My Summery for the syndicate faction update and the general State of the Game!

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My Summery for the syndicate faction update and the general State of the Game!

TLDR:

GOOD:
Depth (Carry-Over, Combos, Deck building, New mechanics)
Consistency (Card Value and Thinning)


NEUTRAL:
Balance (Tech cards, Flexibility, Bronze Strength)


BAD:
Interactivity and Binary Design (Direct Dmg, Artefacts, Coins and Big Finishers)




Hi everyone: I need to make my own thread to discuss what's happening in the design of Gwent and the direction we are headed.

I hope people will actually value my opinion here and feel encouraged to reply and join the discussion, instead of simply downvoting without any explanation (posted this on reddit because of the 10 post rule).
I am open for any critic you might have and promise to consider it. I am only a casual player, so I will for sure have flaws in my logic and maybe enjoy parts of Gwent that other might find annoying.

That being said, lets dive into it:


THE GOOD:

first off: like most of you guys, I am having a great deal of fun playing the new faction.
Deck building is challenging and the game plan is complex and asks you to think about your future turns to maximize the profit you gain out of your coins.
So the two things i enjoy most about this expansion is DEPTH and CONSISTANCY. And that is awesome - that's why I fell in love with Gwent in the first place. To have more of it is a true joy.

For me, DEPTH is the multitude of decisions you make during the game to maximize the points at the end of each turn, round and match.
This includes setting up combos over multiple turns (preparing bounties, setting up scorch or AoE, ...), as well as thinking about resource management.
The later could mean to save a lock/movement/removal for an important engine or to keep your Geralt round 1, to have an edge in round 3 to destroy something huge.

Another great thing to think about is carry-over into the next round - how can I secure an advantage in the rounds to come?
The Coin-Mechanic does a wonderful job here, even influencing things like deck building by the need to balance coin generation and spending.
This is probably what i enjoy MOST about the new expansion!

The second thing that I like is the CONSISTANCY the new faction offers. Part of it is also thanks to the Coin-Mechanic, but a lot of it also comes from the increased strength of the low bronze units and the two nice thinning tools. I really enjoy the idea behind both of those. Hoard and Insanity MAKE you think about when you actually want to have coins, and when not.

I think this should be used even to a greater extent, so piling up your gold is not always the best option!
For an example, my idea would be to remove the FEE bleeding from Whoresons Freakshow (i expand on SY redesign/balance in my other thread), so that you really have to plan when you want to use it, because you cant use the insanity ability if you have coins.

As for the strong bronze units: they have great synergy - and that's what really makes them shine! almost none of them are just a point slam without setup.
If you meet their condition you get rewarded - A LOT, that makes it fun to play them! Bounty setup, swarm engine, bonded interaction/engine or hoard value - you name it, they deliver!
So to sum it up: THIS FACTION IS A HUGE FUN TO PLAY!

But all good things come to an end at some point and the new expansion has some flaws as well. One it produced itself (BALANCE), which I take as a neutral - because I expect CDPR to correct it (which they already announced) and one that is more of a general design problem Gwent has been struggling with, that got multiplied by the Syndicate update (INTERACTIVITY).
This is my biggest concern and it really makes me worry about the future of my beloved game.

to continue see first post: to long..
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THE NEUTRAL:

So lets tackle the part, which I am confident will be resolved soon, before diving into the unpleasant last bit. Obviously the power creep is real, but I wont argue about that, because the result speaks for itself: its a blast to play these bronze bombs. CDPR stated that the other factions will catch up and I fully support this idea, bronzes should be the backbone of a deck.

So now for the more relevant topics surrounding balance which need to be discussed: Tech Cards and general Flexibility/Consistency.

To get into it: this how I understand balance:
In the perfect meta, each leader has a (tier 1) deck that follows a specific game plan. all of these decks have a 50% chance to win against ALL other (tier 1) decks. Now some Leaders/Decks are more popular then others, be it because people like to slam huge stuff on the board (big monsters), or because boobs - lets call it "aesthetics" (dryads) or because a leader is just a crowd favourite from the games lore.

That's where tech cards come in: they get more value in a specific match up, but loose value in others.
Lets look at two cards that have a similar goal, but a different approach: Geralt of Rivia (GoR) and Geralt: Professional (GP). Both have 3 strength and costs 10/11 provisions, so very close as well. GoR destroys any units with 8 or more strength and blanks on anything below. GP damages any unit by 3 and if its a multiple of 3, destroys it. Both of these cards will vastly improve your chance of winning against big monsters, GoR even more than GP - so lets say GoR makes it a 60/40 match up while GP manages a 55/45. But against something like an NR engine deck, both of these cards may loose you the game! Again, GoR more then GP: lets assume 40/60 and 45/55. These are good tech cards, they have upsides and downsides - they will help in a specific situations, but be a burden in others!
If we now compare them with cards like Kalkenstein (purify) (7 for 7) or Tunnel Drill (artefact removal) (6 for 6). We notice that there is no value loss if the conditions are not met and that is REALY bad.
Tech cards NEED to loose value if they do not find their target, otherwise there is no point in trying to play the countered archetype any more - they do not have to fear the downside to having a much higher winratio against your deck. This destroys deck diversity.

As for which out of GoR or GP has the better design? For me its GP by a long shot, mostly because it is less binary. you will always get some value by removing something small, but you may gain huge value if you hit the right target. But it also promotes counter play and interactivity (I'm ignoring Eithne for this), because both sides can influence the outcome and play around it.
This can be extremely rewarding for both players. We need more tech cards like this!


to continue see my third post :)
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THE BAD:

And so we get the the main issue I have with gwent atm: INTERACTIVITY and BINARY DESIGN!

Almost all balance updates try to improve these two issues: be it the Artefact disaster in dez/jan, or the no unit decks, or the constant nerves to direct dmg cards like Ifrit, Regis, Chironex,... or lastly the broken game finishers like HUGEBERT (lets ignore the thinning nerves, because that's a huge topic on its own). And now, after all these nerves regarding this issue, we are in the worst state we have ever been. EVERY deck revolves only around DIRECT DMG vs POINT SLAM, ARTIFACTS and most importantly A HUGE FINISHER. We have more and better direct removal than ever, making any engine without zeal utterly unplayable. This was getting worse over the last expansions, because CDPR keeps printing new direct dmg cards - we have a solution for everything now: dmg through shield, purify + dmg, dmg and banish, dmg and dmg.. and more dmg (and now steal, abduct and abuse as well). Not even the graveyard is save any more. This has to stop.

Because of this, the only counter is to not play any interactable units at all and end with a huge finisher on the last turn. Due to the coin mechanic, SY excels at this. Best examples are coerced blacksmith: (a 5p Fee engine that can produce a swing of 22 points for Gudrun) and WH executioner bounty abuse that gets more and more popular, stacking indirect value and then cashing it all in on the last possible turn, so no one can react to it. Bronze cards should not be able to produce this much value as a finisher. Even gold ones are very critical (hello hubert, hello dagur, hello sheldon). but because these cards cost just 5p, you have so much provision left to win the first round with your gold cards that its almost impossible for other factions to compete.

We need to break out of this cycle and focus on another kind of removal again: soft removal. The interaction between Lock and Purify is actually really interesting and fun. But it never comes to this, because why lock an engine when you can also just kill it with no deficit? Row restrictions and movement is also a great interaction. You could add weather like biting frost that adds a cool down to engines, or make fog make a lane untargetable for units with reach (and add more unit-interaction like blood moon/vampire,..). And then add weathers that have a positive effect, like a warm breeze that buffs a unit each round.
Let the timers of these weather conditions stack, like bleeding and vitality does, to cancle each other out. And most importantly: make removal less binary! If an order deals 1dmg to 3 targets on the ranged row, it should still deal 1 dmg to 1 target on melee. make lock time based (like lock for 5 turns) so there is interaction! (you can pass before the engine can get used again, or you could lock it again in the final round, ....)
Ofc a lot of engines would have to be balanced as well, cap them by a cool down, or a maximum of charges they can use, ...

and the last part below:
 
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4RM3D

Ex-moderator
i cant post the rest.. no idea why.

The forum auto-merges posts, until someone else replies. You went over the character limit for the thread because of the auto-merge. Haven't encountered this situation before, though, but I'll mention it to the web-team. Anyhow, you can resume your summary, now.
 
There are endless possibilities and ALL OF THEM are better than the plain and boring direct removal options we have now. Some artefacts like the svalblod totem are a great example of a less binary and interactive design. It gives value immediately, but the order ability allows you to gain additional value later on - but that can be interrupted! GIVE ME MORE OF THAT!

PLEASE don't just give all NR engines zeal and print more direct dmg cards. We need interaction, we want to plan and think about out turns. The positive feedback to the coin mechanic shows that, this is a lot of fun. Make coin intractable for both sides in a way that does not feel to bad as well! (not exactly sure how to do that: some ideas below at the end, discuss this with me please!


Summery:

I really like some of the new approaches on depth in gameplay and deck building. there are a lot of interesting decisions to make and thinking ahead gets rewarded, which feels awesome to achieve your game plan in most of your matches played.
I am confident that the balance around bronze cards will be restored in the future, and i absolutely approve of the idea that they are the core of your deck to build around, not some thrash that gets tossed asap.
I would like them to keep improving the flexibility of cards and reduce the binary gaps existing in the game. BUT there has to be a price (on provisions) for flex/tech cards!

That all being said, i really fear the direction we are travelling towards - and sadly this sucks all the fun out of gwent for me atm.. the game revolves more and more around direct removal, going so far to even deny the graveyard mechanic (banish against revive, flying redanien,.. ). While i enjoy the Coin-mechanic for its depth, I absolutely dislike the uninteractive part. stockpiling it is way to easy and that makes the carry over a problem (but i like the idea).
please take a step away from hard removal, and step towards interactivity. add more movement options, but make engines row locked with a worse effect on the other row (less dmg, less targets, bigcool down, ...). The cleanse/lock interaction would be a great step, BUT it does not see any play since direct dmg is always superior. Look for new ways to generate value over time: weather (explained above),...


Thanks for reading!

Sorry for my passion and my bad spelling and grammar. I tried to correct it as best as I can, but I'm really bad at proof reading my own stuff :/
There is a lot more stuff i wanted to include and I most likely forgot something important, but that's what the discussion is for! feel free to share your opinion, this has gotten way longer then I had in mind.

for some (now outdated) balance suggestions take a look at my other thread :)
 
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Talking about syndicate specifically, it is far, far too easy to stockpile coins and there is zero interaction with the resource. If I could anticipate what my opponent will spend them on that wouldn't be so bad but you can't, there's too many different ways to spend coins. There's also too many cards that completely swing the game, Bincy regularly gets 30+ points along with sea jackal and fence- what's the point of big monsters compared to this? , boosting engines does nothing because Phillipa steals them anyway for even better value, the stupid ship is 100x better than pheonix could ever hope to be, bounty is still rediculous, everyone runs the full bounty package now because with a fairly minimal setup you can kill your opponents entire board every turn. Yes I can run multiple tall removal, multiple purifies, and no decent engines at all just to stand a chance but why should I? Example is I do fine vs northern realms and I don't even use removal that much
 
If I could anticipate what my opponent will spend them on that wouldn't be so bad but you can't, there's too many different ways to spend coins. There's also too many cards that completely swing the game

Pretty much my experience against SY. They stock up on coins and thin their decks, waiting for the game to develop, then decide on to how to spend those coins on the best way possible.

Playing against engines? Bounty and removal. Tall minions? Gimme those. You need damaged minions? I'll buff mine, sorry about that. I wonder why only the syndicate can adapt to the game on the fly.

My best experience against them is playing a heavy removal deck, with artifacts (no bounties on those) and a finisher like Igni but it does hinder my experience playing other decks.

Last season I managed to reach rank 2 playing my own fun decks with my own chosen leaders, now I find myself having to play around SY or facing a series of losses on rank 4, really not healthy or fun.
 
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DRK3

Forum veteran
Another issue of Syndicate that makes it OP, is that old "principle" that states that removal should be more expensive than boosts, because boosts have an associated risk.

Well, SY can use coins for points, and 1 coin can do 1 damage as it can do 1 boost. So players obviously prefer to use Witch Hunter Executioner and Ewald Borsodi (they leave this one for later, when its more important) than Coerced Blacksmith and Borst Borsodi (play this early just to make the removal of the other bro later more deadly)

Just another aspect to the long list of SY advantages over other factions.
 
THE BAD:

Because of this, the only counter is to not play any interactable units at all and end with a huge finisher on the last turn. Due to the coin mechanic, SY excels at this. Best examples are coerced blacksmith: (a 5p Fee engine that can produce a swing of 22 points for Gudrun) and WH executioner bounty abuse that gets more and more popular, stacking indirect value and then cashing it all in on the last possible turn, so no one can react to it. Bronze cards should not be able to produce this much value as a finisher. Even gold ones are very critical (hello hubert, hello dagur, hello sheldon). but because these cards cost just 5p, you have so much provision left to win the first round with your gold cards that its almost impossible for other factions to compete.
Talking about syndicate specifically, it is far, far too easy to stockpile coins and there is zero interaction with the resource. If I could anticipate what my opponent will spend them on that wouldn't be so bad but you can't, there's too many different ways to spend coins. There's also too many cards that completely swing the game, Bincy regularly gets 30+ points along with sea jackal and fence- what's the point of big monsters compared to this? , boosting engines does nothing because Phillipa steals them anyway for even better value, the stupid ship is 100x better than pheonix could ever hope to be, bounty is still rediculous, everyone runs the full bounty package now because with a fairly minimal setup you can kill your opponents entire board every turn. Yes I can run multiple tall removal, multiple purifies, and no decent engines at all just to stand a chance but why should I? Example is I do fine vs northern realms and I don't even use removal that much

couldn't agree more. I think the issue with SY bronze engines could be resolved rather easily by giving them a 1 turn cool down (like basically all other engines in the game). the ability to hoard 9 points and spend them at will in a single turn even with a 4p bronze is way too strong. this season has been a real pain in the a** because of that lol.
it's also fascinating that most of the meta defining SY cards like the borsodis, freak show (rip) etc. are pretty low provision. I'm pretty curious how CDPR wants to adjust other factions to that level without making the game a complete mess.
 
I know one day you will make it so,

When every faction functions with a unique mechanic and/or strong card abilities like Syndicate, I am sure there will be more to complain about. But if we got through Gold Immunity, we can get through this.
 
thanks for reading my wall of text guys!
I am absolutly looking forward to the changes, those will be exciting. Glad some more poeple identify the same problems as i do. Though it was a rough month for me, I'm confident that i will be able to enjoy the game a lot more in the future.
 
EVERY deck revolves only around DIRECT DMG vs POINT SLAM, ARTIFACTS and most importantly A HUGE FINISHER. We have more and better direct removal than ever, making any engine without zeal utterly unplayable. This was getting worse over the last expansions, because CDPR keeps printing new direct dmg cards - we have a solution for everything now: dmg through shield, purify + dmg, dmg and banish, dmg and dmg.. and more dmg (and now steal, abduct and abuse as well). Not even the graveyard is save any more. This has to stop.
:

TRUTH.

It's kind of silly how they add stuff to help engines like shield and then cards that can instantly kill units with shield......huh?
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All I can say right now is keep an eye out for upcoming changes. Will we improve the situation 100%, no. But I expect it to be a rather large leap forward.

I have been waiting so very eagerly for a big balance patch. Looking forward to it!
 
Long story short - Syndicate is big fat WTF. Might be the worst thing that ever happened to this game.
If I'd be a newbie and saw this crap I would uninstall instantly.
 
OH MY GOD IM SO HAPPY AND HYPED! MOST OF MY DREAMS COME TRUE! THANK YOU!

cant wait for the patchnotes tomorrow and the patch on wednesday!
 
In my opinion cards like Kalkstein and drill should have a cooldown because if, for example you compare Kalkstein with coocodak (nr) kalkstein is so much better, and drill, this card counters a leader (eldain), this should have not be possible!
I wont even talk about dikstra igor combo
 
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