New Cards: When cards need to have 1-5 or more effects that's poor game design

[ShinAkira00]

These new card reveals have just confirmed I will not be returning to the game anytime soon, if ever. When you get to the point where card effects become Swiss army knives, having multiple effects in order to justify its value then that's an indication of poor game design.
You will not be able to balance those cards without completely overhauling existing ones. It's frankly a lazy attempt at balancing that makes the game more binary and less enjoyable to play.

 

[cardgame-respecter]

Come back in 2024. Next year is the last year with card releases, according to the roadmap video on youtube. If you don't like gwent in mid 2024. Then this game was not for you.

Post automatically merged: Dec 4, 2022

I should've added, that they are gonna focus on working on the current cardpool.

 

[DRK3]

I must admit i was one of those claiming for more complexity in cards in Gwent during 2019/20, as card effects were very basic, but especially this year, i think they have gone way over the threshold of what's acceptable in card complexity.

For most card reveals, i didnt even bother to try and understand all the text from the respective cards/books, i just wait and try them out or see others playing it to figure it out

 

[Yopofthering]

Those cards are the EXACT opposite of what I liked in Gwent. :'(

I began to play in March 2020 and it was great, you could pick a lot of different cards to make a deck and it was your strategy (and how you executed it) that was important. A match was NOT decided in the first round.

What the point with Provisions restriction when you have a new NR card that will create 3 Legendary Units and put them in your deck (among other things) ??? I checked : legendary units in NR are 8 to 13 prov, so it's basically 24 or 39 for a 14 prov card (+ an order to draw/shuffle and boost + immunity + resilience).

Is it trolling ? I don't get the logic...

 

[EduFerraz]

Those cards are the EXACT opposite of what I liked in Gwent. :'(

I began to play in March 2020 and it was great, you could pick a lot of different cards to make a deck and it was your strategy (and how you executed it) that was important. A match was NOT decided in the first round.

What the point with Provisions restriction when you have a new NR card that will create 3 Legendary Units and put them in your deck (among other things) ??? I checked : legendary units in NR are 8 to 13 prov, so it's basically 24 or 39 for a 14 prov card (+ an order to draw/shuffle and boost + immunity + resilience).

Is it trolling ? I don't get the logic...

Usually legendary cards without sinergy arent that good.

Put in mind problably The cards that Will be create are problably random cards.

 

[BartonFink]

These new card reveals have just confirmed I will not be returning to the game anytime soon, if ever. When you get to the point where card effects become Swiss army knives, having multiple effects in order to justify its value then that's an indication of poor game design.
You will not be able to balance those cards without completely overhauling existing ones. It's frankly a lazy attempt at balancing that makes the game more binary and less enjoyable to play.

I just posted something here which I think makes a good case for having cards, including units, which have multiple capabilities, although I didn't raise that issue in my post, below. With decks which have exponential growth being ten a penny, I'd say that you really need a lot of cards, including cheap ones, in order to combat decks which have infinite growth, immunity etc. That's really badly balanced, I think.

How do you feel community modding of cards will go?

I'm in two minds over this. On the one had it could be better than the current situation. On the other hand, I'm guessing that the reason that I hate the current situation is because the game devs have pandered to the fans and nerfed where they shouldn't have been nerfing and delivered crazy...

forums.cdprojektred.com

 

[ShinAkira00]

I must admit i was one of those claiming for more complexity in cards in Gwent during 2019/20, as card effects were very basic, but especially this year, i think they have gone way over the threshold of what's acceptable in card complexity.

For most card reveals, i didnt even bother to try and understand all the text from the respective cards/books, i just wait and try them out or see others playing it to figure it out

Complexity under normal circumstances would be fine but what they're doing is pushing these effects beyond the provision cost. As someone here pointed out, what's the point of provisions when you can just add cards to your deck when the game starts?
Same with spamming copies of cards on the board. The irony being, they changed leader abilities not long ago because they didn't want us to copy cards. Now they're just removing the limitations placed on the game for any kind of balance.

A good way to add complexity in a manageable way is to implement conditions. Not ridiculous conditions that can be met immediately like "if a unit has a status" or "if your deck has no duplicates" -_- that's just silly.

 

[quintivarium]

A good way to add complexity in a manageable way is to implement conditions. Not ridiculous conditions that can be met immediately like "if a unit has a status" or "if your deck has no duplicates" -_- that's just silly.

I think I disagree with this -- or at least its underlying assumptions.

First, there are different kinds of complexity -- some good and some bad. I am all for what I would call "strategic complexity" -- complexity where decisions made during game play have rich implications which are challenging to analyze in light of potential opponent responses. And I totally oppose what I would describe as "rules complexity" where what a card does is tedious to describe, understand, and implement. Cards with multiple effects and/or convoluted conditions may or may not have strategic complexity -- but they ALWAYS have undesirable rules complexity.

Placing conditions on cards can be of mixed value -- regardless of the number of steps needed to meet the condition (although more steps can often mean more rules complexity). If the condition is one that can be addressed in multiple ways by both players, it is a wonderful addition.

For example, one of my favorite cards is Villentretenmerth who has the condition of destroying the highest powered unit on the battlefield after a certain time. This condition is potentially addressed by both directly addressing Villentretenmerth or by boosting/damaging other cards. The condition is trivial, but the potential interactions are rich.

On the other hand, one of my least favorite cards is Gord who boosts himself by one for every special card previously played. All this condition does is to reduce the strategic complexity by dictating certain elements of card sequencing. There is no way to interact with an opponent playing special cards -- the only real strategy is playing to have an opportunity to remove the card (last say). And then the sequencing of the tall punish card is also coriographed.

 

[ShinAkira00]

I think I disagree with this -- or at least its underlying assumptions.

First, there are different kinds of complexity -- some good and some bad. I am all for what I would call "strategic complexity" -- complexity where decisions made during game play have rich implications which are challenging to analyze in light of potential opponent responses. And I totally oppose what I would describe as "rules complexity" where what a card does is tedious to describe, understand, and implement. Cards with multiple effects and/or convoluted conditions may or may not have strategic complexity -- but they ALWAYS have undesirable rules complexity.



For example, one of my favorite cards is Villentretenmerth who has the condition of destroying the highest powered unit on the battlefield after a certain time. This condition is potentially addressed by both directly addressing Villentretenmerth or by boosting/damaging other cards. The condition is trivial, but the potential interactions are rich.

I don't agree there because removal should never be that easy, I think most people will agree that the removal frenzy is one of the very reasons the game has deteriorated.

Adding the timer/counter mechanic was definitely a step in the right direction but it took too long for them to make it common among cards and then they undid that progress by adding even more broken effects behind the conditions, looking at cards like Eist for example and the many other broken cards that followed.

The conditions should require setup. Not just skipping a turn. The ease with which gold cards are played with such powerful effects, they may as well be bronze cards. Then tutoring made meeting conditions even easier, then echo tutors even easier....and here we are.

 

[quintivarium]

I don't agree there because removal should never be that easy,

You have to be kidding. Except maybe for Schirru , Villentretenmerth is probably the hardest removal in the game — and it is the most interactive. Not only must your opponent go tall while you don’t, the opponent gets a full turn to respond — and responses can be anything from boosting a less valuable target to damaging the intended target to boosting an enemy unit to disabling Villentretenmerth. If your argument is that a timer is too easy in some cases, I agree. But not in this one.

I think most people will agree that the removal frenzy is one of the very reasons the game has deteriorated.

Excessive removal is an issue. But removal is not the root of the problem — it’s the six point per turn, remove -or-lose engines that necessitate the removal that must first be dealt with.

The conditions should require setup.

Actually, no. The cards need to be reasonable in themselves. No set up (unless the set up is so interactive that the game can revolve around it) will fix a broken card. If the setup is impossible, even a hundred point card is not playable. But if the set up is just hard (i.e. conditional), the card ruins the game by being binary rather than by being OP.

Simlas in a Waylay - Elf deck is a classic example; a card that could play for 25 points and then prepare a couple of other 15-30 point plays. And it was very hard to set up in that it required several other cards to be drawn and played at the right time. It was never OP because ideal conditions for its use occurred maybe one game in ten. But none of the required cards could be countered in any way (except maybe bleeding out portions of the big combination). And Simlas decks are extremely unfun to oppose because opponents have virtually no agency in affecting match outcome.