New player impressions, suggestions...

[aiat_gamer]

Now that I have hit 10 posts, I can finally make a topic talking about the game. Before I start, I never played Gwent before, not in Witcher, and not in beta. I don`t do card games much, except HS. I will compare Gwent to HS a lot, so be ready

1. The game really needs some budget decks for new players. Those basic decks are ok for a the first few hours, but every single place I look the decks are full of gold cards. Since the community has not really took off yet, the devs should make a list of some budget decks somewhere. It is very hard for me as a new player to figure out what I should be spending my small amount of scraps.
2. Whoever played in the long beta has so much scrap it has made the community very weird. I have no idea how, but my friends who played 100 hours in Beta have 150k+ craps, and I only have 4k from 30 hours of playing, most coming from milling the cards of thronebreaker. Giving people this much scrap has made it a problem, such as the update where premium cards are not craftable with scraps anymore. Also, this has lead to the lack of budget decks since most veteran players have everything that they want.
3. I have not idea why, but after 30 hours, i have been stuck with 1 reward point for over 3 days. Again I am playing casually, but I am not getting any new reward points that much. Tying the leaders to reward points seems like a bad idea since I would prefer to spend any reward points I have on getting kegs, so I barely have any leaders unlocked.
4. The quest system needs more variety. Since you have obviously copied a lot from HS, quest system should be next. More quests for not just winning which is pretty difficult for new players like me. Also, please make the quests finish-able with friends. I know you might say people will abuse it, but come on, HS has been doing that without any negative impact on the game
5. Speaking of playing with friends, the ability to watch friends play the game is sorely missing.
6. I only did the arena once, but I felt like some of my opponents had way too many gold cards. I think there should be a limit on the power of cards you can get in the arena, if there is not any.
7. I hate the concept of stuff like Artifacts in the game where there is only one counter (as far as I know). Same for weather effects. It makes it so that if you have the card, then it is fine. If not you have to just watch the enemy get value on every turn. Same for locking, especially for factions where they have units that lock as well. My point making engine will get locked, and I might as well concede.
8. When the game progresses so that the last round is 3-4 cards at each players disposal, the game is pure luck. Either you get the good cards or not, nothing much in the way strategy.

 

[LambentJedi]

I am also a new player in a similar situation, started playing this game in December, but I have to say that my experience is different from yours.

1. After playing the tutorial and opening the first few kegs, I got a few good cards from which I was able to build a decent ST for the first few games and ranks 25-30.
I invested all ore I earned in new packs and with Reward points I opened the complete ST tree.
Unfortunately my progression stopped at rank 22 with that deck.
So I looked at a different faction and build my own skellige greatsword boost deck and added some cards with the scraps I earned along the way.
After the ladder reset which put me back to rank 25 I started playing this deck exclusively with a few tweaks here and there, but I never spend more than 1000 scraps in total (dagur two blades was 800 scraps on his own because I don't have thronebreaker) and hit rank 17 last night with a 29-10-2 record.
So I guess I build a pretty nice budget deck with the cards I had at my disposal.

2. This point I agree with you.
Right now I have 1000 scraps, which is not much compared to the beta participants who can craft any card they wish.
On my Xbox account I played the beta when it was still closed, but never really got into it, and just found out I have 30k scraps there, but I don't really want to play on xbox.
Unfortunately I realised too late that pc and xbox accounts weren't the same account anymore and I can't transfer the scraps to my gog account.

3. 2 Reward points are also obtained by winning 6 rounds daily and after that winning 12 rounds. So if you grind 18 roundwins daily you should get 4 Reward points daily plus the points you should get for leveling and contracts.

4. Quests could indeed be a little more interactive, like play 100 cards with deploy or deathwish or something, that could make playing/trying different decks more interesting.

5. No opinion on this. (got no friends, lol)

6. Haven't tried it yet, but I am afraid that it will be pretty hard for a beginner to do well since we don't have much experience with the cards.

7. I always include a few counters to artifact in my deck and some removal and lock for opponent engines, but these work in cohesion with my deck, so they still generate decent board value if I decide to play them when there is nothing to lock/remove.
And I try to bait my opponents into playing their removal cards early in the game/round by playing engines where I have an alternative for in my hand or can resurrect and then play the cards which can win me the round.

8. Luckily I don't play 3-4 card final rounds very often, because i think they are indeed a bit luck based and my deck plays best with more options that's why I try to avoid them.
My general tactic is to get far (enough) ahead in the first round with 4-5 cards left in hand, sometimes even using harald's ability to net me 16-24 points and most of the time the opponent gives up and passes, after that I dry-pass the 2nd round if I have more than 7 cards in hand I try to bait the opponent into playing his strong cards to not lose 2nd round.
My general goal is to start round 3 with 10 strong cards and the last say and the opponent on a card disadvantage.

Hope this helps you a bit with your experience of the game.

I generally enjoy this game very much and Imo it is more fun to play than closed beta gwent and a lot more fun than hearthstone.

Thanks for reading this long reply!!

 

[Lexor]

@aiat_gamer @LambentJedi

I'm "not so new player" already but I started playing after HC so can probably "answer your questions" properly.

1. Budget decks are hard to create as every new player has different experience (is getting different set of random cards at start). All you need to learn which your cards are the most valued ones and try to create a deck with them.

3. You need to play and win some amount of rounds per day - you can get your daily RPs for winning the 6th, 18th, 42nd and 66th round. A lot of RPs is also coming from contracts.

6. Arena was probably the most important mode for me at start as I could play / use almost all the cards by myself and that helped me a lot to value some cards. In addition to that I'm watching a lot of streams - that also helps to understand how some cards work.

7. In my the only one competitive deck I do not have any counters vs artifacts, weather or locks. I think they are not so needed as long as you are able to estimate your chances for every turn. You also need to build your deck "properly" to have "more answers than needed" (if one of your engines got blocked just use the other one).

8. That's also a thing you need to learn as "3-4 cards in last round" is the result of your play in previous rounds. You need to learn "when to concede a round to have more proper hand for the next one".

 

[aiat_gamer]

I am also a new player in a similar situation, started playing this game in December, but I have to say that my experience is different from yours.

1. After playing the tutorial and opening the first few kegs, I got a few good cards from which I was able to build a decent ST for the first few games and ranks 25-30.
I invested all ore I earned in new packs and with Reward points I opened the complete ST tree.
Unfortunately my progression stopped at rank 22 with that deck.
So I looked at a different faction and build my own skellige greatsword boost deck and added some cards with the scraps I earned along the way.
After the ladder reset which put me back to rank 25 I started playing this deck exclusively with a few tweaks here and there, but I never spend more than 1000 scraps in total (dagur two blades was 800 scraps on his own because I don't have thronebreaker) and hit rank 17 last night with a 29-10-2 record.

!

Can I get screenshot of the deck?

 

[4RM3D]

Can I get screenshot of the deck?

Try this deck I've created, which also uses Craiteswords.

 

[rrc]

Try this deck I've created, which also uses Craiteswords.

Gotcha!

 

[StrykerxS77x]

1. I only did the arena once, but I felt like some of my opponents had way too many gold cards. I think there should be a limit on the power of cards you can get in the arena, if there is not any.

Myself and many other players have talked about this issue ever since they released Arena. So far it's falling on deaf ears.

Arena is extremely non competitive to the point of being completely uninteresting IMO. What is interesting about a player with 13 legendaries playing someone with 4 legendaries? That makes the game start off very unfair.

 

[Esmer]

Arena is extremely non competitive to the point of being completely uninteresting IMO. What is interesting about a player with 13 legendaries playing someone with 4 legendaries? That makes the game start off very unfair.

I actually had 6-7 wins with 4-5 gold decks (won games where my opponent played more gold cards than I had in my decks), but that was before HC, when

- You could dry pass
- You had more mulligans to dig for the cards you needed
- The gap in power level between gold, silver and bronze cards was smaller than now

What I am saying is this: CDPR reworked the game, but forgot to change the arena, so it became even more draft/draw dependent than ever. Or perhaps this was the intention all along? So the new players can easily get a lot of wins if they were lucky with the draft?

Post automatically merged: Jan 8, 2019

When the game progresses so that the last round is 3-4 cards at each players disposal, the game is pure luck. Either you get the good cards or not, nothing much in the way strategy.

Coming from a HS player, this is golden.

In case you didn't know, Gwent used to be the most consistent card game thanks to all the mechanics CDPR chose to remove in Homecoming (arguably, to appeal to more casual audience like HS players). It's bittersweet to hear you don't like this crap too.

 

[aiat_gamer]

I actually had 6-7 wins with 4-5 gold decks (won games where my opponent played more gold cards than I had in my decks), but that was before HC, when

- You could dry pass
- You had more mulligans to dig for the cards you needed
- The gap in power level between gold, silver and bronze cards was smaller than now

What I am saying is this: CDPR reworked the game, but forgot to change the arena, so it became even more draft/draw dependent than ever. Or perhaps this was the intention all along? So the new players can easily get a lot of wins if they were lucky with the draft?

Post automatically merged: Jan 8, 2019

Coming from a HS player, this is golden.

In case you didn't know, Gwent used to be the most consistent card game thanks to all the mechanics CDPR chose to remove in Homecoming (arguably, to appeal to more casual audience like HS players). It's bittersweet to hear you don't like this crap too.

• I only played the arena once, and it was a horrible experience. It is in no way fun to play against someone with so many golden cards. I have no idea why they have not put a limit on this, this is basic stuff!
• Yeah. To me it seems that there are way too many things that shut down my entire game and there is nothing I can do with it. Like in one game, the dude played that lizard card that can consume a friendly unit on each turn, gave it immunity with hero power and kept consuming every card he played while using spells to kill my cards. The whole final round I was just watching this and could not do anything.

 

[BirdMagic]

Though it's a free game getting started can be an annoying grind to get cards when everyone else has manageable decks and the worst feeling is when you aren't fluent in mechanics so you buy a card you think is good with what little scrap you have only to realize it doesn't fit your deck as well as you thought so more grinding.

Post automatically merged: Jan 16, 2019

That or you cave and spend some real money just to speed up the time of getting a decent deck lol.

 

[SkiZophreniC]

I am using this thread to make a suggestion :

I'm a new player, started 2 months ago, really in love with Gwent, and last season I reached rank 6. But here's the problem: I climbed the ladder too fast.

I know it sounds strange but as a newcomer I had very few choices available to make good decks, so I just focused on one faction and bought the most "efficient" cards, you know those powerful neutrals you could use in every deck... As a result I climbed very fast, I tried to slow little bit by using other factions, trying to be creative (= be wrecked) but the main problem is that you cannot loose a rank (except at the end of the month, but hey I'm still rank 8).

I am really having fun with CC expansion, now exploring every part of the game, but there is a "but": I loose very, VERY often (I must be at a 25% win ratio). The fact is that I am still beginner, for example I never touched NR, so I still have troubles to anticipate my opponent moves (I need to play the faction to understand the mechanics). And right now at these ranks I am facing really good players, never a mistake, with competitive decks that I cannot handle except with THE only deck viable I have. And sometimes I'm just: ok screw that I want some wins, so I use my favourite deck, 4 wins in a row and bim, 1 rank up... so the problem is getting worse.

I know, you will tell me about fMMR, so that I should face people of my level. The fact is that you encounter people of same rank, no matter the MMR; and I can tell you that at rank 9 and higher people are really good at this game.

My suggestion is : let us loose ranks ! So that beginners like me can try novel things and get familiar with every faction even with sub-optimal decks... and still win from time to time !

 

[4RM3D]

My suggestion is : let us loose ranks ! So that beginners like me can try novel things and get familiar with every faction even with sub-optimal decks... and still win from time to time !

That's how it was originally implemented, but most player hated it because it felt too punishing. So, that won't be coming back any time soon. The best we can hope for is a toggle that allows you to (un)lock your rank. However, I think it's for a niche group of players, making the feature a low priority, if any such thing would be implemented at all.

 

[Mr_Mugglez]

I have over 100k of ore and I still lose so often, horribly, to netdecks, because I refuse to play them. I can craft whatever I want.

This is what happens. The Youtube mafia get access to cards before anyone else. They have weeks? playing with them offline or simply know about the card and what can be done with it. These are very good players. They then release a deck within 24 hours. It gets copied, by 99% ot the players. The ladder is ridiculous to climb unless you copy, their deck.

As a ST player, it's very sad indeed for my brethren. We have the finest women in HC but, that's about all we have as none of our categories work very well together unlike every other faction.

 

[4RM3D]

The Youtube mafia get access to cards before anyone else. They have weeks? playing with them offline or simply know about the card and what can be done with it. These are very good players.

Having early access to new content certainly helps, but you are overestimating the added value thereof. Even without a closed PTR, good players can make a competitive deck within a day. Also, certain combos only develop much later, after the meta shifts or someone finds a new interaction.

They then release a deck within 24 hours. It gets copied, by 99% ot the players. The ladder is ridiculous to climb unless you copy, their deck.

Netdecks are an inherent part of the game. However, you do not have to follow the crowd; you can make your own decks. But for those that cannot or do not care about it, they will always netdeck.