Hello Gwent design team,
In hopes that you do care about feedback and you take in consideration every voice that took time to evaluate your game, it's time to do my duty as a tester and give you my opinion. Speaking of which, thank you for giving me a key so fast, I played as much as possible and I loved several mechanics.
Since I liked most of the features of the game, I'll only mention the things I didn't like ( pre patch ) :
-The wording. In a few cards, the wording was so unclear, so incoherent that I was just waiting to see it in play in order to understand what the author meant ( e.g. old Cahir, whose by the way "If Nilfgaard" new part of text is still confusing to me - and yes, I'm not native English speaker, but I never had such a problem in a vast amount of cardgames I've played ) .
-The polarization. With the experience I have acquired from other cardgames, there's nothing that I evaluate more than a) card advantage b) opponent's hand vision. As a result I immediately felt in love with Emhyr Var Emreis, I disenchanted every card from all other factions in order to build a dream deck resolved around Emhyr ( something very wrong for a tester, but I had but a few days before the end of closed beta ) and I realized that although the game is not even in open beta, there are the "Strong" Leaders/cards and the "Crappy" ones. Wait. Having 10+ factions and expecting all of them to be strong is insane, yes. The problem is' you can't have one's Leader ability : i) reveal cards ( adding potentially 9+STR to cards in deck/hand ) while others spawn instantly 16 or 11STR raw force where in the last case will most likely stay in battlefield in the next turn, or ii) redrawing cards, which i found even more useless in my opponents etc.
I was also very frustrated with the resurrection theme ( I swear, if I hear again < You'll sweat like a swine in that jacket > again, adding so much value on board, I'd go berserk.
That being said, I am very happy to see that all the last part is now history since with the latest patch you seem to changed.... a LOT.
After trying to login yesterday to play some Gwent, i found myself numb with the classic expression of "What the F@^% happened here" .
Of course I liked the fact that many cards were changed. As a gamer/tester/consumer it gives me the idea that -even though you worked your A$$ES OFF- you don't intend to keep your product if it needs -major- rework. Kudos.
But to be honest, that was toooo much.
Every card that hadn't minor number modification was completely reworked and got several keywords added. As a result, I'm trying to do the challenges to catch up and I'm feeling my head about to explode. When that keyword triggers, why that card didn't trigger, why I -still- can't cancel a card I clicked by accident but it's not triggered yet, why I can't watch that keyword if it's in my opponent's graveyard, WHERE'S THAT DAMN ALGEBRA BOOK !(?)
Complexity is a factor that, indeed, keeps a gamer while stimulates his creativity and thinking, but for a recent game, that is -in my opinion- a brain abuse.
Gwent prepatch was interesting to me because it was so easy to learn and yet had depth; why,where and WHEN you played every card in longterm value. The only thing I was expecting was to see a rework/balance in some nasty combos and easy-to-place brute force cards.
Thank you very much for taking the time to read my huge post, I hope I was on point and didn't repeat what others may have already mentioned. As for the feedback of other players, I'll start digging the posts to see if I'm the only one nagging about the new complexity or not.
P.S. I would be happy to answer any question addressed to me.
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There's but one punishment for traitors.
~Emhyr Van Emreis.