My only complaint is that the game is too dark, i barely can see the cards ...
Im changing my mind after 15 games. Of course there are some things that i dont like, but the game overall is quite good.
CDPR U SHOULD start this gwent ptr WITH TUTORIAL IN IT.A lot of players are so overwhelmed that they dont like it from the start.
U should add some indicators for cards that have melee or ranged abilities only. Some arrows/more colors/something.
CDPR U SHOULD start this gwent ptr WITH TUTORIAL IN IT.A lot of players are so overwhelmed that they dont like it from the start.
U should add some indicators for cards that have melee or ranged abilities only. Some arrows/more colors/something.
A few words about Nilfgaard (my main/only faction). There's currently two archetypes I recognize, reveal and control and here's my take on them:
Reveal:
- Reveal engines don't give you any useful information, which used to be one of the crucial perks of the archetype. You could adjust your gameplan based on your opponent's hand. Now you reveal random cards in both decks which seems pointless;
- Reveal as an archetype is all but reliable. The archetype seems too draw dependent (especially considering that NG leaders only get 2 mulligans). Didn't draw Mangonels and drew Daerlans? You can forfeit;
- Reveal engines are too random. As a player you've absolutely no control over what you reveal, so you easily brick your Recruits, Spotters, or Deithwens;
- Based on the aformentioned points, the archetype is an RNG fiesta;
- There's too many useless filler cards you've to take which lowers the consistency even more.
All in all I see potential there, but I'd happily trade max. point per play values in exchange for more cards supporting the archetype, as well as more reliability and consistency.
Control:
- Once again, too many fillers. The only bronze that effectively supports the archetype is Alba Cavalry and it sure as hell could use a buff (for instance 2nd deploy ability to prevent it being a dead 3 power play);
- Golds like Vanhemar and Vattier are absolutely amazing, but lack of overall consistency hurts them. Quite often you draw locks, but didn't get your golds and vice versa;
- Kingslayer should play the deploy ability of the card he's transformed into. Seriously. It could be a great finisher, but if you didn't draw any engines/orders it's a dead 6 power gold. I see enough potential for the card to be autoinclude in most NG decks, but right now it's lackluster;
- Again, lack of consistency. You've to play a heckton of filler cards to thin/or and generate value, since your core cards could camp at the bottom of your deck and if you drew them, they're too situational.
As in case of reveal, there's potential, but the archetype feels too random to be played competitively.
In general I feel like Homecoming will be one massive arena. You can create some synergies and make some interesting plays, but after all smashing random cards with higher base value will win most of the time. Existing archetypes got gutted for no apparent reason (what happened to spies? Why wasn't alchemy balanced and expanded into a proper archetype?). The idea of more flexible cards was to give you the opportunity to adjust your gameplan, and get multiple wincons. But considering that most of bronzes are too similar and the lack of consistency prevents any gameplan from being executed I feel like Homecoming failed in that department.
Overall I don't feel like Homecoming will be worth putting time into. Sure, visuals look great, the provision system can be interesting, but the cards are too random and boring. Add the fact that you've got only 2 bronze copies and that all fillers are equally bad and there's absolutely no incentive to play. In fact you could give each player one card. 5 base power, deploy melee: boost self by a random number between 1 and 10, and deploy ranged damge your enemy by a random number between 1 and 10 and you'd achieve exactly the same thing.
Wasted 6 months of development and 2 years of beta. All people wanted was to revert to pre-Midwinter and build from there. Instead we got Midwinter 2 but with shiny visuals.
Reveal:
- Reveal engines don't give you any useful information, which used to be one of the crucial perks of the archetype. You could adjust your gameplan based on your opponent's hand. Now you reveal random cards in both decks which seems pointless;
- Reveal as an archetype is all but reliable. The archetype seems too draw dependent (especially considering that NG leaders only get 2 mulligans). Didn't draw Mangonels and drew Daerlans? You can forfeit;
- Reveal engines are too random. As a player you've absolutely no control over what you reveal, so you easily brick your Recruits, Spotters, or Deithwens;
- Based on the aformentioned points, the archetype is an RNG fiesta;
- There's too many useless filler cards you've to take which lowers the consistency even more.
All in all I see potential there, but I'd happily trade max. point per play values in exchange for more cards supporting the archetype, as well as more reliability and consistency.
Control:
- Once again, too many fillers. The only bronze that effectively supports the archetype is Alba Cavalry and it sure as hell could use a buff (for instance 2nd deploy ability to prevent it being a dead 3 power play);
- Golds like Vanhemar and Vattier are absolutely amazing, but lack of overall consistency hurts them. Quite often you draw locks, but didn't get your golds and vice versa;
- Kingslayer should play the deploy ability of the card he's transformed into. Seriously. It could be a great finisher, but if you didn't draw any engines/orders it's a dead 6 power gold. I see enough potential for the card to be autoinclude in most NG decks, but right now it's lackluster;
- Again, lack of consistency. You've to play a heckton of filler cards to thin/or and generate value, since your core cards could camp at the bottom of your deck and if you drew them, they're too situational.
As in case of reveal, there's potential, but the archetype feels too random to be played competitively.
In general I feel like Homecoming will be one massive arena. You can create some synergies and make some interesting plays, but after all smashing random cards with higher base value will win most of the time. Existing archetypes got gutted for no apparent reason (what happened to spies? Why wasn't alchemy balanced and expanded into a proper archetype?). The idea of more flexible cards was to give you the opportunity to adjust your gameplan, and get multiple wincons. But considering that most of bronzes are too similar and the lack of consistency prevents any gameplan from being executed I feel like Homecoming failed in that department.
Overall I don't feel like Homecoming will be worth putting time into. Sure, visuals look great, the provision system can be interesting, but the cards are too random and boring. Add the fact that you've got only 2 bronze copies and that all fillers are equally bad and there's absolutely no incentive to play. In fact you could give each player one card. 5 base power, deploy melee: boost self by a random number between 1 and 10, and deploy ranged damge your enemy by a random number between 1 and 10 and you'd achieve exactly the same thing.
Wasted 6 months of development and 2 years of beta. All people wanted was to revert to pre-Midwinter and build from there. Instead we got Midwinter 2 but with shiny visuals.
I thing he actually works like that now. At least according to his description.BUG : Villen/borkh DOES NOT scorch more than one unit with the same power, only one, this just lose me a game
Ok I played a couple games. And heres my feedback.
Good:
-> Card art is awesome
-> Visuals are 10/10 i love the new boards.
-> Leaders are Ok. I would prefer the card art, because its so good, and with 3d leaders it goes to waste. (Or make the card avaible trough gameplay).
-> Menus are way better.
-> Deck building is nice.
-> The new icons are also an improvement.
-> I like the ideia for Going first/second
Bad:
-> Gameplay got simple, bland and boring. After some games i have no more desire to play.
-> No more CA/CA-spies hurts decision making
-> Card limitation (10), makes one round feel useless
-> Blacklisting was a small skill check, its also gone
-> No point in the row removal. It unecessarely simplifies the game further...
-> Reach Mechanic, why? Whith two rows its so simple.
-> With so much mechanics removed, why is create still in the game? Why is it viable? Remove that for the love of god.
-> Archtypes are WAY limited
-> Not enough cards of the same family
-> 2 bronze limitation enphasizes this
-> Plus you also have due to provisions, to put some uniteresting cards to make room for interactions that are expensive
-> That wont really happen consistently due to less tutors.
-> No alchemy, NG soldiers are boring, Machines its just damage, poor graveyard interactions, mill removed, frost gone from wild hunt, etc
TL-DR:
-> Its very pretty, and very bland.
Possible solution:
As a fellow developer (not videogames), i understand the need for a good design, nice visuals. Or else no one will care.
But you cant sacrifice features, in this case depth, for the visual part.
Honestely, you should keep the best of two worlds.
Keep the visuals, and revert back to the gold imunity patch, or the one before that, or pre midwinter patch.
Those were the top patches in therms of interesting gameplay.
Good:
-> Card art is awesome
-> Visuals are 10/10 i love the new boards.
-> Leaders are Ok. I would prefer the card art, because its so good, and with 3d leaders it goes to waste. (Or make the card avaible trough gameplay).
-> Menus are way better.
-> Deck building is nice.
-> The new icons are also an improvement.
-> I like the ideia for Going first/second
Bad:
-> Gameplay got simple, bland and boring. After some games i have no more desire to play.
-> No more CA/CA-spies hurts decision making
-> Card limitation (10), makes one round feel useless
-> Blacklisting was a small skill check, its also gone
-> No point in the row removal. It unecessarely simplifies the game further...
-> Reach Mechanic, why? Whith two rows its so simple.
-> With so much mechanics removed, why is create still in the game? Why is it viable? Remove that for the love of god.
-> Archtypes are WAY limited
-> Not enough cards of the same family
-> 2 bronze limitation enphasizes this
-> Plus you also have due to provisions, to put some uniteresting cards to make room for interactions that are expensive
-> That wont really happen consistently due to less tutors.
-> No alchemy, NG soldiers are boring, Machines its just damage, poor graveyard interactions, mill removed, frost gone from wild hunt, etc
TL-DR:
-> Its very pretty, and very bland.
Possible solution:
As a fellow developer (not videogames), i understand the need for a good design, nice visuals. Or else no one will care.
But you cant sacrifice features, in this case depth, for the visual part.
Honestely, you should keep the best of two worlds.
Keep the visuals, and revert back to the gold imunity patch, or the one before that, or pre midwinter patch.
Those were the top patches in therms of interesting gameplay.
Put this in:
When a card activates an ability in a certain row make that row light up when the player hovers the placement cursor over it.
A lot of newbies will be extremely confused by this row activation stuff and it will lead to a lot of frustrating instant forfeits because they placed their important golds on the wrong row.
If the row lights up they will know immediately that the ability will activate.
When a card activates an ability in a certain row make that row light up when the player hovers the placement cursor over it.
A lot of newbies will be extremely confused by this row activation stuff and it will lead to a lot of frustrating instant forfeits because they placed their important golds on the wrong row.
If the row lights up they will know immediately that the ability will activate.
My biggest gripes with HC are the fact that decks have been watered down and the first two rounds having little to no impact.
Due to the fact that you can only include 2 bronzes in your decks and the fact that there aren't nearly enough archetypal cards, you're pretty much forced to build a deck with half bronzes that are actually fun and cool archetype cards and the other half are meaningless filler only there to get you to 25 cards and stay under the provisions limit. This feels awful to build and even more awful to play all of the theme is lost when most decks will have the exact same filler bronzes, even more so than every archetype deck being the same.
I think even more so the fact that due to the hand limit and the fact that you draw so many cards, the first two rounds don't really matter. You can't feasibly bleed your opponent for hand advantage in r2 even if you win r1 unless you want to go really deep into that round as well, but every card you play means the opponent has the chance to overtake you and make it impossible to bleed them effectively. More so, passing first r1 is almost always a bad idea as you're only going to give them the initiative, you can't punish bad tempo plays even on red coin, because they'll just drypass r2 and go into r3 with 10 cards.
The best tactic is to just dump your filler bronzes during r1 and r2 and go into r3 with your actual deck and the most gold cards possible and win with simple point slam, as you have no realistic way of controlling the length of the rounds like in the original Gwent. I miss how if you knew the matchup, you could bleed people during r2 if you managed to win r1 to make the r3 as short as possible if you knew you had the advantage or you could try to make r1 as short as possible so that you could have a long r3 and again win because you knew you would have an advantage during long rounds.
HC has practically erased all the things that made me love Gwent and I can only hope they rather delay HC to fix these issues rather than release a sub-par game most of the community will hate and kill their own game for nothing.
Due to the fact that you can only include 2 bronzes in your decks and the fact that there aren't nearly enough archetypal cards, you're pretty much forced to build a deck with half bronzes that are actually fun and cool archetype cards and the other half are meaningless filler only there to get you to 25 cards and stay under the provisions limit. This feels awful to build and even more awful to play all of the theme is lost when most decks will have the exact same filler bronzes, even more so than every archetype deck being the same.
I think even more so the fact that due to the hand limit and the fact that you draw so many cards, the first two rounds don't really matter. You can't feasibly bleed your opponent for hand advantage in r2 even if you win r1 unless you want to go really deep into that round as well, but every card you play means the opponent has the chance to overtake you and make it impossible to bleed them effectively. More so, passing first r1 is almost always a bad idea as you're only going to give them the initiative, you can't punish bad tempo plays even on red coin, because they'll just drypass r2 and go into r3 with 10 cards.
The best tactic is to just dump your filler bronzes during r1 and r2 and go into r3 with your actual deck and the most gold cards possible and win with simple point slam, as you have no realistic way of controlling the length of the rounds like in the original Gwent. I miss how if you knew the matchup, you could bleed people during r2 if you managed to win r1 to make the r3 as short as possible if you knew you had the advantage or you could try to make r1 as short as possible so that you could have a long r3 and again win because you knew you would have an advantage during long rounds.
HC has practically erased all the things that made me love Gwent and I can only hope they rather delay HC to fix these issues rather than release a sub-par game most of the community will hate and kill their own game for nothing.
Here are some suggestions, maybe they are personal but i'm pretty sure some people would agree with me. Let's start with visual options:
Things like bug, text missing, wrong text etc are fixable and they should be no hard work. Card balance is a little too early to be discussed despite some cards being too good for its recruit cost, but they can still be fixed. But my overall exprience was this Gwent is too generic. I hope this is not the final version and this will not be the last open PTR before release and you guys can work this out.
- You guys want board to be a BATTLEFIELD and Heroes franchise inspired this a lot, but is it supposed to be littrally FIELD? Even in Heroes, some battles take place in cloud sky, castle etc. Because of "FIELD" restriction, Gwent board right now is very brown, shady, grey. Some people would say altering color should help, but what is wrong with a battle in jungle (ST), castles (NR, NG), ocean (SK)? Because there are already more than one perspective, you guys can let the board be a font, it is not necessary a place, this would improve user's view a lot.
- Leaders ability are NOT IMPACTFUL at all. I hope there will be more effect, like cheering from armies, arrows from behind tree (ST), waves crash (SK), maybe even specific effect for leaders.
- Leader standing still is very boring. Maybe letting them walk a little bit, or servants comes asking, aiding etc would help.
- Please let gold cards be MORE HIGHLIGHTED, i know right now there is little mechanical difference between gold and bronze when placed on board, but dont let characters with name like prince villem blend in peasants.
- In case making 2 types of battlefields on a board is hard, we could always let the faction of red coin players have their type of battlefield. After all it makes sense to make the battle about blue coin players attacking red coin players, so blue has tactical advantage and red has their home as battlefield.
- ORDER is a awesome mechanic, but right now because of UNLIMITED ACTIONS per turn, it makes Gwent a game about value only. Like what is the point of out tempoing a 0 point thunderbolt potions after 0 points tainted ales if opponent could use all their charge in next turn. Gwent is very unique card game, but it still have core mechanics other card games have : tempo, value, control. Please dont make one of them way less important. I suggest adding a limited action per turns, not only for orders, but also for future mechanics.
- CARDS LIMIT at 10 and 3 CARDS DRAWN PER ROUND make 3 ROUNDS SYSTEM MEANNINGLESS. I never saw a card game with number of limited cards in hands equal to number of starting cards in hand. That doesnt make sense and limits lots of options for players. Gwent is a game about points and points only, restricting it like this would make your plays in game feel so simply and empty. Also every round is a medium long round right now, this totally destroy decks favoring short round. I know provision systems already makes deck building a lot more complicated, but deleting deck building with a clear victory condition about distribution points in rounds is hurting veteran Gwent players. I know this is hard to achieve and current system would make Gwent mobile friendly, but it is not impossible to do, your community (or part of community) always get your back.
- TACTICAL ADVANTAGE is cool, but it is a little too strong and has only 1 PURPOSE right now - to make an unit almost undefeatable, maybe give it less point, and give another options like instead of points, blue can choose to have more mulligans, or secretly block next card red coin play for 3 turns etc.
- CONSISTENCY is what current Gwent is known about, players can build decks then learn to function properly as long as they know their mistake in deck building (too greedy, non synergy etc), mulligan or misplay. This make gwent unique with other card games. I know you guys want a different Gwent with less consitency but nerfing it to ground in one patch is too much. 3 copies of bronze is gone, tutors are almost extinct, no more black list mulligan etc. Maybe future expansion could fix part of this but first impression of new players with Gwent is very important, dont make it blend in with other card games.
- 2 COPIES is a direction for your new gwent and i respect that, hope it will make the game better, but could you add some ABILITIES ALLOWING CARDS TO HAVE MORE COPIES, like "COMPANION: let you have one more copy of this card in your deck", this would bring back the 3 copies without breaking current system.
- Game is little SLOW right now, it is even worse with 3 cards drawn per round system, this make a game painfully long. Maybe speeding up animation could help.
Things like bug, text missing, wrong text etc are fixable and they should be no hard work. Card balance is a little too early to be discussed despite some cards being too good for its recruit cost, but they can still be fixed. But my overall exprience was this Gwent is too generic. I hope this is not the final version and this will not be the last open PTR before release and you guys can work this out.
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Keep current version of Gwent, gameplay,mechanics,etc, but just update new Visuals, because frankly Homecoming looks pretty but bland and boring.
I actually think the way max hand works actually allows artifacts to be viable as they are a low drop it allows you to the lay them early and not worry about being out tempod as you know you have turns to make it up. Maybe reduce the draws to 3/2 or 2/1 or increase max hand count but I can see the idea behind it and it does work but the fact you can't really pass before turn 4, does ruin round one. Anyway I do like this new addition on the whole and with time and familiarising myself I feel like it will get better, however more synergies and archetype depth is needed
- Whispess: tribute seems very good. I think it could have a bigger provision cost (Although I hope it doesn't)
- Arachas Queen's ability doesn't seem so strong for it to have only one mulligan. Demavend's ability seems stronger and it has 2 mulligans
- 25 card limit should stay or if it is changed max provisions should be increased as well.
- I feel like there needs to be something that says that my opponent is still in mulligan phase. (just like current gwent)
- Shupe's tooltip is missing (probably obvious) and sweers ability has 'problems'
- Card ability names (aka melee, order, etc) could "pop out" more.
Hey CDPR, thank you for the early access!
Overall I like the new Gwent, it's different and it's obviously not a finished product, but I can see the potential. The following are bugs / issues I have encountered so far:
Overall I like the new Gwent, it's different and it's obviously not a finished product, but I can see the potential. The following are bugs / issues I have encountered so far:
- On my client the opponent's name isn't listed at the top, over his leader.
- There's a text error on the description of the monster faction that appears at faction select during deck-building. It reads "Humans like the think they are" where it should probably read "Humans like to think they are".
- The card "Ivo of Belhaven" appears to have reach 1, but there's no text about reach on the card itself. He can't shoot units on the enemy ranged row.
- The "Ancient Foglet" card text is ambiguous. I played a Predatory Dive that killed a doomed Ancient Foglet, and it spawned a new copy, even though there were no Ancient Foglets in my graveyard.
- Nilfgaardian Knight card reads "If there are no enemy units destroy self", but if you play it and the enemy has a unit with "immune" status, the NG knight destroys itself. This is either a bug or ambiguous card text. It could instead read "Boost an enemy unit by 2. If you can't boost an enemy unit with this card destroy self".
- There is no indication on the leaders in the deckbuilder of how many mulligans they have.
- During mulligans, if you finish your mulligan before your opponent, there is no indication that he's still choosing cards. When his mulligan timer starts to run out, it looks like your own normal turn timer running out, so for the first few games I thought I was somehow unable to play cards during my first turn.
- When you change the name of a deck in the deckbuilder, it doesn't update the name at the top until you exit that deck and go to the main deck-building screen.
- I'm getting a graphical glitch in several of my games where there's a white square in the center of the battlefield with a unit strength icon in the top right corner of the square. I have attached two screenshots showing the glitch. I'm playing on PC with Windows 10, with an nVidia GTX 760 graphics card, i7 4770 processor and Samsung EVO SSD.
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I played other 4 games with Consume/Deathwish deck (self made ). 4 Wins. If i have Ruehin on the board in Round 3 and the opponent does not have lock, he is done. Everybody forfeited. Ruehin is the new Olgierd...with a Consume unit you have Consume unit power+8 EVERY TURN. It's a little bit op, i think...
). 4 Wins. If i have Ruehin on the board in Round 3 and the opponent does not have lock, he is done. Everybody forfeited. Ruehin is the new Olgierd...with a Consume unit you have Consume unit power+8 EVERY TURN. It's a little bit op, i think...
So, after 3 hours with the PTR here is my Feedback (player since closed beta)
things i liked as a gamer:
I have faith CDPR will be able to fix most issues in the coming months but I dont enjoy the new Gwent as much as the current live version. There is still a ton of work ahead of them!
things i liked as a gamer:
- Visuals and board graphics
- 3D Leaders with their Animations
- Provision system for Deckbuilding
- Mulligan screen
- Main Menu: i was expecting some kind of scroll/slide-effect for the cards, it feels very unnatural to navigate the cards
- Deckbuilder:
- the UI/UX here is a big step back
- it feels very overwhelming
- splitting filter-fuctions is never a good idea
- the filter icons are too similar looking
- i attached a mockup to illustrate how imo it would have been solved better
- Gameboard/Gameplay:
- again the UI/UX is a big step back
- i can see the reason to put most UI-elements to the right (free up 3D leaders) but its not worth the price to sacrifice usability
- the overall gameplay feels too slow and clunky, if there are no more actions possible it should end the turn automatic
- Cards just dissolving instead of flying into the graveyard feels odd
- also the indication if you handbouff a card (particle flying to card) should be added back
- Camera pan on opponent´s turn should be disabled, dont move the camera unless curser/card-effect action
- Indicator of whose turn it is is almost not visible (bring back the blue glow effect from before) and turn the coin into the colors blue/red
- There is also not a single indicator for using your leader
- too many similar card abilities
- i also made a mockup to illustrate what i suggest to change
I have faith CDPR will be able to fix most issues in the coming months but I dont enjoy the new Gwent as much as the current live version. There is still a ton of work ahead of them!
Attachments
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