Open PTR feedback

+
I don't agree with the variance problem argued by Freddybabes. True, a 14 provision card is much better than a 4 provision card. Obvious. But this is somehow diluted by the length of the rounds. Usually, in the 3rd round you play around 6 cards (roughly). So statistically this argument is not valid. Sometimes it'll be true, but in general it'll not apply. By the way, Freddy uploaded that video before the public ptr.

I agree,

The possibility of playing a long round 3 is very good and it disables tactics of a player drawing just by a chance a better card last round and winning it without any tactical play. When we draw more cards and have opportunity to play more cards the game itself becomes more tactical. It's quite amazing how winning round first doesn't give you a huge advantage over opponent in round 3. It's like you need to think about how to play in all of the rounds instead of building an occasion of drawing your most powerful card or cards in round 3 and winning. I LOVE LONG ROUNDS in Gwent.
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Skellige
I love the discard mechanic and the golds centered around it, but i never really managed to build a deck i liked because of the incredibly boring neutral cards. They mostly seem like a bunch of small value cards and then half of them have the bloodthirst keyword and seems useless outside of that archetype.


Nilfgaard
This faction was awesome. The bronzes had some amazing combos and encouraged both careful planning and cunning counterplays.

I think that Nilfgaard was too powerful in some regards. Some basic brown just simply banishing your units? Discarding your plays and buffing self too easily.

I wish cards like Stefan Skellen were treated a bit different though. As it is now he's just a super unreliable gamble with his order ability being countered by 5 damage removal. It feels like you either have to do the "i play engine, they remove it, i play 2nd engine, they remove it, i play 3rd engine, they don't have anymore removal"-dance and be lucky to have more engines or play some artifact or the card is useless.

There are cards that trigger a unit with order instantly if it's really important for you. There is no point of creating an indestructible unit just so you could use its ability.

I love his ability though! So awesome. I wish he was 3 power, 4 armor or something like that.

As for the "put a card on top of your deck"-guy i hope you'll nerf the +4 boost he provides instead of his provision cost. It's just a super interesting card that combos with so many Nilfgaard and neutral cards.

Agree. This Guy is way too cheap for what he does. I wrote about it to CDPR.

Neutral
I wish the potion artifacts gave armor and less points to have some better engine protection (a bit like quen used to be).

Maybe in the future there will be armor or something else.

I love summoning circle, but it feels like i have to play a bunch of artifacts to make it worth it in order to counter their 1 or 2 ofs artifact removal.

You take the risk always by having this or another card. I suggest that there could be a card that gives an artifact immunity for example.

So far i've ended up having either a heavy artifact investment or none in my decks. I wish it was possible to just play 1 or 2 artifacts in my decks.

It is possible to play as many artifacts as you want in your deck. If it wasn't successful for you to have just two of them then your deck wasn't optimized enough to play like that.
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I had more time to look at the game in depth and I really love it.
Again, you guys did an amazing job. Congratz.

My feedback about things that can be improved :

-The problem with the card limit, like a lot pointed out, can either be fixed by reducing the number of cards you draw on turn 2 and 3 or just extend the card limit on turn 2 and 3 (I mean, the card limit just serve a purpose on round 1, it's not like we need it further down the line).

Well. It's very important to have the card limit in your hand. That's the whole idea of balancing the game.
As well as that you can draw 3 cards each turn which means that having more cards each round the game is more tactical and less relying on big units just to draw them in short round 3 after bleeding your opponent. Now with more cards in your hand you have be more tactical throughout the game and not just executing simple mechanics. Long rounds are good for Gwent.

-No way of dealing with traps. It seems quiet OP to me in its current state.

There is no point in not having 'destroy an artifact' cards in your deck then. And then, there is other way of dealing with artifacts and traps. You can think about which unit you will play next. Traps and artifacts in general are making the game much more interesting and gives it more variety. Just open your mind up for more tactical game. Plan your deck better, more flexible.

-Avallach's body is too large, making this card out of reach of thunder seems incredibly risky to me. His main purpose is to protect an engine card and sacrificing a removal on him means you have one less removal for said engine card. Making this guy tanky is overkill and makes him too strong.

You can Lock him or destroy him. I don't see an issue here. I didn't even put him in my deck just because he was too slow or just I had much more better units to put inside the deck.

-I think some leader's mulligans are off compared to their effects :
Morvan Voorhis allows you to play 2 cards in one turn and he can hit golds, I think he should be a 1 Mulligan leader.
Eredin feels such like an oversight to me, this guy can give immune to ANY unit, including super ridiculous engine cards, he should be a 1 Mulligan leader without a doubt...provided his effect is acceptable.
Broover Hoog's effect is good but 2 mulligan seems a bit harsh to me, I would have said 3.

I agree with the Mulligans. Some of the leaders are way to beneficial in that regard. Some of them, like Eithne, can be used EVERY turn with a great Mulligan proficiency. I think that Eithne is way too good for that. She gives a player an additional removal everyturn worth of 4. It's really like an additional card each turn.
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They are artifacts. You can destroy them like any other artifact.

Agree. You can destroy them with no problem. You just need to know that there are artifacts now included in the game ;)
 
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Here's my late extensive feedback. Hopefully, devs find it useful somehow.

I've played all factions but not all the leaders. Overall, I can say that it was a positive experience. The best part for me was learning new abilities and creating competitive decks from scratch in the environment of unformed meta. So, let's start with details.

UI, look and feel, sound, technical features

Major negative: This is the part where PTR version was lacking and this where I have the most negative feedback. I disliked the 3D leaders even before trying PTR but started to hate them after the PTR session. The biggest reason that they are a slow fest. All animations are very slow and they block actions that the game length increased at least 5 minutes due to them. And this is useless time, which doesn't add to the gameplay. Players forgetting to end their turn doesn't help either. All those 3D animations will be "fun" only when the first few games. In the long run, after 1000+ games you'll be hardly paying any attention to them but those ridiculously slow animations will stay unless fixed. Card animations are also very slow to the point that you can miss to do actions during your turn because of watching those excessively long animations.

Minor negative: The minor problems with PTR interface also are the emote activation area is too small and it would be good to see the number of cards left in the deck (the current pile possible to evaluate only for my opponent because my own piles are not very well visible). Many cards had their descriptions wrong, which I think easily can be fixed till the official Homecoming release.

Neutral: The backgrounds are looking pretty now however this is not an important part of the game. I was fine with the current board looks too.

Positive: The music and sound effects are the top quality. Well done. I wish the soundtrack list will be getting updates over time too because I used to like the beta Gwent sound track very much but after two years of the same few min music loop forever anyone will get tired of it.

General Mechanics

Initially it was very uncomfortable to be forced to play first round deep and it felt like the rounds don't matter. But after a day of getting used to new mechanics I started to dig it. It doesn't feel like old Gwent though but rather like a new game, which is not bad, I guess. Essentially, the new game plan is to have a better tempo than your opponent when you both are 4 cards or less with an ability to exit the race earlier and try again next round with the final showdown in the last round. On the last day of PTR I was successfully implementing my game plan in these new conditions. The benefit of this system that it allows you to set up your initial low tempo engines without being forced to a card or two down, like in the current version of Gwent. Therefore, artifacts like spears can exist and I think it is positive development for the game. Different number of
mulligans distribution is good, but it's maybe too swingy if one of the opponents gets a good initial hand and have a whole bunch of mulligans to fish for the finisher in the last round increasing too much the dependence on luck. Leaders getting activated as an addition to a round created broken OP combos such as uncounterable Henselt into a horde of Cursed Knights, Dagur together with Harald the Cripple for 20+ point, or double Ihuarraquax from Jan Calveit in one turn (Tibor Eggebracht + Imperial Golem) for insane tempo. I don't think that such huge 20+ point swings in the game where 4-7 point cards are an average tempo per round are healthy. This leads to binary outcomes of the matches and it should be addressed.

Addition of orders and artifacts was good for the game but many of them need to be adjusted. Removal of armor from the game was bad because one way of adjusting power was giving armor to units. Instead of giving raw points

it's better just to make a unit harder to remove, for which armor was a great tool.

The good point about general mechanics is that there are very few dead cards, which makes the game fun and diverse.

Row identity... I'm a bit disappointed here because very few cards have an alternative ability on the row, which is not their primary. Especially it is bad for gold cards, which can be trashed by Strays of Spalla with provision 4.

Factions

It definitely feels that factions have their own identity and they play differently, which was stated goal of homecoming. Faction balance is not there yet. Nilfgaard and Skellige are generally stronger than the rest and allow multiple tier 1 deck compositions. Monsters are good but they are somewhat limited to variants of either swarm or deathwish archetypes (Eredin into Keltullis bamboozle could be another one but it works the best also with deathwish support). The Scoia'tale is a little weak. Of course, with a perfect hand the Sihil based decks can get a win against anything that is missing artifact removal tools due to OP Sihil, however it's not as consistent to be viable top deck in ranking. Swarming works as long as your opponent doesn't know what's coming but as soon as the opponent gets an idea what the game plan is it is easily disruptable. The Northern Realms are just weak if we won't count broken Henselt with a horde of cursed knights. The issue is that crucial units that depend on order counters are very easily moved/locked/removed. I note that I didn't play all archetypes but I've seen what my opponents came up with too.

to be continued...
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...continuation (due to number of characters limit)

Leaders

Nifgaard:
Usurper - a leader that in my opinion needs a rework because if it won't be handicapped he'll make any leader based decks noncompetitive. Handicapping it too much will make Usurper useless, which is also a bad option. Therefore, it's better to change his ability to something more interesting.
Jan Calveit - solid leader but the 40+ points one turn double Ihuarraquax combo needs to be balanced.
Morvran Voorhis - solid leader, which has an ability previously assigned to Jan Calveit (what's up with those ability jumping between the leaders?)
Emhyr var Emreis - very niche ability, which makes him very weak as it is now. Needs a rework.

Skellige:
King Bran - the leader of the most consistent decks, very solid, might need to be balanced because just discarding from the deck is insanely good even without a damage he deals. Needs balancing.
Harald the Cripple - solid leader with OP interaction with greatswords/Dagur, which can give 20+ unchallenged or up to 40 points power swing. Needs balancing.
Crach an Craite - has an ability that is worse than a spear artifact. Needs a serious buff.
Eist Tuirseach - glorified Sigdrifa. Either Sigdrifa should change or this leader because it's boring to have several cards with the same abilities.

Monsters:
Eredin - solid leader with a powerful ability, which can be a gamewinning if used on Keltullis or on Imlerith. Persistent immunity though might be excessive.
Unseen Elder - solid support for deathwish archetype, but somewhat restricts the deckbuilding because of his ability.
Arachas Queen - autoloss to Usurper, otherwise an interesting concept. I haven't played it myself but my opponents didn't manage to play well with it.
Woodland spirit - boring one-dimensional ability, technically can be good with Mourntart but for Mourntart you need Arachas Queen as a leader. Needs a rework.


Scoia'tael:
Eithne - the best Scoia'tael leader. Because her ability can be used partially and renewal every round makes it synchronize very well with the spear, Sihil, and damage units. And she also has many mulligans, which solidifies her as the best choice for any deck. Might need to be toned down but Scoa'tale units should be improved then.
Francesca Findabair - has a solid ability but the lack of mulligans make her very restrictive leader reserved to no synergy decks.
Filavandrel aen Fidhail - not bad for persistent dwarves deck but the ability is boring. Maybe it should be like Eithne: several charges every round that boost a unit in hand by 1.
Broover Hoog - why do we need a leader with movement when such movement is already available by cheap 4 provision cards? 2 damage to enemy doesn't make it any better. Needs a rework.

The Northern Realms:
King Demavend - interesting ability, very useful but the cards with order charges are weak and gets removed or locked immediately. Needs the improvement in the card base.
King Foltest - Useful ability but it's hard to evaluate it in comparison to Demavend because of the general weakness of NR order cards.
King Henselt - The ability as it is in the description of the leader is very weak. The actual ability that was present at PTR is way too OP. Needs a rework.
Princess Adda - Useless ability with very little synergy, worst NR leader. Needs a rework.

to be continued...
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this forum doesn't allow long posts even if written separately... :mad:
 
I would love to see a poll asking a simple question to closed Beta testers for HC. Do you think this version is more complex, dynamic, and full of interesting play then old gwent? I would be shocked if more than 10% said yes. To me trying to run this game for profit the most important part of that is how do we keep players engaged with an online card game for a long period of time with so many other competitors out there? We can't beat Hearthstones weird visuals, childlike gameplay, and RNG. We can't take on Magic the Gathering's extremely complex mana system. We can't survive with forcing people to pay money to get good cards either. The people that asked for Gwent from Witcher 3 loved it for one simple reason. It was chess with cards. No other card game online is like it. You built that game. And built it well. All you needed was some balance fixes, 1000 more cards, and double the leaders. Boom 2 years of wild mechanics and crazy tournaments. Tournaments by the way that were awesome to watch and we saw so many interesting decks. But this was thrown away with the Midwinter patch update. What I like to call the RNG fiasco. RNG should largely be relegated to draws and not to card mechanics. What makes Gwent next level in terms of game play is no RNG. I believe you will slowly lose people. It might take a year or it might take two, but this is not chess with cards. This feels like checkers with hearthstone mechanics.

I will say that it blows me away all the bells and whistles you added. Almost all of it is great, player friendly (with board issues to be fixed later), and full of potential. I am impressed. But I can't understand how you can do all that and not actually do the one thing that will bring you success: how do we keep players engaged with an online card game for a long period of time with so many other competitors out there? Do you really believe this version of Gwent will pull it off? I will play it, but for the bells and whistles not the game play.
 
since somebody posted in the thread, I can continue...

Some cards that I think needs to be re-balanced or changed:

"Silver" witchers - provisions of those cards are too cheap
Greatswords - 12-15 points bronze card, better than Dagur due to row independence, on par with gold cards. Too strong and too cheap.
Bearmaster - 15-22 points bronze card, too easy to buff it to insane levels, on par with gold cards. Due to being a part of discard archetype those insane levels are guaranteed. Too strong and too cheap.
Ihuarraquax - pulls high value card for you and can trash high provision card for the opponent if it isn't a high strength card. In combo with Tibor Eggebracht gets way too good. Too strong ability.
Tibor Eggebracht - this card could be fine by itself if not for potential trashing of the opponent's high value card. Too strong ability.
Thaler - stillborn card because his ability is good only for mirror matches. It would be better if it can, alternatively, redistribute any charges on any units and artifacts, remove all charges from all ally units and artifacts, Order: give 1 to any unit or artifact (very handy if you want summoning circle or Roche: merciless become powerfull faster)
Imlerith - maybe too powerful if given an immunity by Eredin, but not so much without immunity. Needs a provision tweaking.
Strays of Spalla - a must have unit. It can trash the engines and align units to rows as you like. Too cheap. Needs a provision tweaking.
Rot Tosser - very powerful ability. If you have a card advantage can get 20+ values. Too cheap. Needs a provision tweaking.
Commander's Horn - Who needs this expensive card if there is a golden froth card, which is more cost-effective. Too expensive.
Germain Piquant - cows in the graveyard cause OP bearmasters. Why cows are still blinking with no premiums?
Gascon - Lazy design, RNG-fest. This shit has no place in good Gwent. High variance cards belong to the different game... you know that game. Total redesign required.
Sihil - I like the idea of this card but once it score 3 kills this card gets out of control. It's a new "Sabbath"-like card. Needs the power level checked.
Regis - Too powerful for the provision costs. Needs a provision tweaking.
Geralt, Eyck of Denesle & Leo Bonhart - targets of power 10 or more are too rare for their provision costs. All of them are from the same clones factory, which is sad. Too expensive.
Panther - Stillborn. Why do you want a card, which is trash in the mirror matches and doesn't add anything good in non-mirrors to compensate for the handicap? Total redesign required.

... that's all for now
 
since somebody posted in the thread, I can continue...

Some cards that I think needs to be re-balanced or changed:

"Silver" witchers - provisions of those cards are too cheap
Greatswords - 12-15 points bronze card, better than Dagur due to row independence, on par with gold cards. Too strong and too cheap.
Bearmaster - 15-22 points bronze card, too easy to buff it to insane levels, on par with gold cards. Due to being a part of discard archetype those insane levels are guaranteed. Too strong and too cheap.
Ihuarraquax - pulls high value card for you and can trash high provision card for the opponent if it isn't a high strength card. In combo with Tibor Eggebracht gets way too good. Too strong ability.
Tibor Eggebracht - this card could be fine by itself if not for potential trashing of the opponent's high value card. Too strong ability.
Thaler - stillborn card because his ability is good only for mirror matches. It would be better if it can, alternatively, redistribute any charges on any units and artifacts, remove all charges from all ally units and artifacts, Order: give 1 to any unit or artifact (very handy if you want summoning circle or Roche: merciless become powerfull faster)
Imlerith - maybe too powerful if given an immunity by Eredin, but not so much without immunity. Needs a provision tweaking.
Strays of Spalla - a must have unit. It can trash the engines and align units to rows as you like. Too cheap. Needs a provision tweaking.
Rot Tosser - very powerful ability. If you have a card advantage can get 20+ values. Too cheap. Needs a provision tweaking.
Commander's Horn - Who needs this expensive card if there is a golden froth card, which is more cost-effective. Too expensive.
Germain Piquant - cows in the graveyard cause OP bearmasters. Why cows are still blinking with no premiums?
Gascon - Lazy design, RNG-fest. This shit has no place in good Gwent. High variance cards belong to the different game... you know that game. Total redesign required.
Sihil - I like the idea of this card but once it score 3 kills this card gets out of control. It's a new "Sabbath"-like card. Needs the power level checked.
Regis - Too powerful for the provision costs. Needs a provision tweaking.
Geralt, Eyck of Denesle & Leo Bonhart - targets of power 10 or more are too rare for their provision costs. All of them are from the same clones factory, which is sad. Too expensive.
Panther - Stillborn. Why do you want a card, which is trash in the mirror matches and doesn't add anything good in non-mirrors to compensate for the handicap? Total redesign required.

... that's all for now

I have one more to add:
Spotter - The difference of revealing Old Speartip(15 power total) and Nekker(2 power total) is too high and relies too much on RNG. The HC reveal already has too much RNG, but this...
 
I would love to see a poll asking a simple question to closed Beta testers for HC. Do you think this version is more complex, dynamic, and full of interesting play then old gwent? I would be shocked if more than 10% said yes. To me trying to run this game for profit the most important part of that is how do we keep players engaged with an online card game for a long period of time with so many other competitors out there? We can't beat Hearthstones weird visuals, childlike gameplay, and RNG. We can't take on Magic the Gathering's extremely complex mana system. We can't survive with forcing people to pay money to get good cards either. The people that asked for Gwent from Witcher 3 loved it for one simple reason. It was chess with cards. No other card game online is like it. You built that game. And built it well. All you needed was some balance fixes, 1000 more cards, and double the leaders. Boom 2 years of wild mechanics and crazy tournaments. Tournaments by the way that were awesome to watch and we saw so many interesting decks. But this was thrown away with the Midwinter patch update. What I like to call the RNG fiasco. RNG should largely be relegated to draws and not to card mechanics. What makes Gwent next level in terms of game play is no RNG. I believe you will slowly lose people. It might take a year or it might take two, but this is not chess with cards. This feels like checkers with hearthstone mechanics.

I will say that it blows me away all the bells and whistles you added. Almost all of it is great, player friendly (with board issues to be fixed later), and full of potential. I am impressed. But I can't understand how you can do all that and not actually do the one thing that will bring you success: how do we keep players engaged with an online card game for a long period of time with so many other competitors out there? Do you really believe this version of Gwent will pull it off? I will play it, but for the bells and whistles not the game play.


It is way more complex than closed beta Gwent. Its easy to forget all the stupid mechanichs and issues the game had, such as the binary aspect of weather, faction passives limiting dessign espace, and a large etc. Land system in magic is by far the less appealing part of that game unless you play 4 color decks, its just mana you play. Gwent in the witcher 3 was chess with cards, yes, but against an I.A, and it is imposible to translate it exactly to a PVP game without caving your own grave. Homecoming, with the right tuning and with a larger card pool with more and more mechanichs over time can be one of the best and more complex card games, with what it is the most interesting deck building experience i ever experienced in a CCG. The bases are there to be exploited.
 
Its easy to forget all the stupid mechanichs and issues the game had, such as the binary aspect of weather, faction passives limiting dessign espace, and a large etc
Well i liked these things and problems like weather could be solved, like daylight did it now. Beside that CB-Gwent had some stages too, where different things happend, we didnt tested only one gwent in CB.
 
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Well i liked these things and problems like weather could be solved, like daylight did it now. Beside that CB-Gwent had some stages two, where different things happend, we didnt tested only one gwent in CB.

Solving weather is not forcing every deck to run first light in order to counter it. The game had inherent flaws who couldnt get solved unless a drastic change came, and that change is HC
 
Its a better game, call it as you wish
It isnt. Its a simplified version of complex game, which worked quite nicely. Only in the upper Ranks were some problems. problems you will still see in HC. Maybe other problems, but in higher ranks will be problems again.
 
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