Rework Create Leaders and Runestones

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Change their Create effects to "Spawn a preselected X card.". What they spawn is preselected when the deck is built. No extreme randomness, more possible options to make a deck.

Whispering Hillock = Spawn a preselected Organic card.
Filavandrel = Spawn a preselected Spell card. (a Spell, not any special card)
Princess Adda = Spawn a preselected Cursed unit that is not in your starting deck.
Usurper = Spawn a preselected non-Nilfgaard Leader card.
Runestones = Spawn a preselected Bronze card from your faction.

Now there's Viper Witcher problem, but in this case these witchers themselves are the problem. They should only have 2pts body.
Then there's still a bunch lot of problems in the game. But let's not talk about it and pretend the game is balanced enough. :(
 
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Interesting idea, but difficult for players to keep track of what spawns what, which hinders deck building. Most players already don't know every option Shupe has to offer, let alone this.
 
No. This will make them even more powerful than before. I'll tech a Vanhemar, a Fake Ciri, a Joachim and a Sweers and thell me what will happen? I don't want to pull examples from other Factions, but NG alone will be absolutely ridiculous.
 
If they scrap Create in Homecoming, we should be getting something like this. Or, the Leader cards may be changed completely.

but difficult for players to keep track of what spawns what, which hinders deck building.
No need to keep track. The Leader card shall show the pre-selected card in its description, when the pointer is hovered on it.

Most players already don't know every option Shupe has to offer, let alone this.
Shupe is badly made in this regard. We should be shown every card from the start. Otherwise, the experienced Shupe players get an unfair advantage.
 
@G4merY You can always check out what version of Shupe does what. While playing Shupe just take a look at the possible options right before you pick one version of Shupe and hope for the right outcome.

Don't see much of a disadvantage for less experienced players. Of course one should have a vague idea of a card's ability to time it right but considering that Shupe can do almost anything I don't feel like it is that crucial in that case.
 
No. This will make them even more powerful than before. I'll tech a Vanhemar, a Fake Ciri, a Joachim and a Sweers and thell me what will happen? I don't want to pull examples from other Factions, but NG alone will be absolutely ridiculous.
You don't get to put 3 options for your spawn effect. Just one, and preselected.
And btw, the runestones that I mentioned can't spawn any silvers.
 
I think that is an interesting idea. It would make them more like the silver mages who have certain fixed things they can spawn. More predictable for both sides, player and opponent.
 
While playing Shupe just take a look at the possible options right before you pick one version of Shupe and hope for the right outcome.
You mean right-click the three cards to see it in full-view with its branches (possible options)? I didn't think I could do that. Thanks for telling me, if that's what you meant.
 
What is the difference between creating a card you've pre-selected and having the option to add one more of the card to the deck?

Create is simply a bad concept. There are better ways to add randomness to keep players on their toes, and force them to adapt to the situation. The ideal solution isn't to tweak or improve it. The ideal solution is to kick it to the curb, run it over, pop it in reverse, run it over going backwards, pop it back to drive and flatten it some more for good measure :).
 
What is the difference between creating a card you've pre-selected and having the option to add one more of the card to the deck?

Create is simply a bad concept. There are better ways to add randomness to keep players on their toes, and force them to adapt to the situation. The ideal solution isn't to tweak or improve it. The ideal solution is to kick it to the curb, run it over, pop it in reverse, run it over going backwards, pop it back to drive and flatten it some more for good measure :).
If you meant something like 4th Viper Witcher, then it's the witcher that's OP. If it's something like 4th Dol Blathanna Bowman, why not? Sacrifice a silver slot for a 4th bronze, seems reasonable.

Aside of the random stuffs we currently have, what other randomness can we add into this game that runs predetermined number of draws? We know that create failed to give the game more randomness. Or actually, it oversucceeded. It's more than just randomness, it's RNG itself as a mechanic.
 
If you meant something like 4th Viper Witcher, then it's the witcher that's OP. If it's something like 4th Dol Blathanna Bowman, why not? Sacrifice a silver slot for a 4th bronze, seems reasonable.

Aside of the random stuffs we currently have, what other randomness can we add into this game that runs predetermined number of draws? We know that create failed to give the game more randomness. Or actually, it oversucceeded. It's more than just randomness, it's RNG itself as a mechanic.

Runestones is probably the best example. Spawning a pre-selected bronze for your faction is equivalent to putting an additional bronze card for your faction into the deck. The only benefit is you could only do it with a Runestone, giving room to tweak specific limitations for the create cards. Yes, sacrificing a silver for another bronze may seem like a fair trade-off. The trouble is a lot of the problematic areas and interactions in the game come from bronze cards just as much as silvers or golds. Bronzes are arguably worse in this regard because you have far more ability to replay them.

Adding additional draw RNG is better than create. Perhaps adding some more variability to the way mulligans work. The common aspect of both is you can see how the RNG is going to impact the situation ahead of time. This provides the opportunity to adjust around the RNG. With create the ability to plan and adjust is far more limited. The RNG is intrinsically linked to the card play. This pushes it away from creating more diverse game play and more toward getting lucky, and creating the ideal card for the situation, or getting screwed, and pulling the worst conceivable option.

Additional RNG isn't even necessarily needed to achieve more diversity in game play. The reason the meta settles and ends up stale for lengthy periods is because for any given patch a handful of concepts end up being the strongest, easiest to exploit or most abusive. Whichever archetypes are best suited to exploiting those concepts end up floating to the top and dominating. If there were more viable archetypes, fewer abusive mechanics getting overlooked, smaller time intervals where those mechanics are left unaddressed, and less pigeon holing cards into one pre-determined archetype this wouldn't be a significant problem.

None of this takes into account how frequently the builds dodging the nerfbat end up on top when problem areas finally do get addressed. I can't count how many times I've seen problematic areas addressed and ending up with nothing more than the "tier 1" musical chairs game going for another spin.
 
The reason the meta settles and ends up stale for lengthy periods is because for any given patch a handful of concepts end up being the strongest, easiest to exploit or most abusive.
This is the state of Gwent. Bronze cards' values are weird, underpowered archetypes exist, silver spies, coin-flip issue, etc. Most people know how the state of Gwent is, so let's just pretend Gwent is balanced enough. Draw RNG exist in Swap, and Recon and friends.

NR Runestone is probably the scariest, 4th Scout is good but only when the runestone is the very first buff to happen. Then there's 4th Reaver Hunter which is basically the only way it can be played, still scorchable, and tops at 16 per card. I mean Spotters or Magne Divisions - Shield can worth more with less setup, and easy points staggering. This is where we come back to the state of Gwent, and I choose to just pretend we're doing fine.

By the way, while what we face can be the same all days, we can always try to play anything else right? I just tried the new Slave Driver and it works fine with Emhyr. Then I've never tried NG Soldiers, so I still have something to play. Unless I've tried every single playable deck there is, then there's no reason for me to go with the flow and use T1 decks.
 
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This is the state of Gwent. Bronze cards' values are weird, underpowered archetypes exist, silver spies, coin-flip issue, etc. Most people know how the state of Gwent is, so let's just pretend Gwent is balanced enough. Draw RNG exist in Swap, and Recon and friends.

NR Runestone is probably the scariest, 4th Scout is good but only when the runestone is the very first buff to happen. Then there's 4th Reaver Hunter which is basically the only way it can be played, still scorchable, and tops at 16 per card. I mean Spotters or Magne Divisions - Shield can worth more with less setup, and easy points staggering. This is where we come back to the state of Gwent, and I choose to just pretend we're doing fine.

By the way, while what we face can be the same all days, we can always try to play anything else right? I just tried the new Slave Driver and it works fine with Emhyr. Then I've never tried NG Soldiers, so I still have something to play. Unless I've tried every single playable deck there is, then there's no reason for me to go with the flow and use T1 decks.

Somehow, at one point or another, an argument popped into existence promoting RNG to prevent stale game play (not necessarily by yourself). This is the only reason I brought it up. Gwent never needed more RNG arbitrarily added to keep things interesting. The game wasn't any worse off before Create was added into it. Create hasn't exactly expanded the deck pool a significant amount for a given meta. Create isn't a great concept for a game allegedly designed to focus on player skill. Ideally, it doesn't get tweaked, fixed or changed. Ideally they just take it out of the game, move on and learn from it :).

Yes, in a perfect world the assumption of balanced game play would be safe. Viewing things from this angle to simplify them is perfectly fine. Not considering what could happen when balance goes out of whack, for whatever reason, probably isn't a great idea. Confining either view to the current game is also not a great idea.

For the record, your suggestion could be a good idea depending on how it was done. I don't want to come off like I'm bashing it. It's not the goal at all :).
 
Agreed. I was just being curious on what other random elements we can come up, since I can't find much if any at all beside what we already have.

But as usual, we can only wait for CDPR's decisions. I believe they always consider our opinions, but who knows what's actually happening inside the dev team.
 
I'd like to go with a more simple approach, or at least one consistent to other leaders, to enhance some archetypes
For example:

Filavandrel
Boost 3 units in your hand by 4.

or

Whispering Hillock (personally i'd completely remove this leader)
Apply Moonlight on the row and a Bloodmoon on an enemy row.

The moonlight would be applied on the row you play the leader and the bloodmoon on an enemy row you select.
 
I'd like to go with a more simple approach, or at least one consistent to other leaders, to enhance some archetypes
For example:

Filavandrel
Boost 3 units in your hand by 4.

or

Whispering Hillock (personally i'd completely remove this leader)
Apply Moonlight on the row and a Bloodmoon on an enemy row.

The moonlight would be applied on the row you play the leader and the bloodmoon on an enemy row you select.

I like the Whispering Hillock idea. Moonlight decks definitely need a proper leader.


The other idea might be a problem. For units like Swordmasters or Braenn it could provide up to 24 points (because of the additional damage), plus the base power of the leader.
 
The other idea might be a problem. For units like Swordmasters or Braenn it could provide up to 24 points (because of the additional damage), plus the base power of the leader.

I don't really see it as a problem tbh, naturally the numbers can be tuned, i wanted to use "X" for value initially but i do see the potential and it's by design, that's the goal of the leader in my mind. However i think there are enough downsides to compensate, numbers aren't everything, else Foltest would be the strongest leader ever since he can get 20+ very consistently and even 30-40 in some cases (or most cases when Hubert is involved).
 
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