Shagrics gameplay, design and balance suggestions Megathread

[Shagric]

My Goal: I love to think about and discuss game design and balance issues. I usually have a lot of ideas and think/post about them frequently, so I want a place where all my thoughts are gathered in an orderly fashion.

State Of Gwent, (09.01.2020 - see last post!)

State of Gwent, (31.08.19):
(DJ Balance patch 3.2)

Positive:

• Further improvements to the power level of Bronze cards and the removal options, this really is an awesome direction for the game.
• DJ/Bounty/NR gold changes are good.
• Vampire rework is a great start, I hope it will get some more love in the future! (Gael is way to strong though.. 7/7 + huge upside)
• Berserk rephrasing is nicely done.
• I approve of the restrictions of leaders to only play cards from the own faction – Calanthe is missing though.
• Welcome Walter Veritas! And Clever gaining some coins for playing low prov. cards is very nice.

Negative:

• This all comes down to basically one big point: sloppy reworks:
• Again some of the Gold reworks gain way to much value without much setup. Gael ceiling is way to high for 7 provicions, Yennefer's Invocation is a hard removal for 9p – with a HUGE upside, heatwave is a strictly better Curse of corruption for only 1 additional Provision. Keltullis is now a target for hard removal, while at the same time snowballing even harder when unanswered, I'm torn on this one.
• Most reworks are an absolute mess this time, either they changed unique cards into generic point slam or stronger copies of already existing cards, or they changed totally fine and useable cards for no apparent reason.
• SK Rework: Beast Archetype: Bearmasters have never been a problem so far. They are easy to counter, require a huge set up and need a whole deck build around them. IMO they were a greatly designed card, that provided a big pay-off for full deck building dedication. Want to print strong beasts in the future? Just add a cap to the buff... Cerys an Craite is a flavour full rework for sure, BUT she was one of the only cards that supported a revive archetype and the graveyard mechanic which should be a core element of SK. Was she weak? YES, but was she boring and had no purpose? ABSOLUTELY NOT! This change will leave a another huge gap for SK variety.
• ST Rework: Call of the forest, WHY? Why why why why? This was one of the most interestingly designed cards to build around. It was not strong, but it had so many fun combos AND flexible gameplay. Roach/phoenix, witchers into some Geralt, Relics like aguara into Uni/shiro/johnny/sarah – all of these combo's where gimmiky and weak but fun. And even in regular gameplay, sending an injured unit back into the deck and then playing a freshly buffed card felt great and rewarding. IF, and only if, there was a design problem with it, just restrict it to ST cards only..
• ON TOP of that, the completely unusable Isengrim's council was a natural tutor to upgrade into this card. Now the card is just a ridiculously worse version of call of the forest. Which btw is WAY to strong of a card! 10P tutor that ALSO buffs by 2? Auto-include! But its not the only card pair that had a unique card turned into a stronger copy of an already existing card. We also got the ST Neophyte/Half-Elf Hunter duo.
• And then we get more reworks of unique but niche cards that support an archetype that already is very lacklustre (see bearmaster/cerys). I am talking about hand-buff/ resilience dwarves and Mahakam Marauder.. and some rework of cards that actually do see play (Ida).

So, as you can see I am very happy with the update. Lots of positive changes and improvements, while the negative comes down to one big point: sloppy, random and useless reworks of cards for no apparent reason without any valid explanation. Sadly, for me this point overshadows the whole thing, because the mess up is on such an enormous scale. It feels rushed out, underdeveloped and blind to the actual needs of the game and the players.

I did not talk about the leader changes and the visual changes, because it does not really affect me to much, save one thing: I don't like the 3D models, they are far inferior to the beautiful card arts and I don't understand why they get such a spotlight (other then the buisness perspective, but really? beautiful splash arts also sell well.. much could be done with this..)

Thanks for reading, I will add some thoughts I had about INSANITY and WEATHER effects later today or tomorrow, combined with an Eredin/Wild Hunt rework idea I plan to expand on in future.



Balance/Design Suggestions:
General goal: make as small a change as possible to improve viability, binary design and interaction.

Neutral Cards:

Artefacts:
General goal: make artefacts less binary in their design and give more options to play around them.

Ale of the ancestors: Deploy: Boost adjacent units by 3
Order: Boost a unit by 3
Refresh this ability when ever a friendly unit dies on your opponents turn.
Sihil: Zeal
Order: Damage a unit by 5 and reduce the order damage by 2.
Cooldown 1
Increase the cooldown by 1 when ever you destroy a unit. (from all sources)
Portal: Summon a random 4 provision card from your deck to both sides of this card, then damage the first and boost the other by 1.
Summoning Circle: Deploy: play a bronze unit from your deck.
After 6 turns, transform into this unit.
Tainted Ale: Deploy: give a unit poison.
Order: give a unit poison.

Special Cards:

General goal: special cards are in a very good spot atm, none feel overly strong and none feel absolute useless.

Commanders Horn/
Marching Orders: Add warfare tag. (there are tactic, organic and alchemic cards, so NR should have a few in neutral as well. Those two fit very well – Idea: some reddit post

Bandit Rework:
Goal: make them playable as an archtype and improve the useless cards. Make them interact with coins on the ranged row and most importantly, make poeple think about when to stack coins!

Carlo Varese: Melee: ...
Ranged: Damage a unit by 1 for each coin your opponent possesses.
Angouleme: Melee: Boost an ally by 1 for each card in your hand.
Ranged: Boost an ally by 1 for each coin your opponent possesses.
5 strength.
Gascon: Deploy: Boost self by 2 for each Bandit on the field and boost each bandit in your deck and hand by 1.
Gimpy Gerwin: Melee: …
Ranged: Play a minion from your deck with a provision cost below or equal to your opponent coin count.
Bomb Heaver: 1 strength
Melee: create and play a bronze bomb.
Ranged: boost by 1 for each coin your opponent possesses.
6 provision

Units:
Goal: Make the cards playable.

Ciri: Nova: When this dies on your opponents turn, summon it to a random row.
(or a rework: Melee: move 2 allied and 2 enemy units to the melee row, on the end of your next turn, move them back to the ranged row.)
Triss: Telekinesis: ... your starting deck.
Dandelion: Vainglory: Summon a Cockatrice for your opponent, then slay a beast
6 Provisions
Regis: Higher Vampire: Deploy: reset a unit.
Order: Boost self by the amount of points reset.
Vivienne: Oriole: Deploy: Discard 2 special or artefact cards from your hand and draw 2 new cards. Boost self by 2 for each artefact discarded.
4 strength.
Lambert: Swordmaster: Deploy: Duel a unit.
3 strength.
Vesimir (witcher trio): 3 strength
Wolf Pack: Bonded: Boost all beasts on this row by 1
Peasant Militia: Bonded: Boost adjacent units by 2.

There should also be some minor changes (+-1) in strength or provisions for cards like enrage colossus, myrgtabrakke, johnny+sarah,...


Thanks for your time, I look forward to your comments. If you want some explanation or reasoning behind these ideas, feel free to ask!

 

[DRK3]

I agree with your comments on the current state of Gwent. The devs recently said weak bronzes were supposed to give more value than their provision cost, while expensive golds, less than their provision cost.

Then why the hell did NR got a Bloody Baron, a Keira, a Roche Merciless and Falibor that almost always give more points than their provisions? With the exception of Roche Merciless, you can literally stick any of those in a NR deck and it will be worthy.

Regarding the suggestions:
- to be honest, i dont like your artefact suggestions. i think portal and S.Circle are perfectly fine. Sihil needs a buff (although i still hate the card), but i dont think doing decreasing Dmg is the way to go, it should be increasing, like it is now.

-Commander's horn and Marching orders really should have Warfare tag. I've tried an Warfare deck only to realize warfare cards are few and generally suck. You have Knighthood which is good with Tridam's, but warfare cards synergize with siege engines, so the archetype isnt even cohesive.

-Like the idea of creating a bandits archetype, and having a second option for the more binary cards. However i dont think creating counters specifically for Syndicate is the way to go. Right now, its only 1 faction that has exclusive mechanics, but what if later they add more factions with that? Then how do you create counters for each? That is binary design, which we are trying to avoid right?

PS - lets make this Lambert Swordmaster happen

 

[Shagric]

Hey im finally back home.
thanks for the feedback.

On the topic of artefacts:
i think both portal and s. circle are problematic in their design. both are abused to cheat 2 engines on the board in one turn (or engine + trigger) and with the nerv to direct removal attached to bodies, its gotten quiet hard to deal with these. I think you should at least have a good chance to remove one of those engines - and since most have 4 strength now and most removal deals three dmg, the solution was to set them to 3 strength. on top of that, portal is primarily a thinning tool, it should not generate so much board preassure.

summoning circle is a very problematic card. not only can it cheat 2 cards in one turn, but it also thins the deck. and on top of that its as binary as cards can be. it needs to stay on board 4 turns to get any value - and if it does it usually gains way more than the 8 provision it requiers, even if you only manage to pull one card in the round. (look at vran warrior in AQ, or townfolk in DJ, ..)

in both cases i wanted to assure some immediate reward for playing the card, plus some benefit later on if your opponent does not remove it - which should be the case, because otherwise it feels realy bad to play artefact removal if there is nothing to deny like portal; or if you deny everything like circle.

Sihil: your point is valid, but i could not find a solution with growing dmg that is not either broken or useless. point being again that if it gets removed early - you got nothing. and if it sticks on the board, your opponent will be salty. loose/loose situation and i can not find a solution. so i decided to reverse it: start with a bigger swing so it feels good to play, but also give the opponent the option to shut it down before it gains full value. I added the "+1 cooldown if you kill something", because otherwise it would just be an auto include in any removal deck. but like this, you acually have to think about when to kill a unit to gain full value,and your opponent has the chance to play around it by waiting for it to be on CD to play important engines. I realy like my solution to the problem, i hope i was able toexplain my thought process well enough!

On the Bandit rework:
I think its fine if there are specific counters to a threat, like weather, units, artefacts,... and coins. the problem is they are all or nothing. with the bandit rework the idea was, that all these cards have an option to gain good value, but you would have to stack them all in melee row - which is a big drawback.
and then you have the more specific counter to the coin machanic which has very dynamic counterplay options for both sides. I thought about this some more today and i dont think that reducing or stealing coins was a good idea, coins are untouchable in their design, so what should be punishable is stacking them. I will change Gimpy gerwin to play a card from you deck with less or equal the coin count of your opponent - easy to play around, but punishes hoarding 9 coins realy hard aswell.
and for bomb heaver: with the buff to low provision bronzes, i think its time to realize an idea i had for ages:
5 (or 6) provision
1 strength
Melee: create and play a bomb.
Ranged: Boost self by 1 for each coin your opponent possesses.

Edit: I think portal should boost one card and dmg the other, that would also fit VERY well with the cards flavor text
(i tried to incorporate this with the boost/dmg machanic, but thats a better idea!
its great to get this feedback

 

[FG15-ISH7EG]

I'm not entirely sure what I think about some of the artifact suggestions, but I agree with the design of having a short and long term effect.

Also I agree that some of the special cards are all over the place, in particular tactics. In my opinion every special card category should have a main use, like Crimes mainly generating coins.

Concerning the bandit archetype: In general, I'm absolutly no fan of hard counters, as they make the game far more binary and often do the opposite of what they are supposed to do.
Assuming there is a card that does nothing but hard counters SY, by giving the player +10 additional points against SY. Now if that card was included in 20% of all decks, SY would on average be 2 points weaker than all other decks, which means SY would need to be buffed.
Your bandits already negate that a bit, by offering an additonal choice, but nonetheless to be balanced they would have to be a lot weaker against anything but SY, which doesn't make a good archetype.

What I would like instead would be a swiss-army-knife kind of card, similar to old Weather mages. A card that is a jack of all trades, but master of none. Probably what you described by the Bomb Heaver.

 

[Shagric]

haha, thanks for the subtle reminder that its called bomb heaver

In my opinion every special card category should have a main use, like Crimes mainly generating coins.

I really support this idea, it has been lurking somewhere in the back of my head, but i could not express it properly - thanks you!

Avoiding hard counters is exactly what i had in mind when i created the ranged ability for bandits. Most of the time, the melee ability is the better option, even when your opponent plays syndicate.
But if (and only if!) a syndicate player starts hording 5+ coins without using any of them, they offer the option to punish such behaviour - and i think thats something we dearly need, if coins are to stay uninteractable (which i think CDPR has no intention of changing). this would improve the syndicate gameplay so much and for both sides aswell.
my bandits are designed to be strong on their own (carlo varese is probably one of the strongest removal tools right now and i didnt change anything about that), but they have the option to punish the uninteractable coin hoarding, which we really need in the neutral card pool! Syndicate can easily avoid this by spending coins when they generate more that 5-6.

thanks for your feedback

 

[Shagric]

State of Gwent, (31.08.19):
(DJ Balance patch 3.2)

Positive:

• Further improvements to the power level of Bronze cards and the removal options, this really is an awesome direction for the game.
• DJ/Bounty/NR gold changes are good.
• Vampire rework is a great start, I hope it will get some more love in the future! (Gael is way to strong though.. 7/7 + huge upside)
• Berserk rephrasing is nicely done.
• I approve of the restrictions of leaders to only play cards from the own faction – Calanthe is missing though.
• Welcome Walter Veritas! And Clever gaining some coins for playing low prov. cards is very nice.

Negative:

• This all comes down to basically one big point: sloppy reworks:
• Again some of the Gold reworks gain way to much value without much setup. Gael ceiling is way to high for 7 provicions, Yennefer's Invocation is a hard removal for 9p – with a HUGE upside, heatwave is a strictly better Curse of corruption for only 1 additional Provision. Keltullis is now a target for hard removal, while at the same time snowballing even harder when unanswered, I'm torn on this one.
• Most reworks are an absolute mess this time, either they changed unique cards into generic point slam or stronger copies of already existing cards, or they changed totally fine and useable cards for no apparent reason.
• SK Rework: Beast Archetype: Bearmasters have never been a problem so far. They are easy to counter, require a huge set up and need a whole deck build around them. IMO they were a greatly designed card, that provided a big pay-off for full deck building dedication. Want to print strong beasts in the future? Just add a cap to the buff... Cerys an Craite is a flavour full rework for sure, BUT she was one of the only cards that supported a revive archetype and the graveyard mechanic which should be a core element of SK. Was she weak? YES, but was she boring and had no purpose? ABSOLUTELY NOT! This change will leave a another huge gap for SK variety.
• ST Rework: Call of the forest, WHY? Why why why why? This was one of the most interestingly designed cards to build around. It was not strong, but it had so many fun combos AND flexible gameplay. Roach/phoenix, witchers into some Geralt, Relics like aguara into Uni/shiro/johnny/sarah – all of these combo's where gimmiky and weak but fun. And even in regular gameplay, sending an injured unit back into the deck and then playing a freshly buffed card felt great and rewarding. IF, and only if, there was a design problem with it, just restrict it to ST cards only..
• ON TOP of that, the completely unusable Isengrim's council was a natural tutor to upgrade into this card. Now the card is just a ridiculously worse version of call of the forest. Which btw is WAY to strong of a card! 10P tutor that ALSO buffs by 2? Auto-include! But its not the only card pair that had a unique card turned into a stronger copy of an already existing card. We also got the ST Neophyte/Half-Elf Hunter duo.
• And then we get more reworks of unique but niche cards that support an archetype that already is very lacklustre (see bearmaster/cerys). I am talking about hand-buff/ resilience dwarves and Mahakam Marauder.. and some rework of cards that actually do see play (Ida).

So, as you can see I am very happy with the update. Lots of positive changes and improvements, while the negative comes down to one big point: sloppy, random and useless reworks of cards for no apparent reason without any valid explanation. Sadly, for me this point overshadows the whole thing, because the mess up is on such an enormous scale. It feels rushed out, underdeveloped and blind to the actual needs of the game and the players.

I did not talk about the leader changes and the visual changes, because it does not really affect me to much, save one thing: I don't like the 3D models, they are far inferior to the beautiful card arts and I don't understand why they get such a spotlight (other then the buisness perspective, but really? beautiful splash arts also sell well.. much could be done with this..)

Thanks for reading, I will add some thoughts I had about INSANITY and WEATHER effects later today or tomorrow, combined with an Eredin/Wild Hunt rework idea I plan to expand on in future.

Post automatically merged: Sep 1, 2019

Insanity rework:
I like the idea of insanity a lot, but I think atm it is not used to its potential as an interesting addition to the deck building options/coin interaction. I enjoy the idea of hording coins and insanity being opposite mechanics, so the change I suggest is:

Insanity: Sacrifice strength equal to the cost. If you have any coins at the start of your turn, disable Insanity.

This would make the player think about when to start hoarding coins and when to spend them all to set up a strong Insanity card. Now we look at the cards with Insanity and rework them: please note that their ability should be strong by design, because the restrictions are heavy aswell!

Igor the Hook: 7 strength
Insanity 3: summon a copy of a bronze unit to this row.
This allows Igor to copy a card 2 times, but you do not have any coins to work with, so you would need to use your leader AND have a buffing engine on the board to keep spawning more copies. And you need the card you would want to copy in play as well. It is possible, but very hard to achieve – and I think a fun way to make him playable, but not broken for competitive play.

Boris: 6 Strength
Insanity 3: Damage an enemy by 2.
Deathblow: boost self by 2.
Not a fan of coin generation in the cutups gang, does not fit the theme.
If you have the targets, you can chain the ability 3 times.

Casino bouncers: Just remove the fee, I don't like “unconditional” thinning

Arena Endrega: Insanity 3: damage an enemy unit by 3, cooldown 1.
Would work well with Boris as a setup

Arena Ghoul: Deploy: Remove all coins and boost self by the same amount.
Another way to get rid of these pesky coins, like “bloody good fun”.

Weather is gonna be next, most likely today aswell

*edit: got the 10000 character limit problem again in my original post.. any suggestions what to do so i can update the post with the insanity rework and the weather/eredin+wildhunt rework coming up?

Post automatically merged: Sep 1, 2019

Weather Rework:

Keyword “Weather”: row effect that triggers on the players turn end for a set duration.
Duration now stacks! If there is a weather condition on a row for 2 turns, and you play a different weather that lasts for 4 turns, the old effect will be cancelled and the new one will have a duration of 2 turns. (like vitality/bleeding).
Goal: remove hard counters, make the weather interaction fluid for both sides by granting the opponent a chance to react.

Changes:

Clear Skies: play the following weather on both of your rows: for 2 turns, boost the lowest ally by 1.

Thaw: Reduce the weather duration on a row by 5 and boost a unit by 5, lower the buff by one for each tick removed.

Scout: make a unit immune to weather effects.

Iris of Everec: cast clear skies on an allied row.

Torrential rain, biting frost, impenetrable fog: switch frost and fog (for wild hunt dominance archetype).

Dragons Breath: not a weather! (just to make it clear )

Ragh nar roog: apply for 8 turns; 12 provision.

Crimson Curse: Destroy an allied unit and apply crimson curse for 4 turns, plus the duration of the units strength to both allied rows. Boost the lowest vampire on each row by 1.
8 provisions.
Crimson curse is just to slow to be playable. an entire turn, plus a huge unit sacrificed means that you need at least 4 turns to catch up in tempo and that is highly situational aswell. This change gets the card in line with the "standard" like rain, frost and fog - it can also be used to cancel other weather effects and it can gain additional value due to conditional vampires and a bigger sacifice.
(I dont like dominance for the vampire archtype, they have so much different stuff going for them already; so I would change the condition on protofleddere to “while crimson curse is active”)

Eredin: On round start apply Biting Frost on both melee rows.
Order: Boost a unit by 3
I think Wild Hunt should be based around Biting Frost and Dominance. This Idea for Eredin leaves the opponent with multiple ways to play around his ability, but Eredin still has a one-time buff to get proactive and push for Dominance. Because the opponent always has a chance to react due to the triggering on his turn end, the damage dealt should not be too high. BEST case is 18 dmg over 3 rounds, which ofc is huge, but its comparable to a more conditional Elder, so i think the boosting by 3 is justified.

Wild Hunt Rework: Comming up next!

 

[Shagric]

Shupe vs Radeyah: Lets take a look!

So, once apon a time, shupe was a solid finisher. Skipping about half a year ahead, he is not even played in his own archetype anymore. what happend?
I want to discuss the value distribution of cards, from a filler 4p bronze all the way to the ultimate 13p finishers like the great oak.

To win a game of gwent, it is mandatory to gain more points then your opponent in the deciding round. So the quality of your cards is of uttermost importance.
If you can choose wether to play a bronze special or triss:telekineses into that special, it is almost always better to play the bronze in r1 and triss in round 3 for the additional 4 points of value.

This is the absolut basis of gwent: a card generating a lot of value, IS value on its own. No competetive list would think about adding rain/frost/fog into their list, even though its an "8 for 7". Just to conditional, but avalach? He can be viable in a lot of top tier decks, even though he is only slightly better value: "12 for 10" + some flexibility.
So what I am trying to say: the more "flat points" a card provides, the greater the value of these cards get - And that has to be accounted for in the provision cost. Most new high end golds gain at least their provision cost in points and that is fundamentally wrong.
Coming back to Shupe vs Radeyah, both are very flexible: they can offer removal, carry over and flat points. shupe knight plays for about 10-12 points, hunter is more risky but can get a little more and mage is mostly for the memes. so lets say he gains about 12-13 points in your avarage match.
Radeyah, while setting up combos, removal or carry over, also plays for around 12-13 points of value. BUT she costs only 10 provision!

Sadly she is not the only card that is out of line: lets compaire The Great Oak and Old Speartip. Speartip triggers thrive and is 12 points for 14p. Oak triggers harmony and plays for 8 without any units on the board, his max value is 16 for 13. You could argue that speartipp can be consumed by ozzrel granting 13 for 9, but I would argue that he is no longer a finisher in that case, so tall removal and banish has to be taken into account as well as oak beeing a very flexible removal tool.
I'd say thrive and harmony are about equal in terms of numbers, so that leaves speartip as a 12 for 14 and oak as an 12 (8-16) for 13. Now how hard is it to gain as much or more than 12 value? Since you only need 4 units on the row, not very hard at all.

So should we buff those old high provision cards?? Absolutly not. As i said, the more value a card generates, the better it becomes by gwents basic win condition.

So my take on balancing is this:
4-6p bronze units should always give more value than their provision cost. (around +2 or +3 points)
7-10p cards should mostly be combo or tech cards, granting equal or conditional value. (+-0)
11+p cards should NEVER grant more flat value than their provision cost without a huge setup/combo requierment. (-2 or -3 points)

Some example of good value/provision:
reinforced trebuchet, raging bear, imperial deviner, harpy egg
Svalblod Totem, Avallach, Harald Houndsnoot, vyrgeff, ves
Draco Turtle, Olaf, Draugh, Regis, Old Speartip, Shupe, Sigi (I consider these cards very strong in how I think gwent should be balanced)

Some poor examples:
peasant militia, wolf pack, mad charge, wild hunt navigator, cockatrice
Madame Luiza, Isengrim, cupbearer, muirlega/etriel, weeping willow, yeavinn
Radeyah, Oak, scenarios, Falibor, philippa (sy) (I consider these cards completely broken)

What do you think? Which cards would you considere well balanced? which ones are too weak, or too strong and why?
(copy from my reddit post, so its in my megathread aswell)
and here is a link to my Balance Wishlist 09.01.20:

My Balance Patch Wishlist!

Since we did not get a patch this month, here is my wishlist for the next balance patch: General balance change ideas: Reduce the raw strength of mid to high provision cards! You tried to make bronzes matter and buffed their value, good step. Next step is to get raw point slam gold finishers in...

forums.cdprojektred.com

 

[DRK3]

I agree with most of your intakes, disagree with a few:

- the Shupe vs Radeyah. At first i really liked the idea of reinforcing Shupe, not that it needed. In Gwent HC i never had trouble making Shupe decks. There's plenty of good bronzes, if you need one more you could always use a neutral spell like thunder and you'll get good value.
But what i didnt see is that Radeyah would actually REPLACE Shupe and people would be using her without Shupe. But it makes sense since she provides similar value, versatility and is cheaper, not to mention the ridiculous synergy with Anseis on NR and with elf and scenario decks on SC. She needs a nerf.

- I agree that lower provisions should have a positive ratio and higher provisions a negative one, but not to the extreme you propose, otherwise a 6p and a 11p card would be giving similar value.
The provision evaluation should be more complex, and consider that removal is better than buffing, that random damage is worse than controlled damage, that versatile, reliable cards should cost more (like Falibor and Oak, since its almost impossible to deny these value)

 

[Shagric]

- I agree that lower provisions should have a positive ratio and higher provisions a negative one, but not to the extreme you propose, otherwise a 6p and a 11p card would be giving similar value.
The provision evaluation should be more complex, and consider that removal is better than buffing, that random damage is worse than controlled damage, that versatile, reliable cards should cost more (like Falibor and Oak, since its almost impossible to deny these value)

that is absolutly true. combos and long term plans should still reward more points then the p-cost. you can see examples at the end of my post, draco turtle is a great one. its a simple 6 for 11, but with the right setup and multiple turns, it can gain a lot more then 11p value. but there is also time for counterplay and that is the important part - interactivity.

another example is removal such as g:igni, regis or shirru. i dont have much problem with these cards, both players are able to dance around the value and that makes games so interessting. 13 for 10 point radeyah on the other hand.. or a 12+ point , last say oak with a bunch of harmony triggers? no thanks. (I am not talking about scenarios, because those and artifacts in general are an entirely different beast, i have a suggestion in the balance wishlist)

 

[DRK3]

that is absolutly true. combos and long term plans should still reward more points then the p-cost. you can see examples at the end of my post, draco turtle is a great one. its a simple 6 for 11, but with the right setup and multiple turns, it can gain a lot more then 11p value. but there is also time for counterplay and that is the important part - interactivity.

another example is removal such as g:igni, regis or shirru. i dont have much problem with these cards, both players are able to dance around the value and that makes games so interessting. 13 for 10 point radeyah on the other hand.. or a 12+ point , last say oak with a bunch of harmony triggers? no thanks. (I am not talking about scenarios, because those and artifacts in general are an entirely different beast, i have a suggestion in the balance wishlist)

And that's why you almost dont see Igni, Schirru and Regis anymore - they can provide great value, but require lot of setup and can be worked around - i remember a time a SK guy was clearly setting up a Regis, putting lots of artefacts and few units, than at the end i played Yennefer boost and completely screwed his plans, only 1 wave of Regis...

But now everyone just prefers ultra-reliable cards with no counters - look at Falibor, even if you manage to have all your units at 4pts or more he is still a 7+3 play!

And Oak, he has an interesting concept, but he becomes OP when he's on a faction that swarms the board so easily - just look at the amount of SC cards that generate 2/3 units, thats why they never even needed Portal. And now, the SC scenario to add insult to injury - play radeyah, play scenario, BOOM you have 6 slots used in a row.

 

[DRK3]

@StvAce Sihil was a card that defined an entire meta in the first weeks of Gwent HC. It was ridiculously powerful and terrible to play against.

It suffered a process that in this forum we like to call 'nerf to oblivion' (meaning nerfed so hard nobody plays it anymore). Good, let that card rot in Hell.

 

[Shagric]

Also, your suggestion for Ale of the Ancestors is really terrible- as are several others related to weather, artefacts, etc.

nothing is more terrible then the binary system of most artifacts at the moment. I like the approach of svalblod totem to instantly gain some value, plus a nice little order to gain some extra benefits. atm ale is absolute garbage. I like my idea, but i dont demand that you like it aswell. will i stop because of that? hell no.
also my idea of balance does not seem to far off the goal cdpr is aiming for. most of the problems i am pointing out have been fixed or are in the works. the cards i call out for being to strong, did get nerved and i am confident that those i have issues with atm, will also get fixed in february.
you seem to enjoy broken mechanics and cards that can absolutly snowball out of control - and i do not hold that against you in the slightest. It can be a blast to pull something crazy off and i have tried so many times, but overall I prefer a well balanced game, in which planning and interactions decide the match rather then who has the right answer or the more broken combo.

 

[Shagric]

I dont think cdpr is taking advice from me.. maybe they have a similar idea - but thats about it.

you are talking about adding new machanics to the game, which i completely agree with.
but balancing the existing card pool has absolutely nothing to do with that.
it is one thing to try to reduce the powergap between cards or between the card staying alive or dying asap.

once again on the ale of ancesters topic: as I understand it, the card is supposed to protect engines from dying. atm the card either gets 3 value and is destroyed, playing for a miserable 3 for 12 (which is game loosing), or it survives and nets you 4 uses (12 for 12). you can only get 5 ticks if you have a 10 card round and a unit on board from the start.
so you can protect an engine every 3 turns, which is good - but not fun for your opponent at all; there is no interaction - he either has artifact removal and wins, or he does not and (most likely) looses.
my idea is to prevent that by granting at least some immediate value, followed by the protection of an engine. if that card dies, you regain the ability to protect another engine. I think this version in much much stronger then the current version of the ale of ancesters. your opponent has to decide which cards he REALY has to remove, because every removal means that you gain 3 additional points.

your ideas for new machanics are interessting though, if you want we can discuss them here.