The way for CDPR to not drop our favorite game.

[BANANA_UASergiyUA]

I love Gwent, I always emphasized this game no matter what emotions I wrote, this game has been with me since its announcement and Closed Beta Test, so I want to write my set of proposals for the game for 2024-2025 and find some hope for the future
So:
1. I suggest one tournament at the end of the year which will be held by CDPR with several stages of qualification for it, which will be taken care of by the community.
2. 24 cards (or 12) for the whole year that will influence the meta or add mini archetypes and interesting new synergies
3. Two Battlepasses on the year from which it is actually possible to finance the final tournaments of the year, maybe not so rich in cosmetics, but still. With Shani, Zoltan, Kaer-Morhen, and already with future characters from future games.
4. Selling cosmetics from Thronebreaker (there is still something to sell) and sometimes creating new ones
5. Return of the Arena. Just return the Arena, update its design, and add a table of the most successful players for the month and the final table for the year.
6. Balance cards and come up with archetypes together with the community. Make a permanent article on the forum or somewhere else in which people will send ideas with archetypes and abilities for cards for the next year
All these suggestions sound realistic, no one requires you to be at the same level as in OBT, but the life of the game can be maintained, other games live with a smaller audience and receive support, I don’t understand why you decided to be categorical, i know more have a lot more lite development paths than I have described, why did you make this decision? (do not answer, please answer simply - is there any hope for the game for something close to what I suggested?)
I'm not losing hope for path like this to Gwent.

 

[DolphPingus]

Sadly the game is dead, don't go on full-copium mode.
Without new cards, balance and competitive environment this game will lose an insane amount of appeal for veteran players. And imagine new ones that discovered Gwent some weeks/months ago, it's even worse.
Some points you mentioned are not bad, but who is willing to do that? No one works for free.

 

[quintivarium]

The Gwentfinity Project

As Gwent approached the end of its production lifecycle, I am saddened. It amazes me how much the chapters of my life have coincided with the games I played most – Gwent being the most recent. It is a chapter I hate to close. I have appreciated the community, the developers (whether I agreed with their decisions or not), and most of all, the game, which challenged my intellect and stimulated my imagination. I intend to enjoy the one year of remaining development to its fullest, and to give the Gwentfinity project my best support and wishes – even if I am skeptical of its ultimate success.

It is my hope that this thread can make a little contribution toward the transition of Gwent from a developer-maintained to a community-maintained product. Although, at this point, the developer’s vision of that transition is opaque to me, I would like to both share my thoughts and invite comments from others.

Without knowing how the developers envision a community-sustained Gwent, I want to begin with generalities: what is absolutely essential for a community sustained game to succeed. I don’t think even that will be easy to achieve. Of all the computer games I have ever played, there are several I would love to play again if updated and remade; a few I would tune into occasionally (assuming I could easily do so) – if only for nostalgia – even with no further changes; and exactly one I could see myself continuing to play frequently and indefinitely with no further developer input – Heroes of Might and Magic (but only HoMM II, III, and IV, HoMM I was a little too primitive, and HoMM V+ were complete trash).

As I think about what makes HoMM (especially HoMM III) distinctive and appealing more than 22 years after its last expansion, three things come to mind:

• Community. Gaming is inherently a social activity. Even in solo games, we like to share our experiences: exciting moments, puzzles we solved, thoughts and feelings about the game. One of the saddest visions of my life is of a former land-lady who spent the vast majority of her day sitting at her kitchen table playing solitaire. But for an intrinsically multiplayer game like Gwent, community is essential even to have a pool of possible opponents. If typical wait-time to obtain an opponent exceeds a few minutes, the game will die. As a corollary, there must be only a small set of available “modes” / “card-sets” to maintain the necessary player base for each. And if everything is decided by some sort of vote, I can foresee one dominant viewpoints driving all other viewpoints out. For instance, if a majority (as I suspect) hates mill and votes all mill cards out of existence, we effectively lose a part of the game (and a part of the community) that has its own value and important role.
• Variety. The biggest complaint I hear about Gwent is that it has become boring. OP cards make likely opposing decks very predictable. And dependence upon tutors to draw those high provision, OP cards consistently even makes card sequencing highly predictable. Unless ways can be found to make the existing cards be used in new ways or in new combinations, the game will quickly become stale. Variety is much more easily obtained with a game like HoMM where every new map (at least with decent AI) becomes a new playing experience. For Gwent, it will be key to find ways for the community to, cooperatively and with balance, change game elements. It is easy to create a balanced map – it is not easy to create a balanced card set.
• Creativity. The big thing that draws me back time and again to HoMM is its map-making tool that allows me to create my own designs/stories to share and allows me to experience others’ creations. In a game like Gwent, this is much harder to achieve. If everyone can freely create cards (which might be a programming nightmare as well), I am sure there would be many interesting designs – as well as careless oversights, biased and unplayably OP garbage, etc. And no two players would ever play with the same set of cards. But if we can only shuffle provision cost, strength, and other very basic elements of cards, and if only one final product is accepted by popular vote, creativity is crushed.
• Other. Although three things come to mind for me, I suspect others would add to this list. I did not include challenge, because I am one who will happily play chess on easy mode even if I always crush the incredibly stupid (on that level) AI. But others might want challenge. I’m sure there are some features others (and even I) might want that I have never even considered. Some have suggested an arena-type mode – something that would not satisfy me even though it meets these three criteria. Please add to my list.

 

[igor565]

I would actually love to see the old Arena back.
Unlike Draft it doesn’t need any maintenance which perfectly fits their goal for 2024: just leave it there so people can enjoy it.

As of this Gwentfinity thing: I don’t think it will make any good difference for the game after a couple of months since the community will only have the ability of changing basic things like provision/points tweaking, all the cards we’ve been playing for so long would simply annoy anyone after a couple of weeks of playing.

Also, the extended searching for the opponent time will drive away many more players (and this effect is cumulative) than anything else I think. If you want to see that kind of a game just try TES: Legends (it’s a CCG on a maintenance for years already).

Last but not the least is the feeling of being in a deadland. It just doesn’t feel good to be in something that’s dead and forgotten unless the process is fun.

 

[uber_croupier]

Who would have thought Gwent's playerbase shrank?!

Perhaps ignoring most of feedback and taking several months to fix obviously broken cards did not help to maintain new players engaged? I often took a break for a month or two, since Gwent was often unpleasnt to play, forcing me to play overpowered new cards - for whatever reason that was - certainly un-fun for many. How often players here did share the same opinion that was so often ignored? Detailing feedback, supporting with strong arguemnts, and what for?

I'm pretty sure prioritising "fun", as Vlad once called it, instead of balance also took the toll on the player base. I mean, it's not really a fun game to see the same deck, 5th time in a row and loose to it cause it overpowered.

Let's be real, it took 2 months to change the descritpion of a single card to match it's function on the board, 5 months to nerf Viy, every recent release was a flop due to obvious power creep that took forever to balance.

Before hearing the news about Gwent shutting down, while watching reveals, I genuienly wanted to ask if CDP is trying to kill the game on purpose. What a coincidence that was to hear such news afterwards.

I'm not attacking anyone, those are the facts, this would not be a "natural outcome" as some call it, if this game was driven by the community that actually knows and plays the game.

On the bright side, I have a strong feeling this will only make Gwent more enjoyable, since community will be given tools to balance some cards and there will be no obviously broken releases that surely threw off majority of the playerbase.

 

[Scrubzilla-]

I like your ideas, however I don't think they address the reason as to why CDPR has made this decision. Does anyone know why they have decided to stop supporting gwent? If we know this then perhaps a solution can be found that addresses this.

 

[BANANA_UASergiyUA]

I think one of the key reasons lies in the lack of ideas and inspiration
All Battlepasses were bought steadily, future projects in the universe are in the works, which means that the potential remains enormou sat the thirtieth ranks of the game finds faster than at high. The question is in inspiration first of all, and in war which russia make in my country.
I also hope that CDPR desission can change, a year is, on the one hand, not a lot, but on the other hand, not a little.

 

[duracell1955]

It is probable that the decision to reduce game support has been made on a financial basis, therefore any proposals to maintain the game should be similarly supported.

I've been playing Gwent for almost four years. In that time the game has changed significantly, and the changes haven't all been met with delight from the userbase. Changes have been essential to continually refresh the game and its appeal, however the result has been a huge increase in the number of cards in the game, many extra mechanics and an ever-increasing power given to some new cards. This cannot go on forever, and when the possibilities for effective development reduce, so does the potential income from card purchases.

I have personally enjoyed playing the game and collecting cards; however the sheer number of cards in the game would deter me if a was a potential new player of Gwent, and I suspect that factor may have an effect on the number of new players entering and staying with the game.

I don't believe there is much future in further developing the game, and understand why CDPR may wish to reduce support. However, I believe that there is still one area where development can have a beneficial effect, and that is by changes to the seasonal game mode. Modes like Patience is a Virtue and Bearly Balanced, which rely on gameplay more than deck building, can still attract players. If these modes could be made permanently or more frequently available at a cost rather than FTP this could still bring in a revenue stream. And new seasonal modes could also be beneficial. The sale of cosmetic items such as boards could also generate revenue.

So I believe that it is possible for Gwent to continue, just not in its current form.

 

[BANANA_UASergiyUA]

The first thing the game needs, is the release of new battlepasses. I don't know why they stopped releasing them.. according to my assumption, 75-80% of regular players bought journeys. This is what you need to keep doing no matter what. And this is what they should return to in the first place.

Post automatically merged: Dec 6, 2022

I hope they at least think of releasing high-quality tools for the community, so that the game would live. Will give the tools to add cards, skins, cardbacks, and other mods.