Update 4.1 is a bad joke

[Guest 4368268]

I think the development team doesn't fully understand how disgruntled a significant portion of the player base is (so much so that a lot of them have moved on months ago)

If they go by Reddit they'll think everything is fine because people are posting their Igni videos and memes and seem content but if they look here where people generally post relevant opinions on the actual gameplay I think they'd get a better idea of what some of the major issues are.

I've seen the exact same in other games too (Hitman for example) where the actual forum of the game, where the more serious players congregate, are far more critical than the more casual players on Reddit, because they have a better understanding of gameplay mechanics.

I feel like the people behind gameplay tweaks don't actually play the game on a regular/competitive basis. This is just me talking based on suspicion. Again, I feel like when they wanna know how the community feels they rely on the wrong people.

Casuals are very important, but they're also easy to sway and please. I realize this can come off sounding elitist, but as far as development goes they're better off checking this forum than guys on social media asking about skins or what not.

It's telling a lot of Gwent streamers gave up very early in Homecoming. These are guys that played the game from the very beginning on a daily basis that suddenly stopped all together. Some of them tried to come back only to see that the game is still a shell of its former self.

In my opinion the game just isn't that interesting now. Not to watch or to play. The biggest tell is you've got players joining now that in weeks reach pro rank. I strongly doubt that happened in OB other than a few very talented guys doing it. Gwent was never rocket science but it had a certain depth and with it a certain charm.

It's a shame that a year after Homecoming my ultimate opinion on the game hasn't really changed. Yes, it's definitely improved in some regards, but ultimately it's still barebones.

 

[BlackLuxiat]

I'm new to this game. Just started playing a couple days ago, and so far I really like it, but I obviously don't understand the mechanics of it nearly as well as any of you. So iff you are so annoyed and disappointed with where this game has gone, what games are you guys playing? I just started looking for a strategy card game like this and was pretty happy with Gwent so far, but don't want to put loads of time in just to be as disappointed as you all are.

 

[StrykerxS77x]

I'm new to this game. Just started playing a couple days ago, and so far I really like it, but I obviously don't understand the mechanics of it nearly as well as any of you. So iff you are so annoyed and disappointed with where this game has gone, what games are you guys playing? I just started looking for a strategy card game like this and was pretty happy with Gwent so far, but don't want to put loads of time in just to be as disappointed as you all are.

Give Gwent a fair shot. The reason I stick around is because I still enjoy it and just want to see it get better instead of stagnate. The only other CCG I have played is Elder Scrolls Legends and while it's very fun I was turned off by how pay 2 win the game is. In that game you can stack your deck with copies of gold cards (I think 3 each). That is extremely expensive to do so basically if you want to do well in the game you have to pay a lot of money or else your deck with be very inferior for a long long time. I've heard other CCG's are similar to that like Hearthstone. It's nice that in Gwent you can have a competitive deck very early on if you know what to craft and such.

 

[Archan6el]

I'm new to this game. Just started playing a couple days ago, and so far I really like it, but I obviously don't understand the mechanics of it nearly as well as any of you. So iff you are so annoyed and disappointed with where this game has gone, what games are you guys playing? I just started looking for a strategy card game like this and was pretty happy with Gwent so far, but don't want to put loads of time in just to be as disappointed as you all are.

When you're new to the game, it's all fun collecting new cards and exploring mechanics and decks. When you get more experienced (especially when you have also played beta), you will see the bad, broken and/or OP mechanics, card design and wasted potential that the devs so far have failed to address. Gwent has too much RNG and variance as a combination of cards' abilities, card draws and related rock-paper-scissors stuff, determining the outcome. Therefore luck often beats skill, which is the opposite of what is advertised. If you can accept all that, it's fine. However, a lot of (more serious and strategic) players cannot. They have stopped playing and/or are still hoping for serious improvements addressing root causes.

 

[partci]

One advice @BlackLuxiat - DON'T CRAFT ANYTHING BEFORE A PATCH OR A NEW SEASON! I'd even advise to wait couple a days after a new season has started, cause there might be nerfs coming, but if you started couple of days ago - it is not a good time to craft any cards at the moment. Wait a week for the new patch/season, cause you may be left with really bitter taste in your mouth from all the useless cards you have in your collection and no scraps to craft other cards.

One thing about Beta is it was engaging. WAY more engaging than HC ever came to be. I would argue it even gad way more depth than what we have now, despite (or because of?) its faults. Beta was left out in the air for SIX MONTHS Beta and a lot of people were still playing, while still discovering new combos and decks. Aside from the utterly broken Greatswords, everything else under this deck was more or less floating and you had equal chance of winning against every other deck, if you knew thing or two about your deck and had built a decent one. I had three Morvran decks back than and the three of them were different - I had a Mill deck that I had an obnoxious winrate with and was my favorite, cause it was designed as a "Surprise Mill" (it was suffering only against everything SK - even against Bearmasters you had to be really careful how you are playing), I had the meme-ish deck with Fake Ciri and Letho/Regis combo, relying on the handbuff pack - meme-ish enough to get at the worse 50/50 with, and the cherry on my cake - The Morvran SK Destroyer. This one was a piece of beauty with Yen: Invocation (to pull a second Artifact Compression), Eskel: Pathfinder (always a good value, even if used to destroy your Spy for the mere 20 points play) and Renew to replay either of those. For the life of me I cant remember what the fourth Gold was, might have been Royal Decree cause it was hyperthin, but I am not quite sure and gwentdb is dead now.

You see, all of these decks had the same leader but they relied on a totally different play style, so I could play the same thing but in a FUNdamentally different way.

The other deck that I never encountered anything like and was using to get to Pro almost every season for over a year barely without ANY change (powercreep made him suffer a bit there at the end) was my Monsters Bamboozle deck with Eredin Frost package and Borkh and Miruna as finishers. It really struggled only against NG Alchemy cause they had insane amount of removal and maybe a bit against NR Armor. It could swing for some insane values in R3 (Consume and GS, for examples). Even my girlfriend was using it when she played the game for few months and was her favorite thing to watch, that last swing.

... those were the days...

 

[nedders]

One advice @BlackLuxiat - DON'T CRAFT ANYTHING BEFORE A PATCH OR A NEW SEASON! I'd even advise to wait couple a days after a new season has started, cause there might be nerfs coming, but if you started couple of days ago - it is not a good time to craft any cards at the moment. Wait a week for the new patch/season, cause you may be left with really bitter taste in your mouth from all the useless cards you have in your collection and no scraps to craft other cards.

One thing about Beta is it was engaging. WAY more engaging than HC ever came to be. I would argue it even gad way more depth than what we have now, despite (or because of?) its faults. Beta was left out in the air for SIX MONTHS Beta and a lot of people were still playing, while still discovering new combos and decks. Aside from the utterly broken Greatswords, everything else under this deck was more or less floating and you had equal chance of winning against every other deck, if you knew thing or two about your deck and had built a decent one. I had three Morvran decks back than and the three of them were different - I had a Mill deck that I had an obnoxious winrate with and was my favorite, cause it was designed as a "Surprise Mill" (it was suffering only against everything SK - even against Bearmasters you had to be really careful how you are playing), I had the meme-ish deck with Fake Ciri and Letho/Regis combo, relying on the handbuff pack - meme-ish enough to get at the worse 50/50 with, and the cherry on my cake - The Morvran SK Destroyer. This one was a piece of beauty with Yen: Invocation (to pull a second Artifact Compression), Eskel: Pathfinder (always a good value, even if used to destroy your Spy for the mere 20 points play) and Renew to replay either of those. For the life of me I cant remember what the fourth Gold was, might have been Royal Decree cause it was hyperthin, but I am not quite sure and gwentdb is dead now.

You see, all of these decks had the same leader but they relied on a totally different play style, so I could play the same thing but in a FUNdamentally different way.

The other deck that I never encountered anything like and was using to get to Pro almost every season for over a year barely without ANY change (powercreep made him suffer a bit there at the end) was my Monsters Bamboozle deck with Eredin Frost package and Borkh and Miruna as finishers. It really struggled only against NG Alchemy cause they had insane amount of removal and maybe a bit against NR Armor. It could swing for some insane values in R3 (Consume and GS, for examples). Even my girlfriend was using it when she played the game for few months and was her favorite thing to watch, that last swing.

... those were the days...

Ah, the good old days!

I got to lvl 20 (out of 21, the ranking was reversed back then) purely playing a Shupe deck with ST, with Pavko/Pit Fall beng my combo of choice, and Nivellen to pull everythng back onto the trap, with Dragons Dream being the alternative option. Was just lovely to play with, back when rows were a thing.

 

[Esmer]

... those were the days...

I remember my easiest rank 21 was in Broover's coin flip era. I played self-wound SK with marauders (not the greatsword version) and had around 90% winrate against Broover: won a majority of games even when going 1st. And it was also doing decent against other meta decks (Henselt siege, alchemy, spelltael, greatswords, etc).

Alas, current Gwent has no room for experiment. Everyone is playing the same card pool and leader abilities with optimal provision costs. Many games come down just to having an optimal answer (usually removal) for the opponent's play. And since the thinning/consistency is severely limited, it all comes down to who draws more golds. This makes the games boring as hell.

Everybody said it when HC was released, but I'll say it again: the moment CDPR went from "skill beats luck" to "whoever draws more golds wins" the game became dead.

 

[Evangium]

I remember my easiest rank 21 was in Broover's coin flip era. I played self-wound SK with marauders (not the greatsword version) and had around 90% winrate against Broover: won a majority of games even when going 1st. And it was also doing decent against other meta decks (Henselt siege, alchemy, spelltael, greatswords, etc).

Alas, current Gwent has no room for experiment. Everyone is playing the same card pool and leader abilities with optimal provision costs. Many games come down just to having an optimal answer (usually removal) for the opponent's play. And since the thinning/consistency is severely limited, it all comes down to who draws more golds. This makes the games boring as hell.

Everybody said it when HC was released, but I'll say it again: the moment CDPR went from "skill beats luck" to "whoever draws more golds wins" the game became dead.

Those were the days. Personally I think the days of limited mobility and row locked units was when the game was most strategic. Bluffing especially was a big deal if your deck relied on one of the rows (e.g. Queensguard, NR Machines) or some gimmick like Kambi or Boosted Knight. You could even do things like use your potions to boost your opponent's units to line up a multi-unit removal.

These days, I find that you can usually pick exactly what the deck is by T3, at the latest. Usually the leader is enough to give the game away. From there it's the same sequence of play. What makes it worse is the last few expansions have delivered more of the same types of cards that already exist in the factions. Archetypes are very homogenised, meaning that there's no more than 3 leaders that are viable in any faction, with some factions being restricted to one viable leader choice.

 

[Hiems_]

I'm new to this game. Just started playing a couple days ago, and so far I really like it, but I obviously don't understand the mechanics of it nearly as well as any of you. So iff you are so annoyed and disappointed with where this game has gone, what games are you guys playing? I just started looking for a strategy card game like this and was pretty happy with Gwent so far, but don't want to put loads of time in just to be as disappointed as you all are.

I will give you a advice, coming from someone who plays ccgs competitively and poker, and came back to gwent recently: don't pay attention to those posts. They're just people who got bored with the game for whatever reason and want something new, which is understandable. Also, while some comments regarding some mechanics are fair, the vast majority of them are just the perspective of casual players and have no real basis whatsoever, they don't really reflect how the game looks like at a competitive level.

 

[hachri80]

I'm new to this game. Just started playing a couple days ago, and so far I really like it, but I obviously don't understand the mechanics of it nearly as well as any of you. So iff you are so annoyed and disappointed with where this game has gone, what games are you guys playing? I just started looking for a strategy card game like this and was pretty happy with Gwent so far, but don't want to put loads of time in just to be as disappointed as you all are.

If you enjoy the game you should definitely stick with it because it is worth it in my opinion. A lot of the disappointment still comes from the changes that were introduced with Homecoming last year what was the official release. The beta game used to be different in many ways and a lot of people still miss it. To me both versions of this game were very good, some things I liked in beta better but the game today has also a lot of upside. So, you should keep playing as long as you enjoy the game and don't care too much about others opinions.

 

[StrykerxS77x]

I will give you a advice, coming from someone who plays ccgs competitively and poker, and came back to gwent recently: don't pay attention to those posts. They're just people who got bored with the game for whatever reason and want something new, which is understandable. Also, while some comments regarding some mechanics are fair, the vast majority of them are just the perspective of casual players and have no real basis whatsoever, they don't really reflect how the game looks like at a competitive level.

You really shouldn't generalize people like that. I made this thread and I was an active player (until they killed console). Also the people with the most criticisms like myself are people who have been around for a very long time. Not casuals.

 

[Hiems_]

You really shouldn't generalize people like that. I made this thread and I was an active player (until they killed console). Also the people with the most criticisms like myself are people who have been around for a very long time. Not casuals.

Sorry but some comments I've been reading here are clearly from people who have no clue how card games work, not gwent or really basic mechanics in general. Being around for a while doesn't directly translate to not being casual, but that's beyond the point, there's just way too much criticism with no base, personal bias, confirmation bias; etc. The list is long. This isn't directed to you, it's a generalization because it's what anyone who enters this forum will see, 9/10 of the posts are criticism and sadly the vast majority of them makes no sense whatsoever, so you can only come to two conclusions:
1) some people here have no clue what they're talking about.
2) some people here got bored and want something to criticize, which is what happens in most scenarios.

 

[Allistre]

Sorry but some comments I've been reading here are clearly from people who have no clue how card games work, not gwent or really basic mechanics in general. Being around for a while doesn't directly translate to not being casual, but that's beyond the point, there's just way too much criticism with no base, personal bias, confirmation bias; etc. The list is long. This isn't directed to you, it's a generalization because it's what anyone who enters this forum will see, 9/10 of the posts are criticism and sadly the vast majority of them makes no sense whatsoever, so you can only come to two conclusions:
1) some people here have no clue what they're talking about.
2) some people here got bored and want something to criticize, which is what happens in most scenarios.

I'm sorry but just because you've played poker and "some other non-specified CCGs " doesn't make you an authority on Gwent. Most people here have been playing for 2+ years and you just joined yesterday. You arn't even listing anything specific about unfair criticisms so it's kind of hard to take you seriously...

Like seriously poker is irrelevant. Theres no updates, no balancing, no sequencing of cards, no positioning of cards, no deck building. I'd be embarrassed to brag about how being pro at poker makes me an authority on gwent.

 

[StrykerxS77x]

Sorry but some comments I've been reading here are clearly from people who have no clue how card games work, not gwent or really basic mechanics in general. Being around for a while doesn't directly translate to not being casual, but that's beyond the point, there's just way too much criticism with no base, personal bias, confirmation bias; etc. The list is long. This isn't directed to you, it's a generalization because it's what anyone who enters this forum will see, 9/10 of the posts are criticism and sadly the vast majority of them makes no sense whatsoever, so you can only come to two conclusions:
1) some people here have no clue what they're talking about.
2) some people here got bored and want something to criticize, which is what happens in most scenarios.

Well the problem is you are in my thread so it would make sense for you to respond to criticisms that are in my thread. The poster you were responding to was reading comments in this thread so it would make sense for you to have some kind of response to those criticisms.

I'll concede that the word casual can have some different meanings. If someone has been playing since day 1 of closed beta like i have then I find it unlikely that person would be considered casual. How do you define casual? A lot of the posters in this forum are people who get to pro rank every season. I don't know how those people could be called casual.

I would be curious to see what criticisms you think have those flaws.

 

[Hiems_]

I'm sorry but just because you've played poker and "some other non-specified CCGs " doesn't make you an authority on Gwent. Most people here have been playing for 2+ years and you just joined yesterday. You arn't even listing anything specific about unfair criticisms so it's kind of hard to take you seriously...

Like seriously poker is irrelevant. Theres no updates, no balancing, no sequencing of cards, no positioning of cards, no deck building. I'd be embarrassed to brag about how being pro at poker makes me an authority on gwent.

I'm sorry but just because you've played poker and "some other non-specified CCGs " doesn't make you an authority on Gwent. Most people here have been playing for 2+ years and you just joined yesterday. You arn't even listing anything specific about unfair criticisms so it's kind of hard to take you seriously...

Like seriously poker is irrelevant. Theres no updates, no balancing, no sequencing of cards, no positioning of cards, no deck building. I'd be embarrassed to brag about how being pro at poker makes me an authority on gwent.

I don't want to drag this further but if you want some laughable examples: matchmaking being rigged, create cards being rigged, mulligan phase being rigged...

Comments regarding balancing are fine, but as I said before there's much more than just the black and white that is written here. Having bad leaders, for example, isn't something that you can fix that easily when there's so many leaders in the game, simply because on card games, you can only have a "bad" card when you're comparing to something else, and there's absolutely no way you can achieve a point where all leaders are equally good, it's impossible, it's the nature of how this kind of game works. There will be always a leader or two that are better. If you decide to nerf the two-card play ones (which could be a fine nerf, but it's not the point), you will have another leader that is most likely not your favorite one being the "new best", and then after you nerfed, you will just notice that you ended up killing a bunch of archetypes that are currently being used and would see no play.

tl;dr: it's ok to have "bad" leaders, because for leaders to be good what they need is outside support, and "bad" leaders are always open to be good. "Bad" leaders only exist in comparison to "good" leaders; even though some could use some buffs and others could use some nerfs, it's all a matter of time before leaders fluctuate with just the implementation of new cards or rework of cards.

Another topic is the defenders. I will just say that defenders have a lot of ways to be countered, purify being one of them, and that it's one of the core mechanics of the game right now, and that it's fine because purify has multiple purposes so it's not a binary mechanic - and, of course, purify cards aren't bad by themselves.

For the card balance topic you can use the same I said about leaders. Though, I think people fail to notice how many decks are competitively viable nowadays. Yes, I came back to the game recently but I played when there was 2 decks that were competitive, and the matches were decided by a coin flip - literally. The game is in a much better state than it ever was, and it's quite hard to find a ccg with such a variety of choices. Take as example MTG where you have literally two competitive decks and you will see what I'm talking about.

As I said, I don't want to drag it further so I tried to keep as short as possible and as simple as possible. As for your poker comment I'd rather not comment about it, honestly lol

 

[Lyserus]

Update: update 5.0 is a bad joke

 

[StrykerxS77x]

Update: update 5.0 is a bad joke

I can't play it so I can't give a real complete perspective. I can say though just in skimming through the patch notes and the new cards that most problems in the game are still there and CDPR has added new problems into the game with this patch. CDPR spent months and months finally getting rid of the binary and bad for the game artifacts. Now that artifacts became inconsequential CDPR has added new binary artifacts to the game which has reignited the old problem which will again have to be fixed in the future. This is classic CDPR shooting themselves in the foot....again.

(Stratagems) I wasn't going to judge without playing it. My first thoughts were that some of them are going to be too powerful and instead of making the game fair for whoever starts the game it wiil now make the game unfair in favor of whoever goes first. I think that is pretty likely and they will have to do a lot of tweaking to get them right. However I noticed there is a new card that can spawn a stratagem in any round. That just makes the artifact issue even worse. There are going to be a lot of decks that don't have good enough ways to counter them due to all of these artifact type cards being added to the game. Where is CDPR's balance team? What are they doing????