Update to Artifact Provision Cost!

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We’ve just released an update which changes the provision costs for some cards, mostly Artifacts. You’ll find a list of cards which received the change below. These cards will have full mill value (scraps only) until November 12th, 2018 10:00AM CET.

Based on statistics, Artifacts have been been too dominant in the current meta, specifically Sihil, Mastercrafted Spear and Thunderbolt Potion. This popularity of Artifacts caused players to include Artifact removal in their decks. The problem with that was there were simply too many Artifacts, and not enough possible Artifact removals to make a truly feasible deck. It was never the intention to enable decks based solely on Artifacts.

After weighing all pros and cons, our design team decided to raise the provision cost on Artifacts cards to decrease their number in decks. Also, cards like Zoltan: Scoundrel and Golden Froth have received higher provision costs. These cards together gave very high row buffs on stacked rows and could be a potential issue later on as the metagame develops.

Here are the provision cost changes:

  • Sihil 12->15
  • Tainted Ale 8->9
  • Summoning Circle 7->8
  • Black Blood 7->8
  • Ale of Ancestors 10->12
  • Thunderbolt 7->8
  • Mastercrafted Spear 5->7
  • Wyvern Scale Shield 5->7
  • Petri’s Philter 5->7
  • Pitfall Trap 7->8
  • Golden Froth 9->13
  • Zoltan: Scoundrel 12->15

Note: You won’t have to download an update, changes are done on the server side.

This is just the first step and a small hotfix for the most pressing issues. We plan to release an update in December focusing on further balancing the game, as well as bugfixing.


You should really focus on server connection issues. There is no point of balancing the game when we cannot play it...
 
I have a feeling, that provision cost as an instrument of card balancing will be doing much worse, than developers and some forum members here think it will do.

Lol I'm not even gonna stress it. It's going right over people's heads at the moment, but I prefer to watch on in silence as the predicted lessons are learned the hard way.

What the devs did to this game was basically take a vase, smash it on the floor, remove the handle, put the pieces haphazardly back with some cheap glue, give it a coat of fresh paint and say "we've made an amphora, because the good old vase couldn't possibly continue to hold water".

Everyone then buys into this crap, like those mindless rich people at art auctions, and is ready to overvalue it a hundred times. But the joke is on them, because believe you me, sooner rather than later, water will come pouring out of the cracks and the cheap glue dubbed "provisions" will never be enough to hold this thing together.

I'm happy there are players who are having fun with it, and I wish they continue to do so, but this game is broken in a fundamental way, and it will soon come to show.
 
Still Eithne Control everywhere...

ping epidemic
ping Scorch

artifact. artifact .schirru ggwp
 
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What the devs did to this game was basically take a vase, smash it on the floor [...] Everyone then buys into this crap, like those mindless rich people at art auctions, and is ready to overvalue it a hundred times

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smar...painting-shred-itself-soon-it-sold-180970486/

"Sebastian Smee at The Washington Post reports that there is some talk that the shredding incident will actually increase the value of the artwork."

You were saying? o_O
 

-Tao-

Forum regular
No it's not, Spear and shield can sometimes generate 1O points in a round, considering the situations when it will produce less it's perfectly balanced now.
Also, spear and shield sometimes not worth 5 provisions? Are you sure we're talking about the same game?

To be honest I'm not a huge fan of balancing a game by throwing hate cards willy nilly, no offense but it's a very dumb way of fixing issues since it doesn't solve the problem at its core and force people to play said hate cards.
It's bad for two reasons, 1/ It makes deck building less interesting because you have THAT type of card you need to put many copy of in all of your decks. I don't mind having to put 1 artifact removal in my decks but 2+ is just not how it should be. It's not how you make an interesting game. 2/ It reduces the power of lesser artifacts significantly and make them unplayable. Because you don't fix OP artifacts but just give more tools to fight them, artifacts that are perfectly fine in term of balance will massively suffer from a meta full of anti artifact cards. I personaly don't see the point of making cards unplayable, the dream for a CCG player is a game where all the cards are playable and balanced to an extend. It creates a more varied and interesting envirronement.

CDPR are right to move the provision costs in order to balance the cards, it reduces the options for someone who want to play a powerful card without changing said card but it's true that they can't solve everything this way, they'll have to rework some cards at some point, it's unevitable (Witcher trio, Sihil...).

They also have to realize that artifacts being difficult to remove should be an attribute to take into account for the pricing of those cards. The way they're balancing them right now is similar to units, if the card generate X power it costs X provisions but it's not the right way of doing it.
Each artifact should be slightly overcosted to outweight the fact that they're more difficult to remove. This is why it's always more benificial to play an artifact over a unit that "does the same thing" in the current state of the game. The fact that they have zeal counter balance the lack of body but nothing outweight their resiliency at the moment.

Yes, they are powerful in long turns, but useless in short rounds of 4-6 cards. the thing is you can kill a 7 - 15 cost with a 6 cost card. I think a solution like "only work with an adjacent unit" mentioned in this thread would work better than nerf the cost to 7, but I total respect the CDPR decision, just telling my opinion
 
That means he invested (12+12+13+15=52) for 4 cards, leaving him an average value of 5 points for the rest of his deck, which means there will be hardly any synergies or good playes at all. And if the player doesn't draw all of those 4 cards he heavily invested in, he is screwed anyway, having only crap left. If there is a problem it is likely SK being too reliable in drawing their whole deck/discarding trash cards.
Without going that far, you can run Sihil, Avallach and Caretaker and assemble a decent deck around them (you have to do some sacrifice, obviously but Sihil is so out of place it's not really a problem most of the time).

That's why I love Korathi heatwave as a card, it's bloody expensive but it's a premium removal that I run in a few of my decks and so far I never regretted. Don't change it CDPR, the card is perfect as it is...Or I mean you could change the art and name because KH doesn't make sense based on its effect.

I suggest an art of Yennifer rising her middle finger and rename the card "Screw you".
That would be perfect lol
 
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Bring back armor, stop making it harder to put points on the board by making things like thunderbolt / zeal potion more then most golds. Easy, you have Armor in witcher tales yet not in New gwent? When ALOT of people loved playing armor because it actually meant you kept something on the board for once instead of now in new gwent 5 + cards can remove ANY strength card from the board, what were you thinking CDPR?
 
The Spear and the Shield need at least 7 turns to break even,
That's wrong, it's always been wrong and I don't think CDPR ever got it.
A point of damage is not equal to a point on the board. Three points of damage killing an engine can very well be worth 25+ points on the board. A point of damage should be rated AT LEAST at 1,5 net points.
 
Bring back armor, stop making it harder to put points on the board by making things like thunderbolt / zeal potion more then most golds. Easy, you have Armor in witcher tales yet not in New gwent? When ALOT of people loved playing armor because it actually meant you kept something on the board for once instead of now in new gwent 5 + cards can remove ANY strength card from the board, what were you thinking CDPR?
Which is a good thing because every CCG need a decent amount of hard removal, otherwise it becomes combo land and peoples complain about not being able to prevent them from going off.
It's very important to keep a balance between proactive and reactive strategy and 5+ hard removal isn't that much considering the threats available in the game.

The problem with control isn't due to hard removal right now but the profusion of pin effects that makes it easy to create epidemic/scorch targets. In a way it's the opposite of hard removal (and by that I mean spot removal because yes, scorch, for example, is a hard removal but it's only made strong because of how easy to pin enemy units is (with Eithne for example...Just a random example, I'm not gonna dare say she's a problem, wink wink).

About armor, it would be a good idea to bring it back indeed but they have to rework Skellige control then because armor obliterates it for no reason.


That's wrong, it's always been wrong and I don't think CDPR ever got it.
A point of damage is not equal to a point on the board. Three points of damage killing an engine can very well be worth 25+ points on the board. A point of damage should be rated AT LEAST at 1,5 net points.
That's right but I personaly don't think Spear is under provisioned for two reasons.
First because it's not gonna get that much value every round and second because it's one damage of removal value, meaning that your opponent can theorically react to the potential loss of his unit.

The blame is to put on the milion pin effects in the game.
And speaking of provision cost, if you look at the game right now, there is a lot of units with removal like effect that have the same cost as other cards that boost for example. Just look at Wolf pack and peasans for example, both being 4 provisions but one being clearly better than the other.
I'm not saying those units are a problem, of course they're not but I'm showing the fact that, CDPR considered boosting having the same value as damaging, which is a mistake imo.
 
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That's wrong, it's always been wrong and I don't think CDPR ever got it. A point of damage is not equal to a point on the board. Three points of damage killing an engine can very well be worth 25+ points on the board. A point of damage should be rated AT LEAST at 1,5 net points.

But not all removal is equal, so not every point of removal is worth 1.5 provisions. When you look at the removal cards below, they all cost one provision more than their damage output. Rockslide with 8 removal can often be overkill and a waste to use it on a unit with less than 8 strength, which makes the card risky and inefficient. This means Rockslide's removal is not equal to Thunder's efficiency and actually might need to be an 8 for 8.

Thunder costs 6 for 5 removal
Rockslide costs 9 for 8 removal
Venom costs 10 for 3x3 removal

On the other hand, when you look at Tainted Ale which costs 9 for 3x2 removal, is more expensive, but the card is also more flexible. Is it worth the trade off? Depends on the situation.

Spear is not a heavy removal tool, but supports other units/specials. The Spear on it's own isn't threatening and requires some rounds to gain value. Not only that, it can be countered or even removed completely, unlike direct removal as mentioned above. Once again, the removal is not equal.

So, saying one point of removal should cost 1.5 provisions is look at things too simplistically. Every removal card needs to be balanced separately. And, as it stands now, the Spear's provision is costly, but, for certain decks, still worth it.
 
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