Why Gwent is heading in very wrong direction

[Sj8407]

Why Gwent is heading in very wrong direction?
Very short answer: because devs don't understand, why players really keep playing card games
Explenation:
CdPR is amazing developer of adventure RPG games, what they proved with they Wither series, that is for many considered for the best TPP RPG of the last decade. Gwent, from the other hand, is totally different experiment for them, an online card game, that was created basing of popularity of simple card game placed inside a Witcher 3. And because creating amazing adventure RPG games is something that CDPR is doing perfectly, they made one big assumption mistake: they assumed, that players playing in online cards game's expects the same things to motivate them to keep playing, that players expects from successful RPG games, and that is a thing that I call: "a more and more syndrome"; they assume, that players wants more creatures, more factions, more cards, more mechanics, more abilities, and more and more and more. Just like in Wither series: they gave new expanstlions with nowe more and more, and the players love'd it. But here come a problem: because online cards games are not RPG games where people are playing to have fun from finding new great loot, discover new places, and solving new quests. In card games the people have only one thing, that make them really happy: they just play to win, crush the opponent, and they love it. And everything else, is only a background for it. And here the problem starts, because the more and more new things devs are introducing to the game in belive that it make the game more interesting, in the reality after initial excitement with new things after a while the more complex game is became more and more irritating for players, because no matter how much time they spend with the game, they are unable to create a decks or strategies to be able to win with almost every opponent even with a great hand and very high skills, because are way too many different mechanics that You are unable to predict or counter effectively. For example: You don"t include artifact destroyer in the deck - you play with opponent with play artifact's and You loose. You include- he play two scenarios NG and you can't counter them. So you include two destroyers in deck to counter artifacts - you get opponent with no artifact's and Your destroyers are a brick; or sameone else plays avallach - You than take Iris to deck, and is another brick in game aginst deck with no avallach.
Or poisons: You play puryfy, it is a brick with opponent without; you don't play: poisons kills You; Or boosting decks like MO Kikimora Queen or SC Harmony: You almost can't beat them without Yerden or igni. But in next game You get control tactical Nilfgaard of control NR and your Yerden and Igni are brick for few points and 10-11 provinsion. And on, and on, and on, I can gave more example's, but I think You get a point: these more and more complex of the game if forcing You to prepare deck that is able only to win with same decks, boy it will be let's say 75% loose aginst others. And that is something, what in my opinion shouldn't be that way.
I personally don't mind to spend for example 200 hours of more playing searching for the best of the bests set of cards that my favourite faction can have. But I want to know, that when I will finally find these set, I wI'll have chances with them , and a good hand, and a good skills, win with any other faction and any other set of cards of opponent as a reward. And in Gwent for same time it was like these: in the times when there was only 5 factions, the leaders had they unique skills and when You seen a opponents leader, You knew what he will be playing, and he knew what You will. You've seen Woodland, You knew it will be thrive. You've seen Adda, and You knew it will be Hubert. You've seen Crah an Crate, and You know it will be full control. And You both with opponent had chances to win eith eatchother with good skills and hands . And that was fair, predictable to a point, and the time spend with game and working on perfect deck was rewarding. And now it is not.
Intelligent person ask a question: why there is meta, and many many players are playing the same decks. Because they like it? Or because it is new inttoduced to the game? No. There are many new things in game that nobody use's. And they don't like spam of elves in one month, and love syndycate in other month. They are playing it, because they have biggest chances to win with them. And if CDPR really wants to gave players satisfaction from game and keep them playing, they have to gave them possibility to win if they deserve it for they skills and hard work in decks, no when they play with decks that they luckly have counters aginst.
So IMO the last thing that the game needs in these moment, is a new expansion with new cards and new mechanics. The devs should do the opposit: reduce number of mechanics, faction abilities, and even number of cards. Every leader (faction ability) should have his "personality" and You should be able to predict what mechanics he will play. The all "binary" counters should be kicked out from the game: artifact's, poisons, defenders, armor. The game should be goin' back to the basics, when it was most playable. And passibility to win and counter every deck with Your deck , if it is good eough, will be something, that will keep players playing, not the new cards, new backgrounds, new journeys, and more and more. The chess or standard card games like poker didn't change for hundreds years, yet still the people love to play it. Because in these games, unlike adventure game's, the people play to win, no to have fun from new things. And in Gwent is the same, and as sooner the devs will get it, the less players they will loose.

 

[Jamborinio]

Hmm, ok. But what you're suggesting of 'less is better' doesn't sound like a sustainable business proposition.

I think the fallacy here, is you must win if you play well. There is RNG, there is skill level, there is deck construction ability, and if you have 2 equally good players, with equally good decks, then in theory you should win ~50% of the time. With this mind, if you're good it then becomes you should win more often than you lose, and in general I think that Gwent probably achieves that. The good players are at the top, playing with good decks and trying their best to mitigate RNG.

Where I do think Gwent can improve on is creating greater viability and variety in its strong decks. I've not played for long, so there will be people better placed than me to comment on this, but my feeling is the top decks are rather limited, and the vast majority of cards are rather impotent. I face the same deck archetypes a lot and that to me is Gwent's biggest problem, and in fact it is its biggest risk to becoming out of favour.

Creating new expansions / mechanics is one way to helps alleviate stagnation and boredom but then so does rebalancing old and useless cards. The difference is one is more likely to bring revenue than the other. A clever company would try to do both, since the casual players tend to find themselves stuck with the old and are slower to accumulate cards, and if they go out of fashion then will you lose that player base pretty quickly, as they won't stick around to get continually slaughtered. The pros and the early adopters will be all over new content asap so balancing old stuff matters less to them.

 

[Bleach25]

Unfortunately tech cards have been a problem of this game since Beta, so having or not having the adequate tech can be game changing in some matchups. That's something they should really look into.
However the game would become horribly stale without new expansions and it's already simplified enough. Also not everyone plays the best meta decks, which also originate as Homebrews

 

[vyper1]

The solution is actually double use cards.

there are some already but there needs to be more to counter things. example MO melee bleed 4, range purify

 

[hachri80]

In card games the people have only one thing, that make them really happy: they just play to win, crush the opponent, and they love it. And everything else, is only a background for it.

Once again: You don't know what people want! You don't know why people play this game.

For example: I play this game to have fun with decks I consider creative or that are just fun to play. And I want to complete my card collection. Others want to reach pro rank or even get invited to official tournaments.

And I think we need a new expansion with new cards and mechanics. But the mechanics should differ and really feel different from faction to faction. With the latest expansions all factions got defenders and scenarios but nothing really unique.

If they would reduce the amount of cards and mechanics again (Home-Homecoming) the game would be dead very quickly.

 

[InkognitoXI]

I disagree with you.
The issue (which you are giving examples for) are not new balanced mechanics.
You complain about binary mechanics (like artifacts vs artifact removal).
Such binary concepts have been the bane of Gwents existence and should honestly not exist, no matter how often they say Scenario Bomb Heaver is not a problem, the interaction is and the more binary concepts are stacked the more solitaire the game becomes.
Your second point was that you need certain tech cards (like Yrden) and they become dead in other matchups ... well of course they are dead in certain matchups, however you are not forced to use them, especially since you mentioned Kikimore.
Kikimore is just another example of a deck you lose against if you have no idea whatsoever how to play against it (in that case you might need Yrden), however if you bleed that deck as hard as possible (even if you go down 1 card) and force out Kiki you will crush them in round 3.

To sum it up, I am overall disagreeing with your arguments, except in case of binary design (especially artifacts), such concepts (or like closed beta weather) should not exist in such a binary form.

 

[DRK3]

Despite a few correct assessments from the OP, in general i completely disagree with his message:

Since Homecoming launched, the main aspect in Gwent i've complained about is making it too simple, predictable, basic and dumbed down, compared to its state in the betas.

Its true that game has a lot of mechanics now, which in theory is good, but many of those end up working in a very similar fashion, so it's only an illusion of diverse gameplay.

Finally, i think all players like having expansions and new cards to collect, even the most tryhard netdecker who only cares about winning and placing well in the leaderboard, even those probably get tired of using the same stuff for several months.

 

[Huruem]

With all due respect, what you wrote would be accurate if you would be talking about a non-collectible card game but Gwent is completely the opposite.

In a CCG you need to introduce a variety of mechanics as time goes on, to make things exciting again. You need to upset the balance to an extent. By essence a CCG varies over time, and maybe even stops, if the devs decide that they can't bring anything new, or of value to it.

I have two issues with Gwent, but they're very different from yours.

 

[quintivarium]

I come to Gwent from a background very different than most players — a background that might shed some light on this issue.

Unlike many players who may have been introduced to collectable card games by titles like Magic the Gathering or Hearthstone, I come from the game Spellcraft: Descent into Chaos.

Spellcraft is a wonderful game: original interesting mechanics, immersive cards, deep strategy in both deck design and game play, nearly perfect balance, and a development team that truly cared about the quality of their product. Unfortunately, it is all but dead.

When so many significantly inferior games seem to thrive, I have often wondered why.

One thing that was obvious it that it never really obtained a sustainable base of players. While one could usually get a good game, there were never enough players to match players of similar level — I suspect many players left in frustration after being repeatedly stomped by decks built from much stronger card collections.

A second thing is that I think the developers, after years of pouring time and resources into a game that persisted in loosing money just burned out. Expansions got further and further apart until they were discontinued entirely. That’s when the player base vanished. While most simply disappeared, the few who left comments almost always cited the game becoming stale with no new content and/or inability to find opponents. By the way, Spellcraft has well over 40 competitive deck archetypes, far more than Gwent, and an extensive single player campaign.

While I work very much like to see better balance and variety of viable decks, my observation - based upon another game - is that new content is absolutely essential to a game surviving.

 

[Rudiferme.]

The line 'Players just play to win, crush the opponent, and they love it.' is extremely subjective. It's because there's so many unpredictable factors that make the game fun. If any player was given a deck of 25 with cards that have 100 power each, thus assuring they'd win every game, I'm sure they'd get bored instantly. Yes, winning is fun. But simply winning without discovering a unique method of deckbuilding makes it boring soon.
Personally, the best part of Gwent for me isn't beating the opponents. It's figuring and slowly creating a deck from scratch. If it was simply getting the most amount of points, it'd be simple. but there's the 'screwing over opponents strategy' aspect that make the game interesting.
Which kinda sucks that Traps are so underdeveloped.
The game has a diverse amount of possibilities but they're not developed well enough for the players to be able to build decks on it.

 

[Guest 4375874]

The line 'Players just play to win, crush the opponent, and they love it.' is extremely subjective. It's because there's so many unpredictable factors that make the game fun. If any player was given a deck of 25 with cards that have 100 power each, thus assuring they'd win every game, I'm sure they'd get bored instantly. Yes, winning is fun. But simply winning without discovering a unique method of deckbuilding makes it boring soon.
Personally, the best part of Gwent for me isn't beating the opponents. It's figuring and slowly creating a deck from scratch. If it was simply getting the most amount of points, it'd be simple. but there's the 'screwing over opponents strategy' aspect that make the game interesting.
Which kinda sucks that Traps are so underdeveloped.
The game has a diverse amount of possibilities but they're not developed well enough for the players to be able to build decks on it.

Do you seriously think anyone is building their deck from scratch anymore? I'm sure there are exceptions but the number of newbies I've come across who just copied the NG or SY formula to play because it will guarantee them a win. You can tell because they tend to make mistakes that may cost them the match. Which is very difficult with NG and SY right now, I'm not sure you can draw a bad hand with these factions right now.

You spoke about unpredictability making the game fun. If I play 10 NG matches 9/10 will have the same cards...why? Because they don't need to do what you suggested "predict anything" Their deck works is a cure all that will give them majority of wins. the problem here is everyone has to modify their deck to counter a single faction but the same is not true in reverse because.

 

[Tyr117]

Why Gwent is heading in very wrong direction?
Very short answer: because devs don't understand, why players really keep playing card games
Explenation:
CdPR is amazing developer of adventure RPG games, what they proved with they Wither series, that is for many considered for the best TPP RPG of the last decade. Gwent, from the other hand, is totally different experiment for them, an online card game, that was created basing of popularity of simple card game placed inside a Witcher 3. And because creating amazing adventure RPG games is something that CDPR is doing perfectly, they made one big assumption mistake: they assumed, that players playing in online cards game's expects the same things to motivate them to keep playing, that players expects from successful RPG games, and that is a thing that I call: "a more and more syndrome"; they assume, that players wants more creatures, more factions, more cards, more mechanics, more abilities, and more and more and more. Just like in Wither series: they gave new expanstlions with nowe more and more, and the players love'd it. But here come a problem: because online cards games are not RPG games where people are playing to have fun from finding new great loot, discover new places, and solving new quests. In card games the people have only one thing, that make them really happy: they just play to win, crush the opponent, and they love it. And everything else, is only a background for it. And here the problem starts, because the more and more new things devs are introducing to the game in belive that it make the game more interesting, in the reality after initial excitement with new things after a while the more complex game is became more and more irritating for players, because no matter how much time they spend with the game, they are unable to create a decks or strategies to be able to win with almost every opponent even with a great hand and very high skills, because are way too many different mechanics that You are unable to predict or counter effectively. For example: You don"t include artifact destroyer in the deck - you play with opponent with play artifact's and You loose. You include- he play two scenarios NG and you can't counter them. So you include two destroyers in deck to counter artifacts - you get opponent with no artifact's and Your destroyers are a brick; or sameone else plays avallach - You than take Iris to deck, and is another brick in game aginst deck with no avallach.
Or poisons: You play puryfy, it is a brick with opponent without; you don't play: poisons kills You; Or boosting decks like MO Kikimora Queen or SC Harmony: You almost can't beat them without Yerden or igni. But in next game You get control tactical Nilfgaard of control NR and your Yerden and Igni are brick for few points and 10-11 provinsion. And on, and on, and on, I can gave more example's, but I think You get a point: these more and more complex of the game if forcing You to prepare deck that is able only to win with same decks, boy it will be let's say 75% loose aginst others. And that is something, what in my opinion shouldn't be that way.
I personally don't mind to spend for example 200 hours of more playing searching for the best of the bests set of cards that my favourite faction can have. But I want to know, that when I will finally find these set, I wI'll have chances with them , and a good hand, and a good skills, win with any other faction and any other set of cards of opponent as a reward. And in Gwent for same time it was like these: in the times when there was only 5 factions, the leaders had they unique skills and when You seen a opponents leader, You knew what he will be playing, and he knew what You will. You've seen Woodland, You knew it will be thrive. You've seen Adda, and You knew it will be Hubert. You've seen Crah an Crate, and You know it will be full control. And You both with opponent had chances to win eith eatchother with good skills and hands . And that was fair, predictable to a point, and the time spend with game and working on perfect deck was rewarding. And now it is not.
Intelligent person ask a question: why there is meta, and many many players are playing the same decks. Because they like it? Or because it is new inttoduced to the game? No. There are many new things in game that nobody use's. And they don't like spam of elves in one month, and love syndycate in other month. They are playing it, because they have biggest chances to win with them. And if CDPR really wants to gave players satisfaction from game and keep them playing, they have to gave them possibility to win if they deserve it for they skills and hard work in decks, no when they play with decks that they luckly have counters aginst.
So IMO the last thing that the game needs in these moment, is a new expansion with new cards and new mechanics. The devs should do the opposit: reduce number of mechanics, faction abilities, and even number of cards. Every leader (faction ability) should have his "personality" and You should be able to predict what mechanics he will play. The all "zero-one" counters should be kicked out from the game: artifact's, poisons, defenders, armor. The game should be goin' back to the basics, when it was most playable. And passibility to win and counter every deck with Your deck , if it is good eough, will be something, that will keep players playing, not the new cards, new backgrounds, new journeys, and more and more. The chess or standard card games like poker didn't change for hundreds years, yet still the people love to play it. Because in these games, unlike adventure game's, the people play to win, no to have fun from new things. And in Gwent is the same, and as sooner the devs will get it, the less players they will loose.

How on earth Gwent is extremely Complex?
And, Counter every deck with your deck? This is Multiplayer man, not single player for you alone, and, you don't need to Counter every deck to win against them.
But I do think balancing old useless cards is necessary.

 

[wonderboy870]

Why Gwent is heading in very wrong direction?
Very short answer: because devs don't understand, why players really keep playing card games
Explenation:
CdPR is amazing developer of adventure RPG games, what they proved with they Wither series, that is for many considered for the best TPP RPG of the last decade. Gwent, from the other hand, is totally different experiment for them, an online card game, that was created basing of popularity of simple card game placed inside a Witcher 3. And because creating amazing adventure RPG games is something that CDPR is doing perfectly, they made one big assumption mistake: they assumed, that players playing in online cards game's expects the same things to motivate them to keep playing, that players expects from successful RPG games, and that is a thing that I call: "a more and more syndrome"; they assume, that players wants more creatures, more factions, more cards, more mechanics, more abilities, and more and more and more. Just like in Wither series: they gave new expanstlions with nowe more and more, and the players love'd it. But here come a problem: because online cards games are not RPG games where people are playing to have fun from finding new great loot, discover new places, and solving new quests. In card games the people have only one thing, that make them really happy: they just play to win, crush the opponent, and they love it. And everything else, is only a background for it. And here the problem starts, because the more and more new things devs are introducing to the game in belive that it make the game more interesting, in the reality after initial excitement with new things after a while the more complex game is became more and more irritating for players, because no matter how much time they spend with the game, they are unable to create a decks or strategies to be able to win with almost every opponent even with a great hand and very high skills, because are way too many different mechanics that You are unable to predict or counter effectively. For example: You don"t include artifact destroyer in the deck - you play with opponent with play artifact's and You loose. You include- he play two scenarios NG and you can't counter them. So you include two destroyers in deck to counter artifacts - you get opponent with no artifact's and Your destroyers are a brick; or sameone else plays avallach - You than take Iris to deck, and is another brick in game aginst deck with no avallach.
Or poisons: You play puryfy, it is a brick with opponent without; you don't play: poisons kills You; Or boosting decks like MO Kikimora Queen or SC Harmony: You almost can't beat them without Yerden or igni. But in next game You get control tactical Nilfgaard of control NR and your Yerden and Igni are brick for few points and 10-11 provinsion. And on, and on, and on, I can gave more example's, but I think You get a point: these more and more complex of the game if forcing You to prepare deck that is able only to win with same decks, boy it will be let's say 75% loose aginst others. And that is something, what in my opinion shouldn't be that way.
I personally don't mind to spend for example 200 hours of more playing searching for the best of the bests set of cards that my favourite faction can have. But I want to know, that when I will finally find these set, I wI'll have chances with them , and a good hand, and a good skills, win with any other faction and any other set of cards of opponent as a reward. And in Gwent for same time it was like these: in the times when there was only 5 factions, the leaders had they unique skills and when You seen a opponents leader, You knew what he will be playing, and he knew what You will. You've seen Woodland, You knew it will be thrive. You've seen Adda, and You knew it will be Hubert. You've seen Crah an Crate, and You know it will be full control. And You both with opponent had chances to win eith eatchother with good skills and hands . And that was fair, predictable to a point, and the time spend with game and working on perfect deck was rewarding. And now it is not.
Intelligent person ask a question: why there is meta, and many many players are playing the same decks. Because they like it? Or because it is new inttoduced to the game? No. There are many new things in game that nobody use's. And they don't like spam of elves in one month, and love syndycate in other month. They are playing it, because they have biggest chances to win with them. And if CDPR really wants to gave players satisfaction from game and keep them playing, they have to gave them possibility to win if they deserve it for they skills and hard work in decks, no when they play with decks that they luckly have counters aginst.
So IMO the last thing that the game needs in these moment, is a new expansion with new cards and new mechanics. The devs should do the opposit: reduce number of mechanics, faction abilities, and even number of cards. Every leader (faction ability) should have his "personality" and You should be able to predict what mechanics he will play. The all "zero-one" counters should be kicked out from the game: artifact's, poisons, defenders, armor. The game should be goin' back to the basics, when it was most playable. And passibility to win and counter every deck with Your deck , if it is good eough, will be something, that will keep players playing, not the new cards, new backgrounds, new journeys, and more and more. The chess or standard card games like poker didn't change for hundreds years, yet still the people love to play it. Because in these games, unlike adventure game's, the people play to win, no to have fun from new things. And in Gwent is the same, and as sooner the devs will get it, the less players they will loose.

There are so many problems with this it is hard to know where to start.

1. If there was a hand that could handle everything, then everyone would play it. The whole concept behind net decks is people copying the most efficient/high win potential decks. You say everyone wants to win, this is mostly true (I sometimes play to complete contracts or daily quests and could care less about winning.) That said, if everyone is playing the same decks then it comes down to draw and coin flip more often than not. You want a guaranteed win play a game against a CPU that cannot adapt to you.

2. The notion that adding mechanics is bad is wrong on its face. For example, harmony gave ST new potentials. You could argue that it is too close to thrive and thus should not exist (a fair argument for faction diversity,) but the mere expansion of options to ST is not a bad thing. You point out poison is bad, but poison prevents point slam. If you remove defense from Gwent all you get is runaway engines and point slam. You want more creative defense we can talk, but the general notion that the game should be all about offense is just going to lose players.

3. The best players win a majority of their games despite the obvious disadvantage that some leaders have against others. For example, in theory MO has a huge weakness to NR. MO plays largely on their own side of the board and NR has a lot of powerful engines and can overwhelm someone who doesn’t remove them. Yet MO can use predator dive, deathwish, bleeding, and a whole host of other defensive cards to negate the disadvantage. With a 25 card limit (not a hard limit but most decks limit themselves,) you cannot bring everything you want, but you should be bringing enough to handle a variety of situations.

Long story short, diversity in the meta will increase enjoyment and get more people playing. More mechanics support more diversity. Auto win hands are both fictional and terrible. Everyone would run the same few decks and the match would turn not on strategy but who goes first and who got the better draw.

 

[Sj8407]

Counter every deck with your deck?

No "counter every deck", but have reasonable chances aginst every other deck; in present meta maybe only Nilfgaard is possible to have chances regardless who he will face, but because it is the only faction design that way, is making NG clearly OP at the moment in compare to other factions

Post automatically merged: Jun 7, 2020

If there was a hand that could handle everything, then everyone would play it.

As above, no "handle every other deck" but have reasonable chances aginst every other deck

Post automatically merged: Jun 7, 2020

The notion that adding mechanics is bad is wrong on its face.

Mechanics are nothing bad, binary mechanics (like harmony: have yerden, win, no have: loose, or defender: have puryfy win, don't have: loose, scenarios: have bomb haver win, no have: loose) is bad

Post automatically merged: Jun 7, 2020

For example, in theory MO has a huge weakness to NR

Do You even play current meta? Because these what You say is ludicrous. There is no way to win with NR aginst boosted kikimora when opponent is playing well without Yerden, and even with it is very hard

 

[wonderboy870]

No "counter every deck", but have reasonable chances aginst every other deck

Post automatically merged: Jun 7, 2020

As above, no "handle every other deck" but have reasonable chances aginst every other deck

Post automatically merged: Jun 7, 2020

Mechanics are nothing bad, binary mechanics (like harmony: have yerden, win, no have: loose, or defender: have puryfy win, don't have: loose) is bad

Post automatically merged: Jun 7, 2020

Do You even play current meta? Because these what You say is ludicrous. There is no way to win with NR aginst boosted kikimora when opponent is playing well without Yerden, and even with it is very hard

1. The people who dominate the meta obviously win enough of their games to “have a reasonable chance” regardless of who they play.

2. What you call binary I call situational. Harmony decks are still vulnerable to RNG just like everyone else. Getting key cards is always going to be a part of Gwent. I run a lot of decks with heatwave. When my opponent plays scenario I often use it to destroy the scenario (especially against NG.) When I don’t draw heatwave that is a handicap. It doesn’t mean that the game cannot be won, it means that I need to figure a work around. I dislike the power creep to force specific play styles problem. Defenders force big removal, scenarios force artifact removal, etc... I feel it narrows the meta. But I will say it again, the solution isn’t less mechanics, it is more equally viable mechanics such that no deck can possibly handle everything. If a deck can handle everything everyone will play it, and the meta will the same x decks over and over. Gwent would be so boring people would stop playing ranked and the esport dies.

3. I wasn’t referring to current meta, I was referring to one of the most obvious and historic imbalances since beta. MO was always weak to NR. BTW, row punish like lacerate kills the insects before Kiki can buff them. Bleed your opponent in the second round and win round 1 and you also avoid the problem. I usually play on casual these days but I have used NR successfully against bugs plenty of times. But as you said, if you don’t have the necessary cards in hand, you are more likely to lose. That is when you need to dig deep in your bag of tricks and find a way to survive the onslaught round to get to round 3 and win.

 

[Yopofthering]

Without expansions and new things, a Card Game will die. That happened to the games I tried (Fantasy Rivals and Duelyst). They froze, they died.

As a newbie, very casual gamer, I really enjoy Gwent. ^^

What do I like ?
- Deck building, exploring the cards and mechanisms (the more, the better. I'm not here to play Solitaire)
- The art, the lore (new to me, too)
- The many features (the trees, the little quests, the contracts,...)
- The different game modes
- Master Mirror will be my first expansion and I want to see what's gonna change.

I don't care much about ranking. Somehow, I've climbed to rank 14 without even trying, and I'm pretty sure I could easily climb above rank 10 (you tell me if it is hard or not). I'm an average player, I play the decks I want to play for FUN (Precision Strike + Deathblow right now).
Of course, I got bored facing endless Double Ball/Poison but it's the same in every card game : some decks dominates the Meta... but not forever (except maybe Harmony, it looks pretty strong and stable). And they are not so hard to beat, at my level at least. "One deck to rule them all" doesn't exist. And you can always play Arena.

I spent a little money to buy kegs, and I'll probably spend a little from time to time, as a reward for the great artworks but I think you can play totally for free and be satisfied.

So, it seems that I have a totally opposite experience.

 

[Sj8407]

The people who dominate the meta obviously win enough of their games to “have a reasonable chance” regardless of who they play.

No, they just have decks that are able to counter decks that are most frequent in meta, like everybody that are playing ranked games with more or less success. The main difference between best players and average players is they talent and skills, not decks (most times at least)

Post automatically merged: Jun 7, 2020

What you call binary I call situational.

I remember times in Gwent without artifact's, poisons, or defenders, only with locks and dmg for control. I loved it and I think many other pepole did too

Post automatically merged: Jun 7, 2020

lacerate kills the insects before Kiki can buff them.

Disagree - endriaga larva is 3p , Lecreate did only 2 dmg - i tried everything. Only igni or yerden can really help without filling deck with cards that will be bricks in other matchups than MO

 

[Guest 4375874]

Without expansions and new things, a Card Game will die. That happened to the games I tried (Fantasy Rivals and Duelyst). They froze, they died.

Card games die when players become frustrated and lose interest. No one is saying to freeze the game...focus on balancing the game and then work on expansions. That's not a freeze

 

[Guest 4404014]

I agree with the general sentiment but for the love of life stop using poison and Double Ball as an example for everything. Double Ball is just one of the many concepts and certainly not one of the strongest. And Harmony loses a lot. In fact, according to data just published in another thread, none of the concepts exceed 58% winrate except at the lowest of ranks, and then only the hitherto broken Hidden Cache gets close. And Tactical Decision, Imperial Formation and Enslave didn't even break 50/50 beyond rank 6. So please stop with this op NG nonsense.

Main problem with Gwent is what many people use the phrase "binary interactions" for. It's a buzzword for saying that Gwent is too rock-paper-scissory. That in my view breaks down into three things: 1) Plays require very specific counters, and once those counters are applied, the side that made the play is at a very big disadvantage. 2) Certain concepts stand little chance against certain others on neutral draw (meaning they need to get lucky to win, and with even luck they almost always lose). 3) There are many cards that crush a very narrow range of plays but when they do, they do it completely, cheaply, cheesily, and they can undo whole decks built around those plays in one move.

That leads to another problem: success is too dependent on the draw. One of Gwent's slogans was that it was all about the skill not the luck. Well... that's very debatable.

Third problem is Skellige. If anyone played Blood and Wine expansion to W3 they must remember how the addition of Skellige caused riots especially in the dwarven communities. They were right. 99% problems with Gwent would be solved if Skellige were removed.

 

[Lukideos]

@ya1 Why do you hate Skellige?