Why Gwent is not popular?

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I played Beta only 1 week so I know nothing. But how exactly 3 rows used to affect how you play? Is it the same as now player expect Lacerate, with the difference that 3 rows, so it would be reasonable to play 1st row, 2nd, 3rd, then go back to 1st, 2nd, 3rd, so that there would be 3 3 3 body on each row?

That's more or less what you'd usually do. Against weather focused deck you'd usually only play on two or sometimes even one row(which was a bit risky, because of lacerate and such) to avoid being damaged by multiple weather effects at the same time. Keep in mind though that rows were initially designed around a lot of cards being row locked. They decreased the number of row locked units continously until they finally removed it completely without any kind of compensation, which lead to the feeling that in many matchups rows don't matter and this was one of the biggest issues of Gwent at the end of open beta.
CPDR justified removing a row by saying it's easier to give them meaning this way, but that's definitely not the case. I'd say the only upside of having two rows is bigger card size and therefore it's more suitable for a mobile version. Gameplaywise it's just another downgrade. They alread gave up on the reach concept, which is understandable as two rows don't offer much possibilites to utilize it.

I remember there was a trap that applied Boon effect, that when enemy is moved to the row, receives 2 damage - how the opponent could prevent being impaled by careful row cards placement? He was moved here anyways by the opponent

It also dealt damage on initial contact. So your unit placement did matter.

Guys what are those DEPTH features you meain in Beta? Lots of people talk about them, but never mention specifics?

Well, as @Restlessdingo32 said, the handlimit in the combination with 3 redraws per round certainly is one of the biggest issues. In a game, where the right moment for a pass is extremely crucial and one of the biggest skills, you shouldn' be dictated by the game when you can pass they way it's the case now. Some people say tempo was a big issue during beta (and some cards definitely were an issue in this regard), but I think it created tension as I had to react accordingly and make the right decisions if should pass and keep playing. 'Play one of my most valuable cards now to keep up or to give up and pass now to be able to play it later? ' Now I have to wait several turns before these kind of questions actually matter.


Other than that the game just lacks different mechanics. It nearly all revolves about boost and damage. Strengthen/Weaken gone, carryover nearly none existent, gold immunity gone a loooong time ago. All of the mentioned mechanics had their flaws, but they also added a lot of needed variety. Still think CDPR should have focused on fixing these flaws instead of reinventing the wheel. Interesting deck interaction cards like pre midwinter field medic are also missing.
 
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Those comparisons never seem to go anywhere
And thats the problem: If in any topic of critic "beta was better" came up and teh devs dont even think about returning to that status, then there is something really wrong about communications.
I mean even without beta, my first proposal for improvement would be add a row to three rows each. You Get much closer to witcher3-gwent, get extra designspace for balancing and further expansions as well as different approaches for some existing mechanics.
Well you gotta expect Lacerate, so people often go 5 on one row, 5 on another row.
I played Beta only 1 week so I know nothing. But how exactly 3 rows used to affect how you play? Is it the same as now player expect Lacerate, with the difference that 3 rows, so it would be reasonable to play 1st row, 2nd, 3rd, then go back to 1st, 2nd, 3rd, so that there would be 3 3 3 body on each row?
There were two phase for this regard at beta: The Pre-agility (PrAP) and the Post-agility-Patch (PoAP) version. You know the PoAP-Version and yes, it was 90% as easy as you mentioned, but you could expet some specific cards in some decks, especially weathers, where you could place your cards differently the minimise the weather-effect-damage beforehand.
In the PrAP-Version, you have to had an eye for balancing your rows. Iff you have a melee-heavy deck (most cards could only be played at first row) you can be screwd by row effects. The game was much more predetermined, because you couldn't adopt easily to your opponent. On the otherhand, you have to cut out some combos, becuase otherwise you had a big weakpoint for some decks, so in avarage (for my eye) the decks were much more balanced because of this.
And it is easier to balance cards if you have a extra layer of effect e.g. much a op-boost card into a row, where less synergies happen.
 
Okay, so maybe the game designer needs help from the Players in bringing back Beta DEPTH, but keeping HC design...?
Lets say there MUST be 2 rows (mobile which is cool), and that the current design is a given. What changes should be made to make rows matter, etc.? (sorry but I didn't read this entire forum and I bet it's too much for game designer too). Suggestion threads with card suggestions? I think they read them and sometimes listen. (or came to the same conclusions).

Maybe there exist no game designer who would be able to turn a certain game design + 500 cards into highly complex and deep card game without major changes, or that simplicity is the goal here? (market analysis n such).

Battle Ram hits highest enemy on a row. Geralt Igni. If a row effect stroke for 4-5 the lowest/ the highest, then the player would need to consider where to place an engine.

May it be that the row-depth mechanics could be implemented without rows? -- cards that make 2 adjecent units duel. So you want to play high power units close to low power units, not adjecent.
The NR idea that a machine must be played between 2 Soldiers.

I like ASIMILATE archetype -- it is like in Beta that you play a card which plays another card that allows to play a spy who plays a card. So you have to expect certain cards to appear, and play in a way to utilise them.

2 rows have an advantage -- you must be careful not to spam 9+9 cards on your both rows, because you run out of space. If oppnent played too many spies, you might run out of space unwillingly.

I can't say about "when to pass" skill, I just look if Opponent used significantly more provisions than I on 1st round, if it goes beyond a point where I think that last say will give me less than carrying over my provisions to 3rd round, I give up 1st. If have good cheap-cards synergies, can play long 1st round to run out of them and keep big play for 3rd. (or bleed 2nd if have some high tempo in deck).


Furthermore, the question is: "Rework/ change existing cards & archetypes so that those not-good or meme decks would become Tier1 or at least Tier2 (some meme-decks are really cool and I think deep), or add significantly more Factions, Leaders and cards"?

Again, sorry that I didn't read all of those threads, I feel like things I ask/ say now've been discussed thoroughly. I just wished to help Devs somehow and if it was supposed to be another Whine thread (after "Gwent uninstalled sadly"), maybe it wouldn't be too helpful.
Giving specifics about what exactly was Complexity in Beta and how HC is not deep, helped me understand things, and stuff like that may be not insta-obvious if Devs read this, the thread could have looked like a whine, perhaps.

Thanks
 
What changes should be made to make rows matter, etc.?
under these assumptions:
reach is only worth taking in, if nearly all cards have recah, not onl some few.
More combined effects e.g. "As long as this card is in Melee row, buff a card in the rangd row by x at the end of your turn"
With effect like these you have position your cards well. You can add some more rules for those effects too like "If buffed, buff the card to your left by x and move it in the row forward/behind.
Rows dont must have the only purpose to choose the effect, so you dont always need two efffects at one card, but a prefered row should always be there to trigger the effect.
Removal-spells should only affect a specific row, as melee OR ranged, not to choose from.
 
reach is only worth taking in, if nearly all cards have recah, not onl some few.
I don't agree we've seen what the game looks like with reach and it's a clunky keyword that only restricts few cards, nothing more, nothing less.
Also, let's talk about real expectations here. There won't be revert to the Reach mechanic right after a patch that just got rid of it. While Reach had some uses it was not enough to justify its existence! That's why CDPR decided to remove it after the community had spoken abote it's limited uses and how some cards are unplayable! That being said I think that without reach, moving units, damage only on one row and other row restrictions SHOULD and NEED to be implemented. Example: Dwarven Skirmisher: (Mellee locked) Deal 3 damage to an enemy unit on Mellee row if it survives boost self by 1.
That way you can simulate "reach" without implimenting it in the game and you can make the high damage cards be more unreliable, and also make the opponent think twice if he wants to row stack or split his units! CDPR can push this trend as far as "destroying a minion with X power" if met the requirements! I think they are on the right path, however, it lacks some restricitions, I can understand that because their main focus was NR, but in the future I would love to see more Row restricions, high risk, high reward cards that need set up and lot of requirements but also are worth the asking price! That way deck building and matches would be felt better and there won't be NG everywhere because they can only make that kind of control + tempo on the board!
 
under these assumptions:
reach is only worth taking in, if nearly all cards have recah, not onl some few.
More combined effects e.g. "As long as this card is in Melee row, buff a card in the rangd row by x at the end of your turn"
With effect like these you have position your cards well. You can add some more rules for those effects too like "If buffed, buff the card to your left by x and move it in the row forward/behind.
Rows dont must have the only purpose to choose the effect, so you dont always need two efffects at one card, but a prefered row should always be there to trigger the effect.
Removal-spells should only affect a specific row, as melee OR ranged, not to choose from.
Well I think we've already had that (creature working only on specific row), and that would be pretty stright-forward. Only what, player needs to remember which card is ranged row and which is melee (no big deal), and movement counters it
/edit: Ah. Well if every creature was ranged or melee, then certainly it would matter at the phase of deck building - as you said ealrier, if player put too many melee, he'll be vurlerable to larerate.
 
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I played gwent open beta for about 5 months, then life got in the way and I stopped playing, then when I had finished my exams, university applications etc I suddenly remembered a nice game called gwent, so I installed it. It was nothing like I remembered. There's this thing called provisions? 2 Rows? Literally every card is reworked...

At first I thought I installed the wrong game, that this was gwent 2.0 or smthing and that my potato of a laptop would have to spend another 2 hours installing the old gwent, but after I did some research I found out about a thing called HOMECOMING. I was reluctant to play at first, since It felt.. Well, wrong but after a while I got the hang of it.. (Sihil was a pain). Now 10 months later I think I understand why Beta players have been inclined to not play the game as much. I don't want to turn this into a 'Old Gwent vs new Gwent' post or a 'bring back my favourite erite gwent post' so I'll try to keep it unbiased.

Back in old Gwent, balance changes were a lot less prevelant (and FYI I'm talking about nearing the end of beta, not when Gold immunity and non-agile cards were a thing). If I were to make a list of completely untouched cards (or cards which received nothing more than a name change or added a tag) it would be as following:

-Triss: Telekenisis
-Vilgefortz
-Cahir Dryffin
-Coral
-Dandelion: Poet
-Phoenix
-Vigo's Muzzle

Noticing a pattern? All these cards (at least towards the end of beta) saw play is a viable deck. And yes, Dandelion Vainglory was untouched and saw no play that's for another time. Now let's jump forward to when HC was released, and the power level of many cards, was well, wrong. Of course, about a bajillion cards got nerfed (some into oblivion) but that's the thing, cards were changed. Does a lot of cards getting changed seem like the best thing to do after releasing HC? I'm not saying it wasn't needed, I'm saying that surely, HC needed it's own individual open beta to test the power level of cards. We just had a rework of an entire Faction, something that seems a bit odd this late into a release of a Homecoming. Now let's talk about bad cards, like Dandelion: Vainglory t. I could make a list of all cards that saw absolutely no play on Open Beta but I would rather not get RSA so I'm just going to day that cards like Dandelion: Vainglory had flavour. I don't think the intention of it was for it to be a good card, I think the intention of it is to be a flavoursome card. Cards like Vilgefortz and Cahir are meant to be good cards but Vainglory and that random St 6 point ambush gold card which flips over when a special card is played are not. In HC, almost every card as been changed. This in itself is wildly different to Old Gwent, thus being a factor in swaying the opinion of beta players.

I've seen 2 rows being too cramped a number of times, and although it changes nothing mechanic wise, it makes HC not seem like Gwent any more. The ultimate OG gwent in TW3 had 3 rows. It doesn't matter if things changed for better or for worse it doesn't feel like the same game. Now for some design flaws.

1) Provisions

This solved nothing apart from making arena an even bigger chaos hole then it already was. I ask you, what's the difference between saying, 'I seem to draw my gold cards' and 'I never seem to draw my high prov cards'? It's just a change that alienates old players. There will always be an element of RNG in card games because of how drawing cards work, and provisions does not help this in any way

2) Lack of thinning

Is a lot of thinning really a bad thing? Does it really limit design space or anything? It just makes decks across the board super consistent (and to a degree, lessens the RNG factor of drawing cards). I don't know too much about card games but I feel like lots of thinning isn't a bad thing.

3) Removal/Engines

I know the latest NR rework patch was designed to lessen this problem but in old gwent, this problem didn't really exist at all. How many viable engines were there? That 7 point MO plant with the deathwish? The 7 point NG reveal engine? Some other niche picks? And how many units which deal damage exist back then? There's the 4 point mages but you're giving up a silver and your weather clear to remove. Other units dealt like 3 to 4 damage which was nothing. Viper Witchers are are an exception but they require the rest of your bronze cards to be non-damaging alchemy. Anything else? I know that CDPR probably saw the lack of both as a problem but in HC, they went to the other extreme, and by the time of the NR rework patch, the damage had been done. Lots of beta players probably quit by then.

In conclusion, gwent is not popular because HC alienated some existing players, bad design made some other players quit, and taking too long to fix these problems made most of the quitting players forget about gwent before they were fixed.
 
Back in old Gwent, balance changes were a lot less prevelant (and FYI I'm talking about nearing the end of beta, not when Gold immunity and non-agile cards were a thing).

Apologies, it's just to clarify, with this sentence are you talking after Midwinter? Because after it basically, the team gave up and 3 months after announced the 6-month hiatus for HC where no changes were going to be done. And even after Mid balance changes happened because of the negative reception from most of the community.
 
Apologies, it's just to clarify, with this sentence are you talking after Midwinter? Because after it basically, the team gave up and 3 months after announced the 6-month hiatus for HC where no changes were going to be done. And even after Mid balance changes happened because of the negative reception from most of the community.

1) Yes I am talking after Midwinter
2) Did they say no changes were to be made coming up to HC? I wasn't playing at the time
3) Pretty sure any changes they did make did not include reworking an entire faction
 
I think the bigger issues with orders are pacing and multiple ability usage within the same turn. They slow the game play down. Depending on the type of orders ability they can slow it down a lot. Likewise, there are a lot of potential issues you can get when multiple effects are deployed on the same turn (many of which are probably difficult to foresee). More importantly, it could be argued you don't get a lot of depth out of the mechanic.
This too, of course. It's very slow to play orders. It looks so stupid. I can't believe that developers like to play it. I even think, that developers hate their game too and don't even play it - they just develop it for us to make us suffer.
One immediate example that comes to mind is beta style consume, in it's earlier incarnations. The version involving Nekker Warriors, Nekkers and Vran Warriors. This particular concept involved multiple cards consistently working together to generate points. Nekkers would be dropped on the board, Nekker Warriors would create more copies, Vrans would eat the Nekkers on the board and those copies would land on the board in place of any consumed by the Vran. It had a hell of a lot more depth compared to putting a card on the board then playing another card or leader for your super, duper combo.
That is the one of the things I have suggested earlier in point 3 (and not only I). It would be very nice to have an answer of devs, but no luck. So, what is an idea here? Why this mechanic is interesting? Because it's automechanic in a contrast of order manual mechanic. First, auto is fast. Second, card has become alive, it makes all by itself, u just watch it and think of new moves. Ur mind is free. When u have orders ur mind is overburdened of too much control. So u get head pain and then u hate this game. And if u r not a masochist u just leave. Simple. The same thing we have in became popular autochess-style games. U just play a figure and it lives it's own life. U just watch and think of future moves. Now they are even more popular than Dota by itself, which spawned them, because there we have lesser control and lesser mind overburdening by boring routine tasks.
 
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Now they are even more popular than Dota by itself, which spawned them, because there we have lesser control and lesser mind overburdening by boring routine tasks.

Well, Dota 2 has about ten times as many players as Dota Underlords.
 
Well, Dota 2 has about ten times as many players as Dota Underlords.
Underlords is not so popular like Riot's autochess - Teamfight Tactics. Now TT is 41 000 vs Dota's 35 000. Yes LOL is still more popular, but just twice - 83 000. May be now is not a better time to view the views, cause most people are at school or work. As I saw accidentally not long ago, TT had 150 000 viewers.
 
Because it's automechanic in a contrast of order manual mechanic.
I mean the whole NR rework revolves around an automated mechanics, ofc they left the order as a future identity but I don't think "orders" or the mechanics that require your decisions are at fault for Gwent being boring at times!
Underlords is not so popular like Riot's autochess - Teamfight Tactics. Now TT is 41 000 vs Dota's 35 000. Yes LOL is still more popular, but just twice - 83 000. May be now is not a better time to view the views, cause most people are at school or work. As I saw accidentally not long ago, TT had 150 000 viewers.
TFT and the whole Autochess genre will slowly die out, and that's because of the foundations of the genre itself. Luck and more luck, the skill involved in those kinds of games are near 0, you are only adapting to your composition and try to go for the most broken combination before your opponent! TFT had 150 000 viewers in Beta when NOBODY could play the game and they were just waiting for release, the other high peak was when they paid for the Twitch Rivals Tournament and the viewership peaked... Don't get me wrong the AutoChess genre has a big player base, but for now! TFT has a unique twist on the genre and embraced a lot of popular streamers from HS (because the game sucks), so it got popular but by no means, I see continuing the success it had at the beginning. "The boring tasks" you are talking about are the same as in any game, given the time (1 week max for Autochess) you just get bored of rerolling and getting nothing, and then lose to the other guy, not because he was better than you but because the system didn't choose you! Something similar happened to HS as well, when 70% of the cards in your game revolve around RNG you are losing players and streamers at a high rate and only the dedicated ones that spend a lot of money and time on the game are left!

The original Auto Chess was like TFT, now a chosen few are playing it. And that happened waaaay before underlords and TFT got announced and released. Every game that doesn't reward skill is going downhill after a period of time. That being said I expect the AutoChess genre to continue to exist because it's like a "free casino" and there are people that love gambling, also it gives the false sense of gratification and rewarding feeling, so it has future.

I am just giving my 2 cents on the subject. Strongly disagree that any Autochess is more popular than the Moba genre, and there won't be time that this would be the case!
 

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I played gwent open beta for about 5 months, then life got in the way and I stopped playing, then when I had finished my exams, university applications etc I suddenly remembered a nice game called gwent, so I installed it. It was nothing like I remembered. There's this thing called provisions? 2 Rows? Literally every card is reworked...

At first I thought I installed the wrong game, that this was gwent 2.0 or smthing and that my potato of a laptop would have to spend another 2 hours installing the old gwent, but after I did some research I found out about a thing called HOMECOMING. I was reluctant to play at first, since It felt.. Well, wrong but after a while I got the hang of it.. (Sihil was a pain). Now 10 months later I think I understand why Beta players have been inclined to not play the game as much. I don't want to turn this into a 'Old Gwent vs new Gwent' post or a 'bring back my favourite erite gwent post' so I'll try to keep it unbiased.

Back in old Gwent, balance changes were a lot less prevelant (and FYI I'm talking about nearing the end of beta, not when Gold immunity and non-agile cards were a thing). If I were to make a list of completely untouched cards (or cards which received nothing more than a name change or added a tag) it would be as following:

-Triss: Telekenisis
-Vilgefortz
-Cahir Dryffin
-Coral
-Dandelion: Poet
-Phoenix
-Vigo's Muzzle

Noticing a pattern? All these cards (at least towards the end of beta) saw play is a viable deck. And yes, Dandelion Vainglory was untouched and saw no play that's for another time. Now let's jump forward to when HC was released, and the power level of many cards, was well, wrong. Of course, about a bajillion cards got nerfed (some into oblivion) but that's the thing, cards were changed. Does a lot of cards getting changed seem like the best thing to do after releasing HC? I'm not saying it wasn't needed, I'm saying that surely, HC needed it's own individual open beta to test the power level of cards. We just had a rework of an entire Faction, something that seems a bit odd this late into a release of a Homecoming. Now let's talk about bad cards, like Dandelion: Vainglory t. I could make a list of all cards that saw absolutely no play on Open Beta but I would rather not get RSA so I'm just going to day that cards like Dandelion: Vainglory had flavour. I don't think the intention of it was for it to be a good card, I think the intention of it is to be a flavoursome card. Cards like Vilgefortz and Cahir are meant to be good cards but Vainglory and that random St 6 point ambush gold card which flips over when a special card is played are not. In HC, almost every card as been changed. This in itself is wildly different to Old Gwent, thus being a factor in swaying the opinion of beta players.

I've seen 2 rows being too cramped a number of times, and although it changes nothing mechanic wise, it makes HC not seem like Gwent any more. The ultimate OG gwent in TW3 had 3 rows. It doesn't matter if things changed for better or for worse it doesn't feel like the same game. Now for some design flaws.

1) Provisions

This solved nothing apart from making arena an even bigger chaos hole then it already was. I ask you, what's the difference between saying, 'I seem to draw my gold cards' and 'I never seem to draw my high prov cards'? It's just a change that alienates old players. There will always be an element of RNG in card games because of how drawing cards work, and provisions does not help this in any way

2) Lack of thinning

Is a lot of thinning really a bad thing? Does it really limit design space or anything? It just makes decks across the board super consistent (and to a degree, lessens the RNG factor of drawing cards). I don't know too much about card games but I feel like lots of thinning isn't a bad thing.

3) Removal/Engines

I know the latest NR rework patch was designed to lessen this problem but in old gwent, this problem didn't really exist at all. How many viable engines were there? That 7 point MO plant with the deathwish? The 7 point NG reveal engine? Some other niche picks? And how many units which deal damage exist back then? There's the 4 point mages but you're giving up a silver and your weather clear to remove. Other units dealt like 3 to 4 damage which was nothing. Viper Witchers are are an exception but they require the rest of your bronze cards to be non-damaging alchemy. Anything else? I know that CDPR probably saw the lack of both as a problem but in HC, they went to the other extreme, and by the time of the NR rework patch, the damage had been done. Lots of beta players probably quit by then.

In conclusion, gwent is not popular because HC alienated some existing players, bad design made some other players quit, and taking too long to fix these problems made most of the quitting players forget about gwent before they were fixed.
Good post. Provisions especially is something I've been thinking about recently. When they announced that they'd implement provisions I was actually excited. (I might make a thread about that in time to see how others feel) I thought provisions would make decks more diverse. That people would come to a wider variety of conclusions because of it. I was completely wrong, decks are even more similar now because of it.

One obvious reason is that going over 25 cards is no longer just 'risky' it's actually stupid. It used to be possible with a leader like Foltest or if you were running a Nova deck, now you're just straight up throwing points away. Not drawing a particular card is more damning than it ever was because of the provisions you have to pay for certain strong cards to even be in your deck. Add a strong card and your average deck power takes a big hit, which in turn makes not drawing it a disaster.

Also because provisions exists any bronzes that escape expected value immediately get criticized and nerfs get demanded. The point of deckbuilding to me is to take a seemingly useless card and make it work way above expectation. If that happens in Homecoming people will say "Hey, he paid 5 provisions and got 10 points that's unfair!" I think it should be up to the player to determine the strengths of a card, but the existence of provisions does a large part of that for us.
 
I mean the whole NR rework revolves around an automated mechanics, ofc they left the order as a future identity but I don't think "orders" or the mechanics that require your decisions are at fault for Gwent being boring at times!
I disagree. In most time you just have to activate your effect, the right order may be important at some point, but mostly you have a logically, braindead sequence. So you dont have to think about it, BUT you have to click it anyway. The game itself is slower by "activate"-effects and every player slow it even more down by dont click fast because he is double checking his tactic after some clicks. Its boring for the player who's turn it is, but even more broning for teh opponent. Nobody want to see "Ah, yes, he is going to play that, than into this" and wait the next 2 min the opponent to actually do this, if it was clear after 10 sec and could be done after another 10 sec.
 
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Speaking of the provision system, it's another example that gives the devs more design space. No longer is there a need for all bronze cards to have the same strength (same with gold cards). This not only allows a wider variety of cards, but they can also more easily be tweaked. Though, granted, I don't think the devs have used the full potential of the provision system.

Beta definitively had its charms and I do miss certain aspects. However, I rather have a balanced game than a faithful game.


I only play Gwent HC very, very irregularly, but the impression I get then browsing thorugh the forums from time to time is that the balancing has been pretty bad most of the time during HC despite more regular balance changes than during beta. So the idea that provision improve the balancing is more an assumption than a fact. The problem with trying to balance a game with provisions is that a card's value, which heavily depends on synergies, is actually hard to determine. That's not the case for card, which don't have any synergies though as its value is always the same. So the lower the degree of synergies in the game, the easier it is to balance it with provisions. But wasn't the very synergistic gameplay of Gwent before midwinter update and HC one of the game's strengths? It's also worth considering the different roles bronzes and golds/silvers had in the game. Quite often the same few golds were used in most decks of a specific faction, best example is the old Coral. Great card, played in all Skellige decks for months. Bronzes on the other hand were usually limited to their specific archetype (exceptions prove the rule). Therefore as I've already stated several time I think it would have been better if they had introduces provisions for golds only and not for bronzes as well and additionally added a deck minimum of 15 bronzes. Then again, these thoughts are all based on beta gwent, not HC. But then again (again), the huge number of players leaving Gwent after HC, was the result of changes of aspects of the game, people actually liked.
Btw, the very low power level of Gwent HC also made balancing very difficult, but it seems they finally realized that to some degree.
 
[...] the balancing has been pretty bad most of the time during HC despite more regular balance changes than during beta. So the idea that provision improve the balancing is more an assumption than a fact. The problem with trying to balance a game with provisions is that a card's value, which heavily depends on synergies, is actually hard to determine.

I didn't say that the provision system improves the balancing. I said that it gives the devs more room to create new cards. While I also mentioned that I don't think the devs have used the full potential of the provision system, yet.

You've mentioned that "trying to balance a game with provisions is that a card's value, which heavily depends on synergies, is actually hard to determine." While I agree that the value of a card can be hard to determine, the same thing applies to Gwent beta, with the only difference being that all bronze needed to have the same power level.

So, basically, the initial balancing is still difficult, but cards can more easily be tweaked by increasing the provision costs. In the end, though, this is not the greatest strength the provision system brings. No, that honor goes to the wider variety of cards because they don't have to have the same power level. And this variety is a great improvement upon Gwent beta.
 
There's a core playerbase of longterm players who got a zillion scraps with HC and have every card in the game and will be able to craft every card from future expansions. These players can instantly make any deck that seems interesting or is on top of the current meta.

These players also don't understand how miserable the play experience can be for new players or returning players with small collections. Players like this can craft a couple of low tier decks or they can craft one pretty good deck that then turns to shit when the next round of balance changes hit. For these players it can take a really long time and a huge amount of game play to get the scraps needed to craft the gold cards to make a new deck.

Meanwhile they trudge along getting slaughtered. I'm a very low rank player and lately I just get demolished by highly tuned decks taking advantage of the newest changes. It's totally miserable to get hit for 1 damage 40 or 50 times a round. You just sit there and feel like shit putting the next card on the board that will be a target for the next bunch of 1 damage pings. Or your opponent plays some crazy-ass combo where he suddenly gains a massive amount of points you can't possibly overcome.

Gwent has no future because it's just not fun to play unless you are a long-term player who already has most all the cards. The new player experience is painful. There's never been a game that I wanted to like as much as I want to like Gwent. I've probably re-started a dozen times. But it's just not fun to play and I'm not willing to slog through hundreds of hours of no-fun in order to catch up to the guys who are having a good time.
So in short - we, veterans, are guilty of HC's low popularity too?

Nice.
 
While I also mentioned that I don't think the devs have used the full potential of the provision system, yet.
Btw, that is the same point i have with 3 rows. Introducing free-placement with effects like "left" and "right" but dont really capitalise it. So we will see if they could reach the maximum of its potenial withn provision, but i heavily doubt it. My Assumption ist, they keep it as a tool for cheap, fast and easy nerfing, to not put any thoughts in actually balance.
 
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