Why is Gwent so poorly run?

[wonderboy870]

As someone who has been here on and off since Beta I feel the mismanagement is systemic and apparently unchanging. Bugs in most updates, inconsistent schedules, poor communication with the player base, slow acting and poorly informed support. Sadly you cannot really point to one aspect that consistently functions properly. Worse, Gwent hasn’t really managed to get creative in generating revenue for CDPR. I mean they don’t even run 3rd party adds on their forum site. I just cannot help but wonder why the situation hasn’t improved over the course of years. Thoughts?

 

[Philychstk]

Gwent makes money oO

otherwise they would've shut it down cancel it

 

[wonderboy870]

Gwent makes money oO

otherwise they would've shut it down cancel it

A thing can survive despite being mismanaged. Happens every day all over the world in a great many contexts. Can you honestly tell me Gwent is not being mismanaged?

 

[Ulubey0]

Gwent makes money oO

otherwise they would've shut it down cancel it

Does Gwent make money?
You do have to wonder who is buying $20 intro decks, and $7 card backs, and $10 skins of poor quality 3d models.
Those prices reek of desperation, like CDPR knows they are only targeting children who don't yet know the value of money.

You say they would have to shut it down if it wasn't making money, but isn't that exactly what they just did with consoles?

My theory is that they are just trying to scrounge every dollar out of children and whales before they shut the rest of Gwent down. It's the only way to explain the unreasonable prices and the complete lack of balancing/expansions/general effort.

 

[Easha]

My, my.... aren't we being objective here...
How about we discuss less about assumptions and feelings and more about numbers, which can be found here? Apparently there is much less (financial) doom than it is being prophecized here.

The COVID-19 crisis and thus working from home might be a reason why there were more bugs.
Slower communication? CDPR learned their lesson and announced the longer season way earlier than they used to. Meteorite Powder changed? A whole news article about it. Monthly developer streams? Conveniently ignored by OP. Hard work on the hotfix of the bugs introduced with the latest patch? Ignored again.
Casually dismissing the completely new introduction of the Journey to sell more and much cheaper cosmetic items may support your point, but is simply in harsh contrast to reality.
3rd party advertisements on offical game forums? I am not sure which game forums you are usually visiting to assume this would be feasable or even normal.

Removing inefficient projects from your roster (especially the difficult update policy of consoles made it quite hard to deliver patches and hotfixes) is nothing to be worried about, but a reasonable and healthy business-decision to increase Gwent's lifetime. Mobile market generates lots of revenue, so they focused their efforts there.

Demanding from people to honestly tell you Gwent is not being mismanaged while making such claims is... daring, to write the least.

 

[Draconifors]

I mean they don’t even run 3rd party adds on their forum site.

That argument makes no sense. This is the company's official forum; why on Earth would they advertise 3rd parties? Not that there'd be any need for ads in the first place; CDPR is doing better than great, just look at numbers.

As someone who has been here since the start of closed beta, I can say that your entire OP is wildly over-exaggerating negative aspects and ignoring positive aspects.

 

[wonderboy870]

That argument makes no sense. This is the company's official forum; why on Earth would they advertise 3rd parties? Not that there'd be any need for ads in the first place; CDPR is doing better than great, just look at numbers.

As someone who has been here since the start of closed beta, I can say that your entire OP is wildly over-exaggerating negative aspects and ignoring positive aspects.

Please fill me in on the positive aspects?

Some examples of my point. Today I learned their are contracts which don’t appear unless you know to search for them. I have over 100 wins with hidden cache not counted in either contract where applicable (because they didn’t release the contracts when they released the leaders unlike the last 3 times they added leaders.) Working with CDPR support first on the transfer, then on Thronebreaker issues showcased how slow and generally unresponsive they are. You can read horror stories all over this board about inept support.

The end of season deadline got moved back again (true one day doesn’t matter much in the scheme of things. But the pattern of not being able to meet their own deadlines is just sad.) The imbalance issues. The overpriced Journey which actually gives less rewards than daily used to but still expects real money. As mentioned above the over pricing of just about everything Gwent related. Prestige 8 still not working.


I could go on and on about where they have failed but my point remains the same. The level of incompetence is striking. That said I don’t play other CCGs so maybe it is more common in this genre.

Post automatically merged: May 30, 2020

My, my.... aren't we being objective here...
How about we discuss less about assumptions and feelings and more about numbers, which can be found here? Apparently there is much less (financial) doom than it is being prophecized here.

The COVID-19 crisis and thus working from home might be a reason why there were more bugs.
Slower communication? CDPR learned their lesson and announced the longer season way earlier than they used to. Meteorite Powder changed? A whole news article about it. Monthly developer streams? Conveniently ignored by OP. Hard work on the hotfix of the bugs introduced with the latest patch? Ignored again.
Casually dismissing the completely new introduction of the Journey to sell more and much cheaper cosmetic items may support your point, but is simply in harsh contrast to reality.
3rd party advertisements on offical game forums? I am not sure which game forums you are usually visiting to assume this would be feasable or even normal.

Removing inefficient projects from your roster (especially the difficult update policy of consoles made it quite hard to deliver patches and hotfixes) is nothing to be worried about, but a reasonable and healthy business-decision to increase Gwent's lifetime. Mobile market generates lots of revenue, so they focused their efforts there.

Demanding from people to honestly tell you Gwent is not being mismanaged while making such claims is... daring, to write the least.

See my response to Drac for just some of the list. Demanding is good word. You could also argue I compelled, forced, shamed, or pick another synonym. I would say I asked for thoughts.

Your link didn’t work. But even if the game is profitable (not CDPR, but Gwent,) I would love to see its financials compared to similar games. My point is with proper management the buzz surrounding expansions would be bigger. The websites for each expansion could run adds on the bottom and sides of the screen which bring in extra revenue.

Your point about Covid is pure supposition. We would know if they bothered to tell us. Ask the devs is all but dead. We go months without meaningful content. They scramble to fix the crazy amount of damage they did with 6.2. Gwent could be so much more than it is. Yet the same road blocks keep getting in the way. I honestly wonder if they fired the entire leadership team and brought in people with experience in similar games if they couldn’t do a lot better.

Edit to update: I got the link to work this time (changed browser.) according to the press release Witcher 3 sales (likely boosted by the show,) account for much of the increased growth. What I could not find was any direct mention of the size and stability of Gwents player base. Nor could find individual financial data for Gwent profitability. But I want to re-emphasis the point that this thread is more about untapped potential than current achievement. If Gwent were a less bugged more balanced, and better run game, would it be doing significantly better than it is now?

 

[mazeebra]

A thing can survive despite being mismanaged. Happens every day all over the world in a great many contexts. Can you honestly tell me Gwent is not being mismanaged?

Gwent sprung out of an ingame game, it's not mismanaged. It has turned into a game in itself, and a pretty good one too. I can't think of many better examples of management than making something out of virtually nothing.

The one "complaint" I have about management is the lack of advertising and promotion of Gwent as a game. I think the game could be alot more popular than it is. It deserves to be more popular, and it deserves to be more popular than many other card games, simply due to quality, but it's not.

I don't know why CDPR does not promote Gwent. But sometimes I get the feeling it's like a kind of casual sideproject that just became an actual game out from the Gwent we know from Witcher 3. I don't even know how intentional it all was, or if was just some experiment.

Anyways, it's a great game with alot of potential. As a player I wish the game was better balanced in terms of the cards, and that more effort was spent on that instead of just adding new cards. But then again, I don't know anything about the behind the scenes situation of Gwent. Maybe they have to spend all their time on expansions to make the project viable and keep/attract players. I don't know how it works.

But I don't agree it's poorly run/managed. (I've played since homecoming basically)

 

[Qzman]

The game seems full of issues and growing pains, but that's because it is just that - growing. It doesn't seem struggling to me, just needs to increase the workforce and get more things done faster.

 

[wonderboy870]

The game seems full of issues and growing pains, but that's because it is just that - growing. It doesn't seem struggling to me, just needs to increase the workforce and get more things done faster.

The game was growing in Beta. At this point it is full grown. I am not saying it is a dumpster fire, but it does appear to be understaffed and mismanaged.

 

[Aridez]

My, my.... aren't we being objective here...
How about we discuss less about assumptions and feelings and more about numbers, which can be found here? Apparently there is much less (financial) doom than it is being prophecized here.

I took a look out of curiosity, doesn't it say that on Q1 2020 they had a net loss?

 

[mazeebra]

I took a look out of curiosity, doesn't it say that on Q1 2020 they had a net loss?

No, well above average revenue and wins, due to pre-sales of Cyberpunk2077.

 

[Balgar-bard-slayer]

I am fuming at their terrible communication.

I assumed the counter meant the end of season of the Viper. But they locked off the tree 15 minutes ago. I only had another 2 wins to grind out to get access to the card back.

It's just unbelievable how inconsiderate they are to their player base. It was [...] attroscious that they couldn't even be [...] to send confirmation emails during the console account changeover.

Now I discover that they made the only announcement that the season of Viper was ending on Twitter.

Not their official website, but [...] Twitter.

[...]


Seriously, I'm done putting money into this game. It's just not worth it, if they are continuously taking the piss out of their customers like this.

 

[QuadrigaQvQ]

I am fuming at their terrible communication.

I assumed the counter meant the end of season of the Viper. But they locked off the tree 15 minutes ago. I only had another 2 wins to grind out to get access to the card back.

It's just unbelievable how inconsiderate they are to their player base. It was [...] attroscious that they couldn't even be [...] to send confirmation emails during the console account changeover.

Now I discover that they made the only announcement that the season of Viper was ending on Twitter.

Not their official website, but [...] Twitter.

[...]


Seriously, I'm done putting money into this game. It's just not worth it, if they are continuously taking the piss out of their customers like this.

Don't you wanna fume at yourself?

This is from the official website:

Since you apparently didn't read it the first time, it says the season ends on June 2nd 10am CEST.

Yes.

Exactly.

And on May 27th this was posted on Twitter:

So, yeah, you got 24 hours longer than was initially announced and somehow you still blame CDPR for not getting there.

But hey, if a missed cardback at which you will get another chance again since the season of the viper will return is a problem in your life you're fuming at then overall things can't be that bad, considering we're all living in a pandemic and all

 

[bots_killer]

I can't complain. It's a free game that I've been enjoying for months.

 

[DrunkHemplar]

Gwent makes money oO

otherwise they would've shut it down cancel it

Blizzard makes money off of their products yet they objectively mismanage every project they touch in one way or another.

I think that Gwent is "mismanaged" because the CDPR employees on the Gwent team just don't have much of a clue when it comes to CCGs - and while they're excellent at certain things like art, their balance job has never been amazing - and it's almost always tired to a poorly implemented mechanic.

 

[EvanDavidson]

To all those insisting Gwent makes money: https://forums.cdprojektred.com/ind...out-the-future-of-gwent-on-consoles.11018780/

There you have it, no more console versions. If it was making so much money, that would not happen. This game has some serious issues that should be addressed and all the pushback people get when raising them is completely unhelpful as there will be no more game if things don't improve.

 

[Guest 4375874]

As someone who has been here on and off since Beta I feel the mismanagement is systemic and apparently unchanging. Bugs in most updates, inconsistent schedules, poor communication with the player base, slow acting and poorly informed support. Sadly you cannot really point to one aspect that consistently functions properly. Worse, Gwent hasn’t really managed to get creative in generating revenue for CDPR. I mean they don’t even run 3rd party adds on their forum site. I just cannot help but wonder why the situation hasn’t improved over the course of years. Thoughts?

I agree with the mismanagement but I'm sure they make money from in game purchases. Especially since rolling out on mobile which expanded their player base. I doubt money is the issue but the rest...yea, I'm with you there. I've reported several bugs months ago that are still not fixed yet they are planning another expansion without fixing the last broken one. They have their priorities all wrong.

 

[Draconifors]

There you have it, no more console versions.

And you're ignoring the reason they stated.

They would have six platforms to manage now, not to mention consoles always were slowing down updates due to the verification process required. Sony especially was a problem from what I remember; their policies must have been why powder couldn't be transferred over though it was possible with Xbox, for example.

 

[IvRoz]

Does Gwent make money?
You do have to wonder who is buying $20 intro decks, and $7 card backs, and $10 skins of poor quality 3d models.
Those prices reek of desperation, like CDPR knows they are only targeting children who don't yet know the value of money.

You say they would have to shut it down if it wasn't making money, but isn't that exactly what they just did with consoles?

My theory is that they are just trying to scrounge every dollar out of children and whales before they shut the rest of Gwent down. It's the only way to explain the unreasonable prices and the complete lack of balancing/expansions/general effort.

I don't really think children are within the demographic this game targets

I do agree, though, that their price strategy is a bit baffling. At least regarding cosmetics. It's like the total opposite of the deals I usually find at GOG.

Only exceptions being the Premium Journey (10 dls) and some faction packs (5 dls). I mean, I usually spend about that whenever I feel like grabbing a coffee XD

I think 5dls are the sweet spot and would totally target that. However, I must admit I'm no gaming industry expert thus I might be totally wrong.

I share the OP concer about the bugs, though. I don't know if it is a common situation but I had never played a non beta game so broken since Assasins Creed Unity XD.

Regarding the consoles, I believe that assessment has already been addressed on this very page.

Greetings.