Will Gwent ever change?

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what if you could mulligan a gold for a gold, a bronze of a bronze, or mulligan for the same provision or lower?
 

ya1

Forum regular
The issue with improving mulligans and tutoring is that more games would be played within top value ranges. If pushed too far, this would result in pretty monotonous and very predictable games. (Also, on the margin, draw rng is the only thing which keeps matchup rng from totally bonkering the game. If everyone had they top plays guaranteed, you would literally always take the win favorable matchups (because if you're not favorable, your only hope is that they don't draw). But this only shows how flawed the game really is - as one rng keeps the other rng in check.)

What might imo work is a system which would not necessarily allow everyone to always access all their golds but somehow limit draw advantage. An algorithm which could influence the draws so that no side has a huge provision advantage. This would increase the number of even games where player agency matters. How to do that? Idk.

However, in this current card design trend, even that might not work. Right now the value spike towards top range is so preposterous that even balancing draw advantage would not have much of an impact. A Dethlaff is worth 3 Noonwraiths. This is ridiculous in a game with such a simplistic general win condition (getting more points). In this game, even a single gold you drew and they missed very often decides the win. First, the whole top and upper mid range must be seriously re-balanced. Not much will change in the Gwent: Draw Your Golds Card Game until that happens.

Ofc, this is just fantasy and will never happen. This would require a huge undertaking like a Second Homecoming. I bet Slama does not even recognize this as a problem next to how many levels Journey should have and what new cosmetics to throw in and how.
 
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An algorithm which could influence the draws so that no side has a huge provision advantage over the other. This would increase the number of even games where player agency matters. How? Idk.
I feel like there are already tons of algorithms in the game. I didn't test it yet, but e.g. it's very likely to draw Pavetta in R2.(?) And if I mulligan away Freya's Blessing while having Ermion in hand, it's very unlikely to draw Freya's blessing again.(?) Creating cards like Bribery or Triss:Telekinesis are probably more likely to create a card that already has been played by the opponent.(?) Knickers only appears under certain circumstances, etc...

Edit: I actually don't want to test it because it would require thousands of hours or the help of many other players. Beside of Knicker's algorithm, I'm probably wrong since my assumptions are only based on personal experience.
 
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Guest 4375874

Guest
I've said it before and will reiterate again - ultimately, every major issue modern Gwent has, boils down to linear and uninspired card design after HC. Add one point, remove one point, without any kind of important condition or consequence.
Some cards just add or remove better. There's no reason to even discuss anything while this is the case, because unless engines/removal get heavy "restraining bolt" type of nerf as card types, they will keep outclassing everything else with their dumb linear efficiency.

Make Rebukes scale from 2 to 10, depending on the amount of treants you have on board, make Boiling Oil require two soldiers, make Drummers only boost adjacent unit when a Soldier or a Knight is played that turn, make all the instant knee-jerk reaction cards like Korathi harder to use (like, I dunno, lock a unit/scenario for a turn and banish it if it isn't purified?)
so that game finally involves some deeper planning than "kill everything nasty and slam engines that tick no matter what".


And only once every powerful play involves walking at least an extra step to facilitate it (or paying more provisions if it doesn't involve any setup), will there be something to talk about. There is no way to balance linear mechanics - one will always be better than another on purely math level, and consequently, skill will always be less important than the deck itself.

p.s. I know I'm guilty of participating in such pointless, needlessly-particular threads myself. But I always try to align my suggestions with this general idea of the global makeover.
^^^THIS!!!!
It's not even a new concept so I think Gwent needs new leadership on the dev side before we see any meaningful change. They've done a good job so far but I don't get the impression they have a handle on what direction the game should go.

The tags already exist for much of what you've suggested, it's simply a matter of requiring specific units with select tags on the board/in the graveyard to be able to use certain cards to their full potential. Removal cards at least should have this restriction. Imlerith's Wrath works in this way (still hate his ability) and that's how it should be and not just for removal but also to trigger abilities for certain Golds. Less removal/more requirements for removal and tie the strength of certain cards to the type of cards they have control of or in their graveyard.

Something as powerful as Scenarios should require setup - For Haunt for example it could be something like having two Wraiths in your graveyard or played two wraiths since the start of the match. All of this would of course require tweaking other game mechanics.

Graveyard play has also been such a waste in Gwent since for the most part it's just consume this in your graveyard and boost by it's power. SK has some good uses since MM but there are so many creative ways this could be used as well as consuming cards from your hand, something that's almost ridiculous that MO/Deathwish cannot do given the nature of the faction. I hope for the future but this year of Gwent hasn't been very impressive so time will tell.
 
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What if we could mulligan cards into two separated "pools"? As I see, every mulligan could be chosen to be sent to an "accepted" or a "rejected" pool, so the odds of redrawing those cards would differ accordingly, with higher odds for accepted and lower odds for rejected ones. This could bring us more consistent agency when extreme situations like having full bronze or full gold hands happen.
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ya1

Forum regular
Another episode of "Intricacies of Gwent."


Check out the game at 1:40:00 (Wlastelin on MO-OH vs. Demarcation on ST-PS). Check out round 3. Real kudos to the commentators for trying give it a taste of mystery throughout the round but the outcome was obvious the moment the cards were drawn. Demarcation's both finishers - Skaggs and Gord - were doomed from the start to get ever-so-binarily denied by Rivia and Heatwave in Wlastelin's hand. It was absolutely impossible for Demarcation to win this. In fact, the outcome was already decided by the draw in R1 which forced Demarcation to give up last say.

It's kinda sad that even at the highest level of play, level of play doesn't matter in the least in so many games.
 
Sorry for being negative and all but I need to get this off my chest.
I've played gwent for about 2 years now with many breaks in between. I love the card designs, the feel of the game and most mechanics. but one very big issue this game has is its balance or should I rather say, the lack of balacing.
I always love the first couple of weeks/months after an expansion because there is no solidified meta, so I played a TON after MM expansion and I had a lot of fun. after that, it tends to get stale as seen with every major expansion since the release of syndicate (I started playing shortly after CC so dont know about that one). I had a huge hiatus when the game wasnt changed for months and double/triple ball, passiflora and ME were dominating everything else.
And this time it is the exact same thing all over again. I'm level 135 in ciri's journey and that with basically not playing at all in octobre, because the game got really really annoying thanks to very small balance patches and a meta that is as solid as steel for months now.
I now tried to fulfill the last of the ciri journey quests to get the ciris biggest fan title but maaaan is it a f#ckung chore to play. even in unranked I match against nothing but the same 5-6 decks over and over and over again and I know every single one of them because at this point every streamer/youtuber has shown them.

I have not encountered a single self-made deck in the past 2 days and I cannot get myself to playing this game anymore for now.

CDPR, PLEASE do not let this happen every single time before a new expansion. a game like this needs constant caring, else the player base will always keep dwindling away.
 
If you want to play against unique decks, I invite you to the Arena mode.

It may not be perfect, and the level of competition at the lower 3 levels is all over the place, but it is fun, and at times like these it provides the only genuine surprises. Plus at the higher levels, you will play against good player with good deck building concepts playing non optimized strategies.

Last night I had a game that featured 4 Villentretenmirths... one from each of our hands, plus a Dudu, and the 4th copied via a Coup de grace deathblow. Fun times.

But I do agree with you, CDPR constantly under evaluates the importance of the small monthly balance changes and card tweaks. Even if you only change 10 cards a month, it greatly shakes up the meta for a couple of weeks, and that is all you really need to ease the level of mental grind on your player base.
 
If you want to play against unique decks, I invite you to the Arena mode.

It may not be perfect, and the level of competition at the lower 3 levels is all over the place, but it is fun, and at times like these it provides the only genuine surprises. Plus at the higher levels, you will play against good player with good deck building concepts playing non optimized strategies.

Last night I had a game that featured 4 Villentretenmirths... one from each of our hands, plus a Dudu, and the 4th copied via a Coup de grace deathblow. Fun times.

But I do agree with you, CDPR constantly under evaluates the importance of the small monthly balance changes and card tweaks. Even if you only change 10 cards a month, it greatly shakes up the meta for a couple of weeks, and that is all you really need to ease the level of mental grind on your player base.
I know arena can be fun but my personal arena experience looks pretty much like this: I get a useless leader, then draw 6 golds and rest bronzes (not kidding, it happened in my last attempt at arena) just to be matched against people with either much better leaders or lockdown and seemingly full hands of 10+ provision gold cards. if the mode had a set amount of golds/bronzes it would be so much better imo but the randomness of that tends to really annoy me. hopefully draft mode will be better thought-through.

I'm glad I'm not the only one feeling that way about the game right now, as I dont want to play atm I'll see myself out - until later this year gentlemen :howdy:
 

ya1

Forum regular
Another link if I may


Here some legendary players discuss the main points of this thread: polarization and variance, insane value of top ends, draw rng and polarized matchups, unwinnables, binary interactions, lazy balancing by provision shuffling and more.

Devs, if you're hearing this, these are the biggest problems in Gwent. Do something or more old fans will be quitting. This should be the main focus of the coming expansion.
 
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DRK3

Forum veteran
Devs, if you're hearing this, these are the biggest problems in Gwent. Do something or more old fans will be quitting. This should be the main focus of the coming expansion.

Unfortunately, by now the expansion is probably already mostly done, since we're roughly 30 days away from it, and with a reveal campaign promised, the reveals probably will start in 1-2 weeks from now, so no time to do a complete overhaul of the expansion.

Also, fixing all the bugs the current game has and implementing changes to Draft mode, maybe putting the final version, i think the devs will be overwhelmed, and so wont really do many balance changes of the existing cards on the next update, but i hope im wrong.
 
Devs, if you're hearing this, these are the biggest problems in Gwent. Do something or more old fans will be quitting. This should be the main focus of the coming expansion.

All of these problems are a result of Homecoming. CDPR introduced them all into the game, they were never there in beta. I tried for a long time making constructive posts on here and reddit, but I've come to understand that these problems are CDPR's vision for Gwent. They are never going to change.
 
All of these problems are a result of Homecoming. CDPR introduced them all into the game, they were never there in beta. I tried for a long time making constructive posts on here and reddit, but I've come to understand that these problems are CDPR's vision for Gwent. They are never going to change.
Indeed.

I can understand why they perhaps went the way they did for Homecoming with the provision system. In Beta, there were effectively only 3 provision values, gold, silver and bronze. All cards for each particular colour had to aim to be of pretty much equal effective overall strength. This system was obviously going to get more and more difficult to create balanced interesting new cards for in future expansions with only those 3 provision values.

Was the new provision system the best solution? I wasn't sure it was when I first saw it, and I'm still not convinced. I certainly don't think they have got it quite right at the moment. If there is a better solution, is it now too late to implement it anyway?

Like you, I have come to accept that CDPR's vision for the game is different to mine. Streams with Jason have revealed this gradually over time. Expecting significant change now is almost certainly futile. However, even if a full fix is no longer feasible, surely improvements can still be made within the existing constraints - if CDPR want to.
 
It amazes me how they're putting off the major issue that everyone is facing when it comes to enjoying Gwent. BALANCING and BINARY PLAY. I mean, if the game had more balance then we would have both constructed and arena to be enjoyable. We got "draft mode" instead which is early access yes, but doesn't really do anything. Ever since they launched on steam the number of players has been going down EVERY MONTH.
 
Another link if I may


Here some legendary players discuss the main points of this thread:

I find it hilarious that Spyro is acting like he played during beta. He's a newer player who has said he never played beta before.

Like at 16:04 he starts talking about how matchup dependent beta was, but everyone who played back then would know it was the complete opposite of what he's saying. You always felt like you had a chance to win back then. The only person in his chat that played during beta even corrected him and said it's much worse now lol.

People only repeat what they hear I guess.
 
I was thinking about a simple fix but I doubt it will ever be implemented.
People lamented again that casual is still plagued by meta decks ( even though this journey really doesn't require any form of grind or rush ) and maybe there could be a way to measure the power of decks, some sort of power rating and we could choose to play only with and against decks possessing a certatin power rating; it could be valued on the base on the presence of certain cards, I dunno, it kinda sound very hard to get a filter like that.
But again, that's a problem related to players, if people want to still play meta decks on casual we can't really blame the game or the devs.
Another solution could be to have a mode where you couldn't gain neither experience or journey levels, like "Experiment Mode", just to incentivate players not to just netdeck the latest deck.
 
I was thinking about a simple fix but I doubt it will ever be implemented.
People lamented again that casual is still plagued by meta decks ( even though this journey really doesn't require any form of grind or rush ) and maybe there could be a way to measure the power of decks, some sort of power rating and we could choose to play only with and against decks possessing a certatin power rating; it could be valued on the base on the presence of certain cards, I dunno, it kinda sound very hard to get a filter like that.
But again, that's a problem related to players, if people want to still play meta decks on casual we can't really blame the game or the devs.
Another solution could be to have a mode where you couldn't gain neither experience or journey levels, like "Experiment Mode", just to incentivate players not to just netdeck the latest deck.
Or they could just put forth the small amount of effort to actually balance the game. All these suggestions to create separate modes in which people will hopefully stop abusing all of the broken cards and mechanics are pipe dreams.

I've said this before, but all it would take is for CDPR to hire a couple of people who actually understand card games. Honestly, Gwent isn't incredibly complicated, and most of the balance problems plaguing the game could be fixed in the course of a single month. Even if some things need to be completely redesigned (like Defenders and pretty much every card that costs more than 12 provisions), most cards just need slight adjustments to either their power or provision costs.
 
Or they could just put forth the small amount of effort to actually balance the game. All these suggestions to create separate modes in which people will hopefully stop abusing all of the broken cards and mechanics are pipe dreams.

I've said this before, but all it would take is for CDPR to hire a couple of people who actually understand card games. Honestly, Gwent isn't incredibly complicated, and most of the balance problems plaguing the game could be fixed in the course of a single month. Even if some things need to be completely redesigned (like Defenders and pretty much every card that costs more than 12 provisions), most cards just need slight adjustments to either their power or provision costs.

Or this, but I don't see it coming on the next expansion ( I expect at most a buff to NG but I'd gladly be proved wrong ) as things have been this way since the last journey.
 
I find it hilarious that Spyro is acting like he played during beta. He's a newer player who has said he never played beta before.
Didn't watch the video but Spyro definitely played during open beta on PS4 and was already a Pro Rank player, after becoming more popular as a streamer he switched to a fresh GOG account, but I agree that even when you had a bad match up, it still was possible to turn the tides or after you did lose you were still thinking that if you had done that one move differently you could have won.
 
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