Gwent: The Witcher Card game - standalone Gwent game - now with Rogue Mage standalone expansion

[Multi-headed Cow]

In the first chapter only about 3 battles actually have 3 rounds (most interesting part of Gwent).

To be fair that seems to be following with how post-homecoming Gwent plays now too. Round 1 is real, round 2 is extended mulligan where the players throw away trash cards so that they can get the full draw 3, and round 3 is real.

 

[Agame]

So they fixed rows by removing a row, and adding an ability to some cards depending on which row they deploy. Basically a choose one ability that would work fine without rows. Instead of figuring out why rows were fun in original Gwent they do this bullshit? Pathetic. Rows were an interesting mechanic in W3 gwent because of the strategy of positioning, due to card types, weather, orders etc. I guess its to hard for casuals to deal with mild tactical elements on top of a card game, so this is where we end up.

They have also completely deleted my two favourite archetypes: Wild Hunt Frost/Weather and the army of Nekker graveyard shenanigans.

Well fuck it I think I am done with this game, they spend two years messing around with the game and Witcher 3 version is still superior?

At this stage I dont really care if the game bombs hard. Its pretty clear they dont want to make "my" Gwent.

/salty rant

 

[J1M]

In the first chapter only about 3 battles actually have 3 rounds (most interesting part of Gwent).

To be fair that seems to be following with how post-homecoming Gwent plays now too. Round 1 is real, round 2 is extended mulligan where the players throw away trash cards so that they can get the full draw 3, and round 3 is real.

I'm deep into Chapter 2 now, and the number of 1-round battles is 4 or 5 times higher than the number of "standard" 3-round battles. Not including puzzles. There's also not much in the way of deck building due to the way resources are handled. It's also far too easy considering I am playing on the hardest difficulty.

I like card games. I like turn-based. I like narrated story elements. I even liked Gwent in beta before they made all these big changes.

That said, they need to fire the entire design team. It is clearly controlled by cancerous elements with the wrong priorities.

 

[cvv]

Welp, I knew when mainstream journos complain about something being too easy it's really bad news.

 

[J1M]

Welp, I knew when mainstream journos complain about something being too easy it's really bad news.

Who are you calling a journalist?

PS: Pitfall trap x3 (and fire) + flail is pretty funny.

Very broken combo: Rayla -> Xavier -> 2x Rayla -> Reynard -> Xavier -> 2x Rayla (all it takes to pull this off is Rayla in your hand, and you can play 7 cards instead of 1)

 

[Urthor]

Someone explain to me why game developers ruined Gwent by adding a draw 3.

The extreme attrition over card advantage is the most beautiful part of Gwent and somehow they managed to ruin it while in the process of fixing the pot of greed spy cards.

 

[Urthor]

Still a better game than Cancerstone though

 

[Agame]

Someone explain to me why game developers ruined Gwent by adding a draw 3.

The extreme attrition over card advantage is the most beautiful part of Gwent and somehow they managed to ruin it while in the process of fixing the pot of greed spy cards.

They "fixed" the problems from beta by removing everything that was interesting and fun about the game.

But at this stage its very clear they are focused on casual mobile/console market. In fact now that we have those awesome 3D leader models they should give them health points and every card should do X damage to the leader, cos winning via point totals is pretty boring. And then the enemy leader can explode when you win, kids love that right? Even Magic Arena has explosions when you win! We can also remove the 2nd row because its mostly redundant and confusing now.

 

[Urthor]

I mean I don't mind two rows that makes sense at least, and the real problems are with the case design not so much the draw 3. It just seems so bad that Gwent has so much potential because it *isn't* a MTG ripoff with design compromises to reduce gamelength like Hearthstone which makes every deck red deck wins, and they are screwing it up.

 

[J1M]

I have some bad news for you then. Thronebreaker almost entirely revolves around doing damage to eliminate certain units on the other side. Can't imagine this design direction will be limited to the singleplayer game.

In fact, the more I play of it, the more certain I am that the Thronebreaker devs may not have played Gwent.

 

[Rahdulan]

I think it's what I mentioned at some point earlier - they were basically stuck with Gwent's infrastructure because it would've been too much work to overhaul all of it when Thronebreaker got promoted to proper standalone title. It would not be a crazy assumption to make that a dedicated card game crowd wasn't necessarily their main audience anymore.

 

[Pope Amole II]

Someone explain to me why game developers ruined Gwent by adding a draw 3.

That's their coin solution, pretty much - now it's very difficult to pass while being at 8+ cards as your enemy can go all the way down to 7 without losing any advantage. It also punishes decks who thin themselves eagerly.

Besides, I'm not sure why do you think that attrition doesn't matter anymore - even 1 point of card advantage still gives you the last play of the game, thus having an immense value.

 

[J1M]

One final update on Thronebreaker.

The game has one final fuck-you to the player. The final battle is the complete opposite of all the other challenges presented prior. Instead of strongly rewarding the removal of enemy units, it strongly penalizes it. And the point where you can go back and change your deck will force you to re-watch multiple cut-scenes and complete a puzzle battle before another attempt.

The grand irony here? That last battle is about twice as hard as any other story battle, is one of the few that lasts 3 rounds, card advantage plays a major role, and the key to winning is to bolster your side more than the opponent. It feels like it exists so one of the designers could make a statement: "Yes, we know how to make a single-player challenge that feels like an actual game of Gwent, we just decided to give you something else for most of the game. Hope you weren't expecting Gwent at some point in the last 15 hours, lol."

If you are a storyfag you might like the C&C slides at the end.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

About halfway through Pope Amole II 's Gwent video now and enjoying it. I guess it's more "Enjoying it" since I'm bummed out at how bad Gwent is now too, but still. I hop on long enough to get my 6 round wins for the lowest daily tier and then I quit, and I'm only doing that until the first expansion or so just because of my filthy piles of resources collected from closed beta. If the first expansion doesn't magically improve the game by being nothing but wild and interesting cards and it's just the base set that's so goddamn dull I doubt I'll have it in me to stick around.

 

[Agame]

Gwent is a mess, they needed to do a beta for the new version. Artifact control is disgusting and reveal is turning out to be quite competitive which is terrible as it just turns the game into a RNG fiesta like Hearthstone.

I also have a ton of resource from beta so I optimisticly wait to see what happens.

 

[Agame]

Anyone even play this?

Well its an EXPANSION:

 

[Projas]

Well it's less dead than Artifact, so that's... something.

 

[Agame]

I have been playing it the last few weeks, tbf its an ok game currently, the meta is pretty diverse, possibly because the player base is so tiny you dont get the hardcore "find the exact optimal win rate deck" 2 days after release that you see in bigger ccg like Hearthstone/MTG.

But its very obvious to me now that Homecoming strategy was: "Current game is not viable so lets fuck our core playerbase and throw them under the bus, then design a new game that caters specifically to mobile phones." You can see that EVERY single decision in Homecoming is directed at making Gwent mobile friendly and/or more like Hearthstone. Particularly re: HS, there is so much removal/locks in the game it feels like playing HS, in that you are ramming 'minions' into each other and just hoping something sticks on the board.

I kind of hate Homecoming because its a hollow shell of original Gwent, but its also still more enjoyable and shockingly different to MTG/HS and all the generic shitty clones of them being made by every man and his dog. I have enough resources left from beta to instantly craft all the new cards, so I will see how this expansion pans out.

 

[FritzedProcess]

Anyone even play this?

Well its an EXPANSION:

I had abandoned it a few months ago with all the artifact deck cancer and the relative lack of depth post-Homecoming. A lot of cards have been changed dramatically since then and new leaders have been introduced. I'd say it has improved in the last couple of patches and that it's enjoyable to play again, even if it is a shadow of its former self. I'm only playing 1-3 games a day, but you can tell that a lot of people have come back to test the waters.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Well it's less dead than Artifact, so that's... something.

That might not even be true. I just played one game of ranked right now and conceded so it'd put me at the bottom of the MMR leaderboard (Presumably. Maybe other one-loss players who did it before me are lower) and all Gwent players are in the same ranked pool with no region splitting and this would be an "Active" time for Gwent with the expansion announced and Thronebreaker leaders added recently and the new seasonal game mode and shit and I'm in 29,000th place which means 29,000 individual players have played at least a single game of ranked. Which sounds better than 300 people playing Artifact at any one time except "Has played at least one game" kicks up numbers bigger than "Is currently playing". Artifact's pretty fucking dead but I wouldn't really hold Gwent up as an example of a lively game. On top of that for their first expansion to really kick things off they're going with 101 new cards which is smaller than even fucking Hearthstone sets.

Then if I'm gonna keep bitching, and I am, the cards they're showcasing seem like basically the same shit as current post-homecoming Gwent. Only we get boost-over-time and damage-over-time and shittier-thrive and destroy-if-stacked-twice. Which is basically what drove me away from Gwent after homecoming anyway, the cards and gameplay is boring as all hell. I'll probably still look at it just because I've got like 300,000 scrap and 10,000 ore and I can look at the pretty card art at least but I haven't been playing Gwent for a while now and the cards/mechanics they showed don't look like they'll do much for me. Drives me up the fucking wall since I used to play the absolute hell out of Gwent.

 

[Wunderbar]

Remind yourself that overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

"I'll probably still look at it" status changed to "Thinking about uninstalling before the expansion even launches" based on the further card reveals.

 

[Agame]

"I'll probably still look at it" status changed to "Thinking about uninstalling before the expansion even launches" based on the further card reveals.

Yep seems like they are doubling down on "damage and removal" cards which is the worst thing about the game currently. I have tried so hard to stick with Gwent but after this...

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

"I'll probably still look at it" status changed to "Thinking about uninstalling before the expansion even launches" based on the further card reveals.

Yep seems like they are doubling down on "damage and removal" cards which is the worst thing about the game currently. I have tried so hard to stick with Gwent but after this...

Yep, exactly. "It boosts... But only if you play a certain card!" and "It removes a card... If you can stack two tokens on it!" are boring as all fucking hell with the current cards (Not to mention "Points later" is much less desirable than "Points now" because of how Gwent works so these cards may struggle against the existing set anyway, Demavend/NR/orders decks being a current example). And as a side note, Artifact has a lot of really boring cards on paper too, but due to the nature of the game with the attack arrows and random spawns and lane priorities and shit there's more going on with those simple cards because of the context of the game they're in. Gwent is incredibly simple to play, even more simple than Hearthstone arguably (In the sense of how you play your cards/interact with them once played), and is entirely reliant on the cards themselves being interesting and letting you be tricky. Which the game had in closed/open beta in varying degrees and then was gutted pretty hard in homecoming and now the expansion looks like it's not doing anything to improve that.

Really does suck quite a lot.