Player Progression Wall

Over the last month, I have played a lot of matches – mainly to understand how Gwent is designed and how it functions (you’re more than welcome to look me on playgwent @ DEATHMED1K). I initially played Gwent: The Witcher Card Game during its open beta phase and quit because I didn’t want to pay-to-win: that being said, I want to explain why it removes any fun or potential joy I would find playing this game:

The Dreaded “Pay-to-Win”

A player reaches a certain threshold when playing Gwent: TWCG: you cannot continue winning games unless you’re spending money for better cards so you can win. You have to pay for better cards, in order to win.

This isn’t a foreign concept to anyone who’s played CCG’s, but it needs to be talked about. You need more cards to win, in any card game whether it’s digital or not – you need to grow your collection and get the better cards. This is the main selling point of any CCG – naturally.

Progression with In-Game Resources/Currency

The issue I’ve run into with Gwent is to some degree – the above is not true: they’ve set up an entire system for players to gain resources within the game to build better decks. If you know what you’re doing when you first start, you can use your resources to build some powerful decks to move up the ranks with. It works great and I wish I had looked up public decks sooner!

This is all well and good, but the player eventually reaches a point where they start losing to people with more powerful cards – and they can only build more cards with the very few resources they get from losing. It’s like having your mobile internet speed throttled to a point you can’t even load simple web pages. Of course, they could always buy more cards – but at that point, they’ve been backed into a wall and the only option for real progression is to make a purchase. This rubs people the wrong way.

In Closing

On a personal note: I am very disappointed the company that sent me a note about their passion for games in my PC copy of Witcher 3 hasn’t found a more creative solution.

I will continue playing this game because it’s unique – but I’m not enjoying it. That’s on me, and I have my own reasons for doing so, but I felt it was important to start a conversation with the community about this.

I’ve seen this with most businesses, the ones that really shine through are the ones that focus on *adding value** to their customers/players instead of focusing on making money. That doesn’t go without saying that businesses need to make money to function. When you’re working commercially, it’s not an easy task focusing on adding value to people over cookie cutter income streams: but it is possible: and when it works, it works VERY well.*