State of the Game

First off, Gwent is great.

I have been a part of this community for several years; and, I care deeply about its prosperity and longevity. One of my “greatest” accomplishments was completing the entire Premium Version of the deck library. The art, the lore, the intricacies of deck-building with a card pool of several hundred… I don’t want to play another game.

Much appreciation to Vlad, Jason before him…, Jean, Ryan, Burza… everyone (in no specific order).

I know it is the impossible act for our Devs to manage this game on monthly basis, keep it fresh, engage new and veteran users alike, introduce new content, reinvent old content, prosper financially and keep everyone happy.

I just wanted to create a post to express and ramble my opinion on the state of the game. Please feel free to disagree.

It goes in waves, but I feel like the current level of criticism is a high point at the moment. Particularly over the concept of balance. It seems like there are always almost universally “loved” and “hated” aspects. In recent memory: the masses loved when Vampires and Dwarves made a resurgence and (a bit further back) couldn’t be happier to nerf Ball and Warriors and Harmony out of existence…. and then started to miss them. The Lockdown Meta was painful, Viy was painful, OP Relicts were painful, Original Kolgrim was painful… the Devs fixed it.

But, the introduction of recent cards has drastically changed gameplay in an unusual way. This caliber of tempo squishes a lot of the advances made in recent months. Why play any of these “revived” archetypes when I can just slam tempo? There are some known recurring subjects of complaint. If there is a large user-base that is clearly unhappy with a major element of gameplay or problematic recurrences of certain cards, doesn’t it make sense to address it immediately in some way? I understand the logic to be patient and make calculated adjustments, but if a card is clearly over-tuned or clearly disliked why live through multiple metas of frustration.

Curiosities from my perspective:

Is Priestess really a 4p bronze card?

Are Golden Nekker 9p decks too strong with cards like Aerondight, Ciri, Roach, Knickers and every combination of point slam?

Is Compass 8p when War Council is also 8p.

Is Deploying for 15points without any set up too much, regardless of provision cost?

I wish there was more incentive to play devotion or thematic decks.

40+ point swings are not unusual. They are almost necessary.

And, why isn’t there a Renfri card already? With a user dedicated enough to create cards for well more than a year, with many known great Renfri art submissions, with the fact that Renfri is an interesting character in Gwent lore… it is way beyond justified at this point.

How about a game of Gwent? 🙂