Right now it’s… a bit pay-2-win. At least, there is a good amount of grind to unlock a good selection of cards of a deck, including having all the gold and silver slots filled in, that can be skipped if you spend real bucks on the game.
That doesn’t sound like pay to win, just pay for convenience.
Well, it kinda is, as I would need to play for 2 months, one hour each each day, until I get at the point I can compete equally with people who paid money, that’s not only convenience, that’s two months where I have a disadvantage against them.
Never mind that after 60 hours of play I very possibly will be tired of the game and will switch to another one.
Impressions about Gwent, after playing 3 hours.
The game works. This is, as people suspected, Gwent can be a good game to play against real humans, the bluffing, baiting, knowing when to accept tactical losses to attack in the next round, etc works well. The complexity seems to be between Hearthstone and Magic (yeah I’m a casual player and can only give a superficial comparison as that).
Now, this is only half the Gwent game you knew it about. The new card rank system (bronze, silver, gold), the reworked Leader abilities, new mechanics like wounding, breeding, promotions, cards put face down, even the old mechanics have been reworked too (for example the Horn isn’t a permanent buff to a row, it’s a instant effect), all together makes it a bit more than ol’ Gwent in a multiplayer environment.
I maintain what I said about possible differences between players who didn’t invest real money vs players who spent $60 bucks, the latter has a clear advantage, but in practical terms it seems matchmaking will make it hard for both type of players to play against each other.
The progression is interesting. It’s totally linear, which has both a bad side and a good side: the bad side is that the first 4-5 hours in other games you progress faster and win more cards, which is needed to make the player invested and kick-start the deckbuilding part. The good side is that when you reach the 15th hour, you will still get cards at the same rate, unlike other games where the progress has slowed down at that point. So in the long term for regular players I suppose it will be better?
And keep in mind that there will be a single-player campaign for each faction (said to be 10 hours each). I presume you will be able to acquire cards that way.
Some impressions on the closed beta (thanks again Scott!):
It is a really polished presentation. The UI uses alot of neat animations and effects, and also looks really sharp at 4k (relative to HS and Elder Scrolls Legends). It’s a joy to look at and play. However, you can tell that it was designed with tablets/consoles in mind. I hate pressing left and right multiple times to go through a menu one option at a time, and I think the deck builder is pretty bad. I like in HS and Elder Scrolls how your card collection takes up most of the screen, while the WIP deck list takes up a small amount of space on the side. You can over over certain buttons to get more stats about the deck you’re making to give you the big picture. In Gwent, the WIP deck takes up most of the screen while the card pool space is very small. I also don’t like the mulligan thing, the cards are so huge you have to scroll around alot.
You can tell alot of thought has gone into the gameplay too. Decks have limits on the number of silver cards and gold cards to create a sense of balance (silver cards being a new tier that represent the better non-gold cards), and alot of interesting effects have been added to cards. Naturally there are alot of new cards as well. It’s hard to list these things exhaustively but the game plays very differently to competitive Gwent in the Witcher RPG (which mostly involved copious uses of decoys, spies, and medics to get the card advantage), in a good way. Playing against humans is alot of fun as well for the reasons TurinTur mentioned, the game has alot of bluffing, bunts, sabotage, etc.
The card progression without spending real money is slow, but I think the addition of single player campaigns will change that. I am not really paying much attention to it anyway since the server will probably be reset at some point.
There is already a meta and it is in two words: Monster Decks. I am really enjoying playing Skellige, and am able to win maybe 60% of the time without spending $ (although I am probably matched exclusively with the other n00bs).
Great fun so far, all problems I listed shouldn’t even be that difficult for them to fix. There’s also a handful of things you expect from beta: decks not deleting when you tell them to and a card effect description that is just wrong.
There is a new meta already, NR decks based on buffing units, adrenaline rush, the clone it with Foltest, then promote it to gold cards. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pe6ntGCc3R8
edit: I also don’t fully agree with your appreciation of the UI (done for tablets/consoles), you also can click on the top menu to go to whatever section directly, you don’t have to go left/right as you say.
Thanks for the write-up, @Tim_N (and the video @TurinTur) - sounds like while it may have a little work ahead of it, they are on the right track to make something compelling. I think it looks terrific. Is the beta multiplayer only?
It has practice against AI but no story modes or anything (yet). To be honest it looks almost done. Might need some card balancing and Nilfgaard is listed as “coming soon”, not sure if the plans are to get that out before open beta / release. Otherwise, it just needs the campaign really.
Anyone know if they are doing arenas / leagues?
saying it’s pay 2 win just because you think you might get bored grinding it out for free is a bit odd imo. f2p games (other than those who solely monetize through cosmetics) have always been about money vs time
Finally got my invite, I was worried they skipped me.
Got my Xbox beta invite too, forgot I signed up for this. Only recently played the minigame in Witcher 3, might as well see how this compares.
I got an invite in my spam email for this. I don’t think I have time for it. Is it transferable? Please reply here if you want it.
I’d be interested
Can PC players play vs. Xbox players?
first guess is yes, I think I saw something about cross platform in options
I played this long enough to decide I’ll dive into a campaign or two and play a little multiplayer. I don’t see myself doing much more than that, but we’ll see.
The interface was okay, but as always, I have to chuckle when a game tells me to press Enter.
I can’t be the only one who downloaded the mod that lets you cast igni to auto win gwent matches because they don’t like gwent.
http://wpc.4d7d.edgecastcdn.net/004D7D/mkt/document/Patch-EN.pdf
Patch notes. Spoiler: nerf for everyone.
Sunk about 4 hours into this last night, its a lot of fun playing against other people.