I never made the Pro league, but I was rank 2 and my peak and I played GWENT until last summer. What absolutely killed it for me was their policy of not fixing broken decks during a season. A season would launch with a spectacularly broken card and everyone either jumped on that meta or tried to build a counter deck. It became no fun at higher ranks. It was only worth checking in monthly as a result.
My guy rank 2 is not “higher rank” Hell even pro rank isn’t “higher rank” One can always spam games to get into pro rank given how broken the rank system is
@@DCapps1994 it's kinda a Ben Brode thing, Marvel Snap rn has the same too slow balancing issues; Hearthstone has now a really great pace of changing cards
The game has fair monetization, great art, a good season pass and good gameplay. This is one of the very few games that I have gotten a season pass in and have not regretted it. Overall it's a shame.
yeah but it was never mtg ; and it was doomed to failure. the only game that can even come close is elder scrolls legends; but even though its not being worked on anymore; the client always keeps getting updates. so that tells you something.
@Nexo I agree and I played since closed beta. It was a good game post-rework, a bad game after the first big rework, but a truly excellent game in the early days.
I never thought there would be a Death of a Game on a game I actually played, feels weird I've been with the game for so long, easily the most hours I've put into a multiplayer game
I had the opposite but equally sad experience. Just started playing Gwent 3 days ago (2024), great game, completed all 6 factions' intro reward books with keys, made 6 custom decks (starting decks are bad) to get a feel for each faction (fav: Nilfgaard :D) and played up until I reached rank 23 with the faction I decided to specialize on. The free to play is rather good, and then I looked online and saw that the game is in maintenance mode for 2 years, so yeah, no going pro/competitive in this one. It became a game that is fun to play occasionally, just like Gwent was intended to play in the first place. It didn't become Yu-Gi-Oh where 70% of duels are won in turn 1. I like the slow pace and that the combos are not exaggerated.
the slow paced rounds are integral to the game. it's the core of experience. the round system is a mind game battle that's all about reading the pace and commitment of your opponent and capitalizing on it. this way each card is tense and important and it doesn't feel slow. for people who don't play gwent or only do so casually, allow me to give (too many) examples as to how deep the round system runs. if you fall behind pace with your opponent even a little bit you lose card advantage in following rounds (assuming they know what they're doing). often an automatic loss. as such you have the weigh the risk and value of engines and tempo. you may pressure your opponent to miss out on combos or setting up their board in fear of falling behind. you can surprise them with sudden tempo near the draw threshold after feigning a slow deck archetype. it's a constant mindgame. if you read your opponent correctly and capitalize on their mistakes games can be won after the first 3 cards. the consequences of the first round feed into the mind game of the next. if you win the first round you can play low commitment and force the opponent to match it. this way you can bleed your opponent of good cards. an especially effective mindgame when you had a short round 1 as many opponents expect you to dry pass and therefore fill their hand with good cards in preparation for the final round. knowing this some players keep mid commitment cards on hand for the second round as to mitigate the potential loss of your opponent bleeding your deck. but then you risk your opponent going all-in and being unable to match it. losing the game 2-0. it's all about reading your opponents intention, calling their bluffs and punishing them for it. however a clever loser can read their opponents read. i have regained card advantage many times doing this. the bluff is all the more convincing if you had a long, devastating first round. the more you lost it by the better. this means you're keeping power in reserve and keeping your opponent confident and cocky. you can try and bait your opponent into trying to 2-0 you. keep a few lower commitment cards to get the bluff rolling, making it seem like you were expecting your opponent to bleed your deck. they'll recognize your weakness and commit. a few cards in (the later the better, maintaining the bluff but risking defeat) surprise them by switching to your best, most high value card combos. you were just pretending to expect bleeding. you got your opponent to commit to a full round 2 that you were secretly guaranteed to win as you retained your full power from R1 unlike them. just so the playing field is evened (or even advantageous to you!). this way losing the first round is a good thing, most opponents expect you to play it safe after the first round, you can punish this expectation. again. mind games.
@@nerdSlayerstudioss yea it's not for everyone. in fact i can see how most people would find it boring (so it makes complete sense why you would include it in the video as a contributer to the game's death) ty for reading my comment. i'm impressed, it's kinda long and boring. you're a cool dude
This one will hurt, I played so much before the homecoming, up to the pro ranks, there still isn't a ccg that scratches that tactical itch between a poker game and a card game with so much freedom to set up baits and misplay. It was just never the same after Homecoming though
It's quite a bit less complex, but I find Marvel Snap does a decent job of delivering tactical mind games in card form. Really easy to get cards without spending money also
I and all my fellow friends bought something off the Gwent shop. Not because we felt like we needed to, nor did we truly want to. It was just a way to thank the developers. I still remember a conversation with my brother where we both said that we're going to buy something from the next expansion only because we want to help the devs. Talking about small loyal fan base lol
Yeah the prices of most of the stuff were to high tbf... I always wanted to buy one or two journeys but paying 40 zł for a couple cosmetics when I could get TW3 with expansions for the exact same price or a battle pass in Fortnite for less than half of that (plus it's a one time purchase assuming you do play the game to retrieve the premium currency) just didn't seem right to me. But I did get the starter pack at least.
People like you who think they're "helping the devs" by buying microtransactions are honestly the worst kind of idiot. Do you think they're running a fucking Twitch stream? Are they a charity to you? That money doesn't go to hard working little mister programmer who cleaned up the sound file for your favorite card. He's already got his pittance of a salary. That money goes to the publishers and the shareholders. God I actually despise morons like you.
God I DESPISE morons like you who think that spending money on microtransactions somehow "helps the devs". What, do you think they're running a fucking Twitch stream or something? Are you braindead? The programmers don't get a bonus if you buy the cosmetic shit, you fool. They've already got their pittance of a salary. The money you just spent went to the publishers and the shareholders. God, you are so stupid.
fun fact: Gwent as described in Sapkowski's book was basically just a variation of bridge, the cards used were different than a standard deck in real life, but the gameplay seemed to be extremely similiar
@@Bigwigrah07 it's called "Gwint" in Polish version (my native language), which is also Polish name of the tgc. Maybe something was lost in translation.
6:08 companies definitely need to cool it with the esport stuff. I don't necessarily hate it perse, but it can become very noticeable when it is shoehorned. and sometimes, its just best to ya know, have a fun casual experience, be it with and/or against a friend or complete stranger.
Burza, Slama, Ryan, Vlad, Jean and so many content creators... This game's downfall was really abrupt and unexpected to me. I just wish the Gwent team all the best and thank you very much for your great work!
I find this extremely amusing because I got into Gwent like a week ago and am in the stage of absolutely loving it. It's really fun because I have just 0 expectations and only play because I want to understand various mechanics and I laugh my ass off when someone pulls something at least seemingly unbalanced. But imagine the absolute comedic timing; I never cared for Gwent in TW3, no matter how many times I tried to find an appetite for it. But as a visual artist I wanted to check out the artworks in the standalone, so I downloaded on a whim. And I realized I actually enjoyed the experience! And no chat with the opponent? Great! Makes losing/winning literally not the point (somehow the process is far more fun than the result, little fun game of making the most of what you're dealt, relaxing). Found myself genuinely wanting to congratulate my opponents for outsmarting my little plots. So, sure, maybe the joy will fall off once I figure enough out- as it does with any online pvp game. But no game really made me experience what Gwent:TWCG does. In this context of what the community feels about it? Brilliantly amusing timing. Gosh! Anyway! Hi!! I'm new!:Dd!!
According to a quick Scryfall filter, there should be 171 Mono Black Color Identity Legendary Creature cards in mtg. Granted some of them are from less than defualtly legal Un-sets and there are other exceptions such as Ormendahl, Profane Prince being the flip side of a land, but this still leaves far more than the estimate of 9 Mono-Black Commanders.
As an avid MTG fan, I thought he was joking since it feels like we get 3 new mono black legends a set (hyperbole, but not too far from the overproduction WotC has been forcing the last few years) Yea there's way more than 9.
@Khánh Bảo Đoàn Some ab-libbed lore, mostly shit no one cares about. Alzur is there, there is no coherent plot, cards are randomly played without a faction.
I would love to see a game similar to Thronebreaker than takes place during book saga timeline. Imagine similar to Meve’s perspective but this time with Geralt’s Hanza 🔥
Play thronebreaker, rogue mague was unfinished game they released just before killing gwent. its bare bones, thronebreaker on the other hand is very good
I played this game a lot during beta but at launch they completely changed all the basic game mechanics. It was a fine game still but not the one I fell in love with.
Same for me. I loved the beta. I used to get home from work at 5AM, start up Gwent and play until I couldn't stay awake. I miss beta Gwent so damn much.
CDPR was really stupid for thinking that I was gonna waste my time learning the game AGAIN after spending more than 1000 hours perfecting my tactics and decks
I miss the pre homecoming gwent so much, I was a casual who liked the minigame a lot and the standalone was a dream come true. Then it got more and more "pro" and it wasn't fun anymore.
I think more card games need a single player mode like Thronebreaker. Balancing cards around a puzzle or AI you can do a lot more crazy things and set up scenarios that wouldn't usually happen because you're just focusing on enjoyment of one person and can tailor to that.
Legends of Runeterra does it to great success. You and your enemies will have special passive abilities which continuously change the strategy needed each match
I really wish that yugioh master duel have a proper solo story mode, the story of the duel terminal terminus etc being explained through paragraph hurt, I need an actual solo mode.
Great stuff, I liked that they lampshaded the situation with one NPC saying something along the lines of ‘You want to play Now?!’ He still does though.
I think, everyone has their own "best and most unique digital TCG". I.e. mine is Eredan, old browser flashpased TCG, that died due to wild greed of developers.
Never been a CCG guy, but my friend really got into this one & I actually learned just so I could watch her play. Hopefully Gwent has a second life when CDPR revisits the Witcher universe.
I was one of the first to play this at launch... I was so hooked, had after 1800 hours into this. But Homecoming was so alienating, I just managed to play like 200 hours, but it just never was the same, maybe also just getting old :( I miss the community too, Mogwai, Merchant, Ashlizzle(Shiekdmaid), and Anxxia, especially Anxxia, hope you are well :') Farewell memories, hello loneliness
I always knew this video would come out, and it still breaks my heart. I just don't have the words to describe how much I loved the beta of Gwent and how much Witcher vibes it gave off, it was the only card game I've played (and I've played quite a lot of them) that rewarded skill and strategy over luck, and I managed to beat the most meta decks with my own customized decks and strategies, which always felt so rewarding. It also had the most unique mechanics, for example the Morvran Voorhis Nilfgaard deck and its "reveal" mechanic. Then the Homecoming came out in 2018, and they completely changed Gwent. I tried, I really really tried to love it, but it didn't feel like Gwent to me, it wasn't the game I fell in love with, and it had almost nothing to do with the Witcher 3 Gwent mini-game, which is absurd because that's where most players came from. It felt more like "Thronebreaker : The Online Game" than Gwent. I just want the old Gwent back man...
i used to love gwent when it came out, such a breath of fresh air for poor hearthstone loving highschool me. It had clean simplistic looks, and really fun gameplay, It was probably my favourite ranked experience out of all games. But CDP decided to completly change the game with homecoming and it was just diffrent, they changed the design and in my opinion it started to look a lot more muddy and also the game became more complex needing a lot more commitment, so i just dropped it becouse it wasnt the gwent i fell in love with when it was in beta
Same here, I'd been playing it since the beta and when they re-launched with Homecoming it felt like a different game and my small brain couldn't keep up with all the changes and additions. I always found myself googling optimal deck builds because I didn't feel like I could build to my liking, as I'd always get hammered by people with more optimal decks.
If I may, there's an entire community of people who've remade the open beta game from scratch and keep updating it, you can search for r/DIYGwent if you're interested.
Then we didn't play the same game. Thronebreaker was filled with game breaking bugs and an annoying gwent compared to the awesome version in witcher 3.
You may wanna redo this video. Although Gwent is in maintenance mode, the game is still played and has a relatively active user base. Its only dead in the sense that the devs aren't supporting it but the Balance Council update allows the players to balance the game through voting.
I loved Gwent and had a blast with it during early beta. However, the changes and "revamps" they made progressively turned the game upside down and changed the things I got used to and enjoyed. I loved weather and they killed that, then I got used to the lanes and they changed that too. After a certain point, even if I was getting refunded all my currency, I just didn't have the energy anymore. Was a real shame, the game had a great concept
If I may, there's an entire community of people who've remade the open beta game from scratch and keep updating it, you can search for r/DIYGwent if you're interested.
@@nerdSlayerstudioss Cause it's true, at least for someone. Every season new decks appear just because of the buffs and nerfs from the community. I have been playing gwent throughout 2024 an for me personally it's been an interesting experience. I am going to continue playing it, maybe someday sdpr will return, but it's ok as it is, it's not dead.
"The black faction in MTG has like 9 commanders to choose from." Massive understatement, there's currently 100, not including multicolored black commanders.
I got into Gwent during 2020 and had a lot of fun with it. I learnt the different decks, abilities, techniques, hell I even watched people play on Twitch and UA-cam so I could learn how to play better. But at the end of the year I took a break and with all of them updates and new cards and new metas I could not get back into it. I was already struggling with playing the same unimaginative “meta decks” over and over and over and that only got more boring with each update. I was playing intuitively, picking cards to fit my strategies and if felt like everyone else was playing some sweaty EZ WIN deck they copied off of Reddit. Sad to see Gwent go but it was too convoluted and didn’t reward intuitive play so of course it was inevitable. Also I’m one of those people that played Gwent because I needed more Witcher content and unfortunately, like you said, they dropped the ball on that so it wasn’t even worth it to bite the bullet and get back into Gwent
I like to make thematic decks, like for example a Syndicate deck that nearly only exclusively has Witch hunter cards. They can work surprisingly well, especially since off meta decks can catch those players off guard who only copy meta decks without understanding them. I just play casually with decks I made myself and in my experience it's 40% losing to a deck that counters mine, 40% winning to a deck because mine counters them perfectly and 20% of hard fought wins/losses/draws which are the most fun. The only thing that really annoys me are meta players who abandon a match quickly after realising their copy paste deck can't win. Even worse when they just quit without at least pressing the forfeit button.
It's interesting that the focus here is on the eSports, and there's no mention of the disastrous midwinter update of 2017. THAT'S what caused Homecoming (not the desire to be more competitive). The devs realize they screwed up with that update, and it's been downhill from there. Before Dec 2017 the eSports seen was at its height.
So you're trying to actually argue that eSports was working? That's quite the bizarre argument. And you can't just hand wave my entire argument. When it's based on the literal person they put in power to do exactly what I described.
@@nerdSlayerstudioss I'm not arguing that eSports was working for Gwent, it was losing them money from the start. But Homecoming (and all the gameplay changes it introduced that players largely hated at the time) would never have happened if not for the midwinter update. Basically, there was an update in Dec 2017 where rethaz (the lead at the time) wanted to make Gwent more "accessible." This resulted in simplifying the game, removing card effects, and even changing names to be less flavorful ("Clan Tuirsech Warrior" to "Clan Warrior", etc). These changes were HATED. Where Gwent had previously been only loved by its community and was steadily growing, this moment represented a huge drop-off in players and in player faith. So, after trying for a few months to fix all these problems the update caused, the Gwent team decided they needed to do something bigger. So they announced in April 2018 that they would, in six months, revamp the entire game from the ground up and this would mark the end of beta. This was Homecoming, and as I said above, it wasn't liked that much more than midwinter Gwent... Many of us at the time saw this as CDPR's "last chance" to revitalize interest in the game, but the systems they created ended up flopping for most people. Shortly after, they changed several things (like a terrible mulligan system) that made the game better overall, but the damage was done. It's hard to come back from a flop of a launch that was itself an attempt to recover from an extremely hated update that killed many people's interest in the game. With the exception of Crimson Curse (the first expansion) interest in Gwent has been flatly declining since Dec 2017. I think the midwinter update is what killed Gwent, and the rest is history.
@@nerdSlayerstudioss and just to add on briefly, when I said that eSports was working before then, what I meant was that there was a larger eSports scene before Homecoming than after (which you yourself acknowledged). People were way more excited about old Gwent (3 rows) than new Gwent (2).
It’s crazy how many card based games we have seen on the channel so far. Gwent, Artifact, Duelyst, ES legends etc I feel like it goes under the radar as a genre that is extremely competitive, not only do you have to compete with Hearthstone but the big three traditional card games of MTG/Pokémon/Yugioh as well. Plus these devs and publishers must think it’s so simple to just make a card based game and it will succeed like that, it’s a very complex genre to make it successful by both appealing to competitive hardcore players while having a casual player base as well with that right balance which is obviously easier said than done.
The thing is that the big 3 took years before they actually started a competitive scene. All of them fucked up a lot along the way but endured because of one simple reason: Community. Say whatever you want about the success of Hearthstone after Activision Blizzard discontinued their physical CCG but it doesnt have those ton of stories on playing face to face with people and the shit talking. And for those into the "card stock market" a digital game has no reason to keep pushing the game to survive as an investment because once the servers die, thats it.
@@phyrexian_dude4645 There are smaller but very alive card games too, like Legends of Runeterra, Eternal Card Game and Shadowverse, but they also are alive just because they are persevering and patiently taking time to curate their playerbase. CCGs are a thankless kind of a live service, they can provide an average income with very small cost, but reaching huge profits with them is challenging.
card game is a hard genre to crack. Many get boring fast. runeterra got so boring that I don't remember how many months ago I stopped playing. So far the only online card game that stayed fun for a reasonably good length is marvel snap
A CCG has to be easy to play, hard to master, well balanced, have competent staff that'll axe op cards etc... look like this game didnt care about the easy to play and balance part, was made to fail
I have never had more fun in a CCG than the three seasons before the introduction of the golden nekker. I even had a ton of fun during the nightmarish vampire meta. I've never even played the witcher, the gameplay of gwent alone had me and a friend awake until late at night deck brewing.
My main issue with Gwent was how they made the version so extremely convoluted. It was VERY hard to jump in and understand what was going on because every faction had tons of unique and complex mechanics behind them. Compare this to me jumping back into Hearthstone after several years and I could still easily understand new mechanics.
@@AzureRoxe Yep, it's literally just there to milk money. And even worse, doesn't every new expansion make every card from the previous one unplayable, making them wild or something?
@@NotYourbuisness-zz7ds I'm not sure what makes you say that. It's not like I couldn't understand these mechanics. It's just that it becomes too much for any new player. No matter how hardcore of a CCG player they are.
Yes! I finally did a playthrough of Witcher 3 and decided to play Gwent since I avoided it on my first two playthroughs and it became one of my favorite parts of the game I had so much fun with it! Found out there was an app and was like fuck yeah! Got about 10 minutes in.....nah this is way too complicated
@@NotYourbuisness-zz7ds Again, no. I literally come from a CCG background. I grew up playing MTG and Yu-Gi Oh and then played HS for like a year or two when it came out. And a MOBA or a fighting game can be overwhelming for new players too, even if they are coming from games of the same genre. It would be incredibly disingenuous to say that they wouldn't.
@@Nathan_Coley Yep, that's one of the arguments I don't agree with him on. Speaking mostly about pre-homecoming since I didn't like the game very much after it there were all the archetypes in there that fulfil the same power fantasies and gameplay fantasies as they do in other CCGs. Like there are engine decks which are basically ramp decks (cards that gain a lot of value over time and are weak to disruption - consume monsters, self-harm skellige sword bois, forgot the name), pointslam (beatstick mid-range type decks), aggro (swarm decks with lots of small units which would generate a lot of value unless controlled early), control (skillge boats, trap decks, kinda alchemy niilfgaard?, early spies). The best thing about Gwent imo is that there were super weird decks that also kinda broke that midrange-control-aggro trinity which is what made it special. Even though the game was balanced around archtypes (control kinda beating big monsters, but losing to swarms unless you run specific control decks like boats, midrange out valuing control in many cases etc) , you would always have insane deck variety in pre-homecoming gwent where people would cook up incredibly meta countering and meta defining decks that you would just never see if the game wasn't based on a 3-round system. Like decks made to bleed someone round 1 with huge finishers to close it out in round 3 (since Homecoming gave people way more cards in later rounds, it killed these decks), decks that would sacrifice value in order to have carry-over to make your opponent have to over-commit on round 2 if they lost round-1 and then still have a strong unit in game 3 cause of adrenaline rushed ciri:nova or bear master etc. Alchemy nilfgaard or scoia spells which had almost no units and were all about huge swings and making sure your opponent also can't run any sort of a gameplan while still being flexible to adapt to different matchups. I don't think we'll get another game as complex and fun as pre-homecoming Gwent was soon.
@@AcencialAMV I 100% agree with all that you said buddy. Even though I still occasionally play the game (a few times a week) pre-homecoming was some of the best CCG/TCG experiences I've ever had. Gwent to this day is still my MTG replacement because I don't like the way WoTC has gone in the last ~10 years.
I loved Gwent. It was the best CCG that I could find, it had fair monetization, and was fun and challenging to build and play different decks. I even streamed it on Twitch for a while. I struggled to make the transition to homecoming, so I dropped off from playing it, but it's still sad to see it die
The lack of deck variety is on the players. There's plenty of more than viable decks your can build that can compete with the meta. It's not the developer's fault that people are lemmings. This happens in almost every competitive game you can possibly t think of.
I'm still a gwent player and the game is a lot more stable now, but what really makes me sad is how cdpr had such huge plans for these witcher tales like thronebreaker but because they kinda tied them to gwent it spooked a lot of the people away, if only they just kept as a single player experience telling us great tales from that universe it would be amazing to have and we wouldn't have to wait 10+ years for a new witcher game or anything from that universe
Gwent does have a lot of archetypes in decks. I used to run Mill and Combo decks frequently in ladder. Using Homebrew decks can help massively in Gwent.
I really loved the game played it from the close beta and put in it more than 3k hours over the years but 2022 was really tough balance wise and get me completely burn out, yet it still break my heart.
For me the game died when they released the Homecoming patch. The gameplay and board change were so bad, the game felt unplayable - before that it felt like a fun lil battlefield simulation game.
I have played this game since the beta and have put 600 hours into it. After two years I have returned to see what is happening and I totally understand why I have stopped playing it two years ago. In my opinion the cards's complexity and the mountain of different key words are a lot even for a returning player, let alone for a new one. It is not appealing for a player to jumo into a game and then have to spend a week or more to learn all the key word and cars just to start enjoying the game. Well most card games are like that, but gwent used to be simple and that is what made it so enjoyable
Played it since the first month. Started off very happy with having more Gwent in my life, but with every single update i liked the game less and less as it became more "balanced" as a competitive game, so eventually ditched it entirely. Returned a year later for Thronebreaker, loved it as a standalone experience. But the new Homecoming version of Gwent itself was simply not fun. Beautiful, but not fun. Too complicated with a million mechanics and tedious numbercrunching. It changed the feeling from drinking in a tavern and carefree slapping cards on the table to being an actual war commander trudging through a swamp and fighting for every inch of ground. This should NOT have been an ESport.
Since I don't have any sponsors on this video, sans yours truly. I will focus on making a point I think some people are missing since it happens so quickly. Pre-Homecoming Gwent was not what Gwent was in Witcher, but it was clearly not as competitive as it became. Original Gwent was never meant to be competitive, so once the shifting starts happening when leads to Homecoming, a massive switch, the writing was already on the wall. They literally brought a developer in to do this exactly. This completely changed the course of the game, and the identity of the game itself. You might see some comments wishing I focused more on this pre-homecoming Gwent, but that game was in constant flux with balance updates and new mechanics. The focus is what it led to, which was Homecoming. But people feel that way because pre-Homecoming is seen as a positive period of time of play for most players, which makes sense. But the point of the series, as always, is to focus on what kills a game. This led to Gwent being both a commercial casual failure, AND an eSport failure. Anyway, some more connectivity between that timeline section and my point concerning lack of proper balance (including frequency) would have also made my argument better. Edit: Mistake: I said they removed leader abilities, I meant faction abilities my mistake.
I loved this game so much. I played it so much when I was 15-19. I was ranked #1 a few times. From beta to post homecoming, where I lost some interest but still played regularly. I remember frost monsters being unbeatable in the beta. NG spies after that (my favourite deck), the awful scoiatael dwarves (Dorfs) that dominated for too long. Northern realms machines net deck meta. When everyone used scorch. When Olgierd and Morkvarg were in every game. As you said, I think a big problem this game had was it could never decide if it wanted a casual or competitive fan base. It was balanced and attracted a competitive base which curtailed numbers. CDPR then tried to 180 to a casual base, losing many competitive players and failing to bring in a casual audience all the while. It’s such a shame what happened to this great game. I wouldn’t even mind if it became p2w if it means keeping support (or maybe it’s better to let it die a peaceful death)?? This game is so nostalgic for me and holds a special place in my heart. It’s close to be being dead forever but I’ve just re-downloaded with the intent of becoming number 1 once again for old times sake.
I'm just glad they made Thronebreaker at all. Games as a service tend to evaporate with time and bad updates. You can only hold a healthy population for so long. I'm eager to check your take on GunZ ! Loved that game, at least I loved it until people began to follow the boring keyboard smashing meta instead of just dodging and aiming.
Gwent was at its best in 2017 when Lifeocach did his tournaments in his house. But then they did that weird update with removing the third row and he lost interest and switched to Artifact (lol) and the rest is history.
Been watching NSS for a while. This is the first video that actually hurts. Such a great opportunity for GWENT, just wasted on bad decissions and inaction.
i played this game for more than 3000 hours , i made to pro qualifiers at masters tour , but for me interest went down day by day , gwent became very different from what it used to be , i still love the game and probably still play it sometimes , it is bittersweet ending from cdpr still atleast we can enjoy last year , i wish 2018 never ended , game was peak at that time
Some of your points made sense, particularly the eSports scene (though I don't see how that should kill the game singlehandedly since most people didn't care about it anyway) and the proper balancing issues, but others were absolutely baseless. First off, I feel like the main issue with Gwent is that, yes, it became too different during homecoming, then they tried to revert the mechanics back which I felt they were relatively successful in. However, the main issue, I think, is that during its "peak" around 2019-2021 or so, there were so many cards that didn't synergize with anything, and a lot of them were the starter cards. Beginners felt difficulty creating and keeping up with the new decks and the ever changing meta, and the release of powercreeping cards every few months made it even harder for beginners to consistently win and keep going. Oppressive decks were allowed to stay in the game for months on end which had been frustrating for many people, facing the same decks over and over. But over the course of 4 years, CDPR churned out an insane amount of archetypes and decks that made you feel like a genius for playing, including a few you mentioned, but a LOT more too, with new archetypes being introduced with every expansion and old cards being reworked to fit them. Over time, these issues became more and more apparent, and with marketing being spent more on bigger things like Cyberpunk 2077, the appeal for Gwent was slowing dying out. That's not to say that there was no appeal at first. Most people who were interested are the ones who loved it from Witcher 3. It took them quite a bit for them to actually figure out the game, before scrapping almost everything and starting anew. I definitely don't think the game suffered from the issue of being a spinoff, or that it never had appeal in the first place, or that people were hating on it for lack of lore (I for one found the lore to be very extensive, especially as someone who is only lightly familiar with the characters of the Witcher world), or that it "lacked the Witcher soul", which is way too subjective of an opinion btw (I absolutely loved that Gwent oozes Witcher), or even that the price for new content was too high. I've been an avid part of the Gwent community ever since beta in 2018, and everything I discussed here is stuff I've personally lived through and talked about ad nauseam before. There were definitely some strange development choices and behind the scenes issues that contributed to all this, though, which is unfortunate but it doesn't take away from the fact that the devs overall made a lot of great stuff, including 10+ different gamemodes, plenty of rewards, and consistently interesting cards.
Also, what you mentioned about "Lack of archetypes" explains A LOT about balancing issues. In card games decks balance oftentimes against eachother, because Aggro beats combo, combo beats control and control beats aggro, altough the circle might get reversed in certain CCGs. It both makes the meta more fresh and allows the game to have more resiliance against busted strats.
Played this since Alpha and got the Pioneer tag when open Beta rolled out (OG's will know what I'm talking about). Lost interest when they decided to change the wooden board into a battlefield for no reason. I liked it when it looked like a card game. I didn't like seeing character avatars moving around. Unnecessary and visually overstimulating. Also didn't like them nuking the Gold immunity. With that move, half of the gold cards became useless since only the ones with Deploy ability could garner value. Beta had the best archetypes and was the most fun. Too bad the devs destroyed all of that by creating an absolutely new game marketed as Gwent which wasn't the same. I didn't feel like re-learning so much anymore. Oh well. We'll always have the summer off 2017 😭.
Gonna push-back on the archetype criticism as this is what made this game different from other mainstream CGs in the best way. I remember the earlier feeling of each turn feeling like a poker-game, and that you could bluff board setups to your opponent who could then over-commit to the board only to win 1 of the 3 rounds. Gwent was immaculate in this sense and the reason I knew many to play it for.
I still have many wonderful memories and look back fondly on the game and community during the beta era. There were a lot of missteps, but for a time it was unmatched in terms of raw fun in the ccg market. Thank you for covering this one; Gwent will definitely be missed.
I was honestly addicted to Gwent before they removed the siege row. There were so many different play styles, I loved it. My favorite was a monster deck where I would freeze the field, as most people never ran a clear weather card. I lost so much sleep to just One More Game. It was a massive shame when they changed it, never felt the same.
Personally I played a lot before the Homecoming update. It was fun to learn the different cards while acquiring them. I am not saying that Homecoming is worse, because the problem was I felt burnt out to relearn all the cards again. Especially since it also required for me to completely forget what I had been learning beforehand. It's one thing to learn a card game but this is made more complicated if your brain always goes back to what the cards originally were. Thronebreaker was great though. After a few patches, the fights on the hardest difficulty were really captivating and you had to really make sure to not do a mistake. Of course there were still some extremely strong strategies, but those were only available close to the finish of the game. Especially the whole swamp area was more difficult than I had imagined.
When it came out, freshly on release, it was probably the best online card game in the world. Then first massive update hit, majority of cards were changed, deck building got changed, it became much much MUCH worse game. Even Heartstone was better at that point. Then another update hit, changed the whole completely once again. And Gwent died. I would pay money to play the original version of the game, before it was changed in any way, but that ain't gonna happen.
As someone who just started playing 2 weeks ago, that is very sad to hear... I would've loved to play the beta as well. Or at least to have functional servers and a thriving player base 🥲
@Chiefrocka. Y'know, it's great to hear you feel that way, because since leaving my comment, I've still been having a blast with the game! I can find a match easy, and the servers are getting better; my only gripe now is just that community balancing has me worried.
They really messed up, because Thronebreaker is a great sub genre that could work with a lot of franchises like teltale games. Marvel Power Rangers Transformers
I remember trying really hard to like Gwent when it launched but balance always felt pretty bad. Most of the time it felt like games ended before they really started because meta decks were super rock-paper-scissors. I will say it does feel like they really tried to make this game happen though. Most companies will lie about years of support and abandon a game after 6months.
I quit when they swaped over to Homecoming. I just didn't have the time to "learn" a completly new game, I feel bad for the people who took their time to learn to love the new game. RIP GWENT, thank you for a lot of entertainment. Is was nice while it lasted.
It's funny. Usually those kinds of videos are filled with comments written by by people sh**ng on a game or people angry at devs for making it so bad it was abandoned. But not under a video about Gwent. It wasn't pay 2 play, the music and art was beyond stunning. It was truly amazing game and it's a shame it will be dead soon. At least the art will be used in an upcoming board game, so the work artist put into it won't be for naught.
Its for sure havent died yet. I still can find someone to play without waiting even at 2 oclock am. Which is the most important metric for a multiplayer game from a players perspective. I am playing this game since the beta, how many years I dont know. There are still many things to do for me like completing the full set of cards with premium versions and become last level in prestige ranking. If you like card games, it is still the best and free.
Man I've played this game for so long, I remember before the big patch when it was a three row card game. Got my entire deck put in the shredder, and still came back and played for multiple years. Can't believe this game is coming to an end.
The point of these big events is to advertise the game and sell advertisements. This is true of all sports. But, when you attempt to inflate numbers, that's when you start having more issues. Triple Triad > Tetra Master. I kind of understand what they were trying to do with Gwent. With archetypes and serial escalation, you get the power creep problem that comes with Magic the Gathering and Yugioh. It has really gotten out of hand in those games. I do agree that archetypes are important, but it also means restricting deck building or risk things getting out of hand there as well like in Yugioh. In Gwent's case, it seemed like they played it too safe while in Mtg and YGO, they're letting it get too out of control. There needs to be some kind of middle ground, but it feels like the people in charge are always prioritizing power and sales of new cards other than game balance.
Man I fell in love with Gwent, was voraciously looking for any early playtest videos, signed up for the free beta. Then it all changed. Depressing as hell.
Still remember playing the skellige deck that could like bounce my graveyard units back into the fight. And then you lose to a last turn weather effect
What killed it for me with Gwent is that each time I got back to playing, so many things had changed that my old decks and strategies didn't work anymore. It felt like the game was punishing me for having a favourite deck every time they completely rework a card to do something else. In other card games the same archetype can typically survive the entire lifetime of the game, but for Gwent it felt like half a year at most.
Dam didn't know the game would shut down I had a lot of fun with it but never felt pressured to play it much. Glad I didn't spend money to grab some card arts recently.
I joined Gwent just after release (or while it was in open beta, I am not sure). It was awesome. Had so much fun in it. Then it got overhauled into some pure nonsense. Leaders or whatever they are now got changed. Card effects got changed. My favorite cards got nerfed. I tried to get into new version, but it was utter crap and I dropped it. I am 100% sure that majority of people also dropped it because of that initial overhaul. Developers couldn't stop themselves from destroying their own product.
Im one of the few who never played Gwent in Witcher 3,and i still dont get the appeal of it. Thougt it would have been better if they would have stayed with the mini games from the first 2 Witchers.Made also more sense within the lore. But anyway,here we are.
To me (and this is a personal opinion) Gwent had the same issues that I find in a lot of CCGs, both online and off - a greater focus on decks as competition rather than decks as self expression or experimentation
@@sudonim7367 it’s more about a matter of intent - a game can be competitive without it being the main focus, and the significant downside of a competitive focused game is that a meta tends to get shaken out very quickly. That generally leads to a level of power creep as the game designers try to compensate for meta-focused strategies. You could focus a game more on a level of horizontal power dynamics by limiting the number of cards that explicitly synergize with each other as opposed to things like faction based synergies (like in Gwent or the MtG colour chart)
I played a lot of Gwent (around 800hrs in Steam, previously on console as well), and to be fair it's the card game with the best mechanic in my opinion. In other card games like Marvel Snap or Magic, you have the energy/mana concept, so usually you have to sequence your turns in the same way in almost every game (depends on draws as well). Gwent, however, with the provision system and the 3 rounds, makes it a lot more dynamic, more strategic and entertaining for me. However, as you mentioned in the video, for me the lack of balance just killed it. I would get pissed once they release the uttermost broken cards and have everyone abuse the same few new cards on ladder, sometimes with very toxic mechanics (Saskia, Milva, Arachas Queen, Priestess) or so grossly overpowered (Renfri), so I would stop playing for months until they properly re-balance said cards.
This game was amazing, the best of its genre. For me, it killed me when they remove it from consoles. I play marvel snap now but its not nearly as good. And the cards still have the best drawings by far.
One thing I am really interested in is the balance council. The game is on maintenance mode, sure, but with top players in the community being able to make small shifts in balance to the existing cards through a voting process, I think there is some potential for the game to have some degree of longevity. I've recently picked it back up and I've laddered for like 70 or so games, and I've never had a long queue time or anything like that. It will be interesting to see how far Gwent can survive on the passion of the fans alone.
Before homecoming, this game was a masterpiece I played it every day and loved it. After the 3rd row was gone so was the magic for me. i played only to check out new releases but yeah to me Gwent is awsome and would love to see a 3 row game do what it did pre-homecoming. This one hurts I loved this game.
I played it A LOT in the early days. The Homecoming update pushed me away. It just didn't feel like Gwent anymore so I never really got back into it despite having put quite a bit of money into it.
I played Gwent since the closed Invite Beta and this video is insanely accurate to my feelings over the years, it’s a shame but yeah you nailed the death of this game I used to love. Rogue Mage was the final nail in the coffin for me as a player. Great vid!
They killed this game by making it too complex and different from the original. Gwent was enjoyable in the Witcher 3, because it was very easy to pick up, with enough room to get better. Also the fact that you could earn any card by just playing the game. When I tried the standalone version again a few weeks ago, the game was almost unrecognizable.
Original Gwent in the Witcher 3 is too shallow, it is not competitive enough to make a good ocg. It is fine as a single player but it will not be fun as a multiplayer game.
@@jamessalvatore7054 By that you mean spy spam? The game is flawed, what I intend to point out is not competitiveness but only having "fun" when playing against other people.
I've enjoyed many of your videos before nerdSlayer. I thought they were insightful and provided some good points on understanding where some of these games went. Several of them I'd played for a decent bit of time. Quake Champions, Overwatch, Outriders, and, now Gwent. I am _extremely_ disappointed in this video. I do not think it has been well researched. It has not been fact checked by anyone who played much Gwent. And it does not correctly identify the problems that led to Gwent's death, instead focusing on relatively unimportant details. I am sure a lot of work went into making this video, certainly more than I am putting into this UA-cam comment (though I am spending quite a while). Therefore, please don't take this the wrong way. However, I do have several criticisms. 1:15 - Just a note, they announced no further support for the game _starting in 2024_. This seems like a fairly significant point to leave out. Especially since you call it an "abrupt and sudden death". I hope this is an unintentional mistake that you simply didn't investigate far enough into the announcement, and not an intentional fudging to make things sound more "dire". 4:19 - Maybe I'm being nitpicky, but it seems like you're already trying to put a bad spin on things. Witcher 3 is extremely popular. Gwent in that game is very popular. Card games are popular. Why should we consider it nefarious of a developer to think they can make a successful game out of that? 5:03 - I'm not quite sure where you're coming from. As you had just stated a short while ago, Gwent was not meant for everyone who played Witcher 3. So why exactly is it hard to put it online in the first place? The people who it is intended to appeal to have no problems putting it online. 5:44 - I don't really see how this is segmenting the game audience. I know people who have never played regular Gwent that enjoyed Thronebreak. And people who are vice-versa (like myself). If anything, this would seem to be a smart way to cross-pollinate and get players interested in the other. 6:15 - This is true. Gwent in the Witcher 3 wasn't designed as competitive game originally. This is an important point. I will touch on it more later. 6:36 - This has come up as a point with some regularity on previous Death-of-a-Game videos. I had thougth it made sense, but I guess it took my experience with Gwent to understand this isn't the problem it's made out to be. eSports needs developer support. It's becoming increasingly clear that esports is not a money making proposition. I mean, just look at all the recent major closures/shut downs in the esports. It's worst in scenes where the developer doesn't provide support. Eg. Smash, where a huge number of the major organizers are going under. eSports does not survive without support of the developer. Injecting some life into the scene from the start only seems like a mistake in hindsight. If the game succeeds, there's no issue. 6:56 - "With the announcement of Gwent masters [...] and the shift of Gwent to a competitive CCG the fate of the title was sealed before the game even launched." Ok, respectfully, I think you know you are exaggerating here for effect. CCGs are, at their nature, competitive. Can you name any popular CCGs that don't have a competitive scene? 7:00 - I think this is equating success of an eSport too much with what the developer put into it at the start, and not enough with the popularity of the game. All the major ones you mentioned work because the game is still massively popular. An eSport will stay active and relevant as long as players still enjoy playing the game. 7:40 - We're talking about Overwatch right? Gwent doesn't have franchise spots. 8:42 - I disagree with the argument that if a company doesn't have experience with eSports they should avoid it. Companies get set in their ways, just because they've done it before doesn't mean a company will do it right. And just because a company hasn't done it before doesn't mean they will do it wrong. 9:15 - I'm going to get to homecoming. This is a significant clue in the death of the game I believe, but not really in the way you are saying. I will expand later. Also I just disagree that Homecoming removed the fun aspects of Gwent. That is extremely subjective. 14:40 - It feels very odd to say that critics were taking a very widely different perspective than the player base. Homecoming was 2018. It's 2023. That's 5 years of the game being alive. Obviously a large enough portion of the player base agreed with the critics on the positive aspects of Homecoming. (again, more on homecoming later). 15:04 - This one I think is just a bit silly. There has never been any competitive game ever where people haven't at one point or another complained about there being lack of variety or similar. I don't think Gwent was particularily worse than any other games in this regard (or any better). 15:43 - I see it's already been pointed out before, but leader abilities were not removed. Also there's like 6 per faction. Which is plenty. 16:23 - "In a competitive ccg why wouldn't people just pick the meta decks" How is this different than any other ccg? 16:46 - Extra modes? Like the special rotating "fun" mode that is always available? Any Gwent player could have corrected this point. 17:00 - Well, I am a Gwent fan that disagrees (and I must say, it doesn't feel good to be so completely dismissed). There is plenty of evidence to show that games do not need to follow standard MtG deck types to work. Android Netrunner and Doomtown immediately come to mind. Secondly, this is just not really right. There are combo decks. There are control decks. There are mill decks. Pointslam could be aggro. Engines would be midrange. Those identies are all there, all playable. 19:41 - Very little hype? Not from what I remember. Screencaps of joke comments do not do a lot to support this narrative. 20:30 - Homecoming talk again. Stay tuned! 23:00 - Scenarios are not puzzles. Rather, they are more akin to Sagas from MtG, but that only move to the next step when you play a certain type of unit. 25:00 - This is incorrect. Price of Power, like all the Gwent expansions before it and after it, had all of the cards available to craft immediately. There was an option for whales to pay $60 and unlock everything immediately. Fairly standard for this type of game. 26:48 - This was a balancing problem. Very very problematic balancing. 28:00 - One thing to note, 28:00 Ditto on note above about maintenance mode starting in 2024. It actually says as much in the screencap included in the video.
Ok, those are I think most of the points I wanted to bring up in the video. Now, Homecoming. First I think we need to think about what Gwent began as. A minigame in the Witcher 3. Perhaps most importantly, this means it was played against AI. The game does not need to be fair when you play against a computer. However, when you start playing against other people the game does need to be fair. I think this is what the developers discovered in the Gwent beta. The original version was much closer to the version of the game in Witcher 3 and... it just didn't work correctly. The game was too linear. This isn't a problem so much in a single player game, but it's not goint to work in a CCG. Each game in a CCG needs to feel different. If the cards should always be played in a certain order, there aren't interesting decisions. Additionally, it becomes difficult to balance. There weren't enough knobs to turn. Enter Homecoming. First of all, it made the game _more_ complicated, not less. Suddenlly cards don't just do something when they're played, they have abilities that can be activated. Any entire new layer to the game. Cutting off the siege row was an excellent decision, tightening up the play space so the difference between melee and ranged would be more significant. But now, a problem. The people who just wanted to play more of the game from Witcher 3 aren't happy. This is different than that game. They don't understand it. They don't like it. This is a clue. We have a game that started off based on a minigame, but because of the limitations of that video game had to evolve into something else. And by doing so, it lost some of the recognizable factor that caused it's creation in the first place. I'll also not here that there were some complaints in the video about making the game "competitive". Personally, I think this makes no sense. There is no way where just making a game entirely out of copy/pasted Witcher 3 minigame would be successful or keep players engaged over the long term. I do not believe such a thing as a "casual" CCG exists, or at least would be able to survive for long. Homecoming helped with balance. Less linearity meant more room to breath in card design. However, there were still problems. At it's core, Gwent is a bidding game. Each player has some number of points on the cards in their hands. They take turns bidding these points, with the goal being to spend as few points as possible while still being able to win the round. There's a problem with this kind of game. At the end of the day, the only thing that makes a good card, is points. There is one major knob. And this let to a crippling problem with power creep that Gwent never escaped. New cards were made stronger to be relevant. It started a nasty spiral of increasing power that could never come under control. Over the course of homecoming to know the average powerlevel of competitive cards _doubled_. That's right. TWICE AS MANY POINTS. Even despite semi-regular balance passes on old cards, it just wasn't possible to keep up with that level of creep. And that leads to fatigue very, very quickly. Even know I still sometimes look back at what my old top-tier decks were and I'm just amazed at how unplayable they are. And that, I think, is the second clue. So overall, it's pretty clear that Gwent did not succeed, afterall it's going into maintenance mode (in 2024 though, 72 cards coming out in 3 drops this year). I believe this happened for two reasons. Firstly, the original design idea of Gwent was discovered to not be feasible, this meant the game had to be remade in a different design direction. This lost a lot of it's initial supporters. Secondly I think the game offered fundamental problems in regards to power-creep. These were not avoided by the team (perhaps to drive sales due to free-to-play?) and very quickly tired out the audience.
Maybe someone who played more of the standalone can correct me but I personally really enjoyed the mechanics of Gwent in Witcher 3 and when I played the stand-alone it seemed like the rules were a bit different. Maybe they had to do this for competitiveness and balancing or maybe I’m just remembering it wrong but I remember being instantly turned off by it even though I spent so much time in Witcher 3 playing gwent.
I remember playing Gwent with my brothers when it first came out. I was terrible at it but it was still fun; things were more or less straightforward. Fast forward to when Homecoming came out (I had no idea what went on behind the scenes with the whole esports thing) and I was kinda like "wha wha what are you trying to be, Gwent?" Losing the playing board and the siege row in favor of a battlefield (and the release of more powerful cards at the same time) really killed the vibe for me. I couldn't keep up after a while cause I never went into it with the "I gotta make the deck that all the pros are using" mentality. Very sad to hear where it's at today
That's interesting analysis, thank you for sharing. You focused a lot on CDPR and the thought behind major development decisions - there's so much to talk about that you could probably make another video just focusing on the changes in card design alone. As a Gwent partner who has played thousands of hours of Gwent over the past few years and been one of the people making the decks that other people play, I'd love to share some additional thoughts: You touched on "powercreep" of the cards, and there are some interesting ways in which that took place. As people probably would assume, there were cards that were simply way stronger than everything else. However, some of the bigger issues with those cards has been not just their existence, but how regularly they get created and how long it takes to rebalance them. All of the most recent expansions have had a couple of cards that were substantially stronger than everything else. That alone wouldn't have been the end of the world, but because balance patches only happen once a month, the same length of a competitive season, those cards would dominate for an entire season, with many players copy-pasting whatever deck capitalized most on these overwhelming cards. Then, in the next patch, when players hoped for those cards to get nerfed significantly, the cards' power would often only get reduced by 1 point, which fairly often meant that those cards remained dominant, albeit only slightly less so than before getting nerfed, so the underlying issues would never fully get addressed. Sometimes, instead of nerfing these overpowered cards directly, other complimentary cards that players used to support the overpowered cards would get nerfed instead, serving as an indirect nerf. But in this case, the underlying problem still remained - the overpowered cards were still overpowered, so much so that players would still dominate with decks that didn't synergize as well with the key cards just because those cards were so strong that they could win games almost single-handedly. In this way, it wasn't just that new cards kept getting stronger, but the combination of that powercreep with the slow pace and seeming reluctance to balance these overbearing cards in patches. However, the effects of card powercreep go further than limiting deck variety, including some things that are frequently overlooked. In the past, Gwent (at least the standalone version) was known as a particularly complex CCG in which the many layers of card interactions and strategic possibilities would more consistently reward skilled play over random luck. This was the one of the main aspects that kept devoted Gwent players engaged in the game - experienced players could execute higher risk, higher-reward plays that would pay off against inferior opponents. However, card powercreep changed this dynamic significantly. A few years ago, most of the strongest cards came with considerable risk - if you successfully combined cards' abilities, you would be greatly rewarded, but if you made misplays or your opponent was able to stop your setup, you could still lose, even with your strong cards. Now, the overpowered cards are worth more points when set up correctly, it's easier to set them up, and it's less punishing if players play these cards suboptimally. Because there is now far less reason to engage in high-risk, high-reward plays, the game has shifted from being about strategy-centric planning to mindlessly spamming the most powerful cards as often as possible. In other words, a reversal from the skill-rewarding game that made people like Gwent in the first place. I think this is one of the main reasons why even the most devoted of Gwent players who gritted their teeth through previous bumps and bruises have recently been leaving the game, as this change is most noticeable to them. However, as the seasoned players who helped create and promote those powerful decks leave, less experienced players are stranded with neither a source for the powerful decks that they used to borrow, or the experience to create decks of equal effectiveness on their own, making the less serious players more likely to leave as well. Gwent is still fun, especially for new and more casual players. I encourage people who like CCGs to try it if they haven't already because using the new, overpowered cards can be fun for a little while (there will still be a few more expansions this year). It is mostly in large doses, after having spent a long time mastering the game (and seeing similar decks pop up so regularly) that its issues start to surface. Even then, when played in moderation, Gwent can still be enjoyable. There's even a game mode with an alternate ruleset that switches each week, to keep things exciting.
I never made the Pro league, but I was rank 2 and my peak and I played GWENT until last summer. What absolutely killed it for me was their policy of not fixing broken decks during a season. A season would launch with a spectacularly broken card and everyone either jumped on that meta or tried to build a counter deck. It became no fun at higher ranks. It was only worth checking in monthly as a result.
I'll never forget for how Long Mysterious Challenger Secret Paladin was broken in Hearthstone, and Blizzard just completely ignored it.
My guy rank 2 is not “higher rank”
Hell even pro rank isn’t “higher rank”
One can always spam games to get into pro rank given how broken the rank system is
@@DCapps1994 it's kinda a Ben Brode thing, Marvel Snap rn has the same too slow balancing issues; Hearthstone has now a really great pace of changing cards
The most fun I had was the low ranks. Youd get the occasional munchkin deck but mostly its was pretty varied.
I played for 2 years as my TCG of choice, and never even realized there was a pro league. TBF I also would not have watched it.
The game has fair monetization, great art, a good season pass and good gameplay. This is one of the very few games that I have gotten a season pass in and have not regretted it. Overall it's a shame.
yeah but it was never mtg ; and it was doomed to failure. the only game that can even come close is elder scrolls legends; but even though its not being worked on anymore; the client always keeps getting updates. so that tells you something.
@Nexo Probably someone though he knew better and money.
@Nexo I agree and I played since closed beta. It was a good game post-rework, a bad game after the first big rework, but a truly excellent game in the early days.
so why didi it die?
You would also never regret gettint an event pass in lor
I never thought there would be a Death of a Game on a game I actually played, feels weird I've been with the game for so long, easily the most hours I've put into a multiplayer game
I had the opposite but equally sad experience. Just started playing Gwent 3 days ago (2024), great game, completed all 6 factions' intro reward books with keys, made 6 custom decks (starting decks are bad) to get a feel for each faction (fav: Nilfgaard :D) and played up until I reached rank 23 with the faction I decided to specialize on. The free to play is rather good, and then I looked online and saw that the game is in maintenance mode for 2 years, so yeah, no going pro/competitive in this one. It became a game that is fun to play occasionally, just like Gwent was intended to play in the first place. It didn't become Yu-Gi-Oh where 70% of duels are won in turn 1. I like the slow pace and that the combos are not exaggerated.
the slow paced rounds are integral to the game. it's the core of experience.
the round system is a mind game battle that's all about reading the pace and commitment of your opponent and capitalizing on it. this way each card is tense and important and it doesn't feel slow.
for people who don't play gwent or only do so casually, allow me to give (too many) examples as to how deep the round system runs.
if you fall behind pace with your opponent even a little bit you lose card advantage in following rounds (assuming they know what they're doing). often an automatic loss. as such you have the weigh the risk and value of engines and tempo. you may pressure your opponent to miss out on combos or setting up their board in fear of falling behind. you can surprise them with sudden tempo near the draw threshold after feigning a slow deck archetype. it's a constant mindgame. if you read your opponent correctly and capitalize on their mistakes games can be won after the first 3 cards.
the consequences of the first round feed into the mind game of the next. if you win the first round you can play low commitment and force the opponent to match it. this way you can bleed your opponent of good cards. an especially effective mindgame when you had a short round 1 as many opponents expect you to dry pass and therefore fill their hand with good cards in preparation for the final round.
knowing this some players keep mid commitment cards on hand for the second round as to mitigate the potential loss of your opponent bleeding your deck. but then you risk your opponent going all-in and being unable to match it. losing the game 2-0. it's all about reading your opponents intention, calling their bluffs and punishing them for it.
however a clever loser can read their opponents read. i have regained card advantage many times doing this. the bluff is all the more convincing if you had a long, devastating first round. the more you lost it by the better. this means you're keeping power in reserve and keeping your opponent confident and cocky. you can try and bait your opponent into trying to 2-0 you. keep a few lower commitment cards to get the bluff rolling, making it seem like you were expecting your opponent to bleed your deck. they'll recognize your weakness and commit. a few cards in (the later the better, maintaining the bluff but risking defeat) surprise them by switching to your best, most high value card combos. you were just pretending to expect bleeding. you got your opponent to commit to a full round 2 that you were secretly guaranteed to win as you retained your full power from R1 unlike them. just so the playing field is evened (or even advantageous to you!). this way losing the first round is a good thing, most opponents expect you to play it safe after the first round, you can punish this expectation. again. mind games.
Thanks for explaining, sounds really boring to me however.
@@nerdSlayerstudioss yea it's not for everyone. in fact i can see how most people would find it boring (so it makes complete sense why you would include it in the video as a contributer to the game's death)
ty for reading my comment. i'm impressed, it's kinda long and boring. you're a cool dude
This one will hurt, I played so much before the homecoming, up to the pro ranks, there still isn't a ccg that scratches that tactical itch between a poker game and a card game with so much freedom to set up baits and misplay. It was just never the same after Homecoming though
It's quite a bit less complex, but I find Marvel Snap does a decent job of delivering tactical mind games in card form. Really easy to get cards without spending money also
@Cristo Alba its so pay2win though
It's not to the level of Gwent but Legenda of Runeterra, it's a lot more f2p friendly than Snap.
Legends of runeterra was a nice reppacement for me maybe it will work for you as well?
@@cristoalba5781the definition of p2w is that you gain advantage by spending money, so by definition marvel snap is p2w, period.
I and all my fellow friends bought something off the Gwent shop. Not because we felt like we needed to, nor did we truly want to. It was just a way to thank the developers. I still remember a conversation with my brother where we both said that we're going to buy something from the next expansion only because we want to help the devs.
Talking about small loyal fan base lol
Yeah the prices of most of the stuff were to high tbf... I always wanted to buy one or two journeys but paying 40 zł for a couple cosmetics when I could get TW3 with expansions for the exact same price or a battle pass in Fortnite for less than half of that (plus it's a one time purchase assuming you do play the game to retrieve the premium currency) just didn't seem right to me. But I did get the starter pack at least.
So did I my friend
People like you who think they're "helping the devs" by buying microtransactions are honestly the worst kind of idiot. Do you think they're running a fucking Twitch stream? Are they a charity to you? That money doesn't go to hard working little mister programmer who cleaned up the sound file for your favorite card. He's already got his pittance of a salary. That money goes to the publishers and the shareholders.
God I actually despise morons like you.
God I DESPISE morons like you who think that spending money on microtransactions somehow "helps the devs". What, do you think they're running a fucking Twitch stream or something? Are you braindead? The programmers don't get a bonus if you buy the cosmetic shit, you fool. They've already got their pittance of a salary. The money you just spent went to the publishers and the shareholders.
God, you are so stupid.
fun fact: Gwent as described in Sapkowski's book was basically just a variation of bridge, the cards used were different than a standard deck in real life, but the gameplay seemed to be extremely similiar
what i remember from reading the books is Gwent was basically a dwarves screaming at each other competition lol
No it wasn’t. Gwent is NEVER referenced in the books. The Dwarves do have a card game that is referenced in the books, but it’s not called Gwent.
@@Bigwigrah07 it's called "Gwint" in Polish version (my native language), which is also Polish name of the tgc. Maybe something was lost in translation.
@@jakubpuawski3875 oh shit, you are correct. Dang I had no idea that was translated poorly 😵💫
6:08 companies definitely need to cool it with the esport stuff. I don't necessarily hate it perse, but it can become very noticeable when it is shoehorned. and sometimes, its just best to ya know, have a fun casual experience, be it with and/or against a friend or complete stranger.
Damn, it's finally time for one of my favorite games to be on this channel. RIP gwent
Happy and sad mate
Had some of THEE best game art ever.
Burza, Slama, Ryan, Vlad, Jean and so many content creators... This game's downfall was really abrupt and unexpected to me. I just wish the Gwent team all the best and thank you very much for your great work!
I find this extremely amusing because I got into Gwent like a week ago and am in the stage of absolutely loving it. It's really fun because I have just 0 expectations and only play because I want to understand various mechanics and I laugh my ass off when someone pulls something at least seemingly unbalanced.
But imagine the absolute comedic timing; I never cared for Gwent in TW3, no matter how many times I tried to find an appetite for it. But as a visual artist I wanted to check out the artworks in the standalone, so I downloaded on a whim. And I realized I actually enjoyed the experience! And no chat with the opponent? Great! Makes losing/winning literally not the point (somehow the process is far more fun than the result, little fun game of making the most of what you're dealt, relaxing). Found myself genuinely wanting to congratulate my opponents for outsmarting my little plots.
So, sure, maybe the joy will fall off once I figure enough out- as it does with any online pvp game. But no game really made me experience what Gwent:TWCG does. In this context of what the community feels about it? Brilliantly amusing timing. Gosh! Anyway! Hi!! I'm new!:Dd!!
According to a quick Scryfall filter, there should be 171 Mono Black Color Identity Legendary Creature cards in mtg. Granted some of them are from less than defualtly legal Un-sets and there are other exceptions such as Ormendahl, Profane Prince being the flip side of a land, but this still leaves far more than the estimate of 9 Mono-Black Commanders.
As an avid MTG fan, I thought he was joking since it feels like we get 3 new mono black legends a set (hyperbole, but not too far from the overproduction WotC has been forcing the last few years)
Yea there's way more than 9.
We deserved a second Witcher Tales game
I heard about Rogue Mage. What's that game about though? Is it not the same as Thronebreaker?
@Khánh Bảo Đoàn Some ab-libbed lore, mostly shit no one cares about. Alzur is there, there is no coherent plot, cards are randomly played without a faction.
@@thegrayyernaut rogue mage sucks don't bother can't compared to thronebreaker
I would love to see a game similar to Thronebreaker than takes place during book saga timeline.
Imagine similar to Meve’s perspective but this time with Geralt’s Hanza 🔥
Play thronebreaker, rogue mague was unfinished game they released just before killing gwent. its bare bones, thronebreaker on the other hand is very good
I played this game a lot during beta but at launch they completely changed all the basic game mechanics. It was a fine game still but not the one I fell in love with.
finally someone that undestand me :(
My deck completely broke at launch, so frustrating to see all that get flushed away
Same for me. I loved the beta. I used to get home from work at 5AM, start up Gwent and play until I couldn't stay awake. I miss beta Gwent so damn much.
CDPR was really stupid for thinking that I was gonna waste my time learning the game AGAIN after spending more than 1000 hours perfecting my tactics and decks
yep closed beta was epic af and then as soon as the open beta patch launched they completely reworked the entire game for literally no reason
I miss the pre homecoming gwent so much, I was a casual who liked the minigame a lot and the standalone was a dream come true. Then it got more and more "pro" and it wasn't fun anymore.
I think more card games need a single player mode like Thronebreaker. Balancing cards around a puzzle or AI you can do a lot more crazy things and set up scenarios that wouldn't usually happen because you're just focusing on enjoyment of one person and can tailor to that.
If anyone likes the pve aspect of card games i recommend legends of runeterra, a btter pve experience than hearthstone tbh
PvE card games are done all the time. Its just that they are usually Rogue-likes.
Legends of Runeterra does it to great success. You and your enemies will have special passive abilities which continuously change the strategy needed each match
I really wish that yugioh master duel have a proper solo story mode, the story of the duel terminal terminus etc being explained through paragraph hurt, I need an actual solo mode.
The "stealth" mission gave me inspiration on a couple of different new card games. Thronebreaker is definitely groundbreaking at least.
The playing during the main quests reminds me how you can play triple triad as Rinoa is actively getting possessed and wreaking havoc on a ship in ff8
lmao great scene,
Good times. Save the world? Nah, a game of triple triad is more like it.
Great stuff, I liked that they lampshaded the situation with one NPC saying something along the lines of ‘You want to play Now?!’
He still does though.
"oh my god! The world is ending we're all gonna die! What's that? You wanna play triple triad? Hell yeah, let's go!"
Or play triple triad while escaping an high sec prison about to self-destroy XD
I miss this intro. Im glad you brought it back
Sad to see it go. This is the best and most unique digital TCG of the decade
*looks up "oh sure, yeah so sad" *looks back down at phone continues to play Marvel Snap
Yea no. RuneScape legends disagrees.
I think, everyone has their own "best and most unique digital TCG". I.e. mine is Eredan, old browser flashpased TCG, that died due to wild greed of developers.
Lol, those games suck
Laughably some of us do have officially licensed physical Gwent cards. Others have reproduction cards, It isn't purely digital.
Never been a CCG guy, but my friend really got into this one & I actually learned just so I could watch her play. Hopefully Gwent has a second life when CDPR revisits the Witcher universe.
I hope they make a different game for the next one that's fun this time
I can see how against humans it would be a lot more fun
@@ereviscale3966 Yeah, it's pretty boring in W3 for me too, but was amazing as a full game... until they ruined it.
Just all around weird decisions.
I was one of the first to play this at launch... I was so hooked, had after 1800 hours into this. But Homecoming was so alienating, I just managed to play like 200 hours, but it just never was the same, maybe also just getting old :(
I miss the community too, Mogwai, Merchant, Ashlizzle(Shiekdmaid), and Anxxia, especially Anxxia, hope you are well :')
Farewell memories, hello loneliness
I believe a lot of the creators just moved to MTGA
I always knew this video would come out, and it still breaks my heart. I just don't have the words to describe how much I loved the beta of Gwent and how much Witcher vibes it gave off, it was the only card game I've played (and I've played quite a lot of them) that rewarded skill and strategy over luck, and I managed to beat the most meta decks with my own customized decks and strategies, which always felt so rewarding. It also had the most unique mechanics, for example the Morvran Voorhis Nilfgaard deck and its "reveal" mechanic.
Then the Homecoming came out in 2018, and they completely changed Gwent. I tried, I really really tried to love it, but it didn't feel like Gwent to me, it wasn't the game I fell in love with, and it had almost nothing to do with the Witcher 3 Gwent mini-game, which is absurd because that's where most players came from. It felt more like "Thronebreaker : The Online Game" than Gwent.
I just want the old Gwent back man...
i used to love gwent when it came out, such a breath of fresh air for poor hearthstone loving highschool me. It had clean simplistic looks, and really fun gameplay, It was probably my favourite ranked experience out of all games. But CDP decided to completly change the game with homecoming and it was just diffrent, they changed the design and in my opinion it started to look a lot more muddy and also the game became more complex needing a lot more commitment, so i just dropped it becouse it wasnt the gwent i fell in love with when it was in beta
Same here, I'd been playing it since the beta and when they re-launched with Homecoming it felt like a different game and my small brain couldn't keep up with all the changes and additions. I always found myself googling optimal deck builds because I didn't feel like I could build to my liking, as I'd always get hammered by people with more optimal decks.
I felt the same - Homecoming as a stand alone game was ok, but revamped Gwent instantly turned me off. I really enjoyed beta version.
It didn't become more complex I feel like, OBT had more complex cards and mechanics.
I really miss the OBT too
If I may, there's an entire community of people who've remade the open beta game from scratch and keep updating it, you can search for r/DIYGwent if you're interested.
Thronebreaker was such an amazing game tbh, the story is incredible and the puzzles are pretty crazy
Fr, such an underrated game
Then we didn't play the same game. Thronebreaker was filled with game breaking bugs and an annoying gwent compared to the awesome version in witcher 3.
Great soundtrack, too. Holds its own against the other Witcher games.
Agreed. Thronebreaker was soooooo goood
Hopefully this means the new golden nekker game is still in production
You may wanna redo this video. Although Gwent is in maintenance mode, the game is still played and has a relatively active user base. Its only dead in the sense that the devs aren't supporting it but the Balance Council update allows the players to balance the game through voting.
This is the only CCG I’ve ever played that actually had fair prices on their monetization. Truly one of a kind
I loved Gwent and had a blast with it during early beta. However, the changes and "revamps" they made progressively turned the game upside down and changed the things I got used to and enjoyed. I loved weather and they killed that, then I got used to the lanes and they changed that too. After a certain point, even if I was getting refunded all my currency, I just didn't have the energy anymore. Was a real shame, the game had a great concept
If I may, there's an entire community of people who've remade the open beta game from scratch and keep updating it, you can search for r/DIYGwent if you're interested.
It’s still very active with a huge community
cause you said so or what?
@@nerdSlayerstudioss Cause it's true, at least for someone. Every season new decks appear just because of the buffs and nerfs from the community. I have been playing gwent throughout 2024 an for me personally it's been an interesting experience. I am going to continue playing it, maybe someday sdpr will return, but it's ok as it is, it's not dead.
@@nerdSlayerstudioss what an idiotic response.
@@hikkikimoriTe game is a zombie
"The black faction in MTG has like 9 commanders to choose from."
Massive understatement, there's currently 100, not including multicolored black commanders.
I got into Gwent during 2020 and had a lot of fun with it. I learnt the different decks, abilities, techniques, hell I even watched people play on Twitch and UA-cam so I could learn how to play better. But at the end of the year I took a break and with all of them updates and new cards and new metas I could not get back into it. I was already struggling with playing the same unimaginative “meta decks” over and over and over and that only got more boring with each update. I was playing intuitively, picking cards to fit my strategies and if felt like everyone else was playing some sweaty EZ WIN deck they copied off of Reddit. Sad to see Gwent go but it was too convoluted and didn’t reward intuitive play so of course it was inevitable. Also I’m one of those people that played Gwent because I needed more Witcher content and unfortunately, like you said, they dropped the ball on that so it wasn’t even worth it to bite the bullet and get back into Gwent
Well put
Every card game goes this way. I gave up on them years ago. If everyone plays sweaty, it puts new players off, then the game dies. Rinse and repeat.
I like to make thematic decks, like for example a Syndicate deck that nearly only exclusively has Witch hunter cards. They can work surprisingly well, especially since off meta decks can catch those players off guard who only copy meta decks without understanding them. I just play casually with decks I made myself and in my experience it's 40% losing to a deck that counters mine, 40% winning to a deck because mine counters them perfectly and 20% of hard fought wins/losses/draws which are the most fun.
The only thing that really annoys me are meta players who abandon a match quickly after realising their copy paste deck can't win.
Even worse when they just quit without at least pressing the forfeit button.
It's interesting that the focus here is on the eSports, and there's no mention of the disastrous midwinter update of 2017. THAT'S what caused Homecoming (not the desire to be more competitive). The devs realize they screwed up with that update, and it's been downhill from there. Before Dec 2017 the eSports seen was at its height.
So you're trying to actually argue that eSports was working? That's quite the bizarre argument. And you can't just hand wave my entire argument. When it's based on the literal person they put in power to do exactly what I described.
@@nerdSlayerstudioss I'm not arguing that eSports was working for Gwent, it was losing them money from the start. But Homecoming (and all the gameplay changes it introduced that players largely hated at the time) would never have happened if not for the midwinter update. Basically, there was an update in Dec 2017 where rethaz (the lead at the time) wanted to make Gwent more "accessible." This resulted in simplifying the game, removing card effects, and even changing names to be less flavorful ("Clan Tuirsech Warrior" to "Clan Warrior", etc). These changes were HATED. Where Gwent had previously been only loved by its community and was steadily growing, this moment represented a huge drop-off in players and in player faith. So, after trying for a few months to fix all these problems the update caused, the Gwent team decided they needed to do something bigger. So they announced in April 2018 that they would, in six months, revamp the entire game from the ground up and this would mark the end of beta.
This was Homecoming, and as I said above, it wasn't liked that much more than midwinter Gwent... Many of us at the time saw this as CDPR's "last chance" to revitalize interest in the game, but the systems they created ended up flopping for most people. Shortly after, they changed several things (like a terrible mulligan system) that made the game better overall, but the damage was done. It's hard to come back from a flop of a launch that was itself an attempt to recover from an extremely hated update that killed many people's interest in the game. With the exception of Crimson Curse (the first expansion) interest in Gwent has been flatly declining since Dec 2017. I think the midwinter update is what killed Gwent, and the rest is history.
@@nerdSlayerstudioss and just to add on briefly, when I said that eSports was working before then, what I meant was that there was a larger eSports scene before Homecoming than after (which you yourself acknowledged). People were way more excited about old Gwent (3 rows) than new Gwent (2).
It’s crazy how many card based games we have seen on the channel so far. Gwent, Artifact, Duelyst, ES legends etc
I feel like it goes under the radar as a genre that is extremely competitive, not only do you have to compete with Hearthstone but the big three traditional card games of MTG/Pokémon/Yugioh as well.
Plus these devs and publishers must think it’s so simple to just make a card based game and it will succeed like that, it’s a very complex genre to make it successful by both appealing to competitive hardcore players while having a casual player base as well with that right balance which is obviously easier said than done.
The thing is that the big 3 took years before they actually started a competitive scene. All of them fucked up a lot along the way but endured because of one simple reason: Community. Say whatever you want about the success of Hearthstone after Activision Blizzard discontinued their physical CCG but it doesnt have those ton of stories on playing face to face with people and the shit talking. And for those into the "card stock market" a digital game has no reason to keep pushing the game to survive as an investment because once the servers die, thats it.
@@phyrexian_dude4645 There are smaller but very alive card games too, like Legends of Runeterra, Eternal Card Game and Shadowverse, but they also are alive just because they are persevering and patiently taking time to curate their playerbase. CCGs are a thankless kind of a live service, they can provide an average income with very small cost, but reaching huge profits with them is challenging.
card game is a hard genre to crack. Many get boring fast. runeterra got so boring that I don't remember how many months ago I stopped playing. So far the only online card game that stayed fun for a reasonably good length is marvel snap
A CCG has to be easy to play, hard to master, well balanced, have competent staff that'll axe op cards etc...
look like this game didnt care about the easy to play and balance part, was made to fail
man i miss duelyst. :(
I have never had more fun in a CCG than the three seasons before the introduction of the golden nekker. I even had a ton of fun during the nightmarish vampire meta. I've never even played the witcher, the gameplay of gwent alone had me and a friend awake until late at night deck brewing.
My main issue with Gwent was how they made the version so extremely convoluted. It was VERY hard to jump in and understand what was going on because every faction had tons of unique and complex mechanics behind them. Compare this to me jumping back into Hearthstone after several years and I could still easily understand new mechanics.
@@AzureRoxe Yep, it's literally just there to milk money. And even worse, doesn't every new expansion make every card from the previous one unplayable, making them wild or something?
@@crimsoneclipse0618 Every 3 expansions
@@NotYourbuisness-zz7ds I'm not sure what makes you say that. It's not like I couldn't understand these mechanics. It's just that it becomes too much for any new player. No matter how hardcore of a CCG player they are.
Yes! I finally did a playthrough of Witcher 3 and decided to play Gwent since I avoided it on my first two playthroughs and it became one of my favorite parts of the game I had so much fun with it! Found out there was an app and was like fuck yeah! Got about 10 minutes in.....nah this is way too complicated
@@NotYourbuisness-zz7ds Again, no. I literally come from a CCG background. I grew up playing MTG and Yu-Gi Oh and then played HS for like a year or two when it came out.
And a MOBA or a fighting game can be overwhelming for new players too, even if they are coming from games of the same genre. It would be incredibly disingenuous to say that they wouldn't.
I knew it was coming! This one breaks my heart! 😭💔 Been playing since the tail end of closed beta.
Thank you for doing this one!
Respectfully I've played all of the typical CCG/TCG archetypes in Gwent. Yes different they are all there.
@@Nathan_Coley Yep, that's one of the arguments I don't agree with him on. Speaking mostly about pre-homecoming since I didn't like the game very much after it there were all the archetypes in there that fulfil the same power fantasies and gameplay fantasies as they do in other CCGs.
Like there are engine decks which are basically ramp decks (cards that gain a lot of value over time and are weak to disruption - consume monsters, self-harm skellige sword bois, forgot the name), pointslam (beatstick mid-range type decks), aggro (swarm decks with lots of small units which would generate a lot of value unless controlled early), control (skillge boats, trap decks, kinda alchemy niilfgaard?, early spies).
The best thing about Gwent imo is that there were super weird decks that also kinda broke that midrange-control-aggro trinity which is what made it special. Even though the game was balanced around archtypes (control kinda beating big monsters, but losing to swarms unless you run specific control decks like boats, midrange out valuing control in many cases etc) , you would always have insane deck variety in pre-homecoming gwent where people would cook up incredibly meta countering and meta defining decks that you would just never see if the game wasn't based on a 3-round system.
Like decks made to bleed someone round 1 with huge finishers to close it out in round 3 (since Homecoming gave people way more cards in later rounds, it killed these decks), decks that would sacrifice value in order to have carry-over to make your opponent have to over-commit on round 2 if they lost round-1 and then still have a strong unit in game 3 cause of adrenaline rushed ciri:nova or bear master etc. Alchemy nilfgaard or scoia spells which had almost no units and were all about huge swings and making sure your opponent also can't run any sort of a gameplan while still being flexible to adapt to different matchups. I don't think we'll get another game as complex and fun as pre-homecoming Gwent was soon.
@@AcencialAMV I 100% agree with all that you said buddy. Even though I still occasionally play the game (a few times a week) pre-homecoming was some of the best CCG/TCG experiences I've ever had. Gwent to this day is still my MTG replacement because I don't like the way WoTC has gone in the last ~10 years.
Open beta was the best. The game is so bloated now. It's so obnoxious. I just want a simple card game, no animations.
I loved Gwent. It was the best CCG that I could find, it had fair monetization, and was fun and challenging to build and play different decks. I even streamed it on Twitch for a while. I struggled to make the transition to homecoming, so I dropped off from playing it, but it's still sad to see it die
The lack of deck variety is on the players. There's plenty of more than viable decks your can build that can compete with the meta. It's not the developer's fault that people are lemmings. This happens in almost every competitive game you can possibly t think of.
I'm still a gwent player and the game is a lot more stable now, but what really makes me sad is how cdpr had such huge plans for these witcher tales like thronebreaker but because they kinda tied them to gwent it spooked a lot of the people away, if only they just kept as a single player experience telling us great tales from that universe it would be amazing to have and we wouldn't have to wait 10+ years for a new witcher game or anything from that universe
Gwent does have a lot of archetypes in decks. I used to run Mill and Combo decks frequently in ladder.
Using Homebrew decks can help massively in Gwent.
Fair enough I can claim l2p
Watching this video drop while I have Gwent open on my PC...this hurts heh
I really loved the game played it from the close beta and put in it more than 3k hours over the years but 2022 was really tough balance wise and get me completely burn out, yet it still break my heart.
Once they killed the siege lane that was when I dropped gwent. The interplay between the three lanes was what kept the game unique and fun for me.
I didn't even notice your voice was scratchy but now I can't unhear it. Glad you brought the old intro back.
For me the game died when they released the Homecoming patch. The gameplay and board change were so bad, the game felt unplayable - before that it felt like a fun lil battlefield simulation game.
Changing it from being inspired by Witcher 3 Gwent into a Hearthstone clone killed it
It was so good in closed beta
I have played this game since the beta and have put 600 hours into it. After two years I have returned to see what is happening and I totally understand why I have stopped playing it two years ago. In my opinion the cards's complexity and the mountain of different key words are a lot even for a returning player, let alone for a new one. It is not appealing for a player to jumo into a game and then have to spend a week or more to learn all the key word and cars just to start enjoying the game. Well most card games are like that, but gwent used to be simple and that is what made it so enjoyable
Played it since the first month. Started off very happy with having more Gwent in my life, but with every single update i liked the game less and less as it became more "balanced" as a competitive game, so eventually ditched it entirely. Returned a year later for Thronebreaker, loved it as a standalone experience. But the new Homecoming version of Gwent itself was simply not fun. Beautiful, but not fun. Too complicated with a million mechanics and tedious numbercrunching. It changed the feeling from drinking in a tavern and carefree slapping cards on the table to being an actual war commander trudging through a swamp and fighting for every inch of ground. This should NOT have been an ESport.
Since I don't have any sponsors on this video, sans yours truly. I will focus on making a point I think some people are missing since it happens so quickly. Pre-Homecoming Gwent was not what Gwent was in Witcher, but it was clearly not as competitive as it became. Original Gwent was never meant to be competitive, so once the shifting starts happening when leads to Homecoming, a massive switch, the writing was already on the wall. They literally brought a developer in to do this exactly. This completely changed the course of the game, and the identity of the game itself. You might see some comments wishing I focused more on this pre-homecoming Gwent, but that game was in constant flux with balance updates and new mechanics. The focus is what it led to, which was Homecoming. But people feel that way because pre-Homecoming is seen as a positive period of time of play for most players, which makes sense. But the point of the series, as always, is to focus on what kills a game. This led to Gwent being both a commercial casual failure, AND an eSport failure. Anyway, some more connectivity between that timeline section and my point concerning lack of proper balance (including frequency) would have also made my argument better.
Edit: Mistake: I said they removed leader abilities, I meant faction abilities my mistake.
I loved this game so much. I played it so much when I was 15-19. I was ranked #1 a few times. From beta to post homecoming, where I lost some interest but still played regularly.
I remember frost monsters being unbeatable in the beta. NG spies after that (my favourite deck), the awful scoiatael dwarves (Dorfs) that dominated for too long. Northern realms machines net deck meta. When everyone used scorch. When Olgierd and Morkvarg were in every game.
As you said, I think a big problem this game had was it could never decide if it wanted a casual or competitive fan base. It was balanced and attracted a competitive base which curtailed numbers. CDPR then tried to 180 to a casual base, losing many competitive players and failing to bring in a casual audience all the while. It’s such a shame what happened to this great game. I wouldn’t even mind if it became p2w if it means keeping support (or maybe it’s better to let it die a peaceful death)??
This game is so nostalgic for me and holds a special place in my heart. It’s close to be being dead forever but I’ve just re-downloaded with the intent of becoming number 1 once again for old times sake.
I picked it up again yesterday on Steam, couldn't even find a match. I had 1300 hours on GOG but abandoned it in 2021
I like how you don't hint the next case anymore. Just straight up tell us what it is. Really makes me look forward to the next video.
I'm just glad they made Thronebreaker at all.
Games as a service tend to evaporate with time and bad updates. You can only hold a healthy population for so long.
I'm eager to check your take on GunZ ! Loved that game, at least I loved it until people began to follow the boring keyboard smashing meta instead of just dodging and aiming.
Gwent was at its best in 2017 when Lifeocach did his tournaments in his house. But then they did that weird update with removing the third row and he lost interest and switched to Artifact (lol) and the rest is history.
Been watching NSS for a while. This is the first video that actually hurts. Such a great opportunity for GWENT, just wasted on bad decissions and inaction.
i played this game for more than 3000 hours , i made to pro qualifiers at masters tour , but for me interest went down day by day , gwent became very different from what it used to be , i still love the game and probably still play it sometimes , it is bittersweet ending from cdpr still atleast we can enjoy last year , i wish 2018 never ended , game was peak at that time
Some of your points made sense, particularly the eSports scene (though I don't see how that should kill the game singlehandedly since most people didn't care about it anyway) and the proper balancing issues, but others were absolutely baseless. First off, I feel like the main issue with Gwent is that, yes, it became too different during homecoming, then they tried to revert the mechanics back which I felt they were relatively successful in. However, the main issue, I think, is that during its "peak" around 2019-2021 or so, there were so many cards that didn't synergize with anything, and a lot of them were the starter cards. Beginners felt difficulty creating and keeping up with the new decks and the ever changing meta, and the release of powercreeping cards every few months made it even harder for beginners to consistently win and keep going. Oppressive decks were allowed to stay in the game for months on end which had been frustrating for many people, facing the same decks over and over. But over the course of 4 years, CDPR churned out an insane amount of archetypes and decks that made you feel like a genius for playing, including a few you mentioned, but a LOT more too, with new archetypes being introduced with every expansion and old cards being reworked to fit them.
Over time, these issues became more and more apparent, and with marketing being spent more on bigger things like Cyberpunk 2077, the appeal for Gwent was slowing dying out. That's not to say that there was no appeal at first. Most people who were interested are the ones who loved it from Witcher 3. It took them quite a bit for them to actually figure out the game, before scrapping almost everything and starting anew.
I definitely don't think the game suffered from the issue of being a spinoff, or that it never had appeal in the first place, or that people were hating on it for lack of lore (I for one found the lore to be very extensive, especially as someone who is only lightly familiar with the characters of the Witcher world), or that it "lacked the Witcher soul", which is way too subjective of an opinion btw (I absolutely loved that Gwent oozes Witcher), or even that the price for new content was too high.
I've been an avid part of the Gwent community ever since beta in 2018, and everything I discussed here is stuff I've personally lived through and talked about ad nauseam before. There were definitely some strange development choices and behind the scenes issues that contributed to all this, though, which is unfortunate but it doesn't take away from the fact that the devs overall made a lot of great stuff, including 10+ different gamemodes, plenty of rewards, and consistently interesting cards.
I played about 500h of this game, but could never come back after homecoming
Also, what you mentioned about "Lack of archetypes" explains A LOT about balancing issues. In card games decks balance oftentimes against eachother, because Aggro beats combo, combo beats control and control beats aggro, altough the circle might get reversed in certain CCGs. It both makes the meta more fresh and allows the game to have more resiliance against busted strats.
Played this since Alpha and got the Pioneer tag when open Beta rolled out (OG's will know what I'm talking about). Lost interest when they decided to change the wooden board into a battlefield for no reason. I liked it when it looked like a card game. I didn't like seeing character avatars moving around. Unnecessary and visually overstimulating.
Also didn't like them nuking the Gold immunity. With that move, half of the gold cards became useless since only the ones with Deploy ability could garner value.
Beta had the best archetypes and was the most fun. Too bad the devs destroyed all of that by creating an absolutely new game marketed as Gwent which wasn't the same. I didn't feel like re-learning so much anymore. Oh well. We'll always have the summer off 2017 😭.
Gonna push-back on the archetype criticism as this is what made this game different from other mainstream CGs in the best way. I remember the earlier feeling of each turn feeling like a poker-game, and that you could bluff board setups to your opponent who could then over-commit to the board only to win 1 of the 3 rounds. Gwent was immaculate in this sense and the reason I knew many to play it for.
I still have many wonderful memories and look back fondly on the game and community during the beta era. There were a lot of missteps, but for a time it was unmatched in terms of raw fun in the ccg market. Thank you for covering this one; Gwent will definitely be missed.
I was honestly addicted to Gwent before they removed the siege row. There were so many different play styles, I loved it. My favorite was a monster deck where I would freeze the field, as most people never ran a clear weather card. I lost so much sleep to just One More Game. It was a massive shame when they changed it, never felt the same.
Personally I played a lot before the Homecoming update. It was fun to learn the different cards while acquiring them. I am not saying that Homecoming is worse, because the problem was I felt burnt out to relearn all the cards again. Especially since it also required for me to completely forget what I had been learning beforehand. It's one thing to learn a card game but this is made more complicated if your brain always goes back to what the cards originally were.
Thronebreaker was great though. After a few patches, the fights on the hardest difficulty were really captivating and you had to really make sure to not do a mistake. Of course there were still some extremely strong strategies, but those were only available close to the finish of the game. Especially the whole swamp area was more difficult than I had imagined.
When it came out, freshly on release, it was probably the best online card game in the world.
Then first massive update hit, majority of cards were changed, deck building got changed, it became much much MUCH worse game. Even Heartstone was better at that point.
Then another update hit, changed the whole completely once again. And Gwent died.
I would pay money to play the original version of the game, before it was changed in any way, but that ain't gonna happen.
As someone who just started playing 2 weeks ago, that is very sad to hear... I would've loved to play the beta as well. Or at least to have functional servers and a thriving player base 🥲
@@NahNoWayy game developers are only people who expect to be paid for their failures and they can never admit that "older version" was better.
@Chiefrocka. Y'know, it's great to hear you feel that way, because since leaving my comment, I've still been having a blast with the game! I can find a match easy, and the servers are getting better; my only gripe now is just that community balancing has me worried.
This one's gonna hurt
They really messed up, because Thronebreaker is a great sub genre that could work with a lot of franchises like teltale games. Marvel Power Rangers Transformers
I used to always play the game on xbox. When they removed it I was so sad
I remember trying really hard to like Gwent when it launched but balance always felt pretty bad. Most of the time it felt like games ended before they really started because meta decks were super rock-paper-scissors. I will say it does feel like they really tried to make this game happen though. Most companies will lie about years of support and abandon a game after 6months.
I will forever cherish the gwent beta before the midwinter update.
I quit when they swaped over to Homecoming. I just didn't have the time to "learn" a completly new game, I feel bad for the people who took their time to learn to love the new game. RIP GWENT, thank you for a lot of entertainment. Is was nice while it lasted.
It's funny. Usually those kinds of videos are filled with comments written by by people sh**ng on a game or people angry at devs for making it so bad it was abandoned.
But not under a video about Gwent. It wasn't pay 2 play, the music and art was beyond stunning. It was truly amazing game and it's a shame it will be dead soon.
At least the art will be used in an upcoming board game, so the work artist put into it won't be for naught.
Its for sure havent died yet. I still can find someone to play without waiting even at 2 oclock am. Which is the most important metric for a multiplayer game from a players perspective. I am playing this game since the beta, how many years I dont know. There are still many things to do for me like completing the full set of cards with premium versions and become last level in prestige ranking. If you like card games, it is still the best and free.
completely forgot gwent existed as a standalone game - looking forward to this once i'm done with work.
Man I've played this game for so long, I remember before the big patch when it was a three row card game. Got my entire deck put in the shredder, and still came back and played for multiple years. Can't believe this game is coming to an end.
The point of these big events is to advertise the game and sell advertisements. This is true of all sports. But, when you attempt to inflate numbers, that's when you start having more issues. Triple Triad > Tetra Master.
I kind of understand what they were trying to do with Gwent. With archetypes and serial escalation, you get the power creep problem that comes with Magic the Gathering and Yugioh. It has really gotten out of hand in those games. I do agree that archetypes are important, but it also means restricting deck building or risk things getting out of hand there as well like in Yugioh. In Gwent's case, it seemed like they played it too safe while in Mtg and YGO, they're letting it get too out of control. There needs to be some kind of middle ground, but it feels like the people in charge are always prioritizing power and sales of new cards other than game balance.
Here's a simple way to fix Yugioh (I'm sorry. I know I'm beating a dead horse but still)
TAKE THE LICENSE AWAY FROM KONAMI!
@@GatorRay At this point, that wouldn't be enough. Hand Traps and Link Monsters have forced an accelerated escalation of the game.
i love how Thronebreaker is the Shandalar of Gwent
Man I fell in love with Gwent, was voraciously looking for any early playtest videos, signed up for the free beta. Then it all changed. Depressing as hell.
Still remember playing the skellige deck that could like bounce my graveyard units back into the fight. And then you lose to a last turn weather effect
What killed it for me with Gwent is that each time I got back to playing, so many things had changed that my old decks and strategies didn't work anymore. It felt like the game was punishing me for having a favourite deck every time they completely rework a card to do something else. In other card games the same archetype can typically survive the entire lifetime of the game, but for Gwent it felt like half a year at most.
I played this in the beta man... not long ago I asked to unsub their mailing list after 2 or 3 years wo playing. Sad.
Dam didn't know the game would shut down I had a lot of fun with it but never felt pressured to play it much. Glad I didn't spend money to grab some card arts recently.
I joined Gwent just after release (or while it was in open beta, I am not sure).
It was awesome. Had so much fun in it.
Then it got overhauled into some pure nonsense. Leaders or whatever they are now got changed. Card effects got changed. My favorite cards got nerfed. I tried to get into new version, but it was utter crap and I dropped it.
I am 100% sure that majority of people also dropped it because of that initial overhaul.
Developers couldn't stop themselves from destroying their own product.
Loved the game until the infamous mid-winter patch. After that it lost a lot of originality.
Mid-winter patch was wild and not in a good way.
i am still amazed that it didn't kill the game back then.
Im one of the few who never played Gwent in Witcher 3,and i still dont get the appeal of it.
Thougt it would have been better if they would have stayed with the mini games from the first 2 Witchers.Made also more sense within the lore.
But anyway,here we are.
To me (and this is a personal opinion) Gwent had the same issues that I find in a lot of CCGs, both online and off - a greater focus on decks as competition rather than decks as self expression or experimentation
Thats like... Abject nonsense. Of course a competitive game would focus on competing.
@@sudonim7367 it’s more about a matter of intent - a game can be competitive without it being the main focus, and the significant downside of a competitive focused game is that a meta tends to get shaken out very quickly. That generally leads to a level of power creep as the game designers try to compensate for meta-focused strategies.
You could focus a game more on a level of horizontal power dynamics by limiting the number of cards that explicitly synergize with each other as opposed to things like faction based synergies (like in Gwent or the MtG colour chart)
I played a lot of Gwent (around 800hrs in Steam, previously on console as well), and to be fair it's the card game with the best mechanic in my opinion. In other card games like Marvel Snap or Magic, you have the energy/mana concept, so usually you have to sequence your turns in the same way in almost every game (depends on draws as well). Gwent, however, with the provision system and the 3 rounds, makes it a lot more dynamic, more strategic and entertaining for me.
However, as you mentioned in the video, for me the lack of balance just killed it. I would get pissed once they release the uttermost broken cards and have everyone abuse the same few new cards on ladder, sometimes with very toxic mechanics (Saskia, Milva, Arachas Queen, Priestess) or so grossly overpowered (Renfri), so I would stop playing for months until they properly re-balance said cards.
This game was amazing, the best of its genre. For me, it killed me when they remove it from consoles.
I play marvel snap now but its not nearly as good.
And the cards still have the best drawings by far.
One thing I am really interested in is the balance council. The game is on maintenance mode, sure, but with top players in the community being able to make small shifts in balance to the existing cards through a voting process, I think there is some potential for the game to have some degree of longevity. I've recently picked it back up and I've laddered for like 70 or so games, and I've never had a long queue time or anything like that. It will be interesting to see how far Gwent can survive on the passion of the fans alone.
Before homecoming, this game was a masterpiece I played it every day and loved it. After the 3rd row was gone so was the magic for me. i played only to check out new releases but yeah to me Gwent is awsome and would love to see a 3 row game do what it did pre-homecoming. This one hurts I loved this game.
The reveal of the next game, got hit with a wave of Nostalgia. I had so many hours on Gunz. It was so fun
I played it A LOT in the early days. The Homecoming update pushed me away. It just didn't feel like Gwent anymore so I never really got back into it despite having put quite a bit of money into it.
I played Gwent since the closed Invite Beta and this video is insanely accurate to my feelings over the years, it’s a shame but yeah you nailed the death of this game I used to love. Rogue Mage was the final nail in the coffin for me as a player. Great vid!
They killed this game by making it too complex and different from the original. Gwent was enjoyable in the Witcher 3, because it was very easy to pick up, with enough room to get better. Also the fact that you could earn any card by just playing the game. When I tried the standalone version again a few weeks ago, the game was almost unrecognizable.
Original Gwent in the Witcher 3 is too shallow, it is not competitive enough to make a good ocg. It is fine as a single player but it will not be fun as a multiplayer game.
@@igkewg it never fucking had to be anything more. It was good as it was, as it was originally intended. Not all this competitive shit.
@@jamessalvatore7054 By that you mean spy spam? The game is flawed, what I intend to point out is not competitiveness but only having "fun" when playing against other people.
I just wanted the same Gwent from the Witcher 3. I hated how different the standalone game was which turned me off of it entirely.
I've enjoyed many of your videos before nerdSlayer. I thought they were insightful and provided some good points on understanding where some of these games went. Several of them I'd played for a decent bit of time. Quake Champions, Overwatch, Outriders, and, now Gwent.
I am _extremely_ disappointed in this video. I do not think it has been well researched. It has not been fact checked by anyone who played much Gwent. And it does not correctly identify the problems that led to Gwent's death, instead focusing on relatively unimportant details.
I am sure a lot of work went into making this video, certainly more than I am putting into this UA-cam comment (though I am spending quite a while). Therefore, please don't take this the wrong way. However, I do have several criticisms.
1:15 - Just a note, they announced no further support for the game _starting in 2024_. This seems like a fairly significant point to leave out. Especially since you call it an "abrupt and sudden death". I hope this is an unintentional mistake that you simply didn't investigate far enough into the announcement, and not an intentional fudging to make things sound more "dire".
4:19 - Maybe I'm being nitpicky, but it seems like you're already trying to put a bad spin on things. Witcher 3 is extremely popular. Gwent in that game is very popular. Card games are popular. Why should we consider it nefarious of a developer to think they can make a successful game out of that?
5:03 - I'm not quite sure where you're coming from. As you had just stated a short while ago, Gwent was not meant for everyone who played Witcher 3. So why exactly is it hard to put it online in the first place? The people who it is intended to appeal to have no problems putting it online.
5:44 - I don't really see how this is segmenting the game audience. I know people who have never played regular Gwent that enjoyed Thronebreak. And people who are vice-versa (like myself). If anything, this would seem to be a smart way to cross-pollinate and get players interested in the other.
6:15 - This is true. Gwent in the Witcher 3 wasn't designed as competitive game originally. This is an important point. I will touch on it more later.
6:36 - This has come up as a point with some regularity on previous Death-of-a-Game videos. I had thougth it made sense, but I guess it took my experience with Gwent to understand this isn't the problem it's made out to be. eSports needs developer support. It's becoming increasingly clear that esports is not a money making proposition. I mean, just look at all the recent major closures/shut downs in the esports. It's worst in scenes where the developer doesn't provide support. Eg. Smash, where a huge number of the major organizers are going under. eSports does not survive without support of the developer. Injecting some life into the scene from the start only seems like a mistake in hindsight. If the game succeeds, there's no issue.
6:56 - "With the announcement of Gwent masters [...] and the shift of Gwent to a competitive CCG the fate of the title was sealed before the game even launched." Ok, respectfully, I think you know you are exaggerating here for effect. CCGs are, at their nature, competitive. Can you name any popular CCGs that don't have a competitive scene?
7:00 - I think this is equating success of an eSport too much with what the developer put into it at the start, and not enough with the popularity of the game. All the major ones you mentioned work because the game is still massively popular. An eSport will stay active and relevant as long as players still enjoy playing the game.
7:40 - We're talking about Overwatch right? Gwent doesn't have franchise spots.
8:42 - I disagree with the argument that if a company doesn't have experience with eSports they should avoid it. Companies get set in their ways, just because they've done it before doesn't mean a company will do it right. And just because a company hasn't done it before doesn't mean they will do it wrong.
9:15 - I'm going to get to homecoming. This is a significant clue in the death of the game I believe, but not really in the way you are saying. I will expand later. Also I just disagree that Homecoming removed the fun aspects of Gwent. That is extremely subjective.
14:40 - It feels very odd to say that critics were taking a very widely different perspective than the player base. Homecoming was 2018. It's 2023. That's 5 years of the game being alive. Obviously a large enough portion of the player base agreed with the critics on the positive aspects of Homecoming. (again, more on homecoming later).
15:04 - This one I think is just a bit silly. There has never been any competitive game ever where people haven't at one point or another complained about there being lack of variety or similar. I don't think Gwent was particularily worse than any other games in this regard (or any better).
15:43 - I see it's already been pointed out before, but leader abilities were not removed. Also there's like 6 per faction. Which is plenty.
16:23 - "In a competitive ccg why wouldn't people just pick the meta decks" How is this different than any other ccg?
16:46 - Extra modes? Like the special rotating "fun" mode that is always available? Any Gwent player could have corrected this point.
17:00 - Well, I am a Gwent fan that disagrees (and I must say, it doesn't feel good to be so completely dismissed). There is plenty of evidence to show that games do not need to follow standard MtG deck types to work. Android Netrunner and Doomtown immediately come to mind. Secondly, this is just not really right. There are combo decks. There are control decks. There are mill decks. Pointslam could be aggro. Engines would be midrange. Those identies are all there, all playable.
19:41 - Very little hype? Not from what I remember. Screencaps of joke comments do not do a lot to support this narrative.
20:30 - Homecoming talk again. Stay tuned!
23:00 - Scenarios are not puzzles. Rather, they are more akin to Sagas from MtG, but that only move to the next step when you play a certain type of unit.
25:00 - This is incorrect. Price of Power, like all the Gwent expansions before it and after it, had all of the cards available to craft immediately. There was an option for whales to pay $60 and unlock everything immediately. Fairly standard for this type of game.
26:48 - This was a balancing problem. Very very problematic balancing.
28:00 - One thing to note,
28:00 Ditto on note above about maintenance mode starting in 2024. It actually says as much in the screencap included in the video.
Ok, those are I think most of the points I wanted to bring up in the video. Now, Homecoming.
First I think we need to think about what Gwent began as. A minigame in the Witcher 3. Perhaps most importantly, this means it was played against AI. The game does not need to be fair when you play against a computer. However, when you start playing against other people the game does need to be fair.
I think this is what the developers discovered in the Gwent beta. The original version was much closer to the version of the game in Witcher 3 and... it just didn't work correctly. The game was too linear. This isn't a problem so much in a single player game, but it's not goint to work in a CCG. Each game in a CCG needs to feel different. If the cards should always be played in a certain order, there aren't interesting decisions. Additionally, it becomes difficult to balance. There weren't enough knobs to turn.
Enter Homecoming. First of all, it made the game _more_ complicated, not less. Suddenlly cards don't just do something when they're played, they have abilities that can be activated. Any entire new layer to the game. Cutting off the siege row was an excellent decision, tightening up the play space so the difference between melee and ranged would be more significant.
But now, a problem. The people who just wanted to play more of the game from Witcher 3 aren't happy. This is different than that game. They don't understand it. They don't like it. This is a clue. We have a game that started off based on a minigame, but because of the limitations of that video game had to evolve into something else. And by doing so, it lost some of the recognizable factor that caused it's creation in the first place.
I'll also not here that there were some complaints in the video about making the game "competitive". Personally, I think this makes no sense. There is no way where just making a game entirely out of copy/pasted Witcher 3 minigame would be successful or keep players engaged over the long term. I do not believe such a thing as a "casual" CCG exists, or at least would be able to survive for long.
Homecoming helped with balance. Less linearity meant more room to breath in card design. However, there were still problems.
At it's core, Gwent is a bidding game. Each player has some number of points on the cards in their hands. They take turns bidding these points, with the goal being to spend as few points as possible while still being able to win the round. There's a problem with this kind of game. At the end of the day, the only thing that makes a good card, is points. There is one major knob. And this let to a crippling problem with power creep that Gwent never escaped. New cards were made stronger to be relevant. It started a nasty spiral of increasing power that could never come under control. Over the course of homecoming to know the average powerlevel of competitive cards _doubled_. That's right. TWICE AS MANY POINTS. Even despite semi-regular balance passes on old cards, it just wasn't possible to keep up with that level of creep. And that leads to fatigue very, very quickly. Even know I still sometimes look back at what my old top-tier decks were and I'm just amazed at how unplayable they are. And that, I think, is the second clue.
So overall, it's pretty clear that Gwent did not succeed, afterall it's going into maintenance mode (in 2024 though, 72 cards coming out in 3 drops this year). I believe this happened for two reasons. Firstly, the original design idea of Gwent was discovered to not be feasible, this meant the game had to be remade in a different design direction. This lost a lot of it's initial supporters. Secondly I think the game offered fundamental problems in regards to power-creep. These were not avoided by the team (perhaps to drive sales due to free-to-play?) and very quickly tired out the audience.
I really miss 3 row Gwent. That version of the game felt to me like a mix of ccg and poker. Homecoming was a mistake
Maybe someone who played more of the standalone can correct me but I personally really enjoyed the mechanics of Gwent in Witcher 3 and when I played the stand-alone it seemed like the rules were a bit different. Maybe they had to do this for competitiveness and balancing or maybe I’m just remembering it wrong but I remember being instantly turned off by it even though I spent so much time in Witcher 3 playing gwent.
The beta played like witcher 3 gwent then homecoming happened and the game changed,
@@skycap3081 That makes sense I see. Thank you.
I remember playing Gwent with my brothers when it first came out. I was terrible at it but it was still fun; things were more or less straightforward. Fast forward to when Homecoming came out (I had no idea what went on behind the scenes with the whole esports thing) and I was kinda like "wha wha what are you trying to be, Gwent?" Losing the playing board and the siege row in favor of a battlefield (and the release of more powerful cards at the same time) really killed the vibe for me. I couldn't keep up after a while cause I never went into it with the "I gotta make the deck that all the pros are using" mentality. Very sad to hear where it's at today
That's interesting analysis, thank you for sharing. You focused a lot on CDPR and the thought behind major development decisions - there's so much to talk about that you could probably make another video just focusing on the changes in card design alone. As a Gwent partner who has played thousands of hours of Gwent over the past few years and been one of the people making the decks that other people play, I'd love to share some additional thoughts:
You touched on "powercreep" of the cards, and there are some interesting ways in which that took place. As people probably would assume, there were cards that were simply way stronger than everything else. However, some of the bigger issues with those cards has been not just their existence, but how regularly they get created and how long it takes to rebalance them. All of the most recent expansions have had a couple of cards that were substantially stronger than everything else. That alone wouldn't have been the end of the world, but because balance patches only happen once a month, the same length of a competitive season, those cards would dominate for an entire season, with many players copy-pasting whatever deck capitalized most on these overwhelming cards. Then, in the next patch, when players hoped for those cards to get nerfed significantly, the cards' power would often only get reduced by 1 point, which fairly often meant that those cards remained dominant, albeit only slightly less so than before getting nerfed, so the underlying issues would never fully get addressed. Sometimes, instead of nerfing these overpowered cards directly, other complimentary cards that players used to support the overpowered cards would get nerfed instead, serving as an indirect nerf. But in this case, the underlying problem still remained - the overpowered cards were still overpowered, so much so that players would still dominate with decks that didn't synergize as well with the key cards just because those cards were so strong that they could win games almost single-handedly. In this way, it wasn't just that new cards kept getting stronger, but the combination of that powercreep with the slow pace and seeming reluctance to balance these overbearing cards in patches.
However, the effects of card powercreep go further than limiting deck variety, including some things that are frequently overlooked. In the past, Gwent (at least the standalone version) was known as a particularly complex CCG in which the many layers of card interactions and strategic possibilities would more consistently reward skilled play over random luck. This was the one of the main aspects that kept devoted Gwent players engaged in the game - experienced players could execute higher risk, higher-reward plays that would pay off against inferior opponents. However, card powercreep changed this dynamic significantly. A few years ago, most of the strongest cards came with considerable risk - if you successfully combined cards' abilities, you would be greatly rewarded, but if you made misplays or your opponent was able to stop your setup, you could still lose, even with your strong cards. Now, the overpowered cards are worth more points when set up correctly, it's easier to set them up, and it's less punishing if players play these cards suboptimally. Because there is now far less reason to engage in high-risk, high-reward plays, the game has shifted from being about strategy-centric planning to mindlessly spamming the most powerful cards as often as possible. In other words, a reversal from the skill-rewarding game that made people like Gwent in the first place. I think this is one of the main reasons why even the most devoted of Gwent players who gritted their teeth through previous bumps and bruises have recently been leaving the game, as this change is most noticeable to them. However, as the seasoned players who helped create and promote those powerful decks leave, less experienced players are stranded with neither a source for the powerful decks that they used to borrow, or the experience to create decks of equal effectiveness on their own, making the less serious players more likely to leave as well.
Gwent is still fun, especially for new and more casual players. I encourage people who like CCGs to try it if they haven't already because using the new, overpowered cards can be fun for a little while (there will still be a few more expansions this year). It is mostly in large doses, after having spent a long time mastering the game (and seeing similar decks pop up so regularly) that its issues start to surface. Even then, when played in moderation, Gwent can still be enjoyable. There's even a game mode with an alternate ruleset that switches each week, to keep things exciting.
I love Gwent in the Witcher 3 but when it launched on PS4 I was disappointed in the changes made, it didn't feel anything like in the witcher