Gwent - Standalone Game

What aspects of tavern brawl do you feel they are combining with it? It's just a solo draft mode, with 4 choices instead of 3. That's pretty much the same as all the digital ccgs. Other then getting a pod of people together and passing actual packs, there's not really a good way to implement a draft mode. The magic, pod style, way makes you wait for the pod to fill up. That's horrible for these types of games and the playerbase.

Yeah, not sure what Swim was talking about when he made the tavern brawl comment. I will say that I'm pretty tepid to just a basic, anything goes style draft like they showed on stream. Hopefully they consider adding some type of structure to it, seen suggestions such as limited slots for golds/silvers, and showing the 3 leaders we can choose at the start, but still letting us make the choice at the end. Just feel like normal arena mode will get stale quickly due to the mechanics of Gwent, and we've seen how boring max value point slamming can be in last patch Dwarves.

Sure man. It's a little hard to explain, but when I started playing 2-3 months ago, in almost every game it felt like skill mattered more then anything. If I lost, I could often point to a mistake I made that caused it, or some decision I made that let my opponent outplay me. I thought I had FINALLY found a game that could rival mtg in terms of strategic depth and skill level, and maybe even exceed it as it had no 'mana screw' problems. Over the last few patches, however, that's become less and less true to me. Maybe I've just gotten better at the game and so therefore 'luck' is determining more games (since I make less mistakes overall). But, I've seen similar opinions from other players.

The devs have removed some of the heavy synergy and skill testing cards and so now many cards can be broken down into 'worth between X and Y points'. Even the control options are basically just 'remove X points from opponent'. The order in which you play things matters a bit less and the decision points seem to be narrowing overall.
Sure, there are engine cards (that generate more value over time) but that's still just a simple math calculation (7 pts now, +1 each turn if I don't kill it). I'm not saying there aren't levels of skill or decisions to be made, it's just not as deep as it was.

It was REALLY bad until this most recent patch, as the top deck (dwarves) was pretty brainless to play and play against. Since it was nerfed, the meta is a lot more diverse and some slightly more interactive decks have popped up, but it still isn't as good as it was before. It was a step in the right direction, but only a baby step really.

I, too, am really hoping for a mtg:arena invite. The simple ability to respond to your opponent's plays adds so much strategic depth, that any game without that option is operating at a handicap imo. Eternal technically has it, but in a stripped down way and they added a bunch of other issues that turned me off from it.
Until then, Gwent is still the best option I've found out of Hearthstone, Eternal, Hex and Gwent. Especially if you are looking for free to play. Hex is the most like mtg, but my understanding is the ftp mode is too slow and I'd end up spending a fair amount to play it the way I want. If I'm willing to spend that kind of money on a game, I'd just play mtgo then.

Yep, you pretty much summed up the issue about how card mechanics got removed/simplified. As you said it's definitely better right now than 2 months ago, now that the faction challenge is over I've been running into a good variety of decks today in ranked. The card design problem I think can be addressed when they release the first new set, so I'm willing to ride it out on that front. Two main things that bug me the most right now are Create and carry over. I despise the create mechanic, it just feels awful to have your weather cleared or engine card locked via RNG. It doesn't even feel good to me when I use them and get a high roll, mostly feel bad for my opponent. Carry over is also a problem, especially with Wardancer, possibly the worst card in the game. Not sure what the ideal solution for carry over is, either getting rid of it or just making it much easier for most every deck to have some.

All that said, I still think Gwent is worth playing, especially if you aren't looking to go super hardcore into it. I like the IP, it has the best card art/animation around imo, and CDPR really seem committed to improving the game. Am somewhat nterested to try out Arena, but honestly I mostly haven't cared for the other card games because I'm mostly bored of that style, ie play resources to pay for cards, bash creatures together, etc. At this point I'm more intrigued to see what Valve is doing with Artifact as I think they are likely to do something much different, which is what appeals to me about Gwent.

Anyone else trying out the new homecoming update? I'm still getting into it, but I really like it so far. Tons of changes that I'm enjoying.

I bought Thronebreaker and played a few hours last night. I am still working on crafting all the cards in Gwent release. I had a full collection and the new platform deleted all my cards and is making me re-craft them. I don't see any "easy button" so it is taking thousands of mouse clicks to do it.

I had somewhere around 700k scraps I think a full collection is only 440 so I should have plenty left over.

Probably played 30-35 games so far and I'm still undecided on how I feel about it, somethings I like and some feel off to me. One thing is there's just not many decks I find fun to play, NR far and away for me is the most interesting with the Orders. I like that Artifacts are good/useful, but feel like they need to be tweaked somehow, maybe requiring a body on the board for their abilities to be used? I dunno, sure CDPR has a good list of changes in the pipeline, so we'll see.

Also, even if tons of people bought Thronebreaker, I doubt Gwent will see a huge surge in population. I think if they just manage to get back most of the folks that bailed from Midwinter patch til now they'd probably be happy, especially when they start turning out new content.

This just released on Steam. FTP so will probably get a big population bump. Anyone still playing this?