Hello,

First off, major credit goes to the developers. I have been eagerly awaiting the release of this game from Fantasy Flight and couldn’t believe my eyes when I got a Beta code to test the online equivalent. I thoroughly enjoyed playing this game all weekend. Below is some feedback for the developers. I understand that this Closed Beta is all about testing, so here are some of my thoughts. Other players, feel free to add your own in replies :)

1: A more fleshed out rules and tutorial section, clearly explaining each aspect of the game. While it was fun figuring out everything on my own or with the help of other players. A better thought out tutorial, that is perhaps interactive with all aspects of the game covered would alleviate a lot of headaches in those first few games.

2: Give players who are not in the hot seat a lot more flexibility in terms of what they can and can’t look at when it’s not their turn. It would be great to be able to go through your own character sheet and look at the cards you have so you can plan your next move. Another handy feature would be to also be able to look at the current players cards. This way you can learn a lot more about the different diversity of other characters.

3: While I enjoy the actual game a great deal, it very much feels like a single player game at the moment. In all the games I played (some 30+ so far), I never felt that I was actually competing against anyone. It was more just a race to the quest goal, which resulted into what felt like a rushed game. I’m not too sure what the developers have planned for the actual final release, but this game is begging for some interaction between players. Varied interaction that ranges from helping a player in battle, trading with them all the way to hindering their progress and slowing down their VP gains. Suggestions are an alternate deck that is purely designed for player interaction.

4: Some Video Options would be great. While this is probably planned for a future release, the ability to play this game in a window mode would be great, as I was frequently browsing the internet on my second monitor, however the game would minimize itself while this was happening.

5: One major bug of note is that when a player completes a Quest, and then has a look at another card or clicks something else before choosing the next quest, they can no longer perform any action, nor choose a Quest, in which the only result is for the player to have to quit the game. I found this to be the most game breaking bug at the moment.

6: It would be great to see an actual lobby system that lists Private Games as well as Public Games. I found the Matchmaking system to be quite slow and sometimes chaotic with frequent drop outs. The ability to password a Private Game would be a handy tool when searching through games to play. Players could chat in a central lobby, while having a list of public and private games viewable on a side menu.

7: I would love to see an actual “Statistics” tab in a later release. Somewhere that tracks all the games you have played, the characters you have used, the games you have won/lost etc. It gives the game a greater sense of achievement.

8: I understand the fact that this is a board game that’s going to be released, however it would be awesome to see some animations for the actual player models moving around the table. Even if that’s just a detailed version of Geralt/Triss/Dandelion or Yarpen standing there. It would be visually pleasing to say the least.

Above all, Point number 3 above is the most crucial at this stage. I really want to buy the physically copy of this game when its released. However with the current Core gameplay feeling very single player orientated, it’s starting to tip the scales in favour of the online release only. Here’s to hoping we see a lot more player interaction in the future!

Keep up the great work developers! I thoroughly love and adore The Witcher world, and can’t wait to see future progress on this title and others!

Regards,
ToRN

very nice post!

i gotta agree at some points.

@ #3: the game does indeed feel single player oriented. there is no "we", everyone wins on their own. That is perfectly ok, don't get me wrong ... but the game is lacking interacting between players. I also already thought about changing the pace of the game by making every player move simultaniously, after they've finished their turn everyone would just have to wait for the others to finish ... but that wouldn't work either because some card - especially monsters - have properties like "everyone in the region suffers a wound ..." or "everyone in the region spends 3 gold ..."

it would be nice indeed to see some more interaction possibilities, like a specific set of cards that let's you hinder your opponents. after all this is a single player focused game and you want to win!

#a: another thing i noticed when playing short sessions is this: in 1-quest games people tend to rush to complete the mainquest ... they don't need tactic, they don't need to develop alot of combat skills, because suffering wounds is completely irrelevent if you just need to finish that one quest.
Games with 3 or more quests become a tiny bit more interesting BUT after - let's say in a 3-quest game - a player has finished his 2nd quest he'll again hurry to complete the last one.
Maybe it would be better to set a VP limit instead of a quest-completed limit and reduce the number of VP the main quests main objectives gives. I think that would smooth out the VP-acquisition rate and make sure that it's easier for players to be close - VP-wise - to the other players. Also in that case it wouldn't be THAT important to finish the quest since there are other ways of acquiring VP like killing certain monsters.

#b: also what seems as not so well fleshed out atm is characters. I've played with all so far and multiple games. And to be honest: playing as Geralt is stupidly easy! Geralt has 3 character dice that may show Swords, Double-Swords, Shields, Magic and characterspecific powers (sign). Making combat alot easier for him than anybody else. His development cards are strong and alot of them need no charges but are active all the time. Eg. one of the Witcher Amulet simply generates 1 sign per battle in addition to what you roll. Other dev cards use signs rolled (and generated by the amulet) to generate additional swords and shields. In about 6 or 7 games i only have lost 1 single battle with Geralt ... Playing with Geralt is - atleast for me - as follows: the first 3 or 4 rounds (in a 3-quest game or higher) i travel and develop to gain cards that help me in battle. after that i only travel and investigate with the occasional rest.

Of course i understand that Geralt is the experienced monster hunter and it would be illogical if he weren't stronger or better suited for combat as - let's say - dandelion? But let's take a look at the other characters before making a final judgemet.

Triss has her moments. her development cards are powerful spells that really make an inpact. While Geralts dev cards only give an average of 2 shields/swords Triss can generate 4 swords / shields with one single spell! But her spells need to be charged. A game with Triss looks as followed: the first few turns you travel and develop to gain spells and magical items. During the turn after any battle you need to "Prepare" and recharge one of your spells. During combat Triss only has 1 character die. It may show Magic or Sword-to-Shield conversion and the other way round. So no extra Swords or shields like with Geralt. Combat is tough with Triss, but she can pack a punch and defeat almost anybody with easy, given that you have enough charged up spells. The downside however is that after a hard fight you need to charge those spells again.

Yarpen... Yarpen is a mystery to me. I've only played 1 game so far with Yarpen and i can tell: I'm not impressed. Yarpen's got 2 additional wound-slots that might be filled before you have to put wounds on your abilities, which is neat. He has one? character die, i believe but i'm not sure what it can show. i think sword/shield conversion is on it, the rest i'm not sure - please correct me if i'm wrong. His development cards have to be charged - just as Triss's but they don't feel that strong.

Dandelion ... He's a pussy when it comes to fighting! With one character die (again i'm not sure what's on it) Dandelion is a liablility ^^ his dev cards too need to be charged, or rather "bribed". Luckily bribing doesn't cost any actions, but it costs gold. Gold which dandelion can generate by "Perform". Dandelion is hard to play, you have to stay out of regions with monsters, because the bard is really really weak in combat, especially without dev cards. His advantage though is Dandelion-specific text on some investigation and fate cards. Such text looks like this: "If you are Dandelion ..." and continues with something like that "... gain 2 blue leads and draw a foul fate card." So it is likely for Dandelion to progress faster thanks to his charms ;) but that doesn't make him easier to play ...

Actually i like the idea of having asymmetric classes. This way the game changes drastically once you play with another class. I find it sad though that especially Dandelion feels week, and Geralt feels extremely strong and easy to play, while Triss covers the upper middle-class in terms of playability and Yarpen covernig the low.

Apart from very little uninspired ideas i have no clue as to how to bring the classes closer together.
For Triss i could imagine a special rule that says: If you don't have any Spells charged, "Prepare" charges two at once. Something similar could go for Yarpen ... Dandelion could have some kind of "Kingpin rule" ... whenever dandelion has more than (let's say) 15 gold, bribe charges two cards for the cost of 1.

Well, and that's my two cents ...

and before i forget -->
@ #5: I'm encountering another major bug that blocks game progress: sometimes when dragging a die to it's corresponding slot while battleing, the die might get stuck and cannot be assigned anymore ... the slot however cannot be filled either and the "End" button doesn't appear ... making the game unable to continue.

Best wishes
Tobi

I haven´t played that much yet due to opponents leaving or getting disconnected, but have several times encountered an recurring error with Geralt.

If a battle occurs during an investigation, sometimes he is unable to activate his witcher signs.
The dices are rolled, get plenty of triangle signs on the dices, but the cards blink once, but then go grey, and im unable to click on the cards to select any of the witcher sign cards to change the dices with triangle signs to shields/swords/magic.

I'm not sure this is the place to raise the matter, but it must suffice.
I reported bug with polish letter ą clearing line - bug number 0000141. I filed it under multiplayer, as I didn't believe it to be part of gameplay. You don't chat with your PC (unless doing Turing test on it), hence I decided against gameplay which could be single player too (though at time of writing it is not). The same issue was later filed under gameplay - bug number 0000353 and it got fixed, while "my" - moved to gameplay too - still hangs open. There is no way to contact dev team via tracking system, so I left note saying just what this message says, but so far there's no reaction after three weeks.