Now Featuring: the Wildest of Jokers!

"And when she spins that bottle round and round

Every time it leaves me gagged and bound"

 

Billy Talent - This Suffering

 

 

I keep trying various multiplayer games, despite knowing full well none of them will be worth playing. The overwhelming majority of humans don't want to play games. They want to cheat. Thus, the game industry sells cheats, with so-called games merely a convenient cheat distribution system. However, since I'm not smart enough to beat even a medium-difficulty (a.k.a. idiot-level) AI at Chess.com, I keep banging my head against various other walls for some quick honest competition.

 

Collectible card games having served as initial vector for the microtransaction disease in the first place, you'd think they'd be satisfied with just forcing players to buy new cards on a regular basis. But of course by the very definition of capitalism, enough is never enough. I've been giving Gwent a try lately. Aside from being more simplistic than Magic: the Gathering (advantage doesn't work toward a goal; advantage is the only goal) with plenty of interface timesinks tacked on (cards flipping, avatars spouting redundant catchphrases, dramatic camera shakes) to stretch out match lengths in overcompensation, there's this:

The funniest part? "No holding hands" the store page brags

Gwent suffers from the two major faults of such games:

1) If you don't have the latest "I win" cards you lose.

2) If the random number generator hates you, you lose.

So of course they sell players the ability to cheat the RNG. While MTG always had a few of these allowing you to select any <type> card from your deck, Gwent's strategies are entirely built around them. Play any card whatsoever. Play any card from a particular set. Play any card from your opponent's set. Play any of the worst cards. Play any of the best cards. Etceteree, etceterah. Keep in mind this is a game in which a single card can be so powerful (e.g. resetting powers, all-purpose lock) as to negate or wipe out all build-up. Meaning it doesn't particularly matter how carefully you predict or plan your hand, what surprises you hold in reserve, your enemy will beat you with no planning or prediction by whipping out one of the "do whatever I want" crutches. Nothing you do matters.

So now you have the honor of buying not just the "I win" button, but the finglonger to push it with!

Screw it.

Back to the chess bots. At least I don't need a dice stick to move a rook.