A week to go before season end, with less than 2 dozen global players at level 21...

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A week to go before season end, with less than 2 dozen global players at level 21...

With a week to go before season end and with so few players having reached rank level 21 (check the global leader boards and see for yourself)... one has to remember that level 21 is the "holy grail" a player has to reach if they want to compete in the pro esport qualifiers. For this season it looks like there will be a double whammy, as one mustn't forget that the bottom 10% of the pro players also get dropped.
So, unless there is a dramatic turn around... a very realistic prediction is that fewer players will be joining the pro qualifiers than leaving it.



The fallout from the mid-winter fiasco continues!

It goes to show that CDPR didn't really think through the repercussions of dramatically changing their game interactions. Many players have accused CDPR of money grubbing tactics in altering the rank ups between one season and the next. They halved the season end rewards plus they no longer grant the new season rank up rewards when a player's new rank is calculated in the next season.

CDPR by not adjusting the qualifying rank up points has left the bar too high, previously the goal of 4500 points was set so as to be achievable over a 2 month season. Thus to do it over 1 month requires a constant daily grind... which alienates a large percentage of the player base who might actually have a job, or study commitments or for those who might actually socialise with real life human beings like their family and friends.

It's not surprising that when faced with this new grind, it has translated into many people simply not attempting to bother. When combined with the mid-winter update fiasco and the card imbalances which CDPR didn't address at the beginning of this season, plus with an oversupply of common cards constantly appearing in the kegs... I have no doubt that many players will have simply lost interest in the game, as game progression has become too hard for them... at the end of the day, gamers play games to have fun... constant grinding is nobody's idea of fun.

However, before the fan-bois have a go at me for pointing out the obvious... the proof is in the pudding... with a week to go before season end, it seems to be a quite realistic prediction that the majority of this season's rank up "Top 1000 rewards" will be awarded to players who haven't even reached level 21 and thus can't even attempt to compete in the esport qualifiers... it makes CDPR's attempt to establish Gwent as a genuine esport into a farce.
 
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I agree 100% as well. I came back after the update because there were a lot of new cards and stuff and got really into it so I thought I'd by 25$ worth of cards a month to get my collection going even though I hate the whole concept of microtransactions. Well turns out I got 3 cards that I can use and enough scraps to craft one gold that I wanted and those other 3 were just cards I wanted to try out because I was curious about the rng. A complete waste of money, I pretty much paid 25$ for one gold card. "A fool and his money are quickly parted"

So now with the reward nerf I get around 4-5 kegs a day and being stuck at rank 18 I get 9 kegs at the end of the month. That isn't even worth the effort to play ranked honestly and put up with people playing nothing but op decks.

Right now I feel that there is no way to get my hands on cards even if I would continue to dump loads of money into this broken concept, you simply get nothing but trash 90% of the time.

It's boring to be honest, there's no reward to go for that's worth the effort. I used my scraps to put together a ST deck and am only missing a few cards so now I got 2 factions that I can play. The "challenges" I get are:

Win 5 matches as NG
Win 5 matches as NR
Win 5 matches as SK

All of which I don't have a deck for and they stay that way so those are completely useless to me as well.

Man I can go on for days really..game is broken. They are out of ideas and this is starting to feel like an EA game if not worse. Looking at the patch notes I can see that they are in above their heads.

NG is still massively op and can ruin your whole deck as if the whole blacklisting and mulligan thing didn't make playing a deck hard enough
Roach still doesn't come out with royal decree
Monsters got nerfed again lmao
ST has been ruined and I was one of the people who complained about them but man..you guys slaughtered them. Too much is too much, the I:M and Ithline nerf was all they needed.
Crones still all gather at the top of your deck making your whole mulligan useless and a nightmare so they are pretty much useless.
NR still has way too much firepower, the amount of removal that goes on there per turn is ridiculous. How is anyone supposed to even keep more than a card or two on the board?
Commanders Horn is now useless, was a great card
Using Doppler playing monsters gives me a dwarf
Mild Hunt has 0 tempo and can pretty much pass after the second turn
Morkvarg and the magic Olgierd that pops out of the graveyard which I can do nothing about are retarded.


Between balance issues and not getting any rewards really it's just boring now. I would really love to play and even spend a little cash but neither make much sense at the moment.

I'm pretty sure you guys want to make money off of this game right? I'd gladly part with 20 or so a month for a game I spend hours on and really enjoy but you gotta give me SOMETHING for my money, I'm not buying loads of junk cards to be scrapped for 10 scraps.

Remove the daily limit, give us some rewards for playing. We still aren't going to keep up with the whole collection without spending a few hundred dollars which is well enough for a game like this even GTA is cheaper...

Right now no matter how much I pay or play I'm just not getting anything for it and it's boring.
 
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It's quite disheartening, I have to say. For people like me, with job and kids, grinding to rank 21 is all but impossible in shortened season with the same disribution. Plus, losing mmr for no apparent reason without even playing games. Add to that "winning" 17 out of 22 coin flips at 4.2k+ and you get the picture.
 

4RM3D

Ex-moderator
Jezaboom2;n10392582 said:
CDPR by not adjusting the qualifying rank up points has left the bar too high, previously the goal of 4500 points was set so as to be achievable over a 2 month season. Thus to do it over 1 month requires a constant daily grind... which alienates a large percentage of the player base [...]

CDPR is still experimenting with the length of the seasons as well as the MMR distribution. This season is the first one of its kind. So, there is bound to be some hiccups along the way. I am sure that CDPR has realized this by now and that they will adjust the point calculation. This is a very difficult process to tweak and it might require a few more seasons to find the optimal conditions. That doesn't mean that players shouldn't voice their concerns, but they should realize that CDPR is still tweaking the values.
 
Actually season can be 1 month but it should be easier to get to 21 probably or increase rewards or something else
 
The system is just wrong in general and always been. Loosing one or winning one game allows you to jump 1000 places in ranking, which is rather stupid. I would like to see the system revised completely and give ranking place based on winning % among your nearest peers in rank rather than some arbitrary amount of points given for winning or loosing. Personally, after reaching rank 20, I haven't noticed any big difference in the quality of play between top 1000 and top 5000. The noticeable difference downwards starts with people who still play at rank 18, they tend to make more mistakes and easily loose card advantage. And at the top you can easily fall back down if you get, for instance, an unlucky coin flip streak.

Kingoko;n10395942 said:
Actually season can be 1 month but it should be easier to get to 21 probably or increase rewards or something else
Why it should be easier? Are you feeling entitled for it?

HenryGrosmont;n10394322 said:
Add to that "winning" 17 out of 22 coin flips at 4.2k+ and you get the picture.
Hear ya, hear ya. Happened to me recently too, had to climb back from 4k after such a coin flip "winning" streak.
 
Maerd;n10397042 said:
Why it should be easier? Are you feeling entitled for it?
I think he meant that mmr distribution should be adjusted to the shortened season.
Maerd;n10397042 said:
Hear ya, hear ya. Happened to me recently too, had to climb back from 4k after such a coin flip "winning" streak.
Yup, at 4k at the moment.
 
Hello, I have a pretty important question.

After many days trying, range blessed me with coin flips 7 out of 10 games. I got a win rate of like 12-2-1 and managed to climb from 4150 to 4300.

I was 700 worldwide and around 450 in europe, but then I lost a game and went down.

I'm in 950 place worldwide and 750 europe and there's little to the end of the season

Recently I experienced what a bad coin flip streak is, so I'm a little scared of just trying hard and get lower on the ladder, because I really want the Letho portrait.

¿What score does the system count when giving the rewards? ¿Your top in Europe or your top Worldwide?

¿Would it be wise to simply not play anymore so I don't lose my rank and try to somehow keep the top 1000 place so I can have the portrait?
 
diabloirlandes;n10397152 said:
¿Would it be wise to simply not play anymore so I don't lose my rank and try to somehow keep the top 1000 place so I can have the portrait?

I think it will be wise to stop playing but check from time to time if you're still in the top 1000. #950 is a bit shaky and I'm intended to sneak in too. :)

A week and a half ago I had an 11 games winning streak that got me to #65 globally and, for a moment, it gave me the feeling that I'm unstoppable... Should have stopped playing, as later bad coin flip streak kicked me out of top 5000. :confused:
 
Maerd;n10397242 said:
I think it will be wise to stop playing but check from time to time if you're still in the top 1000. #950 is a bit shaky and I'm intended to sneak in too. :)

A week and a half ago I had an 11 games winning streak that got me to #65 globally and, for a moment, it gave me the feeling that I'm unstoppable... Should have stopped playing, as later bad coin flip streak kicked me out of top 5000. :confused:

¿Do you know if the rewards are for top 1000 global or top 1000 continental? 750 place europe looks like a good place to be in, might hold for the last 4 days, but I know losing once will get me out of the top 1000.
 
diabloirlandes;n10397302 said:
¿Do you know if the rewards are for top 1000 global or top 1000 continental? 750 place europe looks like a good place to be in, might hold for the last 4 days, but I know losing once will get me out of the top 1000.
I think it's a place globally that counts.
 
diabloirlandes;n10397302 said:
¿Do you know if the rewards are for top 1000 global or top 1000 continental? 750 place europe looks like a good place to be in, might hold for the last 4 days, but I know losing once will get me out of the top 1000.

The season end rewards are for global placement. Currently CDPR doesn't award any end of season rewards for local regional placement.

If anyone from CDPR is reading this, do you by any chance know if there are any future plans for end of season rewards based upon regional placement?

... or is this measure purely in place to help soothe a bruised ego... for people to say I made it to the top 50 in my region (even though this may not translate to getting into the top 1000 globally)
 
If you are 950 global then forget bout Letho, many players will get higher mmr. I'm at top 520 or so atm global but im almost sure it will be not enough for Letho and will need to try luck and win at least 1 more game :(
 
Kingoko;n10397832 said:
If you are 950 global then forget bout Letho, many players will get higher mmr. I'm at top 520 or so atm global but im almost sure it will be not enough for Letho and will need to try luck and win at least 1 more game :(

I'm in the 700 range and yep gonna have to dive back in soon ugh!
 
4RM3D;n10395432 said:
CDPR is still experimenting with the length of the seasons as well as the MMR distribution. This season is the first one of its kind. So, there is bound to be some hiccups along the way. I am sure that CDPR has realized this by now and that they will adjust the point calculation. This is a very difficult process to tweak and it might require a few more seasons to find the optimal conditions. That doesn't mean that players shouldn't voice their concerns, but they should realize that CDPR is still tweaking the values.

Thanks for your reply.
Please note, I am using this reply as a means to expand on many of the underlying issues.


I am not having a go at you, but I do disagree with your assessment... namely your view that CDPR would have realised the issue by now (with hiccups along the way)... that assessment alludes to it being an innocent oversight. One mustn't forget that CDPR is a multinational company which employs lots of very talented and creative people, and they also have a team of financial analysts to review their decisions, accordingly I believe that they would of been aware of it at the planning and pre-implementation stage.

The circumstantial evidence against CDPR is not favourable in this regard, they were "smart" enough to recognise that the rewards being offered at season end were based on a 2 month season... thus their justification for halving the rewards was a season was now only going to be for one month... otherwise the rewards over the same time period would be doubled. However, players copped a double nerf in this regard as beginning of season automatic rank up rewards were totally removed as well.

Thus CDPR's implementation of the reward reduction was based entirely on CDPR having a full comprehension of the MMR, which included their full knowledge of knowing that what was previously a 2 month goal was now being reduced to 1 month... without any alterations to compensate for halving the time frame.

So, yes part of your assessment that CDPR is still experimenting is correct, however the real subject matter which they are experimenting on is the patience and goodwill of its player base. One would be naïve to think that CDPR wouldn't be doing a financial analysis of the spending habits of their player base.

CDPR would be well aware that a full game of Gwent consists of 13 turns per player, with a minute per turn plus additional mulligan time in between rounds, so CDPR would know that a single game of Gwent can easily take 15 to 25 minutes. They also know fully well that within their MMR as ranks increase, the rank up points drop significantly. Once a player reaches level 19 its fair to say that the rank up points for a game are around 20 (ish)... thus to make minor progression at this rank, it literally requires a player to commit either 4+ hours a day or significant sums of money into buying and milling kegs, so as to create new op decks.

It is this later point which CDPR is interested in... getting players to spend significant sums of money so that they can continue to create new op decks. With the massive grind that the player base is facing this season so that they can progress, CDPR would be performing a very careful financial analysis of how many players have taken the spend more money approach over the deal with the grind approach. The sad thing about this is those that are truly addicted to the game, are likely to be the only ones who will spend significantly more, however the majority of the player base which make the occasional purchase are more likely to feel ripped off and will loose interest in the game. Which is likely to translate to a reduced player base... nobody likes investing huge amounts of time only to end up feeling used... and most people are smart enough to eventually cotton onto recognising that their time is being wasted due to progression goals having been sneakily shifted... basically over time people will end up resenting the company for it.

CDPR has a previous history of making great games, Witcher 3 is one of my all time ever favourite games and it is through Witcher 3 that I discovered Gwent. What CDPR has to recognise is that they developed a loyal player base by building amazing games which offered incredible value for money for the content which their games included, plus they were engaging. In this regard to my knowledge this is CDPR's first foray into a micro transaction based game... if CDPR doesn't forget its roots of offering incredible value for money for its content and making the game engaging... then they will be financially rewarded beyond their wildest expectations. But if they continue with money grubbing tactics then they will damage their overall reputation.

Sadly CDPR scores a miserable fail at the moment for players to spend money on purchasing kegs... if people are constantly getting barrels full of spares... with an average mill value of around 50 scraps per barrel... I suspect sustaining a heroin addiction would be cheaper (albeit not healthier). As for players being engaged... with so few players bothering to get to level 21 this season, if a player doesn't believe that they can reasonably progress they will stop playing.
 
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