This game is vastly different from Hearthstone in one fundamental (and blatant) way: it is still in beta, lol. There is so much more tweaking to be done. Also, Hearthstone don't give a shit about their community or they wouldn't release such incredibly stupid cards. I came from playing Yugioh, arguably the most exploitative card game in existence, and even though it has no RNG or coinflips, I consider Gwent a vastly superior game even if it is going in that direction.
CDPR listen to us (well, to Merchant/ Swim/ all of the other streamers) and they make changes within hours of their recommendations. The tweet asking what we think of the new leaders got dozens of negative responses which will undoubtedly trigger changes. Add to this the fact that, unlike Blizzard, CDPR clearly aren't in this to bleed their fans dry. The reward system is too community-oriented for that. Increasing the amount of randomness in the game is lazy, perhaps, but it is a fairly natural progression in a game that does not have set rotations and the mechanics of which are based purely on numbers.
Echoing what others have said, let's wait and see what they come up with. They already gave us an original concept for a card game in a world full of mana, I bet they can create a balanced Spawn.