Wild Card invites for next GWENT Challenger

[Rafal_Jaki]

Wild Card invites for next GWENT Challenger

Dear GWENT Community,

First of all, we would like to thank you for the constant feedback regarding GWENT Masters you’ve been sharing with us — we’re incredibly grateful and we hope this relationship continues to grow as GWENT’s official esports series goes forward. On that note, there’s something we’d like to discuss with you.

The second GWENT Challenger is coming up this December. The event will take place in Poland, where a total of 8 players will compete for Crown Points, pieces of a $100,000 prize pool, the Challenger winner’s ring, and a spot in the GWENT World Masters. You can read all about how tournament participants will be determined here: https://masters.playgwent.com/en/news/7111/tournaments.

Out of the 8 spots, 2 are reserved for Wild Cards — players invited to the tournament by CD PROJEKT RED. After considering a number of options for how to distribute Wild Cards, we arrived at 4 we believe would work best, but would like you, the GWENT community, to make the final choice. Should we:


1. Organize an online qualifier for the top 200 players of the current Pro Ladder season (ending October 31st) who haven’t yet qualified for the upcoming Challenger?

2. Give both spots to the players with the most Crown Points who haven’t yet qualified for the upcoming Challenger?

3. Give both spots to popular streamers or players of CD PROJEKT RED’s choosing?

4. Give 1 spot to a home ground representative — the highest ranked Polish player from the current Pro Ladder season — and 1 spot to the winner of an online qualifier as described in point 1?

The poll is available at: https://s.surveyplanet.com/BkMYxJccoZ . Voting closes October 7th. Whatever the result ends up being, we’ll go with what you choose. Vote away!

IMPORTANT! The last link to the survey did not work as intended so if someone has already casted their vote please vote again via - https://s.surveyplanet.com/BkMYxJccoZ. We are sorry for the inconvenience.

 

[4RM3D]

It's good to see CDPR is actively involving the community with important events like these.

:cheers:

 

[TV_JayArr]

I like the idea of assuring that at least one local participates in a Challenger tournament. Especially if you would maintain this procedure for the 3 following Challenger tournaments - in the USA, China and Japan - and a hopefully next Gwent Masters Season with even more venues in probably less represented countries by now. It would definetly strenghten the general interest for a tournament like this on-site, I imagine.

On top of that, I think it would be the right decision to attribute more importance to Pro Ladder players placed between #40-200. Fighting for Top 200 would definetly be more encouraging and rewarding, having the opportunity to fight for a Gwent Challenger wild card.

Thanks for giving the community a chance to participate in your decisionmaking on the Wild card distribution.

 

[DeathhWisher]

1) let the skill do the talking

You can also make 1qualifier for home representative and 1 open as a mix aproach.

 

[TV_JayArr]

1) let the skill do the talking

[...]

Option 4 sounds like it will be the highest ranked local in the Pro Ladder. That is skill talking right there. Although I agree that a tournament is something different than the Pro Ladder.
2 different qualifiers for the GWENT Challenger in december would currently mean a 34-man qualifier for polish players only; And a 165-man qualifier for all other, with Lifecoach (#22) already being qualified through his GWENT Challenger win in may - and Shaggy (#344), alongside J0rah (#2230) not in the Top 200 for now. For the USA it would only be a 9-man qualifier at the moment.

 

[SrdjanB]

I applaud your decision to take this to community, actions like this one are why CDPR is so widely adored by gamers.

Now, call me old-fashioned but I prefer the best players to be determined by actually playing the game, so for me it is clear:

1. Organize an online qualifier for the top 200 players of the current Pro Ladder season (ending October 31st) who haven’t yet qualified for the upcoming Challenger

Hell I would even argue, the online qualifier for all Pro Ladder players would be the best, but I understand the logistics behind it and there is an argument to be made about it being unfair to the people who did really well by dedicated playing of Pro Ladder. Do think about it for the Open, as it is lower level of competition and less disruptive.

As number 4 I think is unfair to the superpowers of Gwent like Germany, Austria and Russia as they don't have Challengers.

 

[EazyR]

Option nº1 is the only that makes sense to me...

 

[partci]

In the latest Tear 2 podcast from today, Merchant and Co. are actually talking about the Pro Ladder and the problems with it. I have no will (or nerves, maybe the skills too) to go through the grind to get there, but what they are saying about the way to get to the top 8 and what it basically means most of the times (that the qualifiers are often the players that have the actual time to grind, that the system needs more like 1 week pre-qualifying rounds, etc.), makes a lot of sense and actually makes the now going system to look really flawed.

Other topic is why they kinda move away from it, which I found really interesting. It's totally constructive criticism though, so I advice you to check it out.

 

[SrdjanB]

In the latest Tear 2 podcast from today, Merchant and Co. are actually talking about the Pro Ladder and the problems with it. I have no will (or nerves, maybe the skills too) to go through the grind to get there, but what they are saying about the way to get to the top 8 and what it basically means most of the times (that the qualifiers are often the players that have the actual time to grind, that the system needs more like 1 week pre-qualifying rounds, etc.), makes a lot of sense and actually makes the now going system to look really flawed.

Other topic is why they kinda move away from it, which I found really interesting. It's totally constructive criticism though, so I advice you to check it out.

Yeah, Merchant is right, he is a guy who obviously put a lot of thought on the topic, so his arguments should be taken seriously.

I would say that they should forget the ELO and all that, flat points won or lost in each games, so player who has best win rate across 4 factions with over 100 games is undisputed #1 and so on.