EDIT#2: So good ideas were discussed but I want the debate to come to some form of community consensus as to what we think would be the best/most practical option for CDPR to use so I made a video compiling the major points I saw:
EDIT: I now realize that my use of the word "round" was misleading. I made a video to try and clarify what I meant:
So I love the first round of professional Gwent tournaments but not the second or third rounds and only recently discovered why that is the case. I'm not the first one to notice this problem and I would cite those who brought it up first if I could remember them. The main problem is that in the current system a winner can almost be determined before any matches if they guess what everyone else is going to be running. For example let's say in the next Gwent Open kolemoen thinks that everyone is going to be running 'Commander's Horn' decks so he runs 'Geralt: Yrden' in all of his decks, if he's right he will crush his way to the top but if he's wrong he's likely going to flop due to putting a mostly dead card in his decks. Now this is what is so exciting about the first round of professional Gwent tournaments, seeing who guessed the meta correctly and adapted for it but also what makes later rounds boring and predictable.
Now if deck editing was introduced between rounds everything suddenly becomes more exciting. Now if kolemoen guesses correctly with his 'Geralt: Yrden' and dominates the first round going into round two he is faced with a tough choice. His next opponent, let's say it's Freddybabes, knows he was running 'Geralt: Yrden' in all of his decks so he might switch up his strategy to counter him, but kolemoen knows that Freddybabes loves 'Commander's Horn' so he thinks Freddy might run it anyway hoping that kolemoen swaps off 'Geralt: Yrden,' so now there is a lot of tension where before there was a sense of inevitability. There is still room for good play to triumph but so much of playing Gwent is trying to predict the meta and account for it when deck building so I would love to see it more heavily incorporated into a professional scene I want to love from start to finish.
TLDR: Add deck editing/switching between tournament rounds to make rounds 2 and 3 more tension filled and less predictable.
EDIT: I now realize that my use of the word "round" was misleading. I made a video to try and clarify what I meant:
So I love the first round of professional Gwent tournaments but not the second or third rounds and only recently discovered why that is the case. I'm not the first one to notice this problem and I would cite those who brought it up first if I could remember them. The main problem is that in the current system a winner can almost be determined before any matches if they guess what everyone else is going to be running. For example let's say in the next Gwent Open kolemoen thinks that everyone is going to be running 'Commander's Horn' decks so he runs 'Geralt: Yrden' in all of his decks, if he's right he will crush his way to the top but if he's wrong he's likely going to flop due to putting a mostly dead card in his decks. Now this is what is so exciting about the first round of professional Gwent tournaments, seeing who guessed the meta correctly and adapted for it but also what makes later rounds boring and predictable.
Now if deck editing was introduced between rounds everything suddenly becomes more exciting. Now if kolemoen guesses correctly with his 'Geralt: Yrden' and dominates the first round going into round two he is faced with a tough choice. His next opponent, let's say it's Freddybabes, knows he was running 'Geralt: Yrden' in all of his decks so he might switch up his strategy to counter him, but kolemoen knows that Freddybabes loves 'Commander's Horn' so he thinks Freddy might run it anyway hoping that kolemoen swaps off 'Geralt: Yrden,' so now there is a lot of tension where before there was a sense of inevitability. There is still room for good play to triumph but so much of playing Gwent is trying to predict the meta and account for it when deck building so I would love to see it more heavily incorporated into a professional scene I want to love from start to finish.
TLDR: Add deck editing/switching between tournament rounds to make rounds 2 and 3 more tension filled and less predictable.
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