The 'Price of Power' expansion of Gwent was the first to follow a different structure, and be divided in 3 sub-expansions.
These sub-exp. were released in the span of 4 months, each containing 26 cards, which sums to a total of 78 cards.
This system started garnering criticisms by the release of PoP part 2, but those have increased up until now, that the 3rd and final part was released. The results of Lion-hart's poll on this subject show that the general feeling of the playerbase is that this system didnt work well, and despite being evasive, the devs acknowledged this feedback and hinted they will change it in the future.
I always had a different view - even though i agree this expansion didnt work well and brought up a lot of new problems, adding to the usual ones with every expansion, i think the issue wasnt the format. I believe the format could work, as long as it's better executed.
And now, the different angle i promised:
GWENT EXPANSIONS - NEW CARD NUMBER:
(its possible the numbers are a little bit off due to tokens and small exceptions)
Crimson Curse - 103 cards
Novigrad - 90 cards
Iron Judgment - 81 cards
Merchants of Ofir - 70 cards
Master Mirror - 71 cards
Way of the Witcher - 71 cards
Price of Power - 78 cards
As you can see above, the PoP expansion had just a slightly bigger cardpool than the 3 previous expansions, but still smaller than the first 3 expansions.
I think that's the problem - if you're going to make an expansion, divided into 3 sub-sets, then it needs to be HUGE, so that each sub-set may be smaller than the previous individual expansions, but all sub-sets combined makes it much bigger than any of the other expansions.
I think the cardpool of PoP overall, should have been 120-150 cards (so 40-50 cards each sub-set).
Getting more than 2 different bronzes for each faction would make a huge difference, increasing diversity, possibly even supporting different archetypes and playstyles, and hopefully powercreep wouldnt have been shoved so hard down our throats, in a cheap attempt to give impact to the new cards.
Also, this symmetry probably hindered their success: all sub-sets following a rigid structure of 26 cards, 4 cards of different rarities for each faction plus 2 neutrals. It would be more organic if on some sub-sets some factions got more focused while others less, as long as overall they balanced each other out.
BE REALISTIC, NOW
To be fair, the complexity of cards on PoP is much higher than in the first expansions, the complexity has been increasing successively, which is a positive, but designing more complex cards is definitely harder, hence the corresponding decrease in the expansions cardpool.
And know im asking a lot. Probably too much.
Lion-hart when doing his poll explained that the different options he gave, were all under the conditions that the dev teams resources were limited, so the total number of cards we would get would be the same in all of the options (every 2,3,4 or 6 months).
Well, i dont accept that limit. The fault is probably not on the developers, but on CDPR itself and the higher-ups who underfund Gwent and yet expect great results and revenue from it. And i dont believe in magic - no matter how many systems and innovations the Gwent team tries, the game wont come close to its potential (as in, compete with the biggest CCGs out there) if it doesnt have the resources it should have.
If this came from a small indie company, i would obviously be more tolerant, but not when CDPR made record-shattering results in the past years, and even after Cyberpunk's backlash, it still got amazing financial results - and of course, it wouldnt be necessary to fully invest those profits in Gwent to significantly improve it, but definitely more than it gets now, where the most perceptive playerbase can see through the cracks and see something isnt right.
