How would you make netdecking less impactful?

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Looking at the monthly posted leader play and win rates, it doesn't take more than one brain cell to notice, that the game is overrun by just a couple of meta netdecks for most of the times. However, even assuming that if you disagree with that statement, it's easily verifiable by simply playing the game. There are already tons of threads in this forum touching upon the netdecking, but for most of the times, the conclusion made there is that some cards are not balanced, and hence meta decks including those cards, are the problem, and the only way to solve it is to nerf the "faulty" cards. We all know, that the developers never haste with "fixing" the "broken" cards. Whatever the reason is (whether they think it's too early to "touch" them, or maybe they see no problem at all), the players will always be in this same situation, that there will be a sense of lack of balance. I think this is not "fixable" by any means, because people constantly try to find most efficient or optimal deck, that serves the purpose at the given state of the game.
So my thought is, since we're not actually able to root out the imbalance and netdecking exploitation, then maybe we could give some suggestions to make it less impactful. (not that I believe developers would give a damn about these suggestions, but let's still give it a shot)

Let's say you're one of those guys, that despises netdecking. You slam your fist on table screaming "Enough! I will show them!". You already know all the dirty tactics they utilize, and you start building your deck to counteract them. You brew your deck and full of spirit start playing. It goes really well, you beat the heck out of a couple netdecks. A thought comes to your mind "well done, the holy grail of anti-netdecking is now in my posession". And then you get smashed by netdeck #4 and realize, that there's no way your deck can deal with everything, and that sometimes you just need a sheer luck not to be matched up against this certain type of netdeck. Then you realize further, that the chances for having such luck are slim, because if thousands of people use the same limited number of netdecks, the probability of you facing the #4 again is significant.

So instead of counting on luck or prayers, maybe it would be better to give players some control over the matchmaking.
My thought is - why regular players can't have this similar way of banning certain deck, similarly to what players can do during Gwent tournaments?
This is my suggestion:
- a player needs to equip 3 decks,
- then, when the matchmaking happens, the coin flip would decide about the banning options (important to note, that the player, who decides to ban opponent's deck would only see the leader ability assigned to that deck, not the entire deck, like it's in tournaments).
1. if you are drawn with blue coin, you have an option to ban one opponent deck​
2. if you're drawn with blue coin, you have an option to ban two opponent decks, but banning the second deck means, that you resign from the Tactical Advantage, that you chose for your own deck​
3. if you're drawn with red coin, you can ban one or two opponent decks, but you will start with negative points for each banned deck​
These are just a couple of loose ideas, most likely they have their flaws, but that's why they are here for - to be discussed.
 
Just no.
Sorry for not developing arguments but to summarize, I'm convinced that any "ban deck" option will be far much worst than actual situation.
Just remind that a given leader ability does not necessarily hide the current top netdeck based on it...
You'll ban all players that creates homebrew decks and just make the mistake to chose the leader you think hide a netdeck... :cry:

And in addition, sometimes, I want to play a given deck (not necessarily the best..) because I like it, or to achieve a contract or personnal goal, and I would be very angry to not be able to play it for hours because other players think that it's a netdeck du to chosen leader ability! :mad:
 
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Just no.
Sorry for not developing arguments but to summarize, I'm convinced that any "ban deck" option will be far much worst than actual situation.
Just remind that a given leader ability does not necessarily hide the current top netdeck based on it...
Oh yes. Yes it does hide exactly that 99% of the times. Unfortunately. A year ago I'd say you are right, but not anymore. Powercreep has taken its toll. The most difference you see is a couple of replacements (like Savolla vs. Salamander), but it's not like these decks are actually different.
You'll ban all players that creates homebrew decks and just make the mistake to chose the leader you think hide a netdeck... :cry:

And in addition, sometimes, I want to play a given deck (not necessarily the best..) because I like it, or to achieve a contract or personnal goal, and I would be very angry to not be able to play it for hours because other players think that it's a netdeck du to chosen leader ability! :mad:
Won't happen. There's plenty of people who outright play metabreakers and looking to "punish" meta decks, so there's that.
 
So instead of counting on luck or prayers, maybe it would be better to give players some control over the matchmaking.
My thought is - why regular players can't have this similar way of banning certain deck, similarly to what players can do during Gwent tournaments?
This is my suggestion:
- a player needs to equip 3 decks,
- then, when the matchmaking happens, the coin flip would decide about the banning options
This is the first interesting (not outright imbalancing) deck banning idea I’ve seen. Although it has flaws (Molock7 pointed out some significant issues), I hope it might generate more creative approaches.

Trying to expand upon places where banning is known to work (tournaments) is a good start. My concern is that many beginning players may lack the card collection to field multiple decks. And open deck lists (like in tournaments) will only eliminate to off-meta “surprise” decks.

My thoughts, which I haven’t fully hashed out and which also have some serious drawbacks would be to allowing the banning of a small number of cards rather than decks. But there would need to be a mechanism for a player to replace banned cards without limiting match-making or slowing matches. And there would need to be a mechanism to avoid a player simply banning the best counters for his deck. I don’t know that is possible.
 
They are all awful problem being that those suggestions exacerbate the idea of winning before the game even starts. Now you can only hope that your deck counters the opponent, but if you can actually ban counters to your deck at slight disadvantage? But because it's closed deck list there is no consistency to what you're banning whatsoever - you have 0 way to know whether you just helped your case and just shot yourself in the leg by forfeiting point advantage. So it makes things worse in 2 ways and better in none.

Games should be decided as they are played not in main menu.
 
Trying to expand upon places where banning is known to work (tournaments) is a good start. My concern is that many beginning players may lack the card collection to field multiple decks. And open deck lists (like in tournaments) will only eliminate to off-meta “surprise” decks.

Lack of cards for beginning players is not a problem, I think. You can make multiple decks using the exact same cards, just different leader ability.
The decks would not be visible to the opponent, only the leader ability.
My thoughts, which I haven’t fully hashed out and which also have some serious drawbacks would be to allowing the banning of a small number of cards rather than decks. But there would need to be a mechanism for a player to replace banned cards without limiting match-making or slowing matches. And there would need to be a mechanism to avoid a player simply banning the best counters for his deck. I don’t know that is possible.

That's also an interesting idea and much more complex. I can imagine something like:
- players have a "ban pool" to use, e.g. 15 provision points, and they can ban any card(s), that fit into the pool. If they decide to not ban any card, they get some bonus points to their match
Banning individual cards however assumes, that you know what your opponent's deck looks like, unless there would be some blind shots, e.g. "ban card that is X provision", then you would not have 100% confidence, whether you banned the card that you thought you're banning.

They are all awful problem being that those suggestions exacerbate the idea of winning before the game even starts. Now you can only hope that your deck counters the opponent, but if you can actually ban counters to your deck at slight disadvantage? But because it's closed deck list there is no consistency to what you're banning whatsoever - you have 0 way to know whether you just helped your case and just shot yourself in the leg by forfeiting point advantage. So it makes things worse in 2 ways and better in none.

Games should be decided as they are played not in main menu.
It's a possibility, use it at your own risk, knowing you may profit or get hurt. Not an obligation whatsoever. A choice is always better than no choice.
 
It's a possibility, use it at your own risk, knowing you may profit or get hurt. Not an obligation whatsoever. A choice is always better than no choice.
Making that optional would mean nobody would use it. Otherwise my opponent still can use it on me, affecting what I want to play.
 
Making that optional would mean nobody would use it. Otherwise my opponent still can use it on me, affecting what I want to play.
I'm pretty sure many people actually would use it. Optional in the meaning you have this option always available during matchmaking and it's up to you whether you want to use it or not. And yes, that would affect what you would play if your opponent chooses to use it. For example, you skip this option bacause you're fine with whatever your opponent brought to the table, but your opponent is not fine with one of your decks and bans it at a price of losing TA or getting negative points (that's just an example, as there could be some other "compensation" mechanisms introduced).
 
Netdecks aren't a problem. Terrible balance is the reason why netdecks exist, because they are mathematically the best decks. If devs would just do some basic math and balance out the weak cards, then you wouldn't see the most powerful netdecks dominate everything.

Even if players were banned from sharing decks, you'd still see the same decks over and over again at top ranks (esp pro rank). Banning netdecks is a terrible band-aid solution to the very serious problem of horrible balance.
 
Netdecks aren't a problem. Terrible balance is the reason why netdecks exist, because they are mathematically the best decks. If devs would just do some basic math and balance out the weak cards, then you wouldn't see the most powerful netdecks dominate everything.

Even if players were banned from sharing decks, you'd still see the same decks over and over again at top ranks (esp pro rank). Banning netdecks is a terrible band-aid solution to the very serious problem of horrible balance.
You might have missed the point. It's not about banning deck sharing and netdecking.
And for balance part, as I already mentioned in the initial post, it's never going to happen. You will never have a perfect or satisfactory balance (CDPR convinced us to thinking this on numerous occassions), which means people will always compose superior decks and keep optimizing them and eventually the circle will be closed again with 3-4 decks overrunning the game.
 
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