I'm done. I have said it before, but I took Gwent off my iPhone about a week ago and haven't reinstalled it. Tonight, after another sickeningly poor bunch of match-ups, crap deals and repeatedly playing against the same tiresome crap I've decided to call it a day. I've uninstalled before out of rage, but now I'm just utterly, utterly bored by this game. It's turgid rubbish. I've uninstalled out of complete apathy.
Very much a fan of CDPR and hope Cyberpunk lives up to expectation. But this? It's tired, unejoyable trash. The matchup algorithm is an utter disaster, the netdecks-on-repeat have killed any enjoyment. You can't "mess around" with decks, you just get beat, repeatedly, by the same cards, the same matchups, the same combo's.
It really is an absolute shambles. One year on and it's still considerably worse than Gwent Beta, and it's absolutely never going to get better. Dreadful borefest.
I remember when Homecoming launched, you were constantly complaining on the forums.
I personally took a break (not from complaints, but from HC experience) for almost a year and returned to the game a few weeks ago, but what do I see? The same nedders saying the millionth time he's done with the game. Mate, you really should take a break!
But I have to agree with you: even after the past year Gwent is far from being at least half as good as the beta was.
While they are adding cards (a major part of those are old cards from beta, as you know), but still fail to solve this immensely huge problem that Gwent always had: you simply cannot win with meme decks / fun cards / experimenting with various mechanics, because Gwent is all about points.
Heck, even with all the new mechanics introduced into the game, good old point slam monsters thrive deck is still very strong, although it got only 3 cards in the expansions (Yghern, Endrega Larva and that 10 points troll).
And on top of that, the game practically forces you to win! Half the dailies and all daily crown progress demand only one thing: win as much as possible, because it maximizes the rewards.
Of course people will play the strongest decks to progress.
This can be partially fixed by introducing new game modes (more limited formats with various restrictions or draft). Partially by rotating cards in ranked (something that MtG invented ages ago when they understood the game power creeps with each new expansion, and something that Hearthstone uses for both balancing and monetization). Partially by reworking the way you receive rewards (mostly daily crowns) in the game: again, something other CCG do really well.
Even the most simple things like limiting deck provision cost would refresh the game.
Bottom line, and I hope to be wrong, but I think Gwent is never going to be popular, because the developers decided to add more content instead of fixing core game's problems.