A simple fix to toxic decks plagueing casual mode

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For a new player ( and for not so new too ) casual mode simply stopped being a test decks/ideas and became a netdeck grindfest. I get it, many people play to win even at the cost of playing brainded and unfun decks. While the state of the game can - and should - be at fault for this, I think this was aggravated by the journey pushing people to mindlessly grind just to farm crown. This problem should've have been addressed way earlier but I think that the solution was simple: instead of getting crowns solely based on wins, people should just get crowns ( for journey only ) from just playing. That should've been encouraged by simple methods like: x crowns for playing x number/types/faction related unit, 2 crowns for every game played and so on. So yeah, this suggestion may be useless right now because the journey is ending but could be applied to the next one to avoid its mutation into a funless grindfest.
 
That's actually a pretty good idea. It would have to be done in form of reroll-able, repeat-able, non-abuse-abke quests, but it has some potential.
 
Yeah but then if winning has no bonus effect then those annoying people will just pass or surrender. Just to get some points for participating. I don't think it's so bad atm...
 
Yeah but then if winning has no bonus effect then those annoying people will just pass or surrender. Just to get some points for participating. I don't think it's so bad atm...

Then they will not have fun if they just pass or surrender.
Also, it is. I tested with a new account, rank 25, tutorial decks and both ranked and casual matched me against meta decks, probably people who bought kegs and got lucky with the drops.
If the rate at which a player can gain resources were not so abysmal you could at least lose many games and still hoard some scraps and ore to craft a viable eventually but atm this is not the case. In fact I wonder how some people claim that one could get 5000-7000 scraps per week just by playing.
 

DRK3

Forum veteran
Metadecks in casual is nothing new, it already existed before Journey, except now those players have a (somewhat valid) excuse to justify their netdecking in casual: "oh i dont have much time to play but i need wins to crowns for Journey." (even when its not true at all)

@OuterSpaceDoggo Regarding the amount of scraps per week, its all dependent on how much you play, but to get 5000-7000 amount, i would suspect its a mid-high level player who has full or almost full collection and most cards obtained from kegs are milled.
 
Metadecks in casual is nothing new, it already existed before Journey, except now those players have a (somewhat valid) excuse to justify their netdecking in casual: "oh i dont have much time to play but i need wins to crowns for Journey." (even when its not true at all)

@OuterSpaceDoggo Regarding the amount of scraps per week, its all dependent on how much you play, but to get 5000-7000 amount, i would suspect its a mid-high level player who has full or almost full collection and most cards obtained from kegs are milled.

Even then ( i am prestige 4 ) the amount of games required would be insane.
 
usually i start to play casual with fun/non meta decks.

So i face a lot of meta decks and i start to play meta too.

Its really boring, i know, but lose all the time its boring too, specially if is against meta decks. Like i said in another topic, if everyone understand you cant win all the time and try to appreciate the game, than maybe we will see less meta in unranked and more cool decks.
 
usually i start to play casual with fun/non meta decks.

So i face a lot of meta decks and i start to play meta too.

Its really boring, i know, but lose all the time its boring too, specially if is against meta decks. Like i said in another topic, if everyone understand you cant win all the time and try to appreciate the game, than maybe we will see less meta in unranked and more cool decks.

Winning is not the point. The point is that the game should rewards both the winner and the loser ( of course the winner should be rewarded more ). Right now the loser can only hope to get a GG and get few scraps or ores while you should be rewarded even for just playing.
 
Hope the next journey awards are just keys and not cosmetics. Really no other reason to grind other than then the red kimono
 
Winning is not the point. The point is that the game should rewards both the winner and the loser ( of course the winner should be rewarded more ). Right now the loser can only hope to get a GG and get few scraps or ores while you should be rewarded even for just playing.

I'll be frank with ya, i agree with what you're saying but, i have only so much time in a day and CDPR "told me" (in a way) :

"Too bad you wanna have fun experimenting and trying interesting and cool decks, from this point on for the next 3 months you will be grinding, so bring your best. No time to play for fun and waste time, sorry, if you "no like" better luck next time"

Since this journey started i had time to only do the daily bonus, ofc I created some decks of my own to have fun but I've been using meta decks most of the time to be more efficient with the grind.

Last journey was way more fun, I'm kindah burned out atm, i might not buy into the next one if they do this again.

PS. Haven't used SK or NR meta, I hate em...
 
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I'll be frank, i agree with what you're saying but, i have only so much time in a day and CDPR "told me" (in a way) :

"Too bad you wanna have fun experimenting and trying interesting and cool decks, from this point on for the next 3 months you will be grinding, so bring your best. No time to play for fun and waste time, sorry, if you "no like" better luck next time"

Since this journey started i had time to only do the daily bonus, ofc I created some decks of my own to have fun but I've been using meta decks most of the time to be more efficient with the grind.

Last journey was way more fun, I'm kindah burned out atm, i might not buy into the next one if they do this again.

PS. Haven't used SK or NR meta, I hate em...

I feel you man, still level 145 and the burnout is going strong. I think the posts are pointing out one fact though, new players are going to have a tough time if things remain this way and If a new player sees that he/she can't play whatever he wants ( which at the start is just a choice between tutorial decks ) and racks up resources reasonably fast he will move to another card game.
 
I disagree with the op for the following reasons.

- "people should just get crowns ( for journey only ) from just playing."

Personally I would like to see you have to win a whole match to get a crown. I discussed this point in this thread.


Basically the trick there would be play one card pass 2nd round play one card pass.

- Fun is subjective - If someone has "Fun" playing what is considered a top deck that has has much right que as much as any others.

- Personally I loved putting counter burn deck in MTGA where the win condition was the person concedes. I have tried similar decks in here with great satisfaction of seeing the player has forfeit

- as for other players finding a deck like mine "unfun" - this is my favorite quote ever

[...]
 
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I feel you man, still level 145 and the burnout is going strong. I think the posts are pointing out one fact though, new players are going to have a tough time if things remain this way and If a new player sees that he/she can't play whatever he wants ( which at the start is just a choice between tutorial decks ) and racks up resources reasonably fast he will move to another card game.

I believe that most of the playerbase of gwent comes from the "main" games of this great franchise.

Imo the majority of people that play the main games up to this day "fall in love" with this universe, I don't think that it's gonna be as easy as that for them to quit and move to another card game because In my eyes (my opinion)
this is not "just another card game"; Having all that in mind I agree with you that this game can be hard on it's new players but I my self have introduced 3 people (refer a friend) to this game, two of them haven't played any of the Witcher games and they find it fun and generous cause it has a good system in terms of rewards for new players.
You can make a good deck if you wisely invest your resources, then you build up from there.

I disagree with the op for the following reasons.

- "people should just get crowns ( for journey only ) from just playing."

Personally I would like to see you have to win a whole match to get a crown. I discussed this point in this thread.


Basically the trick there would be play one card pass 2nd round play one card pass.

- Fun is subjective - If someone has "Fun" playing what is considered a top deck that has has much right que as much as any others.

- Personally I loved putting counter burn deck in MTGA where the win condition was the person concedes. I have tried similar decks in here with great satisfaction of seeing the player has forfeit

- as for other players finding a deck like mine "unfun" - this is my favorite quote ever

[...]

- This one thing we can agree on, people have the right to play whatever they like indeed.

- Getting nothing out the game when losing is bad imo because this game is not only skill based, it has RnG in it and that can be considered a huge time waste, it might put off a lot of people that like to experiment playing anything other than meta.

- So you basically take pleasure in ruining other people's fun, I can see the appeal even though I don't like it nor condone it.

- It's funny (interesting) when your "favorite quote ever" has to be edited out. :coolstory:

Cheers ! :beer:
 
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It now seems clear that the problem with lazy people ruining Casual mode was not the insane grind in the Ciri Journey because that's in the past, and almost everyone is still copying top tier meta decks to play in Casual mode.

Seriously, this is getting ridiculous. I just played six games, and four of my opponents were using an entirely unoriginal Tier 1/2 meta deck, literally card for card. It's getting to the point where I feel like immediately forfeiting against them, but then I feel like I'm rewarding them.

I want to play different/unique decks, but I don't want to lose practically every game either. Draft is still a hot mess and I don't care for the current Seasonal mode, so if there is absolutely no difference between Ranked and Casual, I guess I should just quit playing until Way of the Witcher is released, when there will at least be a couple of weeks when deckbuilding is actually relevant. If anyone has an alternative, I'm all ears.
 
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It now seems clear that the problem with lazy people ruining Casual mode was not the insane grind in the Ciri Journey because that's in the past, and almost everyone is still copying top tier meta decks to play in Casual mode.

Seriously, this is getting ridiculous. I just played six games, and four of my opponents were using an entirely unoriginal Tier 1/2 meta deck, literally card for card. It's getting to the point where I feel like immediately forfeiting against them, but then I feel like I'm rewarding them [...].

I want to play different/unique decks, but I don't want to lose practically every game either. Draft is still a hot mess and I don't care for the current Seasonal mode, so if there is absolutely no difference between Ranked and Casual, I guess I should just quit playing until Way of the Witcher is released, when there will at least be a couple of weeks when deckbuilding is actually relevant. If anyone has an alternative, I'm all ears.

There's no solution and there won't be until the playerbase remains like this. I try to always defend this game but lately some things are really getting on my nerves. Both ranked and casual matches are either MO OH or NR revenant, sometimes you get ST ( shirru, gord with both symbiosis or strong control, choose your pain ). NG and SY seems to have disappeared from this game because maybe they both require brain.
Draft is not a complete mess as some describes but lately i'vee been encountering the same decks over and over again so I guess people are actually that dumb to redraft until they get a busted deck not knowing that after 7 games the draft end anyways.
Even quitting won't save you ahah, because then new decks will come and you will simply encounter a new form of toxic decks. My alternative? If you have friends to play and don't need to get resources anymore just play with them and experiment with different decks. If you don't, just play whatever you like without caring about losing or winning, you will eventually win some rounds here and there. Netdecking is a plague and one that simply slowly destroy the game ( and every other card game for that ) because it actually promotes powercreep with new cards because they will need somehow to replace the old ones.
Not even closing the deck database will be a solution because then people will simply copy them from the streamers ahah.
So, yeah, just hope for a really, really big overhaul and balance patch coming or be prepared to face the same decks or worse.
 
There's no solution and there won't be until the playerbase remains like this. I try to always defend this game but lately some things are really getting on my nerves. Both ranked and casual matches are either MO OH or NR revenant, sometimes you get ST ( shirru, gord with both symbiosis or strong control, choose your pain ). NG and SY seems to have disappeared from this game because maybe they both require brain.
Draft is not a complete mess as some describes but lately i'vee been encountering the same decks over and over again so I guess people are actually that dumb to redraft until they get a busted deck not knowing that after 7 games the draft end anyways.
Even quitting won't save you ahah, because then new decks will come and you will simply encounter a new form of toxic decks. My alternative? If you have friends to play and don't need to get resources anymore just play with them and experiment with different decks. If you don't, just play whatever you like without caring about losing or winning, you will eventually win some rounds here and there. Netdecking is a plague and one that simply slowly destroy the game ( and every other card game for that ) because it actually promotes powercreep with new cards because they will need somehow to replace the old ones.
Not even closing the deck database will be a solution because then people will simply copy them from the streamers ahah.
So, yeah, just hope for a really, really big overhaul and balance patch coming or be prepared to face the same decks or worse.
Thanks for your response; although, I now realize that I became overly upset last night because Harmony, the archetype I was trying to make work, is completely unplayable against any meta deck, alongside other dead archetypes, such as Bandits/Bombs, Pirates, Traps, and Witchers (might finally be in a decent state next month). I was under the mistaken impression that Harmony was only mediocre and not bad because it seems to have a lot of support, but most of that is overpriced when compared with the rest of the cards in the game; plus, it's all very fragile.

Anyway, I still think it's ridiculous that 2/3 of the people on Casual don't know how to build their own decks (and yes that number seems fairly accurate after playing many more matches after posting this last night), most deck concepts have the potential to at least occasionally win against meta decks if piloted well. I just happened to stumble across one of the few that can't. In summary, good/meta decks can generally win against any other deck, mediocre decks (like Organics, Dwarves, NG Soldiers, etc.) can sometimes win against good/meta decks and will often win against everything else, and bad decks (like Harmony, Pirates, Traps, etc.) can sometimes win against mediocre decks but will most assuredly lose to good/meta decks, barring some sort of miracle.
 
Thanks for your response; although, I now realize that I became overly upset last night because Harmony, the archetype I was trying to make work, is completely unplayable against any meta deck, alongside other dead archetypes, such as Bandits/Bombs, Pirates, Traps, and Witchers (might finally be in a decent state next month). I was under the mistaken impression that Harmony was only mediocre and not bad because it seems to have a lot of support, but most of that is overpriced when compared with the rest of the cards in the game; plus, it's all very fragile.

Anyway, I still think it's ridiculous that 2/3 of the people on Casual don't know how to build their own decks (and yes that number seems fairly accurate after playing many more matches after posting this last night), most deck concepts have the potential to at least occasionally win against meta decks if piloted well. I just happened to stumble across one of the few that can't. In summary, good/meta decks can generally win against any other deck, mediocre decks (like Organics, Dwarves, NG Soldiers, etc.) can sometimes win against good/meta decks and will often win against everything else, and bad decks (like Harmony, Pirates, Traps, etc.) can sometimes win against mediocre decks but will most assuredly lose to good/meta decks, barring some sort of miracle.

I am using a pirate SK deck that is doing very well ( in casual at least ) and a Trap deck/ elf control hybrid that works too, even seen a variant of it with Aglais ahah. The rest is pretty tricky, but you could play organic trolling the opponent by filling is lane with rats or swarming.
 
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