A lot has been said lately about the Balance Council, but this is such an important aspect for the future Gwent that warrants further discussion, and hopefully, agreement within the playerbase.
BC - SYMMETRY OR ASYMMETRY
As you may be aware, CDPR has already switched the BC system, so each bracket changes max per voting cycle went from 15 to 10, so overall, the total changes went from 60 to 40.
Also, they said this symmetry between brackets was built-in on the system itself, and could not be changed, which is very sad to know.
Gwent has over 1500 cards.
(Now im gonna throw PERSONAL estimates without data, they may be a bit off but the point behind them should be unquestionable.)
Lets say of that cardpool, 200 cards are meta. 300 are viable, but not really used much. That leaves around a 1000 that are either unplayable or near-playable with a small buff.
This is nothing new, and everyone knows and agrees there's a lot more cards that need buffs than the ones that need nerfs. If the goal of the BALANCE council is to attain BALANCE, it will be quite hard to do without asymmetry in the system, to be able to buff more of the worst cards in Gwent.
BC - WASTED VOTES
The lack of coordination between voters leads to some issues. One of them are "wasted votes":
For artefacts, specials and leader abilities, this is not a problem, but for units - which the majority of Gwent cards are - the fact that there's two ways of buffing or nerfing (points or provisions) leads to division of the votes in two different brackets if there's no coordination between voters, even when both groups want the same thing.
Because of how the system is designed, only one of those changes will be applied - a card cant have more than a single change in a cycle (which is probably for the best). But this can lead to situations where a card isnt changed because its votes are distributed in two different brackets.
BC - SNEAKY BUFFS
The results of the 1st voting cycle are in, and due to the proportions i mentioned in the 1st segment, the nerfs were almost all predictable, and reasonable (at least individually), while the buffs held a few (bad) surprises.
Regarding the nerfs - everyone knows the meta (it hasnt changed much in the past 3 months), what is obviously overtuned, and there almost doesnt need to be coordination to be agreement.
On the other hand, im willing to bet the votes for the buffs were way more spread out, and that's where coordination is necessary.
And that's also why some sneaky buffs that were undeserved were able to slide in. Im talking about those cards that were not bad by any means, even seen quite often in the meta and somehow still got buffed.
This is terrible proof that some players arent interested in balancing, and want to keep the status quo of a small, well-defined meta of OP cards, even if those rotate from time to time, rather than destroy that whole structure.
BC - NEGLIGENCE OF SMALLER CARDS
This is a problem i hope doesnt linger for other voting cycles.
In the first set of changes, of the 30 buffs, only 5 went to bronze cards. And some of those werent even deserved (i expect them to be reverted soon).
@quintivarium made a recent post on another BC thread regarding short and long term voting equilibrium and he's absolutely right: from these first results, the focus was clearly on the short term, which is acceptable in the beginning, but its time to start thinking and coordinating on the forgotten bronzes that need attention and many of us asked for that for years, and now the community itself can fix that.
BC - SYMMETRY OR ASYMMETRY
As you may be aware, CDPR has already switched the BC system, so each bracket changes max per voting cycle went from 15 to 10, so overall, the total changes went from 60 to 40.
Also, they said this symmetry between brackets was built-in on the system itself, and could not be changed, which is very sad to know.
Gwent has over 1500 cards.
(Now im gonna throw PERSONAL estimates without data, they may be a bit off but the point behind them should be unquestionable.)
Lets say of that cardpool, 200 cards are meta. 300 are viable, but not really used much. That leaves around a 1000 that are either unplayable or near-playable with a small buff.
This is nothing new, and everyone knows and agrees there's a lot more cards that need buffs than the ones that need nerfs. If the goal of the BALANCE council is to attain BALANCE, it will be quite hard to do without asymmetry in the system, to be able to buff more of the worst cards in Gwent.
BC - WASTED VOTES
The lack of coordination between voters leads to some issues. One of them are "wasted votes":
For artefacts, specials and leader abilities, this is not a problem, but for units - which the majority of Gwent cards are - the fact that there's two ways of buffing or nerfing (points or provisions) leads to division of the votes in two different brackets if there's no coordination between voters, even when both groups want the same thing.
Because of how the system is designed, only one of those changes will be applied - a card cant have more than a single change in a cycle (which is probably for the best). But this can lead to situations where a card isnt changed because its votes are distributed in two different brackets.
BC - SNEAKY BUFFS
The results of the 1st voting cycle are in, and due to the proportions i mentioned in the 1st segment, the nerfs were almost all predictable, and reasonable (at least individually), while the buffs held a few (bad) surprises.
Regarding the nerfs - everyone knows the meta (it hasnt changed much in the past 3 months), what is obviously overtuned, and there almost doesnt need to be coordination to be agreement.
On the other hand, im willing to bet the votes for the buffs were way more spread out, and that's where coordination is necessary.
And that's also why some sneaky buffs that were undeserved were able to slide in. Im talking about those cards that were not bad by any means, even seen quite often in the meta and somehow still got buffed.
This is terrible proof that some players arent interested in balancing, and want to keep the status quo of a small, well-defined meta of OP cards, even if those rotate from time to time, rather than destroy that whole structure.
BC - NEGLIGENCE OF SMALLER CARDS
This is a problem i hope doesnt linger for other voting cycles.
In the first set of changes, of the 30 buffs, only 5 went to bronze cards. And some of those werent even deserved (i expect them to be reverted soon).
@quintivarium made a recent post on another BC thread regarding short and long term voting equilibrium and he's absolutely right: from these first results, the focus was clearly on the short term, which is acceptable in the beginning, but its time to start thinking and coordinating on the forgotten bronzes that need attention and many of us asked for that for years, and now the community itself can fix that.
