Courtesy, Casual, and Factions

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I consider casual play (unranked) to be for those who want to play standard Gwent without the pressure of ranked success. I play it almost exclusively except to end a season at rank 14 for the rewards, or when the game obnoxiously resets me to ranked play and I forget to change it. To me, unranked should be a fun place for people trying new factions or cards, people playing homebrew decks, those trying to complete Gwent’s quests with suboptimal cards, those with limited card collections who have risen to a rank beyond which they can be competitive, etc. These players still often want or need to earn crowns or have a chance to fill “win rounds” type quest conditions.

Thus I consider it very discourteous to play polished net-decks and especially decks designed to 2-0 an opponent in unranked. I recognize there is no way to enforce this courtesy; I cannot really tell the difference between a net-decker exploiting the mode for quick rewards and an experimenter trying a new faction or a subtle new modification of a familiar deck. About all I can do is to ask players to respect the spirit of the mode. And most players do.

However since the expansion, I have been increasingly annoyed by the playing of Viy decks on casual. I consider a broken, binary deck like Viy to be the worst possible abuse of unranked mode. Normally, I automatically give good games — if only to express appreciation for my opponent playing. (To me, that is also just courtesy.) I also always play at least one card so my opponent can advance in quests, and I only forfeit if interrupted and I cannot finish, although I will pass if the game or matchup is hopeless.

Out of frustration with casual mode Viy players, I now immediately forfeit the instant Viy is played in unranked — hoping to make the game a little less fun for such an opponent. And I don’t give GG’s unless my opponent gives me one first.

Then I noticed something interesting — monster players almost always give good games! This contrasts with NG players who seem to frequently not give good games. Has anyone else noticed this, or am I suffering confirmation bias? And if so, do you think it is related to curmudgeons who refuse to GG an entire faction (usually NG or SK) regardless of the opposing player’s deck?
 
It's kinda funny because you almost don't see any viy decks on top tiers of ranked and the pro ladder. I encountered a couple of them right in the beginnig of the season of the wolf, also a few in the begining of the wild hunt seasons. As far as i see almost all Vyi deck players that i encountered were relatively fresh players, with 200-400 victories overall that already got to pro. Their card collection numbers state that they scrapped pretty much everything they had just to get one faction 2/3 complete, and unsurprisingly its monsters with Vyi.

My guess is that since the deck is quite counterable they get frustrated when they do reach pro and turn to the other option, casual, but since they got pretty much everything scraped they keep playing the only archetype that they have. By the time Vyi will get nerfed they will just scrap whatever they need in order to get the next netdeck and so on and so forth.

I have no problem with netdecking in general but from my prospective scraping everything you have to get 1-2 decks in order to rise quickly to pro both beats the point of CCG being Collecting card game and preventing the player to actually learn the cards/combos.
 
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I agree with you in principle, but instantly forfeiting really just encourages them to continue with that behavior (2 free Crowns for no work).

I'm not 100% convinced bringing a fairly optimized deck into Casual is inherently bad though as long as you have some self awareness. If you see some crazy shenanigans or "Cardsmith" for their title (the default all new players have) followed by bizarre play, you really should try giving the opponent a round. Sometimes players are strapped for time, so taking a better deck into Casual helps them get their Daily Crowns a little faster. I find it hard to judge a player for that tbh. Even if I'm trying out a nonsense deck or spamming certain cards for a quest in Casual, I try making it viable enough to get a round against solid decks just in case.

I think playing Mill in Casual is far more egregious. I've had games where I've won against a Mill player 2-0 and gotten zero quest progression because they milled all of my special/artifact/neutral cards. Talk about a Pyrrhic victory. It's the only thing you can do in this game to actively hold back other players' accounts beyond the match you're playing.
 
Then I noticed something interesting — monster players almost always give good games! This contrasts with NG players who seem to frequently not give good games. Has anyone else noticed this, or am I suffering confirmation bias? And if so, do you think it is related to curmudgeons who refuse to GG an entire faction (usually NG or SK) regardless of the opposing player’s deck?

Why do you want GGs? This seems an extension of CDPR's gambling techniques used in the game. I.e. if you GG thousands of time, you get a little reward each time which amounts to something more in totality.

Frankly I'm sick of it and I would welcome it being removed as option. Better yet, have the damned game automatically do this for you and give you the damned reward without you having to do a damned thing.

Enough with this gameification of GGs!

I do GG people. I used to GG ironically if someone forfeited before playing a card in a round one. When I win, that's an automatic GG from me.

Sometimes I reluctantly GG because the score was closeish, even though I was never in the match.

If you spank me, why on Earth should I GG you? If you spank me and send me a GG...why on Earth should I GG you? I might though. Depends on my mood.
 
I consider that you have a personal opinion about how desirably should unranked be, but it is just your perspective. Before climbing to pro I always test a deck in unranked (usually tier1/tier2 netdeck with few changes adapted to my style), until I am pretty familiarized with some of the most usual matchups. For me it's a place for real train since bots are totally dumb. So that's why some people play netdecks there, we want to know really well the deck before going to ranked.
In any case I've to point out that in the rare case someone is new to the game or is doing some quest like playing only bronces, I usually conceed unless they show traitorous behaviour.
All in all it would be interesting if they added some meme-decks mode where netdecks are not allowed. But nor gonna happen I guess.
 
Has anyone else noticed this, or am I suffering confirmation bias? And if so, do you think it is related to curmudgeons who refuse to GG an entire faction (usually NG or SK) regardless of the opposing player’s deck?

I have noticed the NG part for sure. Even if I am running a weird NG gimmick (this happened earlier today) and lose, the other NG player played in an optimized way and then no-gg.

I disabled emotes a long time ago, but they were also the players that spammed "hurry up" 20 times per turn. Any time someone did that I would drag the turns out in response. People need to learn to be pleasant. Its a game.
 
I disabled emotes a long time ago, but they were also the players that spammed "hurry up" 20 times per turn. Any time someone did that I would drag the turns out in response. People need to learn to be pleasant. Its a game.

It's good when people take the hint about annoying taunts, like "hurry up" when you reciprocate. Even more annoying is that Ske "Ha". Switching off my speakers or muting opponents who overuse that is good. Can your opponent tell if you are muting them?
 
He can't see if you've muted him or not. He can only see you not responding to him, as if he doesn't exist, which is the best answer to annoying people lol.
 
He can't see if you've muted him or not. He can only see you not responding to him, as if he doesn't exist, which is the best answer to annoying people lol.
Isn't the red cross in their chat box indicative if they have taunts enabled or muted?
 
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