Does the game only has SK one faction?

[eillinggel]

Does the game only has SK one faction?

So ridiculous,boring.I just want to play rank match,why everywhere is SK!!!!Can players use other factions in rank match?10 rank games,7 SK,2 Monster,0.6 NR,0.3 NG,0.1 ST.
I decide to give up gwent until next update.Dont want see SK here and there in rank match.Pathetic，No fun.Bring your werewolf and bear home,thanks.

 

[Jotun35]

Same here. And if these were interesting SK deck (like Kambi), I would be ok with it. But no. All auto-pilot frost/X-men/bear archetype or Morkvarg + wild boar BS.

Funny how so few people were playing the Morkvarg deck last patch and suddenly everyone and their moms are playing it now. Because weather is all over the place and CBH are dead, people have to relly on extremely boring play like "Put Morkvarg on the board, strengthen him like crazy and carry that over". CBH was actually interesting because it was requiring good set up, planning ahead and punishing frost spammers.

Most of my plays these days at 1900 MMR are against: X-men deck (boring), Morkvarg decks + wildboar (boring, although I've seen one player trying CBH but obviously he lost the game because of how CBH was butchered by the pacth), control Radovid (boring), Dagon fog/frost (the most interesting of the lot), consumme (and mind you, all the same unseen elder/arachas/harpy/nekker decks... it's just not fun to play against anymore because of how predictable they are) and sometimes to oddball Foltest deck that is actually fun to play against because you never really know what they have up their sleeve (blue stripes? light cavalry? who knows?).

I never thought I would say that, but I miss playing against NG (especially reveal decks, these are so fun to play against).

 

[Rammyp]

Before the patch SK were mostly QG and morkvarg, but since the bear was changed u almost don't see QG anymore. Personally i switched from QG to X-men deck since i have almost all the SK cards and its much more convenient to build a valid deck for ranked play.

I really wonder though what happen to all NG decks. I played about 50-60 ranked matches (around 2200-2400 MMR) since the patch, only 1-2 games against NG, they just vanished. I don't recall they were nerfed that hard after the patch.

 

[Iuliandrei]

I really wonder though what happen to all NG decks. I played about 50-60 ranked matches (around 2200-2400 MMR) since the patch, only 1-2 games against NG, they just vanished. I don't recall they were nerfed that hard after the patch.

They're all playing Crach en Craite now, NG was very powerful and this is why people played it, not because they liked the faction or found the spy archetype fun or anything. They just want a "victory" screen, how they achieve that is irrelevant.

 

[Ignotas]

I have three SK decks but I'm just terrible at managing my units so I play my ST decks instead

 

[DRK3]

I have been devoted to Skellige ever since it came out in Witcher 3, on the Blood & Wine expansion, and it was love at first sight. When Gwent CB came, i started with Crach, then moved on to Harald (that i played with for many months), then finally got to Bran. And so, i feel the need to defend my faction here.

So, i havent been playing for a few days, but now, for the 1st time its the most popular faction? Well, may i remind you at some point, most factions have had that "honor"? Monsters have been the 'go-to' faction to most beginners and players who want an easy and powerful faction for quite some time. Nilfgaard was (and still is?) accused of being OP ever since the Open Beta started. And i remember a certain unit of NR that everyone not using it hated it (me including) - PFI - and it was everywhere.

Scoiatel is the only faction that i dont recall ever being the most popular at any time, although it had some peaks with the elf chains, and now with the 'Spellatel' and Dwarves.

My point is - this is cyclical, and it's not so much the dev's fault, but where the playerbase choose to invest and explore en mass, then everyone learns to counter it, and everyone moves on to another tactic/ faction.

 

[jamai36]

SK was probably the most represented faction at the top of the ladder last patch - it has simply become worse as other factions had their heavy hitters nerfed.

Community perception didn't quite catch onto this fact though, and I think CDPR may have hinged their changes a little too much on community feedback.

Outside of that I think they just overestimated the importance of the Hunter on SK's power, which I think is a more fair mistake. When you take away a big part of the established archetype, it is hard to predict what kind of deck will fill its place. In this case a fairly different looking deck that is currently looking more and more like a special-heavy weather/axeman deck.

I think overall this patch should have been a great learning experience for CDPR.

 

[partci]

... NG was very powerful and this is why people played it, not because they liked the faction...

BS - NG is fun cause you (had) few more combinations up your sleeve, but after the nerf I struggle like hell in Ranked and win only barely on luck.

 

[pthieu1986]

Before patch, I see Dagon, Eithne, Calveit

After patch, Salvage Bear EVERYWHERE

 

[smergalaev]

That's happening because SK have 2 best bronze units in game - top1 savage bear(about 16+ str bronze ressurectable card) and top2 shieldmaiden(15str, 6 damage and pull 2 cards out of deck. Thats INSANE). They also synergize with each other.
Also very nice silver cards like Donar, Sigrdrifa, best mage in game Gremist and ofc Morkvarg
Also 20 str gold card without any downsides - Hjalmar.
Hands down its most powerfull faction right now.

 

[Restlessdingo32]

I have been devoted to Skellige ever since it came out in Witcher 3, on the Blood & Wine expansion, and it was love at first sight. When Gwent CB came, i started with Crach, then moved on to Harald (that i played with for many months), then finally got to Bran. And so, i feel the need to defend my faction here.

So, i havent been playing for a few days, but now, for the 1st time its the most popular faction? Well, may i remind you at some point, most factions have had that "honor"? Monsters have been the 'go-to' faction to most beginners and players who want an easy and powerful faction for quite some time. Nilfgaard was (and still is?) accused of being OP ever since the Open Beta started. And i remember a certain unit of NR that everyone not using it hated it (me including) - PFI - and it was everywhere.

Scoiatel is the only faction that i dont recall ever being the most popular at any time, although it had some peaks with the elf chains, and now with the 'Spellatel' and Dwarves.

My point is - this is cyclical, and it's not so much the dev's fault, but where the playerbase choose to invest and explore en mass, then everyone learns to counter it, and everyone moves on to another tactic/ faction.

What are you on? I want some.

Look, I can understand defending your faction. Unfortunately, players aren't rolling SK all over the place because it's the SK part of the cycle. Players are doing it because it can easily control the opponent side of the board and, while doing it, generate significant points on their own side. Furthermore, the way they can do so is repeatable for pretty much every round in a game. On top of that, they have access to ridiculous tempo options, some of which cannot be stopped without specific cards. NG was nerfed because they had close to the same ability, just in a slightly different form (NG was more due to control/tempo/thinning ability).

As much as I wish it wasn't the case, it feels like 75 percent of games are vs SK lately. Many of those are close to the same deck, with some slight variation in some cases. That is what we call a problem.

Now, all of this might change if every other faction starts running counter cards for cards like bear/axemen en masse. But you shouldn't need to run 3+ counters for one specific faction/deck. This is particularly true given the limited room to do so in certain decks already, and the fact a number of them are subpar vs a number of other decks.

 

[Crueldwarf]

Yeah, I kinda want an option to blind switch the deck after seeing the opponent faction/leader but it simply will create a switch loop or baiting by choosing different deck at the start.

 

[Laveley]

Above 2,5k mmr, yeah, everybody plays sk.

 

[4RM3D]

Patch XXX: 90% of my opponents are Henselt's Gold Towers
Patch YXZ: 90% of my opponents are Monster Consume
Patch ABC: 90% of my opponents are Nilfgaard Spies
Patch NOW: 90% of my opponents are Skellige bears

We can't have nice things in life, now can we?

 

[smergalaev]

Thats how all card game works. Netdeckers, netdeckers everywhere...

 

[frozensinx]

Same here. And if these were interesting SK deck (like Kambi), I would be ok with it. But no. All auto-pilot frost/X-men/bear archetype or Morkvarg + wild boar BS.

Funny how so few people were playing the Morkvarg deck last patch and suddenly everyone and their moms are playing it now. Because weather is all over the place and CBH are dead, people have to relly on extremely boring play like "Put Morkvarg on the board, strengthen him like crazy and carry that over". CBH was actually interesting because it was requiring good set up, planning ahead and punishing frost spammers.

Most of my plays these days at 1900 MMR are against: X-men deck (boring), Morkvarg decks + wildboar (boring, although I've seen one player trying CBH but obviously he lost the game because of how CBH was butchered by the pacth), control Radovid (boring), Dagon fog/frost (the most interesting of the lot), consumme (and mind you, all the same unseen elder/arachas/harpy/nekker decks... it's just not fun to play against anymore because of how predictable they are) and sometimes to oddball Foltest deck that is actually fun to play against because you never really know what they have up their sleeve (blue stripes? light cavalry? who knows?).

I never thought I would say that, but I miss playing against NG (especially reveal decks, these are so fun to play against).

How about queensguard decks? See many of those?

 

[Laveley]

How about queensguard decks? See many of those?

Qg's is nonexistent on higher elos.

Source: i'm 2,7 mmr now, but i was above 3k few days ago (which was top500)

 

[el_Bosco]

Patch XXX: 90% of my opponents are Henselt's Gold Towers
Patch YXZ: 90% of my opponents are Monster Consume
Patch ABC: 90% of my opponents are Nilfgaard Spies
Patch NOW: 90% of my opponents are Skellige bears

We can't have nice things in life, now can we?

Well its up to the devs to change that. But i'm starting to lose hope to see a well balanced gwent.

I'm starting to realized that Gwent can actually turn up to be always like this: an endless cycle of buffing-nerfing decks and that the meta will circle around 2-3 decks according to those buffs/nerfs.

 

[Laveley]

Well its up to the devs to change that. But i'm starting to lose hope to see a well balanced gwent.

I'm starting to realized that Gwent can actually turn up to be always like this: an endless cycle of buffing-nerfing decks and that the meta will circle around 2-3 decks according to those buffs/nerfs.

On the end of CB we had the most balanced patch we ever had on this game. Granted, there were certain archetypes on top (mainly consume and ST) and certain archetypes lacking (NG), but the difference wasnt that huge between them and the game was fairly well balanced (at least comparing it to now), with the need of only some tweaks.

Than OB hits and we have some radical changes and pretty much 6 months of balancing went down the toilet. So yeah, back to square one.

 

[Avetohol]

Sadly It seems gwent is falling in that black hole of games where constant rotation of x,y,z happens which is bad. Once people see something strong they all flock to it, probably because they don't care about lore and "liking" a faction but only winning.
I like SK and played them when they were not the top faction and all I wanted was balance, when everyone and their dog played NG or STspell.
Now it's SK everywhere and Dagon. Don't like it either, even if the faction that I like playing is strong, that's not the point. There must be variety or people will just abandon the game.
If it all goes down to 1 week this faction, next week (patch) the other, it's extremely boring and non-fun style of play.
And no, it's not about card games, it's about balancing and different options.
There are many things developers can do to prevent this mass movement from 1 faction to another.
1. Add A LOT of new cards with many various crossing effects to make it hard to just compose 1 deck that stomps them all.
2. Don't make significantly strong one sided cards that everyone would use or very weak that nobody would use. Gwent is full of dead cards atm that nobody uses and several super strong cards that everyone uses.
3. Make cards with surprising effects, that counter a lot of different things based on match development and player choice, no need for all cards to synergize within a faction, this leads to funneling and super-deck building, that everyone starts to use.
4. Add "loyalty" bonuses for players sticking mostly with a faction (through stronger or weaker times).
...
I guess many people can give many ideas and am sure the devs can come up with great ideas, but they need to act fast.
I kind of don't feel inclined to log in and play anymore, seeing all the same decks and cards and knowing how a game will go and just come down to the better draw one has, it's boring.
Even if they nerf bears, for example and bring down SK a notch, what next? NR next round? Monsters?
It's gonna be the same with a different color.