I strongly believe there is a place for forfeiture; but I also agree it is often abused. While people play a game so they can have fun, it needs to be recognized that the opponent also wants to have fun. Simple courtesy suggests one should not act to destroy an opponent’s fun. Something is definitely wrong if you are unable to have fun without destroying the enjoyment of others.
When someone forfeits after the initial card draw, because of a bad draw, I consider it poor sportsmanship. Bad draws are a part of the game — live with them. Even better, design a deck that can withstand a bad draw and enjoy the challenge.
If you don’t like my faction, at least give me the courtesy of seeing what I play — none of my decks are or ever will be the net decks you dislike.
If you are too impatient for the pace of the game, play something else!
And when you consider your situation hopeless, simply pass and let me decide whether there is reason to play out my cards. I assure you that I will be as efficient as possible.
So when is forfeiting appropriate? When you have been interrupted by life and cannot finish. Then courtesy suggests you should forfeit rather than making your opponent wait for time to expire.
Some things to consider.
1. Some factions have an inherent advantage over other factions. For example, monsters usually play on their own side of the board. NR runs a lot of damage of orders. In a ranked game the MO player is stuck. In a non ranked game one has the luxury of considering the odds and deciding if the chances of victory are worth their time. I would always FF to NR when using MO unless I had reason to believe I could compete (season of the bear last year is a good example.) The same is true for NG over NR. In fact, with uprising and HC both nerfed and NG not nerfed, the lock, poison, and high utility cards give NG an advantage over everyone.
2. My time is worth more to me than your enjoyment. I don’t mean to be rude, it is just how I see the game. If I have a hand missing all my key cards (happened a few times today,) then the best I can hope for is to tap dance in the round and make it to the next set of draws. Now I could wait, gamble with my time and hope my opponent doesn’t know how to take advantage or I can cut my losses and seek out a more competitive game. You might find it to be bad sportsmanship, but you get the win anyway. All you are missing out on is the opportunity to play a game against someone who cannot properly execute their strategy. If it is not fun for me I generally don’t see why I owe you my time in sticking around.
3. I think you underestimate how bored people get playing the same match over and over again. Just because you don’t run netdecks doesn’t mean you don’t run the same basic synergy as other NG players. The primary reason I auto forfeit NG is that I will get five NG matches before I get one ST or MO. SK is distant 3rd to NR and good luck finding an SY to play against in seasonal. Having left before SY debuted and coming back last month, the freshness of playing with and against SY is a major draw. I don’t feel that playing NG.
When you add these factors together you get a pretty straightforward reason to auto forfeit, especially when the game doesn’t do faction challenges, new content updates, any form of serious balancing updates, and no special events outside of one seasonal concept per month. They don’t even run puzzles anymore. It’s hard enough having fun playing gwent, it gets harder playing the same match over again with a sizeable handicap.