Gwent's Problems (All of Them)

[DRK3]

Note: i planned on adding this to my gwent retrospective thread. But since nobody commented, it would just get attached to the other post and the thread wouldnt get bumped. Im sorry but i didnt spend hours thinking and writing this for it to be never read. Even if it's just a few who have the patience to do it, it'll be worth it. If you do read, please do comment and share your opinion, i appreciate it even if you disagree on everything.

Part 1 - https://forums.cdprojektred.com/index.php?threads/gwent-2019-a-year-in-retrospective.11018987/

Sorry for this giant text, it's probably my biggest on this forum.

Part 2 - Personal Take

Important note: i will make some very harsh criticisms now, that might make it seem like i hate CDPR and Gwent. That is incorrect, i love this developer, for what they did with Witcher 3 and Gwent Betas, and i just want them to improve this game in every way, while still making it profitable and sustainable for them.

Communication
I think this one is easy to solve. Establish a closer connection with the playerbase, like they promised in the beginning of HC. Making dev streams is nice, but not enough. The ask a dev thread goes unanswered for several days, sometimes weeks (maybe make more devs answer, not just Burza?). I barely see any dev presence, both here and on Gwent Reddit (am i missing some secret place? Twitter?). We rarely get information on what they're working on and when there's big problems, what they're doing to fix it. I get it, the fans arent always right and sometimes you think its better to do something your way, but i would rather you answered the requests and justify why you're not implementing them instead of just ignoring them.

And this maybe is just me, but it's incredibly frustrating seeing the devs on stream always so positive and never really opening up about the issues they're having and the game has, i think it's a PR/psychological tactic and i feel like you're not being honest with us, i would prefer you kept no secrets. Finally, a lot of focus on QoL, UI, aesthetics this past year, which is important to captivate new players. But guess what? Its not those players that are watching the stream, it's the fixed playerbase, that want to know about gameplay and balance instead.

Control
I've complained and whined about this a lot, and so did many others, but the devs just ignore it. Gwent in HC is very arithmetic, lots of damages and buffs. And usually they cost the same, which is the problem. The risk of playing buffs and big units isnt taken into account, so control and removal run rampant. Not long ago engines were not viable, so CDPR buffed bronzes, and lots of 3pt units became 4pts. But even though that caused a big shift in the playstyle overall, in the end it was still control and removal! Just control engines, instead of direct damage. Its easier to destroy than to build, dont forget that, CDPR.

Provisions
This has been debated recently on these forums, and i agree - the concept of provisions is good, but the execution is terrible. We have leaders from 160 to 169 provisions leaders, yet most fall in the 164-166 area. We have leaders with only 1prov difference, or even the same, yet one reliably delivers 8, 10, maybe even 15 points over the other! Its completely offbalanced, and maybe the range should be 155 to 175 provisions? I dont know, but the current system sucks, and that's why only 4-5 leaders are played.

Tutor Leaders
This seems to be the current big problem, and it may get fixes in just a couple of days, but until then...
When this year started, the game had 20 Leaders. Now it has 36! And yet, that doesnt matter when we only see 4 of them, with some sprinkles of a few others, mostly on SK and MO that dont have a tutor leader. Cards like Portal, Roche, Novigrad Justice are super popular, because they can put many engines on board, while the opponent usually can only deal with them one at a time. Defenders also add to this problem, but they are not the root of the problem, the tutor leaders are. I dont know if removing these abilities is the solution, but they certainly need to changed in some way.

Powercreep
This is a lesser problem, and one CDPR actually profits from, so it'll probably persist. With each expansion, new cards come and are more powerful than the old ones. Lots of cards become obsolete, when there are cards that are direct upgrades. I didnt analyze this thoroughly, which would require going through the entire cardpool and see which percentage is still "playable", but a value below 50% is kinda scary, and not far from reality. Just look at Prophet Lebioda and how NR Defender is simply better. Or the entire SK Discard archetype, which hasnt been touched for many months and what was once the meta is now completely unviable.

Dumbing Down
This has been a constant accusation on Gwent HC, which i think it's fair, but recently its getting worse and i've come up with a solid example that proves it: one of the biggest skills in Gwent is knowing when to pass and when to push your opponent. However, in the latest (very well-established) meta, i notice nobody cares about this. Everyone is pushing everyone, playing mindlessly aggressive, for the 2-0, with the safety of their versatile metadecks. Before it was something that SK and MO did, specially against NR, because one worked well in a short round and other on a long round. Now? Even NR goes for the bleed, and its damn deadly, when they start and immediately set up several engines, which you cant catch up (props to the 'Snowball thread' by another user which tackled this grave issue)

Isnt this dumbing down? Before, only newbies made this mistake, never drypassing R2 and they would end up losing CA and the match for that, but now that is less risky and every faction can do it. Just keep playing, never pass. It completely removed one of the layers of the game.

[ . . . ] Im having Prestige 3,4,5 players who only know the cards in the meta and never tried anything for themselves. And making dumb mistakes like double mystic echo 4 berserkers when i literally just played letho and telegraphed i have both auckes and serrit on hand and would just lock them all, or putting 4 of those stupid dwarves TOGETHER when on previous round i used Triss TK for Arachas venom, so he knew i had that card on deck... And do you wanna know the best part? Even with those dumb mistakes, those guys still almost won, since their deck was so good!

Meta
Best for last uh? I know this is probably an unpopular opinion, but sites/teams like Aretuza and Leviathan killed Gwent for me. Netdecking already existed in the betas, with decksharing sites like GwentUp and streamers making certain decks more popular, but it was only with HC Gwent that established metas became ridiculous, sometimes only taking 2-3 days after a new update to reach the point where all you see are the same decks, played the exact same way, guided by better players.

And this is a double-edged sword for CDPR - on one side, they declare they arent fans of netdecking (just recently on the latest stream, for example), but they know these meta-dictating sites bring lots of new players, making the new player experience easier, and so they have to advertise them and say 'check them out'... even if they're responsible for making this game stale, robotic and skillless.

 

[Archan6el]

@DRK3
All good points. Honest and direct criticism is needed to get the message across. The devs should be open to and do something with constructive feedback about blatantly obvious issues.

Communication, I fully agree. It's non-transparent and almost never addressing and properly discussing the more difficult issues. In the devs streams, the community manager only says yes and amen to the game director instead of bringing and discussing differing view points from the community. It's like they pretend there are no major issues, also cherry-picking easy questions. It feels fake.

Provisions are not used properly and consistently. The game is very unbalanced due to bad mechanics such as SY coins and binary stuff such as Artifacts, Defenders and Poison. Card abilities that have unlimited variance add to the unbalance, creating and aggravating rock-paper-scissors problems. The point of provisions is to balance cards around their provision points. It's ridiculous that this excellent basic principle is not properly implemented.

Leaders that allow playing 2 - 4 (engine) cards in one turn. How difficult is it to see that this would be a problem, especially when also adding Defenders to the game? Again it was said in the latest dev stream that they do ability branding by having abilities decoupled from leaders. That's simply nonsense. Check what branding is and realize that this is exactly the opposite. Leaders have no meaning now. Allowing the new Gascon 3D model to play with all factions and abilities... no brand, all bland. Let's also not forget that our collected (paid for) leader cards have been removed from our collections.

One last hope: In the last dev stream they mentioned that next year the focus will be more on quality. Let's see.

 

[Khithas]

Im sorry but i didnt spend hours thinking and writing this for it to be never read.

At least I can confirm I read the text .
Nevertheless, for many topics I have a different point of view. Overall I currently enjoy the game alot. FInally a meta which is fun and managed not creating any T0 decks.

Regarding communication I totally agree, even though I like the Streams (e.g. weekly Stream), I don´t get the purpose of "GWENT: Ask a Dev" if you are not frequently answering. Simple close it or put effort into frequent replies. Otherwise it`s meaningless and leads to frustration.

Regarding Provisions, Powercreep, Tutor Leaders and Meta I disagree.
First of all the current Tutor Leaders are slightly to strong, yes. But they are not game breaking. In contrary they add very intresting feature into the game, if you are only able to play each and every turn only one card the game would be far more boring from my perspective. You can tweek them via Provisions, which most likely will haben on 10th December.
Will it lead to the fact that suddenly all leaders see play? Never!
Esp. when the game gets more competitive again People are going to utilize best available tactics (Cards) leading to playing a lot of meta decks, which comes at a Price: They are foreseeable. Accordingly you can Play around Cards and choose best possible sequence of playing your Cards, which is far more difficult if your oppenents Play unique decks. And don`t underestimate suprise effects in ranked.
Nevertheless, I personally still enjoy to Play against foreseeable far more as long as the opponent is skilled; I would even appreciate a game mode with open decklists like already happening in tournaments.

Furthermore just copying decks doens´t help at all. It`s sometimes even funny, People copy a deck, obviously read the description and simple Play according to description. Due to this fact I got already gifted multiple games in Pro-Rank because some People playing good decks without knowing how (e.g. pointless bleeds in R2).

 

[sfruzz]

Communication

It would be nice to have Development diaries similar to what Paradox Interactive does. Dev diaries are articles that present new features and updates, mostly accompanied by screenshot and short videos. They have more of a descriptive and informative attitude. CDPR tries to "build the hype" and fills with jokes its streams. But especially if you're the bearer of bad news (see the Console topic), it would be better to have a less "hyped" and self-celebrating attitude.

Control / Dumbing Down

Once upon a time, to put points on the board you had to work for it. WIth CiriDash you would get +3 strength each time the card would go to the graveyard. So you had to build your deck accordingly. You had to be sure you could play Ciri over and over again, and retrieve it for your final power play. You would build a deck around a strategy.

Now you build your deck based just based on raw value. Is this card cheap enough in term of provision, given the value it can generate? That's not a strategy, that's just economic basics.

 

[Guest 4368268]

You nailed communication. When a big chunk of the player base is very frustrated with the gameplay or meta and the dev team is not acknowledging it and is instead rolling around with Shupe plushies it can be a bit irritating. Like you said, if you watch a roadmap it's probably because you're banking on specific solutions being offered.

If they're excited and in a good mood then that's great but if they then proceed to neglect certain glaring issues it instead comes across as them being oblivious or careless. The dominance of control is still one of my biggest problems with HC.
OB ended with one 'tier 1' control deck in Alchemy Nilfgaard. Most decks had 3/4 serious removal options in a 25 card deck.
Check your opponents graveyard at the end of a match now and take a shot every time you see 'damage by *X*'

Even Monsters and NR, traditionally the more solitaire factions are now vomiting out control left and right. In HC it's not a case of a bad meta, it's a gameplay design issue. The whole 'wipe your opponents' board/battlefield' aesthetic worked fine for Thronebreaker but boy is it tedious in a multiplayer format.


Provisions were something I was initially excited about. Now they just feel like a lazy cop out system. "We should be reworking this set of cards but instead we'll just drain it of 1 provision for the next three months." Provisions could be utilized to fix the control gameplay by making them very costly to use (thus giving you an incentive to pick them carefully and sparely) the fact that a 1 power build-around card like Mourntart is only 1 provision cheaper than 7-deal 6 Falibor is incredibly stupid.

Straight up value cards should be expensive and risky proactive cards should be cheap and it's very easy to understand why.
The powercreep point you make is the traditional trick of overtuning new cards pushing people to try and get them. Unless people wanna make believe that the Dijkstra/Detlaff/Iron Judgement dwarves debacles were a mere coincidence.

The dumbing down you mentioned is also evident by the amount of new players (I'm talking people that played the game a couple of weeks or so) bragging about reaching pro rank with a given tier 1 netdeck. Particularly in the Gernichora days. There's still a decent skill ceiling since the players that end up in the top 100 of pro rank are often the same names, but the skill floor is artificially high just because it's so much simpler to familiarize yourself with the games' basics now.

Netdecking is something I've given up arguing against. There's a certain type of player that doesn't see a problem with it. I think it's the weirdest thing because it takes away the huge (satisfying) element of deck building and the feeling of noticeably improving at it. Far be it from me to tell these people what to do, but yeah I'd at least hope the game itself in no way would promote it. I don't know how you can even consider yourself a 'skilled player' if a significant element of the game is something you're so bad at you have to delegate it to someone else and not only that but you then follow a guide. You might as well just let a robot play in your stead as you watch. Since there's barely a personal touch left.

Netdecking isn't just more prevalent it's also much more efficient because the game is so dumbed down and things are so much more matchup and draw dependent. In OB I often found myself beating players that had a better deck and losing to players I should have beaten because of mistakes I made. I miss that major element of being satisfied with a decision you made or being able to learn from a mistake. Blitz mode felt very good because I believe it's not really a thinking mans' game anymore.

 

[Khithas]

I don't know how you can even consider yourself a 'skilled player' if a significant element of the game is something you're so bad at you have to delegate it to someone else and not only that but you then follow a guide.

As you mentioned it is one part of the game.

Nevertheless, how you rate it is a personal opinion. I prefer to play the game instead of ramping up multiple decks; take up meta decks and tweek them according to my playstyle. About the guides I don`t really care; I will figure out how to play the decks. Building crazy decks, which lead to unexpected results is sometimes fun as well but not really the reason I play the game.

In short: I don`t think it`s reasonable to complain about Netdecking, if you don`t like it setup up own unique decks.

 

[Pacifixer]

@DRK3
I thing people didn't reply to the gwent retrospective thread because they were waiting for part 2

The first thing i thought when i saw this thread: the list is too short , but i agree with most points.

Communication
100% true, they have to start communicating with us more!

Provisions
Leaders cannot be balanced by provisions when the range is so small. Just like you said, devs should increase the prov range of leaders.

Dumbing Down
Always bleed - never pass is as bad as never risk - always pass, i thing the only way to do something about this is to promote meta diversity.

Net-decking
It is always much more satisfying to win with your own deck instead of some copy-pasted OP meta atrocity, but i understand why ppl do it - making your own deck competitively viable takes time and some ppl simply don't have that much free time. That obviously applies only to ranked, playing the most powerfull meta deck in casual is a d*ck move!
The biggest problem are those braindead meta decks, you can be thick as a brick and still beat good players with them.
On the other hand, i can't even count how many times i've won agains some braindead ST deck, just because it was piloted by a noob that was blindly pushing R2.

Multi-engine cards
You mentioned this along with leaders, but i thing it is a separate problem.
Gwent is supposed to be 1-card-per-turn game, so it is only natural that you should be able to answer 1 card with 1 card of equal value. But that is not the case, multi-engine cards like Endrega Larva or Waters of Brokilon cannot be answered with a single card. The problem is that you have to answer them before they get out of control (not every time, but often enough), which means you have to trade down, you will not be able to trade up or equal.

 

[Guest 4368268]

As you mentioned it is one part of the game.

Nevertheless, how you rate it is a personal opinion. I prefer to play the game instead of ramping up multiple decks; take up meta decks and tweek them according to my playstyle. About the guides I don`t really care; I will figure out how to play the decks. Building crazy decks, which lead to unexpected results is sometimes fun as well but not really the reason I play the game.

In short: I don`t think it`s reasonable to complain about Netdecking, if you don`t like it setup up own unique decks.

Fair enough to have different perspectives. It wouldn't bother me so much if it wasn't so widespread. Hell, it can even be fun to play a popular deck a bunch of times as long as it's not OP (which is CDPRs' responbility)

I liked playing Henselt machines or NG handbuff a bunch of times because when I lost I would learn something useful about how to do better next time, I miss that with current meta decks and that makes me dislike netdecking more cause it feels more cheesy now in my opinion.

 

[partci]

... Accordingly you can Play around Cards and choose best possible sequence of playing your Cards...

This is just my favorite response ever when something is obviously causing problems in either Gwent or Homecoming.

 

[4RM3D]

@DRK3

While I agree with the points you've made, some of them lack proper context. Foremost, I am talking about the dumbing down and the meta.

Dumbing down is not a cause, but rather a consequence of other aspects of the game. While you can mention it as an issue, it's not one that can be or should be directly addressed, but rather the individual problems leading to this need to be solved first. A very simple example is how Call of the Forest got changed from a tactical card to a simple tutor card.

The meta is a problem inherent in all CCG. Gwent is no exception. Instead of "blaming" Gwent, it's better to focus on why the meta grows stale in the first place. I want to note that popular meta decks are self-propagating. What I mean is that because something is marked as a meta-deck it remains popular, regardless of its actual strength. Plenty of decks are viable, but becaue they are not marked as meta, they are not being played (enough). As long as you give players a choice, which you should, there is no real solution to this problem.

 

[Archan6el]

By not balancing cards around their provisions and allowing high variance in card abilities and mechanics, the devs create and allow OP card abilities and combo's, including multi-card engine plays, made even more problematic with Defenders. Of course players will (ab)use the OP stuff to generate most points. The counter is to play high control. There's the current meta for you.

 

[Eliogabalo]

it's fair, except the powercreep one.

That one is pretty dumb, look at all top tier decks today. Except for Scoiatel the majority of the cards in them are old ones. The last expansion in particularly brought very few great card per faction

 

[DRK3]

Thanks for all the replies, everyone. Im gonna try to answer all, if i dont, its probably because i agree and have nothing to add on the subject.

@Nathan277 Agreed, on everything. I think its @4RM3D that is always saying "you cant compare cards in a vacuum" and yet its exactly what CDPR does in card designing, when they see a card provides x value and another provides the same value, in a much riskier way, yet they give it the same provision cost, not considering risk and versatility in the provision allocating process.

@Pacifixer I like it when you say using the most powerful meta decks in ranked is a d*ck move. Let me tell you something: this season, i didnt play at all in November, and this last week played over 20 hours, ONLY casual, and a few Arenas. And yet, 90% of my match-ups were against metadecks, if to the "Fab Four" we also count Braindead Gernichora and Dethlaff Vampires.
(PS- to counter Endrega Larva, use Arachas Venom. Its also good against dumb dwarves)

@4RM3D OK, maybe the 'dumbing down' is a complex issue, it probably could even be its own thread, and like you said, its connected with the other problems and more.

But regarding the Meta, i know its my opinion but i think i justified it properly. I did not blame Gwent. I blamed those teams and their "meta reports". You know as well as i do that they werent around in the betas. There already were lots of new players going 'im just starting, where i can i find some powerful decks?' but deck-sharing sites were way more democratic and in constant motion.

I do agree when you say whats popular is not necessarily the most powerful. And the reverse is even more true: what's not played at all is not necessarily terrible. So many instances in Gwent HC i see really good leaders that are not played at all, at least until someone "shows the world" how good they are:
Nobody was using Calanthe when she was released, now she's NR top dog. Calveit was one of the least played, then became the most popular in a month. Unseen Elder and Deathwish were considered trash for months and only on these past weeks has there been a resurgence of DW. And none of these Leader abilities were buffed, they remained the same, its just the meta that found them...

Post automatically merged: Dec 8, 2019

@Eliogabalo Are you sure? The top cards in the meta are old ones, except SC? Lets see:

NR: Falibor, Philippa, Redanian Archers on every deck.

SK: Morkvarg, Drakkar (both from Iron Judgment)

MO: Endrega Larva in ALL decks, Yghern completely replacing Speartip

NG: the popular cards are indeed mostly old ones. But just look at Assimilate units and see how the new ones replaced the old ones. And Tourney Joust is new and Yennefer's Invocation got a buff that made it 'kinda new'

I wont go through SY since its obviously a very new faction.

Neutral: all Defenders, replacing pretty much all cards designed to protect engines.

 

[Luckless_Jack]

So many good points above.

In the past I had started compiling more than one similar long post of feedback, suggestions and constructive criticism to post here for discussion and to hopefully provide an idea or two to CDPR, but now.... I'm just weary of the whole thing.

Ever since Midwinter two years ago, and despite several changes of leadership and direction since, I just can't help but feel that CDPR are either unwilling or unable to fix the long standing issues that the game has. The exact nature of the problems ebbs and flows slightly, but tends to ultimately revolve around the same things (several of which have been detailed above). What appears to many of us as quality feedback and suggestions to potentially solve some of the ongoing problems just seems to go unseen or at least unheeded. The fact that CDPR don't really talk much or engage with us about these things only adds to that impression and eventually deters us from bothering any more. I enjoy the enthusiastic and upbeat developer streams as much as anybody, but as stated by others above, they mostly tend to skirt around or even totally avoid dealing with the most important things.

CDPR have always excelled at storytelling and artwork. They are great at the presentation side of things. I have yet to get the impression that they are equally invested in the less glamorous and more tedious job of dealing with the core technical and gameplay parts of Gwent - the small important details that aren't as immediately apparent, but ultimately determine whether a game is still fun to play and succeeds over the long term. Gwent has been around for over 3 years now, longer if you consider its existence in the Witcher 3 and the early development work to translate that to a standalone game. It should have long since moved past these teething troubles.

The UI is still extremely lacking - not so much in appearance, but in functionality and ease of use. Features that would make the game more pleasant to interact with, especially around the collection and deck builder are still missing (some of which even existed in early Beta). Bugs are a constant source of annoyance - several endure for many months without being resolved and new ones appear as fast as old ones are squashed. Impactful decisions are taken without any apparent strategy or forethought regarding monetisation resulting in howls of protest and outrage from long-term players, especially those who have backed their faith in CDPR with their hard earned money along the way.

CDPR, I love you guys, but you make it extremely difficult sometimes. I'm still very interested in Gwent, but I've pretty much given up playing it altogether now. I just don't find it enjoyable at the moment. I persevered enough to get the Squirrel border, but I think I'm pretty much done for the time being - at least until CDPR address the core gameplay and balance issues.

 

[DRK3]

To be totally honest, regarding the meta and netdecking, i have to add this:

Since im only playing Casual lately, ive noticed the iOS launch has actually brought lots of new players, im getting matched to newbies quite a few times. It's completely unfair to them, facing someone with almost 2k hours, but for selfish reasons, i quite enjoy it...

Not for easy wins. No glory in defeating the inexperienced, specially with better decks than them. And i dont care about winning anymore, dont need to level up or get more resources. Im just glad to face decks with more variety - they have limited cardpools and have to make do with what they get on kegs, and so it ends up being the only time when i still see some unexpected cards from the opponents.
That, and those poor souls still havent been corrupted by the meta.

 

[Luckless_Jack]

To be totally honest, regarding the meta and netdecking, i have to add this:

Since im only playing Casual lately, ive noticed the iOS launch has actually brought lots of new players, im getting matched to newbies quite a few times. It's completely unfair to them, facing someone with almost 2k hours, but for selfish reasons, i quite enjoy it...

Not for easy wins. No glory in defeating the inexperienced, specially with better decks than them. And i dont care about winning anymore, dont need to level up or get more resources. Im just glad to face decks with more variety - they have limited cardpools and have to make do with what they get on kegs, and so it ends up being the only time when i still see some unexpected cards from the opponents.
That, and those poor souls still havent been corrupted by the meta.

I also found this. It was very refreshing to face something different and have unpredictable matches. I felt bad about the mismatch in resources and experience too, but at least I was playing a janky homebrew Filavandrel deck (or whatever that "deck ability" is called now - still not happy with them replacing leader abilities and cards), so it wasn't entirely one-sided.

The best thing about playing in casual was the freedom of having no qualms just forfeiting against the same tired old tier 1 netdecks being played by higher level players. Really saved my sanity being able to bypass facing too many of those over and over again.

 

[Pacifixer]

To be totally honest, regarding the meta and netdecking, i have to add this:

Since im only playing Casual lately, ive noticed the iOS launch has actually brought lots of new players, im getting matched to newbies quite a few times. It's completely unfair to them, facing someone with almost 2k hours, but for selfish reasons, i quite enjoy it...

Not for easy wins. No glory in defeating the inexperienced, specially with better decks than them. And i dont care about winning anymore, dont need to level up or get more resources. Im just glad to face decks with more variety - they have limited cardpools and have to make do with what they get on kegs, and so it ends up being the only time when i still see some unexpected cards from the opponents.
That, and those poor souls still havent been corrupted by the meta.

Casual matchmaking is probably the worst part of gwent. My friend left the game solely because of that.
It's unfair for newbies, everyone is wiping their ass with them.
It's unfair for experienced players, now they're the ass , winning these games doesn't feel good at all.
It's unfair for everyone and it is one of the reasons why new players don't stick with this game.

 

[xDeithwenx]

Releasing an expansion with no prior announcement or buildup should be added to your list.

 

[Eliogabalo]

Thanks for all the replies, everyone. Im gonna try to answer all, if i dont, its probably because i agree and have nothing to add on the subject.

@Nathan277 Agreed, on everything. I think its @4RM3D that is always saying "you cant compare cards in a vacuum" and yet its exactly what CDPR does in card designing, when they see a card provides x value and another provides the same value, in a much riskier way, yet they give it the same provision cost, not considering risk and versatility in the provision allocating process.

@Pacifixer I like it when you say using the most powerful meta decks in ranked is a d*ck move. Let me tell you something: this season, i didnt play at all in November, and this last week played over 20 hours, ONLY casual, and a few Arenas. And yet, 90% of my match-ups were against metadecks, if to the "Fab Four" we also count Braindead Gernichora and Dethlaff Vampires.
(PS- to counter Endrega Larva, use Arachas Venom. Its also good against dumb dwarves)

@4RM3D OK, maybe the 'dumbing down' is a complex issue, it probably could even be its own thread, and like you said, its connected with the other problems and more.

But regarding the Meta, i know its my opinion but i think i justified it properly. I did not blame Gwent. I blamed those teams and their "meta reports". You know as well as i do that they werent around in the betas. There already were lots of new players going 'im just starting, where i can i find some powerful decks?' but deck-sharing sites were way more democratic and in constant motion.

I do agree when you say whats popular is not necessarily the most powerful. And the reverse is even more true: what's not played at all is not necessarily terrible. So many instances in Gwent HC i see really good leaders that are not played at all, at least until someone "shows the world" how good they are:
Nobody was using Calanthe when she was released, now she's NR top dog. Calveit was one of the least played, then became the most popular in a month. Unseen Elder and Deathwish were considered trash for months and only on these past weeks has there been a resurgence of DW. And none of these Leader abilities were buffed, they remained the same, its just the meta that found them...

Post automatically merged: Dec 8, 2019

@Eliogabalo Are you sure? The top cards in the meta are old ones, except SC? Lets see:

NR: Falibor, Philippa, Redanian Archers on every deck.

SK: Morkvarg, Drakkar (both from Iron Judgment)

MO: Endrega Larva in ALL decks, Yghern completely replacing Speartip

NG: the popular cards are indeed mostly old ones. But just look at Assimilate units and see how the new ones replaced the old ones. And Tourney Joust is new and Yennefer's Invocation got a buff that made it 'kinda new'

I wont go through SY since its obviously a very new faction.

Neutral: all Defenders, replacing pretty much all cards designed to protect engines.

3 cards of the new expansion per deck is too much for you? really?

 

[ThomHjj]

The solution to netdecking should be suggested cards that work well with each other. That is the only way people can learn easily how 900+ cards work.
And I want to emphasize this "The risk of playing buffs and big units isnt taken into account, so control and removal run rampant."
I feel like the game started its beta state since official release.