After making a few decks and playing a handful of matches I can post some pros and cons.. I've been here since the beginning anyway I'll leave some feedback
: first of all Sabbath I've and well.. My opponent plays Sabbath. I lock him, he then gets destroyed and a copy of him is created and then buffed with 5 point coin.. I pass.. He is now renewed and buffed and given immunity by leader.. Not a good introduction to the game.
: no faction identity
: card abilities not interesting or lore specific, like they randomly pulled abilities from a hat.
: handsize is a bummer and I dislike how if you don't play enough cards by round end your cards are drawn and banished.. Terrible... At least put them back in deck.
:card effects such as damage, lock, and destroyed cards are very very lame.
: cards feel meaningless when played
: when leaders are played I also have to play another card with my leader.
: more rng and less consistently in decks.
: not a fan of new deck building provision costs hurt deck building.
: games are very slow played and overly long.
: passing and card advantage feel meaningless now.
: less architypes
: passing after each play slows down the game.
: I thought the game was suppose to be gory and adult, it is not
: too much boosting
I know there are more. I'm hoping some rebalancing will occur. I understand current gwent would not survive. I'm still remaining optimistic as the cards look nice. The ptr was a shock to my system though
+
The thing is the current gwent was their doing in the first place to pretend to salvage us from it which the PTR has shown will not be the case anyway, players will actually be missing the current version of the game when homecoming hits. Gwent was becoming more balanced in the end of Closed beta and through the beginning of Open beta but instead of making some tweaks and balance patches here and there, they instead slowly stripped away gwents identity with a series of patches. Such as; Gold immunity removal, Faction abilities removal, Agile update and a series of smaller patches changing card effects to more simplified versions that lacked flavour and also made factions feel obsolete, whilst also making archtypes feel universal across the board. And then ofcourse the abomination that was the midwinter update to introduce the rng slap whilst cementing the simplified card effects and point spam solitare gameplay.
They did it slowly and methodically to cater to a new demographic. They want the game to be played on portable devices which I stated long ago, it's the main reason why they were so adamant on removing the third row and stripping down the complexity of the game. Their target audience are casuals now, they want a portion of the pie that Hearthstone has all it's fingers in instead of catering to their core players, they will find out the hard way I guess.