Looking at the monthly posted leader play and win rates, it doesn't take more than one brain cell to notice, that the game is overrun by just a couple of meta netdecks for most of the times. However, even assuming that if you disagree with that statement, it's easily verifiable by simply playing the game. There are already tons of threads in this forum touching upon the netdecking, but for most of the times, the conclusion made there is that some cards are not balanced, and hence meta decks including those cards, are the problem, and the only way to solve it is to nerf the "faulty" cards. We all know, that the developers never haste with "fixing" the "broken" cards. Whatever the reason is (whether they think it's too early to "touch" them, or maybe they see no problem at all), the players will always be in this same situation, that there will be a sense of lack of balance. I think this is not "fixable" by any means, because people constantly try to find most efficient or optimal deck, that serves the purpose at the given state of the game.
So my thought is, since we're not actually able to root out the imbalance and netdecking exploitation, then maybe we could give some suggestions to make it less impactful. (not that I believe developers would give a damn about these suggestions, but let's still give it a shot)
Let's say you're one of those guys, that despises netdecking. You slam your fist on table screaming "Enough! I will show them!". You already know all the dirty tactics they utilize, and you start building your deck to counteract them. You brew your deck and full of spirit start playing. It goes really well, you beat the heck out of a couple netdecks. A thought comes to your mind "well done, the holy grail of anti-netdecking is now in my posession". And then you get smashed by netdeck #4 and realize, that there's no way your deck can deal with everything, and that sometimes you just need a sheer luck not to be matched up against this certain type of netdeck. Then you realize further, that the chances for having such luck are slim, because if thousands of people use the same limited number of netdecks, the probability of you facing the #4 again is significant.
So instead of counting on luck or prayers, maybe it would be better to give players some control over the matchmaking.
My thought is - why regular players can't have this similar way of banning certain deck, similarly to what players can do during Gwent tournaments?
This is my suggestion:
- a player needs to equip 3 decks,
- then, when the matchmaking happens, the coin flip would decide about the banning options (important to note, that the player, who decides to ban opponent's deck would only see the leader ability assigned to that deck, not the entire deck, like it's in tournaments).
So my thought is, since we're not actually able to root out the imbalance and netdecking exploitation, then maybe we could give some suggestions to make it less impactful. (not that I believe developers would give a damn about these suggestions, but let's still give it a shot)
Let's say you're one of those guys, that despises netdecking. You slam your fist on table screaming "Enough! I will show them!". You already know all the dirty tactics they utilize, and you start building your deck to counteract them. You brew your deck and full of spirit start playing. It goes really well, you beat the heck out of a couple netdecks. A thought comes to your mind "well done, the holy grail of anti-netdecking is now in my posession". And then you get smashed by netdeck #4 and realize, that there's no way your deck can deal with everything, and that sometimes you just need a sheer luck not to be matched up against this certain type of netdeck. Then you realize further, that the chances for having such luck are slim, because if thousands of people use the same limited number of netdecks, the probability of you facing the #4 again is significant.
So instead of counting on luck or prayers, maybe it would be better to give players some control over the matchmaking.
My thought is - why regular players can't have this similar way of banning certain deck, similarly to what players can do during Gwent tournaments?
This is my suggestion:
- a player needs to equip 3 decks,
- then, when the matchmaking happens, the coin flip would decide about the banning options (important to note, that the player, who decides to ban opponent's deck would only see the leader ability assigned to that deck, not the entire deck, like it's in tournaments).
1. if you are drawn with blue coin, you have an option to ban one opponent deck
2. if you're drawn with blue coin, you have an option to ban two opponent decks, but banning the second deck means, that you resign from the Tactical Advantage, that you chose for your own deck
3. if you're drawn with red coin, you can ban one or two opponent decks, but you will start with negative points for each banned deck
These are just a couple of loose ideas, most likely they have their flaws, but that's why they are here for - to be discussed.