Opinions on Gwent's Current State

[bots_killer]

I liked this game so much that I have spent +300 hours on it. When I reached Pro Rank a few months ago I felt like I had accomplished something of great difficulty.

The game had a lot going for it even though it was never really balanced but right now it's astonishingly unbalanced and boring.

I've been playing old decks as of late which had granted me fair success in the past, but my winrate has now dropped to a meagre 20%. It's really frustrating.

I fully understand that some decks can be (and must be) a bit more powerful than others (depending on their synergies and the player's deckbuilding skills) but it's unacceptable for a deck with good archetype synergy to perform as poorly as they have been especially since the last expansion.

SK is so powerful now that in the last match I played against it I was beaten in round 3 despite having 2 card advantage and a good hand. Ridiculous.

As of now, it's more about your deck strength than anything else. I would say 75% deck strength, 15 % luck and 10 % skill.

This is my review of Gwent in its current state:

Art - 9/10
Balance and consistency of cards and abilities - 2/10
Fun - 4/10
Lore - 7/10
Interface (on PC) - 8/10
Basic concept of the game (factions, archetypes, abilities, rounds, mulligans....) - 8/10
Reward system and progression - 6/10
Bug-free mechanics - 7/10 (some bugs appear when destroying/spawning units if the row is or will be full, for example)
Different game modes - 5/10
Matchmaking - 7/10 (too slow now)

Sadly, I'm leaving the game, I've grown so tired of it already.

 

[StrykerxS77x]

Have you tried other card games?

 

[bots_killer]

Have you tried other card games?

Not really, I've seen some gameplay from a few other card games but they didn't appeal to me much.

 

[BAT0MAN]

I feel ya there. I have played other CCGs out there.
Eternal MIGHT interest you but too much RNG for my taste.
Compared to other CCGs, Gwent for me is like the best of the bunch despite its many flaws and whatever.
It's still the most generous F2P I've played so far.
Maybe you just need a break and play other games bro.

 

[StrykerxS77x]

Not really, I've seen some gameplay from a few other card games but they didn't appeal to me much.

I left Gwent for Legends of Runeterra a few months back. So much happier now.

 

[Balgar-bard-slayer]

SK is so powerful now that in the last match I played against it I was beaten in round 3 despite having 2 card advantage and a good hand. Ridiculous.

^^^^THIS^^^^
sounds extremely remiscent of the final game I played on pro ladder before uninstalling.

Post automatically merged: Jul 19, 2020

I left Gwent for Legends of Runeterra a few months back. So much happier now.

Just installed it, I'll also give it a go. Though the Witcher universe is always going to be a bigger pull (for me) than Warcraft or in this case League of Legends.

 

[nedders]

There's three decks. SK Warriors, NG Ball/Spies and ST Dryads. Then there's luck of the draw. It's unbelievably dull.

 

[Miko_Bd]

Played 4 games today. 4 SK matchups. I played a syndicate deck i tweaked a little. I'm always near victory but finishers of Skellige like Dagur or GS are overpowered. And with second wind it's impossible to win. I think about quit too

 

[Guest 4404014]

Yeah. Power creep is too much. Old cards are left to gather dust. Old decks are mostly obsolete. Concepts that did not get new cards in the expansion are meme.

There's three decks. SK Warriors, NG Ball/Spies and ST Dryads.

ST is crap. Not a single competitive deck. NR is good. And MO.

 

[QLK]

Balance and consistency of cards and abilities - 2/10
Matchmaking - 7/10 (too slow now)

Definitely! Matchmaking has been terrible for a long time. You either play a boring top deck or get f**ked. Since yesterday I face mostly NG, I can't f*** stand this BS anymore. I'm probably going to quit soon as well.

 

[Gimme_a_break]

When I'm fed up of people literally abusing the powerdecks, I switch to arena mode. It's way more interesting in its card selection randomness and forces to think of and be flexible with different strategies. Plus it's obviously free of the disgusting netdeckers.

 

[KenLBlack]

Each season seems to have one or two ridiculously over-powered factions, and I sympathize--to an extent--with the developers in trying to make a competitive game. No one can think of all possibilities and it takes the players, especially the pros, to tinker around and fine-tune things to exploit the various weaknesses. This season, however, is ridiculous. While I've complained about NG in the past (and they're still annoying and strong), @bots_killer's concerns echoes what many have felt throughout this season. When playing as SK myself this season, I've often assumed I could easily go a card (or two) down and still get the win.

And AGAIN, this is why I have constantly been concerned with the way the regular, non-pro ladder works. A player who really, really wants to make pro rank can slide by playing just one faction. This cannot continue. There HAS to be a better system so that people who wish to move up ranks must play more than one faction. Somehow. (Especially at the 1-7 ranks). In the meantime, however, I have to wonder why CDPR seems allergic to the idea of doing more than one significant hotfix per season. (There may have been more than one in the past--I can't remember--but there haven't been many.)

Sorry for the long post.

 

[Alexander_Volgin]

You know that you can skip annoying matches by forefeiting ? If you are matched with a faction you dont want to play against, or otherwise are unfavoured at the start of the match. Just forefeit and queue into a new one. It doesent take that long.

You can also play in casual, if ranked pressure is too much. No shame in that, just don't 2:0 noobs.

 

[kikosalazar]

I think a problem is people are married to a faction and take it personal when their faction has been nerfed. While understandable, I think its best to play multiple factions and bounce around. You might enjoy a different one.

 

[Rammyp]

I find it kinda funny that in the same post different players are complaining about OP factions/decks, and nearly every faction is mentioned.

SK is so powerful now that in the last match I played against it I was beaten in round 3 despite having 2 card advantage and a good hand. Ridiculous.

There's three decks. SK Warriors, NG Ball/Spies and ST Dryads. Then there's luck of the draw. It's unbelievably dull.

ST is crap. Not a single competitive deck. NR is good. And MO.

Definitely! Matchmaking has been terrible for a long time. You either play a boring top deck or get f**ked. Since yesterday I face mostly NG, I can't f*** stand this BS anymore. I'm probably going to quit soon as well.

So 5/6 factions are mentioned by different players in this post alone as good/OP.
Personally i do think that atm SK are a bit OP while ST was nerfed a bit too much and SY didnt get enough love in the last patch. But as i wrote in many previous posts, there will always be a meta, always 1-3 stronger factions and 2-4 stronger decks. There is no way around it.
Do you reallly think that it's possible to balance and twek 6 factions + neutrals with over 1K cards in such a way that nearly any deck type will be competitive in the higher tiers or the pro rank? I think it can't be done, and no matter how many cards or factions will be added in the future, there will always be a couple stronger factions and a few stronger decks while 50-60% of the cards will be pretty dead. The key is to keep the game fresh, not let the meta be stale for months (sorry but to players complaining about winrate drop of their old decks, thats the way it should be) and balancing the game in so that there won't be just 1 uber deck that owns everything.

Can CDPR do a better job at balancing and hotfixing? Probably, and i hope that after Cyberpunk will be released the company will put more focus on gwent. If you feel bored or burnt by gwent just take a break, you probably be back in a few months, i tool a break twice since I started in the closed beta but "... they pull me back in."

 

[QLK]

there will always be a meta, always 1-3 stronger factions and 2-4 stronger decks. There is no way around it

There is a way around it, at least in matchmaking rules, different game modes, etc. And no, 60% cards don't have to be dead. It's a matter of putting time in designing, testing and fixing things. Apparently, the B team in CDPR is not enough to manage this game properly, esp. when it becomes bigger and bigger with every new expansion.

 

[BAT0MAN]

meta is boring AF.

I've been playing TCGs and CCGs most of my life and Gwent takes the crown as the one that bored me to death the quickest. I started playing last May, and I was playing about 4 hrs a day then and now I have a competitive deck for each faction. But nowadays I'm not even excited to play past the daily quest.

 

[nedders]

I find it kinda funny that in the same post different players are complaining about OP factions/decks, and nearly every faction is mantioned.

So 5/6 factions are mentioned by different players in this post alone as good/OP.

Fundamentally, not really. MO, NR and SY are only playable if you get a favourable matchup. If you get drawn against either SK and NG Meta, it's auto-lose. ST can win if you get a great deal and the oppo runs out of luck.

The problem is there should be a viable SK alchemy deck, a viable discard deck, a viable berserk deck. There isn't. The only variety may be in blazing glory vs second wind (it's 90%+ second wind). None of the other archetypes are played.

Same with NG - all out spies should be feasible, so should assimilate, but they're not. It's the same old combos with Ball, either played with Tactical or Strat Withdrawal.

 

[Rammyp]

There is a way around it, at least in matchmaking rules, different game modes, etc.

I meant only ranked/pro mode. There is ofcourse arena and the seasonal mode and adding more game modes will change the game for the better but as i undertood the post it's not the issue.

 

[DC9V]

I liked this game so much that I have spent +300 hours on it.
[...]
SK is so powerful now that in the last match I played against it I was beaten in round 3 despite having 2 card advantage and a good hand. Ridiculous.

Two weaks ago I was super mad about the hotfix. After taking a break for one weak, I started playing again - but just for fun, no grinding. I had to remove Triss from my favorite deck (because the Second Wind provision changed to 11) and I wasn't expecting anything, in fact I was tired after a long day of work and I didn't care at all since the hotfix totally killed it for me. Played some matches and in the end I even managed to rank up.

Long story short: The hotfix doesn't seem to work and I can totally see where you comming from, but maybe you need to revalue card advantage because it's not always the key to win, and as far as I can tell it never was...