Leader Ability play rates and win rates in the Season of the Elves

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Burza46

CD PROJEKT RED
Hello Everyone,

In order to keep on improving communication we thought that it would be cool to share some data from the Season of the Elves.

To test run this initiative we want to show the leader ability win rate and play rate percentages divided by rank. Below you will find a visual representation and here you can download a .xlsx file if you want to play around with the data.



Enjoy and as always we welcome your feedback!

Cheers!
 

4RM3D

Ex-moderator
Nice data sheet. Knowing this, what is your opinion on the winrates when comparing the top with the bottom? A 55% winrate in pro-rank is decently balanced, but a mere 32% (for Invigorate) is not. Are there plans to buff those kind of leaders (at the bottom)? It can be as easy as adding a few provisions.
 
What I see in that graph is that NG are losers, and they are not as played as it seems according to the complaints. It would be time for developers to notice that they must do something with that faction, it has a very negative impact on opponents due to the way they play and at the same time it does not even serve to be a dominant faction.

Echo is still too strong and it has been more than a year in that way, it is sad that the strongest decks are the dumbest, little effort and much reward.

I love how Invigorate is almost consistent in being the worst ability, knowing how to always be the worst in the room also has its charm.

Very good information, there is much to analyze. :beer:

In pro rank are all games taken or only the 4 with most mmr?
What happens with the fact that after having 3 factions to 2500 the players choose a faction to lower their mmr and make the victories of the useful 4 faction easier? I don't remember exactly what the process was like but I know it came at the cost of losing on purpose with a "useless" faction. That's a lot of intentionally lost games.
 
Great! Love the initiative!

But there are also some aspects which the data doesen't tell us. For example the binary nature of Scenarios and artifact removal. Sure, the data might indicate a balanced variety of competitive decks, but when (if) majority of decks run artifact removal, then there could be something wrong in how the game feels for the players. Mainly because of the mandatory aspect of having to include counters to defenders and scenarios in order to compete on ladder.

It just doesen't seem right that the ultimate skill check is to draw the counters, or avoiding bricking the hand with a bomb-heaver in case there isn't a scenario to prepare for.
If the average value of scenario is 20 points, or 4-6 points, depending on it get's bomb-heavered or not, then there is something wrong with how this interaction 'feels' for the players

Can't the game be balanced by not having binary tech options or 'Overpowered' cards that spin out of control if not answered ? :shrug:
 
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Guest 4375874

Guest
What I see in that graph is that NG are losers, and they are not as played as it seems according to the complaints. It would be time for developers to notice that they must do something with that faction, it has a very negative impact on opponents due to the way they play and at the same time it does not even serve to be a dominant faction.

Echo is still too strong and it has been more than a year in that way, it is sad that the strongest decks are the dumbest, little effort and much reward.

I love how Invigorate is almost consistent in being the worst ability, knowing how to always be the worst in the room also has its charm.

Very good information, there is much to analyze. :beer:

In pro rank are all games taken or only the 4 with most mmr?
What happens with the fact that after having 3 factions to 2500 the players choose a faction to lower their mmr and make the victories of the useful 4 faction easier? I don't remember exactly what the process was like but I know it came at the cost of losing on purpose with a "useless" faction. That's a lot of intentionally lost games.
You do realize it says "Season of the Elves right"? Unless I'm mistaken but how does that make NG losers given how seasonal operates it almost always favors one faction or another.
 

DRK3

Forum veteran
Amazing, i almost cant believe CDPR is publishing this data. I like to think in some part, it was due to the complaints of myself and others about the state of their communication and their disconnection with their playerbase. Let this be one of the 1st steps in the right direction.

Regarding the actual data... Hidden Cache and Mystic Echo at the top, no surprises. Hidden Cache was nerfed within 1 month of release... meanwhile Mystic Echo is dominant for what? Over 9 months? Its that bloody Waters of Brokilon, no matter how much you nerf Mystic Echo's provisions, its not enough!

You could take 2 more provisions of Mystic Echo, to be at 160 like Usurper and i bet it would still be one of the top ST abilities! To make ME Harmony decks balanced, Waters needs a real rework, for it to be more on par with other decks and other factions.
 
Amazing data!
And I love statistics and numbers.

Please, can you tell us how the devs see this statistic?? From what point? Is winrate considered to be the main factor? Thoughts about playrate?
How can we "help improving communication"?? Exactly how?

There are many things that can be said.

Some thoughts:
- there are too many leaders below 1% usage, and they have bad winrate too; lets consider them dead (unplayable);
- Rank30-26 is a mess not to be taken seriously??
- rank25-15 seems to be the most balanced? But still 2.5% is 10 times better than 0.25.
-as the rank gets bigger, we see that there are increased popularity of leaders, while others remain dead;
-rank7-1: only 5 leaders (or maybe 10) i think are good, judging by the winrate.
- for example, if I am only one playing Leader X (0.0001%), but I win 100% games, is this Leader X considered to be balanced?

But there is one major thing that cant be seen in the above statistics.
Even if we have that many leaders, cards within one faction are almost the same. Without clear archetypes, there are just cards: there are bad, there are good, and there are ones better than others.
I would like to see card statistics too.
I remember we had something like that before.

Please dont let this topic die.
The best topic since hc-release.

When you released this data, what did you have in mind? Why doing it?
 
What I see in that graph is that NG are losers, and they are not as played as it seems according to the complaints. It would be time for developers to notice that they must do something with that faction, it has a very negative impact on opponents due to the way they play and at the same time it does not even serve to be a dominant faction.

It could also mean that the people who complain about NG don't know what they're talking about and represent an echo chamber on this and different forums. That they actively refuse to tech against or try to play more swarmy decks vs ball or poison. The scenario-heaver connection is admittedly a bad play/counterplay and scenarios should probably onle be played once, yet, complains about NG were always there even when mystic echo and other leader abilities was slaughtering on ladder last year and up untill fairly recently in which I now concider the ME ability more tolerable. It seems people didnt mind losing 20-30 points to mystic echo as long as their 1 point per turn engine was not locked or removed by the bad and scary NG faction. Of course the devs. wont listen to these complaints when you see the graph, they would be foolish to do so.
 

Guest 4375874

Guest
It could also mean that the people who complain about NG don't know what they're talking about and represent an echo chamber on this and different forums. That they actively refuse to tech against or try to play more swarmy decks vs ball or poison. The scenario-heaver connection is admittedly a bad play/counterplay and scenarios should probably onle be played once, yet, complains about NG were always there even when mystic echo and other leader abilities was slaughtering on ladder last year and up untill fairly recently in which I now concider the ME ability more tolerable. It seems people didnt mind losing 20-30 points to mystic echo as long as their 1 point per turn engine was not locked or removed by the bad and scary NG faction. Of course the devs. wont listen to these complaints when you see the graph, they would be foolish to do so.
hmmm....:smart:that must be it. The majority must be wrong
 
hmmm....:smart:that must be it. The majority must be wrong

Bingo. A loud minority is often confused for being the majority. The numbers in the graph don't lie. Everyone has a hate faction, mine is scoita tel and skellige, still play them to understand them, but hate them due to older metas. I wouldnt be the right guy to ask advice from on how to nerf said factions due to my negative bias against them.
 

Guest 4375874

Guest
Bingo. A loud minority is often confused for being the majority. The numbers in the graph don't lie. Everyone has a hate faction, mine is scoita tel and skellige, still play them to understand them, but hate them due to older metas. I wouldnt be the right guy to ask advice from on how to nerf said factions due to my negative bias against them.
The numbers on the graph do not represent all gwent players unless I'm interpreting it incorrectly. What's more Hidden cache becoming even more broken than NG doesn't change what's quite obviously wrong with the faction. I only recently returned to the game after several months because of the same issues. In the time that you responded I played about 10 matches. ALL of whom were NG btw...not an exaggeration and all with the exact same copy and paste deck.
 
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What's more Hidden cache becoming even more broken than NG doesn't change what's quite obviously wrong with the faction.
This was season of the elves, not seasonal gameplay. It shows NG being played roughly the same across all leader abilities including lockdown, the winrate is lower than the most viable leaders like eg. scoia tel, hidden cache yes even monster's gernichora ability and arachas swarm, the latter on tier 1. It indicates that NG is a very popular faction evenly across all leader abilities, but not a faction that completely dominates in terms of winrates. Based on critics, NG should have a winrate at least at 60-65% or at least on par with deadeye ambush, but thats not the case. NG is getting beaten roughly the same as inspired zeal and reckless flurry on tier 1, I assume its rank 1. It explains why there is a lot of NG in ladder but that shouldnt matter, the win rates are what matters here. For every 0,38 HC player, you get 1,97 imp. form. Thats the ratio of playrate which affects encounter.

I also returned to the game recently, was playing MTGA and mythgard due to poor gwent meta. Had to rank up from rank 18-19 ish to now 3 after the new season change dropped me down 2 spots from 1. And I have to say there is a lot of strange plays at these lower ranks. I played NG and NR. Not poison NG but the new leader with wattier, and a lockdown list made specifically to counter 2X ball play and mystic echo. Seriously all you need is korathi heatwave and the soldier package is very underrated. Uprising leader is very strong against ball as well.
 

Guest 4375874

Guest
This was season of the elves, not seasonal gameplay. It shows NG being played roughly the same across all leader abilities including lockdown, the winrate is lower than the most viable leaders like eg. scoia tel, hidden cache yes even monster's gernichora ability and arachas swarm, the latter on tier 1. It indicates that NG is a very popular faction evenly across all leader abilities, but not a faction that completely dominates in terms of winrates. Based on critics, NG should have a winrate at least at 60-65% or at least on par with deadeye ambush, but thats not the case. NG is getting beaten roughly the same as inspired zeal and reckless flurry on tier 1, I assume its rank 1. It explains why there is a lot of NG in ladder but that shouldnt matter, the win rates are what matters here. For every 0,38 HC player, you get 1,97 imp. form. Thats the ratio of playrate which affects encounter.

I also returned to the game recently, was playing MTGA and mythgard due to poor gwent meta. Had to rank up from rank 18-19 ish to now 3 after the new season change dropped me down 2 spots from 1. And I have to say there is a lot of strange plays at these lower ranks. I played NG and NR. Not poison NG but the new leader with wattier, and a lockdown list made specifically to counter 2X ball play and mystic echo. Seriously all you need is korathi heatwave and the soldier package is very underrated. Uprising leader is very strong against ball as well.
I was at rank 2 but got knocked to 6 but i guess that was expected. Trying to scrape my way back but I don't know how the Gwent matching algorithm works but it's a NG festival out of 20 matches 16 NG. So i'm being reminded at the moment why I left. I don't play NR, I play MO. I could change to stand a better chance sure but I shouldn't have to. What the NG defenders fail to comprehend is it's not so much countering NG that's the problem...take your suggestion for example ...Korathi heatwave. The moment I add it i'll get matched with other factions like ST or SY or SK and now I have a 10 provision card that is not very effective against anything except NG. Mind you all it would be used for is banishing an artifact anyway and ads no point to my field. The problem is the cards that I would have to add to counter NG have very little synergy. Bomb heaver...is otherwise a dud. If I add caretaker it just hands them a 7p unit courtesy of Yennefer's invocation. Add a defender, same thing.

If i saw where units with actual synergy to their faction were present and not being used then i'd agree with the criticism here. Whats worse is the new expansion at least in so far as the theme appears to be focused on NG so I cant help but feel as though the devs have all but forgotten anything else. The art work for Master Mirror looks great and a lot of stuff I would normally purchase I won't because I'm expecting the next expansion like the last will have me drop the game again so why waste the money.
 
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