I hate to be this negative, I really do since I love the game and even in its more... Rough patches I have always stuck by it (seriously do you all remember Sabbath and Grate Swords at the end of open beta?), but this recent meta shift has actually killed my desire to play the game outside of seasonal.
I was super hyped for SY, even thinking it would be the thing that got me into streaming the game at last, but it ended up sort of being a mess and I felt my enthusiasm ebbing the more machine gun Witch Hunters I ran into. But then a light appeared! NR rework, hotdog! My boys in blue are coming back and SY will get some nerfs to bring them back in line with the rest of the... Oh their going to buff everyone up to SY's level? Well... Okay ya cool! More playable cards! Just so long as they reduce the power of Witch Hunters I am sure it will be... No not doing that? Sure okay fine, well NR and later the other factions when their gotten too will be able to... A new leader you say? And their... Just a straight up power creep on the cool pirate lady I really was looking forward to building decks around once SY was toned down so I didn't feel so dirty... Cool. Well hey as long as its all been balanced I am sure that- OH WHAT THE-
And then the meta exploded into a healthy mix of Foltest, DJ and No Fun Allowed Usurper just in case you might want to try out some fun deck ideas. Because the team did just what they promised they were not going to do anymore and made a large number of sweeping changes in a very short period of time and when asked to address them went, "No, but don't worry, EVEN MORE SWEEPING CHANGES ARE COMING! Also another new expansion! Also maybe another new faction!"
Like... What the heck? I thought the lesson we all took away from Homecoming was to take things slower, not shake everything up all at once and carefully address issues as they arise rather then rushing blindly forward? SY was a MASSIVE addition and the coin mechanic is still rife with issues that need addressing, NR and SY are massively ahead of the curb and the plan is to quickly shoot out similar overhauls to 4 additional factions, all leading up to what might well be a 7th faction being added to the game, possibly with another new mechanic that could be hard to integrate smoothly with the rest of the game?
I'm sorry, I love Gwent, I think the team is wonderful and has worked very hard on all of this and I am sure their harts are in the right place, but what we need is not an new faction, not another expatiation, not a new crop of leaders, but a rework of the remaining, existing factions followed by a slow down to seriously look at the state of the game to address everything that these changes have messed up. Because at this point theirs no putting the cat back in the bag, we have NR and SY at a much high level then everyone else and so reworks ARE needed for the remaining factions, but after that before ANY new cards and ANY new mechanics are introduced, the devs need to get their house in order! They need to address DJ, they need to take a serious look at coins and consider making them more intractable, they need to see where some combo's might have been overturned and where small changes to provisions and leader caps might be needed.
We can all bellyache and complain about the game being dead or about that this or that update should not have happened, but I truly think right now, the biggest threat to Gwent is the devs insistence that al our problems don't need to be addressed, because new shiny cards are coming that will make us forget all about them.
Please, CDPR, please consider a hotfix and more transparency about how your planning on re balancing the other factions. Please give us a sign that your going to give due consideration to fixing the game as it stands now rather then just dumping more cards on the fire in hopes of smothering the problems. And please, for the love of all things good, don't make another faction right now! We don't need another SY!
Okay that's my rant. I'm spent. I'll go back to... Waiting and hoping that my faith is well placed and that the game will get better. If not... Well... I managed to make it through Sabbath and Grate Swords, I guess I'll just hope I can make it through SY and expansion fever...