Alright, so I've finally hit rank 0, starting back from rank 10 this season and since I believe I'm pretty much done with this game for good, I'd share my thoughts on the gameplay I've encountered. I realise getting to 0 is not that big of a deal since the 0 rank has a 'inner ranking' on it's own, but I think I've seen enough if not all that gwent can offer.
I managed to climb the ranks using only 2 SK decks - mostly Arnj and very briefly an Eist deck. The last few ranks were especially hard as the clustering of Ardals and Frans is over the top with their meta OPness.
Let's face it - this game will never be even moderately balanced, every season there will be 1-2 over the top decks (or factions) that the majority play in ranked and if you don't go with the flow, there is no point to play except if you enjoy losing most of the time. I've played gwent over 1,5 years ago and I can honestly say nothing has changed in a good directing or showing any signs of changing in a good direction regarding balancing. I've come back after 2 expansions were introduced, with dozens of other new cards, new faction etc, to see the old problem of ppl playing no more than 100 cards over and over ad nauseum. What is even worse - the change of the mulligan system and the introduction of very efficient thinning options reduced the variety and variance of decks even more so.
Without a doubt about half of the neutral cards see no play anywhere, without a doubt there are dozens of faction cards that rot in the cellar the same way. I think at this point CDPR can simply cut them out to make the newjoiners experience a bit better, as the variety of cards is a lie and a trap.
Another factor that drives my opinion on balance is the fact that the developers had the intent to decrease the 'control' of low value cards in order to balance 'removal' on a more decent level. You can see the total failure of this effort as almost all meta decks still have very efficient low value bronze removal options - NG tactics, portal dwarves/scorpions, bounty, poison as few examples of such.
The most important factor for any game - the fun factor is very lacking. You will hardly get it from deck building with all the restrictions and low variety of interesting cards, and it's even more lacking in the ladder, which instead of being fun friendly skirmishes, it is nothing more than pure grind and the same 2-3 strategies every single match.
What really killed it for me this time are cards like Portal, Vigo, Novigradian Justice, Water of Brokilon -which are all essencially the same thing - ways to play every single match in the same way, drawing most of your cards from your deck thus reducing the risk of not drawing your high value cards. It will always be an efficient stragety no matter how they want to balance it.
The trend of simplifying stuff in order to fit in the future mobile version is also horrible PC experience - gutting of interesting cards, 3D leaders instead of the beautiful card drawings, the whole de-coupling of leaders and losing leader identity are all things I have no desire to experience in the future.
After all this time, playing about 5 full seasons in total, reading the forums and watching streamers/developer videos my conclusion is that the game is simply too low budget for what they wanted to achieve and is running in a vicious circle biting its tail every single month due to lack of people or funding. It if had the Hearthstone budget, I believe it could have been one of the best games in the decade, but untortunately this is not the reality.
I managed to climb the ranks using only 2 SK decks - mostly Arnj and very briefly an Eist deck. The last few ranks were especially hard as the clustering of Ardals and Frans is over the top with their meta OPness.
Let's face it - this game will never be even moderately balanced, every season there will be 1-2 over the top decks (or factions) that the majority play in ranked and if you don't go with the flow, there is no point to play except if you enjoy losing most of the time. I've played gwent over 1,5 years ago and I can honestly say nothing has changed in a good directing or showing any signs of changing in a good direction regarding balancing. I've come back after 2 expansions were introduced, with dozens of other new cards, new faction etc, to see the old problem of ppl playing no more than 100 cards over and over ad nauseum. What is even worse - the change of the mulligan system and the introduction of very efficient thinning options reduced the variety and variance of decks even more so.
Without a doubt about half of the neutral cards see no play anywhere, without a doubt there are dozens of faction cards that rot in the cellar the same way. I think at this point CDPR can simply cut them out to make the newjoiners experience a bit better, as the variety of cards is a lie and a trap.
Another factor that drives my opinion on balance is the fact that the developers had the intent to decrease the 'control' of low value cards in order to balance 'removal' on a more decent level. You can see the total failure of this effort as almost all meta decks still have very efficient low value bronze removal options - NG tactics, portal dwarves/scorpions, bounty, poison as few examples of such.
The most important factor for any game - the fun factor is very lacking. You will hardly get it from deck building with all the restrictions and low variety of interesting cards, and it's even more lacking in the ladder, which instead of being fun friendly skirmishes, it is nothing more than pure grind and the same 2-3 strategies every single match.
What really killed it for me this time are cards like Portal, Vigo, Novigradian Justice, Water of Brokilon -which are all essencially the same thing - ways to play every single match in the same way, drawing most of your cards from your deck thus reducing the risk of not drawing your high value cards. It will always be an efficient stragety no matter how they want to balance it.
The trend of simplifying stuff in order to fit in the future mobile version is also horrible PC experience - gutting of interesting cards, 3D leaders instead of the beautiful card drawings, the whole de-coupling of leaders and losing leader identity are all things I have no desire to experience in the future.
After all this time, playing about 5 full seasons in total, reading the forums and watching streamers/developer videos my conclusion is that the game is simply too low budget for what they wanted to achieve and is running in a vicious circle biting its tail every single month due to lack of people or funding. It if had the Hearthstone budget, I believe it could have been one of the best games in the decade, but untortunately this is not the reality.
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