Hello everyone,
I am new here but I would like to connect to this old conversation and see if nowadays people have the same feeling about this game as me.
I joined Gwent on September 2022, and since then played for 675 hours.
I had a lot of fun, always looked forward to gain experience, craft new cards and build strong decks as I progressed. Never cared about my rank. I reached Pro Rank once but never really mattered to me. I like playing, I like creative deck building, trying to think out of the box.
I won, I lost. Winning by 1 point with the last card gave me satisfaction, but as everyone I had my moments of frustration as well.
I don't like destroying other people strategies, so I prefer decks that can score lot of points for me, combining the abilities of several cards, rather than having lots of cards that can damage or destroy the opponent cards (Heatwave for example), if you know what I mean.
Now, after playing lots of games, I am getting tired of playing. I am losing motivation and the frustration is higher than the pleasure I get. The reasons are:
- there is no balance. Some decks are simply too strong, we don't have incentives to be creative with decks
- majority of players using cards to damage or destroy you, rather than creating their own strategies
I will give more details about my experience below.
I slowly built all the meta decks.
I remember winning a lot of games with the Harmony deck, for example. Playing Saskia in the first round, and the scenario on the next. Lots of points. At the beginning it was fun, but then I got tired of playing always the same strategies. And here is when the game is failing its players, I believe.
I started to experiment with original decks, different factions, neutral cards, but to my surprise I realised you do not have any incentive to do so in this game. The feeling is that, as soon as you stop using those 4-5 powerful meta decks, you simply lose all the games. But losing is not important to me, the point is I stopped having fun.
I have reached a point in which I created decks of only Witchers, and I play almost only with them. Lots of thinking behind it and big excitment because, in my opinion, having a deck of only Witchers is the pinnacle of this game. This is the Witcher game, and made me so proud to slowly and patienly build this kind of deck.
But 90% of the times, decks of Witchers have zero chances against anyone and, most importantly, are often destroyed with Tactic cards, locks, Heatwaves, etc etc. I would need perhaps 6 purifying cards or Ales removing locks.
I keep losing playing this kind of decks, but I don't care. I feel proud that I am trying something original.
But at the same time, I realise am getting sad and tired of seeing that all the players I face either use meta decks or decks full of "killer" cards, milling cards....
I don't give GG anymore. Most of times when a game starts and I see that my opponent has a Nilfgaard deck or Syndicate Bounty deck, I just forfeit before drawing the first 10 cards.
It's like this game is incentivating people to use destroying tactics rather that creative thinking and points scoring strategies.
Recently I played 3 games during my birthday. On the first two games, the opponent destroyed my first 3 cards with some Tactics, while on the third game he/she used lots of Kingslayers to just eliminate a good part of my deck.
I love Gwent, the medieval fantasy set up, the various characters and factions, the art style of the cards, but I am terribly afraid that I will go away soon. The direction the game is taking is not good in my opinion, and it should be reviewed. I cannot see how this game will continue to exist if developers will not make structural changes before stopping to support the game.
Big hugs to all the frustrated players out there, and to all the people who spent a lot of time to write down a constructive feedbacks for the developers.
Regards