Why is everyone playing Lock in ranked??

[quintivarium]

That kind of proves the understated point I was making. They are fragile gimmick decks that fall apart if one thing is missing. They are not good decks that depend mainly on the skill of the player.

While I kind of agree, there is a significant difference between building a deck around a single card (which could be undrawn or destroyed) and a leader ability which is always (except for lockdown) available — especially when the leader is designed to stabilize an archetype.

This is not true al all leaders, but some — especially in MO and SY — strongly influence the “economy” of the game and have to be built around. This does not make all decks using that leader “gimmick” decks that take no real skill. If anything, they make lockdown the gimmick deck by causing rounds to be won solely by matchup. Let me take two examples.

A successful consume/deathwish deck requires a careful balance between consume cards and deathwish cards. Neither consume nor deathwish cards are generally worth their provision cost without the other — they become bricks. A good deathwish deck has enough flexibility with mulligans to remove or work around these bricks. Overwhelming hunger, with guaranteed consume-like effects, plays around the unreliability of drawing consume card and having them survive. It also switches the balance between consume and deathwish cards in a good deck. And because deathwish decks are balanced by the developers based upon overwhelming hunger being available, they are seriously weakened when it’s not. Removing an ability like imposter is akin to removing one (very good) card. Removing overwhelming hunger invalidates the entire deck design.

Hidden cache is another such example. Hoard cards have little value unless they can meet the hoard condition. Creating a hoard requires having enough cards to consistently earn enough coins — but this ability comes with a provision cost. “Leftover” coins are wasteful in the same way unused provisions are wasteful. But coins are far more fickle than provisions. They impact sequencing of cards and they are dependent upon draws. Hidden cache changes the balance between earners an spenders needed by both providing some coins and reducing the need for as many coins. It also provides flexibility to use certain low coin cost cards without first needing to establish earners. And these cards are balanced by game design under the assumption that the leader ability exists. So when lockdown denies the hidden cache leader ability it doesn’t just remove a nice effect challenging a player to adjust strategically, it disrupts the entire game balance in ways that cannot compensated for.

 

[nehu]

i believe we can all agree, lockdown is the most toxic leader ability

it often breaks even fun in seasonal mode

whats the worst in my oppinion, u cant do anything with it

as there is nothing like leader ability "removal" except that lockdown or damien, both in lockdown faction, which is just ridiculous

one more point, hoard deck is just destoyed by that, its not just about losing 3x3 coins, but it blocks lessering coin demands for hoarding units

 

[Celadyl]

Fuuuuck, this is so boring. It is just a terrible, terrible experience.

Can someone explain why is everyone using the Lock leader?

exactly my thoughts lol. yesterday I played like 60% against lockdown wtf. absolutely miserable experience.
NG leaders are pretty bad but honestly lockdown shouldnt even exist in this game imo. best part is most of them just spam control in your face, so you spend 15 minutes of your life playing cards but not actually playing the game.

 

[EduFerraz]

While I kind of agree, there is a significant difference between building a deck around a single card (which could be undrawn or destroyed) and a leader ability which is always (except for lockdown) available — especially when the leader is designed to stabilize an archetype.

This is not true al all leaders, but some — especially in MO and SY — strongly influence the “economy” of the game and have to be built around. This does not make all decks using that leader “gimmick” decks that take no real skill. If anything, they make lockdown the gimmick deck by causing rounds to be won solely by matchup. Let me take two examples.

A successful consume/deathwish deck requires a careful balance between consume cards and deathwish cards. Neither consume nor deathwish cards are generally worth their provision cost without the other — they become bricks. A good deathwish deck has enough flexibility with mulligans to remove or work around these bricks. Overwhelming hunger, with guaranteed consume-like effects, plays around the unreliability of drawing consume card and having them survive. It also switches the balance between consume and deathwish cards in a good deck. And because deathwish decks are balanced by the developers based upon overwhelming hunger being available, they are seriously weakened when it’s not. Removing an ability like imposter is akin to removing one (very good) card. Removing overwhelming hunger invalidates the entire deck design.

Hidden cache is another such example. Hoard cards have little value unless they can meet the hoard condition. Creating a hoard requires having enough cards to consistently earn enough coins — but this ability comes with a provision cost. “Leftover” coins are wasteful in the same way unused provisions are wasteful. But coins are far more fickle than provisions. They impact sequencing of cards and they are dependent upon draws. Hidden cache changes the balance between earners an spenders needed by both providing some coins and reducing the need for as many coins. It also provides flexibility to use certain low coin cost cards without first needing to establish earners. And these cards are balanced by game design under the assumption that the leader ability exists. So when lockdown denies the hidden cache leader ability it doesn’t just remove a nice effect challenging a player to adjust strategically, it disrupts the entire game balance in ways that cannot compensated for.

You descrbe perfect what i think about lockdown.

And The problem is the devs Who balance The game dont play it, so they cant see how toxic is.

"aaah but lockdown has less provision..."

Yes, but NG has Good cards wich doenst need The leader ability, so doenst matter The provision, you only need to trade 1 or 2 golds to 2 bronzes, but in trade of that you destro The entire archetetype of your opponent

 

[quintivarium]

People play things because they work. When there is a broken card (Viy), people play it. When there is a broken combo (Lippy/Cerys), people play it. And when there is a broken leader Lockdown), people play it — especially when it counters most of the other broken stuff.

I understand how in a complex game, misjudgments occur, but they are fixable. One should not have to count upon the good graces of opposing players to avoid them.

 

[StanislavOZZO]

People play things because they work. When there is a broken card (Viy), people play it. When there is a broken combo (Lippy/Cerys), people play it. And when there is a broken leader Lockdown), people play it — especially when it counters most of the other broken stuff.

That is the fundamental problem with this game.
The devs keep the Lockdown to negate the imbalance and outright fuckups they come up with.
But this is BAD for the game overall on so many levels I will not even bother to describe it here.

The Lock must go and CDPR must do a better job at balancing the game BEFORE the new cards are released.

Post automatically merged: Feb 12, 2021

P.S. Viy was nerfed so stop the fuck playing Lockdown you people!

 

[Slizzl]

Lockdown has gone from being ridiculed as a meme leader to people thinking it is gamebreakingly overpowered without anything about it actually being changed. It is fascinating.
Lockdown generally beats two kinds of people. Those with the wrong mindset/gameplan and those that have built their deck solely around their leader and not the cards themselves. The latter is usually some sort of netdeck.
I think the bigger issue is Kolgrim and now Viper Mentor but that's an entirely different discussion. Multiple cards that shoot to absurd heights the same turn they're placed will always make matches binary.

 

[GrimWrapper1]

I don’t think the real problem with the SY / lockdown imbalance is particular leader strengths or weaknesses. The problem is that leaders profoundly impact the coin economy. When that economy is optimized for a particular leader and that leader is disabled, the deck almost invariably becomes badly suboptimal. And if you balance the economy assuming no leader, you will have a significantly weaker deck when the leader is not locked down. Thus SY will either be generally overpowered or it will be underpowered vs. lockdown.

The only real solution I see ( short of either eliminating lockdown or eliminating coins) would be to provide SY cards able to adjust the economy to compensate for the lost leader — and I’m not sure I see a good way to do even this.

I'm a casual player, recently started playing SY because I've come up against some really interesting decks in the past and wanted to give them a try. I have found that in ranked, every SY deck i've tried just gets wrecked by lockdown, but performs decent against almost any other deck.

Maybe if they changed lockdown to have charges, like "lock the enemy's leader ability for 3 turns, charge 2) then it would have to be used more strategically, rather than as a carpet strategy to avoid toxic decks. In this way, you as the player with lockdown would have to try to anticipate when you will get the most value, and the other player would have to consider playing some of their heavy hitters earlier to avoid getting locked out of their ability.

 

[OuterSpaceDoggo]

Lockdown has gone from being ridiculed as a meme leader to people thinking it is gamebreakingly overpowered without anything about it actually being changed. It is fascinating.
Lockdown generally beats two kinds of people. Those with the wrong mindset/gameplan and those that have built their deck solely around their leader and not the cards themselves. The latter is usually some sort of netdeck.
I think the bigger issue is Kolgrim and now Viper Mentor but that's an entirely different discussion. Multiple cards that shoot to absurd heights the same turn they're placed will always make matches binary.

That's just dishonest, things changed. NG was buffed overtime after the scenario nerf and recently got strong cards from the new expansion.
I can deal with Lockdown, albeit with big frustration, but the average match is Lockdown ( leader ) followed with a chain of lockdowns on units. I get that NG is a control faction, I play it too as I think it has the most diverse playstyles and is kinda " jack of all the trades" faction but too much control is not fun for both players, to the point it just becomes a game of "let's see who has the bigger numbers".
And a rework would be so easy to make, just make it like "Disable the opponent leader for two turns" and give it 1 turn cooldown, at least it would give the opponent some room to breathe.

 

[plastiq33]

Lockdown has gone from being ridiculed as a meme leader to people thinking it is gamebreakingly overpowered without anything about it actually being changed. It is fascinating.
Lockdown generally beats two kinds of people. Those with the wrong mindset/gameplan and those that have built their deck solely around their leader and not the cards themselves. The latter is usually some sort of netdeck.
I think the bigger issue is Kolgrim and now Viper Mentor but that's an entirely different discussion. Multiple cards that shoot to absurd heights the same turn they're placed will always make matches binary.

My problem with lockdown isn't that its overpowered, my problem with it is that its not fun to play against and I am playing against it sometimes over half of my games.

 

[OuterSpaceDoggo]

I also think that the thread should just be renamed to: " Why is everyone playing Lockdown?" , because people spam it even on casual now.

 

[duracell1955]

I've been playing Gwent for a couple of years now. In that time the game has grown ever more complex with expansion after expansion and the introduction of new mechanics. Many may welcome this but for me this has made winning more difficult. Lockdown represents a simplification of the game by removal of leader abilities. As such I find it easier to play with a Lockdown deck and currently have more success with that than any other deck. So I'm not in favour of removing Lockdown, playing without leader abilities is just another challenge the game presents and in my view Gwent would be the poorer without it.

 

[Lokiat0r]

Would it be a bad thing if Lockdown only affected the Order portion of a leader ability and the passive portion (if there is one) was unaffected?

It'd certainly give SY decks a fighting chance, and they definitely need all the help they can get these days.

 

[Selestes]

If you play unranked and you see freaking usurper, just forfeit immediately and don't waste your time.

Overall I think that the state of the game right now is the most terrible of all times, except maybe weather spam in early stages of beta.
The main problems for me are:
- too much freaking removals or locks
- zero diversity: same decks same cards over and over and over again. "Oneiro/heatwave witcher card game".
- many many dead cards and leaders which are dead for more than a year. New cards are too much OP every time.
- same mistakes from devs: crazy OP untested cards, increasing removal (bombs and maddock) etc.

 

[Draconifors]

If you play unranked and you see freaking usurper, just forfeit immediately and don't waste your time.

I always get a good laugh when opponents do this. Happened thrice in a row the other day.
I use Lockdown in all kinds of decks, not a single one of them clog or a meta deck, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Sometimes opponents even insta-forfeit in ranked when they see Lockdown and probably jump to a wrong conclusion. Free wins.

 

[Selestes]

Enjoy your "free wins" and don't waste my time or make me angry ))

 

[North_forever]

Lock's too good lockdown it self is a game breaker as it was said skellige self damage is well in a bad spot

 

[InkognitoXI]

Well, given their statement we might be lucky and Lockdown could get the treatment Overwhelming Hunger got.

 

[fil_faniki]

All the decks available to me right now require their leaders, and all I'm finding is Lockdown. I'm out for this season I think, we'll see what changes the next one bring (hopefully Lockdown gets reworked completely)

 

[Messyr]

I'd say changing Lockdown to only disable your opponents Leader for one round (your choice) would be fair. And increase it's provision boost by a few points in return.