Don’t let streamers ruin your Gwent experience

Hello everyone,

I have started playing Gwent around the time master mirror expansion came out. I got pro rank in my first season of playing and have been playing on and off until the last 5 months when i started getting serious about climbing and have been top 100 on ladder ever since.

I'm only making this post to shed some light on an issue that has been bothering me a lot lately since i like to tune into gwent streams when i'm not playing and i think a lot of voices in the community share my point of view.

I think i'm genuinely very well acquainted with the gameplay concepts of Gwent from macro to micro : When to pass and when to push, identifying ones decks win cons vs the opponents, estimating potential points a certain combo has and implementing it into the round strategy, understanding deck matchups, knowing when to accept a loss on even vs pressing for round control etc.

If you've stuck with me so far i'm not patting myself on the back and calling myself the best player on ladder. I just want you to take what i say with a hint of credibility.

And watching gwent streams has been increasingly a horrid experience for me. I love the game itself, the dev team, i think despite the hiccups they've shown time and time again they listen and care about the community and they're coming up with some original card ideas that work well within the frame of the 3 round strategy that i love most about gwent. You can argue balancing but this is not what this post is about.

With certain faces moving on from streaming gwent i feel like the community has more or less a fixed 2 to 3 streamers they watch and that attract most viewership. And let be blatant when i say i have never seen a head shoved so far up ones own a** that some of the comments i hear from these " content creators " just make me wonder how many newer/casual players might actually fall for the facade.

Why does this bother me ? Can't i just not watch and that's it ? Well i feel it's a shame the overall negativety some of the streamers are propagating and infesting into the community. If you watch someone for hours cursing strangers online and being passive aggressive . That's likely how you will react when playing the game. Instead of thinking about your own plays and misplays. Staying calm after a defeat and learning how to play your matchups properly. After all top players like Pajabol don't get their impressive win to loss ratios from being "lucky" nor "unlucky". They're consistently playing good despite the luck factor and that's what you should be aiming for.

A few examples of the negativety showecased on streams :

1- Verbally insulting viewers and opponents on ladder for playing " clowny" decks or cards which btw if you think are bad then you should be happy are being played against you ( free win next time no ? 🙂 ) and just quiet down instead of ranting half the stream without a structured thought or critique about it, just insults. They're not doing anything illegal, just playing a card in the same game you logged into 🙂 . And if you log into Gwent you're CONSENTING to people playing Uma , Mill, Yrden, Shupe, Peasant Militia or whatever else THEY WANT against you. Tough pill to swallow maybe but calling people " pepegas " everyday ( because hinting at the r word without saying it doesn't have the same effect i guess ? ) is nothing but a lack of self respect. The game wasn't made for any of us alone to play it. And what we dislike ourselves might make sense and be fun to others. If you want to rage at the game less accept that fact.

2- Putting down the dev team and the game any chance they get ( who actually go to a work enviroment for a living and whose livelyhood depends on the game just as much as the people putting it on twitch and calling it content. But enough about that ).

Calling your own misplays " game bugs " because you were spamming your mouse clicks and just messed up your own match.

3- Making basic micro and macro misplays and let me expand on this point a bit since it's difficult to put ones ego aside and admit to these things:

a- wrong row placement/unit placement ( losing points because certain cards are row locked or failing to do the proper placement to optimize value )

b- not counting reach points.

c- sequencing so badly you start blaming draw luck and rng

etc.

( example: blue coin playing self wound and opening veteran instead of defender giving the " off the books " opponent a turn to accumulate coins , now they have 9 at their disposal instead of the initial 8 from leader and can philippa your melusine after they kurt your defender. A play they wouldn't be able to do if defender was played on turn 1 and melusine buffed to 9 on turn 2 with the help of Mask strategem for skellige. 1-Defender/Kurt 2-Melusine 9 points/Opponent has only 8 coins )

But who needs to think about that at the start of the game when you can blitz your cards and blame the matchup/luck when you literally had the winning line at your disposal. Even being delusional enough to actually blame ones misplays on opponent him/herself " well they're playing so sh*t they're actually making me misplay " ," I lost by 10 anyway so my 5 points misplay didn't matter ". But the learning experience matters. And the 5 points you threw away this game might win you the next one if you sequence proper.

4- Randomly making your personal insecurities surface and taking the defensive stance, shouting , insulting, being passive aggressive, pretending to have all sides of the argument covered, pretending to know better, that your opinion trumps others simply because you played the game for a longer period of time, which if we put gameplay into scale, your plays and misplays are no better than the average pro rank player, being a sore winner and starting to boast an unloasable matchup. Which is nothing but petty. Spamming games for hours on end ( years ) and making the same misplays over and over again.

And many others …

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I understand that streaming can make one live in their own bubble and the only relevant thought or perspective to be their own. The lack of a team enviroment does that.

And i do get that dealing with trolls etc can take its toll on your mental.

But being an egotistic self centered a** with a like-minded mod team chearing you on for insulting others and influencing newer / casual players who don't know better to follow the same road of shifting blame is just bad for the game i really enjoy.

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I hope i gave a new / challenging perspective to some of you who find it difficult to criticise people they're used to watching. I tend to have stricter restraints on content i watch because i believe my behavior / mood and overall health gets influenced. If you're listening to deathening music at max volume all day you're bound to get a headache. And if you're watching negative content for a prolonged period of time day after day you're bound to get influenced one way or another. Think about the last time you called someone a clown just because you heard the word on stream. Or haven't ggd someone even though you won just because they played a card and ( we don't like this card i learned that from x streamer ).

Like some of these idiots literally have " spit " commands to " spit on opponent ". In their streams

Others are talking about " iq chat restrictions ".

What kind of delusion are you living in ?

What social/work enviroment, dealing with real life human beings is going to accept you ? If that's your language/mentality.

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Pardon any english errors it's a foreign language. Now how about a round of Gwent ?