MEETING ON GWENT MASTERS RULES UPDATE FOR SEASON 2

02 JUNE 2019 / 07:00 PM CEST / TLG Discord

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TEAM LEVIATHAN GAMING: ShadowplayRed (Team Manager), BeardyBog (Competitive Manager), wusubi (Content Manager), KingChezz93, Alessio1996, Green-Knight, aifBowman

TEAM ARETUZA: Green Cricket (Team Manager), Gwent2Town (Competitive Manager), Molegion

TEAM RANKSTAR: SemperEU (Competitive Captain), Flake

TEAM NOVA: Jamedi

CD PROJEKT RED: Vlad Tortsov (Gwent PR, Marketing & Esports Lead)

OTHER ATTENDEES: Freddybabes, Gameking, Tailbot, Callonetta (Taking minutes of the meeting)

CURRENT GWENT MASTERS RULES: https://masters.playgwent.com/en/news/7141/rules-regulations

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AGENDA (EXPLOITATIONS & SEASON 2 RULESET UPDATE)

 

1) Wintrading

 

• Consensus was that the penalties enforced by CDPR, based on the most recent instances, were fair going forward. The minimum punishment is a 1 month ban, plus 6 month Gwent Masters tournament ban.
• Suggested preventative measures:
  • Self-policing. Anytime someone forfeits to their opponent multiple times in one competitive season, require the benefactor to report to CDPR the indiscretion by particular opponent committing the repeated offense. If CDPR are not made aware of this, both the benefactor and the opponent forfeiting to them could be held accountable.
  • Adapting the Gwent Masters system so that wintrading wouldn't give anyone an advancement to tournaments.
• Smart players can just pass or throw on purpose, making it difficult to prove. When obvious instances happen, stiff bans are needed because at the end of the day, you are denying an opponent who has worked hard for a shot at an Open or Challenger. When someone is caught breaking rules, we feel it should be made public knowledge through an official statement by CDPR.

 

2) Queue Sniping

• While keeping in mind the casual experience, instead of removing the in-game player status, adding a busy status feature to hide your current game activity from your friend list. We agreed that by possibly implementing a 10-15 minutes delay to player profile and Gwent Masters Leaderboard on the website, it would form more of a deterrent for those wanting to engage in queue sniping.
• General consensus: Very hard to police this exploitation, but we all felt suggestions would deter most from abusing. Even baby steps could go a long way in correcting this issue.

 

3) Bug Abuse

• Ruleset as is explains enough. The understanding we gathered from CDPR punishments on past violations has ranged from a few days to permanent, depending on whether it was a single match or on a much larger scale.
• This might be the easiest rule to police, as it is simply a matter of the player reporting the issue to record the instances while in a match. Agreement that penalties here would need to depend on the situation that occurs.

 

4) Stream Sniping (or "ghosting")

• Difficult to deter on the streamers part, ultimately the biggest safeguards lie with their own preventative measures.
  • Delays: very hard for streamers to implement, as this hinders them keeping an audience. In short, streaming comes with many disadvantages.
  • Creating a new streaming account or concealing your username could work, but even with new features added in the recent patch, it doesn't really help streamers here either.
• Nearly impossible to prove without clear-cut evidence, which usually only happens when someone is a well-known abuser of ghosting. The only way to police this properly would be CDPR having direct access to Twitch data, which unfortunately will not happen.

 

5) Co-oping

• Co-oping during the season won't be punished.
• No co-oping in Gwent Masters official tournaments, qualifiers or licensed tournaments.
• An explanation in rules to possible bans if caught. One month, upwards to permanent.
• Impossible to prove, but a rule defining CDPR's stance on the matter would do more good than not.

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To wrap it up, much was discussed and suggested regarding all these exploits. We as a collective group of competitors leave it with CD Projekt Red to decide how to proceed into Season 2 of Gwent Masters. It was a real honor holding this meeting and whereas definitive solutions were not the result, having solid discussion and ideas on how to improve the Gwent Masters Pro Ladder was much needed. Thanks again to all that joined us today.

Kindest Regards and Happy Gwenting!

-ShadowplayRed and Wusubi