Homecoming was a chance to return to the pre-Midwinter roots of Gwent when it was at its peak. Sadly, CDPR derived all the wrong conclusions from years of beta testing, choosing to discard a wonderful rough gem in the making for an abominable simplistic reductionist offering that still carries the Beta's flaws yet none of its strengths. Judging by GOGstats (http://gogstats.com/game/1971477531_gwent-the-witcher-card-game) as well as Google Trends (https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2016-10-27%202018-11-27&q=%2Fg%2F11bzs2z_sr) and Twitch numbers, the game has never performed worse than right now, shortly after the release of Homecoming. The release version has rendered Gwent as a game irrelevant in today's market, as reflected in Homecoming being less popular than even Beta Gwent during the infamous 6+ months of complete content drought. Sadly, CDPR hasn't shown an ability to identify the core issues of Homecoming. Homecoming's design removed every shred of emergent complexity within the game, reduced the creativity and outplay/outsmarting/counter-play potential of the game, and devolved most strategies into binary scenarios of "answer or lose." After more than 2 years and thousands of hours played, it is painful to see a beloved game reduced to this.
