Dear GWENT community,
Last year, we’ve introduced an alternative way to qualify for GWENT Challenger — an online qualifiers system utilizing 2 “Wild Card” spots. Since then, a significant portion of your feedback asked to make GWENT Open tournaments more inclusive and provide more Pro Ladder players with a chance to earn their spot in the LAN event. We have good news — we’re going to make it happen!
We’re updating the GWENT Masters ruleset (paragraphs 3.1b and 5.2) to allow for more flexibility with GWENT Open events in the future. The approach is similar to the original wording for Challenger qualification criteria — we’re decreasing the number of spots guaranteed for the players with the top Pro Ladder placements at the end of each season (from 8 to 6). In addition, “Wild Card” spots will be awarded by default to the winners of online qualifiers. Same as with Wild Card spots for Challenger – CD PROJEKT RED reserves the right to use Open Wild Cards in its sole discretion, however we don’t have plans to invite any players to Opens directly. If organizing a qualifier for any Open tournament in the future won’t be possible, we can always return to the old format and give these 2 spots to #7 and #8 players from the final Pro Ladder standings.
Thus, Open #5 — taking place on 19th-20th of May — will still be using the old format with top 8 Pro Ladder players qualifying for the event directly. Open #6 (July) will use the new format with 6 players qualifying based on Pro Ladder final standings and 2 players getting their spots by winning a separate online qualifier.
Online qualifier for Open #6 will be held on June 30th and July 1st. Pro Ladder players on the positions from #1 to #100 on 12:00 PM (noon) CEST of June 27th will be eligible to participate. Players who will secure their Open spots by finishing Pro Ladder season #5 on positions from #1 to #6 won’t be able to participate. This means, up to 94 players in total will be eligible to play in the online qualifier.
For Challenger #4, we’re happy to confirm that the online qualifier will take place in July. The pool of eligible Pro Ladder players will be decreased from 200 to 50. This change is based on a popular suggestion from the community to make Challenger qualifiers more exclusive and skill-heavy. More details about July Challenger qualifier will be provided further down the road.
Last, but not least, we’re improving Pro Ladder matchmaking to gradually increase the pool of possible opponents over the first 60 seconds of search. It means that, while the quality of matches should increase, it could take slightly more time to find the opponent of the similar skill level. We will be looking closely into the outcome of this change, which is the first step out of many on the road to improve laddering experience for the most competitive GWENT players.
Thanks for being awesome and keep your feedback coming,
GWENT Masters Team
