The new competitive season of GWENT Masters starts on January 13th! We've updated the official ruleset to reflect the changes that were introduced between S3 and S4, as well as clarified and extended some rules. Here's what you need to know about Season 4:
The Roadmap
Changes in World Masters qualification
The most notable change is a different qualification path for the World Masters event. With only up to 3 players qualifying by winning GWENT Opens, the remaining (5-7) spots will be given to the winners of the Play-In Tournament to be organized after Open 3 for 12 players with the most Crown Points at the end of the competitive season. This tournament will be held in Round Robin format (2 groups, 6 players each, Bo5) with winners of each of 2 groups qualifying to World Masters. The remaining (3 to 5) invites will be given to the winners of a single Bo5 series against players from the opposing group according to the seeding (see the example below in which 5 players are to qualify).
With the addition of this tournament, we intend to give more players at the top of the ladder the opportunities to fight for the spot in the most important GWENT tournament of the year. We also hope that it will make the race to the top of the ladder at the end of the season less stressful and exhausting by putting more focus on the tournament performance.
Off-seasons
Based on the feedback we have received from the pro players, we’ve decided to remove the granting of Crown Points for top-200 placement from all ranked seasons that do not lead to online qualifiers. We want to avoid situations during the season that would make Crown Points accumulation the only reason to play on the ladder in a given month. Not only does it put pressure on pros to stay in the competitive race for the bigger part of the year, but it can also lead to some unwanted scenarios when only a handful of players will be engaged in the real competition.
Different participants replacement rules for Opens
Previously we’ve relied on Crown Points as the sole criteria to determine who should be eligible to play in the official tournament in case the original participants cannot make it for any reason. While this approach works well for World Masters, using it for Opens is less optimal as a qualification to these events is not dependent on Crown points at all. Therefore, we’re changing the way the replacement player will be selected for Opens: in case any original participant won’t be able to make it, we will invite a top-3 player from the same qualifier that the player who is being replaced won. If it’s not possible for any reason (for example such a player already qualified to the same Open in the next qualifier), then a top-4 player from the same qualifier will be invited. If that won’t be possible either, then a player with the most Crown Points on that date will be invited.
Changes in Crown Points distribution
Starting from Season 2 our goal was to keep a healthy balance between the influence of a steady performance on the ladder and in the official tournaments. With the newest change, we’re making another step towards improving this balance.
Here is how the rewards for placing high on the ladder will look like:
At the same time, we’re slightly buffing rewards for the good performance at online qualifiers: a player finishing on the 3rd position in the final standing will receive 3 points (previously 1), a player on the 4th position - 2 points (previously 1).
As a result, we hope to see more players equally investing in both ways to generate Crown Points in Season 4!
Other changes in GWENT Masters Ruleset
On top of the points already mentioned above, we are introducing a few changes to the Ruleset to extend certain paragraphs and clarify the rules which were causing some confusion previously. Full updated ruleset is available here.
