ndclub

If you want actual people to play pvp against there needs to be free pvp decks. Deck level has always been the largest barrier to pvp. Was always my biggest gripe in battleforge.

Can't stress this point enough. At the moment the pvp experience is the best since 2012. I feel like some players who feel bypassed because someone gets something for free dont realize pvp would just die again if we dont have the free decks. Or they dont care but thats just mean

In open stress test I was playing a bit of PvP. I was running across Shadow and Fire decks all the time as well, and about free decks, I think there were either none, or just 2 stages of upgrades, so nothing changed in that matter. If PvP is putting you off because of decks you play against, then perhaps it's not a gamemode for you? Nothing changed in here over past few years.
Making free decks a bit weaker (in different ways) could be a good thing, because some decks are just perfect. However, I believe cards with 2 upgrades, was a tested solution at some point, and for some reasons it was not appropriate.
Also splitting already small PvP community into smaller parts is a bad idea, this is why Devs are not eager to split queues and so on.

I'm really confused which game people were playing before, because this has always been my experience in BF. With the difference that I can now at least start with a lvl 120 deck myself, instead of having to grind PVE until I can compete in PVP.

Free PvP decks is a boon for the gamemode. Handicapping the PvP scene at the beginning by removing the free decks would kill the game mode long-term, and removing it later would make the barrier to entry incredibly high. I play Pure Shadow, the most expensive deck in the game bfp and gold-wise. I don't want to grind rPvE for weeks to be able to play my deck, if that's what it turns into I will quit.
Only change that is appropriate is locking the free decks into their own card pool like the old tome decks. This way you could mix-and-match between the two weekly decks but otherwise be locked-in. If you want a fully custom deck you would need to level-up cards from your own collection. 

All those agains free PvP deck - please realize that PvP is endangered mode. It needs certain critical mass to be playable - you need enough players online. During beta this was not the really the case. Something had to be changed and free PvP is it. It does the following
- removes huge barrier to entry for newcomers (described above multiple times)
- Hooks players for longer time. E.g. in orignal BF I had to invest some money and time to get one deck. At that point I was very reluctant to do it again to build some different PvP decks. But this barrier made me lose interest gradually. With free PvP decks everyone can "spice it up", try different factions and thus keeping players hooked for longer.
When you are arguing that you like to grind you mean for your favourite PvP deck. Have you considered trying different faction? Add 3+ more "grinds" on top of what is needed for your deck to actually have all PvP factions available.
Also, I dont think that splitting PvP modes is good idea - at least until the plaerbase is really really large enough
 

I honestly think the core of all the perceived problems is the fact that you can currently customize the free decks you have with your own collection. I strongly believe that removing this option and having concrete free decks that rotate will alleviate a lot of those negative emotions currently. 
The grind was shorter during beta than original BF days but it was still excruciating. I like making my own "trick" pvp decks and am willing to grind for it. However, I still want to play pvp to grind to that in the meantime. I can't remember the last time there were so many active pvp players, I haven't even recognized the name of one of them yet. That is incredible and I can't help but feel the free decks were a big part of increased participation. PVE did not rise in popularity nearly as much as PVP has.

Agreed. Also, many people say "they take away a part of the game, i.e. grinding for a PvP deck", but imo it's the opposite, they open a new part of the game for me.
The thing is, that I do not have that much time to play because of family and work. But with the free PvP decks I can still play some PvP when I have the time and, at least in theory, compete with everyone. If I had to build a PvP deck from scratch, I would already have a disadvantage, because I wasn't able to play over the weekend. This would make it, that even with perfect gameplay I would start with a disadvantage from having worse cards/upgrades. This would snowball over the months to come and I would virtually be locked out of PvP until I have a competitive 120 deck, which might take months. In the meantime I would have to grind BG9 for months, if I wanted to get into PvP as quickly as possible, which would get boring and repetitive very quickly, making me lose interest in this project.
Long story short, if you want to grind - go for it, but don't force everyone to do it, since it makes people have to do "shores" in order to even play the game. If I wanted to grind 24/7 I would play World of Warcraft or smthng.

Main stream tourney VOD is available now. I will update this post here after uploading the other one to avoid further doubleposting! 
 

This is absolutely nonsense.
As a experienced speedrunner, normal pve and rpve player and top 10 pvp player in 1v1 and top 5 in 2v2 i can say its fact that every possible and very needed change for pvp as for example: Mortarnerf, phasetowernerf, netherwarp (green) glitchfix, thugsnerf, cursed well, Altar of Nihil, voidstorm and so on, does absolutely NOT affect any of the speedrun tactics. Every speedrun tactic on every map is absolutely still doable with any cardchanges for pvp.
The PvP scene needs some big balancing changes. The speedrun scene needs exactly 0 balancing changes.
 
In clearly most of the competitive pvp games the pvp has the absolute highest balancing priority. This should also count to battleforge. If not than the game cant be taken serious belonging to the word "competitive" and overall this would be catastrophical. This i am saying as an ESL (esportleague) player but also as an passionate speedrunner and pve player. 
 
Ofcourse there are stronger and weaker cards in every game but in pvp there have to be cards, combinations and deck variations that have to be nearly equal to each other. Because of some broken cards two colours arent really competitive in pvp: Nature and Frost t1. Nearly every competitive player plays fire or shadow t1. For a "competitive" pvp mode this is absolutely catastrophical.
 
The pvp needs balancing changes big time and now.

So I looked up the names for the 12p maps. I can't even remember if there were any noteworthy cross-map events for Passage to Darkness. The only thing I distinctly remember is that everyone had to sit around and do nothing if the players of another map were slower. There was some weird thing that made it so you called extra enemies to your map to help the others? I can't remember too well. Possibly because it was such a non-factor. Maybe the map is even perfectly playable without these events. And if they were just additional enemy spawns, could just set these to a timer.
Ascension was a bit more complex, I only remember some bits. Would it be possible to reconstruct those events from scratch? Maybe through old videos. But were they even that important? It's quite possible that they can be replaced with some somewhat similar scripted enemy spawns.
I recon a big turnoff for many people (I include myself here) is that their progress will be wiped so they hold off on getting too invested. I guess the project is in a difficult spot right now. There aren't enough people to report issues but it's also not very attractive to start playing now. While at the same time a "full release" while crashes and bugs are still notable would be a bad look as well. I'd assume people aren't all that used to being needed for bug reports because communities are usually big enough for someone else to pick up the slack.
Sucks that the whole thing is pretty much at a stand still because of that. Well, if really nothing else is on the table and a release is hard to justify with the current state of the game might as well try something else to get people involved, like balance changes.
However, I would make sure people are really aware that every bit of help is direly needed. Right now when I log into the game I see the "Here be bugs!" notice that I would assume is mostly skipped over and that's it. So, if there are barely any reports to begin with I would loosen up the requirement to check if a bug already got reported or not. I think many people encounter some bug or crash and would like to report it but think to themselves "Eh ... I don't want to dig through all kinds of reports first ... and it probably got reported already anyway."
I would create a big, to-the-point pop-up that everyone sees when they log into the game. Something like "Please take a moment and report ANY kind of bug and crash you encounter on the official forums. Without your help, further development is impossible!" And a direct link to the forums. After each game there could also be a massage popping up reading "Encountered any issues (crashes, bugs, etc.) during or after this game? Please take a moment and report them on the official forums. Without your help, further development is impossible!"
Reminding people and keeping them constantly aware can help.
Also, let people skip the part where they have to check if a bug was reported already. If no reports come in otherwise, just let them post everything. Remove as many possible hurdles for communication as possible. Maybe it's even worth it to develop a rough in-game solution for reports. A quick form they can fill out. Make it as simple and fast as possible. I would argue getting people to report at all, even if many reports are not usable or repeats, is better than getting no reports. Try to get quantity going and lower the standards for quality.
I think even the "How To Report Bugs - TEMPLATE INSIDE" post is too intimidating for someone just trying to give some quick info. I would make this post much shorter and strip it down to the bare necessities. Severity for example is a comparatively huge paragraph that I would say is pretty unnecessary. The first paragraph too. A post that can be skimmed and understood at a glace would be much, much better.

In terms of balancing in the PvP community I am pretty optimistic that we can come to a consensus on a lot of the changes while just letting the controversial stuff sit where it is for now. In the last year of Battleforge's balancing, MaranV, myself, and 1 or 2 other major English players were able to present agreed upon changes to most watchlists. The English forum's watchlist on homesoil is a great example where a number of us privately worked out an acceptable homesoil change that MaranV then posted to the forum. The entire rest of the watchlist was just people posting "I agree with MaranV's proposed change." Of course Phenomic then responded by releasing the current slapshod homesoil change that almost no one is happy with. I think these discussions are easier to have on the forum because you can go back and review what someone has said previously easier and long posts don't appear as walls of text.
In terms of current Devs making PvP changes, I'd prefer if they just deferred to the top players on issues to avoid more bad balancing like with homesoil and thugs. The current Devs have also made it pretty clear that they don't play PvP anyway.

I am also waiting to come back when there is more player activity being a PVP player as well. The stress test happened when I was too busy with other things in life. It will be a tough road to get the population back to any sustainable level and will require something drastic. The fact that everyone working on it is doing it on a volunteer basis it makes this goal even harder. 
Every discord feels so disconnected from everything else. It is definitely not a marketing tool but good for active discussions.

Most people lost interest since there are almost 0 infos given. Also all Social Media Accounts are dead since Stress Test start. You cant reach players by hiding. The rumors about the reset dont help aswell.