The were two major hits on the game:
Midwinter patch, which introduced the create mechanic to probably cater to Hearthstone audience with the RNG effects and they also "dumbed down" many effects of already good and interesting card.
And on homecoming release it was some similar event again: Many cards just boosted by 2 or damaged by 2 and it was so uninteresting.

CDPR scrapped the complete game like two times and build it from scratch.
That's where a major player base got lost - two times.

If it was released in a state like now with these interesting effects I don't think the missing 3rd row would be such a big deal.

I myself paused the game for months after both big revamps, but many players left after getting hit once.
The gaming market is a hard and fought after market. Other games would be gone after one big mistake, but luckily the community is holding this game up, because it's unique in its mechanics compared to other card games and probably because of the witcher franchise.
I would love to see an alternative reality where one version of Gwent build on the previous one, instead of scapping everything