https://steamcommunity.com/games/583950/announcements/detail/1819924505115920089
When we launched Artifact, we expected it would be the beginning of a long journey, that it would lay the foundation for years to come. Our plan was to immediately dive into our
normal strategy of shipping a series of updates driven by the dialogue community members were having with each other and with us.
Obviously, things didn't turn out how we hoped. Artifact represents the largest discrepancy between our expectations for how one of our games would be received and the actual
outcome. But we don't think that players misunderstand our game, or that they're playing it wrong. Artifact now represents an opportunity for us to improve our craft and use that
knowledge to build better games.
Since launch, we've been looking carefully at how players interact with the game as well as gathering feedback. It has become clear that there are deep-rooted issues with the game
and that our original update strategy of releasing new features and cards would be insufficient to address them. Instead, we believe the correct course of action is to take larger steps,
to re-examine the decisions we've made along the way regarding game design, the economy, the social experience of playing, and more.
So what does this mean? Moving forward, we'll be heads-down focusing on addressing these larger issues instead of shipping updates. While we expect this process of
experimentation and development to take a significant amount of time, we’re excited to tackle this challenge and will get back to you as soon as we are ready.
Let it go
Just let it die
I'm morbidly curious what a "significant amount of time" means for Valve time. Not really sure if cancelling whatever updates they had planned for the game is good for the health of the already tiny remaining player base or if people will come back if they do somehow manage to fix all this.
will get back to you as soon as we are ready
From the creators of Half-Life 3...
Just pull the plug on the damn thing. Don't let it suffer any more than it already has.
Since launch, we've been looking carefully at how players interact with the game
You know looking at the player numbers, I think the problem is people not interacting with the game.
Make. The cards. Free.
Customer pays $20, they get the game, the whole game, all the cards and as many of them as they want in as many decks as they want, keep playing as many times as they want. No tickets, no UT packs, just a fucking game for fucking money.
You want to do bullshit cosmetics on top of that, fine, make foils as a reward for winning a draft or tournament that people can trade and you can take a cut from. But you have a chance to go from the most excessively greedy game to putting the competition to shame. Everyone else is doing some sort of evil UT crap, you got backlash because you were so blatantly evil I'm surprised you didn't kick any puppies on stage. Show them all up by making it not just a good game quality-wise but a good game morality-wise.
Why can't Valve always communicate like this? On the rare occasions when they actually issue a statement about something, they're usually pretty candid and honest about the situation, but 90% of the time they just don't say anything at all even when things are crumbling around them
The game has a lot of design problems. The big two being insanely swingy RNG and a lack of card synergy.
It's like a card game made by people who haven't been paying attention to the development of card games over the last 20 years.
STOP! IT'S ALREADY DEAD!
From the thread title O thought this was going to be a F2P announcement or some major update. Instead it’s basically just “big things coming fam 🙏”
Clearly I've not followed it that well myself then, if the game itself is bad. Very awkward that its also a shit game if true.
Even if Valve wanted to pull a NMS Next, there's way less demand for a digital card game based on DOTA vs a space exploration game where you travel the universe, trade and build bases. Even with content updates, NMS still feels a bit lacking once you get settled, as NMS Next is what the game should have been like on launch.
Fucks sake, valve has a competitor playing rough to secure a foot in the market share. If there's a time to drop something along the lines of "Oh yeah, we *actually are* working on a new halflife game and here's a teaser" or some nonsense then it'd be now. Why would this be good for Steam? Because it'd show publishers that Steam is the dominant platform and that they shoulden't take risks with the up-and-comer.
It's funny and sad really; Valve could literally make any other game - Left4Dead3, Half Life 3, Half Life 2 Episode 3, Portal 3, a new Day of Defeat, a good VR title, or even something completely new and original - and I reckon it'd probably be doing a lot better than a fucking Dota 2 card game of all things.
so nothing again. this is like the 10th time valve has said we are in for the long haul. nobody cares just do something
It's ironic since that's pretty much the model dota used, and the game is fucking themed off of dota.
What happened to Doug Lombardi? Where is he and why isn't he doing his job?
It would also convince people like me who are supporting Epic's strongarmed shiftyness because they think Valve's being incredibly lazy and resting on their laurels that they are wrong. Flat wrong. I really want to be proven very wrong about Valve being lazy. If they weren't the first really good online digital-distribution marketplace, I think they would have gone bankrupt long ago.
https://youtu.be/0d6yBHDvKUw
And now to never to hear from them again on the matter...
We know how this all goes valve, you'll toy around with ideas, no one will decide on a single one, all of them get dropped and you move on. All the while what little left of the artifact community hears nothing and the game drops into obscurity.
As expected, they double-down on it instead of working on literally anything else.
It almost feels like they're trying to take the worst course possible. I actually wonder if this is silently out of spite.
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/2304/a855a963-ac61-4e2f-ade8-746442e35789/image.png
This, on the other hand, is a bit of a snag in terms of Valve hoping for an Artifact 2.0 rebirth, and I said it myself when comparing NMS' redemption journey and a prospective Artifact redemption arc: everybody wanted NMS and were ready to like it until Hello Games dropped a release that was unlabeled Early Access AFTER a last-minute 3-month delay and then went radio silent as the community began compiling lists of Sean Murray's lies (accurate or not), so making the game closer to whole through ongoing updates was the only winning strategy for NMS and it was one the remaining player base was ready for.
On the other hand, Artifact is the game next to nobody asked for. Dota 2 fans mostly won't care even if the game is in the Dota lore, they're here to play Dota. Digital cardgame fans don't want to swim in such an abusively bad microtransaction pool, especially when there are better alternatives around like Heartstone and Magic TG Arena.
they're talking big because they're too stubborn to admit defeat
morale will be crushed, people will give up on the project, and it'll fizzle out with no one taking responsibility for the lack of progress
how many times does this have to happen before the people at valve notice the pattern
I am sad that Artifact failed actually. A new twist on the card game, with a the OG designer, an interesting lore (Dota 2 heroes do have an interesting design, even though I have played it for 2 hours) and seemingly a good company behind it.
They completely failed to meet expectations and failed to monetize it properly. Make it F2P or a one time payment or something. Also entered the market a bit too late.
A really good example of a great idea, bad execution.
It is possible to come back from the dead, but only a very small few have done so.
No Man's Sky did it, Final Fantasy XIV did it, Artifact will not do it.
I get what you're saying but this is probably a one-off where they mustered what little care they had to respond to an extreme failure. At least it shows something rather than them internally going "huh, guess we flopped, oh well" and not even making a public statement.
To be fair they literally said they were going to do this right after launch. They just didn't expect the game to die so horribly that it would make this admission look terrible in hindsight.
I'm glad to see Valve determined in a project after these years of abandoning everything and I'm sure a bunch of people will appreaciate it. But at the same time it is silly to see the same story over and over, how low something has to fall to make a difference. If Artifact were a complete success with skyrocketing numbers today, it would have fallen into silence now.
https://i.imgur.com/HXcakYp.png
Good luck with this one.
For me it feels like the only thing he's capable of is making sure Gabe and other people do not talk about stuff they should not be talking about at the moment. (like EP3)
https://store.steampowered.com/sale/valve_index/ - Speak of the devil, Valve is actually doing something more then like what, five people want? This could be great if it's affordable, may even sell my WMR headset for it
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