Chain Frost is my favorite card and god I love Lich.
Splashing bristle just to have a bruisher, without adding any red cards? Do you mean in draft or constructed? Because I guess in draft people like the early kills, but ditching aside a whole color from one of your heroes seems counterproductive.
I haven't followed much of the meta, other than the selemene-drow-ogre magi combo. Is there a way to counter it other than playing drow yourself, maybe RB aggro removal?
Draft. Putting a third color just for the stats seems like an awful idea.
Haven't follow much of constructed, but aggro seems to deal with them fairly well. They need a few components running such as the right cards, BG heroes in the same lane and ramp. Claszureme Hourglass, deny them one color constantly, and end asap.
Oh yeah, you guys got any tips for making decks? I tend to struggle when it comes to building my deck, especially with items. What are good tips for picking out items and cards?
I try following basic guidelines for mtg decks: decide on what strategy your deck should follow and choose cards accordingly; make the deck with as few cards as possible to maximize the chance of drawing the cards you want, and try having a proper manacost curve, having few low and high-costed cards, and many with 4-5 cost. What I have noticed is that plenty of the mandatory hero cards are in that range, so getting a nice curve isn't too hard.
For items, the normal cloaks and the stonehall ones are very useful and cheap, don't get more than >15 item unless you are playing some kind of econ deck, and try having a bit of variety on the equipment slots so you aren't stuck with a lot of items that occupy the same slot.
I won against a red/black deck (with axe and sorla in it...) with my green/blue. It's hard but not impossible. But yea, Axe is definitely one of the most annoying hero cards to play against.
The reason why a lot of people ain't exactly rolling with the "but other card games also have you buying packs, what makes artifact bad??" but valve wasn't exactly known to follow trends. Similar to Dota which broke the moba standard by making all heroes free and limiting $$$ stuff to cosmetic shit they could've went the same route for artifact and just make foil cards or whatever.
Sadly that isn't the case. The game seems to be actually pretty good albeit lackluster in the feature department but that'll get ironed out sooner or later. I know enough nerds people IRL that unironically, after telling them that Magic the Gathering is too expensive for me, said it's just "100€ for a good, lasting deck that's diverse" - and I guess Valve is aiming for those.
I like the icon for this thread.
Not all hobbies are for everyone.
But I digress, the model's got merits but Valve's currently taxing it a little too heavily. The inflexibility of SteamBux, the 15%+ fees of the secondary market, the 8% rake for Expert Play, the compulsory $20 buy-in, etc. The generosity of letting people play preconstructed and phantom draft for 'free' isn't enough to win most outside of the TCG circle. They need to tone down the aggressive monetization.
This game should go F2P. Even CS:GO is f2p now.
Artifact now peaking at 25k players. It was at 32k last week I believe?
It was close to 60k at launch.
ngl I don't mind Valve feeling the pressure to improve the situation, with WotC announcing 10mil prize pool and hearthstone staying king it is looking grim for this game.
I guess this goes to show regardless of the effort you put into a game, people don't always take it at face value.
I think ppl did take it at face value, with the game's reputation plus what little goodwill Valve still possesses, and the initial stages needed to get past blaming the RNG.
What I meant is that despite Valve putting all their time and energy into Artifact, it culminated into something people did not necessarily like. I think that has been a running theme for them ever since they dipped their toes into VR and "other" things their fans did not necessarily expect or appreciate.
You know what they say... videos games are commercial art. It doesn't yield anything if people don't want it, regardless of quality.
This is probably a sentiment that's been echoed a lot around this game but I picked it up and I really like the game, its real interesting and I enjoy playing it. But man there are some wonky ass decisions that were made here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgBNQzKp7jc
Cheating Death is a balanced card
Whoever made Cheating Death needs to be publicly shamed, or at least confess design intentions.
This week promised update to colorblind mode and in-game communication. Call to Arms event might also add new decks. More @ PlayArtifact twitter.
https://twitter.com/PlayArtifact/status/1072350816332333056
Don't think this solves any of the public outcry, but one step at a time. It only has been a week, and so close to Christmas, no less.
"We're in this for the long haul."
You know, it may just be the Christmas spirit that is getting to me, but I am actually willing to give them a chance. Valve, show me that you can commit to a long-time project without getting distracted by one of your new shiny toys and you will have won back a substantial amount of goodwill for me.
I am never in a billion years going to buy the actual game, though
They have decided to buff / nerf cards.
The meta is saved.
https://www.pcgamer.com/richard-garfield-among-those-not-working-at-valve-any-more/
Out of all the bad news haunting this game, tbh this one seems like the smallest from what I hear about the guy having minimal roles at best with game maintenance beyond rulesets.
It has been known few months ago but this is a confirmation from the man himself. His contract probably ended with the game's launch.
As a longtime Valve follower and satellite observer of Artifact, one of the biggest problems here is Valve's "lay low, communicate with a good update when we're ready' approach is backfiring like never before. Rapidly losing players like this is probably unheard of for them, and just because they don't talk doesn't mean they live in a vaccum, they do see community words and how bad it may look on the outside with 99% player loss and 1 1/2 months of no updates. And yet they continue to say nothing, either out of shame, demotivation or genuinely feeling they'll be fine until they prepare the mobile/singleplayer campaign/F2P update people like Tyler at VNN anticipate.
That is of course assuming Valve internal politics hasn't already neutered the Artifact dev team's size to a skeleton crew that can barely accomplish what they promised or leaked. Either way, they have to say something soon. Just dropping the next update could be it, but others have said that it may be too late for even a top-quality F2P update to pull this game out of its pit. And will such an update do more harm than good to the intended playerbase, I wonder?
Anyone here followed DOTA or CS: Global Offensive during their launch cycles? I heard how they had rocky start until microtransaction schemes of safes and/or skins got the ball rodlling on their current top-tier playerbases, I'm wondering how their issues compare to what Artifact's facing now. That the last 3 Valve games also can't get anywhere without adoption TF2's Mann Co doctrine of hats, outfits and shiny guns probably says something about Valve's true ability to make marketable multiplayer games these days...
Dota2's early days were waves of invites (I was in it) and since it got to public eyes the momentum didn't die down. A lot of people were dying to get in because people left dota1 for HoN and LoL now they have good reason to jump back in this hot new game that's fresh yet familiar. When they announce all heroes are free (which competitors are on rotation or pay) and the International Dota2 pretty much skyrocketed to the #2 moba/arts in the market.
For CSGO I feel like its almost the same with other iterations of CS: their players feeling reluctant to switch to the newer version. "1.6 is still the best!" "go is gay" "our local cybercafe didn't install the newest game" and the such. Unless Valve fucked up hard, it was pretty much destined to slowly crawl up the CS fame.
This game tho? I attribute it as a major misread on Valve's part. They didn't expect the model to be acclaimed but they'd at least think the game's good enough to carry it, convinced by whatever internal data they have gathered. Now I don't want to list out like the few major factors why the game performed so poorly unless someone wants to hear it (a lot of them mechanically and externally), but their current silence, no doubt backfiring like mad because it is 2019 and dev communication is norm in service games, but someone on Reddit pretty much convinced me that they shouldn't say anything until their big patch is ready because the insurmountable amount of skeptics will no doubt hound them no matter they say (see: the long haul). They gave up on the current version of the game.
Still, I personally don't believe they are ready to abandon it yet. #1 they are going to destroy their company as a game developer if they do so NOW because ALL their goodwill will perish, their morale will tank and they pretty much can kiss their game making days goodbye. #2 there has been sources mentioning Valve going about collecting feedback behind the scenes (tournaments and players) and for example, Lifecoach, who visited Valve to look at Artifact, trusts that the game do have a future (he previously visited Blizzard and CD Projekt and quit their card games respectively shortly after). #3, well, there are a few features already halfway in development: Spectators, Puzzle mode, next expansion. They should at least push them out first if they no longer want to continue.
Looking at factors surrounding it and its competitors, I honestly expect 2 more months of dreaded silence, perhaps their Twitter going active again mid next month.
Had a shower thought: the DOTA lore is a flimsy basis for the game’s standing. The Sensationist Headlines crowd may not be the best judges, but no one is too attracted by it to feel any story exploration Artifact can provide is worth it. Not to mention that the DOTA playerbase clearly hasn't taken to being the center of Artifact marketing.
so how could they make the game attractive style-wise? Take another page from Blizzard and Heroes of the Storm: turn Artifact from a DOTA card game to a game themed around All Valve properties: Portal, Half Life, TF2, L4D , DOTA and the others drawn together in a multiverse-crossing story centered around the titular Artifact’s reality-bending powers or whatever. Themed decks, fresh art of favorite Valve characters, humorous scenes created in comics, it could be a major attraction.
i know this wouldn’t sell everyone, tho. The HL crowd could easily roast Valve for “wasting” Half Life on a card game, I know that much. But treating franchises equally could remedy that, and hell, maybe it could offer a kick of motivation to try making new games in the franchises.
........
I actually wish people knew how much Artifact brought and pieced together Dota's lore before they go saying that the game has "terrible to no" lore.
That's the one department I actually want them to keep trucking and not change.
If you are any person who still enjoys seeing content for this game, you'll see this exact same "joke" everywhere every day. It gets very tiring.
No wonder content creators fled the game(outside of not really getting much views and money), these are like jehovah witnesses that won't leave us alone.
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