Artifact is released (Also Valve acknowledges Half-Life exists) - Sensationalist Headlines

I think it's just comical that valve presents us with a "deeply-strategic, competitive gameplay with the rich setting of Dota 2." of a trend that happened a few years ago that revolves purely around money. People have been justifying it by saying they bought it for $19.99 and made back most of that by selling cards, but even then it's still heavily revolving around money that goes straight to valve one way or another, through market cuts and/or it just being locked to your steam account. This is a machine built to make valve money, it doesn't matter if the game is actually good or not that fact still remains.

I find it in poor taste they got Richard Garland to make what looks like a great game, yet surround it with the most hostile whale hunting monetization scheme I've ever seen in digital TCGs. The only way this could get worse is with limited use cards.

Diclaimer: I bought my husband a copy of Artifact as an anniversary gift because he was hyped for it. He's enjoying it immensely and has been kind enough to let me twiddle around on his PC with it. Here's the problem I have. Artifact is, I think, a good game-system. As in, as far as card games I've played go, yes. It is a robust, well-designed game made that knows, understands and, dare I even say, loves it's target audience. I have nothing wrong with frothy grognard neckbeards (like myself) getting up to their breeches in cards, and math, and complexity. Artifact has a good level of aesthetic quality. Personally I don't like how it's butchered Dota's standing lore and I think the writing is truly god awful, but what can you do, I'm a snob. The voice line reactions of heroes, the "feel" of the card effects, it all works out in a pretty satisfying way. I understand people who'd like deeper TCG innovation (MUH YUGIOH) but I think that will always be a pipe dream as far as a real "card" game goes. It's a cost-benefit thing, and the (captive) audience for TCGs don't expect it, so raising the bar would only be spending money so you have to keep spending money. Artifact is, dare I say it, fun. I enjoyed what I played. But Artifact is greedy. Artifact had it's road paved with the most transparent set of lies I've ever seen Valve tell, and has earned quite a lot of bad faith in my ledger. I still hold by Valve's wisdom, I think they're a fundamentally functional company with strong vision, but Artifact's grotesque birthing has certainly been a sobering reminder that like all companies, Valve is not a humble little workshop of friends building neat things, they are a business driven by money. Unlike other times the "business driven by money" angle could be applied to their decision making and rational in neutral and understanding tones, this time, it is only for the darkest and most upsetting reasons that can be attributed to them. This greed, ultimately damns Artifact in my book. [I was writing something longer, but really, there's no point to the laborious process of illustrating what "makes" Artifact Greedy, so I'll rush to my more important point.] The seeming promise of Artifact that is intact, is that the card-market facilitates a cheaper, more robust TCG. This promise is simply bullshit. Somebody is paying-in for cards, first of all. So no matter what, somebody is putting up the 300$ needed to pull the Rares before they ever go on the market. "Okay," says my convenient nearby strawman, "but they'll get some money back on the cards they sell!" Will they fucking really? They get the "money" back? After Valve's 15% "processing" fee? That money could say, pay a bill? Oh wait. No, it can't. That money isn't money anymore. It's Valve's store credit. That's the real specter looming behind all of this for me. Valve talks about Artifact respecting the notion of "value" for player's money. Valve tries to say they're somehow different from Hearthstone because you can buy and sell cards, rather than only milling through packs. Go to the Market! (There will be no direct player trading, Valve then quietly adds.) But the fact that the so-called money is, in fact, money already given to Valve, converted to store value that is clearly and transparently sweated of it's value by the, frankly fucking absurd Marketplace tax that Valve wields, is a total fraud of a practice. At no point will anyone ever be able to "cash out" of Artifact. If a player with a 100$ deck in Artifact quits, he won't get back 100$ of real world cash. He will get back 85$ of Valve Credit. That is not "retaining value" for players. That's retaining value for Valve. Valve never sweats a drop of cash. Wizards of the Coast must be seething right now, thinking of Valve getting a cut of that massive card-flipping market. Honestly, it's obscene.

https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/108589/dd9f410c-3a70-446c-9b2e-1f57cc8723c4/image.png I WONDER WHAT OUR CUSTOMERS WANT FROM A NEW GAME

I guarantee Garfield is responsible for the monetization. He invented this garbage.

ur so brave

It's not zealotry to call out garbage monetization practices. It's called having standards.

I am OK with cards costing money, physical or not. But the game shouldn't cost money to start, there should exist some mechanism to earn cards in game (since you're showered with free MTG cards if you show up at a nearby tournament), and of course Valve shouldn't be profiteering on the resale of cards. Any given card pack opened could make Valve a theoretically infinite amount of money, if the card is sold on the marketplace continually. It's like some people at Valve watched Office Space and realized they could do the heist legally.

Oh come on, why would people be upset about Valve making Dota? Just because it isn't Half-Life? Every time on facepunch when someone dislikes dota/cs:go or artifact is because it isn't Half-Life and that these games are the reason that Valve aren''t making more of their favourite beloved series. Valve has probably not commited to HL since 2008/09. So you can blame Left 4 Dead 2, because they decided for that instead of Half-Life, can also blame the ongoing support TF2(this is where they started the whole lootboxes btw!) because they decided to do that instead of Half-Life. Portal 2 as well. But that isn't the case because Valve is big enough to make Half-Life if they wanted to, with or without any of their other titles. Being upset or hating Dota, not because of them actually not liking playing it but because of being upset about Half-Life is pretty pathetic.

TF2 doesn't make you open a lootbox to gain access to a character you already had access to. TF2 doesn't make you pay every single time you play a competitive match. TF2 allows you to trade your items without losing 15% of the value each and every time. TF2 is an original IP and concept. TF2 is designed to be a game, not a credit card machine.

I do not see anything pathetic about it personally. You may have a point that the whole trend of focusing on other shit started way earlier but dota is still the culmination of the entire SP derailing escapade. TF2 at the very least was RELATED to HL in the sense that they were both first person shooters with massive amounts of personality, with dota being a 100% foreign.

I am not talking about the rage against Artifact alone just so you know. TF2 is also not original IP because it's based on a TF mod for quake.

First Valve game I'm not going to own, and the first Valve game with poor reviews. I wonder if there's a connection.

I would be begrudgingly accepting of paid cards if they had actually reasonable pricing while simultaneously having options of grinding for them realistically without the game being rigged to make old cards invalid every year to ensure that the free 2 play players were always at a distinct disadvantage.

I mean Dota 2 is a really solid game, it's just not for everyone. It's also literally the opposite of the Artifact situation - I've played a 1000 hours plus without ever paying a dime, because I'm a complete cheapskate. At the same time I'm literally getting all the gameplay, save for a few extra seasonal challenges that I honestly couldn't care less about. Dota 2 didn't even start the trend of Valve making money off cosmetics - that'd be TF2 - though obviously it probably didn't turn them off the idea. About the community being toxic - I think it's more that A) the games are long, so you really get to know people (for better or worse) B) you rely a lot more on your team mates to win the game, so someone dropping the ball can be a lot more frustrating. Personally I honestly don't experience that much toxicity in the game, but obviously your mileage may vary.

The genre was not the main point of the reply, the motivation and integrity behind those games was(in relation to what was done before). Dota is foreign to old Valve mainly in IDEOLOGY, which is why so many people are not happy about it.

I got yelled at for playing like shit as a level 1 player by other level 1 players who are not even supposed to have a concept of what playing poorly is like and are supposed to be complete noobs who are just trying a new game out.

Motivation? Integrity? What are you talking about? You see it like Dota was Valve turning evil with get-rich-quick schemes. And lots of people love it, it's only specific(this place) half-life fans that seem to not be happy about it.

Well then I guess I must be one of the insane half life lunatics then, my apologies.

Well tbh a big problem with Dota is that it's hard to get into. There are few resources for learning what to do (and when), and you just kinda get released into a long game where you don't know what's going on and told to pick it up. For what it's worth, the community (at least on reddit) are pretty aware of this - there are basically daily pleas to Valve to make a proper tutorial, learning videos etc. People actually want more new players, and they want them to be treated better. I'm not claiming the community is amazing or anything, but at least for me I never experienced anything I couldn't just laugh off.

There is a mode that's completely free to play after purchase of the game. You can earn cards in game without buying anything.

That's right. From my experience, it's a genre-wide issue, and you can only wonder "How did it get so populars with such barrier of entry?" Ah, excuse me, but there is a concept in most competitive called "Smurfing" which is the practice of playing on a new, fresh account when you're already at your "peak" in a game to try and refresh the experience (for exemple, starting back from 0 on the ladders in ranked mode and climbing again). This is a prevalent issue in most competitive videogame (even Overwatch), but especially touch MOBA. Both Valve and Riot Games fight against this by placing more and more elaborate "anti-smurf" system by detecting them, which in my experience Riot Games is more performing (Althought you should not play League of Legends with a friend since the friend is gonna play better than you and you're going to be indirectly considered a smurf and then placed with the hidden smurf queue). The MOBA community being toxic is sad, but both developers are trying their best at fighting it, especially Riot Games.

Which was made by the same people as TF2. It's their original IP.

I would probably be way more chill about it if casual matches lasted like 10 minutes each or something. But the fact of new players getting locked in such a wildly long experience with other people who may potentially verbally shit on you the entire match EVEN if they are winning is probably one of the reasons why dota has problems with new players. But you already mentioned before how lots of dota players apparently like the ultra long match length.

No, TF2 is basically the same as its predecessor but with much more improved design choices like lack of grenades and better art style. If TF2 being made by the same people make it original IP then CS is too (until recently with Cliffe lmao). Pretty much a lot of their games are original IP with that logic. Dota could even be so since Icefrog is with Valve although started developing dota around 2005 when it came around 2002~. But since Dota 2 is very different from its predecessor it could be regarded as original IP too? And Half-Life could be regarded as not original IP because pretty much the entire team behind the original half-life has left at this point?

Yeah, I'm trying to use IP in a way which simply does not meet its definition. So you're right there. I'll remove that part from my post. Oops it's still a completely valid list of issues with Artifact that make it an unacceptable game.

What is original ip and not original ip are semantics and not important with why certain individuals are unhappy with dota in relation to Valve. a lot of people would have much less of a problem with it if it was made by a different company.

I mean personally I think around 30-35 minutes is the optimum for a good game, but there’s obviously also a huge variance. I wouldn’t call that “ultra long”, though, and at ten minutes long, it literally wouldn’t be Dota anymore. And if people could quit with no penalties, you’d literally have one guy ruining the game for nine other players with no repercussions. Sorry, but that’s basically unworkable. If you don’t like how Dota plays, there really isn’t much more to it. There’s a turbo mode now that cuts down game length quite a bit, though (but not to ten minutes on average), is maybe you could try that.

Not if a different person auto filled in or if a high level AI did?

I'm still not arguing about Artifact but the fact that fans here are disliking valve's other games for dumb reasons. See this is the problem. You guys don't dislike artifact because of its bad monetization, you guys don't dislike Dota for whatever reason. You literally don't like them because Valve made them and not Half-Life. This just makes it more obvious.