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

The policy makes sense IMO but seems easily exploitable. "Shit, Steam gives people the right refund my game, if only there was a way to take that right away. Oh wait, I can just bait people into redeeming a free in-game item first"

The starter pack policy is purely intended to prevent people from refunding the game, just the same as how some games & publishers (FO76, for instance) choose to use custom launchers for games to prevent refunds on platforms like Steam If Valve wanted they could just give two shitty starter decks and no booster packs, or they could make the cards in one/both of those things be untradable so they can't be used to abuse the marketplace. Letting players unpack (untradable) cards would still give them the mouthwatering lootbox unboxing mental reward so they might still remain and play the game/buy more packs, but at least those who don't care for the game would be able to refund it that way..

If they had released pretty much any singleplayer game in the 7 years since Portal 2, even if it wasn't HL, then we would at least have some reason to think that they care about more than microtransactions.

This would've spawn a separate (and perhaps harsher) set of complaints. If the packs and tickets are not consumed players should have the rights to demand for refund.

Coming off of MTG the games alright but it needs more cards. Right now its hard to build a deck around a theme and there isn't enough cards that combo with each other. Every game plays out the same due to the Champion system and its the same strategy of abandoning a lane and focusing on the other two. Hopefully the introduce more cards that allow you to win by just foucsing on one lane to mix things up. I also seem to be matching up with mostly Chinese people, game must be doing well overseas.

That's an odd generalization given that nobody will ever have enough resources to fight a three-front war, and no mention on how each of the color faction plays. Admittedly pushing for ancient is more of an inevitability than a strategy currently unless you are playing draft where heroes being stranded in a lane is much more common.

So they cannot release any game that isn't in your favourite genre if they haven't released one in your favourite genre in recent years?

Y'see, I would have been nodding with almost any other genre, but this is a card game. Monitization for card games are "Heavy" by default. The only card games I know of which don't at the very least heavily incentivize paying money for new cards are the ones which were physically incapable of doing so at the time of release, such as the Pokemon card game cartridge for the Game Boy Color. As far as I'm concerned, throwing leery gazes Valve's way for coming back after so long with a card game isn't all that different as if they did the same for a gacha game. Yes, there is theoretically a chance it's not all about the microtransactions, but it would be the unicorn of it's genre and Valve hasn't shown that skill for about a decade.

https://twitter.com/PlayArtifact/status/1068959077990981632

As mentioned earlier in the thread, the genre is not the main issue inherently, what surrounds the genre change is.

Don't know why but imagined someone like scrooge mcduck or mr krabs writing that on a computer made of golden colored money.

They should just make a page with live counter of how much they have made money from market operations at this point.

TCG is a pretty popular genre and Valve are even trying new things with the whole 3 lane or whatever that is and it seems monitization is not so bad..? Or at least it might be better than Hearthstone when it comes to actually getting what you want thanks to the marketplace instead of having buying booster packs or grinding for hours for the cards you want. Lack of trade sucks though. And what surrounds the genre change is that Valve is making it? All your posts in this thread says that you don't like that Valve is making them and not a singleplayer game. "traded"

No, the main issues were primarily related to integrity and morality in relation to what was done to their previous franchises rather than the inherent issue of it being not a single player game.

What is this about integrity and morality? I seriously don't understand. You make it sound like Valve were some godly angel that could do no wrong ever. Your problem is only because it's from Valve and not even about these games because you even stated that if Dota was in another company's hand it would be better.

the thing is, they could've gone with a much more user friendly way of getting into the game but they're just greedy. they could've made the game free to play and give the free to play players only an untradable version of the worthless starter deck and make the rest purchasable as usual but they wanted your money before you could even try the game yourself. everything about this launch and the refund shenanigans is super scummy by valve

I stated that Dota would most likely end up in a different company's hands if Valve were to no longer able to support it, whether it would be more or less successful with a different company is not known to me. I am not implying that anyone is a godly angel however the company's attitude and philosophy to what they care about has blatantly changed throughout the years and not for the better. Valve has obviously started going downhill way earlier than dota however dota is by far one of their biggest "game" projects at the moment which includes a lot of practices that they learned from before, mainly related to caring about money primarily and not other things such as artistry.

This I don't understand, dota is a very beautiful game with lots of awesome hero designs and the map is visually pleasing even without added effects or terrain packs.

Look if I sound like some kind of an asshole to you I apologize, if you love the game that's fine. One of the reasons why I am saying this shit is because fans of Valve's earlier work have been kind of ultra fucked over by being led on for more than a decade by this point only for their obnoxious journey to be concluded by the original writer posing a mildly encrypted blog conclusion in the form of a blog post. Given the massive influence that half life games had on so many people on this forum naturally quite a few of us are going to feel like feel like someone just murdered a puppy infront of us. People who became familiar with Valve way later with Dota and other stuff will naturally not understand what it feels like all that well and will have difficulty empathizing with us.

I understand, I've loved Half-Life too for the longest time since its WON days (best main menu). I've been disappointed about it until like early 2010s when I just became convinced it wasn't coming. This doesn't mean you have to take your disappointment against Valve's other products.

I am not really following how you are capable of seeing where people are coming from yet simultaneously not seeing the blatantly negative transformation that the company has went through as a correlation. My main impression is that you may not be as familiar with the contrast of what they went through and as a result may have a considerably more benevolent image of them, especially if you like their new stuff.

I just don't think this 'negative transformation' is as dramatic as you think. I can feel sad about Half-Life but also happy about Dota. I don't have to like one thing and completely hate another.

It's pretty much just exploiting the entrepreneurial culture that arguably began with skin trading in CS:GO where people would honestly think investing $300 for that $5000 skin was gonna work out in their favor. It typically doesn't. Everything that happens on the Steam Market works out in Valve's favor. If someone spends 300 bucks on a rare card, the seller gets 200-something worth of Steam Credit and every time they purchase something with that credit, more and more of those 300 dollars become a part of Valve's cut. Calling it cynical is an understatement, it's practically encouraging players to cannibalize each other for personal wealth but that wealth only exists in Valve's terms in the first place. I guess you don't have to care about someone wasting their rent money on a virtual card when it lets you buy a hundred boosters.

Careful @Gorou , arguing with @Dr.Cola appears to be similar to the experience of throwing rocks into a polite miniature black hole. He seems to have an utterly inexhaustible quantity of bizarre defenses and is probably capable of arguing with people over this shit until the thread gets auto locked from maxed out pages. @Dr.Cola if you are trolling us with this shit by wasting as much of our time as possible then you are a very gentlemanny troll, I applaud you, however your opinions simply do not make any sense.

he has been talking shit for ages man I wouldn't bother engaging with him Artifact is just the epitome of p2w shit game, everyone should be angry about it, but because its valve and they made good games 15 years ago peoplenare defending them. They're like Bio-drones but worse. Valve drones that think this shit business practice is acceptable.

Everyone now has more than full grounds to stop doing this shit, Valve now is basically indistinguishable from other triple A assholes and in some ways even worse because other companies are atleast evil honestly instead of pretending to be still good.

How is it trolling? The reason why I even started this is because you made a post about dota that was in the tone of "why did Valve do this and I don't understand people who play this game" as if dota should not have happened and people should not play it. There are users in this thread that even rated someone liking MOBAS funny sarcastically and dumb which to me is fucking idiotic and childish. I then see you post how if Valve never made dota then they might have hypothetically made something else. I wasn't even in it to defend Artifact in the first place.

Dude i'm done, I presented my argument as transparently as possible and outlined every single thing in a crystal clear manner in such a way that even the most adoring fan of dota could understand and briefly share in my perspective even if he/she completely disagreed, you are being ludicrously persistent and confrontational for zero reason and denying what are essentially objective observations. You show zero concession or at the very least respect towards other people's arguments and as a result create the impression of someone who simply wants to call people idiots for no reason.

do I need to comment on how terribly you misrepresented what I said, or are you just going to admit that you're not going to listen regardless of what I say?

You said this Which implies Valve had to release any SP games before releasing something like Artifact. Or what am I supposed to read it as?