Artifact has lost over half its active playerbase in a week
113 replies, posted
Not to defend Artifact, but unlike Portal 2 there is no console port that would benefit from having it's existence made known via commercials, maybe?
That's a good argument. Pc gamers are often on their pc, but you can always benefit from Web ads. Consoles are very much played on TV's, which means TV ads definitely work
TF2 would prob make loads of money if it was released on console
I enjoy tf2 for the community.
I somehow don't believe the general console community would be a good fit
Suck it.
I get what you mean, but uh...
It would be nice if it went F2P. I like the dota universe, but I don't want to spend money buying that game.
...TF2 is a part of the Orange Box from the PS3/X360 generation.
It received zero patches on Xbox 360 and one patch on PS3 because Microsoft and Sony had (and to a degree still have) massively obnoxious patch certification processes that basically add two weeks to your patch release turnaround time (and in Microsoft's case bill you like $20,000 for the QA staff services).
Valve has released multiple TF2 patches in a day and simply can't put up with that kind of red tape and bullshit standing between them and their players and installed game clients.
It would be nice if it went F2P. I like the dota universe, but I don't want to spend money buying that game.
The baffling part about people saying it should go F2P is that it's literally based off of a F2P game. And yet somehow Valve thought $20 on top of a system designed around earning or buying cards to basically extort as much P2W cash out of you as possible was a good idea, combined with the fact that they've gone out of their way to prevent any refunds if you open any starter/card packs at all. PUBG having $30 for entry for a subpar game was already working against it thanks to Fortnite, and that came prior to its big competition with a massive consumer base. And yet, while others have said that Artifact isn't trying to compete directly with Hearthstone or the like, there's other collectible card games that are free to play and easier to access, already have install bases and (relatively) positive reputation, and don't even inherently have worse card market systems thanks to how Valve handled this.
Who the hell thought this was a good idea? This past year alone has shown so many attempts at trend-following that's fallen flat on its face due to having little to offer that the competition didn't already, and it's like Valve is run entirely by idiots.
I think about that whenever stories like this arise. I don't believe that Valve is run by idiots, just some weird collective of people, mostly newer hires, who either do not remember Valve when they were in their prime, or have long since abandoned the proverbial "old days".
I think the onset of Steam took its toll on the more creative parts of Valve, and since then its only gotten more and more stagnant to the point where the company is just aimless. We've already seen the major players in the creation of Half-Life leave to work elsewhere; no reason to stay if nothing is actively being produced. I don't want to imply that Gabe is a poor boss, but the mentality of having a purposely structureless work environment is bizarre.
Guess you don't need to appeal to your fanbase when you're making way more money through Steam.
I like to think Artifact is pay-to-play in the first place in order to protect the market because they can't have people selling their free cards and they can't have unsellable cards drop in a booster when the whole point is being able to sell them (and give Valve a cut).
Valve are anything but idiots, they know who they're selling to and are insidiously good at rigging the game in their own favor. People already bought CS:GO just to gamble on skins to sell on the Steam Market so they can "make a profit" but someone has to feed the cash into Steam and remember, Valve takes a cut from basically anything where money or credit is exchanged.
It's just that this time they may have gone too far and it bit them in the ass.
Pity, the game had potential.
The game has 0 progression, no wonder people stop playing it. You get nothing for playing matches.No new icons, card skins, nothing. After a handful of games you get tried of basically playing the same decks since there is too few cards to theory crafting from.
Axe is in the fucking default deck, I imagine those default cards are so expensive because you can no longer acquire them as dupes from the card packs.
um... no? Axe is in one of the preconstructed event decks which are not yours to keep.
I mostly agree with Crazy Ivan, the constructed environment isn't in a good state atm.
lmao when your investment is beaten by war thunder
Are you sure you want that when like no one involved with the games you liked still work there?
Are there numbers on Hearthstone for comparison?
The game itself aside, the only positive thing I can see about the economy fiasco is that you pay for cards and packs up front with money. I've been playing quite a bit of MTGA and while they shower you with decks and cards, I wouldn't mind occasionally buying a pack or two, but in order to do that you need to buy stupid fun coins that come in bundles of either slightly too less, or slightly too much. I refuse to buy packs because of that. So if Valve got their heads out of their asses and added proper progression and ways to get free cards, it would could have been alright.
I'll be the one laughing when it finally comes out in 2047.
Although gameplay-wise, Artifact is a well-designed and thought out experience, one can understand why it’s struggling to retain players. Unlike its competitors, Artifact is “locked”
behind a $20 purchase cost and there’s not much to do in it after you’ve bought in. Valve’s product still offers the best cards-for-cash exchange rates compared to the competition, but
the game lacks any sort of progression system or ways to grind cards and packs in-game. The expert play modes, which are the ones giving rewards, are all locked behind $1 event
tickets — so pretty much a “pay for everything” model, as far as community’s perception went.
ummm what the fuck??
you have to pay actual real world money do do literally anything? after paying $20 for the privilege?
fuck off, this is next level bullshit
Even Terraria, a 2D building game thats years old has more players than a very new valve release
https://www.pcgamesn.com/hearthstone/hearthstone-player-count
Over a 100 million apparently, and still growing.
