Valve adds player progression to Artifact, will start regularly balancing cards

[Crazy Ivan]

Yes. They did.

If you bought the game earlier, you got 10 packs. You still get to unlock 15 more card packs.

If you buy the game now, you get 5. You may unlock 15 more.

They reduced the number of packs.

Unless you do some incredibly byzantine handwaving, and presume that grinding is somehow an expected exchange, never mind that it's capped grinding, you can somehow come up with a bigger number of "free" cards, if you're a dick. It is still less cards than people who bought the game earlier.

"Har har, buy in to my game, so you can grind for the cards I used to give away, that's what you wanted, right?" I can audibly hear the gold capped teeth glinting before the back alley salesman guts me for my kidneys.

I considered buying Artifact for myself after this update, but this flagrant act of greedy (not to mention, ugh, capped fucking grinding) tamped that consideration right back down.

Valve is trying everything it can to simultaneously appease the fanbase that it righteously pissed off, while pushing design-for-acceptance to incredulous levels of "see, this is what you wanted, right?"

[Geikkamir]

This is a problem I've seen with a lot of games that have microtransactions for game-affecting content, whether it be unlocking characters, cards, whatever, because it creates this dilemma where the developer is screwing over people who paid by balancing the game because they aren't getting the thing they paid for anymore, but they're screwing over the game by refusing to balance it.

And all I can say to these people is that this is a stupid fucking problem that they are entirely responsible for creating. If you weren't charging for game-affecting content, this problem wouldn't have happened.

[Pie_Savvy]

So just want to put the newest peak into perspective

https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/168411/8ab0d2bd-2c19-44d5-9e7e-1a641c16c6e1/image.png

a day or two ago it was nearly off the top 100 list at around 91. I really dunno how valve will recover artifact considering a game like this really needs a strong launch to get people into it and build momentum.

[Electrocuter]

It's weird though, TF2 has done the free xmas crate every year for the past couple of years and it never got a peak like this from it.

[Solokiller]

People be loving that func_rotating.

[Electrocuter]

func-rotating 2018

[antary]

It's 50k even before the free crates.