Which is true for basically any CCG. So if you don’t like CCGs, then definitely don’t buy Artifact.
Let’s not tie a genre of videogames to a specific business practice. I was competitive in Gwent (for a while) without spending money. I also did it ok in Infinity Wars and in Duelyst.
I hate how CCG fans are so accustomed to P2W models that they believe now it has to be that way.
Fair point, but I can play other CCGs without spending significant amounts. Hearthstone, Magic Arena, Eternal, even Infinity Wars…spent less than $10 on each and played for months. (Though I eventually gave up on that last one for the same pay-to-win reasons.) I’m not likely to reach the top ranks of constructed in any of those, but I can at least expect to win on a regular basis…maybe not quite enough to climb the higher rungs of the ladder but enough to earn rewards and complete quests.
Based on that RPS article, Artifact looks particularly bad in this respect. You have to pay to get started, for one thing. There’s a ton of options out there that you can at least try for free. The only reason to pay for Artifact right now is to jump on the bandwagon while it’s hot. Also, per the article there’s not even a modicum of progress on your collection made by playing those phantom drafts. Even in Hearthstone or Magic Arena, you get something as reward for playing the free modes, even if it’s just minimal gold that eventually adds up to a pack or two.
Anyway, I’m not trying to say it’s a bad game. If you enjoy it, more power to you. But as currently designed, it’s a bad game for me and anyone else that doesn’t want to pay to play (at least not more than $5-10). I think that’s a big chunk of the market.
Conversely, I’d much rather pay a low fixed amount and be able to play as much as I like with all the cards without having to either pay a fortune or grind. And I don’t massively care about building a specific deck, though obviously it would be nice to have the option. I’m the guy who bought the base Android: Netrunner and never bought any other cards.
Oh, so would I. But those kind of games aren’t CCGs any more, they’ve lost the collectible part. In the digital world, there’s not much of this kind of thing to choose from. In the physical game world, I do play various of the Living Card Games from Fantasy Flight that have tried this approach, and they’re generally lots of fun…if you can find people to play with.
There’s not much, but there is Artifact. It’s also why I prefer Duels of the Planeswalkers to actual Magic.
I’m confused, I thought you could only play that “phantom draft” mode with the $20 outlay. Getting all the cards for constructed requires a bunch more money. Am I missing something?
So did I, before Arena came out. Arena is much closer to Duels than the old MTGO model (or physical cards), largely because of the daily gold rewards.
Yes, but as I understand it, all the cards are in phantom draft. I don’t particularly care about constructed. For me, the fun of these games is in how a particular match plays out, not in the theorycrafting.
Ah, gotcha. Yeah, if you only want to draft then Artifact doesn’t seem to want any more money than the initial outlay.
I’m interested in it but haven’t pulled the trigger yet. I’m a very casual CCG player and not willing to put in time or money to really excel, or I’m just not smart enough. I’ve never minded being under 50% win at Hearthstone (my only other CCG except for minor efforts at a couple others) and I don’t really care about ranking. I care about having fun, fair matches with cool plays.
There’s rumors that Valve could just eliminate the phantom draft? Plus it seems like this game could easily fall into a spiral of paying to win, losers unwilling to pay more losing interest, so even if I was willing to spend $10-20 over time I’d still end frustrated.
Thoughts? Maybe overthinking it and I should get a few months of enjoyment out of the base game…
Gosh, I see a lot of complaining about the price scheme, but I am really enjoying myself here. I think maybe it’s designed just for me, since I really don’t care about constructed, and that’s the only real limitation vis a vis price.
Just for funsies, I bought a group of 5 heroes I didn’t have, and it ran me a dollar. I just had a really enjoyable match against the AI using a couple of them. Meanwhile, I have a phantom draft deck that’s 1-1. After that, I’ll play again. Drafting is a great time!
I really don’t feel robbed at all, and I don’t have to grind for anything. I’m sorry Valve seems to be getting burned for this, but I guess my preferences are just outliers here.
In theory I suppose they could, since all their modes regularly rotate, but they tweeted: “This doesn’t necessarily mean that the gauntlets rotate out, or go away - it’s just setting the expectation we may tinker with the formats periodically (new/updated modes, etc).” https://twitter.com/playartifact/status/1064293576295702529?lang=en
You and me both. Free draft is great, and it’s also fun to play solo games against the bots. They’re not pushovers, especially on the higher difficulties.
Count me as another outlier. I love not having to worry about daily quests and timers and grinding and all that free-to-play stuff. I just play Artifact when I feel like it, and I always enjoy it. Just wish it had more PvE content.
I watched the Reynad video and am not too worried about most of his complaints, but I’m not thrilled to hear about the heavy handed RNG elements. Is the RNG as overbearing as he makes it seem, or is it a minority of cards that only pop up every once in a while? (In draft, I don’t care much about constructed)
I just got 3 more heroes for 30 cents. This is great! I gotta jump on getting the cheap stuff I want before the mass outcry somehow ruins my fun :P
The single most RNG things for me are: 1. The initial set up determining whether certain heroes live or die and 2. One card that stops death for dudes 50% of the time.
The game offers many ways of dealing with both in your deckbuilding, though, and the cards that work against them are not silver bullets.
Yeah, the most egregious RNG is Cheating Death, an improvement that prevents units from dying 50% of the time. I hate that card. At least it’s a rare, so you don’t see it often in draft. Unlike most RNG in Artifact, you don’t know in advance how the Cheating Death coin-flip resolves. In most other cases, the game tells you in advance how the coin-flip resolves, and you get a chance to react.
Yes, the initial placement of heroes is also random, but I actually like this feature. It means games play out differently. It also makes you think about which three heroes to place in the “flop” (the initial deployment phase). I also like the semi-random way in which unblocked units attack: 50% hit the enemy tower, 25% attack an enemy to the left, 25% to the right. To me, that simulates the command-and-control challenges of battle, and I like it. Also, there are cards that allow you to override it.
In theory, I see risk-mitigation as an essential skill in a game like this, but I do wish Artifact had a bit less RNG. Still, it bothers me a lot more in Hearthstone than here; the RNG swings in Hearthstone seem larger to me.
I do think it’s a little too RNG although the only case that really makes me rage is the unblocked unit behavior. It’s not just the randomness there (which is not explained by the tutorial, either) it’s that most cards will not allow you to reset a unit to attack straight (at the tower) so short of killing the enemy unit it insisted on targeting outright there are too few options to get the tower damage that feels stolen by dice.
Right, even when trying to assuage people’s fears that the mode will rotate out, the most they could say was “it’s not guaranteed to rotate away on the very first opportunity in a couple of weeks”. As far as commitments go, that’s some weak bullshit.
The free draft after the $20 buy-in is great. It should be the selling point for Artifact. And the game really needs a selling point, as it’s tanking pretty hard (the concurrent player graphs are not pretty). But Valve is totally unwilling to capitalize on the mode that players love. Why would it be? I can’t come up with any reason except that they are desperate to kill the free draft ASAP due to it invalidating their whole card-trading business model.
I feel that’s one instance of RNG that adds to the strategic layer of the game, if anything. Depending on what colours/deck you’re running there are many ways to change a units attack direction. Blue has a number of cards that directly do this, or you could always kill whatever it is curving into before combat using certain red/black cards.
No, you can’t change attack direction, you can change attack target to another unit. I only know of one card in the game that will make your units go back to straight without killing the diagonal target.