or collapse in an orgy of vice.
The next update is here, and this one is the important one!
Account levelling which unlocks tickets/packs/etc. and more importantly card balance changes!! It’s nice to see that the change to cheating death is exactly what I proposed earlier in the thread (not that I think they took my suggestion), as it now gives death shield to a unit each round.
Ok, I really didn’t see either the card balancing or progression rewards (rather than just stats tracking) coming. The buyback is an interesting solution for the problem they created with the promises of no balance changes. And the free rewards from the leveling seem like they’re going to totally wreck the economy.
The description of the skill rating has to be wrong (they say everyone starts at one, and it goes up if you win somebody with a higher rating; but everyone has the same rating, so nobody can ever gain anything). But even assuming that the system is slightly different than described, it’s not a skill rating. It’s a ratcheting grind rating. Not what I was looking for.
There’s two ways to wreck a digital card economy: deflation from free cards being regularly introduced, and deflation from people leaving the game in droves. The latter was already wrecking it.
Well, it’s what Hearthstone does too. It’s largely based on the fear that if bad players are given hard evidence they are bad, they’ll conclude they should play a different game.
I like the look of this patch! The balance changes seem really smart to me. Tim, good call on Cheating Death; it’s a great fix. I also like that they actually (gasp) buffed some cards; it wasn’t just nerfs. Moreover, some of the nerfs indirectly buff other cards that needed some love – e.g., making a whole set of heroes more survivable on Turn 1 now. I watched a stream with a guy playing draft with heroes like Crystal Maiden, Lion, and Bloodseeker – and winning. I’ve never drafted any of those three before this patch.
I also like the progression changes, They seem like a nice compromise between daily quests (which I find a bit tedious) and no progression at all (which saps me of motivation to play). And I like that a season means more than a month; maybe an actual season, or even 4-6 months? I like earning levels for rewards, as in Gwent and Hearthstone. Most of all I like that I can earn packs from playing the casual (now called “standard”?) modes, especially draft.
I’m not sure how it will affect the economy, but if my own behavior is any guide, there may be signs of hope. I’d actually been holding off buying cards until I saw how they’d handle progression. Now that I’ve read the patch notes, I will probably do what I’d planned to do all along: buy a few cards here and there to experiment with new decks. But mostly I’m down for earning some free packs and tickets. :)
Fair point. Artifact already has a (hidden) MMR system, so maybe we’re invisibly ranked even at level 1? Certainly that will be the case after level 1, because our level is actually our maximum MMR for the current season: if we start losing horribly at level 10, we keep that level, even as our hidden MMR plummets. That prevents /ragequitting over losing levels. That’s me: I hated losing levels in Everquest. :)
Anyway, I’m excited to play tomorrow! I’d play tonight but I know it would keep me up until the time that gives this website its name.
I’m so happy they embraced balance changes. What a reversal! Way to go Valve seriously!
A common pattern in physical card games is to design around the goal of never changing cards, and to only make card changes or bans in extremely rare cases. Our initial approach to the game was to follow this type of methodology and keep balancing changes as a last resort, in large part because we thought players valued immutability very highly.
Since the release of Artifact, there have been a lot of discussions surrounding this topic. Input came in many forms, some from online discussions, some from direct feedback with players, and some through discussions among our own team members. This caused us to take a step back and spend a bunch of time debating the merits of the different arguments presented.
In the end, we struggled to see the benefits of immutability outweighing the numerous downsides. The average player mainly wants the game quality to be high above all other considerations. Players who focus a lot on deck building would prefer a more diverse and engaging meta to play around. While some card collectors enjoy having a small number of really valuable cards, many others are happier in a world where the full set value isn’t overly dominated by one or two cards.
Further consideration also made us realize it was the wrong approach from the development side. An extremely high bar for making iterations will indirectly cause future set development to be worse off. Long term set creativity will suffer if we are reluctant to try new ideas because of fears around not being able to make adjustments.
Our conclusion was that embracing ongoing card balance for a digital game has a lot more upsides for the game as a whole. Once we shifted over to this new mindset, it became obvious to us that it was a more natural fit with how we tend to develop games. Starting with today’s update, we will be taking an incremental approach to balancing, with the primary goal being to improve the gameplay quality over time. New set expansions will undoubtedly cause bigger meta shifts, but we’ll use incremental balancing between sets as a way to make sure that gameplay quality is as good as it can be.
Having forgotten about the new patch, I sure was surprised when I won a free draft game and earned a ticket. Nice!
After reaching level 2, I won three more games and jumped right to level 4, thanks to the weekly bonus. I also ranked up to 2 in draft skill. I typically go 2-2 in drafts, though, so I don’t know if I’ll rank up very high at all. Especially as, much as I love Artifact’s gameplay, I stress out playing it (and pretty much every other online CCG). This is the first game that I watch on Twitch more than I play!
My Artifact fantasy: Valve produces something like Gwent’s Thronebreaker for Artifact! (Thronebreaker is a purely single-player version of Gwent.) I’m not holding my breath. :)
This is still a bit more than before the update boosted the player counts.
Yeah, it’s been as low as 3.1k.
Not playing Artifact? Join the crowd.
Even Portal 2 , Valve’s much-praised puzzler from 2011, currently has more players online than Artifact .
Who would have guessed the business-model-first game design would backfire!?!? It was more an experiment in perpetual revenue creation than anything else. This is a Diablo 3 Auction House level miscalculation. I look forward to the F2P relaunch.
It’s unfortunate, but I think they blew it when they shipped without any kind of stats tracking or progression. Plus the card resell ability means that a lot of players who were turned off initially sold their collection and have no “sunk cost” reason to come back nor the cards to even do so.
I know it’s kind of a contentious topic in some places (mostly reddit) but I really don’t think the business model is what caused it so many problems. I think the game just isn’t intuitive and engrossing in the way it needs to be. If you build a card game that people enjoy learning and improving at, I really don’t think they’ll care what the business model is. Instead, it’s a stressful game that’s also extremely stingy with its lessons.
I kind of enjoyed my time with Artifact, but to be blunt, it felt like I’d need to spend a lot more time with it to get good than I had to invest. So I stopped playing.
I still suspect that the initial cost is a big barrier for a lot of people when there are multiple popular F2P digital CCGs already on the market. Why risk $20 for Artifact when Magic, Hearthstone, Gwent, and Elder Scrolls Legends are all out there with established communities to try for free?
Definitely. Once the inevitable F2P rethink hits Steam, I’ll check it out. As others have said, there are just too many options out there to mess around with something that’s going to charge me upfront to even see what it looks like…not to mention no free play options, apparently.
I think the other factor that led to its decline is that Magic Arena is awesome.