My main issue is that they are so busy. Look, this one had 8 numbers or symbols on it!
It’s quite strange to be broadcasting big tournaments while the beta is very closed.
Pretty much what you have to do to be successful with a multiplayer game nowadays. If people haven’t seen their favorite streamer playing it by the time it ships, it’s too late.
I’ve been looking pretty hard for an invite but they are still super exclusive. I know they have to get streamers involved, that’s smart, but you’d think they’d been opening the floodgates a bit by now…
The art style isn’t quite my thing, but the gameplay looks pretty neat. Does anyone know what game modes will be available, and how advancement will work? I’ve read that there won’t be a ladder, and instead that there will small and large tournaments, sealed competitions, etc. I guess they’re trying to avoid the free-to-play ladder-grind of Hearthstone and other games? It’s fine with me – the ladder is my least favorite thing about Hearthstone.
This explains exactly what you’re asking.
Thanks! That explains a lot. It really is more a Magic economic model than a Hearthstone model, including a secondary market for cards – a Steam-hosted auction house. Interesting.
Edit: So we can make our own tournaments? Does that mean a Qt3 Artifact tournament might be in our future? :)
Can someone interpret this reaction for me? Are they happy? Are they moaning? I can’t tell. :|
So I watched someone stream this.
I’m pretty sure you need a degree in the game to even understand what is going on. That’s not a good sign, imo.
Its really not that bad, you just need to watch a brief explainer vid or play the games tutorial and you’ll be fine.
Its far simpler than dota 2 itself and that’s widely watched, so there’s no reason this can’t be popular too. The talk about this being so complicated is just some people willingly telegraphing how little patience they have, imo.
But therein lies the problem. If you need to watch a video explaining things or go through a tutorial to even understand what is going on, you’re making a niche product.
Niche products are fine, great even, but if you’re going to get into the ring against Hearthstone and Magic things aren’t going to end well when long-time Magic players stare at a screen and don’t understand what is happening. The massive RNG that seemed to fly around didn’t look like much fun either.
“Oh my dude is just doing his own thing, so I guess I lose this.”
“Oh there was a 25% chance this thing happened, and it did, so now I’m screwed.”
It seems like an interesting concept, but it just feels too random and needlessly complex for it’s own good. I said I was like playing Shaharazaad and Forking it twice. You’re basically playing 3 games at once because… that’s how MOBAs work. And when the board ends up being like 15+ dudes and you have to scroll down the lane? Yikes.
After a few hours of it being on in the background, I figured it out, but I’m not sure I like a lot of the things they went with.
There can’t possibly be any more RNG than in Hearthstone.
I can’t imagine long-time Magic players will need alot of time to understand this game, I got it pretty easily without watching an explainer vid. Sure, it is more complicated than Hearthstone, but then again almost all games and things in the universe are.
You’re probably right that it will lose some of the card-gaming audience for not being immediately understandable, but they may also gain audience from DOTA 2 players who have never played/watched a card game before, and gamers over 16 who want something with more lasting appeal.
If anything is going to keep the hordes away from the game, it’s the fact it has a $20 price tag. Anyway, we’ll see what happens over the next few months after it releases.
This weekend’s Twitch channel sure had a lot of the bigger Hearthstone players playing Artifact, some who have been away for a while. Will be interesting to see if it catches on because it is harder to follow.
Yeah, last night when I was browsing Twitch, Artifact had 54,000 viewers while Hearthstone had only 11,000. Of course, a large portion of that 54K was Kripparian who tends to get around 20k on his Hearthstone streams, but all the other HS streamers were playing it too.
I know that Disguised Toast at least tweeted that he didn’t think it was a very streamable game, because it’s hard to follow, and I’ve heard that some of the other streamers share the sentiment. I tend to agree. I watched Kripp’s stream for a while, and it was really hard to figure out what was going on in the game, but I’m not sure how much of that is unfamiliarity with the game and its cards. We’ll see how it goes.
For me I like the fact that Artifact looks like its a deeper game. What is holding me back a little is how much $$$$ it is going to take to have fun. Also can homemade decks be competitive or net decks will be required. I hang around rank 13 to 15 in Hearthstone with my homemade decks and I’m fine with that.
My high level takeaway from watching Kripp stream over the weekend was “this is crushingly dull.”
I was excited to see where Valve was going to go in this space, but having now seen the combination of gameplay and pricing I’m a solid pass.
Purge (famous noob-friendly DotA streamer/announcer) has just put up a bunch of explainer videos and game talkthroughs.
I was really excited for this, because it had a $20 price tag and seemed like it would be easier and cheaper to get into than Hearthstone which is such a drag but looks fun when all the cards are unlocked. However, it seems from all the backlash over the game that this is simply not the case at all. the buy in gets you little more than some basic cards. there is no way to unlock packs in game except by paying money to enter draft or ranked, it seems. you can get copies of starter cards you’ve already unlocked in packs. Who knows what the resell value will be.
I don’t know. I’m very disappointed. I won’t be buying this game, although i probably will watch it on twitch.