Valve have really listened to feedback from users with the latest Artifact update out now and it's a good one.
While it has the usual balance changes you would expect, to tweak values of various cards it also has some rather big feature additions.
One of the single biggest issues with Artifact has been solved. You now have an account level and as you progress, you will unlock event tickets, packs of cards and portraits. This is a pretty big addition, one that should hopefully help players who don't want to constantly spend money on new cards.
On top of that, there's also a skill rating system which ranges from 1 to 75, to increase your rating you need to play games outside of the Call to Arms event.
Both systems are limited per season, so your level will reset with each new season and the amount of cards and tickets you can earn is also limited in the same way. As you can see from this screenshot:
You can only earn 15 tickets and 15 packs of cards per season. While some may scoff at such a limit, I think it's pretty good. This update definitely makes me more interested in the game. While I've always said the gameplay was excellent, the way you were previously forced to spend extra money was an issue. Having a progression system with rewards makes it really feel like you're getting somewhere.
Read more here about how they will approach balancing cards and everything else in the update. There's also this dedicated page on the official Artifact site to give a little more detail too.
Find Artifact on Steam now.
If you think so too, go post a review! (If you can ; Steam refuses to save my (positive) review after 17h of play, weird.)
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