Valve are doing some really impressive work with Dota Underlords, their new strategy game that everyone can now try.
As a quick reminder on the gameplay: you go through rounds, picking heroes and placing them on the board, then you fight against the choices of other players and neutral enemies for loot. The actual battles are done by AI, with the tactical part based on your choices and positioning. You lose health based on the amount of enemy heroes left if they beat you and it's the last player standing to win.
It's free and will remain free to play, with some sort of optional Battle Pass likely to come for cosmetic items in future. They have a lot more planned for it including: daily challenges, a level up system, a tournament system, seasonal rotation for heroes and more. They said that during the Open Beta Season, it will regularly see new features and updates.
I've put tens of hours into it and will no doubt play plenty more. It's still a little rough around the edges in places of course, since it's Early Access but I have been really impressed with not only the gameplay but how quick they've acted on feedback. You can see some early thoughts I had here.
Find it on Steam or head to the official site for more info and mobile links. The multiplayer is cross-platform across everything.
Also, this Twitter thread from one of the developers is interesting. Nice to see more Valve developers being so open, which can't be easy given how many people are watching.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: subBtw, anyone else currently not able to log into Steam?Problem is with newest kernels, use older kernel and it should works.
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/6326
Quoting: jkaartQuoting: subBtw, anyone else currently not able to log into Steam?Problem is with newest kernels, use older kernel and it should works.
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/6326
THanks for this info; I will hold off updating the Kernel for a while until I see this resolved.
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/6192
Luckily rarely happens. But this segfault is really annoying for a hardcore player like me:
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/6079
I encounter this problem almost every day. Okay, it only occurs with the Intel driver, and who is playing Artifact on Linux with Intel drivers? With the few remaining players, I guess I'm the only person on the planet now.
But there are other parts that are lacking. And it's not the gameplay, it's the stuff around it (or the missing stuff around it). Plus that the base game costs money while all competitors are free. If Valve treated Artifact like Underlords, everything would be great. Even if not everyone likes the game.
Last edited by 1xok on 21 June 2019 at 9:29 am UTC
Quoting: GuestI would think you would be happy that they were this dedicated to making the game something everybody loves instead of just scaping it.
I know this statement and can accept it. But, well, I'd like if they'd fix segfaults at least. These are just bugs and possibly security vulnerabilities that have nothing to do with the gameplay.
Otherwise I'm skeptical, because the gameplay of Artifact is completely ok. The game just needs to become more accessible.
But I have confidence in Valve. Only they shouldn't put it on the back burner. And a better Artifact should still be Artifact, like Richard Garfield designed it. The game that most people enjoy is probably Underlords and not Artifact.
Last edited by 1xok on 21 June 2019 at 4:21 pm UTC
But what shocked me was how popular it is for something that just released in early access. Reportedly it already got more players than Artifact ever had (peak players). Yeah, it is free to play, it builds on an already successful mod, Artifact flopped due to the monetization model, but even so... cardgames are also popular, with Hearthstone and Magic Arena for example, and Artifact had a lot going on for it.
Personally, Android: Netrunner has ruined other cardgames for me. It is so much better and unique, all those other games feel the same with their creature cards... and, ironically, the original version of Netrunner was designed by Richard Garfield, that also created the much more successful (but less interesting) Magic the Gathering and the huge flop that was Artifact.
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