Artifact is coming back, and this time Valve are being more chatty about their plans for it after it died a quick death originally. So far, their plan sounds quite good.
It was a shame to see it disappear, as the artwork and overall design was pretty great. The problem was the monetization model, which Valve have already confirmed they've thrown out (hooray!). So now you will earn cards in the game so it's not pay to win in any way.
In a new announcement, the Artifact team mentioned it's taking a while to go over all the feedback they've received lately but that a lot of it is good. In this post they do a "Deployment Deep Dive", detailing how the boards will change in Artifact 2.0.
With the three-lane system staying, they're adjusting how the board is actually deployed to remove some RNG (randomness). Each board will now have a specific set of 5 slots whereas before you could stack a lot in each lane, this makes it more restrictive perhaps but across three lanes it's still a lot of cards in play. The rest of it seems quite sane too. Before each round a creep will spawn in each lane, in the leftmost empty space. You then each deploy a hero card into a slot in the middle lane, then the third lane and then the first lane.
They also mentioned these other adjustments to how it works, given the limited slots:
Additional placement rules
- Deploying a hero on top of another hero will bounce the old hero to deploy next turn.
- Deploying a hero on top of a creep will destroy the creep.
- When you play a creep card you can choose the exact slot in the lane to deploy it into.
- Playing a creep on top of a unit will destroy that unit.
Additionally armour now works differently but they didn't say exactly how, and that Tower Health is also now dependent on the game mode.
See the full details in the post on Steam.
If you were a player of Artifact, do let us know in the comments what you personally think to the explained changes. For me, I'm starting to get a little bit excited about what's to come. I did genuinely like the three-lane gameplay in Artifact and I'm keen to see the revival.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
hardpenguin Apr 14, 2020
And I would like a phone release as well but with Dota Underlords very poor Android version I don't see it being on the list of priorities.
Last edited by hardpenguin on 14 April 2020 at 11:50 am UTC
Of course some players didn't like some gameplay elements of 1.0. But the current changes will also not be appreciated by all players.
The reason for the failure was the monitarisation. Paying $20 for a game, only to have a hull in which you have to invest more and more. With a card market that is more like stock trading, plus buyable tickets just for playing. That just scared people off even if they had bought the game before. They were all the more annoyed afterwards.
Without the free Draft the Artifacts player base would probably have dropped to zero.
You quickly get used to the game mechanics once you really start playing the game (with all cards). This is especially true for the RNG elements, which are never decisive for experienced players and free the player from micro-management. But most people never got that far into the game.
The current changes eliminate the scapegoat RNG, but at the price of micro-management. I don't know if I can play such a game again for 1000 hours.
I'd like it to be F2P and there should be a mobile app (not that I'd use the mobile app). The Underlords app is quite functional, but also not quite "right" (text is way too small).
Artifact is a great game. Monetization killed it.
For CCGs a great bit of the fun is *trading* the collected cards.
That wasn't an element of the last one. I sure hope it is an element of this one.
If cards are only available as drops I think it will suffer from (or maybe benefit from) a gameplay issue that MMOs have IMO. More hours of play means you'll have an advantage, regardless of how good you are. New players would have to grind in order to play the real game with their friends.
Dota 2 and Dota Underlords don't have any of this grind. They are F2P. They are quite fun. Everyone comes to each new game with an even playing field. Drops are only cosmetic and don't impact gameplay.
A CCG does have to deviate from that model in some ways though I guess.
Edit: I'd love to see a "Duos" mode like in Underlords. It would be like Pinochle!
Last edited by psymin on 14 April 2020 at 2:30 pm UTC
Dilbert says, "What they want is better products for free."
"Oh. Then let's just give them what we have and call it a 'strategy'".
I agree with the above posters.I think you are throwing CCGs and TCGs together here.
I'd like it to be F2P and there should be a mobile app (not that I'd use the mobile app). The Underlords app is quite functional, but also not quite "right" (text is way too small).
Artifact is a great game. Monetization killed it.
For CCGs a great bit of the fun is *trading* the collected cards.
That wasn't an element of the last one. I sure hope it is an element of this one.
CCG = Collectible Card Game, TCG = Trading ...
Every TCG might be a CCG, but not the other way around. There is no "need" for a CCG to have trading.
The majority of digital CCGs have no element of trading.
If cards are only available as drops I think it will suffer from (or maybe benefit from) a gameplay issue that MMOs have IMO. More hours of play means you'll have an advantage, regardless of how good you are. New players would have to grind in order to play the real game with their friends.Not quite. If there are enough players and if the matchmaking is good, new players will be pitted against other players with similar "low-tier" decks.
And as you advance in ranks, your deck grows higher-tier.
I'd just hope that there is some kind of smurfing prevention.
One of the most annoying aspects of some digital CCGs is ranking up and being regularly faced with decks consisting of only the rarest of cards. Sometimes, that is due to whales, but it seems that won't be possible in Artifact.
Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 15 April 2020 at 6:04 am UTC
I think you are throwing CCGs and TCGs together here.
CCG = Collectible Card Game, TCG = Trading ...
Every TCG might be a CCG, but not the other way around. There is no "need" for a CCG to have trading.
The majority of digital CCGs have no element of trading.
That's what I get for listening to wikipedia ;) /s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectible_card_game
You are right though, the other major online CCGs don't have trading.
I also don't play them either :)
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