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Artifact - a Valve card game based on DotA

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Heroes scale into late game with items though, got active abilities and allow you to use cards from the same color on the lane they are present, so they are not just stat sticks. Separating most of their abilities into "signature cards" (or whatever they are called) is a pretty elegant solution to their power curve, otherwise shit would play out like HOMM4 (weird comparison, but it fits in this case), with heroes smacking each other while creatures and spells become almost completely irrelevant after a certain point.
 

whydoibother

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otherwise shit would play out like HOMM4 (weird comparison, but it fits in this case), with heroes smacking each other while creatures and spells become almost completely irrelevant after a certain point.

Or like, you know, DOTA2. Creeps and towers are powerful early, and static damage spells/nukes. Then over time they become weaker, and heroes smacking each other becomes the impactful powerful part.
I'd expect this to be the case with a DOTA2 card game.
 
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Yeah but that would be either dreadfully boring or impossible to balance, what works in one genre, doesn't necessarily work in the others. It's a card game first, everything else - second. There will be more formats down the line though (most likely), so you never know what we will get.
 
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That preview tournament was such a shitshow. The game itself has MTGO model (the worst out there) as far as paying for shit is concerned. If not for some steambux lying around, I wouldn't be getting this.
 
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https://www.a-space-games.com/predicting-the-cost-of-artifact/

Buddy linked me to that today. After the FAQ that explained how some of the pricing is going to work I may actually end up skipping Artifact despite being a valvedrone and liking children's card games. I'm not opposed to chucking some money toward a card game, but if it really does end up in the $50-80 for a competitive deck range and doesn't have a way to freely acquire cards (I know that article says Hearthstone decks are more expensive, but when you're a retard like I am that started in closed beta you build up enough funbux that you could keep up with everything) then that's just more than I want to spend on it. I don't play paper Magic (Any more) or MTGA or MTGO for much the same reason, MTGA at least has supposed free to play.

The tiny bit I've watched of Artifact and heard about the mechanics it sounds like a fine game and I'm interested in it, but I'll probably wait until after release to see if the price of individual cards tanks on the market. On one hand if cards hold value then it may be easy to go "Infinite" in draft modes since your prize cards may sell for as much or more than the entry fee. On the other hand I don't give much of a shit about draft and only like it as a diversion. Even though I feel like I'm almost the ideal audience for this I'm still heavily on the fence instead of immediately slamming down my D1P. :M
 

tripedal

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What's the point of building a deck in Artifact though? There's no ladder or anything competitive like that.
 

tripedal

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Some guy on reddit made the calculations for expected $ loss per ticket used for the gauntlets:

For average players with 50% winrate, the odds are

1/4 for 0 wins

1/4 for 1 win

3/16 for 2 wins

1/8 for 3 wins

5/64 for 4 wins

7/64 for 5 wins

That's an average return of

11/16 * (-0.99) + 5/64 * 1.99 + 7/64 * 3.98 = -0.08984375$

for the regular gauntlets and

11/16 * (-1.98) + 1/8 * 1.99 + 5/64 * 3.98 + 7/64 * 5.97 = -0.14859375$

for keeper draft

This actually paints an overly-positive picture since it doesn't take into account the additional fee Valve takes from selling the winnings on the market. And since the matching in gauntlets will be MMR based everyone (except the top .1% or whatever) will have a 50% WR. There's no way to keep playing without continuously paying money for tickets.
 

Pope Amole II

Nerd Commando Game Studios
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The numbers for the keeper are stupid - I did them myselves and it's something around 63% or so. The thing he doesn't account for is the 15% trading tax (meaning that booster is 1.7 tix at best) and the fact that an opened pack will never cost as much as a sealed one. And even a sealed prize pack will never be worth the full buying price simply because of how the digital economy works - people are putting in money (which have an obvious liquidity) but are paid back in mostly packs (which you can either open with a loss or resell with a loss).

Another thing that'll devalue the pack opening process is that lots of people will play limited only, reselling the cards to afford more drafting. Meaning that there'll be a huge supply with potentially much smaller demand. It won't be noticeable at first but it's bound to happen eventually. In reality, without some kind of controlling mechanism (in MTGO that was Redemption - exchanging digital cards for real ones) thing will get bad real quickly. Or good, depending on whether you're interested in constructed or limited. But they will be bad for those poor schmucks who buy into the game at the start of it.

Also, while the value of the phantoms is kinda good, the majority of it is also being paid out in packs. With all the similar consequences - once they hit 1 dollar reselling value or so, that value will stop being nearly as neat. And it's not even something that's out of the realm of possibility - in MTGO Dominaria, one of the current sets, is supposedly going for $4 per pack but on the market they're slightly above $2. And it's not even the lowest bottom that it can hit. And that's without any kind of tax on the market.
 
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It's weird, the game seems solid and fun mechanics wise but it's so incredibly mishandled in every other way.

Like, you have Dotes (and even CS:GO to an extent) as a good paying models for sustainability, keep everything available to everyone and just sell cosmetics. Card players love their bling more than anyone else anyway, besides the game has way more things to apply it to compared to other CCGs. Instead we got the shit we got.

Then you have the whole closed beta thing with NDA and inept "content creators". The first stream was such an inexcusable shitshow, that Kripp of all people (vegan fucking Canadian that seems to be half-asleep all the time) did a WAY better job at explaining things compared to a paid crew of "professionals" (most of them have been in the relevant scenes for a while now). Dipshits aside, you also have the potential competitive scene for the game being all fucked up due to people having access to the game months in advance (some been playing close to a YEAR).

And now you still don't have solid answers regarding certain parts of the game (like can you actually create and play free draft tournaments with your friends etc.).

I wonder if there are any good managers left in the game dev, or it's clown fiesta everywhere.
 
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Card players love their bling more than anyone else anyway
That really surprised me too, when I learned they were charging money for it. I figured they'd be selling hats for the little animated gremlins, selling premium versions of cards, selling card backs, selling alternate blinged out play mats, etc etc etc. They could even give everyone the full set of cards right out of the gate with no free way to acquire bling, but keep card rarity so you can still have draft modes. With how they handled TF2 and DotA2 and to a lesser degree CSGO I was surprised how on Artifact's looking. In fact I haven't even heard of ANY cosmetic bullshit yet, don't even know if there are premium cards.
 
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the game seems solid and fun mechanics wise

My favorite mechanic is the one where units that don't have an enemy in front of them have a 50%/50% chance of attacking the enemy tower or attacking an enemy diagonally.

Idk if you are being sarcastic or not, but that's the only thing I don't like about the game, arrow RNG is just annoying and pointless, unlike other randomness present in the game that can be used to your advantage later on (like bad early placement of heroes and such).

Card players love their bling more than anyone else anyway
That really surprised me too, when I learned they were charging money for it. I figured they'd be selling hats for the little animated gremlins, selling premium versions of cards, selling card backs, selling alternate blinged out play mats, etc etc etc. They could even give everyone the full set of cards right out of the gate with no free way to acquire bling, but keep card rarity so you can still have draft modes. With how they handled TF2 and DotA2 and to a lesser degree CSGO I was surprised how on Artifact's looking. In fact I haven't even heard of ANY cosmetic bullshit yet, don't even know if there are premium cards.

Yep, I thought going hats route was a given, but I guess ancient ass MTGO model (but WORSE rofl) is the move to make.

Honestly, at this point despite liking the gameplay itself, I hope this shit bites them in the ass, the way the game's been handled so far is inexcusable.
 
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the way the game's been handled so far is inexcusable.
Agreed. The bit I saw of the tournament (On the 10th, didn't watch any on the 11th today) was pretty awful too since everyone was acting like everyone already knew what the fuck was going on and what all the cards did, etc. Which I would appreciate greatly for something that's been out for a few months/years so you don't just get people breathing heavily and reading card text and are actually talking through the decisionmaking, but for a game that hasn't been released to the public and hasn't even had an official full on explanation of the rules by all fucking means breathe heavily and read card text to me. I've got a super basic grip of the general mechanics but I know absolute jack shit about the cards themselves, and I'm probably ahead of the curve compared to most people since I was curious enough to even learn some of the basic mechanics beforehand.

I guess one potential argument in favor of Artifact's pricing model (Maybe, possibly) is that you don't get skinner box "Oh I gotta hop on and do my dailies" hits. The only real draw to playing the game is playing the game itself. At least as far as I'm aware, but maybe there are enough people thinking they'll make it big being professional children's card game players that they're pulled in by the allure of that.
 

J1M

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Agreed. I've been waiting for this thing to come out because Hearthstone is starting to feel a little long in the tooth and I don't like Gwent after the "re-beta". The amount of clear information about the game that is available has been pretty poor.

Edit: I'll also point out that in the past valve has put sticker prices on their games before making them free to play, so I wouldn't be surprised if they did that here too.
 
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BlackAdderBG

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Refunded that shit after the FAQ and Kripp's steams where he showed the game. There is nothing new to the genre that Artifact brings. The lanes mechanic is in the elder scrolls game and m&m champions for example. Maybe the gold and buying items...meh. Game looks like something EA would make. And gratz on payment model worse than Magic.
Art of the cards is also pretty cheap looking.
 
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Dawkinsfan69

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People are streaming this and I can't figure out wtf is going on there's like 3 tables full of cards but his hand only has 2 cards and shit comes out of nowhere and each turn seems to take like 5 minutes

I want some of whatever drug the guy who came up with this shit is on
 
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Aye, the best part is Garfield's rationalization for this payment model bullshit.

He thinks abusing whales (people who spend hundreds and thousands on f2p games) is unethical, so everyone gets abused equally instead.

That's coming from a man that invented gambling for kids in form of MTG, hilarious.
 

Pope Amole II

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Despite the game being really bland & mediocre, they can easily succeed by the mere fact of buying out the pros. Even though Hearthstone has what, 20 million players? And MtG has no less, if not more of them. Even despite that, the prizepools on those events are mostly a joke. One of the this year's MtG world championship players even boycotted his own admission (losing ten grand in the process) just to drive a point that Wizards are mistreating their playerbase.

Hearthstone became somewhat less stingy over the course of the past years but, considering the profits they're raking, the prize pools are still not exactly adequate. So there will be lots of pros from each games willing to hop on this gravy train, not to mention the lesser games - with Gwent it's almost comedical as most of the people who pledged their loyalty to Gwent's eventual Homecoming has abandoned it ASAP so they can grind some cash out of Artifact.

We'll see how far it will take them, though. Why they will inevitably create initial hype and the flood of the players (even though that'll be a travesty), the reality of the situation is that both Hearthstone & MtG are not exactly pro driven. In my opinion, that's exactly why those two are not minding their pros too much - because they know that while they help to squish some extra cash from the constructed-oriented tools, most people will play casual anyways. MTG for the past 5-6 years minimum have been designed mostly for casual & Commander - no matter what they say, constructed is a strict priority number 3 for them (after limited too).

So I'm not exactly sure if a game like this can survive on the competitive drive alone. Especially when the cards are already so imbalanced that Constructed is bound to be boring, stale shit. And, despite all the fervent ravings, RNG will play a much, much steeper role in this one.
 

lukaszek

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deterministic system > RNG
 
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