Artifact - a Valve card game based on DotA

[Jenkem]

18€ for an Axe card.

Yep, glad I didn't buy this shit.

but if you get an Axe card in your 10 packs you can sell it and recoup the cost of the game.. also either they will nerf the card or the meta will change and prices will plummet, guaranteed.

 

[Sentinel]

That's a big "if" since I saw people open 150 packs and didn't get an Axe in the beta.

The pricing model fits its customer base. Only complete oblivious retards will buy into it and get exploited.

 

[Jenkem]

The pricing model is the same as most mainline TCG games like Magic or Pokemon TCG.. It's as much "pay to win" as those games are.. it's the nature of trading card games IMO.. Card values are determined by what people are willing to pay and they will fluctuate based on rarity and the current meta. But if you just want to play casually then the base set is fine, and there are pre-constructed decks to use as well. What's funny to me is that a lot of the people I see on youtube/reddit complaining about the "pay to win" aspect and how "disgusting" the practice is are fucking Hearthstone players...

Also I got it for free from Papa Gaben so I might be biased...

Also opened my ten packs and didn't get an Axe but I got a card worth $3.50, dunno if I will sell it or not.

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

I mean if $20 is a lot to you you probably shouldn't be playing card games

That said this game looks fucking boring

 

[Great Deceiver]

Bought, played for an hour, refunded.

Too old for this shit. People are just going to mull netdecks 24/7 and whales are going to ruin the market.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Also opened my ten packs and didn't get an Axe but I got a card worth $3.50, dunno if I will sell it or not.

Been waffling over selling my blink daggers too. I don't really give a shit about constructed and I could get around $4 back by selling them, and they'll almost 100% get cheaper over time as people play more phantom/keeper drafts and/or buy more packs, but eh. May just sit on everything and then sometime in January after the market's stabilized more I'll sell my Steam trading cards then buy Artifact cards so I can dink around in constructed a little too. I keep getting the urge to buy some cheap shit so I can toy with deckbuilding more, then I think what the fuck am I even doing since I'll play with all of them in draft anyway.

 

[J1M]

Prices are a little bonkers right now. People are selling cards for $0.01, when 20 of them can be converted into $1.00 event tickets.

 

[sser]

Not that the game isn't any good, it's really well crafted and has a pretty cool design, but this shit is PAY2WIN maxed right the fuck out, a little shell game of trading cards with Valve getting a cut of every transaction. There's no real F2P path for it, not anywhere close to Hearthstone's which is already laughable, and certainly miles away from Gwent which is very giving.

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

Doesn't seem too expensive.. You could buy 1 of every card for less than $100 or you could buy 3 copies (max u can have in deck) of the cheapest 120-ish cards for less than $20

That's like 360 cards for less than $20 not bad if u ask me



still the game looks boring as fuck

 

[J1M]

Not that the game isn't any good, it's really well crafted and has a pretty cool design, but this shit is PAY2WIN maxed right the fuck out, a little shell game of trading cards with Valve getting a cut of every transaction. There's no real F2P path for it, not anywhere close to Hearthstone's which is already laughable, and certainly miles away from Gwent which is very giving.

You can do "casual phantom draft" or whatever for free. There's also the constructed guantlet.

 

[BlackAdderBG]

18€ for an Axe card.

Yep, glad I didn't buy this shit.

but if you get an Axe card in your 10 packs you can sell it and recoup the cost of the game.. also either they will nerf the card or the meta will change and prices will plummet, guaranteed.

They said no touching cards and it's obvious why, the moment they change (nerf or buff) cards tons of complains will go and even people could sue them for fraud. Same shit Blizzard put themselves with D3 AH and anyone with half a brain did tell them it's a bad idea for the balancing of the game.

Unless this is some internal experiment with the steam market or whatnot, which I doubt, the Artifact team are clueless amateurs that don't know what are they doing or malignant greedy actors on the level of EA, Ubi andd the rest. Pick your poison.

servers are shitting themselves + it's sleepy time in a lot of the first world. 55k is already really high.

Even if they double the numbers (I doubt it) it will be failure, to put it in perspective new game from Valve is released and the game has slightly more players day one than TF2.

 

[J1M]

Well, after finally having a chance to play this it is pretty clear that it won't have the staying power of hearthstone. It's simply not fun to wait so long after every single card that you play. One of the best design decisions hearthstone made was not allowing you to act on your opponent's turn. It speeds up the game considerably.

Let me know if someone organizes a codex draft tournament or something. Maybe that would be fun.

I wonder what valve will do for people who try to refund the game after selling their cards, lol.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

God damn, about shit myself during my last game. Opponent got an ancient (The 80hp second tower) down to 3hp on me after multiple turns of desperately delaying him, but then I stole the win with exact 23 point lethal on a second one of his towers. Also every single opponent has been playing red and trying to give me guff with thicc heroes and it feels good to give them the razzle dazzle.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Do you guys wanna' know two things i do not give a flying god damn fuck about?

Dota and card games. Now with their powers combined i have entered a state of abstraction-zero-fuckery where the surmounting weight of my tired, descending eyebrows threaten to cave in my fucking face.

I know its a tired question by now- but what the fuck happened to valve? How do you go from creating the most interesting fiction and industry-dominating gameplay to fucking around with numbered picture-cards.

btw - they still have the launch box from the Orange Box launch

 

[Projas]

I played p. much all the other digital card games on the market and this is the first time I got bored during the very first game. Refunded.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I wonder what valve will do for people who try to refund the game after selling their cards, lol.

There is an express in-game warning that you can't request a refund after opening your packs. I refunded after playing the tutorial - one of the reasons was something that you mentioned, play time is too long.

 

[Pope Amole II]

Won my first keepo draft, got a luxurious $1.5 dollar of profitz - invested 5 packs and 2 tix, returned 3 packs and 2 tix, milled commons for 2 tix and sold rares for $1.5. Should've rare drafted heavier, I guess, though the only money cards I've missed were 2x Incarnations of Selemene and they went rather early - risky.

Considering all the risks, that's an obviously shitty equation but what can you do - better than just opening those packs.

 

[Frusciante]

Apart from the whole talk about how expensive this is or not, the game itself is pretty damn amazing. Not sure yet if I will invest in constructed level decks though...

 

[you know what time it is]

I absolutely hate arrow and deployment RNG, I was hoping this was less random compared to MTG, but it's roughly the same, got fucked multiple times out of easy wins. Feels cheap, just like getting manascrewed.

No all chat (promised), no 1x1 drafts (promised), no open tournament lobbies (idk if promised or not but it would do wonders for the game).

Tactically though it's pretty sweet, in draft at least. Though G/R THICCness seems to dominate drafts, at least so far.

Got double Prellex once, now that's a damn swarming tactic, with some green lane-wide buffs shit gets out of control really fast. If you get veno or kalla as well it's just absurd.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

I do like that you can see your opponent's deck in draft after the match is over. Adds an extra level of smug when you see some of the cards your opponent had. Beat up a red/green last night that had something like 3x thunderhide packs, a time of triumph, that damage ramping satyr, ogre conscript, mists of whatever, etc etc etc. Then I beat him one turn before he had me because my green/blue weenie draft has 4x arm the rebellion. Just wish I had more dimensional portals for more weenies.

 

[Atlantico]

Without buying a single pack, you can at this time, buy every single card for about $200ish on the market. Most cards are selling for $0.04 and $0.08

The most expensive cards are about $10-15 and you don't really need many of those. The rest you can pick up for chump change.

It seems a lot of people bought the game and played it a couple of times and then decided to sell all their cards.

Artifact final verdict:

out of

 

[you know what time it is]

Apparently Volvo doesn't want to balance cards, because people will get butthurt or whatever.

I don't get what they are going to do with Call and Duel though, since they contradict Red's design completely and nullify its weaknesses. One color dominates both formats, this shouldn't be happening that early (if ever). There's no counter either, one hard removal (with rng discard attached to it) tied to a specific hero and color is not nearly enough.

You also have things like this

For 10g you can shutdown the game completely, what the fuck is this shit.

 

[Frusciante]

First two expert phantom drafts went rather poorly. But now had my first ''perfect'' run, 5-1. Feels pretty good.

 

[Beastro]

This name shoulda been used for a Stalker card game.

"I counter your Meat Chunk with some Mama's Beads!"

 

[you know what time it is]

Balance woes aside, here's what you get from a game released one month away from 2019:

No chat.
No way to add your opponents to the friendlist after the game.
No game lobbies, instead you have a forced group chat steam thingy that's about as intuitive and enjoyable as facebook integration in other shitty ass games.
No way to play 1x1 drafts with your friends.
No way to join a tournament aside from a huge hassle of finding a working link that leads you to official site that asks for login credentials AND game access (phishing heaven).
And also

Spoiler

NO FUCKING IN-GAME CHAT