Artifact - The DOTA Card Game

Got hyped, played two games of constructed and proceeded to get beat by the same op u/g deck that drove me away two weeks ago. I know it's my own fault for playing constructed, but holy hell is that mode broken. I guess when new decks come out it might not be as bad, but part of me wonders if the Market place is a bad idea overall. With the increased ability to win packs, the Market just serves as a p2w feature.

I'd deffinately agree on draft being the best way to play. Adds so much complexity and skill to an already deep tactical game.

I've lost count of the amount of games I've thought to be a sure win that I've gone on to lose and vice versa. One tiny mistake can hurt so bad just as much as a great play can win you a game.

The amount of playable decks you can build in draft i's literally limitless with no dominant styles that I've noticed. I always seem to have more success playing just 2 colours rather than 3 and enjoy red/black and blue/black the best.

The monetization model was too greedy for me, especially given it's effectively pvp only, but I've been keeping an eye on it because the gameplay looked interesting.

It seems to have cratered super hard though.

Artifact - Steam Charts

Yikes.

I picked up again last day or two on vacation, enjoying it with the minor chat and few balances. I just made a 3 green, 2 red non meta deck from scratch really trying to use Sven's cleave to manage the wave of blue decks that are out there. (Lycan, Treant, Drow for G, and Sven and LC for red). Won my first 3 in a row against some pretty strong meta decks but still was close. Enjoying it so far, i refuse to play blue decks.....i have avoided those gimmic type bullshit decks in my whole life and will continue to damnit!

I want to go back to a mono black at some point but having fun with this one.

Quick question, is there a chat config i don't see? At the end of match when i try and pick chat with opp it says my account does not allow chatting with unathorized people etc that aren't my friends. Is the only way to talk post match is if you first invite as steam friends?

5-1 with below deck just built from scratch. Still fairly a noob so feel free to offer any suggestions. Again i built to try and have a good balance between the damn blue deck swams as well as handle strong red hero decks. I'll say Treant + Defend the Weak is such an awesome early game combo to keep lane's alive.

Biggest weakness i think is not handling improvement clears well at all with just the 1 weapon in there for oh shit situations but as a whole can fuck me. Suggestions to improve the build?

Artifact Deck - cl

Valve really dropped the ball on this one. Timing was terrible and the release optics just wrecked any chance of the game taking off.
I really liked the game, but I simply like MTG more...They needed to look at a release calendar.

I think the mistake was more assuming that just because MTG could get away with a greedy as fuck pricing scheme 20 years ago, that that means they can get away with the same thing now.

Pretty much the same mistake a bunch of 'WoW killers' made, just because *someone* succeeded enough to get people paying a monthly sub, doesn't mean that you will.

I expect the same thing from a bunch of 'Like fortnite but with...' wannabes that will crash and burn over the next few years.

Considering we don't live in a vacuum, it probably was a combination of everything that everyone is saying. Some bad timing due to MtG Arena, scary gameplay which is hard for new-ish players, and a pricing which wasn't terrible but wasn't appealing either. Combine that with not releasing with any form of progression and then when they finally added progression it really wasn't much. Also, the major negative publicity around the pricing probably hurt it as well, some reasonable and some uninformed. Though as 2 or 3 weeks ago you could own the whole set for less than $100 dollars.

I still love the gameplay, but I don't play any game that has no progression or half-baked progression for long.

I hope they release one more set along side a big feature patch to give it one last shot. Something with actual ranked progression, cosmetic rewards, observer functions, and maybe a change to ranked pricing but as of now, similar to HS, people can go infinite in ranked draft, so I have no idea what that change would be.

Many factors went into this game not succeeding.

1. Magic Arena- Timing a release that close to the online release of the 2nd most popular player verse player card game in Human history was a bad idea. They either needed to have released a year earlier or should have waited a lot longer to gauge how well Arena did. Since Arena looks to have finally made a game that is pretty well designed, I question whether Artifact ever stood a real chance.

2. Since you are competing with Arena, you need things that draw players in. They needed to just sell the first expansion for a fixed price and then introduce the collection aspect with continuing expansions. Trying to sell packs of cards that players have to collect for a brand new game that tries to do what another game pretty much already does, is not going to work. Players know Magic the Gathering. They do not know this game enough to be willing to pay out even more money when they would just rather play Magic Arena.

3. Players like to have progression. Yes it is fun to just sit down and play a game but it is a lot more fun if winning has its own rewards. This game needed to already have a tier system with rewards in place along with Alt art that was significant in appeal. In short, carrots are a good thing.

4. The game itself.

The game is more strategic but to a flaw. I like to sit and play a game but if I have to constantly overthink every move just to win, then I will have a difficult time playing many games in a row. You want players to continue playing, not become tired of playing.

The graphic were not overly appealing. Its hard to describe but the graphics felt....basic. The dragon made the games feel even longer which for this game was a bad idea. The cards were not distinct enough for me. There was no feeling of Awe when a powerful card was played. When I play Magic Arena, I have no doubt as to what is being played in an instant. I suppose as I got more familiar with Artifact, that would have changed but the cards just did not grab me like they do with Magic.

I wanted the game to succeed but it was poorly marketed and still had some work to go. They got my initial 20.00 but I was not even interested enough to use my tickets. Given the trend the game is showing, it appears as I was not alone.

I am an avid Dota player and use to be a Hearthstone player. So you would think I checked the boxes to be in their player demographic... and I wanted nothing to do with this game. I am shocked they made people pay $20 upfront to get into the game. Valve basically created the best F2P gaming experience ever with Dota 2 and had the Hearthstone model to simply copy, yet they stifled their player-base right out of the gates with the upfront cost. It baffles me that they thought they could get away with this.

I watched probably 3 hours of it on Twitch and nothing about the game came across as appealing. It is a super complicated Pay2Win game of chess. Where is the fun in that?

That Article says they have gone from 60,000 players down to 1500, a 97% drop off, since launch. lol, gg.