Artifact - The DOTA Card Game

Fyff

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
2,695
5,096
I do not think there is a single person who said, 'I wish Valve would go ahead and make a card game'.
I don't know a single person in 2003 that said "I wish Blizzard would go ahead and make an MMO" and yet that seemed to work out okay.
 
  • 2Picard
Reactions: 1 users

Cybsled

Avatar of War Slayer
16,396
12,030
Actually, in 2003, plenty of people were excited that Blizzard was making WoW (people knew it was being made back in 2003). We were all 100% sick of EQ's shit direction at the time.
 
  • 1Solidarity
Reactions: 1 user

Fyff

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
2,695
5,096
The point, you missed it. Change the date to a date before you knew Blizzard was making an mmo.
 
  • 2Picard
Reactions: 1 users

Warrik

Potato del Grande
<Donor>
1,295
-645
I don't know a single person in 2003 that said "I wish Blizzard would go ahead and make an MMO" and yet that seemed to work out okay.

Uhhh, nearly every single person that played MMO's clamoured for Blizzard to make a Warcraft MMO...any MMO.
 
  • 1Solidarity
Reactions: 1 user

Cybsled

Avatar of War Slayer
16,396
12,030
That was back when Blizzard could do no wrong. People literally wanted Blizzard to make any type of game, since it was virtually guaranteed to be an A+ title.
 
  • 1Solidarity
Reactions: 1 user

Hateyou

Not Great, Not Terrible
<Bronze Donator>
16,259
42,248
Kiroy's avatar right next to this thread title is perfect.
 

Croetec

Lord Nagafen Raider
1,783
1,955
Valve has done plenty wrong recently and much like Blizzard it has lost a lot of the talent that made it what it was (writers/artists), its definitely not the same company it was around HL2/TF2/Portal. At a certain point Valve just began acquiring other teams to make their new projects which they've stopped doing for some reason since Icefrog, if anything Valve's ability to spot talent is really quite good and their ability to keep a team focused on their project. Now they just work on new ways of monetizing cosmetics in the same way Blizzard is now going.

But much like Blizzard as soon as those that made the company great start leaving they seem to make bad volatile products, i.e. Hellgate London / Evolve / Marvel Heroes / Firefall. Dishonored being the only project I can think of that did well from the concept artist behind HL2, though I'm sure there are some more.
 

xzi

Mouthbreather
7,526
6,763
Idunno, Portal 2 was amazing.

Dishonored certainly stands out, it feels the closest to Half Life any other game has come for me personally. There is one developer I'm kind of excited for that got hired to come work on his game in Valve offices, it's the dude that made Gunpoint which was pretty fun and he's been making this procedurally generated game that looks to be coming along pretty nicely.

 

Croetec

Lord Nagafen Raider
1,783
1,955
Portal 2 was great, hell the ARG and the getting the golden potato for it is easily the most fun I have ever had playing video games ever. I'd race home from work every day to see what people had found and do any of the new challenges, and that is the last time I ever enjoyed something by Valve, but I couldn't even tell if that team actually works on games anymore at this point. Which is why I don't get this obsession with loot boxes now, at what point do you start investing your endless amounts of cash into actual game development again.

There are genres they've never really touched yet that they could knock out of the park at this point but digital CCG's are a cash grab until we hit MOBA levels of saturation again and Hearthstone remains to be the only one anyone cares about.
 
  • 1Solidarity
Reactions: 1 user

Genjiro

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
5,218
5,066
Valve will put all their resources into this I think. Devil will be in the details and how many they can pull from dota to play it.

I guess the good thing is CCG players are willing to spend fucktons of money to play-to-win so I cant really see this failing unless its unplayable and Valve is usually pretty good about that sort of thing. Being able to play 5 heroes in lanes seems intriguing, sort of the zone thing the Elder Scrolls thing does, but we have no info aside from that.
 

Zaphid

Trakanon Raider
5,862
294
Aren't pojects inside Valve evaluated by how much money they can make, or by extention, how much profit the people participating can bring to the company ? Which essentially means single player games will always lag behind, since there is no fucking way anyone spends comparable amount of money on an SP title, as they do on virtual hats. VR games that make people buy a headset have an obvious advantage, since it pushes them into your marketplace, same for anything you can eternally patch with new DLC and gameplay. I'm actually amazed L4D3 didn't make it out yet, since it seems like an obvious candidate, especially with Source 2 being finally out.

I reckon it was originally also the driving force behind "episodic content" since it was supposed to provide better returns than a one huge title every few years with all new assets and created the whole "game as a service" rhetoric Gaben talked about.
 

Luthair

Lord Nagafen Raider
1,247
85
Portal 2 was great, hell the ARG and the getting the golden potato for it is easily the most fun I have ever had playing video games ever. I'd race home from work every day to see what people had found and do any of the new challenges, and that is the last time I ever enjoyed something by Valve, but I couldn't even tell if that team actually works on games anymore at this point. Which is why I don't get this obsession with loot boxes now, at what point do you start investing your endless amounts of cash into actual game development again.

There are genres they've never really touched yet that they could knock out of the park at this point but digital CCG's are a cash grab until we hit MOBA levels of saturation again and Hearthstone remains to be the only one anyone cares about.

This is normal in the gaming industry, any successful game has a million clones aiming to be xxx-killer until players get sick of the genre and it fades into obscurity. See fast FPS (Doom, Quake), fighting games, RTS, rhythm games, MMOs, etc.
 

Tenks

Bronze Knight of the Realm
14,163
606
From what I've gathered from people who worked at Valve is it is really hard to justify a multi-year long project anymore at the company. Due to the ranking nature (and therefore your bonuses) you need to focus on projects that have short term immediate benefits. If you and a team lock yourselves in a closet for 3 years making Half Life 3 you will get ranked lower than someone who is just adding rando features to DOTA2 since they've effectively shipped and made the company money. Financially it makes little sense to focus on ambitious long-tail projects at the company right now.

--edit

Should also note these are former employees so obviously the lens will be biased
 
  • 1Barf
Reactions: 1 user

xzi

Mouthbreather
7,526
6,763
I'm actually amazed L4D3 didn't make it out yet, since it seems like an obvious candidate, especially with Source 2 being finally out.

Source 2 still isn't out, there are specific mod tools for Source 2 dota but you can do hardly anything with it, you can't make an FPS game it's just impossible. Destinations Source 2 is out but again you can't do anything with it outside of photogrammetry world building. They're really fantastic tastes of what Source 2 is supposed to be capable of but there's still no word on when they actually fully release the engine.

My guess is they will probably ship something big, like a L4D3 when they actually ship Source 2. I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't though, as Gaben has stated Source 2 will be free to everyone from indie to AAA devs but they are forced to release their game on steam (but can still release on other platforms as well), which means they're going to pull in even more fucking money. Which is the only reason I can see Source 2 actually being released lol

I wish it would come out already, they announced they were working on it as far back as early 2011. I've followed every leak possible but it still remains pretty in the dark. The last best thing we got was the Chinese announcement of a localized CSGO that vaguely said Source 2 will be in the game, but then they said that will only be the UI so I don't know. I don't know.
 

Zaphid

Trakanon Raider
5,862
294
From what I've gathered from people who worked at Valve is it is really hard to justify a multi-year long project anymore at the company. Due to the ranking nature (and therefore your bonuses) you need to focus on projects that have short term immediate benefits. If you and a team lock yourselves in a closet for 3 years making Half Life 3 you will get ranked lower than someone who is just adding rando features to DOTA2 since they've effectively shipped and made the company money. Financially it makes little sense to focus on ambitious long-tail projects at the company right now.

--edit

Should also note these are former employees so obviously the lens will be biased

I imagine it also has a lot to do with internal politics, veterans would have the pull to justify long term projects, but if you are new you are stuck patching Dota or TF2. Because otherwise there's no explanation for Valve getting in bed with VR, since it yet has to turn much of a profit, although if they offloaded production costs to HTC and just make money off the marketplace ... And the seniors recognize that they have to think long term, which means taking risks, but I guess if you are not great at politics, there's no rank and file to guide you along.
 

Julian The Apostate

Vyemm Raider
2,315
2,411
Just came out that Richard Garfield(MTG, Netrunner) has been working on this since 2014 for valve. Apparently he came to Valve with a game that could be adapted to a moba.

Even as a dota player I wasn’t hyped for artifact until I heard about this.
 

Fyff

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
2,695
5,096
Just came out that Richard Garfield(MTG, Netrunner) has been working on this since 2014 for valve. Apparently he came to Valve with a game that could be adapted to a moba.

Even as a dota player I wasn’t hyped for artifact until I heard about this.
Garfield is actually pretty bad at making good games. The Magic you see today is totally different from his version for a reason. I hope someone reigns him in. The shit he designed for Magic was awful. The base system was fine but the cards were literally retarded.