What went wrong?
>>744671020I don't know. You tell me
>>744671502idk that's why i asked.
>>744672026Why do you think something went wrong?
>>744672110i remember it being a thing at the time
>>744673569What thing was it and what was the time?
>>744671020It wasn't Half-Life 3
>>744671020They rushed its release and focused too much on lore autism rather than actual game mechanics that would keep people invested into the game. By the time they actually started fixing it, everybody had already abandoned the game. Same shit with Dota Underlords too really. Valve just can't do anything correctly when it comes to vidya anymore it seems. Probably why they've all but abandoned vidya aslnd pivoted extremely hard towards hardware now.
>>744671020I miss when people would stream tv and movies in the Artifact twitch category.
>>744671020they hired a person that they held on an extremely high pedestal as the main man for the project, but this man was an obvious fraud that just got lucky with MTG
I mean surely the game would be more popular if they were not asking $20 upfront lol. Extremely stupid decision by Valve, considering that around that time they even made CS:GO free.
They had a bunch of twitch tards doing the closed beta tests and all they did was suck off Valve for every retarded decision for good boy points and then the game launched with a bunch of really retarded shit that was apparent from minute 1
>>744671020Valve are incompetent and can't into game design.Just look at wokelock and how they ruined dota
>>744671020The game had a price tag and required paying to play on top of that. Perfect recipe to make everyone run
>>744671020They made it a sandwich and gabe ate it
While you can incorporate elements to get people to pay more with a freemium model, you won't have a sustainable user base if you make it a requirement to pay to play matches.
>>744671020>What went wrong?Gamers are insufferable and fucking whine when shit they don't have to play gets made for other people.
The game was entirely designed by a team of 40-60 year olds' who have classic cars in their garages, dusty guitars on the walls and cottages on the lake. Uncs with disposable income who value conveniently being able to pay for what they want and have little spare time, completely ignoring that the majority of Valve's playerbase are 15 year old peruvians and russians who think grinding 12 hours a day for 5$ of steam currency is good value.
Why does it have 10k CCU right now?
>>744676785Right
>>744671020overdesigned
>>744671020Game required a very high iq to appreciate it plus valve being scummy
>>744676737this. there really should have been a longer open beta because of course you will get shit feedback from so called pros that will play the game for month and then swap to another hot game
>>744671020they somehow convinced themselves that they can scam the players like a mobile or gacha company and get away with it
>>744682903Hearthstone does that just fine, where they fucked up was making it obligatory to pay money to simply play the game.
>>744683904yea buthearstone is very simple at the first glance, artifact had 3 simultaneous tables you need to play
>>744671020poor image quality, way too much artifacting
>>744680061Never even looked into it because of this.
>>744684103Artifact still may not have succeeded long term, but it wouldn't have died nearly as fast if it had a more standard mobile/gacha business model.
OK, we all know Necrolyte's aghanim sucks, so here's my suggestion as how to improve it:While under the effect of Reaper's Scythe, target takes double damage from Hearthstopper AuraMuch better now.
>>744671020They hired the washed up creator of Magic the Gathering and let him implement all the retarded shit he wanted to without question. Just trusted him blindly.
>>744682903While also charging money upfront. They had the worst f2p model of any card game at the time and they weren't even f2p.
>>744671020If the immediate reaction to your product being revealed is a universal sigh of disappointment, think of something else to sell.
>>744682903The rest of Valve's first part games do exactly that, it is the fact they tried to scam players in a different way that the player base didn't buy into that lead to Artifact flopping.
>>744688253>look at me being retarded and wrong Ok, I'm looking.
>>744688253there is was nothing scammy in dota, all its cosmetics has 0 effect on the actual game
>>744671020>ctrl-f "richard">0 resultsRichard Garfield and his monetisation model
>>744689676If your search doesn't highlight "washed up creator of Magic the Gathering" when looking for Richard there's something wrong with your computer.
>>744671020>what if we charged money for a spin off of our F2P game (in a market where all other competitor card games are also F2P), then we charged you more money as the only way to earn cards, then charged you even more to play rankedIt was insanely greed. Shame because I actually liked the gameplay, and trading cards on the marketplace was a perfect fit.If they had just made the game F2P, and made it so 'free' earned cards couldn't be traded (only bought ones) then it would still be nichely played today.For reference leagues clone did well enough within it's niche that it even has a physical version now.
>>744671020It was a good card game with excellent presentation. But it wasn't "fun". games could take 20+ mins. And paid entry to a game that really shouldve been f2p killed it. Draft mode was great and it was made to be very easy to setup draft tourneys. Damn shame what happened, a couple of expansions and it wouldve been great imo.
>>744691152Draft was amazing. I personally never fucked with constructed, so it could have been aids. But if the game didn't die in its literal first set I'm sure they would have introduced more aggressive play styles based on feedback.Like imagine any other card game only having access to it's first set.
>>744671020Pay to playShould have been f2p with a free starter deck
>>744671020game was expensive and the betas were fairly closed. the people who were able to play were retarded yes men saying it was amazing when it was only decent, 3 lanes was too confusing for plebs. one of the big draws was selling the cards on the market, personally i lost a lot when everything crashed it seemed that the entire player base just evaporated
>>744689618>waswhat happened now?
Artifact 1 phantom draft mode was fun. I can totally see why the game failed, but I had some fun while it lasted and am glad I got to play it. I didn't buy into Constructed because the monetization was just insane, I was a fence setter who just played phantom draft mode because it was free, and then the game died pretty quick, so I left too.
>>744689676Rich's usual problem is too big of a variance in his rng and I think someone should have definitely reeled back some degree of it - minion targeting was annoying but fine, item shop swing was baffling imo. But I'm still adamant that wasn't the core issue -- it was the horrible combination of >misplaced audience expectations>higher barrier to entry than its competition>higher learning curve than its competition >higher long term cost than its competition with the promise of future payoff But Valve was retarded and assumed Rich's consulting expenses were the true issue, so they axed him and then panicked instead of just fixing ANY of the problems above in a timely manner.Like serious, did they really think the market would tank if they made the game F2P when the fucking game modes already have additional costs?? And I'm still pissed that the card market would have taken off, it's absolutely insane you can't trade cards in Heartstone, Runeterra, etc. i am the doggie
>>744685126>>744689676>>744674743Has Garfield done ANYTHING right since mtgHow do people keep falling for it
>>744693264>Star Wars TCG>Netrunner>King of Tokyo>Bunny Kingdom>Keyforgeand my personal favorite The Great Dalmuti
>>744693448bnuuy kingdom looks cute.
>>744671020I remember trying to get my friends into the game and it was basically impossible. Imagine telling somebody they had to pay $20 (non refundable btw) just to TRY this new card game. When mtg arena, yugioh duel links, and hearthstone were all right there.
Did Artifact copypasta anon die?
>>744694031It is, kind of light but still fun for 4 peepsmore than roboralley imo
>>744693264Garfield is like George Lucas. Good ideas guy, but if he's not kept in check by his colleagues he'll go full retard.
>>744671020here's a gameplay videohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=od5XamlmNxQdoes it look fun? i don't think card people want to play 3 games at once.and those silly dragons probably annoyed some people.maybe the root of the problem was to try and forcefully invent a card game to fit the "3 lanes" theme rather than coming up with a fun card game without forcing it to fit a theme
>>744671020too complicatedbad monetizationnot even Dota players care about Dota lore
>>744696404I think the gameplay had its issues, but if they didn't have the stupid monetization system I think it would have stuck around.
>>744696404I liked the 3 lanes thing. It seemed to filter a lot of people HARD, but it really wasn't that complicated. Feels like the only game that solved the color identity issue without just ripping off MTG too. Ironic given the original MTG creator worked on it.Early turns definitely had an issue of being slow and too RNG heavy, but like actual Dota 2 I think they would have eventually sped it up.
>>744692475>But Valve was retarded and assumed Rich's consulting expenses were the true issueYou are retarded for having this completely made up thought in your mind. Every retarded decision in Artifact's monetization was Garfield's idea. That Monday hating freak wrote an article about how to properly monetize things and it was all the retarded shit that Artifact had.
>>744696581Thats basically my thoughts. So many f2p card games stick around forever. Shadowverse JUST shut down in June after a decade of service.The game would have been niche, but it would have hung around for a while.
>>744696581what was the stupid monetization system? that you couldn't get cards for free?>>744696404>>744696665looking at a couple of videos i think the main problem is that although the complexity is not too difficult, it wouldn't translate well into a real card game. playing a round of Artifact IRL without the retarded little dragons doing their things would take too long, i think it then becomes unappealing for card people.
>>744691828i wouldnt knowsome years ago they were adding some items to affect matchmaking, or maybe im mixing it up with some seasonal event, idk
>>744671020Basing a card game around Dota lore, which is really fucking shit.
Went woke.
>>744697235>what was the stupid monetization systemp2w where you had to buy the cards on steam marketplace. At the start some did cost ~$5, then the price dropped to cents once the players left. If the game would have been popular some cards would get to hundred dollars or more, it was obvious that this is what they were going for
>>744697235>what was the stupid monetization system? that you couldn't get cards for free?That plus you had to do an initial buy in of $20. Keep in mind all 3 of the big CCGs still around where all there when artifact launched, and all F2P. Even if you ignore the gameplay, try imaging a scenario where you have to convince you friend to play a pay to play digital card game over the alternatives.
>>744697537saw a video saying valve promised that wouldn't happen, they could just sell those rare cards for 10 USD in the store to ensure it couldn't go higher than that.which is a ridiculous macrotransaction in my book, just saying that they could have done that. if they actually would have done it nobody will know.
>>744697763oh you didnt get any starter cards at all? guess valve thought they were some hot shit and didn't have to compete
In March 2018, Gabe Newell held a presentation on Artifact claiming there would be regular expansions, an eventual mobile release, and a $1 million tournament, all of which ultimately failed to materialize.https://youtube.com/watch?v=mERhtoD21rUIn August of that year, Gabe Newell repeated the claim of an Artifact tournament during the opening of The International: https://youtube.com/watch?v=X4xYOmUwad0In March 30, 2020, Valve announced Artifact Beta 2.0, stating they planned for a closed beta (which happened), transitioning to an open beta and later full release (which didn’t).https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/583950/view/2102558993190369210In December 17, 2020, Valve stated they would allow users to invite friends to the Artifact 2.0 beta in January.https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1269260/view/2951510987408670526In March 4, 2021, Valve formally abandoned Artifact. No expansions, no mobile version, no million-dollar tournament, not even something as basic as allowing users to invite friends to the beta in January like they said they would.https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/583950/view/3047218819080842820Valve screwed over the Artifact fanbase by cancelling the Artifact 2.0 beta without even allowing users to invite friends like they said they would in January 2021 and does not deserve your financial support for these gross consumer-unfriendly practices.
>>744671020Card acquisition was fucked, that's literally it
>>744698010He lives!
>>744697235Wasn't the primary mode pay to play? Some people seem willing to spend a fortune to get an advantage from a gacha system, but numerically few people seem to be interested in a required pay to play each match system.
>>744696721>Rich's consulting /and/ expensesis what I meant to say because yeah I agree, he had some stupid ideas on how to sell itBut not nearly as stupid as Valve letting a game designer dictate monetization, doubly so when it's their own bread and butter.They would have been fine if they just took over the money stuff and rode the waves while the transaction/F2P bullshit got smoothed over. But those player count numbers scared them so much so they took the big brain move of trying to ""fix"" the game while telling the designer to fuck himself. The game was in dire straits but it still had some support until the beta was made publicly available. That's when everyone released Valve had no fucking clue about anything, no the monetization, not the design, not the audience, and that's what ultimately killed it. That to me is more the sign of a systemic issue, not just one person (even more so if the claims this was like a George Lucas prequel situation were remotely true)
The worst part is this was the only CCG in YEARS to have actual social features. You could type to your opponent mid match, and tournaments would auto create chat rooms for everybody to use if they wanted.That shit is non existent these days thanks to blizzards hug box design and everyone else copying it.
the pricing was fucking retarded>have to buy into tournamentswhat the actual fuck where they thinking
>>744699884and i actually did like the gameplay it was genuinely fun to play for me but holy fuck did it deserve to die for pricing alone
You cannot understate how horrible the monetization was AND you had to pay 20 bucks for the pleasure. Even something as basic as dailies just didn't exist. There was absolutely no excuse for how insanely Jewish it was to play when things like Hearthstone (who was nearly still in its prime) and Shadowverse showed how to make an online card game work. Gabe and his infamous Powerpoint made it clear from from the get go that the only thing that mattered to them was the market aspect and they excepted it to print them free money somehow.But even from a design standpoint, there were just so many awfully balanced cards. Cards that had a 50% on winning or losing on play, which made both players upset. And the fucking random arrows!!!! Also, just boring to look at and play and Dota lore is honestly one of the most retarded things they could have pulled from. Nobody cares about Axe, man. And even if somehow you were loyal to the idea, Valve immediately showed they were bailing and the long haul was a myth.It's all the more baffling because Richard Garfield designed Keyforge, a physical card game, at the same time and there are some similarities between it and Artifact, but Keyforge is actually fun and still receiving new expansions. Artifact is BY FAR Valve's straightest fuckup. They were completely arrogant and clueless and entered a genre they knew nothing about and didn't care to learn. But by god the doomposting was a hoot.
>>744697235>>744697892the gimmick was trying to replicate local game stores where you pay money to play in a tournament and get free cards to take home with youso the game had the upfront cost of buying it in order to "unlock" the starters. You then could play free endlessly with your cards against friends or bots, but only maybe 1-2 times for free a day against other randos in the drafts and tournaments with their ""cash"" prizes. The idea of course being you took said card chaff to the Steam market and sell it to buy the cards you want. Players get to trade/sell their cards, Valve gets a cut each and every time.The irony is if they just stuck with the market, they probably could have made fucking bank. But they got extra greedy not making it F2P and providing a means to get card packs without trying to ape "just like my game store"
>>744699991>Keyforge is actually fun and still receiving new expansions.I tend to wonder if Artifact paid the bills so Keyforge could run, especially after hearing it was a pipedream idea for 20+ years. That said, fuck me, I wish people around me played keyforge again and not the fotm and endless mtg. I don't think I ever had a bad time playing it
>>744700259i don't understand why they thought this was ever a good idea, paying LGS's for tournaments has the incentive of keeping the game store open as well, it's the same reason why you pay to goto fighting game locals
>>7446710201. HORRIBLE economy that demanded people to pay real money for every single card, when every single one of its competitors was F2P and that was the expectation by everyone.2. The triple lane gimmick made the game incomprehensible to watch on a stream.3. The game was just badly designed. Cards had extremely boring effects like "+2 to something" and whatever decisions you made, the random arrows made them incorrect in the end anyway.Reynad described it well: "Playing Artifact is like doing really easy math homework, and then someone else changes all your answers to make them wrong". Incidentally another Richard Garfield game, Roborally, has this exact same design problem where it's trivial to know what the optimal move is but the RNG prevents you from doing it.
So am I the only one who thought being able to sell the cards was neat? Afaik no other online card game lets you do that
>>744698010The only reason I came in here.
>>744699884"People still play MTGO, they'll probably love this!"
Main issue with Artifact was Valve's arrogance. They literally thought they could enter a genere they have zero experience in, one they know nothing about, and instantly take it over because damn it, we're Valve, we can do anything. The moment they realized they had to actually fight for the market share they folded and abandoned the game.
>>744700512I gained a lot of respect for Reynad during the whole Artifact debacle. I always found him a complete tool coming from the Hearthstone community, but literally every single thing he said about Artifact before release turned out to be true. Every single Youtuber/streamer gushing about the game, except for that autistic German, really did it thinking it would somehow be the Next Big Thing. >>744700460Keyforge had its own problems. Practically sabotaged by Fantasy Flight Games, dreadfully weak sophomore set, nearly annihilated by Covid, wrecked by the shipping crisis, then totally neglected until Ghost Galaxy bought the IP. And yet somehow it has survived. Meanwhile, Artifact was a laughingstock within the month.>>744700607Ultimately, the benefits of it were vastly outweighed by the downsides of Valve locking everything behind real money.
>>744700505if I had to hazard a guess, they were stuck between hooking the players in a play loop and keeping the market propped up. >Get packs quickly: players feel good but then cards won't hold high value. >Get packs after 30 wins in draft: cards cost more and thus Valve gets bigger cut, but players don't get their dopamine hit to keep playing>Get packs only if you pay for them: why would players not stick with their years of money wasted in MTGO?So I think they figured the real world analog had potential - chip in some money, get the gamblers high of potentially getting more if you do well, not have to grind for the sake of grinding, still get a small dopamine hit even if you perform like shit.
>>744700724I hope not, given that MTG arena was already around by then.>>744700607I liked that and all the QoL, like being able to see your opponents deck mid match (with a tracker showing what is left in their deck). Also being able to talk to people.
>>744698010based
>>744700802They really mishandled the beta too. It was ecelebs only at first, who obviously aren't going to say anything since you just give them everything for free. Then the 'open' beta was like a week long, way too short to get any meaningful feedback.Then once it came out they panicked and added hearthstone style crafting in like two days, then just gave up.I assume one of the reasons deadlock is STILL in beta is they were scared of it flopping and wanted to have the option to do a soft 1.0 incase they killed the entire playerbase again.
>>744701769as long as they continue to release likeable characters deadlock is going to succeed
the gay little imps dryheaving every time something zany happened were not a smart additioneven the hearthstone pets aren't as annoying despite taking up more of the screen
>>744671020>PAID CARD GAME >WHERE YOU THEN PAY MORE TO OPEN PACKS >WITH NO REAL WAY TO BUILD A COLLECTION WITHOUT PAYING OUT THE ASS the Jewishness was incredible
>>744701896i hate how true this is because deadlock has ZERO vision whatsoever and it's actually an insanely poorly designed game propped up entirely by valve/icefrog cultural and technological cachet
>>744698010>an eventual mobile releaseit probably would have had more of a chance if that was available from the start, phone "gamers" is a big market. but most of them are expecting to start for free before needing to pay ridiculous amounts of money.
>artifact classic 11,442 peak todayhttps://steamcharts.com/app/583950>marathon 4,810 peak todaywait, artifact isn't that dead?it's over 2 times more active than Marathon?? only counting pc
>>744703140https://steamcharts.com/app/3065800forgot the marathon url...
>>744703140>>artifact classic 11,442 peak today>>https://steamcharts.com/app/583950>it's real
I remember the game was way way over monetized. It was so pay to win that you were guaranteed to lose against a whale because you were at such a massive disadvantage. The game also had a layer of RNG that helped curve that, but most of the time it ended up going against you, so it really felt like I was getting fucked for not spending more money on packs
>>744703140>>744703240its bots farming cards or some shit, look at the spike
>>744703340>Observers note that large automated bot networks or script tests frequently target free-to-play or dormant Steam titles to farm hours or manipulate metrics
>paid version of a free game>game design is mimicing the game and not the abstracted concept of a wari literally don't understand what they were thinking. It'd be like making a card game about starcraft but its about microing drones and building pylons
>>744703447choosing valve's game to manipulate valve's store is kind of retarded imho
>>744671020Hearthstone changed the meta forever. Nobody is going to pay for an online card game ever again when YGO and MTG and all the others are free to play online
>>744700505Garfield had some manifesto about how the usual f2p model is manipulative and the hyper greedy model used in Artifact is the honest and fair way.
>>744700607>no other online card game lets you do thatBecause it doesn't really work. Either all the cards are worthless or you have to make it pretty much impossible to get them through playing the game without paying.
>>744699794something i've respected valve for is the fact that you can still chat in their games, and with the enemy team. not being able to see some banter before blocking it is yet another feminization step of gaming. and sometimes it really is just friendly or useful to be able to talk with other humans.
>>744701896>>744702480i've not seen a single video of deadlock even tho people seem to have talked about it for years, isn't that game going to release some day? it's been years
>>744696404There are tons of three lane/lane battler games, the problem with artifact was that it SPECIFICALLY gave you a resource refresh between each lane that basically turned it into a curvestone-style game rather than resource investment
>>744700460Richard didn't fund keyforge
>>744671020Gambling regulators knocked on their door so they shat themselves and shut the game down.
>>744671020>20 bucks for a game type usually expected to be free>cards are also not free>card design blatantly meant to manipulate the second-hand market (taxed by Valve, therefore ALSO NOT FREE)>all this to play a huge slog of a game because Valve worshipped a card game designer notorious for RNG autism>it would be a slog if it was only one lane, but you have to play 3The death knell was the smug community excusing every bad decision along the way, because CCG players are the beaten housewives of gacha niggas
>>744671020>>744710157Also, personal opinion, but nuDota is a profoundly uninteresting setting/aesthetic.
>>744700802They hired the MTG guy, so they weren't going in completely blind. Turns out the MTG guy was using Valve as a testing ground for his own random shit.
https://youtu.be/R0qZTS38cjw?si=toB1oNuTcnc8VOZbBest crowd reaction to a reveal
>>744671020nothing, film festival was glorious
Isn't the reason Valve went along with the monetization bullshit is because not doing some type of pay to play would fuck with Valve's "we let you buy shit on the market" model? Either way though it ultimately killed the game.
>>744711028I love how even the panel kekd
You now remember how Artifact label was used to stream porn on twitch.
>>744711885They thought TF2 hat market bullshit was the peak of community-driven "entertainment"(really just gambling addicts abusing trading systems to gamble harder) and basically crippled the rest of the game to accomodate it. Genuinely braindead.
>>744671020Triple lane gimmick in a card game, trying to surf on MOBA's gimmicks.It's like, I dunno, adding choke-points to a rhythm game just because it's TF2-themed.
>>744676737I remember playing the game and selling the cards to get my money back. I didn't really understand the mechanic where I think you randomly set heroes on random lanes and if they were just naturally stronger you got your ass run down. Can any artifacthead explain to me wtf you were supposed to do?Anyway Valve is always super fucking late to the party anytime they do this shit. Peak hearthstone garbage was years ago. It's like making another battle royale game in 2026
