Apr 13, 2020

Artifact - EricTams

I have some good news, some more good news, and some bad news. The good news is that after our previous post, we received a deluge of emails. More good news - it’s high quality feedback that people have clearly spent a lot of time thinking about. The bad news? We’re slow readers, so it’s taking us a bit more time than we thought to thoroughly comb through all of your emails. But we are a determined bunch!

Now enough chit-chat, let’s dive in:

One of the first heavy RNG components that players faced was the initial board setup. “The Flop”, as it used to be called, would randomly deploy the first set of heroes and lane creeps. Let’s take an in-depth look at how deployment has changed.

Board Layout
The board still has 3 lanes, but each lane is exactly 5 slots. The slots also have a fixed position, so adding units on either end of the lane doesn’t shift the positions of any units. There are some rules for deploying on top of units if the lane gets too full or if there’s just something in your way, which you’ll find at the end of this post.

Lane Creep Deployment
Before each round, a melee creep is deployed into the leftmost empty space in each lane.

Hero Deployment, First round
Heroes are deployed in three stages in the first round.

Let’s take a step by step look using this match-up.

Step 1, Mid - Both players choose one of their first three heroes. They can choose to deploy them in one of the three middle spots in the lane. The heroes and their deploy locations are simultaneously revealed.

We’d like Treant to survive a few rounds to build up a creep advantage in a lane. Treant would make a juicy target if we put him in the off lane, and we have a chance that we might be unopposed in mid. Treant’s passive aura can affect the whole lane from the center position so our opponent might play center mid just to prevent that advantage. We might get lucky depending on where our opponent deploys.

We are going to play our tree to the mid position.

Looks like our opponent saw through our plans!

Step 2, Off lane - Each player chooses their second hero (one player deploys to the first lane, the other to the third lane). The hero and their deploy locations are simultaneously revealed. This hero will be the most vulnerable since the enemy will be able to respond with full knowledge.

We don’t mind if Wraith King matches up against any of these enemies. So we can safely put him in our off lane. Bristle is nice to play in the second slot of any lane since you might get some free creep kills with Quill Spray. He can also take a hit so we would expect our opponent to play him now.

We are going to play our Wraith King in the fourth position.

Let’s see what our opponent chose.

Step 3, Safe lane – Players now deploy their last hero into their safe lane (the lane their opponent deployed into in the previous round). You have full information about what you are facing now, so you can deploy your final hero to the most beneficial of the three available spots.

Mirana is a good choice to put in the safe lane for better Sacred Arrow positioning and so she doesn’t get killed. Because we deployed bounty last we are guaranteed we can take advantage of his track ability. Hopefully we get some cards to save him, but we are fine with the trade.

We are going to play our bounty hunter to attack their Bristleback.

Let’s see where Mirana went.

Not the best, but I think we ended up in a good spot!

Hero Deployment, Subsequent rounds
You still get an additional hero to deploy in the 2nd and 3rd rounds plus any hero that returns from the fountain. Later deployments have no restrictions on where heroes can be deployed.

Additional placement rules

Deploying a hero on top of another hero will bounce the old hero to deploy next turn.
Deploying a hero on top of a creep will destroy the creep.
When you play a creep card you can choose the exact slot in the lane to deploy it into.
Playing a creep on top of a unit will destroy that unit.

Additional Notes

Armor works differently from the base game.
Tower health is dependent upon the game mode.

Let us know what you think!

Apr 6, 2020

Looking Forward, Looking Back

Artifact - EricTams

When the members of the team decided to reboot Artifact we all did it for different reasons. Some of us loved the original game and wanted to see it thrive. Some of us liked the freeing sense of creativity you can have with a card game. Some of us love trying to figure out how something is broken and see it fixed. There was one unifying reason for all of us - we thought that there was something special in the game, and with hard work we could bring it to light. Thanks for the feedback over the last two weeks, it's been great seeing how many of you share those feelings.

There is one class of concerns raised that we wanted to address specifically. Those from the founding players of Artifact - the people who played extensively and built a collection in the original game. There are some great ideas floating around for things we could add, and they mesh well with our own. We want to make sure that there are some incredibly cool and special things that we deliver to our founders, but we aren't ready to implement them yet.

We mentioned in our previous post that we were focusing on gameplay first. That wasn’t just a random choice - We wanted to make sure the game had a strong foundation to build upon. It's not going to look polished because we're going to be changing things a lot during this process based on feedback and data. It's really important to us that we take your ideas for how to improve the game into account, so please email them to ArtifactBetaFeedback@valvesoftware.com. We are going to read all of them.

With all that said, let’s look at some of the fun stuff to come! Also, speaking of things that aren’t finished yet, check out this sweet placeholder art. ;)

Mirana

Mirana has a pretty standard stat line for a Black Hero. (Stats overall have been scaled to around 60% of the original game.)
Leap gives her excellent mobility and can be used defensively and offensively. You can select your landing spot so it’s possible to buff specific units and go for a knockout punch.
Her include card, Sacred Arrow, is versatile and powerful. (Probably a bit too powerful right now, to be honest.)

Wraith King

Wraith King looks fragile for a green hero, but his built in death shield makes him one of the most survivable units in the game.
Reincarnation makes killing Wraith King a bad time for all the enemies in his lane.
The Decay from Hellfire blast works similarly to regeneration, just in reverse. Unless a hero gets healing it often means death after two turns.

Sticky Greevil

With the increased amount of movement in the game, a cheap blocker like this little guy can really gum up your opponent's plans!

Morphling Whelp

As you might have guessed, this unit is hilarious.
Does it copy both Passive and Active abilities? Of course it does!

Defenstrating Ogre

This is one of the few blue creeps with a big stat line.
Bouncing returns a hero to be deployed next round, or a creep to the hand.
You need to be careful not to bounce units with a strong deploy effect.

Sheep Stick

So cute you might almost feel bad for killing your enemies.

Mar 30, 2020

What's the plan - Beta 2.0

Artifact - EricTams

This week we wanted to talk about the Artifact Beta 2.0, what it will include, and when it will happen.

We’ve been focusing on gameplay changes first. The biggest change is zooming out to allow players access to all three lanes at once. The majority of effects still work on individual lanes so they still maintain their identity, but it’s less likely that a player will get shut out in the same way they used to.

We’ve also focused on making the game easier to pick up. We aren’t selling cards, so you won’t face an opponent with a stacked deck. We’ve also added a new draft mode, Hero Draft, that gives you a taste of constructing decks without all the pressure.

The beta will exist as a new executable and access will be granted to individual accounts. When we are ready to send out invites we will let you know the process.

Here’s the current road-map:

Test boring stuff <- We are here
Trickle out invites, starting with players of the original release (ramping up similar to Dota 2)
Work on the Beta, eventually transitioning to an open beta
Leave Beta (hopefully quicker than Dota 2)

FAQ:
Q. I didn’t play the original. If I buy the original game now, will I be able to get in?
A. No, we will prioritize people who purchased before today’s date.

Q. I played the original, will I have access to my stats, cards, decks, etc. from the original game?
A. In the new version cards are unlocked through play. Individual cards are likely to have been changed, removed, or brand new; so old decks and stats wouldn’t be valid.

Q. Can I buy cards/packs in the Beta?
A. We have some ideas about what we’d like to sell, but none of them are cards/packs.

Q. I’m a member of the press, a celebrity, a streamer, an influencer, a pro gamer, etc. Can I get in?
A. Selection will be mostly random. So… maybe?

Jul 3, 2019

Artifact designer thinks it can be saved but isn't interested in doing 'damage control'

Artifact

Artifact is one of the more infamous videogame bombs of recent years: Designed for Valve by the creator of Magic: The Gathering—basically a guaranteed recipe for a hit—it flamed out spectacularly, from a peak concurrent player count of more than 46,000 in December 2018 to less than 1,000 just three months later, and only 210 over the past 30 days.

We dug into the reasons for Artifact's failure earlier this year. The underlying game is actually pretty good, but it's intimidating and too complicated for new players and viewers, and its monetization is unappealing for some. Unlike Hearthstone and Gwent, Artifact has a $20 upfront price, and cards can be sold and purchased on the Steam Community Market. Even though Hearthstone can be very expensive if you're trying to build a good deck quickly, paying $20 and then another $20 or more for an important card (they're cheaper now) didn't sit well with everyone.

We said at the time that if Valve was going to take steps to save Artifact, "it needs to happen soon." Instead, it's done nothing, and the numbers tanked even harder in the months since then.

In a recent interview with Eurogamer, designer Richard Garfield acknowledged the raft of complaints but also defended the game, saying "there's demonstrable information to the contrary" regarding what unhappy players thought about it.

"So, for example, when players complain about the luck in the game, there is demonstrably more skill in this game than in any other digital trading card game as measured by the Elo rating that players achieve. So there's this complaint but there's this black and white contradiction to it," Garfield said.

"For people complaining about the price, there's a complaint about how much money it costs, but there's a black and white contradiction in the sense that if you want to be competitive in a game like say Hearthstone or Magic, you have to pay far more."

Co-designer Skaff Elias expressed similar sentiments. He acknowledged that there were relatively few balance changes made to Artifact during the closed beta period but said that's because the game was "very balanced" to begin with.

"We didn't want to push the community to preconceived notions because then that kind of spoils the value of the test," said Elias. "So, you kind of let them play around with stuff and then they'll say 'Oh, this thing here is too good.' And then you kind of know, on the back-end, that it's not, because you've been through that before, you've played that."

"So that would continuously happen throughout the beta. Some people would say they don't like this, and other people would say they do like that, you know, there was a lot of mixed results. In the end, the balance from our perspective was very much in-line with what we would expect from a trading card game."

Garfield also criticized Valve for not doing enough to combat perceptions of Artifact, saying that Valve relies too heavily on its players to "drive their marketing."

"I think that at some point, you have to take control of that yourself," he said. "They have some very positive messages there and very positive things in their game design and they're being sort of misrepresented by a lot of the player community."

The big question now is whether Artifact can be saved—and more to the point, whether Valve wants to make the effort. Both Garfield and Elias parted ways with Valve shortly after the release of Artifact, and while Garfield said at the time that they "have offered our feedback and advice in an ongoing gratis capacity simply because we would like to see the game do as well as we think it can," it sounds like he's had a change of heart since then.

"Personally, I'm interested in designing new games or expanding old games," he said. "I don't want to be involved in damage control and figuring out how to find an audience for this game. I think the underlying game is excellent and original. It gives the player something new. So in that sense, since there's something there to offer the player, I think it's possible to save it. Since Valve is a smart company with lots of smart people working there, I think that it's possible they can do that. Will they? It's hard to say."

The signs so far are not encouraging. Valve's most recent update came at the end of March, more than three months ago, when it described Artifact as "the largest discrepancy between our expectations for how one of our games would be received and the actual outcome," and said that it had decided to scrap its planned schedule of updates and new cards in favor of an undefined "process of experimentation and development" aimed at overhauling the entire game.