Artifact - It's Luna Moonday, my dudes

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• It's Luna Moonday, my dudes
• The Long Haul Podcast with Richard Garfield and Skaff Elias: TL:DR
• The Long Haul Podcast with Garfield and Skaff: Too Long; Didn't Listen
• The Long Haul: An Artifact Podcast // Interview with Richard Garfield and Skaff Elias
• Community Tournament Update
• Update from GabeN on Richard Garfield
• At Least Valve is Doing Better Than High-Rez
• About 4 turns into the game I realized I needed to end faster
• Free tournament starts in 3 hours
• The Long Haul Podcast gave me more hope than I ever imagined
• This Week on r/CustomArtifact
• Raaiiinboow, but sadly i lost the last 2 games ;(
• Looking to invest on cards

It's Luna Moonday, my dudes Posted: 22 Apr 2019 08:39 AM PDT submitted by /u/28064212va [link] [comments]

The Long Haul Podcast with Richard Garfield and Skaff Elias: TL:DR Posted: 22 Apr 2019 04:15 AM PDT They find games successfull not only if they find a dedicated playerbase, but also if that playerbase is relatively large. If the publisher is unhappy, they probably are too. Artifact creation is based more on the idea of making a digital TCG, rather than a moba card game. Artifact is similar to paper card games because its more epic, since its not limited by "fitting everything into a small screen", e. g. no hand size or minion limit. Artifact is not easy to understand for a viewer until you acquire some knowledge about the game, but thats true for many games. Overall Valve has done a great job on making UI as clear as possible. Artifact feels like it has more rng than it actually does, but it actually has less rng than other games. Analyzing replays would help a lot, since you would see all the things you did wrong. Similar to poker, there is a lot of rng but there is also a lot of skill, because the game is so different and the game is not widely played its often hard to see where the skill lies. They could do a better job explaining the difference. They feel like in terms of game design Artifact is quite solid compared to other card games, even though as a product it was not very popular. The economics were designed together, with Valve not pressuring them into the decision. Both Valve and Three Donkeys, even though in restrospect their decisions might be wrong, were focused on friendly player experience and not profit. The thing they dont like about cs;go for example is that the main profit is coming from vulnerable people. They dont mind having a game fully run by cosmetics, but they dont like having a game in which the payment is coming from a 1% of players spending thousands of dollars, they prefer having a reasonable amound of people spending an amount of money proportionally to their playtime. People usually dont mind paying an upfront cost for a game (e. g. PUBG), so its not a big deal compared to on-going payments. Having said that, the #1 complaint is the revenue, so something has to change here. They wouldnt mind creating the game for the 5% of players who dont mind paying a reasonable price for a quality game, but the negative responce from the 95% would make such game harder to reach the target audience. In MTG a ticket would be like buying a pack with a discount, but in hindsight that is not the case with Artifact. They werent directly involved with the leveling update, but they feel like the cap on the amount on getting cards for free has to be there, otherwise its basically skinnerware. Speaking of which, buying tickets (packs with discount) is different since you do get them at discount, but you dont get tricked into feeling like you get them for free, you still pay for them. Instead of nerfs they would like the community to solve the problems instead, the stronger cards would spawn interesting decks and there were interesting ways to deal with them. Even before the nerf the meta game was shifting away from those strong cards. The change of the cards has received a lot of goodwill from players though, so it might have been worth it in the end. The perception that the nerfs werent initially supposed to happen to preserve the card cost is not 100% true, it was also about investment of players into strategies. Generally changing the game often is better for hardcore players or current players (short-term), as opposed to old players or casuals. Making changes to the core set is not a good sign since there will always be strong and weak cards. Usually further expansions balance the meta. Compared to Spynet (another relatively unsuccessfull card game), with Spynet it was hard to simply make the game noticed by players. Artifact had attention, but the negative response made the game hard to be noticed by the 5% target audience. They trust Valve to fix the game, and Valve has a lot of material to work with (solid design, tournament system etc.) In conclusion to that, the main two complaints are too much rng (but there is a lot of skill) and high price (but its cheaper to buy a set in other games or you can get single cards from the market). Having a beta for a card game is much harder as opposed to a FPS game for example. Valve could have invited more common folk to the beta for the sake of allowing them to understand the game better. They dont know anything regarding the next update time, they would expect it to be not too soon, since Valve just made the announcement. The game was meant to be more like a paper game, with playing with friends being the main focus as opposed to playing ladder. They should have done some things to make the social structure "spring up". In MTG some part of the money goes to the retail store, and they want to organize social systems since they make money off it. There is nothing like that in Artifact. They feel like the changing the RNG might make the game worse, since the years of playtesting made the RNG quite balanced. P. S. I have omitted some things to keep this relatively short (and might have misunderstood some other things). Make sure to check out the original post to listen to the podcast itself if youre interested. submitted by /u/iamnotnickatall [link] [comments]

The Long Haul Podcast with Garfield and Skaff: Too Long; Didn't Listen Posted: 22 Apr 2019 05:21 AM PDT TL;DL: Both Garfield and Skaff think the core game mechanics and game design are solid. They explain it's more like a Real Time Strategy game then a trading card game because the quantity of decisions made in such a short time. People who play Artifact a lot will feel the oomph that it provides, as opposed to a lot of games that are focused on fitting everything on a small screen. Artifact is difficult to spectate if you haven't played it before, but like basketball or cricket if you know the rules Valve did a really good job making a complicated board state easily view-able. Garfield and Skaff were able to look at ELO ratings of players within the first couple of weeks and saw more then 1000 point spread between players. Artifact has RNG, but the RNG is not what decides the game. Many people have mistakenly assumed they lost because the RNG, but it was mistakes they made. We need replays so salty redditors can post their RNG losses and good players can tell them where they made their mistakes. They were surprised at how much they needed to work on explaining the skill in the game. The economics of the game was agreed on by all parties, they thought it was a great opportunity with the steam market. Valve maintained a really player oriented focus. They don't think F2P is important, because before fortnite there was PUBG. A one time fee is much less of a deal breaker then ongoing payments. There were a lot of people who bought the game only to give it a low review then refund it. They don't want to give away too many cards, because it will make all cards worthless. They think prize play rewards are too low, and even if you only win one or zero games there still should be a small reward. You cannot compare autochess and artifact because autochess isn't a trading card game. Changing balance on cards is something that is extremely friendly to people who play a lot but aren't necessarily at the top level. It is unknown how long the long haul will last. What follows is my notes from listening. Most of these are word for word quotes, but not everything was directly transcribed. They are in order of the podcast. I tried to keep any of my opinion out of this, it should be just the most relevant points made. Garfield: I play games as much as I can. When I play my own games, I find all I can do is redesign them while I play them. Skaff: The games I play have changed because now I have to play with my kids Garfield: I've been playing autochess on Dota, I think that one has a lot of interesting stuff going on. Garfield: I define success by finding more then just a dedicated audience. If it finds a reasonably large community of people, I consider it a success. Skaff: There is success for the game design but not for the game. G: The birth of the artifact project was from the digital trading card game. I had been a long time fan of mobas. G: Online gaming has been so focused at fitting everything onto a small screen. If they don't see it immediately, people who play a lot feel more oomph in Artifact. S: You'll be playing on artifact, but you don't you want the game to end. Concede is a feature that can end games before you get the resolution and you might dislike it because you want the resolution. G: It's not my nature to make a game with that many decisions in such a short time. While people complained this isn't HS, there's too many things going on. I've been thinking about it as a Real Time Strategy game. S: I watch more games then I play. Artifact is difficult to spectate. You would like to have a view as a spectator where you can move around the board. Football or basketball are considerably more complex then artifact. If you go to watch cricket you won't be able to understand if you don't know much about the game. You'll get a deeper spectating experience if you know the game before. G: It was great how much valve tried to make a complicated board state easily viewable quickly. I think the game state is very understandable if you know the game. S: The UI work design is just incredible. S: We had close to unlimited power at Wizards, I didn't have anywhere near that at valve. S: We had designs for a pro circuit, but that was before launch. S: Richard differentiates between how much RNG is in there and how much RNG it feels like is in there. When you look the ELO rating spread in artifact, its astounding. Even after the first couple weeks it was a 1000 point spread or more. It's more skill testing then Magic. On a provable level we can see it has less RNG then any other card game. We need replays to show people that there is less RNG. S: A lot of people for a long time thought of poker as just RNG. Now people understand it has a lot of skill. G: Part of the problem people confuse RNG with skill. There is a lot of RNG in artifact, but there is even more skill. You can measure the skill by looking at how often the skillful people win, which is very very often. G: The game is different enough from what is out there that people have trouble internalizing where the luck and skill is. If there was broader play of Artifact these people would quit the game whining and later on there would be a community of people vouching for the fact that they lost because they actually weren't playing skillfully. Players might come back if they heard this. S: I watched lower level twitch streamers making a lot of mistakes and then blamed it on RNG. I was surprised how much more we needed to explain how much skill is in the game. S: It's not true that increasing the RNG decreases the skill in the game. It gives the more skilled players an edge over the long run. G: You get a lot more skill testing which is made possible by a good application of RNG. G: You get a monolithic group think of the metagame in games now. G: I think Artifact is one of the most solid design in trading card games that I have contributed. It's hard to beat magic for its place in history, but Artifact just has something really special going on. One of the things we were after was making it feel epic, and we were really happy with that. S: As a product it wasn't as successful as we would have liked but it's one of the most solidly designed. G: Artifact is sooo different then a game like magic. The feeling you get playing artifact is much closer to a real time strategy game then a card game. I often finish a game of Artifact and end up sweating, I rarely finish a game of magic sweating. S: It's probably closer to Gwent then it is Magic. G: The major hitch in the game was not due to game design. In this case there is a lot of stuff outside game design that made it not hit the audience. S: The game is the metagame in Magic. It's the tournament structure, social setting, and trading, etc. that makes magic really enjoyable. S: The economics: we all did it together. Valve was not demanding. They were open. We all thought it was a great opportunity to have a real card game in the digital model because of the steam market. G: Valve maintained a really player oriented focus. Working with them I can tell you they are always focused on the player. G: We thought there was a lot that the marketplace could offer. The thing I don't like to see is when the only people providing money are vulnerable to certain types of skinnerware abuse. We don't want the payment to come from 1% of the audience spending $10,000 each. As long as the cosmetic purchases are split over a large amount of people who are putting in reasonable time for what they're spending, the skin model can work. S: I don't think the free thing is very important. Before fortnite PUBG was pretty successful. It would be the fortnite of today if fortnite hadn't come out as free. I don't think the one time fee is as much a deal breaker as the ongoing payments. S: Something needs to change. The number on complaint by far for Artifact is the revenue model by far. G: If 95% of people are demanding a free game, I'm perfectly happy reaching the other 5%. 5% of people want to pay a reasonable price for a quality game. S: One thing that shocked me was the reviews, it would get a 1 star review and the complaint was entirely about the price. The best restaurants in the world would get 1 star reviews because of the price. This means at a glance Artifact's reviews are much worse because so many people said 'great game, 1 star because price. G: It's even worse then what you said. There were a lot of people who bought the game only to give it a low review then refunded it. S: The ticket system, obviously a lot of people are against that. The ticket system wasn't as value as say drafting in a local MTG tournament. It should be a discount on buying product. Richard wanted more prizes for lower win %. A pack if you only win one game, for example. S: If you give away too many cards, cards are worthless because people can grind infinite cards. S: Dota autochess is great. It's hard to compare the two because there are a lot of differences. It's not a trading card game, it's a little bit apples and oranges to compare them. G: In general, we like to let the play community figure their way around problems. There's a reason axe and cheating death were not game breaking cards. If every time people complain you change the game to meet their expectations, it becomes I tried something and it didn't work waaa, so the game developer goes in and tweaks some numbers and what they were trying works now. Personally, I don't think the main problem was the game design. S: Changing balance on cards is something that is extremely friendly to people who play a lot but aren't necessarily at the top level. No buffs/nerfs protects people who develop strategies. We were thinking of the game lasting 10, 20 years. S: Some of the things that were done, were grabbed from the next expansion. The purging effect on the item was one that was from the next expansion. G: It's known the sets were designed, but we don't know when they were even planning on releasing it. S: People are inclined to think a game is less balanced then Artifact was. It's about managing player expectations. S: We were brought in to design the game, so it makes sense for us to leave. G: There is an amount of heartbreak in how the game was received. It also felt like we got so much rating bombed that we couldn't reach the 5% that might have enjoyed it. G: There are two common complaints that are demonstratable not true. One is there is too much RNG, the other that it is too expensive. It is much cheaper then MTG or hearthstone, it is very modestly priced. RNG can be shown by the skill difference in players. S: Trading card games need new cards to keep them interesting. It is a much more challenging beta test then a first-person shooter. G: I think there are a lot of difficulties in the game because the revenue. S: In artifact, you don't need to play with the full card set. Draft has much better beta testing applications because you don't have to show the full card set necessarily. G: Valve is basically just excellent. I do not know how long the long haul is. G: It is almost guaranteed the update won't come before summer. S: Without a doubt the launch was a failure. G: A lot of the problems were the revenue model and ratings bombing. There weren't things that made people try to play every day. Some people feel like they get value out of climbing a ladder, some people find the value out of achievements. G: I would bet that if you start messing with the general structure of random spawning of creeps and random arrows you will make the game worse. ​ EDIT: "Nine has the sexiest voice of any artifact pod-caster" submitted by /u/aquin1313 [link] [comments]

The Long Haul: An Artifact Podcast // Interview with Richard Garfield and Skaff Elias Posted: 22 Apr 2019 02:24 AM PDT Episode 10 So much (or so little?) has happened since this game came out. We have developed a love/hate relationship with the game, the designers and the developers. The community had - and still has - a lot of questions regarding this game. How were decisions made regarding mechanics, revenue... and what does the future hold? We figured - why not give it a shot and ask those involved directly? ​ Follow and review us on all major podcast platforms! YouTube / iTunes / Spotify / Podbean / TuneIn / Stitcher ​ Join the cast! We record every Sunday at 4 PM CET. Join our Discord; ask questions, join the long haul! ​ Let us know what you think on Twitter too! @NineArmada @k3rrigor ​ Useful Links: Artibuff: Garfield is no longer at valve Reddit: Artifact Survey Reddit: Artifact Census Graphic Richard Garfield´s: A player´s manifesto submitted by /u/NineHDmg [link] [comments]

Community Tournament Update Posted: 22 Apr 2019 08:38 PM PDT Hi Guys, ALL LEFT TO CONFIRM IS TIMING, let me know a suitable time slot for next monday, 29th APR 2019. ​ If you remember me, a few days back I mentioned that I would be interested in hosting a community tournament. And I am back! If I host it next Monday, what would be a good timing for everybody? I am from Singapore, my timezone is GMT+8. Oh, don't worry if you can't get in to be one of the 8 Slot, I hope this can be recurring and more people can join. Reason I only put 8 participants is because I just want this to be quick and fun games for everybody, and more people can join if I can manage to do this weekly! ​ This community tournament will probably be hosted on discord, everybody ok with this? ​ Winner's Prize: $50 USD in Bountie Tokens Participants: 8 Participants Tournament Mode: Game Mode: Draft Single elimination, best of 1 till finals, best of 3 for finals Q&A Sections How Do I Sign Up For The Tournament? Tournament will be hosted on Bountie's tournament platform, sign up link can be found when tournament is created. What Is Bountie? Bountie wants to create a Gaming Ecosystem that revolves around the Gamers, Partners and Bountie. The Partners refer to Computer Hardware companies such as Razer, MSi, Dell's Alienware and also game developers like Bluehole Studio Inc (For PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds) & Valve Corporation (For Counterstrike & Dota 2). Hardware companies would be able to sell their products online and offiline via Bountie's platforms to Gamers. Bountie also operates sweepstakes and tournaments that allow Gamers to win products. Bountie will also work closely with partners to gather feedback on products or games, create in-house content around them and help them to publicise to our targeted group of Gamers. Bountie Token? Yes, Bountie Token(BNTE) is our own cryptocurrency. As of right now, we are still working on integrating into our tournament platform to be able to let users to store and keep right on their accounts. Right now, winners of tournaments will have to store BNTE on a wallet from www.myetherwallet.com Trading of BNTE among communities are allowed. BNTE can also be saved up, allowing users to accumulate for future cashouts, or to exchange for gaming gears and products that will be coming in our store as we grow and develop our platform. Once BNTE is listed, users can sell BNTE for cash. Do I need to pay for anything? Not at all! There's no background fees or registration fees. All you have to do is enjoy the experience. What can I use Bountie Tokens for as of now? Since Bountie is still in early development stages, Bountie Tokens can only be traded peer to peer. However, gamers can collect and accumulate Bountie Tokens and sell them once we list soon on a cryptocurrency exchange and cash out their tokens. submitted by /u/speedingdonutgames [link] [comments]

Update from GabeN on Richard Garfield Posted: 22 Apr 2019 09:36 AM PDT "We've had issues with Richard during Artifact's development. Some Valve people lobbied to bring him back for the first expansion, feeling that he deserved another chance. That was a mistake. Richard is an ass, and we won't be working with him again". submitted by /u/TryingMyHardestNot2 [link] [comments]

At Least Valve is Doing Better Than High-Rez Posted: 22 Apr 2019 07:00 PM PDT submitted by /u/AustinTP [link] [comments]

About 4 turns into the game I realized I needed to end faster Posted: 22 Apr 2019 06:56 PM PDT submitted by /u/Shadiez135 [link] [comments]

Free tournament starts in 3 hours Posted: 22 Apr 2019 06:02 AM PDT https://discord.gg/9QfmE69 join the discord for more information, free entrance, 25$ 1st, 10$ 2nd. constructed, 4 rounds of swiss into a 2/3 top 8. I have just been notified that if we can raise the attendance to 60 players we have another 25$ in store for first place. Let's do this together guys submitted by /u/oren88vkiddo [link] [comments]

The Long Haul Podcast gave me more hope than I ever imagined Posted: 22 Apr 2019 02:41 PM PDT When they went back on their words and implemented free packs on level up I got kinda scared for the vision, but luckily Garfield confirmed the obvious point: This game is not for casuals. This game is for people that care about playing this game because they like the deep mechanics and the control one has over the whole board and every interaction. Not for people who only play games that trick them into believing they aren't wasting their time with artificial progression. The progression in Artifact comes from having fun with your friends and learning the game. As it should be. If you need a ladder to be interested in a game maybe you should rather do and or play something that actually interests you? Inb4 but I have no job and live in the global south so $20 +$40 for a Tier 1 deck and half of all other decks is more than rent and I can't get my friends to try it they only ever try popular stuff. So guess what, maybe this game isn't for you and your friends? Maybe this game is finally a real TCG for actual Card Game players. I don't whine about how expensive Poker is per night either. submitted by /u/Smarag [link] [comments]

This Week on r/CustomArtifact Posted: 22 Apr 2019 09:03 AM PDT submitted by /u/JakeUbowski [link] [comments]

Raaiiinboow, but sadly i lost the last 2 games ;( Posted: 22 Apr 2019 09:02 AM PDT submitted by /u/UnbelievableToken [link] [comments]

Looking to invest on cards Posted: 22 Apr 2019 05:33 AM PDT Good day fellas, Well first things first, I have never played artifact, but I love card games. I've played quite a ton of yugioh/Magic/Pokemon back in the day, and the last card game I played was hearthstone, that i dropped last year because I was bored of it. I am also very interested on card investing, like buying a card expecting to increase its price because next expansion may need that card in the new metagame, and such. So with that in mind, I thought about investing now a little (to be more precise, I was thinking of using 20$ instead of buying the game, to buy cards) And you may ask, why now? It's a dead game, no one plays anymore yadda yadda. Well, it's easy, because it's a low risk/High reward investment. Axe now costs 2$ compared to the 20$ that cost on release, so i can invest on many cards with high potential to be valuable. Worst case scenario, I lose 20 bucks and maybe wait for its free release to use them. So, that being said, I searched a little about the game and found that heroes like Axe are highly valuable, and some spells like annihilation, but I don't know the actual meta of the game, so i was hoping to find some pointers to which cards are considered the core of the actual metagame. TLDR: Wanna buy cardz, wanna know whats OP :) submitted by /u/darthwii [link] [comments]

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