Artifact - I don't really "get" Artifact 2.0 or why this is the direction Valve has taken. |  |
- I don't really "get" Artifact 2.0 or why this is the direction Valve has taken.
- Noob question - creep spawns in A2
- Want to play draft and constructed with more cards. Feels like a grind to unlock cards.
- Shop, whats most effective
- So my first attempt at an opinion
| I don't really "get" Artifact 2.0 or why this is the direction Valve has taken. Posted: 08 Sep 2020 07:17 AM PDT Well, now that everyone has beta access, there's a lot more discussion to be had. Before this past Thursday, a lot of people on here were arguing over whether or not the game looked good, but most people didn't really have an idea of how it felt to play. Now, clearly, we're seeing a lot of negativity on here. I think it's justified. Regardless of whether or not you liked A1, I see a lot of people share one sentiment: it had problems that needed to be fixed. It's pretty clear Valve has instead decided to redesign the game instead of fixing its problems. I'm here after starting a match queue and then audibly pouting before it even started because I realized I just don't want to play this new game anymore. I really thought that letting everyone in and introducing a constructed queue would make me feel differently, but it did not. I have ~370 hours in A1, absolutely adore that game, and I get excited to talk at length about what I think is right and wrong with the it, but A2 just makes me want to drop it all. (To give a quick cap of my A2 problems: The game feels slow, the plays are uninteresting, the rules are arbitrary, the board state is a book to read, we have to deal with multiple bandaids to fix design decisions that were implemented to fix design decisions, my actions feel like attrition, and every turn I feel like I'm just trying to minimize loss. Let's not even discuss the new item shop.) So I'm kind of upset. I just really don't understand why we are dealing with this, nor why Valve has chosen this direction for the game. They promised they were in this for the long haul from the beginning, which I guess they have stayed true to, but it doesn't feel like it. They totally abandoned the game for more than a year and came back to throw it away and start over. That doesn't make sense! Who are they doing this for? Who are they designing this game for? Are they trying to get a new audience? A2 suffers from all the same problems to the public casual. It's obtuse, it's hard to follow, it looks far messier than A1 ever did, it's unintuitive as heck, new players are basically guessing at what to do... Are they trying to make A1 fans happy? Well, they aren't... Personally, I'm more unhappy now with the state of the game than I was before A2 was announced. Back then I was naive enough to think A1 would be revived. When rumors started that a type of A2 would happen, I was excited that we would get a faster, friendlier game that would at least attract interest. Sure, that's not the game I would ask for, but at least I could kill stuff with dota cards and have a good time with my friends. We're not getting that, either. I know it's pessimistic, but it kind of feels like they're going to let this game out to die and it won't get touched for months at a time, and then they'll throw us a bone with a dozen new cards 8 months down the road with a blog post that says their employees are too busy with other projects to work on Artifact. What's truly frustrating, and the reason I'm posting this at all, is that it doesn't feel like the situation has improved even slightly from the beginning of the year. Artifact 2.0 just marks the start of a new long haul. The game will release and we will once again be waiting for them to breath some new life into the game so that the player-base doesn't rapidly die. If it doesn't change dramatically from what it is right now, there is no way it's going to capture an audience. And it has already changed too much to bring back the A1 audience. Let's not forget that Valve, as a company, just does not work in a way that makes sense for a card game service. It feels like A1 was abandoned and we're now back at zero. Valve's actions over the past couple years are not in the running to convince me that anything different will happen this time, so them choosing to go backwards is boggling. If you like the game that A2 currently is, that makes me sincerely happy. I just don't get it. And it feels really bad. I feel kind of baited. I really believe that whatever team decided this would be for the best had good intentions, but jeeze I don't understand them at all. [link] [comments]  |
| Noob question - creep spawns in A2 Posted: 08 Sep 2020 06:21 PM PDT Can someone please explain what the deal with creep spawns is in A2? From what I can gather based on 3 games played so far:
What's the point? I can't put anything particularly useful in that slot against the opponent's creep because it will be blocked every round by the creep, while their creep chips down whatever I have placed in that slot by 1hp every round. Am I dumb and have I missed something obvious? [link] [comments]  |
| Want to play draft and constructed with more cards. Feels like a grind to unlock cards. Posted: 08 Sep 2020 09:55 PM PDT Anyone feels the same? I know there was a way to play with all the cards. Was that removed? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 08 Sep 2020 03:26 PM PDT Hey all, What is everyones thoughts on the different shop elements. I tend to spam upgrade shop until level 3 / 4 and then load up on items after that. I have found its not usually worth the money to buy a +2 attack at the start, when you can get something way more powerful a few rounds later for the same price. Anyway it would be great to get other peoples opinions! [link] [comments]  |
| So my first attempt at an opinion Posted: 08 Sep 2020 04:33 PM PDT I've now played 20 hours. Reasoning about game design is one of my favorites things to do, so I couldn't really judge the game in full without having the feeling I grasp what is going on. I would say 2.0 does some things better than 1.0, but has lost a lot of the charm in the progress too. To my surprise it doesn't feel as directionless as I initially felt when reading the first blogposts(which really gave off "lol so we strip this and then see what happens"-vibes for me). I'm unsure whether this game can successfully be salvaged by Valve too, not because it isn't possible but because I don't get the impression they mean to change a lot more. Not speaking as some kind of oracle here that knows what is best, but rather rationally from previous experiences with card games - Artifact in particular. I also kind of wish they'd engage in discussion a bit more like they used to several months ago, but sadly that mentality seems to have fallen by the wayside. Anyway. As I perceived it the game changed the following aspects of 1.0 most drastically(in arbitrary order):
First and foremost I think the deployment system is a direct upgrade from what it used to be. It was one of the things I myself never understood from 1.0. It introduced very weird temporary mechanics such as the direction cards and added RNG where it really wasn't necessary to keep the game dynamic. On top of that it could sometimes end up with having your entire board of heroes sweeped simply due to a bad flop, which just felt really, really bad. Other than the deployment we see a really obvious trend in the other changes. Artifact "1.0" promised "infinite strategies". Nothing was confined. The game could get as crazy as you wanted it to given the right circumstances. This brings along with it obvious hurdles from a development and design point of view. Balancing infinite cards or strategies is hard and almost fully dependent on the meta. On top of that it could easily move into the territory of rock paper scissors - where some decks would just go apeshit simply for the opponent has no means of stopping them. Especially in 1.0 this was best shown through the color blue - but also green with wide boards. The upside to this was the thrill of trying to achieve these insane strategies. 1.0 did this especially well, and always felt extremely satisfying to me when I managed to set up my big plays. And there were so many of them too, ranging from wide buffed boards, to creating an ultra wide board out of nowhere, to a Storm spirit 1 hitting the tower after a ridiculous chain combo or simply going on a full rampage with Zeus. 2.0 recognized the issues that came with the promise of "infinite combos" and decided they probably outweighed the upsides. Pretty much everything from mana to lane width to a lot of cards got confined. I personally am not entirely convinced of the consequences of this so far, but I think this might have been a very big mistake. It takes a lot of the excitement out of the game, and instead of making the game curve from "tactical micro plays" to set up a "big infinite combo" it simply stays at the micro plays. There's just not an awful lot to strive for right now. I think the item shop is an upgrade, but definitely not as obviously as the deployment phase. Again this was one of the cases I initially didn't really see why Artifact went for this approach, but I later started to appreciate it. The current iteration basically takes some of the strategy out of building a deck with items, which could curve across the categories, for more consistency in game. I think the original shop might've been a little to RNG dependent for decks that didn't rely on amassing gold. I've not a particularly strong opinion on this change either way. As for the new hero card design I'm not convinced at all. I actually don't like moving emphasis to hero abilities. I know this was a very widespread complaint among the community - especially after Runeterra came along with its very flashy champion cards. I personally wasn't particularly fond of that camp's opinion as it doesn't really rhyme with what I consider good design. My notion of "elegant" design is achieving complexity through a minimal, properly confined ruleset(this obviously doesn't entail the whole game's design - merely the ruleset. Making it fun is definitely as important). I really liked the concept of heroes being pretty simple creep cards with a gimmick. It was properly contained, allowed for a little bit more creative space in designing hero cards and I personally really really like the idea of associated signature cards. It made brewing decks very fun for me due to the synergies that some heroes would have with one another. 2.0 throws a lot of this overboard to my disappointment. The heroes have become much, much flashier. If I'm not wrong they were made even flashier as the development progressed. The result is enormous walls of text on each hero card. This goes directly above my previously mentioned idea of an "elegant" ruleset. It basically expands the complexity "horizontally" by using informal language rather than some understandable ruleset. I really, really dislike this design choice. It is easily the change I've got the strongest feelings about in 2.0. I also genuinely don't think this is what 1.0 lacked - it already had the big flashy plays going for it, all of which vastly varying per color. Right now it achieves "some" of the fireworks while directly sacrificing clarity for it. I don't think that's a good trade-off. The new drawing mechanics are a composite approach to tackling the initiative driven approach in 1.0. As most of the 1.0 will know 1.0 was about passing at the right time, in order to prevent the opponent from leveraging the resources in the next lane by eg silencing/killing their heroes. Fewer draws overall obviously tackles this issue to some degree, by introducing the risk of moving into topdeck territory(making hand size a more impactful resources). The problem is that this was introduced in a composite manner; the game already took the mana from individual towers. The game addresses the issue of going into topdeck territory by by simply making the overall game last much shorter. Again the game feels very "flat" and unexciting due to it being so obvious in the way games pan out. On top of that Valve introduced an "overdraw" mechanic, presumably to limit the consistency of decks really good at drawing cards like 1.0 mono blue. Again they did this compositely, hitting the theme twice; they already nerfed "infinite" strategies wherever they could. Take for example ramp with "refill mana" - both all mana refilling effects as well as ramping options have been confined. The result is, once again, a "flattened" experienced. Things don't get crazy like they did in 1.0. That being said, I actually do not think the new mana system is bad. I really don't think it's the source of my mixed feelings towards 2.0 at least. It takes away a lot of the initiative play which really confined the way Artifact was played, especially on a more competitive level. So in summa: very long post, but I figured it'd be because I love Artifact. I think 2.0 tackles some of the issues with 1.0, but also probably managed to lose more of the original's game's charm I'm willing to admit at this time. [link] [comments]  |
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