Artifact: The Valve trading card game

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moush: Aug 19, 2009; Rage Your Dream

It's pretty clear Valve only cares about games when they bring people to Steam.

# ? Mar 14, 2021 15:46

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# ? Jun 10, 2024 08:32

Pathos: Sep 8, 2000

Communist Thoughts posted:

Valve are super lucky nobody has VR so most normies are only going by the fawning press response for alyx.

That game basically made me lose all hope in valve making a good game again.
At least all the millienial jokes were competently written and the lighting is good.

As someone who hasn�t played it, why? I�ve seen the fawning coverage but nothing really substantive.

# ? Mar 14, 2021 16:13

Kild: Apr 24, 2010

People just say its a worse boneworks as its only real criticism.

# ? Mar 15, 2021 00:11

mp5: Jan 1, 2005; Stroke of luck!

Paul Zuvella posted:

LONG rear end POST. SIT TIGHT
here are my thoughts on Artifact in general and how we should proceed :-

The only way for a card game makes it to anywhere near the legendary popularity status of juggernauts like MtG, Pokemon, YGO, etc is by initial luck of the draw (LUL), having a strong IP to draw on for its theme, and having an inordinate stockpile of talent and wealth to fund a LONG HAUL PROCESS of dialogue between the players and creators. How do you get your players to care about a bunch of images with numbers and text on them... The creators iteratively make mistakes and learn about the psychology of players, while the players continually try to break the game and push the designed mechanics to it's limits. One by one, each little kink in the armor is evened out and you get a highly refined and vibrant rule set. (i know its a very droll and naive way of looking at the design process, but if you want to learn more about it, I'd highly recommend Mark Rosewater's articles and podcast)

Back in 2017 - 2018, our optimism for Artifact Classic (AC) stemmed from the fact that it was being co-developed at Valve alongside 3Donkeys, a team that's easily one of the most experienced in both video games and in card games respectively, and also all the factors seemed to align to make AC a long running powerhouse. We all in the DCG community hoped and prayed that this team would carefully look at other popular DCGs such as hearthstone, Duelyst, Gwent, shadowverse, etc, learn from their mistakes and make a game that utilizes the computer as a ground for a fun, mechanically vibrant and competitive card gaming experience. Another reason to be excited was that Valve had based their game in the dota universe, one where in both theme and mechanics design, the sky was the limit, and competitive balance was "crown jewel"

Was AC mechanically rich and competitive? Absolutely! No doubt. (I'd recommend reading through this MtG HoF Pro's Review and his Post-Mortem). It's honestly quite fun to read through it again after last week. It took me a long time to understand what the reviewer saw in the game (around the 90 to 100 hour mark is when AC started to make sense to me, similar to how dota2 started to make sense after 2000hrs), and as of this writing, I generally agree and align with his take in regards to game play. Monetization style is one of pure greed and I will maintain that position to my grave, especially when dota2 continues to champion the free gameplay model.

But we could not deny there were "deep rooted issues" in the game's design and economy as Valve themselves so eloquently put it (before they jumped ship to underlords and made the worst game in that genre too)..

Every single decision taken in regards to AC's presentation to the public was antithetical to Valve's usual approach. They were doing all of this publicity when the game itself was totally unfit for consumption. It was difficult to see the path they could take to redeem themselves.

When the new team of developers began to reach out to the community and started the process once again, it was only logical to react with critical and apprehensive optimism, and that is exactly my position towards Artifact Foundry (AF) even now. But with each blog post that was put out before the beta, it was clear that the new team had learned from mistakes of the past and had a solid plan in store to revive this game (before they initiated an excruciatingly slow beta invite process that killed off majority of ppl's interest towards the needed iterative process).

In spite of this plodding and labored rate of adding new players, Valve were making many substantial changes to the formula which would, IMO, make AF more palatable to the general gaming public. It is debatable whether the changes made are good or not, but we were definitely moving somewhere more concrete, towards a future where AF could garner a small but sturdy foundation to build off of.

So, naturally the decision to COMPLETELY ABANDON development of Artifact came as a shock to all of us in the community who were looking forward to inviting friends and family into the beta. (It would have been understandable if they said they're taking a hiatus due to reduced productivity, but saying THE END effectively kills off any possibility of creating new sustained interest in the future...)

Coming to the current situation, there are a couple of possibilities as to what is going on at Valve (these are purely speculative, so please don't believe one over the other):
The game is DEADER THAN DEAD. ITS OVER! THE END! : This post is an attempt to change that if that is indeed the case. If we put up a petition on change dot org or whatever it should be done after the anime release and more ppl are interested in the dota IP.

Valve really means it when they say the games were suffering from poor player numbers and they weren't getting enough data to make big decisions.. In that case, what they've done now is actually VERY SMART. Think about it. What were the main things that happened last week? AC and AF went free, AC got cosmetic cards with the whole set being free! (THEY'RE TESTING THE ECONOMY BOYS). Now, both games have a decent number of players and a small community may build up, which will amplify by at least 33.32% (repeating of-course) after the anime. BIG BRAIN PLAYS VOLVO WELL PLAYED! This also means they get more time to hash out other problems, focus on other projects since the company productivity is very low., etc etc. They will most likely resume Artifact development after a while!!

2.1. (point 2 episode 1). During this interim, they're collecting a ton of data points in regards to which version people like more, how they're interacting with the games, etc. If you read the Post-Mortem I linked above, you'll see the author says something really important, "The best way to learn and enjoy artifact is to have a real person teach you, then play with someone you know!" Now that the game is open, WE THE COMMUNITY CAN DO THAT FOR PEOPLE WHO WANT TO PLAY BUT LACK THE BRAIN CELLS! The tutorial by valve can only do so much.. WHY? See this video by siractionslacks about his dota2 tutorial project, which goes over some of the issues with tutorializing for games.

2.2. (point 2 episode 2). If this is the case, we need all hands on deck.. if you have the time and good internet, stream the game (whichever version you like), make some instructional content and post them here, do constructive community poo poo.

Assuming we're dealing with situation no. 1 here,
Before we put out the formal petition for Valve to restart development, we as a community need to convince the public that the digital card game genre as a whole benefits greatly from having a remade Artifact as a part of the family. (This is where I would like your input). I would love for anyone to help me write up a comprehensive list of reasons why Artifact deserves to have a place at the table with other popular CGs of the day. It would be unfair of me to simply list my subjective reasons in the petition, so if you could please present your own views, it would be helpful!

Next, assuming we have the larger gaming public on our side, we have to hope that individuals actually sign the formal petition when its uploaded.

Then we need to hope that our chorus reaches the ears of Valve as an organization, not just the Artifact Team. The likelihood of this working are remote, considering how they treated the Half Life franchise all these years.

We still have a long and challenging road ahead of us.. I for one am not ready to give up!! even after the last two years.

pls.. i cant go back to playing LoR skinner boxes... anything but THAT!!!

We are alone.

We don't have the good will of popular gaming influencers,

we barely even have a consensus within the community on where artifact should go,

but one thing i'm sure we can all agree on is that ARTIFACT MUST LIVE before it can become anything noteworthy..

If we're dealing with situation 2,
Chill out! Play the game, make content, sit tight and wait for development to resume @ValveTime. LONGHAUL etc etc.

3D on keys? Three Donkeys? Threedon keys?

# ? Mar 15, 2021 03:44

TOOT BOOT: May 25, 2010

He's dead, Jim

# ? Mar 15, 2021 03:48

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Firebert posted:

The Final Fantasy brand is so much bigger than Anthem or Warcraft 3 knock-off characters, FFXIV had to be fixed or it had the potential to bring down the entire franchise (especially with how many L's in a row Square had taken at the time, starting with FFXIII and the development hell XV was in).

I'm not sure one of their fastest and best-selling titles counts as an L.

# ? Mar 15, 2021 03:55

The REAL Goobusters: Apr 25, 2008

Kchama posted:

I'm not sure one of their fastest and best-selling titles counts as an L.

Definitely an L for the culture

# ? Mar 15, 2021 04:08

Communist Thoughts: Jan 7, 2008; Our war against free speech cannot end until we silence this bronze beast!

Pathos posted:

As someone who hasn’t played it, why? I’ve seen the fawning coverage but nothing really substantive.

The part that really disappointed me as a valve game is there's no environmental storytelling at all really. Which is doubly weird in a VR game.
All the assets with writing on them in the levels are in Cyrillic or are just quick assets you aren't really meant to look closely at. In a VR game.

So like the equivalent of the HL2 lab, which had basically the backstory of the game printed around the walls in various newspaper cuttings etc, in alyx the lab just has dozens of monitors displaying static and the name of the scientist written in big letters on the wall. That's it. There apparently was no writer working alongside the art team.

Beyond that it's just a very unambitious game, it's basically about shuffling around in the dark shooting the godawful pistol from HL2 (very faithfully recreated) at harmless zombies. Or throwing grenades and throwing is especially bad in VR since nothing has weight.

I just found it had absolutely no old valve spirit, people bring up Boneworks cause that game, despite being kinda a janky pos, does have the old valve spirit. There's lots of envelope pushing and lots of meta narrative and wall lore. Every written asset I found in Boneworks either had a lore reveal or a joke.

# ? Mar 15, 2021 11:05

Groovelord Neato: Dec 6, 2014

Considering how stupid long it took them to port over all the heroes to Dota 2 I figured they would've fixed the company structure but I guess not.

# ? Mar 15, 2021 14:20

CharlieFoxtrot: Mar 27, 2007; organize digital employees

Wait didn't they poach campo santo specifically to work in the VR game?

Getting a team known for their narrative and environmental storytelling experience and then not having them do any of that...?

# ? Mar 15, 2021 18:18

Groovelord Neato: Dec 6, 2014

They picked up a bunch of people and did nothing with them. There was some pinball lady I think.

# ? Mar 15, 2021 19:16

The REAL Goobusters: Apr 25, 2008

Campo Santo worked on Half life Alyx

# ? Mar 15, 2021 19:18

Stan Taylor: Oct 13, 2013; Touched Fuzzy, Got Dizzy

Groovelord Neato posted:

They picked up a bunch of people and did nothing with them. There was some pinball lady I think.

Is there a Mr. Pinball Lady??

# ? Mar 15, 2021 19:20

CharlieFoxtrot: Mar 27, 2007; organize digital employees

In the Valley of Gods died for Half Life Alyx

At least we can safely assume that anyone working on Artifact probably wouldn't have made anything better instead?

# ? Mar 15, 2021 19:40

Communist Thoughts: Jan 7, 2008; Our war against free speech cannot end until we silence this bronze beast!

Valve imprisoned Erik, chet and Jay for like 15 years and paid them not to write any comedy

# ? Mar 16, 2021 09:49

ErrEff: Feb 13, 2012

CharlieFoxtrot posted:

In the Valley of Gods died for Half Life Alyx

At least we can safely assume that anyone working on Artifact probably wouldn't have made anything better instead?

Still super weird how a bunch of the Idle Thumbs guys now work at Valve.

# ? Mar 16, 2021 09:54

stev: Jan 22, 2013; Please be excited.

ErrEff posted:

Still super weird how a bunch of the Idle Thumbs guys now work at Valve.

I fully blame Valve for killing Idle Thumbs. :negative:

# ? Mar 16, 2021 09:59

Acerbatus: Jun 26, 2020; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

stev posted:

I fully blame Valve for killing Idle Thumbs.

I sorta figured that'd be an obvious fit.

:haw:

# ? Mar 16, 2021 10:04

Communist Thoughts: Jan 7, 2008; Our war against free speech cannot end until we silence this bronze beast!

Valves thing seems to be hiring talented people and paying them not to make anything

# ? Mar 16, 2021 10:32

The Moon Monster: Dec 30, 2005