Death of a Game: Artifact

[Lyng]

There are some people who find it fun to be sparked with paddles. They are some people who can find fun in *anything*.

When people talk about 'what is fun' they are referring to what most people consider fun. Again, this isn't just a hypothetical - games design has been looking at this sort of stuff for *decades*. we *know* that certain things are much more likely to be perceived as enjoyable or fun by most people than others.

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But thats all about what sells the most. By that logic monopoly is the most fun and by the logic of the video best board game ever designed, simply because a ton of people find it fun? If we end up in a place where we criticize games for not appealing enough to the masses we will soon loose any kind of interesting development in game design. The reason we have a ton of fantastic and deep board games today is because there where designers who dared to challenge what was perceived as "fun" such as roll and move etc.

 

[i hate cheaters]

I never found Artifact's randomness to be an issue in limited short of a player getting like Axe Axe Drow. I had a consistently good winrate in the format. I believe in general Artifact's top players had really high winrates (not necessarily a good thing).

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i'm not really talking about winrate, but rather what kinds of things ended up influencing the result if both players are evenly matched

in games whose drafting i've enjoyed, there's more emphasis on the drafting part of it and building a good deck. artifact didn't have much card synergy or control over the draft, and a lot of the cards were just irrelevant compared to what heroes could do. the gold loot system was pretty snowbally as well

under time pressure, it was tough to just do the arithmetic to figure out how close to dead your tower in one of the lanes was (based on what could spawn and where it could point, all while keeping track of 3 board games going on). it's not like the faster players really needed the randomness to enjoy the game, so at the end of the day i'm not sure who it was for. maybe math PhDs

 

[ZeroX]

in games whose drafting i've enjoyed, there's more emphasis on the drafting part of it and building a good deck. artifact didn't have much card synergy or control over the draft, and a lot of the cards were just irrelevant compared to what heroes could do. the gold loot system was pretty snowbally as well

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In terms of digital card games, Artifact was well ahead of the pack. As far as lack of synergy goes, Hearthstone and Runeterra are far worse. Artifact's main problem is it was a shared pool among all players. A tournament mode where it was just shared between the pool would've been perfect. Like the deckbuilding is extremely involved, it's not just auto pick the best card. Three color and base hero were completely viable too, it was perfectly fine to draft for synergy rather than a specific color/hero.

under time pressure, it was tough to just do the arithmetic to figure out how close to dead your tower in one of the lanes was (based on what could spawn and where it could point, all while keeping track of 3 board games going on). it's not like the faster players really needed the randomness to enjoy the game, so at the end of the day i'm not sure who it was for. maybe math PhDs

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You're not wrong that you were required to make complex decisions on a tight timeframe. That was part of what made the game so appealing to me. You're basically never autopiloting, you're kept engaged at all times (which again was a complaint that the game was too intense lol).

 

[Luminish]

under time pressure, it was tough to just do the arithmetic to figure out how close to dead your tower in one of the lanes was (based on what could spawn and where it could point, all while keeping track of 3 board games going on). it's not like the faster players really needed the randomness to enjoy the game, so at the end of the day i'm not sure who it was for. maybe math PhDs

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That's how I felt about the RNG too. You can definitely outplay an opponent by going through the odds of all the random spawns and attack choices, but it's exhausting to do for very long, and not really that fun. Meanwhile, the types of players who don't really consider playing around RNG risk mitigation just get pissed off at the game every time it doesn't work for them and no one is happy.

 

[JahIthBer]

If they released this after Half Life Alyx or Left 4 Dead 3 etc, it might have been more successful, i really believe a big chunk of this games failure is because people were pissed Valve were trying to make another cash flow instead of an actual single player game that everyone has been asking for, it's almost insulting how greedy Valve is, they are a private company, there is zero need to go capitalism ho! to please shareholders who don't exist, that good will from Half Life 2 is wearing thin & they are slowy becoming EA tier.
I hope HL:A is a success & they make more single player games again, even if they are VR focused.

 

[Maledict]

But thats all about what sells the most. By that logic monopoly is the most fun and by the logic of the video best board game ever designed, simply because a ton of people find it fun? If we end up in a place where we criticize games for not appealing enough to the masses we will soon loose any kind of interesting development in game design. The reason we have a ton of fantastic and deep board games today is because there where designers who dared to challenge what was perceived as "fun" such as roll and move etc.

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No?

What sells the most isn't necessarily the most fun - there's hundreds of other factors that affect sales. And something doesn't have to be mass market to be fun - if your product is meant to be fun for a particular type of person then that can be a very healthy sustainable market even if it isn't fun.

The issue with artifact is that its version of randomness is not fun for a *lot* of people, and the people who do find it fun aren't enough to sustain the game it seems (along with all it's other issues).

Really not sure why this is such a challenging issue - people have been talking about this sort of stuff in CCGs (and board games) for literally decades. Its also BTW not the first time Garfield has made this mistake - his Star Wars CCG had dice rolling in it. Even though (like Artifact!) it wasn't that random, people *hated* the way the randomness played out in game and it was a major reason why the game failed.

 

[Lyng]

No?

What sells the most isn't necessarily the most fun - there's hundreds of other factors that affect sales. And something doesn't have to be mass market to be fun - if your product is meant to be fun for a particular type of person then that can be a very healthy sustainable market even if it isn't fun.

The issue with artifact is that its version of randomness is not fun for a *lot* of people, and the people who do find it fun aren't enough to sustain the game it seems (along with all it's other issues).

Really not sure why this is such a challenging issue - people have been talking about this sort of stuff in CCGs (and board games) for literally decades. Its also BTW not the first time Garfield has made this mistake - his Star Wars CCG had dice rolling in it. Even though (like Artifact!) it wasn't that random, people *hated* the way the randomness played out in game and it was a major reason why the game failed.

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Funny enough the most successfull Star Wars trading card game is Star Wars Destiny which has dice in it...so I guess he was on to something

 

[Evolution of Metal]

I dont understand this part of the video. The idea that the rng in Hearthstone or magic is objectively more "fun" is downright silly to me. Surely that is a highly subjective thing. The only objective comment to be made is the one Garfield makes.

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There is nothing "objective", it is merely an observation that people find Artifact RNG to be "bad and boring". Artifact's RNG problem has been a problem ever since the Beta, but Garfield doesn't like to get his opinion challenged, so it stayed unchanged.

There are plenty of comments and articles that were unhappy with Artifact's RNG. However, a much more convincing evidence is the almost 60k concurrent players on launch, majority of which abandoned the game instantly, while others trickled down over a couple of months. There was something bad and boring regarding Artifact's gameplay.

Card and Strategy games aren't popular, yet a good 2k amount of concurrent players is enough to keep most communities going as long as the game itself is fun.

 

[BLASTEROID]

At this point why would anyone put money into an Artifact 2.0 knowing the very large chance there'd never even be an Artifact 2.1?

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I guess you are arguing that they should have had some continuous updates to the game while concurrently having some other team work on Artifact 2.0? Tough to argue against that, it sure would be nice :)

But even as the video in the OP suggests, very important updates were coming to the game pretty quickly over the first few months, but it still basically died despite that. As someone who still has interest in Artifact, and even likes the game as is, I can't deny that I would have loved to see continuous improvements happen to the game as is... I just don't see that being realistic when it was tanking as fast as it was, despite all the post release updates.

I do hope we see some sort of No Man's Sky revival type of situation here... would be cool :)

 

[BLASTEROID]

...

Part of the reason it crashed was they abandoned updates just 2 months after the game was released. I still feel strongly that they could have maintained a concurrent player count in the thousands were they willing to accept that as a success.

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Perhaps you are right... It's tough to tell. As someone who was playing during that time, all the press on the game was already very negative at that point... many of the content creators and pro players who were planning on switching to Artifact full time had already started bailing, twitch numbers dwindling fast, etc... Meanwhile the main pain points people had with the game are pretty deep rooted I think.

As I mentioned earlier, I personally don't think it makes sense to make updates that flat out change gameplay, or the way the economy would work, for example... to me that smells more of a reboot.

You could be right, though... I really liked the game as is :). I'd be one of those that are still playing it today had regular updates come out.

 

[Maledict]

Funny enough the most successfull Star Wars trading card game is Star Wars Destiny which has dice in it...so I guess he was on to something

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Um, Decipher's original Star Wars TCG sold way more than both Wizards and the FFG one. It was the second biggest CCG around for a long time (even though it was a truly terrible game!).

 

[Lyng]

Um, Decipher's original Star Wars TCG sold way more than both Wizards and the FFG one. It was the second biggest CCG around for a long time (even though it was a truly terrible game!).

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Yeah true enough. Apparently garbage sells.

 

[Maledict]

Yeah true enough. Apparently garbage sells.

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Back then CCG design was far less understood. Most of the games around (even Magic!) had some really big issues and problems. People hadn't figured out that you can tell a story without mimicking the source one for one, amongst a hundred other things.

The one thing Decipher did have was the best image capture and card framing people in the business. Another thing Wizards didn't understood when they outbid Decipher for the star Wars license - it takes a lot more skill than they thought to capture a good image. A lot of the stills used in the Wizards star wars game were bloody awful.

 

[cakely]

Um, Decipher's original Star Wars TCG sold way more than both Wizards and the FFG one. It was the second biggest CCG around for a long time (even though it was a truly terrible game!).

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Amen to that.

I really enjoyed Wizard's Star Wars TCG, though. The way they handled heroes with stacked cards of different commonalities was brilliant. I still have some assembled decks set up but I haven't played in a long while. They're right next to my Netrunner decks.

Decipher, of course, made all the main characters rare and all the garbage common. Just like you would expect.

 

[Lyng]

Back then CCG design was far less understood. Most of the games around (even Magic!) had some really big issues and problems. People hadn't figured out that you can tell a story without mimicking the source one for one, amongst a hundred other things.

The one thing Decipher did have was the best image capture and card framing people in the business. Another thing Wizards didn't understood when they outbid Decipher for the star Wars license - it takes a lot more skill than they thought to capture a good image. A lot of the stills used in the Wizards star wars game were bloody awful.

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yeah even today Wotc continue to often make baffling decisions.