I'm not saying the game sucks, I'm saying his post seems like a weirdly worded way of saying it sucks as a means to explain away the retention issues.
The game doesn't suck, but it's absolutely had its marketing mismanaged. At its core, Artifact is complicated, difficult, and fairly different from other games on the market. Valve probably needed to be advertising it as "the card game for really hardcore card gamers who think doing math is fun!" or something like that to help get across its nature to potential buyers. Instead, I've always felt like they positioned it as another Hearthstone type of game, but it exists on the other end of the spectrum from Hearthstone's simplicity. Between that and advertising heavily to DotA 2 players (at least based on what people are saying in this thread), it sure seems like they've been targeting their marketing at people who would dislike it for the very things that make it enjoyable to someone like me. People who just want to dip their toes into card games, or who just want to windmill slam their big exciting cards aren't exactly primed to appreciate what Artifact is bringing to the table. (And to clarify, I'm not trying to say that other card games are shallow. Artifact is just really punishing to players who aren't putting in a lot of effort.)
Maybe there really isn't a big enough market of people who want their card games to be stressful and taxing, but it sure feels like Valve didn't really target that market in the first place. That would explain the rapid drop off.
That hasn't always been misinformation though. The free draft got added in a patch. For a long time it was correct. Can't expect everyone who is turned off by the game design to keep up to date on the patches that get added after much community outcry.
You're half right. Free drafting was available from day 1. It wasn't patched in. However, it wasn't going to be a thing until shortly before the game launched, when player outcry got Valve to change their minds about it.
I knew there was Phantom Draft and Keeper Draft but there's also a hidden third draft mode?? you can see why this is confusing.
It was never hidden. You have Casual Phantom Draft (no entry fee), Prize Phantom Draft (entry fee), and Keeper Draft (entry fee + you keep cards). I think they changed the names on the category tabs to make things a bit more clear in game, but it was always a case where you had the Standard tab containing non-entry fee events and the Prize tab containing the events with entry fees.
