"Everything costs money": Valve meets Artifact players who put the game economy afloat

The public beta for Artifact – The digital card game inspired by Dota de Valve – started earlier this week and suffice to say that the beginning is difficult. As soon as the NDA has lifted the private beta, the subreddit artifact has been flooded with messages from players who are unhappy with the price it simply costs to play.

Unlike card games like Hearthstone and Duelyst, Artifact is not free and has an initial cost of $ 20. This gives you a starter pack with 10 boosters each containing 12 cards, five "event tickets" used to play in draft mode and two completed decks. However, that did not stop the game from integrating what many players have called free play strategies, nickel and pennies.

In a Reddit article now deleted, Ac3Zer0 criticized the fact that you can not win additional cards without spending real money. (User Sicarius6292 shared a helpful introduction to This thread, which is still in place.) The artifact has no equivalent to Hearthstone's gold. You can not get more cards by buying more than $ 2 packs, by purchasing specific cards via the Steam Marketplace (where players will definitely play in the future, and where Valve takes a share of each transaction). ), or performing well in draft mode that cost event tickets. And no, event tickets can not be obtained for free either; Five ticket packages can be purchased for $ 5. So no matter how much you play, you will have to spend more money if you want to expand your collection.

These costs are compounded by the problems highlighted in this thread now deleted from Viikable. See, Artifact also lacks an equivalent of Hearthstone's craft system, which allows players to break unwanted cards into a dust used to make new cards. Of course, you can sell copies in the Steam market, but only if users want it. However, basic hero cards included in the Artifact starter pack may also appear in normal card packs. Everyone gets these heroes automatically and you can only use one copy of a given hero in a deck. These heroes therefore have no value. In other words, card packs sometimes bring you redundant and worthless hero cards that you can not get rid of.

Several professional players from Hearthstone have already tried Artifact, and many of them have been neutralized by its costs. Streamer Twitch Savjz describes the paywall as a "huge fucking mistake" in a tweet, while Twitch streamer and YouTuber Disguised Toast m said He was upset by the initial price of Artifact associated with the recurring cost of buying tickets and packs. In the video above, the Twitch and YouTuber streamer Kripparrien said he still lacked many key cards even after spending $ 300 in card packs (although he was able to build several viable decks with his extended collection).

In response to this wave of disappointment, Valve has released A declaration Yesterday, we discussed changes to Artifact's modes and business model. To make draft mode more accessible, Valve adds a free version that does not cost event tickets (but does not earn rewards). This "occasional ghost project" is already available to beta players. A multiplayer version of the ghost draft, which players can use to play a rough draft with friends, has also been added.

Valve also adds "a system that can recycle superfluous cards into event cards". This recycling system will arrive before or shortly after the release of Artifact on Wednesday, November 28th. However, Valve did not specify the number of heroes it will take to create a ticket for an event. It is therefore difficult to know to what extent this system will improve the ticket winning loop. and get packs. At the very least, recycling will not be enough to ensure that average players can consistently earn cards without spending money. Kripparrian said this on Twitter:

So, the developers of artifacts have already responded. I still hope to see the developer's first answers to the community's problems, but I'm always surprised we'd get one. Good changes, but those who expected the game to become much cheaper will always be disappointed. Pic.twitter.com/RyDsOvHshiNovember 18, 2018

The ghost draft makes Artifact more fun to play and the recycle feature will solve the problem of unused cards, but I'm afraid these changes are not enough to appease players from games like Hearthstone or The Elder Scrolls: Legends. Even with the high cost of Hearthstone, it is still a lot cheaper than a game like Magic: The Gathering, and Artifact's business model is certainly closer to the latter. The root of the problem seems to be that many players want to win cards simply by playing, and without the need to do so exceptionally well in draft mode. Unless Valve adds occasional gifts or additional accessible tournament rewards, I think some people will still be disappointed. In the long run, this could result in the health of the Artifact market – but given Steam's track record for player-managed markets, I do not have much hope for that either . That said, it's still relatively early for Artifact, and Valve said it can make more changes based on the comments of the players. This is certainly not missing.

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