Lets talk about Artifact and why it failed (none meme addition)

Greetings everyone I think most of you are aware how Artifact has become a meme at this point but many of us were at least interested in the game before and a little after its release. I can say I have played card games quite a bit for over 15 years of life; around half of my life. This was maybe the first card game that was heavily hyped that I knew was going to fail within 3 days of playing the game. After playing all the modes and paying close attention to card design I quickly realized that this game was going to be a disaster and I should sell my cards.

Within the first 3 days I sold most of my expensive cards I got from my packs and made my money back and more. I happened to open Axe and a few others. People were thinking it was going to be the new biggest thing and playing the market. With my card game experience I knew it was going to fail flat on the floor. Many people think it failed because Valve got greedy and charged 20 dollars and having no way to earn more packs in game unless you pay real money. But this is far from the truth and had nothing to do with why it failed.

1. People complain about RNG in Hearthstone but Artifact has the most RNG than any card game I have ever experienced. The direction your minions are attacking, the boards your minions show up on, the items listed in the store. I knew right away this was a huge problem in its design.

2. The 3 board system is a failure. The 3 boards add NOTHING to the gameplay value and is simply bloat to the game. Most games have so much RNG that 2 boards become almost irreverent. RNG wins you one board, RNG screws you one board, and you only really invest in 1 board. Majority of your resources and time is mostly invested in 1 board while another board maybe gets 1 or 2 spells played on it per game. This is bloat of the worst kind and it doesn't make a better experience for anyone.

3. The game has the most simple card design every created. Lets take a game like Magic the Gathering, 1 color is able to do the job of many roles. For example RED is not simply aggro but could have great control cards or card advantage in different forms of play. Artifact is so stupidly simple every color basically has 1 mechanic. If you want this mechanic you have to play its color. If you want to generate lots of gold you need to play black, if you want to control you need to play Blue, with you want strong heroes you need to play Red etc.

4. This game was HEAVILY advertised for draft and not competitive constructed play. There isn't even a ladder on release. The problem with this is DRAFTING IS HORRIBLE due to the 2nd reason. The game is so simple and has such simple mechanics you don't draft for deck synergy. Where as Hearthstone Arena synergy is extremely important this game has no synergy of any kind. If you see a great card YOU PICK IT. If you see an AXE you pick it 100% of the time period.  This is the core reason the game failed. It's main advertised mode has maybe the worst drafting I have ever seen.

Please contribute your ideas on your experience with Artifact.

For my part, I tried to watch it once and could not tell what was happening at all. It was not a viewer friendly CCG, and if you aren't attracting viewers, you aren't attracting customers.

Quote From RandomGuy

For my part, I tried to watch it once and could not tell what was happening at all. It was not a viewer friendly CCG, and if you aren't attracting viewers, you aren't attracting customers.

That is very true also. The 3 board system bloated the experience and made people popping into streams become confused. I do wonder what they are going to do with it in the future. Based on Valve not asking for feedback and Richard Garfield being off the development team I think the game is dead in the water. The game barely has 190 players a day which is extremely bad. Not sure on the website's rules on putting external links but here is one to check the players every day.

https://steamcharts.com/app/583950

I think part of the issue also might be the fact that with ALL the free CCGs out there, Artifact having a price point isn't a good decision.

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Where as Hearthstone Arena synergy is extremely important this game has no synergy of any kind.

Not to get off topic, but what?! Extremely important eh? Not even close. That is like the furthest from the truth statement iv seen in a while.

If you don't want your 12 wins I guess it doesn't matter right? There is very popular add on's that help with Arena picks that looks at your deck synergy giving each card different rankings. Highly used, there are a few versions. One will be below.

https://github.com/supertriodo/Arena-Tracker/releases/tag/v7.0

I was really interested in Artifact, from the time of its announcement through to the release. Then, when I saw the pricing model, I was hesitant enough to wait and see how the game panned out first.

I'm pretty much glad I held off in the end. Bullet dodged there...

Quote From RandomGuy

For my part, I tried to watch it once and could not tell what was happening at all. It was not a viewer friendly CCG, and if you aren't attracting viewers, you aren't attracting customers.

Exaclty this!

I tried watching some streamers/youtubers play it but i could not stand it. After that i try to read about it and play it myself but i lost interest within the first 10 minutes ... 

and RNG will always be a thing with CCG ... and i have nothing against some randomness in the game - sometimes that´s what makes it fun but if it is like artifact with 3 board system etc it's just too much! 

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I think part of the issue also might be the fact that with ALL the free CCGs out there, Artifact having a price point isn't a good decision.

Definitely a factor. It's thing if you pay and get a full collectible card game with minimal grind and lots of content. It's pretty bad when you have to pay $20 just to play and then just get slapped in the face with what's basically a f2p business model requiring you pay even more for you to actually enjoy the game fully. Basically payed up front for the privledge to pay some more...

^^^ This!  I was interested, but as soon as I heard I had to pay $20, then had no in-game currency to earn more cards... I was out!

I was intrigued, as I am by any new CCG that claims to be a Hearthstone Killer. In a way its no surprise it failed. It was overly complex to play and follow, it had a bizarre price point compared to the other games such as Eternal and Shadowverse and it was just hyped waaaay too much.

 It looked nice though. 🤔 

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Presumably because it was geared towards a more niche playerbase and had a very unfriendly business model towards newcomersBasically it appealed to a very small group of people and was accessible to even fewer.

I honestly believe if a game is fun people won't mind staying around and paying a premium for it.

All of you are way overthinking it.  The failure of Artifact was caused by the lack of f2p options alone.  HS got away with being expensive because it was the first ever big digital card game.  People joined because there were no good alternatives.  By joining, you start building a collection, which is an investment (time or monetary) which makes it difficult to quit or switch to another card game

Artifact, on the other hand, was launched after many free alternatives have been released.  A player getting into card games would have a lot of incentive to avoid this title and instead go for one of the free indie options.  Meanwhile, players invested into HS already would not want to abandon their investment and because they have the experience, they're aware of how expensive a card game can be if the creators are inclined to charge them

A part of why HS is still the most successful digital card game out there is because of its playerbase.  It's a lot more fun when I can share my aviana dragon druid or discuss quest rogue strategy among friends or on forums.  The pricing structure prevented that big community from forming for Artifact before it even had a chance.  

Speaking of which, the card free market probably fueled its downfall once things clearly started looking south.  Players leaving the game en mass meant the value of cards is decreasing by the day.  Players who are on the fence about leaving are incentivized to cash out their cards sooner rather than later

I admit, I haven't played Artifact myself but I believe these factors alone are enough to spell disaster in any upcoming cardgame.  It doesn't matter if the game itself is good or not when no one is willing to give it a chance.  Even if it was the best one out there, a card game is still a card game; there can't be enough variation to make it $40+ better than Shadowverse/ Eternal/ etc

Quote From NightCrawler

I admit, I haven't played Artifact myself but I believe these factors alone are enough to spell disaster in any upcoming cardgame.  It doesn't matter if the game itself is good or not when no one is willing to give it a chance.  Even if it was the best one out there, a card game is still a card game; there can't be enough variation to make it $40+ better than Shadowverse/ Eternal/ etc

Try playing it to form a more educated opinion(or not I don't blame you). Or at least watch some gameplay. If you actually played it you will understand why it failed. I believe if it was a solid game the pay model wouldn't have mattered. It has a strong brand and an amazing company with a big fan base.

Hearthstone succeeded not because it was the first; far from it. The game was really easy to follow, really easy to learn, a great art style, and advanced tournament play showed the game had a high level of depth and it simply wasn't curve stone at higher levels. Artifact even failed to show advanced depth in tournament play. People didn't mind shelling out cash on the game because its gameplay was solid. The same would apply to Artifact if that was the case. If anything Artifact was actually much cheaper to play than Hearthstone. But the main problem as I said there was no constructed ladder on release. The games main focus was draft. That has big problems in itself. 

If you think the answer is as simple as its pay  model I am glad you are not in charge of a development team. The game is flawed in many ways. Simply changing it to free to play will not fix it. AND why the game is still not released as free to play. Valve could have simply made the game free and give people who bought the game free packs for the cost they invested. Valve themselves know the pay model is not the real problem. If it was fixing it would be quick and easy. The developer interviews already stated the game is going to be reconstructed and reconditioned.