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.