How Artifact became Valve's biggest failure • Hacker News Board

Re: How Artifact became Valve's biggest failure

#51

Post by DanHulton » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 8:05 PM UTC

asdjlkadsjklads wrote: post #30

DanHulton wrote: post #10

If the price was the only problem, you'd still expect to see people playing draft regularly, at least in the interim, especially since there are free drafts you can play. But there's more wrong with this game than just how they priced it. It may be that RNG is actually less of a factor in Artifact than in other similar games, but boy does it FEEL stronger. Every turn in a CCG lets you draw cards, and maybe you don't…

> If the price was the only problem, you'd still expect to see people playing draft regularly, at least in the interim, especially since there are free drafts you can play. But there's more wrong with this game than just how they priced it. Fwiw, price _was_ my only problem and i still stopped playing. Why? Because it felt the game's intentions differed from mine. It felt like the game was trying to be Magic, where a…

Yeah, I'm not saying it wasn't a problem for anyone, but that there should be a solid core of people playing drafts (free or otherwise) if the base game itself was legitimately great, since the pricing issue effectively goes away there. Maybe it would still keep you away, but it shouldn't have kept everyone away. The fact that only about a hundred people are playing means that the problems have to run deeper.

Re: How Artifact became Valve's biggest failure

#52

Post by DanHulton » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 8:07 PM UTC

ggregoire wrote: post #11

No the biggest issue wasn't the pricing structure. Artifact was just not fun at all. I've been playing a ton of MTG, HS, Gwent, MTGA, bought Artifact, played 5 hours, never touched the game again. It's overengineered, unnecessary complex, too slow, too long, too random and at the end exhausting, frustrating and not that interesting. Most people played one or two games of Artifact a day then moved too something else.

Exhausting is correct, I'd forgotten about that. A lot of games give you the "just one more" feeling, like you could have won, or could keep winning, if you just fired up another game right now and tried something just a little differently.

At the end of every game of Artifact, I felt like I needed to take a break and get some water. Talk about stream poison, if you have to psyche yourself up to get into every new game.

Re: How Artifact became Valve's biggest failure

#53

Post by anigbrowl » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 8:57 PM UTC

usrusr wrote: post #38

anigbrowl wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could say that about anything though.

Depends on how much you have to lose. Valve has a lot, and what they could win is a drop in the ocean next to "the steam tax". The icing on the cake is that there is value for them in competing less with those who publish on steam.

I don't buy that they can't figure out how to make a game that's at least as compelling as its predecessor.

Re: How Artifact became Valve's biggest failure

#54

Post by mos_basik » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 10:58 PM UTC

Reedx wrote: post #43

cm2012 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DotA was a well established Warcraft 3 custom game with the same name before Valve copied it.

Right, DotA was a mod no one asked for. Portal was actually a similar thing. It started as a student game called Narbacular Drop. Valve hired that team, who turned the concept into Portal. Likewise they hired Icefrog from DotA to work on DotA 2. That's a good strategy.

It's an excellent strategy. To add to your examples: Team Fortress was originally a Quake mod, and Valve hired its creators to head Team Fortress 2's development. Counter-Strike was originally a Half-Life mod before Valve bought the rights and made CS:S, then CS:GO.

Re: How Artifact became Valve's biggest failure

#55

Post by leetcrew » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 12:22 AM UTC

ggregoire wrote: post #13

benbristow wrote: post #12

Nobody asked for a Valve card game. We're all waiting for a '3' of any of their franchises.

Nobody asked for the '1' of their franchises. It worked out well tho.

I get the point, and it is true to an extent that the best products/games are ones that people didn't even know they wanted (the original ipod being a good example), but this faith in valve is misplaced at this point. half life was an incredible achievement, but it was released over twenty years ago. the last great original title (imo) created by valve was left 4 dead, released over a decade ago. I definitely like steam better than any of the other distribution platforms, but in terms of actual games, they haven't done much worth talking about in the last ten years; they're just playing out the endgame on their old IP.

Re: How Artifact became Valve's biggest failure

#56

Post by MauranKilom » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 12:35 AM UTC

Reedx wrote: post #31

kmnc wrote: post #20

I played the game a lot, before giving up. I played only draft and was pretty good (Mostly infinite and highly ranked). I have two opinions on why the game failed. First, while it was a truly satisfying game and wonderfully complex the random elements where both anti Dota and truly fuck you rng where a flip of a coin decides most high level games. Now, the same could be said about most competitive card games but in A…

> I believe valve has no clue what their audience wants. Maybe that's the problem - if they were trying to make something they think the audience wants. The audience itself doesn't know what it wants, let alone anyone removed from it making guesses on their behalf. The audience didn't know they wanted DotA or Minecraft until they were made.

The point about Minecraft is valid, but DotA grew incrementally over such a long time (and with such a heritage) that it is very clear the audience was more involved in its making than any single developer.

Re: How Artifact became Valve's biggest failure

#57

Post by bsder » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 12:56 AM UTC

dx87 wrote: post #39

DanHulton wrote: post #10

If the price was the only problem, you'd still expect to see people playing draft regularly, at least in the interim, especially since there are free drafts you can play. But there's more wrong with this game than just how they priced it. It may be that RNG is actually less of a factor in Artifact than in other similar games, but boy does it FEEL stronger. Every turn in a CCG lets you draw cards, and maybe you don't…

The worst part about the in your face RNG of Artifact is that Richard Garfield knew players don't like that type of RNG, and it was one of the main factors that killed off the Star Wars TCG he developed [1]. He decided to try it again in Artifact, and to nobody's suprise, people still don't like super visible RNG affecting the outcome. https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/k...

> people still don't like super visible RNG affecting the outcome.

Everybody says this, but the problem is that RNGs are friendlier to noobs.

The real problem is that any game like this has two markets--noobs and experts. And you have to win over both--that's a tall order.

You have to have a continuous influx of noobs or your game dies. However, the experts have to be able to fleece the noobs and gain enough money consistently or they will leave and you will have nobody encouraging the noobs.

Re: How Artifact became Valve's biggest failure

#58

Post by nas » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 1:02 AM UTC

doctorpangloss wrote: post #2

They tripled down on the worst part of card games, paying to win.

Valve's revenue models are going to kill it. At least, kill it as a studio that can create high quality games. I not opposed to them making money and getting compensated for hard work but the level of greed is getting insane. For the Dota TI prize pool, they take 75% of the revenue from Battle Pass related sales (i.e. digital in-game items, like DLCs). Its not hard to understand why they do it, the profit is insane:

https://dotesports.com/dota-2/news/the-international-2019-pr...

However, why should the company ever spend the effort to build games? Making the Battle Pass content is vastly easier. I don't see how they are going to be able to wean themselves off such a juicy revenue stream.

Artifact was a result of this new reality. The game was designed from the get-go to optimize revenue from in-game digital items. Why should a digital card in a computer game cost $100? A rational person would realize it is an insane idea. I'm glad that Artifact crashed and burned.

I don't think Valve learned their lesson. The whole game industry is moving that way. E.g. free to play games with paid in-game items. I wish they could figure out a more healthy way to fund game development. Human nature being what it is, I'm not holding my breath.

Re: How Artifact became Valve's biggest failure

#59

Post by vasili111 » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 2:34 AM UTC

Price! People are not ready anymore to pay lot of money for one game. HearthStone which also needs lots of money in order to be competitive is also on decline. Just look at the twitch view counts (which indirectly indicates game popularity). 1-2 years ago HearthStone was at 2-4 position now usually it is at >15 position. People do not like that kind of monetization scheme any more.

Re: How Artifact became Valve's biggest failure

#60

Post by rishav_sharan » Sun, Jul 07, 2019, 5:06 AM UTC

asdjlkadsjklads wrote: post #30

DanHulton wrote: post #10

If the price was the only problem, you'd still expect to see people playing draft regularly, at least in the interim, especially since there are free drafts you can play. But there's more wrong with this game than just how they priced it. It may be that RNG is actually less of a factor in Artifact than in other similar games, but boy does it FEEL stronger. Every turn in a CCG lets you draw cards, and maybe you don't…

> If the price was the only problem, you'd still expect to see people playing draft regularly, at least in the interim, especially since there are free drafts you can play. But there's more wrong with this game than just how they priced it. Fwiw, price _was_ my only problem and i still stopped playing. Why? Because it felt the game's intentions differed from mine. It felt like the game was trying to be Magic, where a…

As someone who has put in over 10k hours into dota since 2004, price was my issue as well. I don't want to pay for the game and then pay for the cards.

I would have been the natural convert to artefact. Yet they missed on players like me