Two Open Letters from Die-hard Artifact sites to the developers

[👽🐬 Old Black Nerd🐬👽]

These were posted on reddit. It's from DrawTwo and Artibuff.

https://drawtwo.gg/articles/drawtwo-open-letter-to-valve

https://www.artibuff.com/blog/2019-01-23-the-hero-artifact-needs


Oh, and for my stalker friend, one of the letters has a section called: No News is Bad News ;)

[X4N]

Really disagree with that Artibuff article. Maybe there should be a poll or survey why people stopped playing, cause for me the biggest things are lack of diversity for decks and RNG, mainly curving. I still play and do find it fun regardless.

And Valve has ALWAYS been horrible about communicated with it's community. This is nothing new.

[Esxhaton]

👽🐬 Old Black Nerd🐬👽 a écrit :

These were posted on reddit. It's from DrawTwo and Artibuff.

https://drawtwo.gg/articles/drawtwo-open-letter-to-valve

https://www.artibuff.com/blog/2019-01-23-the-hero-artifact-needs


Oh, and for my stalker friend, one of the letters has a section called: No News is Bad News ;)

Thanks for actually sharing something useful for once!

[UserWithNoName]

Thanks for sharing, 'twas a great read. There's no denying that Artifact flopped at launch largely because of its aggressive microtransactions. Though many people, myself included, found the gameplay to be repetitive, RNG heavy, and not as fun as we hoped. Even if the games tend to become exhausting/frustrating to play, I still find myself coming back for a game or two. Or I'd often get an idea for a deck and booting up the game to build it and test it out against some bots. I defended the game a ton because I genuinely believe there is a good game here, possibly a great one. I think this game has the potential become one of Valve's biggest multiplayer games up there with CS:GO and Dota 2, it's just going to take a long while to get there. Much like CS:GO before it, Valve is tasked with the monumental task of how they can get more people to play and enjoy Artifact rather than going to a more fleshed out alternative.

I will say this: All of the problems Artifact currently has can be fixed through updates and continued support

This raises the question, why should we have to wait for games to get better? Why couldn't we get a complete experience at launch? We're given a hollow experience but still cling onto this belief that we will eventually get a good game "cuz Valve?" I agree with that sentiment and is why I still don't recommend people buy it despite clocking a good number of hours into it. It's also why I personally believe the biggest mistake Valve made with Artifact is not launching this game in Early Access.

I think it's inevitable that this game will go F2P, but I think that will happen alongside a big update and a big shift in its fundamental design (gameplay, market, or otherwise). Going F2P right now wouldn't work out well because there's no real incentive for a new player to play other than grinding for card packs. Making the game F2P will bring in a large influx of players, I imagine Valve would like to keep those players playing. The most feasible way I can see them doing this is by creating an Artifact Battle Pass, the concept created by Dota 2 and adopted by Fortnite. You can buy a $10 version or just play a free one with limited rewards/missions. It will be closer to a Fortnite Battle Pass (ie. no cosmetic lootboxes) purely because this is a Richard Garfield game and will reward players for completing sets of various in-game missions with cosmetics or some kind of v-buck equivalent (like Dust or Arti-tokens). This currency will allow you to buy cosmetic items and nothing more.

Not the most fleshed out solution, but I think the easiest Valve can implement in order to begin turning this sinking ship around. There's no denying that Artifact fell way under everyone's expectation. Despite this it's not a bad game, just badly monetized, which left a bad taste in people's mind that Valve will need to erase before this game can get any real traction. I am hopeful for this game and Valve's ability to turn it into a success, assuming Valve were true to their word and really are "in it for the longhaul," I just don't know how long such a monumental task will take...

[X4N]

WTF are people on that say it was badly monotized? People bought it at the $20. It had high numbers. If you are argueing that you had to buy cards to have fun in Constructed. OK. That is where a peasant or pauper constructed can fix that. You don't need to make it F2P to turn this around. They turned CS:GO around without making it F2P.

[Cablenexus]

Bless whoever that these guys are open letter writers and not the game designers.

[Dysmetria]

👽🐬 Old Black Nerd🐬👽 a écrit :

These were posted on reddit. It's from DrawTwo and Artibuff.

https://drawtwo.gg/articles/drawtwo-open-letter-to-valve

https://www.artibuff.com/blog/2019-01-23-the-hero-artifact-needs


Oh, and for my stalker friend, one of the letters has a section called: No News is Bad News ;)

Oooh you mean me! I'm hardly a stalker.

But I suspect we both have a stalker and he is why we seem to keep nmissing each other here.

I keep hoping to run into you in Faeria but it hasn't happened yet. You just doing puzzles or what?

Thanks for the links, I just replied to the Artibuff one. The Steam login doesn't work on the other.

[ゲ-で]

Was he banned for this? If so, did valve read this?

[Dysmetria]

G-d a écrit :

Was he banned for this? If so, did valve read this?

We get bans and posts and threads deleted pretty often. Which is sad, neither of us are trolling, just offering constructive criticism just like in those open letters. I got two in a row yesterday and while they were overturned and I can't get any of those deleted threads or posts back at least I can post again.

[ゲ-で]

Dysmetria a écrit :

G-d a écrit :

Was he banned for this? If so, did valve read this?

We get bans and posts and threads deleted pretty often. Which is sad, neither of us are trolling, just offering constructive criticism just like in those open letters. I got two in a row yesterday and while they were overturned and I can't get any of those deleted threads or posts back at least I can post again.

At least we know valve read this forum, not sure if they get something from players' opinions. But they read and ban, ban mostly. I don't get it tbh they see people disappointed and still they're silent.

[Dysmetria]

G-d a écrit :

Dysmetria a écrit :

We get bans and posts and threads deleted pretty often. Which is sad, neither of us are trolling, just offering constructive criticism just like in those open letters. I got two in a row yesterday and while they were overturned and I can't get any of those deleted threads or posts back at least I can post again.

At least we know valve read this forum, not sure if they get something from players' opinions. But they read and ban, ban mostly. I don't get it tbh they see people disappointed and still they're silent.

Well what is it you expect them to say?

[ゲ-で]

Dysmetria a écrit :

G-d a écrit :

At least we know valve read this forum, not sure if they get something from players' opinions. But they read and ban, ban mostly. I don't get it tbh they see people disappointed and still they're silent.

Well what is it you expect them to say?

"We're working on making Atrifact the best ccg ever, mamoy klyanus!" - would work.

[Dysmetria]

G-d a écrit :

Dysmetria a écrit :

Well what is it you expect them to say?

"We're working on making Atrifact the best ccg ever, mamoy klyanus!" - would work.

Yeah they told us for over a year that they were working on making Artifiction the best TCG ever.

Look how that turned out.

[ゲ-で]

Dysmetria a écrit :

G-d a écrit :

"We're working on making Atrifact the best ccg ever, mamoy klyanus!" - would work.

Yeah they told us for over a year that they were working on making Artifiction the best TCG ever.

Look how that turned out.

Now they're working HARDER!

[Dysmetria]

G-d a écrit :

Now they're working HARDER!

Well if that is the case then let them work. If they stop to tell you they are working harder when you already know they are then they might mess something up.

[neuralnetwork]

Interesting read.

But you know what I found between the lines?

DT: "cmon buff up the game or we gotsa shut down the site, noone clicking ads"
AB: "yo I dropped almost half a grand on day 1, gief tourney I'm pro and daddy needs new shoes"

But that's just the crazy part of my brain talking. Obviously that wasn't what they were after. Most of their points were valid and have been reiterated a plenty of times in plenty of places. Overall direction felt thought out.

Hard to say whether it's true or not but if some dev back at Valve really told the other guy to post his article online for some publicity, I'd say things look a lot more grim than I had imagined. That is, of course, assuming that the dev was sincere and genuine.

If Valve would really be interested in community feedback on such simple ideas and basic concepts as presented in the letters - cosmetics, Big Money tourney, dota success copycat, philosophy of fun-in-games, game accessibility and so on... It all begs the question, have they not put a single thought to the game itself by themselves?

I mean, really? Seriously? These are things that any random guy tosses out on a near daily basis even here at their own platform discussion boards.
These are things that they themselves have already created for their other games while others are so commonplace activities within the industry you'd have to be completely out of touch about everything related to video games - among quite a few other things too, should you not be aware about these.

Do you get it? Do you understand how utterly insane it is to imagine they'd need input from an outside source on such absolute basics?
Was there really anything spectacular and refreshing in either letter? Any ground breaking innovations?
No, they were pretty much a compliation of forum rants polished out of bad words and put into a decent written form.

So there's more or less two logical explanations.
Either the AB guy made it up to make his fancy story seem more credible or Valve has really lost the plot.
Maybe they just got too rich and stopped caring. Someone made bad decisions following the advice of a bad consultant but who cares, Steam prints money every day.

At this point it's probably in Valve's interests to cut the game development to minimum. If money talks as it typically does, there's really no reason to keep buffing up Arti.
They already made a decent sum from the launch sales so dev costs are somewhat covered. Might've earned some too. Since popularity has tanked, it'd be best to recuperate by shutting the lights.
A failed experiment, time to move on.

Though, the scary part is, did the OP really get banned due to those links? I can't see anything out of line in his posts - worst being calling the community toxic lately. People do that all the time and get away. Water off a duck's back.

Heck, I was said to be full of manure once and the cold hearted aggressor didn't get banned. My tender soul got scarred for life and the vicious, brutal tormentor held his reign of emotional pain without any consequences. Oh, the injustice we must endure.

If anything, Valve should be thankful for those open letters. Those writers are among the best thing Arti and Valve could have. Vocal, kind of. Critical, sure. Constructive, yeah. Aiming to help, definitely.

Once the voices go silent, there's nobody left.