Price: $19,99 Artifact is a TCG just released by Valve and this is my first impression of the game. My previous experience is primarily from Magic and Heartstone. As of me writing this the game is sitting at mixed reviews with 64% positive. The main reason for that is the monetization. The only way to get more booster packs (one pack contains 12 cards) from gameplay is by playing something called "Expert Play" but playing there requires you to have a ticket. If you win 3 times you earn a ticket, 4 times you earn a ticket and a pack, 5 times is 1 ticket and 2 packs. If you lose 2 times you have to start over. You get tickets by either buying them for real money or converting 20 cards into 1 ticket. The only other way to get a pack is by buying it for real money. You can also buy specific cards from the steam market but the price there is set by the community. What is currently considered the strongest card did for a while cost $22 which is more then the actual game but that have dropped a little now and will probable drop more in the future. Most cards do cost something between $0,04 and $0,20 There is a split between wether people think its expensive or not. Alot of card gamers think it's fairly cheap while pc gamers think it's ridiculous and pay 2 win. The gameplay is good and should deserve a better rating. It is played 1v1. The board is split into 3 lanes. The lanes are played through in sequence, starting with the left one, then middle and ends with the right one. Each lane is split horizotally. One side for you and one side for your opponent. There will be a tower on your side and a tower on your opponent side. The tower have 40hp. If the tower is destroyed an ancient will spawn with 80hp. You win by either destroying 2 towers or 1 ancient. Each tower have a mana pool that starts at 3 and increases by 1 for every turn. Your deck will be split in two parts, the main deck and the item deck. Each main deck will consist of 5 heroes. These will be in 1 of 4 colours: red, blue, black and green. You can mix colours in your deck but red cards can only be played by a red hero and blue cards can only be played by a blue hero and so on. Cards in you deck will come in 3 types: creeps, spells and improvements. These cost mana to play. The item deck will consist of 4 types of cards: weapon, armor, accesory and consumable. These are played to improve your heroes these cost gold to play and you get gold from killing creeps and heroes. When a hero is killed they are sent to the fountain where they spend a turn waiting and then become available again. There are currently 2 ways to play, constructed and draft. Constructed will have you build a deck with the cards you own and then play it. Draft will see you draw 60 cards from 5 packs and then you will build the best possible deck with those cards. There are 5 "modes": featured, solo, social, casual and expert. Featured will have you play one of several preconstructed decks and see how many times you can win before your first loss. Solo is just playing against a bot. Social is where you challenge you friends but can also create tournaments. Casual is well casual, this is also where you find the global matchmaker. Expert is where you play to win packs. Overall, i do like the game so far. I wish there was a better way to unlock cards from playing the game but that is the only issue i really have. The game was just released and it will be interesting to see where they go with it when it comes to new additions and changes.
Reading through this I will say the method by which you obtain cards is excessively difficult for someone who wants to play casually but still be able to get new cards and doesn't want to invest a lot of money in the game. You already have to pay just to play the game, this is microtransaction hell unless you either get super lucky on your initial draw or you're just exceptionally skilled at the game. (and lucky) Now not having played the game this is conjecture, but typically rare cards will be more valuable to game play and therefor the more rare cards you can field the better your chances will be in the game. Honestly this is the kind of garbage tactic a lot of companies are using to increase the amount of income from the people who like the game enough to pay for the benefits, and is more than enough (without changes being made) to prevent me from ever even giving the game a chance. If I like the game, I'll be frustrated by the fact that I can't really progress without either jumping through some (seemingly) ridiculous hoops or paying in more money. Now, there's a couple really simple ways they can mitigate this, one of them is simply handing out free cards (not packs) liberally but over time, maybe a daily draw or a challenge you have to complete (other than the existing method) each day for a few cards or something. They also are going to need to remove the requirement for a ticket on the expert play, or come up with some other way to obtain them beyond paying money or playing expert play. Really all you get from putting this behind a pay wall, is removing people from the queue which historically ends poorly. CCG players may look at this and think 'that's not much more expensive than I spend playing M:TG or whatever other game they have chosen for their game of choice, but they frequently overlook one aspect. In a CCG you get a physical copy of the card, which can then gain or lose value based on rarity, popularity, age, and condition. VCCG on the other hand may have some of the same concepts, but you don't actually receive a physical copy of the cards, and as such their value is only truly relevant as long as the game is current. The second they turn off the servers for your VCCG all your cards, no matter how rare exclusive or useful are absolutely worthless. Regardless of your opinion of CCG games and collectibles in general, while most of them are no more valuable over time (due to market flooding and simply human nature, you can make the cards, but you can't make people want them) there are plenty of circumstances where even relatively unsuccessful CCG ventures have yielded -some- valuable collectibles, even if the vast majority are barely worth the stock their printed on. Your virtual cards on the other hand can never obtain true value because they're only of value within the confines of the game companies decision to continue running the game. There are plenty of CCG's that throughout the ages have died, but because they've died, for those that value them, that simply makes the cards themselves more valuable, you can no longer get new things, so those things that are still out there gradually increase in value as long as there are collectors willing to buy them, or people willing to play the game in spite of it's failure overall. All said though, the game itself may be good, but it's doomed to fail if people won't play it because p2w even if it's simply perceived. In this case it seems pretty obvious, their reward structure is hidden behind a pay wall, unless there is some mechanic not mentioned that is pretty much the hallmark of p2w, if you cannot obtain the winning elements of a game without investing more money, p2w. (also, card packs are just the original loot crates btw)
Probably has to do with this: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vg247.com/2018/12/13/artifact-valve-decline-player-base-steam/amp/
