Trying to break into the competitive genre of Trading Card Games (TCGs) is no easy task - as Valve found out with their first failed iteration of Artifact - but the future looks bright as developers work hard at rebuilding the game from nearly the ground up. Too many other games based on successful franchises have tried and failed, including The Elder Scrolls, The Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, and more, proving that a game needs more than name recognition to succeed.
For starters, one of the biggest offenders to the original version of the game has been completely removed from the game, and that is the market through which players bought and traded cards. This was a ridiculous and expensive way of acquiring new cards and was extremely anti-consumer given that there was an initial purchase price for the game followed by a constant need to keep plunking money in for competitive play.
Replacing this terrible system is something far more consumer friendly, letting players unlock all of the cards through gameplay. Cards will be awarded via the completion of certain campaigns, and others through packs. Additional monetization mechanics have not been revealed, but anything would be better than what we saw at launch. The most likely scenario will be a battle pass that is meant to support the game, but largely cosmetic and not a determiner for competitive advantage, or so we sincerely hope!
While the monetization and methods for acquiring cards in the game was one of the biggest offenders, the beta for Artifact 2.0 also reveals major revisions incoming to the core gameplay, which is something that was less expected. The first major change is how each of the three lanes are shown on screen. Rather than have three individual screens to move between, all three will appear on a single screen, compressed, but giving players all the information the need in a tighter, more compact UI.
The RNG component of Blink Daggers has also been removed. Destroying an enemy tower will now provide players with a blink scroll that teleports a hero and has no resource cost to use, allowing for more strategy and coherent planning without such counter intuitive tactics as killing your own hero.
Finally, the single-player experience mentioned previously looks to offer players a way to continue advancing their collections in a way that can be compared to Legends of Runeterra. These campaign matches reward experience similarly to playing live opponents in multiplayer and will be a helpful way to ensure progression while also providing users with a variety of ways to play.
There is much more to discuss with the development of Artifact 2.0, and we are excited to see what comes next as Valve keeps adding newer and better features to their game.
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