It did so many things right, yet people just don’t see it?
Initiative solved the problem with going second.
There is an active, supported market . No need to sign up on external sites. You also get affordable cards. When was the last time you bought a Magic card for $0.05? You can get competetive decks for < $20. Heck, you even can make money. If months or years later you decide to quit … just sell your cards and buy new steam games instead.
It has depth . You have 3 lanes, item shops, initiative, multiple win conditions and you have to manage colors. All these things make it very strategic and very interesting. You not just play on curve, you have to think ahead and hold your cards for initiative and bigger impact. How is that not freaking cool?
There is less RNG . This one is gonna make people salty. While there definately is RNG, overall it has less impact than people blurt out. Being mana screwed or flooded in MtG is the worst feeling ever. Getting destroyed by one of the random effects in HS is the worst feeling ever. In Artifact you do have RNG, too. But it is usually much more subtle. You can recover because games usually last long enough to even out the RNG. When you find yourself always losing to RNG … it’s probably not RNG. There are people with > 70% win rate, how do they not always lose to some bad arrows? Because in ~30 phases of the game one bad arrow is not the deciding factor but rather a consequence of bad plays before. It just happens to be the last one which you’ll remember and blame.
Valve made the decision to buff AND nerf cards. That is insanly good and will improve the game immensly. No broken combos for months. People don’t like Cheating Death or Axe stats? No problem, it’ll get fixed.
No grind needed. I love this one. If you value your time more than money, this game is perfect. Go infinite with selling and recycling. No need to do stupid daily quest with a deck you don’t even like to play.
Draft, Tournaments, Constructed and PreConstructed all play and feel verry different. You play what you like most.
Yes, there is still a lot to do. They could improve on tournaments, add a ladder, futher balance cards and add new sets. But eventually this will happen. The first patches showed we’re heading in the right direction.
I just don’t fully understand why people don’t give Artifact credit for what it already has done way better than the competition.
