Updates for Artifact, Valve's DCG, on hold

Artifact, the digital collectible card game based on Dota 2, is in a really bad state right now. Currently its sitting at Overwhelmingly Negative on Steam as players aren't really happy with all of Valve' decisions.

An in-depth review from the Steam Store page reads:

by Wagz

 

Valve got greedy.

Apparently Valve forgot everything they learned from TF2, CS:GO and Dota2. Making fun games fully accessible to everyone. Online games without players and communities are destined to fail.
But... Nope. Valve decides to exclude 90% of the World.

• Pay for the game.
• Pay for cards to play the game, making the best cards the rarest and therefore most expensive. (when they said power level wouldn't be related to rarity)
• Pay to enter prize modes.
• Take a % cut of prize mode entry fees.
• Make a Trading Card Game where you can't trade. You can only buy and sell on their market, while taking a 15%+ cut. Sell a card for $0.03, get $0.01.
• Slowly inject cards behind a weekly time-gate to ensure the market decays, making it impossible to break even in prize modes.

There's so many things they could charge for that don't affect gameplay. People love hats.
Why not charge for: different imps, hats for imps, different card fronts/backs, different boards, animations, dyes for cosmetics and features (river color), props like trees/flowers/dota2 heroes to decorate/place and make unique boards, chatwheels, emotes, and everything else you did in your other successful games.
 

The game isn't fun.

This is supposed to be the best card game possible? They had complete design freedom to do anything they wanted on a digital only platform with a 3D game engine. And they made 3D versions of 2D cards with static art... They literally have 3D models, animations, and cosmetic systems to work with for every hero from Dota 2.

The gameplay is essentially completely reactive and plagued due to RNG at every step. It's not complex with the current card set and it's nothing like Chess where the initial state and immediate possible moves can be determined by a human skill level.
 

• Random initial placement of heroes and creeps
• Random card draws
• Random creep deployment every round
• Random attack directions
• Random draw of which item from your list you get to purchase during the shopping phase
• Random secret shop item and consumable item during the shopping phase, different for each player.
• Random card procs (Bounty Hunter, Ogre, etc)
• Randomness of card actives (Chainfrost, Eclipse)

Is it possible for a better/perfect player to win 100% of the time? No.

The game just isn't complete. There have been a few features added since the game released, but they just aren't good enough.

• The chat interface is terrible. You can only chat by bringing up chat wheels. No chat log/box. Really, how hard would it be to have a chat box like your other 3 main games? Add an option to disable the chat box if you get butt-hurt by social interactions and can't handle it.
• No voice comms (with a disable option)
• Once a game is over, that's it. No replay, no stats, no game history, can't even tell who you just played against. Literally the only thing you can do once a game ends is immediately add them as a Steam Friend to chat... Any other game you've ever played is basically like it never existed.
• Progession system: Earn levels mainly dictated by a weekly time-gate to unlock a bunch of Icons.
• Ranking system: How can you tell if someone is good? You can't. There's a 1-75 rank bin it puts you in based on your hidden MMR, but it's essentially meaningless. You can't even see your opponents rank level! You can only see their Icon level which is basically just a measure of how much they play.
• No matchmaking leaderboards. (Featured mode win streaks leaderboard is useless)
• No unranked global matchmaking mode. Want to test some really bad ideas out? Play against a bot or else it's counting towards your hidden MMR.
• No demo mode. Want to try out cards you don't own? You can play against a bot that uses them, but you can't use them yourself.
• No anything profile related that you expect as standard after playing other Valve games.
• Basically, the only thing you can see about other people playing the game is their name and icon level in your current match only. (Or the dwindling concurrent user count online)
  
  Because the game isn't inherently fun for the average person, there is no incentive to play. Valve's only option is to finish the game, make it more fun, more complete, and then relaunch as Free2Play without any paywalls so the other 90% of the world can try it out and create a better community. No players = no game.

Artifact was initially praised for its complexity and depth when it launched back in November last year, it even got to 60,740 players all-time peak at some point but now it sits at 390 players in the last 24 hrs according to Steam Charts. The players accused Valve that they abandoned the game and neglected their feedback, but on Friday the devs addressed these issues (on Artifact's website as well as its Steam page). You can read the statement down below:

When we launched Artifact, we expected it would be the beginning of a long journey, that it would lay the foundation for years to come. Our plan was to immediately dive into our normal strategy of shipping a series of updates driven by the dialogue community members were having with each other and with us.

Obviously, things didn't turn out how we hoped. Artifact represents the largest discrepancy between our expectations for how one of our games would be received and the actual outcome. But we don't think that players misunderstand our game, or that they're playing it wrong. Artifact now represents an opportunity for us to improve our craft and use that knowledge to build better games.

Since launch, we've been looking carefully at how players interact with the game as well as gathering feedback. It has become clear that there are deep-rooted issues with the game and that our original update strategy of releasing new features and cards would be insufficient to address them. Instead, we believe the correct course of action is to take larger steps, to re-examine the decisions we've made along the way regarding game design, the economy, the social experience of playing, and more.

So what does this mean?

Moving forward, we'll be heads-down focusing on addressing these larger issues instead of shipping updates. While we expect this process of experimentation and development to take a significant amount of time, we’re excited to tackle this challenge and will get back to you as soon as we are ready.

Valve has agreed with player feedback, saying that is “has become clear that there are deep-rooted issues with the game" and they will reexamine "the decisions we’ve made along the way regarding game design, the economy, the social experience of playing, and more."