/v/ - Video Games

You just want to derail this thread into xeno-porn, don't you?

> Do you think they can ever bring it back?

Nobody wanted it in the first place and the jewish practices made anyone with an interest go away. Valve will think the issue was entirely in the cards and mechanics because otherwise this game won't make any sheqels.

I think Artifact would have been decent if they didn't rely so much on imitating DOTA's gameplay and just focused on making it fun on its own. And instead of selling cards, they should have done what DOTA did and sell cosmetics, like card borders, alternate art or something like that. It'll be interesting to see if they do anything for people who bought the game on release.

>>16883948

>tfw no sangheili GF

>>16883981

MTG is a great game ruined by the jews which hold the reigns to the franchise. I got back into it a year or so ago and abandoned it in disgust when they launched a new set which was just 3x the price for no reason. The crackaddicts who play it loved it.

Not to mention them selling products which are specifically designed to be useless and shite specifically for new players. Or the fact that they are STILL kowtowing to the cuntish collectors and allowing the game to be ruined by dickheads who lucked into a nice draw 10 years ago and don't want their piece of cardboard with a picture of a unicorn drawn on to "lose value" because it's an "investment."

Thankfully the chinks are willing to copy anything and you can get bootleg cards cheap as chips with perfect quality. But dealing with the ant people leaves a bad tase in my mouth.

Is there a trend of rebooting half backed games at launch because of No Man's Sky turn around? It's possible to fix something if you fuck up royally on launch. Though, the best thing to do would be to minimize the problems beforehand so it isn't a complete mess at launch. Take care of the easy to handle and sometimes game breaking bugs later as they come up. That was the standard before at least. It's somewhat valiant to work on a game to make it the best it could be, but if you're making a complete overhaul of a game that it might as well be a sequel, you should just make a sequel game instead. The only acceptable full game reboot I'd take are for games that people actually liked and MMOs.

>>16884140

I mean no, there is definitely not a trend of trying to totally redo your game post release.at least from a content point of view

This and NMS are pretty much the only two cases currently, why would you even try to use the term trend for it.

If this succeeds it has a decent case of becoming such though.

>>16884140

it can only happen if the devs have wherewithal to do it. So no.

>>16884144

Final faggotry XIV did it too with great success.

What's wrong with it is it's a card game you fucking retards.

>>16884177

Felt like i was forgetting something.

>>16884186

Its a clunky mess of a card game that has mass RNG yet a bunch of crap to keep track of.

And also seems to want to negate some RNG despite the large amount of variance.

Its also way too expensive. Being a card game doesn't give you any special immunity anyway.

Unless you mean the reaction, but even then no matter what happens it'll reflect the extremely flawed original.

Though thats not a true death sentence for quality, it doesn't ring well for it.

>>16884049

This has to be one if not he msot funny moments in history. The audio, the timing the reaction…

It's all perfect

>>16884159

<quality matters

>what is hearthstone

>>16884202

>Its also way too expensive. Being a card game doesn't give you any special immunity anyway.

was it tho? sell the cards you don't want, buy singles, done. in the end that would've been cheaper than buying booster after booster and "craft" it with the pity currency when the RNG fucks you over.

one of the reasons people bitched was that it wasn't f2p so they couldn't grind for it like rats in a skinner box, even when they would spend more on shitty boosters in the end.

>>16884415

I'm sure all 5 owners wouldn't mind the downtime.

>>16884399

>>16884202

>Its also way too expensive

At the time of artifacts release it was about 100 monies cheaper to get a full set of artifact cards than full set of (standard) cards in hearthstone and slightly cheaper than full set of mtga cards.

People completely ignore(d) this and i would guess that's because most of the people complaining about the price tag were childeren.

>>16884453

The problem was they treated it like a physical card game in terms of value but not in terms of gameplay. Cards can be traded, bought and sold, so players have more control over that aspect, but the actual game almost feels like it's on auto half the time, where you can't even control who a unit attacks, or even if a unit spawns. Now because no one plays it, the cards aren't worth the price of entry, which means no one wants to purchase the game to play it. What irritates me the most is they have free basic decks of all the different colors, but don't let free players try them out. I think it would have helped immensely.

>>16883950

>>let's make a Hearthstone clone

objectively wrong

>>16884514

Proof?

>fat man burns his hand on a stove.

>reaches back again

Whatever. I wonder how much money they sunk onto Artifact? I can only presume sunk cost mindset is setting in now but they have more money than God so not like it's gonna make a difference.

I just wonder how many times they're gonna do this.

>Boss, Boss! Our chance to to jump on Blizzard's TCG train bombed just as bad as the people who tried to jump on WoW's train back when it was still popular!

>B-boss!

>Do it again!

Yet again, something nobody asked for, gay ben.

Video game developers just don't understand anymore when a market is cornered, do they? It's like when every developer tried to hop on the battle royale money train after Fortnite proved to be a hit and they all fell flat on their faces.

>>16883981

Early to mid 2010s Yugioh was pretty fun. Lots of weird cards came out all the time that you could spend an afternoon building and testing decks around, there was fun shit like Dragon Rulers and every summoning mechanic had their own sense of identity.

>>16884722

>>16884713

wasn't it actually not that bad? I don't play BR shit, but whenever people talked about it back then said it was good but unfinished as fuck.

>>16885509

>It's like when every developer tried to hop on the battle royale money train after POOPG proved to be a hit and they all fell flat on their faces.

>>16885509

>CoDMW War Zone

>CoDBOPs4 Blacked Out

>Apex Legends

>PUBG

Everything else did fail though, I seriously dont understand the appeal of Battle Royale. It's boring as all fuck, all you do is run around with nothing happening. Suddenly you get sniped across the map because some fag was watching a building you happened to be near. Although, I heard Modern Warfare's Warzone wasnt bad, and that's coming from friends who really dislike BR shit.

>>16885617

>not listing The Culling

best summer of my life, before they ruined it

>>16885622

Didn't that predate battle royale though?

I thought the updates were because of said craze. Though i suppose that makes it count.

>>16885626

it came out about a year before puhbgee and fortnut took off, but it was easily better than both of them

>game didn't look or run like ass despite being in alpha

>combat was 90% rock-paper-scissors melee unless you're a richfag who got a gun somehow

>occasional radical balance changes that just shifted the meta but eventually things panned out

>then devs started adding shit that nobody cared for, changes to perks/weapons that were completely balanced that made them laughably broken or completely useless

>devs ignored community and kept pushing their own shit, found out in hindsight that Xaviant has terrible reviews on GlassDoor

>keep teasing update that's going to revive the game and make everything great again

>update drops

>premium weapon and character skins

>new map with the same amount of effort put into it as Krabby Land

>more absurd nerfs/buffs than every update before combined

>game tanks and falls off the charts, at most ~16 players left in all main regions combined

>fortnut and puhbgee get released and normalnigs go insane

>Xaviant tries to capitalize on this and releases Culling 2 (literally)

>it's fucking abysmal, plays like a bad clone of pubg and looks worse, nothing works, one guy won a match before he opened his parachute

>game tanks, devs pull it from Steam

>several months of silence

>then suddenly The Culling is back in its day 1 state

>a month or so of devs actually seeming to care, game is good

>but fortnite and pubg already won the masses so very few people return and get invested

>game eventually gets canned for good, servers shoah'd

if they'd only release the source code so we could have community servers, i miss it so much

>>16885879

Nothing really killed half life though, and the obvious success its having shows.

Half Life doesn't have the gap to have let its audience wither and die, people still remember HL2 at this point; it really isn't a large enough gap to erase a series from the public conciseness.

The prequel factor seems to be to sell a couple extra copies of a game by hanging the idea of a HL3 over peoples heads.

A proper HL3 would probably still sell Alyx better, but that takes actually taking a risk; Alyx won't have the full reputation of Half life hanging over it

Artifact is just gabe smashing his head against a wall though.

Maybe testing those brain interfaces affected his brain or something.

>>16884140

>NMS turn around

It's still a completely shite game. It's just more of a shite game than it was at launch. There's a lot more shite in that game now. It launched with 10% shite and 90% nothing. And now it's 50/50.

>>16886191

>Implying liking Artifact is a commonly held opinion

>Implying I play hearthstone

>>16886203

>Implying liking Artifact is a commonly held opinion

It is if you use Reddit

>Implying you haven't played Hearthstone religiously

Nobody needed to pay anyone anything to hate this this game because nobody the concept was rejected immediately. Nobody but shills like VNN wanted to even act like they'd be willing to give the game a chance, and nothing Valve did was going to change that, not that they did anything to help themselves.

>>16886213

Valvetards really piss me off. Even Nintendo has flops that no one cares about, like Arms and 1-2-Switch this generation. Meanwhile, Valve has this dedicated set of autists who will completely ignore genres for decades, then suddenly like them once Valve makes them. Autochess was bad and shit until Valve made Underlords. Card games were irrelevant until Valve made Artifact. VR was a shitty expensive gimmick until rumors started coming out of HL:VR.

>>16886206

Whatever makes you feel better, buddy.

>>16886175

The "massive knee jerk reaction" doesn't need a conspiracy theory to be explained. It's simply this: Half-Life has a huge fanbase that wants the series to continue and reach its conclusion. And they got angry that Valve has decided to work on something completely different instead. Not only plot-wise, but a whole game genre that they don't find appealing (I don't suppose there is much overlap between FPS players and cardgame players).

>>16886288

Valve is rich enough that they ought to be able work on two things at once, I say. Them wanting to branch out and explore genres where they're behind the curve shouldn't stop them from developing their core game. If they're afraid that HL2 Ep 3 or HL3 will be the end of Half-Life, maybe they need to gear their asses up to develop a new property rather than drag that one out forever.

>>16886288

To be fair, on the surface "dota card game" sounds like shit, so I can't fault them for that. But when I heard Garfield was designing it, I decided to give it a chance. I guess people are still really hurt over HL2: Episode 3. It's easier to just give up and assume it will never come out. The well is effectively poisoned at this point - I have a feeling Alyx is going to be pretty polarizing. The supposedly leaked ending was already being ripped to shreds the other day.

>“We ran an experiment, we got a negative result, and now we need to see if we’ve learned anything from that, so let’s try again,”

Man they're really desperate for this cash cow. What do they even do with their money?

>>16886309

>leaked ending

tell me so I too can laugh at it

>>16886324

So far the only proof is just some tweet, so take it with a grain of salt. Didn't stop people from losing their shit though. Essentially: time travel.

>>16886401

Didn't like the first trailer blatantly imply that anyway?

They played an episode 2 clip in the trailer. And episode 3even if in limbo is well known to be based around the teleporting ship.

>>16883941

I believe the main reason Artifact failed was it's price model. It was everything wrong with Hearthstone, Duel Links and MtG but worse with the upfront cost. If they were actually bold, they would have left it as a OTP and make card earning 100% grind. Only selling cosmetics for card backs and alt artworks. Alas, they didn't though.

>>16886078

>>16884638

the gameplay

>>16886401

the fuck is this gay shit

>Much of Alyx’s story sees the titular character trying to reach the Vault, a floating behemoth hovering above City 17, kept airborne by a set of massive cables surrounding it. Alyx’s father, Eli, discovers that the Combine are keeping something inside the Vault. At first they suspect it’s a superweapon. Then Alyx learns (via a nod to future games) it is in fact, a living being. Everyone immediately assumes it’s Gordon Freeman, the protagonist of Half-Life and Half-Life 2. Thus they set off to save him.

>Alyx decouples the cables powering the Vault (with the help of some friendly Vortigaunts) and a backup power generator. The Vault promptly crashes and Alyx is able to get onboard. There she initially discovers a surreal facsimile of different buildings, presumably within City 17, following a ghostly figure.

>Once Alyx passes through this area and makes quick work of some final Combine soldiers, she gets to Gordon’s containment cell. Only upon opening it does she discover that it’s not Gordon at all; the Combine have actually captured G-Man, the mysterious supernatural figure that stalks Gordon in past Half-Life games, still fitted with his iconic blue business suit and black briefcase.

>In return for his release, G-Man grants Alyx one favor. She immediately requests getting the Combine off of Earth but G-Man declines, reasoning that that is too big of a push. Instead, he has another idea…

>Suddenly, Alyx is subject to an out-of-body experience and time travels to end of Half-Life 2: Episode 2. In that infamous cliffhanger from 2007, Gordon and Alyx are about to set out on a new mission when a Combine attack kills her father, leaving Alyx cradling him in her arms. Only now, G-Man reverses the scene just a few moments, giving Alyx a chance to kill the Combine. Eli picks himself up, alive and well, but is clearly in search of something.

>Alyx prepares to leave but G-Man informs her that, in return for this favor, she now works for him. The game transitions to the credits with a nod to Half-Life 1’s ending, leaving you with your jaw on the floor and plenty of questions you don’t think will be answered in the Half-Life: Alyx ending…

>Except, toward the end of the credits, you hear a voice. It’s Eli but noticeably different from how he’s sounded for the rest of the game. He’s gruffer, older like in Half-Life 2, and he’s not calling for Alyx; he’s calling for Gordon.

>The world fades back in and, boom, you’re Gordon Freeman, standing right where he stood at the end of Episode 2. Eli is alive and Dog is there too, but there’s no sign of Alyx. Eli seems to be perfectly aware of what’s happened, cursing “unforeseen consequences” and vowing to save Alyx. But, of course, he’ll need Gordon’s help to do that. So he hands you the crowbar and, just for a split second, you get to hold it before the game ends.

>>16887260

>Alyx prepares to leave but G-Man informs her that, in return for this favor, she now works for him.

That confuses me. Isn't the favor supposed to be repayment because Alyx freed the G-man? They should both be square after this whole ordeal.

>>16883999

>G

>>16887324

They already do so much else beside that to fuck up the story and especially the lore. They didn't care.

>>16887324

>implying the gman plays by the rules.

>>16887260

What was the point of retconning Eli's death? It can't be that they have written themselves into a corner, because Epistle 3 proved they already had a plan. This ending is pretty much a terrible rewrite of the Epistle 3 ending.

>At this point, as you will no doubt be unsurprised to hear, a Certain Sinister Figure appeared, in the form of that sneering trickster, G-Man. For once he appeared not to me, but to Alyx Vance. Alyx had not seen the cryptical schoolmaster since childhood, but she recognized him, instantly. "Come along with me now, we've places to be and things to do," said G-Man, and Alyx acquiesced. She followed the strange grey man out of the Borealis, out of our reality. For me, there was no convenient door held open; only a snicker and a sideways glance. I was left alone, riding the weaponized research vessel into the heart of a Combine world. An immense light blazed. I caught a cosmic view of a brilliantly glittering Dyson sphere. The vastness of the Combine's power, the futility of our struggle, blossomed briefly in my awareness. I saw everything. Mainly I saw how the Borealis, our most powerful weapon, would register as less than a fizzling matchhead as it blew itself apart. And what remained of me would be even less than that.

Do people even want yet another card game?

>>16883941

I think Valve being the monolithic entity it is means it is definitely possible to revive Artifact. I think they got the guy who invented magic to come up with the game in the first place too. I think Valve could create something that is truly a force to be reckoned with if they use the full power of their platform. I've talked about it before, but if you made Artifact free to play and made it so that players got "free" bonus cards whenever they made a purchase on Steam, it would both lower the barrier of entry and also make people more curious about the game. I also think vidya-themed tie-ins besides Dota could help the game and simultaneously provide an opportunity for them to. Theoretically you could make a weird digital version of the Yugioh world where nearly everyone has a deck to play with.

I think that dethroning hearthstone is probably not possible because of the sunken costs players have put into that game, but I think it could still be a serious rival if they took the approaches I outlined. They probably aren't bold enough to do that though. I expect it simply going free-to-play and getting a slight boost before continuing to fester. A similar case is Blizzard's Heroes of the Storm, where despite being a better game with more beloved characters, it could never come close to League or Dota2 numbers. Like I said, the one thing they can maybe do to not just be another Hearthstone competitor is to do this crazy move that uses the Steam infrastructure itself to convince players to play.

>>16883941

>valve announces it's newest game since its last release years before

>huge reveal

>it's a fucking cardgame

>are surprised when nobody gives a shit.

People have literally been asking for half life episode 3 for nearly a decade. How out of touch with your own fanbase could you possibly be at that point?

>>16892471

>cuckchan screenshot

>>16892576

people and valve's fanbase especially are retarded and even a game 11/10 will be received like DNF because it's nothing like what they imagined. the expectations are so outlandish high they it's pretty much impossible by now. the only winning move is not to play.

>>16892587

>valve drone

>>16892627

The difference being, DNF was announced a decade or so before it actually came out, and was constantly teasing it's audience with clips and teasers before being restarted/cancelled again for whatever reason. When the game finally came out it felt pretty fucking average and would've never lived up to the wait. Conversely, half life 2 episode 3 has been a contested rumour and Internet meme almost since e2 first came out. I don't think it's quite the same since the game probably hasn't been in active development so they could probably still get away with it unless it was complete trash

>>16892836

>DNF was announced a decade or so before it actually came out, and was constantly teasing it's audience with clips and teasers before being restarted/cancelled again for whatever reason.

and retards go MUH VALVE MUH PORTAL IT WILL BE REVOLUTIONARY. it doesn't need to be teased to make people's imagination run wild - if anything it could help getting expectations down to acceptable levels again.

DNF could have been a 11/10 game too, and at best people would've said it's not that bad (but still not what they expected) and then slowly fade out of consciousness, like all overdue sequels do. no one really gives a shit anymore about KH3 or shenmue 3 for example. only reason people even remember DNF because it was meh. plus, once the series is "done", good or bad people will move on. no more "valve can't count to 3" memes etc.

>>16893219

can't play officially with proxies, and collecting is an aspect of it. can't even play with chinese fakes, some lard will pull out his magnifying glass and check.

another thing is that TCGs are pretty much dead unless you're one of the big established brands. no one wants to buy into a new one, the closest you'll get away with is LCG where everyone has cheap access to the same set of cards (however that only works so far since over time the perceived cost of entry gets so high less people gonna get into it, even if it's nowhere near realistic).

no one cares what you use for your kitchen table.

>>16893219

It's actually very, very cheap to get a casual magic deck, you can make one for $5 by buying singles online. At a gamestore maybe $7. This can be really awesome if everyone you play with has decks like these, since they tend to really capture the spirit of the game better than anything else.

While it depends on the cards you want to use, I found that it's typically less expensive to buy the original card than to buy/make a proxy, and the quality will nearly always be better. I'm kind of atypical though since I don't buy cards that cost more than $2 apiece. I have one set of low quality chinese proxies of ridiculously expensive cards like Emrakul I bought on sale a while back and they are pretty much the only fakes I use.

Also, it is more fun to play in person than use virtual cards, but if two+ people have their computers out sitting at a table together it is almost as good. A big part of the fun for me is joking with the other players as I play.

For people who drop hundreds of dollars on a single deck, I dunno. I've never met these people in person, but I also don't play with many people I've never met before. The point that buying custom proxies becomes cheaper than buying actual cards to make a deck tends to be $60 or more, depending on the quality.