Constructed is fun if you're trying to test some things and don't mind losing a lot. Figuring out how to play around an Axe or Drow for example. Don't worry about whether you'll get to try. Every deck has at least an axe, drow and 3 cheating deaths.
Bad news, they will consistently make whatever you came up with look like trash. As fun as the game is, balanced around construction it is not. Any hero with less than 9hp will get dumpstered without a lucky opening hand and some fortune creep spawns.
There just aren't any consistent ways to punish axe/drow cheating death decks right now. Even black loaded with hero killers gets readily smashed in constructed. Maybe someday with some card buffs or more variety and interaction but not right now.
Edit: I really think heroes should all be uncommon/rare. Let the variety be available to everyone, make the interesting cards super rare. Axe isn't interesting, he's just broken.
It’s not a full fix but it’s worth remembering that there’s a few cards you can play in first turn that prevent one turn hero kills: cunning plan, rebel decoy and compel.
Axe is way over-tuned, Drow has 1 or 2 health too much, Blink Dagger should probably have been a common, and Kanna is a bit over-designed. I'll say that much.
But.
Cheating Death is easily in the top three of the worst design decisions in card gaming history.
I think one of the biggest issues I have is that Red and Green get the ultra-tempo "nobody can cast spells this turn" spells (plus initiative granters) while also having the best stats in the game by far. You should have to make deckbuilding concessions to get full anti-control tempo tech, but the concession is... run Drow, the best hero in the game, and run Enough Magic as a 3-of.
Like, in Magic terms it'd be like if mono-red aggro had Spell Pierce and Blossoming Defense
What's interesting is Axe's body is good but it's not significantly better than Keefe's body. Axe is strong almost entirely because of Berserker's Call because Call and Duel are basically the only direct removal red has.
Two armor and seven damage is a huge breakpoint compared to one armor and six damage, though. Axe can't be damaged by basic creeps and instakills half the nonred cast (notably including Drow, Zeus, and BH) while Keefe leaves them limping away
Axe is way over-tuned, Drow has 1 or 2 health too much, Blink Dagger should probably have been a common, and Kanna is a bit over-designed. I'll say that much.
But.
Cheating Death is easily in the top three of the worst design decisions in card gaming history.
I'll go to bat for my lady Kanna in that she mostly exists to power a specific deck archetype and doesn't do much outside of that. She's got a weirdly tanky body and her signature is useful but not explosive.
Drow I think is fine but mostly because like, right now the meta is 'a hero better have 7 health at least or it's just dead meat'. She's much more valuable/strong on the basis of her exceptional passive and signatures than her body.
Do we know what a timeline is on another set to shake up this seemingly limited meta? Drafting has been fun for me so far even though I'm pretty bad at it still it seems.
I'm waiting to see if there's some meta tech we just haven't discovered yet, but if this set is their idea of balance then they're never going to have an interesting constructed scene.
Honestly I think Blue/Green Storm is the most powerful deck right now, it's just hard to play. Red using Axe and LC is much easier and it still beats up on anything that isn't Blue/Green storm, so people play it a lot.
I'm honestly pretty confused why so many constructed players brought Red/Black decks to this WePlay tournament. It's not good against U/G storm, I don't know why they thought it was.
U/G Storm: Ramp using Aghanim's Sanctum + Stars Align in a single lane and drop an early Incarnation of Selemene. Draw through the rest of your deck, since most of your deck is cantrips and draw spells. Play an Emissary or Kanna spell and win the lane at 80. Nuke other lanes with Annihilation.
B/R Aggro: Try to overpower the enemy with Axe, Legion/Bristle, Phantom Assassin, and other red/black goodstuff. This deck is trying to beat U/G Storm before Incarnation comes online, but from what I've seen, it doesn't even do that very well.
B/R Goldmine: I LOVE GOOOLD! Lots of hero kill spells and gold generation effects to play early Horn of the Alphas and win off that. Sometimes uses Sorla for cheese plays.
U/G Ramp Go-Wide: Cuts the Incarnation game plan and tries to ramp fast into an Emissary or a lane full of Kanna dogs. Seems slightly weaker than the storm deck, but still good.
R/G Ramp: Uses the strong heroes of red and the strong finishers of green to try to ramp to 8 mana fast so it can Time of Triumph or Emissary faster than the opponent.
Those seem like the major players, but the big metagame fight right now is between the U/G Storm deck and...everything else. The Black/Red deck SHOULD be able to kill U/G before it can do anything, but I think people need to have more improvement destruction to really make the deck hurt. The current iterations of B/R just aren't fast enough, they might need to include Sorla Khan to try to rush the enemy down.
Edit: For what it's worth, I think Cheating Death is incredibly strong against Incarnation decks. Decks that play green and aren't playing Incarnation NEED 3 of this card and they need to drop it in the lane they're WINNING so they don't get annihilated out of the lane. These are the only times I've seen U/G Storm struggle, when they can't reliably wipe a board.
It is a bit of a bummer that all of those decks include Axe, Drow, or Kanna since they're all still quite pricey. At least you only need one, but then there's like annihilation and all that which are fairly pricey as well that you need 3 of.
For the tournament peoples, I'll be starting it as soon as I get home from work today, assuming everyone has registered a draft deck.
Goal is to finish the tournament by the end of the week so we can start up another on the weekend. Try to work out the best time for matches with your opponent!
Any ideas for tournament format for next week? We could do Pauper or Penny Dreadful, I think that'd be fun! For those that don't know, pauper = commons only, penny dreadful = any rarity is allowed, but only allowed to use cards that have been under 10 cents (or an arbitrary number that we pick, 10 cents seems about right) for the entirety of the set.
How is drafting a drunken brawl? It's the patrician's choice that most challenges the player. You have the challenge of the draft itself, your deck building skills come to the forefront for building a deck from scratch with what you drafted, and then your piloting skills come into play for piloting your new creation.
This is super snide when MTG costs more than Artifact and Hearthstone is both a capital B Bad game in addition to still costing heaps of either time or cash.
Let's not compare the price of this game to Hearthstone or Magic, please.
I spent 60 dollars on Hearthstone packs a few expansions ago and I didn't even get all the cards for a full deck. Good luck finding a Magic deck that's worth less than 60 dollars right now.
I spent 100 dollars on Magic Arena in beta and a lot of my cards have since rotated out. in order to afford a constructed deck.
Artifact is cheaper than both of those games. And don't tell me to spend my time grinding; I spend money in these games because I don't HAVE the time to grind anymore. Not all of us are students with infinite time. My time is valuable.
I'm not saying this is a perfect business model, or anything. But it's a step in the right direction and it's way better than other things on the market. Except for Eternal, I actually think that game is really generous for a free-to-play, but they are struggling right now. If you're a free-to-play model, you almost have to be greedy.
This is super snide when MTG costs more than Artifact and Hearthstone is both a capital B Bad game in addition to still costing heaps of either time or cash.
MTG: Arena is debatably cheaper than artifact. I dunno about Hearthstone being a bad game.
I'm debating throwing more money at artifact but the constructed meta being so dependent on such expensive cards and being seemingly so limited is making me feel not great about that.
Drafting is weird since it seems like whatever I'm drafting against is murdering my hopes of getting the colors I try to pick most times. I should watch some successful drafters do their picks I guess. The whole "only get one hero each round" thing is rough.
Let's not compare the price of this game to Hearthstone or Magic, please.
I spent 60 dollars on Hearthstone packs a few expansions ago and I didn't even get all the cards for a full deck. Good luck finding a Magic deck that's worth less than 60 dollars right now.
I spent 100 dollars on Magic Arena in beta and a lot of my cards have since rotated out.
Artifact is cheaper than both of those games. And don't tell me to spend my time grinding; I spend money in these games because I don't HAVE the time to grind anymore. Not all of us are students with infinite time. My time is valuable.
I'm not saying this is a perfect business model, or anything. But it's a step in the right direction and it's way better than other things on the market. Except for Eternal, I actually think that game is really generous for a free-to-play, but they are struggling right now. If you're a free-to-play model, you almost have to be greedy.
They reset it when it went into open beta and you got all your gems back though, so you didn't lose any money. They haven't had a rotation since the beta opened up for the general public.
I feel like MTGA is easily the most generous out of those three games with its f2p monetization, like by a long shot.
The rate at which you build gold is very fast (if you win 5 times per day and the only thing you do is the daily quest plus those first 5 wins) you get a draft every ~3-4 days, and since you get to keep the cards it's less expensive to buy with real money than an artifact keeper draft.
Plus the one real issue they have right now, which is the vault, is being changed sometime in the future with what they claim is a system which will just straight up not give you cards you already own (except perhaps in edge case circumstances, etc)
Let's not compare the price of this game to Hearthstone or Magic, please.
I spent 60 dollars on Hearthstone packs a few expansions ago and I didn't even get all the cards for a full deck. Good luck finding a Magic deck that's worth less than 60 dollars right now.
I spent 100 dollars on Magic Arena in beta and a lot of my cards have since rotated out.
Artifact is cheaper than both of those games. And don't tell me to spend my time grinding; I spend money in these games because I don't HAVE the time to grind anymore. Not all of us are students with infinite time. My time is valuable.
I'm not saying this is a perfect business model, or anything. But it's a step in the right direction and it's way better than other things on the market. Except for Eternal, I actually think that game is really generous for a free-to-play, but they are struggling right now. If you're a free-to-play model, you almost have to be greedy.
They reset it when it went into open beta and you got all your gems back though, so you didn't lose any money. They haven't had a rotation since the beta opened up for the general public.
Oh my bad, I thought the rotation was happening soon. I'll edit my post.
I feel like MTGA is easily the most generous out of those three games with its f2p monetization, like by a long shot.
The rate at which you build gold is very fast (if you win 5 times per day and the only thing you do is the daily quest plus those first 5 wins) you get a draft every ~3-4 days, and since you get to keep the cards it's less expensive to buy with real money than an artifact keeper draft.
Plus the one real issue they have right now, which is the vault, is being changed sometime in the future with what they claim is a system which will just straight up not give you cards you already own (except perhaps in edge case circumstances, etc)
This doesn't really address my point though, which is that my time is valuable. Of the card games out there, Artifact is the cheapest game where I can just straight up BUY a deck with money. No need to open packs, no need to grind for an alternate currency.
If you have an issue, then your issue is with the card game business model in general, it's not with Artifact.
Artifact has a very low buy in right now compared to other card games. Most CCGs/TCGs are inexpensive when there haven't been any expansion sets. It's still pretty awful though. That decks in other games can cost hundreds to build doesn't mean that costing 70$ is somehow a fair price. Especially when it's entirely digital and the notion of "rarity" is entirely artificial.
Still a fun game with potential, cost just isn't something card games by big companies have ever shown restraint with. It's the ultimate loot boxes model.
I think it would be cool if the rarity was cosmetic, the cards could have several different styles of art of animation since they're digital.
They reset it when it went into open beta and you got all your gems back though, so you didn't lose any money. They haven't had a rotation since the beta opened up for the general public.
And Magic: Arena also has 5 sets available where this is Artifact's first, so even there it's not a direct comparison.
Arena feels way cheaper to get into than Artifact.
XBL: Bizazedo
PSN: Bizazedo
CFN: Bizazedo (I don't think I suck, add me).
Artifact is cheap because there aren't many cards in the set. Like, the price of Artifact and the price of a given Standard Magic expansion are both set in stone when they are created and priced; the EV of cracking packs will be slightly below the bulk pack price
They reset it when it went into open beta and you got all your gems back though, so you didn't lose any money. They haven't had a rotation since the beta opened up for the general public.
And Magic: Arena also has 5 sets available where this is Artifact's first, so even there it's not a direct comparison.
Arena feels way cheaper to get into than Artifact.
And I'm telling you as someone who is arguably a card game whale and keeps track of how much money I spend in card games, this is objectively not true.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills over here. MTGA's business model is not cheaper than Artifact.
Anyway, every card game has some advantage in its pricing structure somewhere. MTGArena is generous F2P. Magic and Magic online are cheap as hell to play actually fun jank. Artifact is cheap, relatively, to buy tier decks or the whole package (though a tier deck on Modo and in Artifact probably aren't too far apart)
MTGA I got a tier 1 competitive deck with $20 and a couple weeks of casual play. I mostly drafted, where I didn't quite go infinite but routinely got enough draft rewards to keep playing without spending more. Also casual play was exactly that, normal play where I paired off against other, similar strength, decks. MTGA is also routinely spinning different formats of play events through so that players try different deck types with the cards they have available, like the recent cascade event.
MTGA is an insanely good value of fun to low cost, to the point that I think they might need to tune back the rewards some.
They reset it when it went into open beta and you got all your gems back though, so you didn't lose any money. They haven't had a rotation since the beta opened up for the general public.
And Magic: Arena also has 5 sets available where this is Artifact's first, so even there it's not a direct comparison.
Arena feels way cheaper to get into than Artifact.
And I'm telling you as someone who is arguably a card game whale and keeps track of how much money I spend in card games, this is objectively not true.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills over here. MTGA's business model is not cheaper than Artifact.
You're comparing apples to oranges here, though. Some people don't want to buy the full set of all cards, they want 1-2 decks, or value money over time, and MTGArena comes out ahead on that front.
They reset it when it went into open beta and you got all your gems back though, so you didn't lose any money. They haven't had a rotation since the beta opened up for the general public.
And Magic: Arena also has 5 sets available where this is Artifact's first, so even there it's not a direct comparison.
Arena feels way cheaper to get into than Artifact.
And I'm telling you as someone who is arguably a card game whale and keeps track of how much money I spend in card games, this is objectively not true.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills over here. MTGA's business model is not cheaper than Artifact.
You're comparing apples to oranges here, though. Some people don't want to buy the full set of all cards, they want 1-2 decks, or value money over time, and MTGArena comes out ahead on that front.
Well, yes. I'm telling you I play all card games the same way: I don't grind, I pay cash for cards. And I am telling you, as someone who pays money for cards, Artifact is cheap as hell compared to basically any other game on the market.
And you all responded by saying that MTGA is cheap because you grinded for cards over the course of a couple weeks. We're talking past each other.
What I'm saying is if you've ever actually pulled out your credit card to buy cards in a free-to-play card game, Artifact is the game you should be playing. If you're expecting to trade time for value, this is not the game for you.
They reset it when it went into open beta and you got all your gems back though, so you didn't lose any money. They haven't had a rotation since the beta opened up for the general public.
And Magic: Arena also has 5 sets available where this is Artifact's first, so even there it's not a direct comparison.
Arena feels way cheaper to get into than Artifact.
And I'm telling you as someone who is arguably a card game whale and keeps track of how much money I spend in card games, this is objectively not true.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills over here. MTGA's business model is not cheaper than Artifact.
You're comparing apples to oranges here, though. Some people don't want to buy the full set of all cards, they want 1-2 decks, or value money over time, and MTGArena comes out ahead on that front.
If the argument is, "artifact is a better return if you want to spend money rather than enjoying playing in formats that reward incomplete sets" then that's true.
MTGA has way more formats and play reward systems for players with incomplete sets or lower skill levels than Artifact does. MTGA assumes you're going to buy some cards then play other folks like you to improve your collection.
Artifact assumes you want to buy straight into the top and only play top tier decks.
Pretty much all the business models have intentional good and bad sides (and all of them are pretty exploitative garbage aimed at people with gambling compulsion issues).
I just find continual frustration with the angle where Artifact requiring the money makes it satan compared to the f2p models. Because it's rooted in this idea that people's time has zero value and how much people place enjoyment of something on progress rather than fun in the moment.
It's a fucking shit show that it costs £30 for a deck in any card game but Artifact at least is up front and doesn't rope along dailies and other garbage.
EDIT: Also I super agree on the formats comment. Artifact really needs to push Pauper/etc. as part of the game that doesn't require you getting friends round.
They reset it when it went into open beta and you got all your gems back though, so you didn't lose any money. They haven't had a rotation since the beta opened up for the general public.
And Magic: Arena also has 5 sets available where this is Artifact's first, so even there it's not a direct comparison.
Arena feels way cheaper to get into than Artifact.
And I'm telling you as someone who is arguably a card game whale and keeps track of how much money I spend in card games, this is objectively not true.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills over here. MTGA's business model is not cheaper than Artifact.
You're comparing apples to oranges here, though. Some people don't want to buy the full set of all cards, they want 1-2 decks, or value money over time, and MTGArena comes out ahead on that front.
Well, yes. I'm telling you I play all card games the same way: I don't grind, I pay cash for cards. And I am telling you, as someone who pays money for cards, Artifact is cheap as hell compared to basically any other game on the market.
And you all responded by saying that MTGA is cheap because you grinded for cards over the course of a couple weeks. We're talking past each other.
What I'm saying is if you've ever actually pulled out your credit card to buy cards in a free-to-play card game, Artifact is the game you should be playing. If you're expecting to trade time for value, this is not the game for you.
I like opening packs and I'm willing to spend some money to do so. I have in fact spent a fair amount of money in mtga. I don't usually pay for singles, which is a big reason I never got into competitive constructed magic, partly because it seems weird (even though it is not) but mostly because it's more fun to crack packs open to me than it is to get a specific card in exchange for money.
You can't trade cards for cards, which I would be into, in any of the games, which is a shame but hey. Currently of the three I vastly prefer mtga as the game I play casually and sometimes spring dollars for.
Also I have a HUGE problem with artifact's rng, so while that's not related to pricing, saying "if you pay for cards you should be playing X game" is contingent upon them all being equally fun to play
And while artifact is pretty cool, magic is better imo.
They reset it when it went into open beta and you got all your gems back though, so you didn't lose any money. They haven't had a rotation since the beta opened up for the general public.
And Magic: Arena also has 5 sets available where this is Artifact's first, so even there it's not a direct comparison.
Arena feels way cheaper to get into than Artifact.
And I'm telling you as someone who is arguably a card game whale and keeps track of how much money I spend in card games, this is objectively not true.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills over here. MTGA's business model is not cheaper than Artifact.
You're comparing apples to oranges here, though. Some people don't want to buy the full set of all cards, they want 1-2 decks, or value money over time, and MTGArena comes out ahead on that front.
Well, yes. I'm telling you I play all card games the same way: I don't grind, I pay cash for cards. And I am telling you, as someone who pays money for cards, Artifact is cheap as hell compared to basically any other game on the market.
And you all responded by saying that MTGA is cheap because you grinded for cards over the course of a couple weeks. We're talking past each other.
What I'm saying is if you've ever actually pulled out your credit card to buy cards in a free-to-play card game, Artifact is the game you should be playing. If you're expecting to trade time for value, this is not the game for you.
We're not talking past each other, you're just condescendingly refusing to read to the point you can't even tell whether you're responding to me or darkewolfe. I understand what you're saying and your response is just to post the same thing more angrily, with some bonus points for trying to imply we're too poor or cheap for your posts to be relevant.
But to reiterate yeah comparatively it's cheap to get the cards you want in artifact because of the singles market but that's not necessarily what I want to spend my money on
They reset it when it went into open beta and you got all your gems back though, so you didn't lose any money. They haven't had a rotation since the beta opened up for the general public.
And Magic: Arena also has 5 sets available where this is Artifact's first, so even there it's not a direct comparison.
Arena feels way cheaper to get into than Artifact.
And I'm telling you as someone who is arguably a card game whale and keeps track of how much money I spend in card games, this is objectively not true.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills over here. MTGA's business model is not cheaper than Artifact.
You're comparing apples to oranges here, though. Some people don't want to buy the full set of all cards, they want 1-2 decks, or value money over time, and MTGArena comes out ahead on that front.
Well, yes. I'm telling you I play all card games the same way: I don't grind, I pay cash for cards. And I am telling you, as someone who pays money for cards, Artifact is cheap as hell compared to basically any other game on the market.
And you all responded by saying that MTGA is cheap because you grinded for cards over the course of a couple weeks. We're talking past each other.
What I'm saying is if you've ever actually pulled out your credit card to buy cards in a free-to-play card game, Artifact is the game you should be playing. If you're expecting to trade time for value, this is not the game for you.
We're not talking past each other, you're just condescendingly refusing to read to the point you can't even tell whether you're responding to me or darkewolfe. I understand what you're saying and your response is just to post the same thing more angrily, with some bonus points for trying to imply we're too poor or cheap for your posts to be relevant.
Do you think Darkewolfe and you are making different points? Because, to me, you're both saying that grinding for cards makes MTGA more valuable to you. And that's why we're talking past each other.
I usually only buy 1-2 decks as well, I don't buy the full set.
I'm also not calling you guys cheap, but you can think that if you want.
Posts
Bad news, they will consistently make whatever you came up with look like trash. As fun as the game is, balanced around construction it is not. Any hero with less than 9hp will get dumpstered without a lucky opening hand and some fortune creep spawns.
There just aren't any consistent ways to punish axe/drow cheating death decks right now. Even black loaded with hero killers gets readily smashed in constructed. Maybe someday with some card buffs or more variety and interaction but not right now.
Edit: I really think heroes should all be uncommon/rare. Let the variety be available to everyone, make the interesting cards super rare. Axe isn't interesting, he's just broken.
But.
Cheating Death is easily in the top three of the worst design decisions in card gaming history.
Like, in Magic terms it'd be like if mono-red aggro had Spell Pierce and Blossoming Defense
I'll go to bat for my lady Kanna in that she mostly exists to power a specific deck archetype and doesn't do much outside of that. She's got a weirdly tanky body and her signature is useful but not explosive.
Drow I think is fine but mostly because like, right now the meta is 'a hero better have 7 health at least or it's just dead meat'. She's much more valuable/strong on the basis of her exceptional passive and signatures than her body.
I'm honestly pretty confused why so many constructed players brought Red/Black decks to this WePlay tournament. It's not good against U/G storm, I don't know why they thought it was.
U/G Storm: Ramp using Aghanim's Sanctum + Stars Align in a single lane and drop an early Incarnation of Selemene. Draw through the rest of your deck, since most of your deck is cantrips and draw spells. Play an Emissary or Kanna spell and win the lane at 80. Nuke other lanes with Annihilation.
B/R Aggro: Try to overpower the enemy with Axe, Legion/Bristle, Phantom Assassin, and other red/black goodstuff. This deck is trying to beat U/G Storm before Incarnation comes online, but from what I've seen, it doesn't even do that very well.
B/R Goldmine: I LOVE GOOOLD! Lots of hero kill spells and gold generation effects to play early Horn of the Alphas and win off that. Sometimes uses Sorla for cheese plays.
U/G Ramp Go-Wide: Cuts the Incarnation game plan and tries to ramp fast into an Emissary or a lane full of Kanna dogs. Seems slightly weaker than the storm deck, but still good.
R/G Ramp: Uses the strong heroes of red and the strong finishers of green to try to ramp to 8 mana fast so it can Time of Triumph or Emissary faster than the opponent.
Those seem like the major players, but the big metagame fight right now is between the U/G Storm deck and...everything else. The Black/Red deck SHOULD be able to kill U/G before it can do anything, but I think people need to have more improvement destruction to really make the deck hurt. The current iterations of B/R just aren't fast enough, they might need to include Sorla Khan to try to rush the enemy down.
Edit: For what it's worth, I think Cheating Death is incredibly strong against Incarnation decks. Decks that play green and aren't playing Incarnation NEED 3 of this card and they need to drop it in the lane they're WINNING so they don't get annihilated out of the lane. These are the only times I've seen U/G Storm struggle, when they can't reliably wipe a board.
All this time we thought we were playing Artifact we were really playing Counterstrike.
Switch: US 1651-2551-4335 JP 6310-4664-2624
MH3U Monster Cheat Sheet / MH3U Veggie Elder Ticket Guide
this game feels like medieval jousting
whoever has the most expensive lance wins
Switch: US 1651-2551-4335 JP 6310-4664-2624
MH3U Monster Cheat Sheet / MH3U Veggie Elder Ticket Guide
Goal is to finish the tournament by the end of the week so we can start up another on the weekend. Try to work out the best time for matches with your opponent!
Any ideas for tournament format for next week? We could do Pauper or Penny Dreadful, I think that'd be fun! For those that don't know, pauper = commons only, penny dreadful = any rarity is allowed, but only allowed to use cards that have been under 10 cents (or an arbitrary number that we pick, 10 cents seems about right) for the entirety of the set.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
This is super snide when MTG costs more than Artifact and Hearthstone is both a capital B Bad game in addition to still costing heaps of either time or cash.
I spent 60 dollars on Hearthstone packs a few expansions ago and I didn't even get all the cards for a full deck. Good luck finding a Magic deck that's worth less than 60 dollars right now.
I spent 100 dollars on Magic Arena in beta and a lot of my cards have since rotated out. in order to afford a constructed deck.
Artifact is cheaper than both of those games. And don't tell me to spend my time grinding; I spend money in these games because I don't HAVE the time to grind anymore. Not all of us are students with infinite time. My time is valuable.
I'm not saying this is a perfect business model, or anything. But it's a step in the right direction and it's way better than other things on the market. Except for Eternal, I actually think that game is really generous for a free-to-play, but they are struggling right now. If you're a free-to-play model, you almost have to be greedy.
MTG: Arena is debatably cheaper than artifact. I dunno about Hearthstone being a bad game.
I'm debating throwing more money at artifact but the constructed meta being so dependent on such expensive cards and being seemingly so limited is making me feel not great about that.
Drafting is weird since it seems like whatever I'm drafting against is murdering my hopes of getting the colors I try to pick most times. I should watch some successful drafters do their picks I guess. The whole "only get one hero each round" thing is rough.
They reset it when it went into open beta and you got all your gems back though, so you didn't lose any money. They haven't had a rotation since the beta opened up for the general public.
The rate at which you build gold is very fast (if you win 5 times per day and the only thing you do is the daily quest plus those first 5 wins) you get a draft every ~3-4 days, and since you get to keep the cards it's less expensive to buy with real money than an artifact keeper draft.
Plus the one real issue they have right now, which is the vault, is being changed sometime in the future with what they claim is a system which will just straight up not give you cards you already own (except perhaps in edge case circumstances, etc)
Oh my bad, I thought the rotation was happening soon. I'll edit my post.
This doesn't really address my point though, which is that my time is valuable. Of the card games out there, Artifact is the cheapest game where I can just straight up BUY a deck with money. No need to open packs, no need to grind for an alternate currency.
If you have an issue, then your issue is with the card game business model in general, it's not with Artifact.
Still a fun game with potential, cost just isn't something card games by big companies have ever shown restraint with. It's the ultimate loot boxes model.
I think it would be cool if the rarity was cosmetic, the cards could have several different styles of art of animation since they're digital.
Arena feels way cheaper to get into than Artifact.
PSN: Bizazedo
CFN: Bizazedo (I don't think I suck, add me).
And I'm telling you as someone who is arguably a card game whale and keeps track of how much money I spend in card games, this is objectively not true.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills over here. MTGA's business model is not cheaper than Artifact.
MTGA is an insanely good value of fun to low cost, to the point that I think they might need to tune back the rewards some.
You're comparing apples to oranges here, though. Some people don't want to buy the full set of all cards, they want 1-2 decks, or value money over time, and MTGArena comes out ahead on that front.
Well, yes. I'm telling you I play all card games the same way: I don't grind, I pay cash for cards. And I am telling you, as someone who pays money for cards, Artifact is cheap as hell compared to basically any other game on the market.
And you all responded by saying that MTGA is cheap because you grinded for cards over the course of a couple weeks. We're talking past each other.
What I'm saying is if you've ever actually pulled out your credit card to buy cards in a free-to-play card game, Artifact is the game you should be playing. If you're expecting to trade time for value, this is not the game for you.
If the argument is, "artifact is a better return if you want to spend money rather than enjoying playing in formats that reward incomplete sets" then that's true.
MTGA has way more formats and play reward systems for players with incomplete sets or lower skill levels than Artifact does. MTGA assumes you're going to buy some cards then play other folks like you to improve your collection.
Artifact assumes you want to buy straight into the top and only play top tier decks.
I just find continual frustration with the angle where Artifact requiring the money makes it satan compared to the f2p models. Because it's rooted in this idea that people's time has zero value and how much people place enjoyment of something on progress rather than fun in the moment.
It's a fucking shit show that it costs £30 for a deck in any card game but Artifact at least is up front and doesn't rope along dailies and other garbage.
EDIT: Also I super agree on the formats comment. Artifact really needs to push Pauper/etc. as part of the game that doesn't require you getting friends round.
I like opening packs and I'm willing to spend some money to do so. I have in fact spent a fair amount of money in mtga. I don't usually pay for singles, which is a big reason I never got into competitive constructed magic, partly because it seems weird (even though it is not) but mostly because it's more fun to crack packs open to me than it is to get a specific card in exchange for money.
You can't trade cards for cards, which I would be into, in any of the games, which is a shame but hey. Currently of the three I vastly prefer mtga as the game I play casually and sometimes spring dollars for.
Also I have a HUGE problem with artifact's rng, so while that's not related to pricing, saying "if you pay for cards you should be playing X game" is contingent upon them all being equally fun to play
And while artifact is pretty cool, magic is better imo.
We're not talking past each other, you're just condescendingly refusing to read to the point you can't even tell whether you're responding to me or darkewolfe. I understand what you're saying and your response is just to post the same thing more angrily, with some bonus points for trying to imply we're too poor or cheap for your posts to be relevant.
Do you think Darkewolfe and you are making different points? Because, to me, you're both saying that grinding for cards makes MTGA more valuable to you. And that's why we're talking past each other.
I usually only buy 1-2 decks as well, I don't buy the full set.
I'm also not calling you guys cheap, but you can think that if you want.