EricTams

We’ve sent out the first round of invites! All invited players should immediately see Artifact Beta 2.0 on their accounts. We will keep you updated on additional invites (no timeline yet!), and will continue to work to support more people.

Our localization team is hard at work and non-English languages will become available over the course of the Beta.

Our first two areas of focus are Usability and Bugs. Feedback on other topics is welcome, but fixing these types of issues will let us grow the beta more quickly. There is an in-game tool to report any issues, and you can use the feedback email for anything that requires a discussion.

Have Fun!

We are happy to announce that we are moving to the next phase of the Beta!

The Beta for the original game started too late and was too short. We’ve decided to approach things a bit differently this time around by gradually inviting people to join us while we are still “Under Construction”.

Here’s the updated road-map:

1. Test boring stuff
   
2. Trickle out invites, starting with players of the original release <- We are here
   
3. Work on the Beta, eventually transitioning to an open beta
   
4. Leave Beta

We will be sending an email to all players with the original game on their Steam Account (it doesn’t need to be installed). Emails will appear by NEXT WEEK. Follow the instructions in the email to sign up for the Beta.

We will use a lottery system to invite people who ... Read more

Welcome back to another round of shop talk! After our last blog post we received a lot of email which made it clear that people still had questions about the specific functioning of the new shop. A lack of clarity in our previous discussion also caused some confusion. Let's start by trying to clear up some misconceptions, then we'll give some more details on the new shop's current implementation, and finally show some updated cards.

Clarifying The UI Our tasteful placeholder art muddied the waters a bit. The title "Secret Shop" in the new shop interface implied that it was somehow separate from the old shop in Artifact or a replacement for the Secret Shop slot, when really it is just a reimagining of the old shop.

People also found the "Invest" option confusing, because it created the expectation of giving money in the future, rather than right a... Read more

Before we get into the blog, we wanted to share the results of last week’s poll. Arc Warden was the front-runner right out of the gate – his lead seemed insurmountable. Slow and steady, though, Nyx started to creep up. Then, right before were going to close the poll, he almost overtook the front spot. In the end it was close enough that we figured why not add both!

Now on to the shop!

Feedback about the shop has been a bit more scattered compared to other parts of the game and the suggestions have ranged far, from tiny tweaks to a huge Dota-scale item shop with item recipes. We've found we also have a mixed mind about the shop. We liked some parts and had other parts we thought needed improvement. There are some side effects of the original implementation that pushed optimal item-deck building into a narrow space.

It's a topic that we thi... Read more

This week we wanted to talk a bit more about the heroes in Artifact. These have been viewed as one of the strengths in the original game, but also as one of the missed opportunities. The most common concerns we hear are about underwhelming signature cards, lack of abilities, or heroes that fictionally don’t fit with their kit.

Our philosophy this time around is different, so we’d like to go over some of the factors we use when evaluating hero designs.

• All heroes should have at least one ability.
  
• You should be excited to draw a hero’s signature cards.
  
• Signature cards should avoid being situational.
  
• Signature cards should generally be at their best when their corresponding hero uses them.
  
• Bonus if a hero has a small self-synergy.
  
• It’s fine to hav...

Read more

This one came in hot so please forgive any gram badder, who would have guessed that doing all this remotely would be so hard? Anyway, let’s get to it!

Initiative
The initiative rules haven't changed much, but the implications are different due to the round being shared across lanes. Players still take turns performing actions until both players pass in a row, and then you go to combat. This sequence continues across rounds, so while you can't control initiative across lanes you can still do so across rounds. There are more rounds per game, although each round is shorter. And "Get Initiative" spells still exist, although they have been renamed to "Quick."

Mana
There is now a single Mana pool that starts at 3 and increases by 1 per turn. Some cards and abilities are crosslane, but in general cards only affect the lane that they... Read more

I have some good news, some more good news, and some bad news. The good news is that after ... Read more

When the members of the team decided to reboot Artifact we all did it for different reasons. Some of us loved the original game and wanted to see it thrive. Some of us liked the freeing sense of creativity you can have with a card game. Some of us love trying to figure out how something is broken and see it fixed. There was one unifying reason for all of us - we thought that there was something special in the game, and with hard work we could bring it to light. Thanks for the feedback over the last two weeks, it's been great seeing how many of you share those feelings.

There is one class of concerns raised that we wanted to address specifically. Those from the founding players of Artifact - the people who played extensively and built a collection in the original game. There are some great ideas floating around for things we coul... Read more

This week we wanted to talk about the Artifact Beta 2.0, what it will include, and when it will happen.

We’ve been focusing on gameplay changes first. The biggest change is zooming out to allow players access to all three lanes at once. The majority of effects still work on individual lanes so they still maintain their identity, but it’s less likely that a player will get shut out in the same way they used to.

We’ve also focused on making the game easier to pick up. We aren’t selling cards, so you won’t face an opponent with a stacked deck. We’ve also added a new draft mode, Hero Draft, that gives you a taste of constructing decks without all the pressure.

The beta will exist as a new executable and access will be granted to individual accounts. When we are ready to send out invites we will let you know the process.
... Read more

First off, we wanted to say thanks for all of your tweets, emails and posts. The continued interest in Artifact has been encouraging, and we sincerely appreciate all of the feedback!

You might notice some changes soon – we are starting tests on our systems and infrastructure. This shouldn’t impact live Artifact but we wanted to give you a heads up.

Expect more news after the launch of Half-Life: Alyx!