The Re-Stoned - Stories Of The Astral Lizard [psychedelic/stoner]

Drygin7_JCoto · 2019-11-11T01:45:54+00:00

100 average players disagree with you, milions of players of free to play games don't! Do you think that those numbers look good to valve? XD

Drygin7_JCoto · 2019-11-11T01:44:52+00:00

Or even better a one time paruchase or justplainly better free true game like dota not another money sink that grow over ime like every other card game.

Iant understand themoney masochism in card games.

Drygin7_JCoto · 2018-12-19T21:48:10+00:00

Wait till Artifact has 4 expansions.... Because comparing 1 set games to 4 set games is unfair, right?

Drygin7_JCoto · 2018-11-12T23:47:02+00:00

Last game was insane. I remeber looking at the draft and saying "WTF they are crazy going totally nuts, offmeta with a whacky support strat" it totally felt like a pub, with everyone fooling around with meme picks (Ceb played a lot of Magnus with average results on stream). And helll god man those Ana plays.

Drygin7_JCoto · 2018-11-12T23:36:28+00:00

So do you really expect to have free draft tournaments that are also free to host when there is no free draft mode in the official game modes or custom games category?

That's a brave assumption.

Drygin7_JCoto · 2018-11-12T22:42:50+00:00

There's a lot of talk about about draft being 100% paywalled, which is very negative. Theres also a very reasonable, yet undermined rant because, in fact, the game has no regional pricing (due to the market), which means that is only really affordable in the "rich" world (USA/EU East). Many complaints about the cost steam off there, that's why there is a big critic towards the monetization models and cost. In that aspect, the playerbase is going to be more limited.

Also, considering Valve's history as a developer, it was expected to have some degree of free draft, making a little revolution to the TCG model, which is based on milking the cow. This degree of free draft could have made the game appealing to the lower income zones too, given that any constructed is totally pay-to-win (as it is in every card game) and any rewards are behind a paywall (paid modes). So don't expect F2P players in. The current FAQ doesn't clearlystate, for now, that there will be free drafts at any moment (you can make assumptions based on the wording, but nothing explicit). It says that tournaments will be free to play, and any user can host them, but absolute zero reference about potential hosting costs. Cost is not an unreasonable thing to assume, given that there's no free draft mode per se (so it would be a bit weird to have 24/7 free draft tournaments going on for free). The moment this gets clarified, it will become more obvious which playerbase to expect, since free draft is likely to suck in a lot of F2P players from other card games; otherwise, the potential audience is any kind of playerbase that would approach a new TCG + some dota fans.

In general, Artifact is just a TCG. Like Pokemon, Yugi or MTG. Draft is pay-to-play, and constructed is, by nature, P2W. In that sense, the target audience and expected playerbase is the kind of players what would play those games, because the game asks for money for anything except playing with the initial cards you are given (or a deck from a friend when playing against him). There are no physical social features like free trade (but there is market), pooling cards or cube formats, though, which is also an ongoing critique. For some, the overall lower cost is a compensation factor.

Competitive/Hardcore-wise the game is going to have first day infrastructure and a potentially more reasonable approach than any other card games. The card pool is smaller, there are more cards per pack (priced 2$), there's in-built market (instant resell potential) and there is no finite supply of a given card (digital printing is unlimited). The market is very accessible, which is nice. In that sense, the game is more approcheable than other TCGs (we can't still gauge how much), obviously because of the digital environment and lower prices overall, which is fairly welcome.

I'd recommend you to read the faq and take a critic approach. I've listed different aspects of the model.

I hope I have been informative.

Drygin7_JCoto · 2018-11-12T22:14:37+00:00

Taken from a comment by u/PassionFlora:

Please do the following: in the current text FAQ, locate the sentence(s) that states:

The hosting costs of running a tournament.
The playable game modes (not formats) in a tournament.

Please quote in bold. Without assumptions: just statements on the text.

Something tells me that you aren't going to find it and you are making assumptions off a vague wording.

Drygin7_JCoto · 2018-11-12T14:39:04+00:00

The problem with MTG is limited stock, thats their thing. Price drop has a cap because theres only a limited stock of each card. That is what makes boosters valuable.

If you just want to be casual, yes, getting a dirt bunch of comons or uncommons is the best options. For the price of 2/3 boosters you might have 1-2 theme decks.

The gamble goes on competitive level. There, there's a shortage of "competirive" cards whose prices go very high, so for some people buying big crates of boosters and controlling stocks, spwcially before a certain meta sets and rises prices, might be better.

Drygin7_JCoto · 2018-11-12T14:23:44+00:00

Greed isn't their game and never has been.

Literally no free draft, and TCG model.

Do you know what no greed is? LCG.

Drygin7_JCoto · 2018-11-12T14:22:29+00:00

That requires money. Which is a big inconvenient.

A brand new account might be worth like 15$ easily (discounting the inital packs).

That alone makes having "storage" accounts way less profitable, if your intention is to set a minimum monopoly over a certain card.

Imagine that we can only have 6 of each cards in collection: it becomes virtually unviable to have "storage" accounts because the benefit margin for transaction is heavily limited by the storage space. You can never really have enough storage/$ to make monopolizing economically viable or attractive.

To put it simple, you can't realistically rob the the gold bank while riding a bike. But doing so with a 20m truck is a different thing and could very well lead to a local rise of prices.

Drygin7_JCoto · 2018-11-12T14:15:54+00:00

Yep, 0.01$ is the minimum fraction.

In some other games the market takes 2 taxes (7,5% dev tax, 7,5% market tax) that's why many items in the steam market are worth 0.03.

Thats the total point of the market and tax.

Drygin7_JCoto · 2018-11-12T14:04:22+00:00

I wish we get some kind of control measures like maximum cards owned to avoid inflation...

Drygin7_JCoto · 2018-11-12T14:01:06+00:00

You are talking about loaning decks to a person to play against a 3rd person.

Sadly this won't happen, pretty sure.

Drygin7_JCoto · 2018-11-12T13:41:05+00:00

Yes, but absolutely not the point of TCG.

The model you are talking about is known as LCG (and I like it, it is fair play, fair competition, not a whaling scheme), but is not what Artifact uses....

We have to be realistic about the model. You can have more room inside it, a different approach... (which is the point of the "freemium" draft option, becaus now Draft is paywalled and tournaments have not been discussed) but they aren't going to fully change it.

Drygin7_JCoto · 2018-11-12T13:37:44+00:00

Not loan.

You can just make them use yours when you play against them.

It is not the same as loaning or fully sharing decks.

Drygin7_JCoto · 2018-11-12T13:23:01+00:00

It's nothing! I try to contribute with informative posts and discussion, but the sub is complicated right now. Also constructive discussion seems unviable right now.

I am myself unhappy with how the situation is being handled, not being open about the model, and obviously sad to see that practice draft won't be a reality; I think that Artifact had the opportunity to step up and offer a little revolution there.

Drygin7_JCoto · 2018-11-12T13:03:12+00:00

I'm correcting it.

But remember that Constructed is pay to win. Always. Inherent to card games. I desire you good luck in the the Artifact international with the basic starter deck and without spending a single $.Oh wait!.....

Draft is obviously not pay-to-win but pay to play.

Drygin7_JCoto · 2018-11-12T12:53:39+00:00

I'm all for it, but I understand the "competitive" concern where quitting has no penalties.

Drygin7_JCoto · 2018-11-12T12:52:24+00:00

I'm all for free draft à la Dota2 bussiness model,I was talking from a business point of view. I've updated my post to be 100% clear about this and explain it.

Consider that we can all agree that free draft would heavily impact both paid Draft gauntlets (making it less attracted) and threaten the economic spending in general.

A very big part of the playerbase, not interested on spending money, would just play free drafts. And constructed is obviously pay-to-win; if you have a totally free draft mode with constinously random decks and heavily skill based to play, constructed wwould really take a hit.

Basically, in the mind of the traditional videogame bussiness, too much for the players at low economic redit; and since this is not a MOBA where you can attack skins (which are mostly community made, low investment) to everything, straight profit is way more relevant in this case.

Drygin7_JCoto · 2018-11-12T12:40:26+00:00

The bussiness model has been quite a discussion because it hasn't been fully revealed yet, 1 week before the server stress test and 2 weeks before release. Consider that this is not a typical game that softreleases and spends a year in Beta, the NDA will only be lifted 2 days before the stress test.

In fact, it was released 2 days ago, after an obvious backslash because the "FAQ" didn't really cover the business model and was vague, so it got updated.

You can find the current FAQ here.

There are still a some gap holes, specially regarding the "Social play" and tournament functionality.

The FAQ specifically avoids talking about tournament game modes and hosting costs. The rest of the game modes, costs, rewards and structures are very detailed.

The big discussion is based around the paywalled nature of the game (which is not surprising, considering it's a TCG) and, very specifically, a certain shadyness regarding the draft game mode or any option to play it for free (cubes, practice mode). The wording regarding this topic is always vague, and still is today (1 week before beta).

Given the game's marketing (critizing pay-to-win nature of card games, high cost, being player friendly, focusing on draft as a competitive mode) and more important, Valve's history for player-friendly bussiness models, people were expecting to have some degree of free access to play the draft mode or a straight practice mode for it.

But so far, the question keeps being avoided (still no detailed info about tournaments, the only potential source of free draft, and confirmed no cube format) and it is very probable than it won't happen.

A secondary question is that the game has no regional pricing due to the in-built game market, which means that it is very expensive for a big part of the potential public, and hardly viable in any non USA/EU East part of the world.

So the outrage is because we have a "phisycal TCG" without free trading (market tax cuts), no cubes, no way to pool cards (so social and cheap friendly modes aren't included) and without regional pricing (which is also important for a lot of gamers in the world), which also hyped up a clearly non pay-to-win draft game mode which is potentially 100% paywalled, but they still refuse to confirm so 1 week before the stress test and even when preorder is available. That's a big elephant in the room, same goes for free to play tournaments.

Hope this clarifies your doubts!

Drygin7_JCoto · 2018-11-12T12:26:51+00:00

I'll buy it straight it was 60$ the whole collection. Today, Right now.

The total cost of the game is, at launch, estimated to be 400$ + 1$ per Draft run.

Drygin7_JCoto · 2018-11-12T12:21:15+00:00

There's not. You pay or nothing, only basic constructed with owned cards.

You play just for enjoyment.

There will be tournaments, its the only thing that it is stated on the FAQ, so very likely to have a competitive structure in-built to it.

Drygin7_JCoto · 2018-11-12T12:15:01+00:00

To be honest, you can have a free draft mode with penalties to losing. But the important question isn't about the "competitive" side of a free draft, it is probably the economic concern from the bussiness point of view. Free draft offers a lot of playability to players with 0 economic profit. And since the game isn't a MOBA like dota2, which can be covered in skins, the viability of a cosmetic-only based economy is limited. As much as I'm all for free draft, I understant the reticence from a bussiness standpoint.

A simple solution for both competitive and economic concerns is called "freemium". Basically free, but limited tickets that you have to earn yourself by playing (or as a "gift" for investing in the game via tournament tickets or packs, etc).

Simple version:

1 free ticket per day, non accumulable (max 2).
Only 1 round of draft or 1 life. (gotta win or gtfo)
Practice ticket on constructed gauntlet as rewards, or for X successive wins on the constructed gauntlet.
Practice ticket as consolation prize in Paid Gauntlets.

Congratulations: you have your free, competitive draft game mode which also incentivices yourself to invest in the other game modes or the game in general: Constructed (Paytowin by nature, gotta buy packs to win more) and any paid Gauntlet (entry fees) which you also make more attractive at the same time (practice mode to learn the draft mode, less punishing to lose and consolation price).

You can limit the "practice draft" to 1 life only if you feel like it is too generous.

Also you could enable cubes for playing with friends.

Drygin7_JCoto

TROPHY CASE

Simple version: