Valve continues to soldier on with its comeback plan for Artifact through a Beta 2.0. In the latest blog post on the Artifact website, the developers revealed that the whole team working on the game believes there is something special about it. They didn’t manage to capture it the first time around. However, they are pushing themselves and taking feedback from the community to ensure they get it right this time.
Dealing everyone an equal hand
Last week, the team shared their plans and intentions for the Artifact Beta 2.0. This new direction will see the old version of the game cease to exist. Understandably, founding players and those who invested a lot of time and money into the original version of the game don’t love this idea.
However, one of the key things Valve wants to remove from Artifact is players purchasing their way to powerful decks. That only serves to give a bad hand to anyone trying to keep costs down. The developers also don’t want new players to always feel like they’re miles behind those who have been playing for longer – at least, not in terms of resources available to them in-game.
They don’t want any sad faces like our blue buddy over there.
The Artifact team hasn’t revealed how they intend to solve this issue. They do, though, say they have seen some good ideas floating around that work well with Valve’s existing plans. This tells us two things. Firstly, the team is taking community feedback seriously. Secondly, they are committed to giving their founding players some ‘incredibly cool and special things’.
Artifact Beta 2.0 card updates
One of the other big revelations from last week was that the Artifact team was working on the gameplay for Beta 2.0 before anything else. This week, the team has taken that a step further by providing players with an email address to send ideas to.
Focusing on gameplay first means the Artifact team is balancing the cards before anything else. It even comes before artwork, apparently (which explains the badly drawn feature image up top). Valve says that all cards have been dialed back to about 60% of their power in the original game. The team has also provided an early look at the changes to some cards.
Mirana
Mirana gets her Leap ability from Dota 2, which she can use offensively or defensively. You can select your landing spot, so it can be used to escape danger or buff a specific target and go on the attack. Meanwhile, Sacred Arrow has its own card, which provides Mirana with influence across the lanes. However, the team does mention Sacred Arrow might be a bit too powerful right now.
Wraith King
Another hero sporting a new look is Wraith King. While his stats don’t make him look like the tankiest hero, his reactive Reincarnation ability effectively doubles his health while also hindering enemies. Wraith King’s Hellfire blast makes an appearance in its own card and works very similarly to its Dota 2 counterpart – stun and deal ticks of damage over time.
You can check out a few more Artifact card updates in the team’s blog post. Some of them don’t sound real, but maybe that’s just because of the artwork? We’ll find out in time.
