The Gamer Group: A Discussion On The Social Aspect of Artifact

Like many, I came to Artifact with some Magic: The Gathering in my sordid nerd-history. As a lad I first watched Magic being played by my older cousins in the mid-to-late 90s. 

 

After some false starts where my garbled understanding of the rules resulted in multiple and humorous misinterpretations of the game, I was playing with a Magic crew of my own by the early 2000s. These six to eight of my closest friends and I spent many happy years in middle and high schools playing cards around the library tables at lunch.

However, as is so often the case, the continental drift of college, career, and life eventually broke our little group apart. To me, the dissolution of my interest in Magic: The Gathering is representative of the dissolution of my childhood crew and all the good times we had together at school, at each others’ houses, and at state and local tournaments. These are the memories that leaped to mind when I heard an interview with Richard Garfield wherein he claimed that the major philosophy behind constructing the Artifact social scene was re-capturing the “Magic around the kitchen table” feel of a physical card game. I was a bit skeptical that a digital card game in 2018 could bring back the glory days of old where we had to walk uphill, both ways, in the snow, to get to the card shop. Regardless I was intrigued.

I'll admit that until it came time to write this article, I hadn't given the whole “physical card game feel” philosophy much thought. I've simply been playing Artifact as the next step on the road to my gaming hermitage-queueing game after game of Expert Phantom Draft. After the slow disbandment of my high school gaming crew, I cycled through some games and settled on DotA where I gained a new crew of friends who I have at this point been gaming with for five or six years. However, even that association has begun to fray as all of us have stepped further into our career and family lives. 

For a guy in my situation who can’t always find compatriots to play with, Artifact presents an opportunity to flex the strategic muscles that sometimes atrophy in DotA where you first have to wrangle the four cantankerous cats that are your randomly assigned teammates before you can execute anything resembling a game plan. What's more, Artifact doesn’t have a mechanical component for my aging gamer’s reflexes to deal with. Artifact has lived up to my hopes and dreams in these regards, but for this past week, I’ve felt that something was missing each time my opponent’s throne fell. For a time, I figured that this was the absence of a progression system or any sort of meaningful stat tracking. Winning a game of Artifact always feels like such a big accomplishment, but it doesn’t always feel fulfilling.

It wasn't until the other night when I happened into the Discord of another gamer enclave I sometimes guest with that I realized that a good portion of what I was missing in Artifact was social. The guys based in this particular Discord haven’t followed the narrative I outlined above. While lots of friend groups tend to drift apart and associate less as the ties that brought them together fray-geography, interest in a game, what have you-these guys have continued to play different games together over the years. When I stepped into their Discord that night, they were just beginning an in-house constructed tournament with five people. I stayed in their discord for a couple of hours as they proceeded to play each other. What I heard in their discourse did indeed bring me right back to the Magic days of old. Most of these guys had not followed Artifact as closely as I did through the beta, and in some places, their understanding of the rules was still lacking. This would be a big disadvantage in the Phantom Draft I was doing at the time, but for these guys goofing around with their friends, it obviously didn't stop them from enjoying the game at least as much as I was that night. Indeed, I’d argue that the shared experience these guys were having at the game was more rewarding than the tickets and packs I was likely to amass on my Gauntlet runs.

You see, Artifact is a game of great depth and as such makes for some exciting moments that are just better when shared with your friends. In one short week of playing, I've had so many games come down to the wire or turn on an amazing play. Winning like that feels wonderful but not as wonderful as sharing it with somebody who understands what you're talking about. Being able to brag about the time that you took a pile of garbage draft deck and piloted it past some morally bereft individual who somehow managed to draft two copies of Axe is almost worth more than actually getting the win. Similarly, the sting of defeat can be much cured by having a sympathetic shoulder on which to cry your frustrations at having mismanaged your resources in leaving his last tower alive at one health when your opponent had lethal the next lane over. Because it has a powerful in-game tournament system and a lack of any sort of ladder system that focuses gameplay in one venue, Artifact is a fertile ground for these types of social interactions, and therefore does indeed capture some of the essence of sitting around with your friends and playing a physical card game.

That being said, what I’ve been missing wasn't just friends. Artifact is a one-player game and there is no way to interact with your opponent in the game client itself, so right now it feels difficult to form any sort of human connection in-game. If you aren’t coming to this game with your group of friends in tow, or you're having a hard time getting the frayed edges of your gaming community together on this, Artifact’s bounty can feel limited and hard to expand upon. Don't get me wrong, it plays well in a vacuum and the addition of a personal progression system will go a long way towards making Artifact the ideal companion in your gamer hermitage. However, I think the most important mechanism that Artifact needs in order to feel really good as a pastime is more opportunities for people to discover and engage with new gaming communities. I don’t think Valve necessarily has plans to add anything in the near future that will facilitate this further because the community tournament system is already and place, and that ought to be the method by which we are finding and developing new communities. I think the best thing we can hope for from Valve is that when they do introduce strong stat-tracking and a progression system that it is designed in such a way as to avoid undermining the community environments that Valve is trying to encourage. 

I didn't intend for this article to end as a plug for the Artifact.game community tournament, but its timing is pertinent. It should be mentioned that I’m not on staff for Artifact.game, but enjoy contributing these articles because it is a site designed for the sole purpose of forming the type of community that Artifact really needs and is designed for. My Hope is that in short order the internet and perhaps even the real world will be dotted with little Artifact communities that can talk about the game, compete in the game, and, above all, enjoy the game together.

This Content has been taken from https://artifact.game/component/k2/the-gamer-group-a-discussion-on-the-social-aspect-of-artifact

The Top Five Items In The Valve Artifact Game | Artifact Game Item

There are Many items in Valve Artifact Game.  But Now in this blog, we will discuss only 5 (five) topmost Items in the Artifact Game. Every item does something different, so being aware of these differences can considerably improve your long-term strategic planning.

Valve Artifact Game Items are generated primarily through purchase with Gold at the Shop but can be acquired through other means.

Item Categories

Hero Items

Valve Artifact Game Hero Items are an exclusive card type to spell and improvements in that they are in their own 9 (nine) card deck and require gold to buy instead of mana.

After each round, the player can pass gold on an item from the secret shop, the nine card deck they made, or a consumable shop that contains all the consumable items. You will never be re-offered a Dota card if you already bought from the secret shop or your deck. After purchasing an item it is added to your hand to be equipped to a character losing your initiative. The items often grant a singular skill that can be used by the artifact game hero.

Each and every Hero has 3 basic item slots. These subsections each have special qualities and talent that makes equipping items have different effects.

Five Top Most Favorite Valve Artifact Game Item

Town Portal Scroll

Item Type ⇒ Consumable
Rarity ⇒ Basic
Gold ⇒ 3
Effect ⇒ Return an allied hero to the Fountain.

Fountain Flask

Item Type ⇒ Consumable

Rarity ⇒ Basic
Gold ⇒ 4
Effect ⇒ Fully heal a unit

Potion of Knowledge

Item Type ⇒ Consumable
Rarity ⇒ Basic
Gold ⇒ 5
Effec ⇒ Draw a card

Healing Salve

Item Type ⇒ Consumable
Rarity ⇒ Basic
Gold ⇒ 3
Effect ⇒ Heal a unit 6.

Shield of Aquila

Item Type    ⇒ Armor

Rarity           ⇒ rare

Gold              ⇒ 10

Effect              ⇒ Equipped hero has +2 Armor. Equipped hero's allied                                     neighbors have +3 Armor.

Artifact Game Concepts Explained in Ten Minutes

Artifact Concepts Explained

The Valve Dota card game Artifact borrows many concepts from other card games, such as Magic the Gathering and Hearthstone, however, it has a lot of unique features. In fact, these unique concepts broaden the depth of the gameplay, meanwhile confuse new players moving from other games. In this article, we quickly go through the important concepts in Artifact game to help new players to get started. You can navigate to detailed game guides or tutorials about the concept you are interested in by clicking on the inline links.

Basic Concepts

Mana means magical power. It is the capability of casting spells. In Artifact, each board has a mana pool. They have 3 mana each when the game starts. Then the maximum mana is increased by 1 for each turn. Not like other card games such as Hearthstone, Artifact mana pools do not have the upper limit. Some spells can modify the max mana. Each spell consume a certain amount of mana.

Deck is a card set in a certain format. Based on the revealed information, a standard deck in Artifact game allows a maximum of 3 copies of a card, a minimum of 9 item cards, and a minimum of 40 other cards. Heroes are not included as cards. However, their signature cards are. Each hero has 3 copies of their signature cards, so actually.

Lanes are the venues where battles happen. The Artifact game playing involves three lanes. Each lane is a standalone battlefield. It has structures, mana pools. Units can only combat in the lane where they are deployed. However, some spells can take effect to another lane or across the board.

Hand is the cards drawn but not played. Cards are only playable when:

• At least one hero with the same color is present in the lane.
• The tower has enough mana to play the card.
• The player has initiative.
• Cards are not locked.

In Artifact, Initiative means the right of playing. The player who has the turn to play has a golden coin. We call this player active player. The active player can play some cards, or simply "pass" the coin without doing anything. If both players pass the coin, it enters the combat stage. Most of the card games, such as Hearthstone, each player can only have one chance to play cards in a round. Artifact is using a different mechanism, so you will see more counter-actions in the game playing.

A Round is a single cycle of game playing. A round consists of unit deploying, card drawing, action (card playing), combat and shopping phases. Action and combat will happen on each of the three lanes.

Gold is the currency in the game that you can spend to buy items in the shop. Gold can also modify some card's stats. Killing a hero gains you 5 gold while killing a creep only gets you 1 gold. Some spells can increase or reduce the amount of gold from units' death.

Tower and Ancient are two types of structure in Artifact game. The goal of game playing is to bring down either two towers or one ancient of your opponent. Ancient only appears when one tower is destroyed. So literally the winning condition is either breaking two towers or one tower + one ancient. A tower has 40 HP and an ancient has 80. Structures don't have an attack attribute so can't do any damage, but some cards can give them armor to reduce the damage received.

Flop is the card deployment phase of the first round. Each player has three heroes deployed to each lane randomly.

Card Types

In most of the context when we talk about "cards", heroes are not included. Because in gameplay you don't draw heroes like other cards. But since Artifact is basically a "card game", so every game asset is a "card".

Heroes are the major characters in Artifact game. They can be killed but never die! The killed heroes will stay on cooldown area for 2 turns and then come back to the battlefield. All upgrades on them are not reset after they are killed. Players have five heroes. Three of them are deployed to random lanes at the starting of the game, and the other two will be deployed on the second turn by the player. A hero has a color. Players can only cast the same color of spells when a hero is alive in a lane. A hero has attack, armor and health attributes. The hero is destroyed when heath is reduced to equal or below 0. Most of the heroes have one hero skill. Some heroes don't have. Meepo is only one that we know of so far has two hero skills. Every hero has a signature spell. Only heroes can equip items. These items will be retained even they are killed and revived. Five heroes are included in a deck you composed. Only three of them will join the battle at the start, and rest will join later. Under normal rules you can play duplicate heroes in a deck, however, some rules will not allow it.

Spell card sometimes mean creep + spell + improvement cards, but more often we are referring to specifically a spell. Casting a spell consumes a certain amount of mana. Also, it requires a hero of the spell's color.

Creep cards can summon creeps. A creep has attack/armor/health attributes, just like a hero. However, creeps can't be revived after death. Also, creeps are unable to equip any item. Creeps and heroes are combined to be units. Summoning creeps are subject to the same requirements as spells: mana and heroes of their color. Creeps can have skills as well. Normally heroes have much higher stats and stronger abilities than creeps.

Improvement cards are regarded as "add-ons" on the structures. They can't be targeted by units but some spells or items can "condemn" them. Most of the improvements can be played in any lane.

There are four types of items in the game: Weapon, Armor, Accessory and Consumable. Each hero can equip on one Weapon, one Armor and one Accessory. Equipping the second one will overwrite the previous one. As the name indicates, the Consumables can't be equipped but consumed.

Unit skills. A unit (hero or creep) can have an exclusive skill. Skills are classified into four categories. Continuously abilities are constantly taking effect. Reactive and Passive abilities are both triggered by certain events. It is not very clear what is the exact difference between them. Active abilities require cooldown turns to activate again. When it is ready, it does not launch automatically. Players need to click certain buttons to unleash its power.

Advanced Concepts

Death Shield will prevent a unit from dying when it received deadly damage. It keeps the unit under protection alive at 1 health. It even survives a unit from Condemn. The shield is gone after it is triggered.

Piercing Damage is a type of damage that ignoring target unit's armor.

Charge (a.k.a: pulse, redo) means the number of attacks from a spell. Total damage = base damage x charges.

Rapid Deployment is an ability that allows the hero to be deployed the round after it dies instead of waiting at standard one-round respawn time.

Regeneration heals the unit during combat. It is triggered before death check so it offsets the damage that unit receives. It does not work in other battles such as caused by Duel.

A unit with Retaliation deals a mount of damage to the enemy unit attacking it. The retaliation damage is buffed or debuffed by armor separately.

A unit with Siege will deal extra damage to the enemy structure (Tower or Ancient) only when it is blocked by an enemy.

Silence is an effect that disables a hero from casting spells and using abilities.

A Disarmed unit will not deal battle damage before or during the combat phase.

A Stunned unit is both Silenced and Disarmed. They cannot activate abilities and does not contribute their color for playing cards. They also do not deal damage.

Taunt is an effect in the combat phase. The taunting unit is forcing all enemy neighbors to target it in combat.

More Useful Tips

Destroying a Health Item (with cards like Ravenhook or Corrosive Mist) can kill a hero if the item destruction will take the hero below 0 health.

Multicast and And One For Me only creates base copies of cards. For example, an Eclipse created by OgreMagi's Multicast only has 1 charge.

Ancient=core tower. Tower=defensive tower. These terms are exchangeable. So don't be confused when you see them in some other game guides and tutorials.

Each hero has 3 equipment slots for items(attack, armor and health). Equipping an item in a full slot will destroy the previous item.

'Modify' effects change the target permanently. 'Give' effects persist until a unit is killed or returns to the fountain.

If two card effects have the same timing listed, they occur simultaneously.

Players can only purchase 1 secret shop(left) and 1 side shop (right) item per round but can buy as many items as remain in their item deck (middle).

Damage dealt to units remains in subsequent rounds unless healed.

A Disarmed unit will not deal battle damage before or during the combat phase. A card like Frostbite can be a great defense against Duel and Beserker's call.

Each incoming source of damage is reduced by Armor. This includes damage from spells, cleave or retaliate.

Negative Armor amplifies all sources of damage, including piercing damage. Negative armor synergizes well with repeat source of damage such as Ignite or Viper Strike.

Cleave only occurs during the Combat phase. Cleave will trigger the effects of Ursa's Fury Swipe and Apotheosis Blade.

Effect of Condemn will destroy a unit, improvement or equipment. Death Shield can prevent a condemn effect.

If a unit would have died, a unit with a Death Shield instead survives with 1 health and has their death shield removed. A unit may have at most 1 Death Shield.

Lock is an effect that is an effect that is applied to cards in hand and prevents them from being played. For example, a card with "Lock 2" applied to it can't be played until 2 rounds have passed.

Neighbors are the units directly to the left and right of a position. Applies similarly to Enemy neighbors.

Purge removes all stats and ability modifiers such as opponents debuffing your units or opponents buffering their units. This does not affect external modifiers such as Euipments or continuous effects from neighbors or improvements.

A silenced unit cannot use activated abilities. A silenced hero does not contribute its color to mana for playing cards, and will not be able to use activated ability from an equipped item.

Dire/Radiant are concepts borrowed from Dota. In Artifact, the Radiant player goes first.

Damage immune units can still be killed by Condemn effect.

This Above Content Is Taken From : https://artifact.game/guide/walk-through-artifact-concepts-in-ten-minutes

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Dota 2: A Crutch for Artifact Game?

Let’s not beat around the bush. If you visit this website of  Artifact Game, you’ve probably thought a lot about Artifact recently. Although a lot of us are looking forward to the release with bright-eyed expectations, others, like myself, are beginning to see a bit of cloudiness in the forecast.

Not a thunderstorm, but we have questions. In particular, I’ve been a bit fascinated with the idea of Artifact being inspired by Dota. I’ve turned that idea a few times in my head, and I ultimately come out wondering, “What exactly does that mean?” Well, Artifact has heroes and villains that battle it out in lanes and rectangles, but that just makes it a card game inspired by massive online battle arenas, not a Dota-inspired game in particular. What relationship does Artifact actually have to Dota, above and beyond character-crossovers? Luckily, a recent interview with Artifact programmers Bruno Carlucci and Jeep Barnett tackled this topic.

Although Carlucci and Barnett have been a part of the team for around two years, Artifact Game has been in development for around four. The primary motivation behind Artifact is to create a digital, as opposed to a physical, card game. If you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. With computers, you can turn what you can only imagine with a physical card game into something you can see and hear. That being said, some may assume that the founders added the Dota element simply for name recognition. However, Carlucci counters that the team views the situation differently. The artifact does not use Dota as a crutch. Contrarily, Artifact is a vehicle with which to explore Dota.

Carlucci points out that types of games have their own unique ways of telling stories. “Dota is a fast-paced multiplayer action game. Here, as a turn-based game, there’s a lot more time to absorb the dialogue.” Carlotta continues by emphasizing that, although you hear about some of the backgrounds of the characters in Dota, such as their acquaintances and hometowns, you never really get to learn too much about these topics due to the pace of that game. By contrast, Artifact would be able to immerse players more into these characterizations and, in the process of doing so, introduce some new characters as well.

Now, let me be clear. I get all that. I totally get it. You can follow a narrative much more easily during an Artifact Card Game than a live-action massive multiplayer game. Still, I am a bit skeptical of this suggestion by Carlucci that Artifact can offer something – add – to the Dota universe. In my experience, card games have more lore than the story. There may be tribes, themes, canon, or even a few favorite characters, but it is almost always a backdrop – an ornament that embellishes but is not essential, to the scenery. The story itself does not affect the actual process of playing the game, so it is regularly ignored by most players.

Which things having been said, there are some things in Artifact that should keep players from feeling bored. For example, Artifact will introduce some new characters, which, most importantly for some people, may come to Dota 2 Card Game. Valve has been secretive as to how much of Artifact’s content would cross over to Dota 2, but even a bit of novelty content in Artifact would pique the interests of so many players. In addition, from my perspective, the developers do not intend Artifact to be clean cut as expansions come out. Expansions in most card games are in essence self-contained, but Artifact seeks to build continually on a core storyline.

“As you play, you’ll see how it plays out, especially in the dialogue,” Barnett said. There are mechanisms built into the game to flush out this characterization. For example, if two characters operate within the same line, they insult each other if they are enemies or say positive things towards each other if they are friends. The designers thought of every combination of these interactions, so the more you explore the game by playing different characters, the more you learn about this world into which you are invited.

However, what exactly is the backdrop to all of the action? Barnett explains this quite well. Essentially, there is a conflict between three military factions: the Bronze Legion, which can already be found in Dota, the Red Mist, and the Vhoul people. The Legion Commander leads the Bronze Legion, and she wants to protect her hometown of Stonehall, which the Red Mist plans to besiege under Soria Khan after trashing the rural areas.

Now, saving Stonehall involves occupying a Vhoul city, which is commanded by a person known as Rix, who happens to be a friend of the Legion Commander and a completely new character as well. However, as occupations usually go, the Vhoul people are not thrilled with their new neighbors and begin to rebel. Rix seizes the opportunity and tries to evict the Bronze Legion. Altogether, you should begin to see the makeup of at least an interesting conflict develop between these three factions.

Frankly, this is not such a bad idea. I like the idea of a power struggle that conceptually makes sense. It is simple, it is direct, and it compels me to root for the Bronze Legion – or the two other teams if you insist. However, can you really root for any side without a discrete story mode? When I tested out Artifact, I fought against the computer, and certain AI modes could theoretically advance the story without formally being in a story mode.

Interestingly enough, Carlucci compared Artifact’s story to that of Left 4 Dead. You are kind of thrown into the middle of things with Left 4 Dead, but the more you play. the more you understand what exactly is going on around there. Will Artifact have similar success with this method, or will its story be a pretty ornament that merely subsists?/p>

You will have to wait later this year to find out.

  This Content is taken from :

 https://artifact.game/news/dota-2-a-crutch-for-artifact

Final Chance To Win Artifact Beta Key!

Greetings to you all,

It feels good to have all of you Artifact Game lovers on this platform and we believe that the fun and experience from this game will be completely out of this world.

Though we are still anticipating for the much talked about the game Valve Artifact to be officially launched, the rave and buzz that comes with this game can’t be gainsaid.

While we await the launch of Artifact game, our website has put together a special event that will give you some excitement.

To participate in this event, what you need to do is to post on the Cards/Heroes category on this forum and tell us which is your most preferred hero and the reason behind it. Note that you have to sign up on the forum before making any post.

Definitely, you will stand a chance of winning something special. The two best posters in this category will be awarded a Game Keys which will give them access to Artifact Beta version when it is launched.

Below are the rules you need to follow to be qualified for this amazing reward….

Rule #1: You must post on the Cards/Heroes category. As a user, there is no limit to the number of posts you can drop. You can post as many times as you want but just ensure that your post is related to the category. No Spamming will be allowed.

To get information about revealed heroes, kindly visit our Artifact card database, as it is updated regularly.

Rule #2: No copy and paste are allowed. Your content must be unique and original

Rule #3: There is a time frame for your posts. For you to qualify for this reward, your posts must be submitted between GMT 0:00 14th and 23:59 28th of October.

Aside 2 Beta Keys, posting unique and interesting posts will get you a limited edition badge for participating in this ongoing quest.

At the end of the event, the website admin will get in touch with winners and the Beta Keys will be sent to them. 

Note: peradventure the Beta game is launched before the end of the contest, we may decide to go ahead to release the keys to the winners earlier. So join early! 

Artifact Game reserve all rights to make any urgent announcement and all terms and conditions must be duly adhered to.

This Content is taken from the artifact.game website : Click this link to know more: https://artifact.game/forum/final-chance-to-win-artifact-beta-key