[kmnc]

I played the game a lot, before giving up. I played only draft and was pretty good (Mostly infinite and highly ranked).

I have two opinions on why the game failed. First, while it was a truly satisfying game and wonderfully complex the random elements where both anti Dota and truly fuck you rng where a flip of a coin decides most high level games. Now, the same could be said about most competitive card games but in Artifact it was so visible, felt terrible, and had no ways to play around it. Hearthstone has learned that good rng is about having a range of bad medium to good results. In Artifact it was as either game losing or game winning, every time. Terrible design and in my opinion the game could of removed all rng entirely and it would of been an amazing niche competitive game. The problem though is, the ranking system, tournaments, and pay to play economy made competitive play boring with no rewards. I am not exaggerating when I say the game would of not been a failure if it had a solid visible Elo ranking system.

Second opinion: the entire design philosophy was a failure from day one. Dota has over 100 heros. Imagine a hearthstone style game were on day one you had 100 heroes to choose from, each with their own cards added to your deck and having four skills (like hero powers in hearthstone). Games remain fast while still being complex and keeping the spirit of Dota (100s of options). I believe valve has no clue what their audience wants.

[jsnell]

Right. I don't think it's controversial at all to say that the game would have been far more successful with a visible and statistically sound MMR (Elo, Glicko, whatever). I played Artifact for maybe 30 hours. The free draft was fine, and I never engaged with the other forms of gameplay so the predatory economics didn't directly affect my experience.

But in the end I had no way of knowing whether I was getting any better, and the games ended up feeling totally meaningless.

[Reedx]

> I believe valve has no clue what their audience wants.

Maybe that's the problem - if they were trying to make something they think the audience wants. The audience itself doesn't know what it wants, let alone anyone removed from it making guesses on their behalf.

The audience didn't know they wanted DotA or Minecraft until they were made.

[MauranKilom]

The point about Minecraft is valid, but DotA grew incrementally over such a long time (and with such a heritage) that it is very clear the audience was more involved in its making than any single developer.