Game Design Scribbles: Artifact
I played a whole many hours of Artifact over the Christmas break and I thought it would be fun to take some stuff away from it that could be applied to other games :D
Agency and Decisions
In my opinion, the worst thing about Artifact is that the ‘right’ move is often to remove the opponent player’s agency. There are some cards that do this (like Gust which silences heroes) and mainly, at the core of the game, you can’t play cards in lanes without a hero or hero of the cards colour.
Stopping the opponent playing any cards that round means you get to do what you want and is essentially at the base of the game.
There is a couple of ways to talk about this, but what I want to point out is it’s not fun to not be able to play any cards. If my opponent is better than I am, I at least want to play moves and see how they go, and importantly, how the opponent counters them. If I can’t play anything, I’m super bored.
One of the things that I’ve been thinking about recently is that I’d prefer to be overwhelmed with cards I could play than have, like 2 options each turn for the whole game. This is still a decision, and I don’t want loads of useless information clouding up my turns decisions or anything. What I want is maybe 3-6 really solid options to choose from that have ripple effects through the rest of the game. I want to make decisions that have a lasting impact.
Tower Improvements
I don’t think this is as objectively bad as the agency thing, more that it (for me) is frustrating when playing and I think leans toward some bad game design principles.
Tower improvements are things you can add to a lane that do stuff each round without any future player interaction. For example, each turn do 1 piercing damage to each enemy on the lane. I think there are the same things in Hearthstone but more of them are manually activated?
I think this is bad game design wise because it just happens for the rest of the game. You pay the initial mana cost then it just happens forever. There needs to be more risk/reward throughout the later match, something like sacrifice two mana this turn to have it happen this turn, or something like that. There are a bunch of manual ones in the game too but they usually just charge up and cost an action and that’s it.
The effect also happens at the start of the round. This is good in one sense because its consistent and not hidden so the enemy can properly plan against it. However, with all the other effects that can happen at the start of a turn (a bunch of cards can do stuff like this), it just becomes frustrating at the beginning of a turn.
Also, this literally happened to me in a game today. They had literally 9 improvements:
So at the start of the round, all this stuff just happens without either player being able to play or do anything first.
Deck building
I only have a couple hours a week to play games, and I know that there are millions of people online making decks. I don’t see any situation where I would spend time making decks instead of searching online ‘best Artifact decks’ and choosing from the top 10 which I liked most. I also don’t think deck building is particularly fun, especially when it is so seperate to playing the game itself. I do like the idea of building your deck over a match though, like in Dominion or Puzzle Strike.
The cool thing is that Artifact has this ‘Call To Arms’ game mode, where the games designers have made a dozen decks and you choose one and play against someone else that has chosen one. As far as I’m concerned this is the best mode, and presumably the most balanced and fun too, as the designers have specifically created these decks to play each other.
Revtel Convoy
I’m pretty sure Revtel Convoy is my favourite idea for a card in the game.
It’s easy to forget how awesome it is that video games can do maths and functions for the player without any complexity on the player. For example this card has its attack equal to 50% of your gold. This is awesome! It changes your relationship with money, which is a major resource, and is one of the few cards that changes dramatically every game and pretty much every turn too.
I wanted to show you because it not only costs something when it’s played, then functions for the rest of the game. It ties resources and the other game elements together to create ongoing decisions as you play.
This kind of thing could be overwhelming (like if every card had this) but I think there is TONS of room, in Artifact specifically, for this kind of complexity.
Thoughts
I’m not 100% sure how to end this so I wanted to say two things
It’s cool that by adding complexity to a card game system there emerges a ton of fun stuff to discover, I had fun for at least the first 8 hours just seeing what things would have unforeseen impact on other lanes on the board.
To have true complexity that lasts past this I think you must need an incredible amount of playtesting and intention to update the game with huge overhauls.
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I'm thinking about calling this Game Design Scribbles, where I chat about games that I play from time to time. I'm super open to any feedback about these article things as I don't have any experience writing like this :D
Thanks so much for supporting me in 2018 too! I HAVE SO MUCH EXCITING STUFF COMING IN THE FIRST FEW MONTHS OF 2019 ALONE!!!! WAGGHHHHHHHHHH EVERYTHING IS SO COOL!!
-HAPPY NEW YEAR GAMES