Valve is going to balance Artifact cards more aggressively after all

Valve has made notable changes to its new digital card game Artifact; the behavior of certain cards has been tweaked, despite the studio saying it would only happen in the rarest of cases. The game will also have a leveling system.

Since the release of Artifact, players have complained about a handful of cards in the game that are said to be too powerful. This, combined with the fact that players can buy single tickets on the Steam Community Market with real money, created a pay-to-win situation. At a certain point the Ax card was sold for 33.95 euros, almost double what the game itself costs.

“We wanted to avoid modifying existing maps as much as possible because we thought players value immutability,” Valve said in the patch notes. But the development team is now coming back to that, acknowledging that “the average player wants the game primarily to be of good quality”. Therefore, eight different cards are now weakened.

Because this update will cause value increases and decreases on various cards, Valve is allowing a one-time refund for buyers for a purchase. “Players who purchased cards that were changed in this update will be able to resell those cards to Valve at the highest market price the card had in the 24 hours prior to this announcement.”

Also from a game development perspective, Valve now says it’s wrong not to modify cards at all, if at all. “Future development would also suffer. We cannot be creative if we are hesitant with new ideas because we are afraid that we will not be able to make adjustments later”.

In addition to these balance adjustments, Valve is introducing a leveling system. Players receive two different skill ratings, one for draft games and one for constructed games. When players beat a higher rated opponent, their rating goes up. Players are rewarded for these levels with level icons, tickets and card packs. The levels are reset per season.