I Like Artifact: My Issues and Suggestions for Improvement

Overall Opinion: Artifact has very interesting mechanics and gameplay, but lacks feedback. In most games, you do a good series of plays and you can see a large benefit/reward and experience that in the game. After that point, the player is typically satisfied having accomplished their cool deck goal regardless of if they win or lose. Artifact instead has individual cards that are high costed that swing the game. This means that the game revolves more around playing those specific cards rather than performing a series of cool interactions. This is simply boring and in my opinion the biggest reason that Artifact is still losing players. They should revamp their card design philosophy to accommodate creating cool synergies and in game feedback that players desire. The below are some methods of creating a more satisfying experience overall. I do think that RNG is an issue in this game and even confusing at times.

1. Playable card pool is small and the average card power level compared to heroes is very low. This reduces perceived agency because your heroes dictate so much of the game. I suggest either buffing most cards or reducing the power level of heroes so that card plays can feel more impactful, especially early game card plays.

2. High cost cards don't have enough of a time/temp drawback because aggressive options are not strong enough to outpace and win 2 lanes against a control deck on average. This is a fundamental game flaw and suggests that low cost aggressive options need to be buffed so that Aggro>Control>Midrange>Aggro...

3. Initial hero deployment should be deck designated so that you can control which lane your early plays go into. Not sure why it has to be totally random. It would still be pseudo random if they went into a specific lane because you would still not know the matchup.

4. Arrows should point straight unless manipulated. This would make arrow manipulation more important and reduce the number of feel bad moments when you have the win except all your arrows are pointed at one random creep for no logical reason.

5. Heroes should have more ability focused kits and less stats. This would at the same time make games feel more diverse and allow low cost stat based creeps to fight heroes better. Also, early game initiative might matter more if more heroes had activated abilities.

6. This game needs both more card draw and stronger early game plays. There is simply a lot of do nothing turns in Artifact which I think is ridiculous. Who wants to play a game where you sit and do nothing on 1/3 turns. This is partially related to the low amount of card draw, smallish starting hand size, very strong late game cards, and weak early game cards.

7. Shop needs an over hall. I think that players should expect and it would be fun to be able to upgrade your heroes more often throughout the game. Also, the shop in its current state forces you to build your deck with very cheap and very expensive items due to not wanting your shop to get blocked. I think the shop should only offer items you can afford if you can afford an item. This would allow for more item shop diversity.

Thanks for reading my opinion even if you disagree or don't care. Have a good day!