Artifact has a swarm of problems with monetization, gameplay and a lack of features. But one of the less-mentioned problems is how incredibly boring and uninspired the base set cards are. So here is a core design strategy with some example cards on how the next set of cards could avoid making the same mistake.

Foreword

Two things you must keep in mind while looking at these cards. First, any mana cost or base stats can be altered. You should instead focus on the core concept of the card; numbers are easy to tweak. Second, while I try to keep heroes similar to Dota, I ultimately go for gameplay first. This might tweak a hero a bit or use their lore instead. The gameplay concept is more important than the hero’s name, or even their colour.

Heroes with Deck Altering Passives

These sorts of abilities have an impact on how you build your deck. The moment you include them, your deck must change. Alchemist will alter your item deck and make you favour stats over ability centric items like Blink Dagger. He’s weak early on and super item dependent, probably the first hero in the game that’s best in the fifth position.

Warlock makes you go for the cheap and dirty. It’s all about cheap cards and this includes hero signatures. The numbers can be altered, but he’s a hero focused on a heavy draw of cheap cards. He may be great with something like Rising Anger in mono-red, or perhaps partner him with black to ensure you get your gold generation out fast. There’s lots of great concepts to be tested, and decks to try.

Now these cards lend themselves more towards constructed play than draft, but that’s exactly the point. I like cards like Rising Anger or Storm Spirit because they alter the deck, yet draft lovers hate them because of this reason. Catering too heavily to draft players results in boring cards. It severely limits you from having cards that interact well with each other, perhaps even rely on each other. The card has to be good in isolation, or drafters tend to go for other cards.

There are many other ideas that can be applied here, but an increase in cards that alter how you build a deck would make deck building more enjoyable. They alter what is considered best. Time of Triumph is good, but it cannot be used with Warlock which means there is an entirely new set of cards that are best in any Warlock red deck. If balanced correctly, it creates decks that are viable when played against the auto-include, but don’t have the auto-include cards.

Heroes with Mechanic Manipulations

Troll Warlord removes restrictions from target-specific cards. So Bellow can only be cast on a creep, well it can also now be cast on Troll Warlord because he doesn’t care about your petty human restrictions. Sven’s God’s Strength can only be cast on Red Heroes, well Troll doesn’t care about that, so you can use it on him too. There still has to be a Red Hero in the lane to allow you to use Red cards, but he provides some interesting interactions and fun.

Vengeful Spirit, or rather her Signature Card, is different almost every game. Do you want to swap your own abilities, putting Prellex’s ability on someone else because she is about to die? Perhaps you fancy an enemy ability and are willing to swap something like like Bristleback’s passive in order to steal the enemy’s Rix’ fast deployment.

Both cards switch things up as they can be different every game, but they also allow you to manipulate pre-existing mechanics. Mechanics are meant to be broken, it’s what makes them good. Dota is filled with this. You have a movement speed cap? Okay, here’s a hero who can go faster than it. You have stats, okay here’s a hero that can shift one into the other and back.

Epilogue

This is just part one of my series on card design, and I’ve only looked at heroes. One of the problems with heroes at the moment is that because so many of them are so simplistic, it’s incredibly easy to determine who is better. Most don’t change play style or decks very much, and thus some are objectively better. Take the PA vs Storm Spirit example. PA gets +4 damage against heroes, Storm only gets +4 damage (against anyone) if you use 2 black cards. PA has better base stats. PA has an amazing signature card, instantly killing someone. Storm’s is ultimately best in mono-black decks, and yet he is so objectively worse that most mono-black decks don’t even use him. His ability could have allowed for some interesting deck building in mono-black or with extra draw, but because he is so badly balanced his deck altering ability is useless.

Which is the massive point. Adding the type of cards I’ve suggested is sorely needed, but for some reason the few that exist in the base set seem to be intentionally weak. The best hero on launch was Axe, a hero with no ability. That’s incredibly dull. Greater care needs to be dealt with balance; namely you want your popular cards to be interesting. It’s bad if you’re most popular heroes lack abilities, or have basic stat boosts. It’s bland. So spice life up a little.