The Artifact public beta is starting later today. All attendees from this year's International and everyone who redeemed a beta key will find the game activated in their Steam account.
Since lifting the NDA on the private beta yesterday, there's been an overwhelming amount of feedback on all parts of the game. Much of that feedback has been a clear signal that we underestimated how much interest and excitement the community has around certain features that weren't available in the initial beta build.
We want to take a few minutes to talk about some of those missing features now:
- There was no way to do a draft event with friends. We didn't prioritize this play mode, and had planned to enable it sometime after release. We've heard your feedback: drafting with friends is a core part of what you want to spend your time doing in Artifact. In the next Artifact beta build, you can select Call To Arms Phantom Draft in any user-created tournament.
- There was no way to practice the draft modes without spending an event ticket. Drafting is incredibly fun, but can also be very intimidating. We agree that it's important to have a way to practice before venturing into a more competitive mode. In the next Artifact beta build, everyone who has claimed their starting content will find a Casual Phantom Draft gauntlet available in the Casual Play section.
- There was nothing to do with duplicate starter heroes. We're adding a system that allows extra, unwanted cards to be recycled into event tickets. This feature will ship before the end of the beta period.
The first two changes will be live for everyone when the public beta activates later today. We'll ship the recycling system, as well as other improvements to the beta, over the next week and a half.
Please enjoy the beta, and keep sending us your feedback.