I know I'm gonna be in a minority here, but that's fine. I was definitely a little disappointed when they revealed that it was a card game, because the logo and name definitely evoked "Destiny-alike" to me. But, thinking about it, I'm probably more excited about this than I would be any other Valve release aside from perhaps Team Fortress 3 or an actual fresh IP. I don't have a ton of investment in their other franchises except for Portal, which doesn't really need another game at this point.

From the little Day[9] talked about it, it sounds pretty different structurally from most of the other card games out there right now, so I'm eager to see it in action. Maybe (like HearthStone did for me with Warcraft) it'll give people who don't want to deal with MOBAs a way to get invested in the Dota 2 universe.

As someone who hadn't really followed games news, or done any PC gaming, since 2011 (Funilly enough the year portal 2 came out), until early this year what is the communities general feelings towards valve now?

I remember that back when I was keeping up with news Valve could do no wrong, making great games and Steam was seen as a great marketplace, I didn't even really hear people complaining about TF2 hats.

Now it just seems they've got lazy, and to be fair, I have no interest in MOBAs or E sports so I have no idea how much effort it takes to keep DOTA balanced and profitable, but surely it can't take up so much of their time that all they can come up with to prove they're still making games is a CCG?

That and the complete lack of quality control on Steam just make it seem like they're resting on their laurels now they've got a couple of constant profitable revenue streams.

tl;dr: I want a new half life.

@paulmako: that's a pretty cynical way to look at it. Sometimes people make games because they have a really interesting idea they're passionate about. I'm personally very disappointed Valve, basically the only company in gaming with the financial liberty to do whatever they want, is just making games designed around milking whale users for maximum revenue.

They have no public shareholders, steam and Dota are printing infinite amounts of cash but they have zero compulsion to make any original, innovative video games.

Compare that to CDPR which is much poorer, publicly traded but still focuses most of their efforts on great ambitious projects they're passionate about.

So does everyone hate Brad Muir now?

Nope.

What's with Valve? They used to make other games, but now they seem to just stay with what would be considered currently safe.

More fantasy card games based on IP that ripped off their whole setting, art, characters from another game, not enough of them. Can't wait.

By the way, I did not ask for a FPS at all. But that's almost all Valve has done so shitting on them for making a FPS much leave someone with no reverence for Valve.

Don't forget that Blizzard also ripped all those things from the Warhammer universe, making this creatively bankrupt on so many levels.

As for what I'd want Valve to do instead, fuck I don't even know anymore. Maybe just release the Team Fortress 2 build they scrapped in 2004.

I do.

Except I am kind of set playing just one of them. You can play them endlessly, and since my go-to one is Hearthstone, I never have to worry about content updates either. Hearthstone updates with new cards every few months. It takes about a month or two to figure out what cards are great in which decks. So you have a period of getting to know all the cards in whacky decks which is super fun and after that you have the period of playing a very solid deck to rank up. Then, I'm kind of done with it for a month or so and then a new expansion is announced.

I wouldn't have time for more than one of these unless all I want to play is card games.

@onemanarmyy: It could be way better than Hearthstone and it would have no fucking chance of being particularly impactful in that market.

Man...Valve, huh?

making fart noises with my mouth over here

This is the only thought that popped into my head when seeing that video.

@pyrodactyl: CDPR made gwent.

Why can't this be a project Brad Muir was passionate about?

People act like the only reason this game exists is because Gabe was like 'more money,underlings!' Yet people that knows Brad Muir knows he's into dota and magic. He even designed a magic card. Thatpinguino even thought he would work for Wizads at the coast when he left double fine. Him making a card game sounds like a natural fit and something he would be passionate about.

Sure I get it. People are emotional because a quality developer haven't done a big AAA game in a while, and lost most of their story staff beforehand.

Brad Muir joining them with the wish to headline Hl3 or episode 3 I guess, was way more unlikely.

Pretend Acclaim is Valve.

@onemanarmyy: To be fair they made Gwent, because their user-base wanted Gwent. That thing got way more love in W3 than they ever expected.

@aktivity: There are also a lot of dota players that love the game but only watch streams of it because they cant fit a game that takes between 25 and 60 minutes in their lives. Especially as they get kids. i found a lot of people like that in the Starcraft community as well. A card game that retains some of the ideas and strategy behind Dota yet takes a consistent amount of time, would be a lot of fun.

This game will not be a 'hearthstone killer', but I'm sure it will have a decently sized audience. Especially if they update the game based on changes in Dota, and let users buy the cards they want directly through the steam store. That alone would make it at least a cheaper game to be competitive in.

@onemanarmyy: I'm not saying Brad Muir is not passionate about this game. I bet he is. But the fact is, the reason it got made was because they hired him and people with similar interests. A select group of people passionate about making derivative F2P games that can make bank by milking some whales. It all aligns with Valve's apparent corporate objectives and Gab Newell's current interest in F2P games. Like you said, people who are not aligned with this path (writers) left in droves. It's all very disappointing considering Valve could take on much riskier and interesting projects but seem content to rest on their laurels and make the safe games that will make the most money.

Regarding CDPR: gwent was the passion project of a single guy during Witcher 3's development. Now it's their side hustle maintained by a small team while most of their staff works on Cyberpunk. CDPR doesn't make Valve money, they are publicly traded, they needed this game so they could have the freedom to invest in a larger project. Again, Valve is a privately owned company with infinite money. They can do whatever they want. They choose to do boring, safe F2P games.

IIRC, when hats were first introduced, it was a dumb extra thing you got essentially by just playing the game. It was once crates/microtransactions/marketplace (basically the TF2 economy) started creeping in that people started to question it.

Hey guys, Gwent is pretty good, i played it a bit in the beta. Id say give it a shot.

Cautiously interested in this. I enjoy playing card games. While I prefer physical ones because I love collecting cards, I do enjoy a good digital card game to play on my own. Hearthstone brought me in despite knowing little about Blizzard/Warcraft so Dota could too. My interest in Hearthstone has died as time has gone on but, despite trying a couple card games since, I've yet to fill the void of it. The reveal was funny, but Day[9]'s description has intrigued me and I'm willing to give it a chance.

I love gwent hearthstone is ok I will most likely play this.

Yeah this seems about right...

@stordoff: I remember when the space for hats first appeared on the weapon equip screen people were really worried that it was a new thing that would ruin balance. Then as soon as they found out it was just cosmetic people went mad over them. I didn't used to get get through a game without someone offering to buy my Sam and Max bunny ears. I think this was even before the steam marketplace launched.

Oh wow that audience reaction was fantastic. I never really expected them to make any other game again, so hearing that they were was interesting. And then hilarious after finding out it was a card game, of all things. Maybe their Scrooge McDuck-esque gold stockpile got below the minimum threshold for swimming in? Never cared about either card games or DOTA, but good luck to them anyway.

I will watch that clip again though.

@dixavd: Curious why you lost interest in Hearthstone. I feel the game has gotten a lot better and fun ever since Whispers of the Old Gods released and continues to get better.

The reaction is a meme of it self glorious !

Also would have liked a Brad Muir monster hunter meets valve mash up, that's still a market that's untapped you have dauntless but that's it .

That reaction is perfect, and basically mirrors my own. It's disappointing to me that Valve used to be one of the more innovative developers this industry had, and I miss the days when they made games that weren't so esoteric.

Great reaction. A card game is way more interesting than the next style-over-substance-shooter though. Hard market ot break into since players will tend to stick to one game at a time. I switched from Solforge to Elder Scrolls: Legends and I'm having a great time. We'll see how long it lasts.

I'll need to know more about the actual gameplay but the DOTA theme is a massive turn-off right off the bat.

@zevvion: Part of my drifting from Hearthstone is certainly to do with my and my inability to stick with games-as-service for long periods of time. That said, there are some things that put me off. First was a by-produce of the story content: despite enjoying it, my interest was very dependent on whether I was interested in the theme. I have almost no prior knowledge of Warcraft games pre-Hearthstone, so any interest based purely on sight. When the theme didn't grab me, playing them felt like a lot of effort to build decks for each scenario purely to grind out cards. If I didn't do that, I felt like I was missing out on what could be killer cards in the format (i.e. these were the few new cards from this minor story expansion). I'd get stressed about having to play it to catch up with the meta and instead tended to only return seriously at big expansions.

My other big issue is with how, as time has gone on, very specific synergies (or gimmicks if you're cynical) became common in each expansion. It felt like my room to experiment was being actively discouraged because it was obvious which cards were designed to play off each other. There were less inherently broadly good cards - as they relegated that to the original classic set - to instead focus on cards having distinct playstyles they fit with. While this is fine in general, my ability to get all of the cards to play a given mechanic optimally is limited. I much preferred early Hearthstone where there were many good cards which could fit as staples in multiple decks because it felt like I could actually make new decks and fill them out with my shared collection of cards. As the mechanics got more flashy, specific and combo-based, my ability to actually try them out as a casual player became harder to do.

Finally, the rotation (Standard/Wild) system felt like the worst compromise of keeping the oldest but favouring the new. The idea that any cards (i.e. the classic ones) would stay in format forever while other sets would rotate means I have to always second guess every card I craft. I may be more interested in a newer card, but it must compete with the idea that dust is a limited resource so using them on classic cards in the long run is better (even if it's less fun and interesting to me). I'd much prefer if every year or so, all cards before a given set enter a different format and those after stay in standard. Having any exceptions at all means those staples are favoured by my pragmatic-with-resources attitude, but this just leads to the amount of novelty in my playable collection being reduced (even if the new sets ramped up the creative design).

Anyway, that got long. That was a general overview of the culmination of thoughts that lead me to find playing Hearthstone more stressful than enjoyable (so I drifted away from it).

I laughed at that video. That's probably the reaction that Valve deserves at this point.

It's been a decade. Half-Life 3 will never be as good as it needs to be for people to be satisfied with it. Still, for my part, I want to see that loop closed. They left that franchise on a hell of a cliffhanger and I still occasionally catch myself thinking about what might happen next. I want to know. I'm not going to freak out about it or hate Valve or whatever for not making it but, as has been pointed out in this thread already, they're pretty much the only developer who can do anything and everything they want. They can try to upend any trend, they can try to give us something crazy or weird or insane, they are the one company that can do literally anything, provided it can be done with modern computers and manpower, and their current projects consist of a card game, cosmetic items for what was originally a modification of Warcraft 3, skins for what was originally a modification of Half-Life, and items for what was originally a modification of Quake. I do understand that they got to the point where they can do literally anything by being a business first, but it's really disappointing. More disappointing than seeing nothing about Half-Life 3 is seeing nothing really big and interesting that kicks everything else AAA in the balls.

But, hey, good on Brad Muir for doing work. I'm glad that guy's got something in mind. I just wish seemingly the rest of Valve had something in mind.

Classic response, but in the end Valve won't learn a thing.

The only way that could've been better is if the logo started out as the lambda symbol before morphing into an upside down triangle.

On the real, though. Valve used to be my favorite developer. When I was going to school for game design, they were always my number one dream job.

NOT NO MORE.

Haha, Valve, nice try! I laughed. Bonus points for it being a card game - the only way to make the joke even funnier!

The downside being, once the humor wears off all we're left with is another fucking card game. Sad!

@penguindust: What are you saying they have to learn? Everything Valve works on makes a ton of money. Three Valve devs wanted to make something they thought was cool. That's it.

Half-Life outdated

Portal overrated

Long have we waited

Card game created

Gonna take this opportunity to say hey if you are into card games, play the Gwent beta! It's a lot different than Hearthstone (a lot better imo).

I'm going to start a petition to change his nickname from :D to D:

I feel bad for the guy though, this is a rough reaction to your first game at your new work.
Even if it winds up being the worst game ever made for all time, he's just still so likeable though. :D

Talk about disappointing. It feels like everyone is making card games now, especially since they see the ridiculous amount of cash people willingly drop in Hearthstone to get cards. I understand why they're making a card game, but my reaction mirrors the crowd, what a disappointment.

Still, it would feel pretty shitty to be working on that game and see the reaction be that bad.

HL3 or GTFO at this point, between their many terrible decisions and steam's abysmal customer service, they'll never see another penny from me.

Am I the only one who doesn't want Half Life 3? I'm not too hyped about this card game but i haven't seen more than a logo so I cant really be disappointed. I bet they wont just do a Heartstone clone.

For me it's not something I really beg for now or think about specifically, but if I saw HL3 I'd get excited because it probably would be a different type of mechanic or jump in technology that made them make it. Kind of a weird thing.

I would want them to make some first person something. That's what they do really well.

Someone's been slighted!

I feel that you and many others would be disappointed anyway, no matter how "good" HL3 would be. Expectations are unreasonable at this point. I would like it if they made MORE games and tried some new things, but I think the HL3 boat has sailed and it would probably just end up worse for them if they tried.

I was curious why there hasn't been a fan attempt at a HL sequel yet and found http://store.steampowered.com/app/399120/Prospekt/. Doesn't sound too hot, though.

I laughed so hard at that announcement, not even DOTA fans could be bothered to fake a smile it sounds like. But in all honesty...Fk off valve. Go manage your friggen store front that has been left to drift into a dubious pit of disarray and garbage.

Now I'm done pouting

I loved Half Life 1 and have some cool memories about HL2, but storywise i thought Half Life 2 was pretty weak and unremarkable. I'm sure that a certain amount of people really love that story and want to see the conclusion to it, but the cynical part of me feels like many of the people that shout for HL3 mainly do it because it's a meme and other people told them it would be the best thing ever, given that HL1 and HL2 were critical darlings.

When i think about the stuff i love about Half Life 2, it's the creative weapons. I'm thinking about using the antlions to fight for you or the gravity gun. Especially using those sawblades in Ravenholm was a lot of fun. The physics of that game were groundbreaking. The story however never did anything to me. It felt like 80% of the characters you met are old dudes in labcoats, and the game kept putting you in closed rooms while the characters finish their monologues. I don't remember many of the characters having a distinct personality neither. When i think about Alyx, the main thing i remember is how there was a hubbub about people downloading nude mods for her. I do remember playing fetch with her robot dog though.

The amount of jetski levels also felt egregious. I remember playing Resident Evil 5 and having flashbacks to Half Life 2 whenever i had to get off the jetski to open a door, after which you repeat that process over and over. When the episodes were released, the jetski parts got replaced by sandbuggy levels. All those vehicle sequences felt like they went on for too long and didn't scream fun to me.

Sure, i would like a new Half Life, but i'd rather have a reboot or stand alone game than HL3 at this point ( Or episode 3, whatever people feel needs to be next).

Or just something completely new. The only characters i still fondly remember are Gordon, G-man and Headcrab. No characters past 1 impressed me.

I also don't understand the hate against Steam. I rather have an open store that has everything i want + 'garbage' , than a store that has 50% of what i want , but without any garbage. Just use quicklooks / youtube / friends to find the games you like and use your steam wishlist to keep track of those games.

I mean, games like PUBG and H1Z1 were very janky at certain parts in early development, yet people could see through that and have fun in those games which made the devs earn a lot of money to polish their game. If Valve decided it was 'garbage' at that time, and never gave them a storepage It's unlikely that a game like PUBG would ever blow up like it did. That's the beauty of not having a walled garden.

Honestly, the only time i see 'garbage' on steam is when a friend messages me to a link of some MS paint game on steam out of fun. I never encounter those games naturally.

I'm actually curious to try this out. I don't think I'll stick to it long term given my track record of card games but there's a lot to like about Dota but also a ton of nuances that I dislike about Dota that you probably don't have to deal with in a card game. So I'll be on the lookout for this.

@ripelivejam: I don't expect or even need it to be good tbh. If they'd wrapped the story up with Episode 2, I wouldn't even want 3. I want a conclusion to that story and until they deliver (though it'll never happen) I'm out.

I'd rather give my money to companies that finish what they start, not leave it hanging with no mention for almost a decade, and steam customer service is the most unfriendly and unhelpful I've ever come across.