No Artifact PAX content?

Howdy bombers. Considering Brad Muir works at Valve with Artifact and both Ben and Brad are (or was) avid Dota2 players, AND the impressive Artifact presence at PAX West. I am disapointed that there was no Aritfact coverage from the GB crew. Did I miss something, like a panel or discussion, or is there just no Artifact interest from the GB crew?

GB generally doesn't produce much content while actually at PAX besides the panel so this isn't too surprising. Expect them to discuss what they saw at the show on the Bombcast.

My Artifact impressions: booth was INSANELY busy all four days. Didn't get to play, but watched one of their featured matches while grabbing lunch. Game looks cool even if I'm not groking some concepts from watching in a noisy convention hall.

Related: Got to speak with Mr Muir for a few minutes even though I couldn't get into play; he reached out when I tweeted him a picture of me in my Massive Chalice shirt. His reputation as a genuine, nice, and genuinely nice guy is well earned, and possibly even understated.

I watched the game play and man does the game look generic! Speaking only about the visuals but it just looked like the elder scrolls or MTG CCG's.

Compared to Hearthstone which is colorful and eye catching.

I was also really unimpressed by the gameplay, when they said the game will feature 3 lanes I wasn't expecting it to mean the player will be playing essentially 3 games on different boards at once. Just was really ubderwealmed by it and I didn't have high hopes for it to begin with.

I expected higher quality from Valve. And while I’m not someone who’s into TCG/CCG when I look at Hearthstone it looks extremely appealing and inviting while this just looks bland.

They did come back to it on this weeks bombcast. Ben had checked it out.

In regards to the aestethic, I agree that Hearthstone is very well designed from an art perspective. It is very cutesey and has that typical Blizzard finish. They are world leading in this department imo. However, game art can grow on you, like Slay they Spire. I didnt like the art in the start, but after some dozen hours it looks good and right.

I did look at some of the Hearthstone EU qualifyers on twitch this weekend, and in 3-4 matches, Sintolol needed a specific card in turn 'X' to win, he was lucky and got it. Heartstone game is very meta and combo and RNG dependent. I am under the impression that Artifact is not in the same degree. It does seem complex, but that is just more to dig into.