Passive artifacts: they can be swapped as many times as needed, bu twill remain 'inactive' until activated.
Once activated, they are locked in place for 16-24 hours.


?

Well, for artifact collectors like me, I also see a chance to spend AP here: 500 AP (just a random, round number) to unlock another artifact slot.

Yes, I'm an active swapper, although I often forget to take out the draft artifact,....

And everyone refers to Krinid, so now I have to scroll and find his proposal.
Can we sort the thread replies according to the number of likes a post has?

@JK

your sheet is incomplete. There are Insane Artifacts too.


I also second krinid here. Pretty much on the point.

Edited 2/10/2021 23:45:54

If fizzer do indeed make restriction on artifact swap
Please make sure swapping be done more manageable
Instead of freely toggling artifact as in now, try make a window and put the artifact in new slot, then press. Confirm

I will go on record saying that swapping artifacts is fun. It's tedious, but I try to set things up in a way where I only have to swap every few hours when I am not idling and need to purchase things/change smelters etc...

A lot of people have suggested fixes and alternatives. I have an idea as well, one that does not fundamentally change the gameplay. It's based off the simple and in my opinion, accurate, assumption that nobody likes active artifacts.

The idea is to combine active artifacts into the functional/passive ones. Example: With a cache boost artifact, it would also have the ability to get a free cache every 24 hours, or whatever is deemed fair to not make them too OP. Or with Mercenary boost, you get a free inspire "x%" of Mercenaries every "y" amount of hours. Or for artifacts are being described in this thread as "functional artifacts" such as Army Camp Discount, you get special double or triple discount once every "x" amount of hours.

Yes, this would make artifacts much more valuable, but you could just make harder to acquire. This would somewhat do away with the concept of "upgrade fodder" and make upgrading your artifacts a much more strategic endeavor. Also, you could switch out your artifacts like we do today, but then obviously if you activate the effect, then you're stuck with it for the rest of the cool down period. What's nice is that it wouldn't be a wasted slot.

And I know that not every passive/functional artifact has its active counterpart, so some work might have to go into fleshing that out, but alternatively it could be really fun if the correspondence was actually totally random, so you get a Smelt speed increase artifact that also gives you a discounted mine upgrade every 24 hours, or a Draft increase that gives you a 3 minute time warp every 24 hours, etc. This would also have the added benefit of never getting the same artifact twice based on all the possible variations.

Thoughts?

*Edited to include Krinid's new terminology of Passive/Functional/Active Artifacts

Edited 2/11/2021 15:46:15

So, if I understand you, ChillHouzVanHoutn, correctly, your suggestion is to combine actives and passives in a way that I can use them passively - just like today - or could use their active part for a greater effect but while cool down they will still give me the passive portion of them. It's definitely an interesting approach but I still dislike the part where a slot is blocked for 16h. Sure, you are making up for this. But I would probably keep using them passively (because of the slot blocking) and Fizzer will still complain, that this doesn't mitigate swapping.

Let me just propose a slight variant that I like more but that has similar downsides to your idea:
Again, we get rid of all active artifacts and add an active part to each functional one (the actual passive artifacts really don't need an additional effect tbh) especially to the ones that have an active counterpart. You are free to swap as you like, but if you manage to keep a functional artifact for some time in some slot (moving an artifact from one slot to another shouldn't penalize you), you can on top "claim" some additional goodie. So, e.g. we have the "Draft Boost" that while equipped gives you x% (depending on its quality) more armies for drafting. And if you keep it equipped for - let's just say - 16h you can claim a few more armies, perhaps equivalent to four drafts or so. After equipping an artifact, there is a count down for when the bonus effect triggers and as soon as you claim whatever additional bonus, the count down starts anew.

What I like about this approach is that there is no artificial limits to what I do with my artifacts. But if I play more like Fizzer intended, I profit from not swapping too often. I would suspect that more users WANT to wait another hour before swapping to get this bonus, than they enjoy HAVING to wait.

I think - unless someone proves me wrong - that is should be pretty straightforward to extend this idea to all other artifacts. Army Camp Discount has x% discount passively, and one time 3x% or so in its "active" phase, ...

As a consequence, there would be no active artifacts anymore, no activation buttons, no cool down. So, this change is still extensive.

I just realize, that players that DO ACTUALLY prefer the active artifacts would be totally screwed by my idea, so let me fix this myself:

I equip my "Draft Boost" like in my last post. Now, the count down starts from 16h. I can now benefit from the passive boost effect and gain some more armies after each 16h (given I am awake and claiming the active portion of my artifact). BUT - and here's the change - if I need the active effect right away at some point, the game offers me this, but converts what is left of count down into cool down, but still with the passive effect while it is cooling down.
So if for example, I equip the Army Camp Discount for general cheaper camp upgrades and 8h in, the most expensive army camp of mine gets almost into reach and I really want to upgrade now rather than in 3h when I would have collected the money passively, I can activate the Army Camp Discount for the greater effect, but then I have to keep this artifact in its slot for another 8h and the next goodie count down will only start after the cool down has ran out.

So, the activate button would be back, but the cool down essentially would decrease with the time the artifact was already in slot before activating it.

I would still rather have nothing changed, but here's a new idea:

Keep Actives as they are and have all Passives converted to X Ap based on if it's Poor, Common, ect. Other than the two money bonuses which might be in Phase 3, I think all of them have Advancements that do the same as Passive Artifacts. Yes the Mine bonus is split up, but I'm guessing no one ever spends AP on those so maybe get rid of them and make a general Mine bonus like the artifact. You still get Passives or Actives from dig site, but the Passives are immediately converted to AP. This would solve Fizzer problem with people micromanaging and make Actives useful.

***edit*** If the two money bonuses aren't in Phase 3 there are free spots it the Tech tree to add a couple of them to make up for the lose.

Edited 2/11/2021 14:57:26

Here is phase 3:

Another impact of swap limitations to consider ... the math on artifacts is wonky and not clear.

Example: what is better, 100% territory money boost or 40% bonus money boost? Both are Rare. The answer is ... it depends on what you've captured so far, and you don't know until you compare with 1 equipped then swap one out and equip the other. There are occasions during a level where TMB > BMB and sometimes TMB < BMB. But given that neither territory money/sec nor bonus money/sec show up as a stat anywhere, it's difficult to measure before equipping the artifacts.

If the artifact could forecast what the impact of using it would be, that would help, eg: current 2M/sec income, with the 40% BMB will become 2.2M/sec income (note: net 10% benefit b/c of other related bonuses, not actual 40% b/c of the wonky math which I won't get into here - but the point is that just makes it harder for players to predict the real benefit, and thus rely on swapping in/out to figure out the real value) could show; "Current 2M/sec, With artifact: 2.2M/sec", then we wouldn't have to swap in/out to know. In lieu of this though ... players will be confused.

Honestly, WZI math is not obvious. Stats help a lot but there are still a lot of calculations just not visible to us so we need to experiment to figure things out, and some of it we can never figure out accurately.

Maybe make it so that all artifacts have to be activated but some artifacts last for longer, say 30 minutes, when activated? this may require the cooldown to be reduced to say, 6hrs.

How about if you make all artifacts passive. This will equalize all of the artifacts, and not make it annoying to be activating them all the time. I only play passive artifacts because it is annoying to activate them all the time.

Hi

First, we could rename this artifact category, to open new possible ways. I think we may change "active or passive artifacts" as artifacts with "constant or temporary effects"... but why not a third category ?

Secondly, me too I think we may create a new artifact slot system : three slots for constant and three slots for temporaries.

At last, I propose that constant artifacts need a charging time when they start activating, and during the activation time they run with a lower efficacity. For example the lowering could be 50% during 20 minutes, or why not it could start with 50% efficiency and increase gradually during 1 hour.
As well the player could choose between two strategic approaches : keeping strong artifacts wih constant effects without worrying more about, or trying to play an optimization way with weaker artifacts but adjustable.
Maybe, another new stragegy should emerge : preparing a strong and charged artifact combination with constant effects before one or more specific actions, and then preparing an other combination for other "packaging actions". However, a such strategy would need a lot of different artifacts, considering we loose many when we make evolve them... in order to privilegiate the first strategic option.
Concerning beginning players, it could be the same thing than beginning levels : less slots, and possibility to increase the slot numbers thanks to an upgrade or a conquest, so the choice to make the effort to obtain this slot bonus may depend on which artefact we have.

Thank you for all the creating work.

Lot of good, well thought out responses from the community. I agree with many of them.

My two cents: all of fizzers proposals are taking agency away from players. I don’t understand why this is a good OR fun solution. But if the goal is really to stop swapping you should just eliminate passive artifacts entirely. Alternatively rework them as permanent, always on, advances with the only limit being being you get one of each type. Any half measures don’t fully solve the “problem” and will just create frustration for players.

So Fizzer, what say you? Any useful nuggets in what we've provided here?

Synchronicity. I was thinking about this, came to the forum to ask about it and here is a whole thread with lots of opinions already.
I agree with Fizzer that the switching is not fun and I add that it is frustrating when you forget it for a moment and insta-regret an action.
I would like to see the slots gone. The most advanced version of every artifact is always on. The actives can now have their cooldown and still be useful because since they are not blocking anything the only way to waste them is not to use them, the opposite of how it is now.
Artifacts becomes kind of an advancement that you gain inside the campaign instead of after it, but the random element of not knowing what you will get makes it different enough to be its own thing. You have to be constantly digging for better ones (through luck or upgrading). Additionally, I do not see a point in waiting for artifact upgrade.

Additionally, I do not see a point in waiting for artifact upgrade.

Agreed, getting the 4 artifacts together you need to upgrade already takes long enough, so waiting days for an upgrade to finish is just extra painful.

Making upgrading less painful would cause more upgrades to be done, which reduces the number of artifacts and therefore the swaps as well.

Isn’t the easiest answer to just have unlimited slots? May require a slight difficulty tweak to adjust.

You would still need to trade up because only the best version of each artifact would be active - i.e. if you have a Rare and an Uncommon the uncommon doesn’t do anything.

The problem with that is Fizzer didn't want people to have use of all artifacts. He purposefully limited it to 3, and he is trying to limit a workaround.

Artifacts are basically free AP advancements.

If he were to allow use of all, he would have to make levels harder. All this would do is hurt newer players who don't have as many artifacts.

yep, removing the slots is not an option