I recently upgraded my Visual Studio 2017 Community Edition from version 15.6.2 to 15.6.3 and since then I have not been able to successfully deploy my .NET Core 2.0 web applica
I had the same problem with the publishing and a local build.
The developer community has a discussion about this https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/content/problem/218674/assets-file-cxxxxxxobjprojectassetsjson-doesnt-hav.html
Resharper and MS people found the problem and promised to fix it soon...
For now, deletion of the sdk\2.1.102 and the restart solved my problems