[Update]: The Artifact 2.0 rework is now heading into Closed Beta!

After being incredibly silent about the fate of Artifact for over a year, Valve recently came out to say that they are not only in the process of reworking Artifact from the ground up, but that they will be keeping the community involved throughout the entire process. And given the amount of developer updates released so far, they really weren't joking!

The latest update, as you would imagine from the title alone, is all about the various mechanical changes coming with Artifact 2.0. I unfortunately can't tell you much about them as I haven't invested enough time in the original Artifact to have something solid to compare them to, but what I can say is that the new progression system seems downright lovely, especially when you contrast it with the current and extremely expensive one.

"All players will unlock cards playing in any mode," reads the developer update. "The pace should be such that players are excited by getting fun cards to play with, but aren’t overwhelmed when they see too many new cards being played by an opponent."

"Players that are new to the game, enjoy casual play, like to learn by doing instead of reading, or just enjoy a sense of progression would start in general matchmaking. They can grow their card pools while matching against opponents with a similar number of card unlocks, giving them a controlled environment to learn in. There will also be the option to jump right in to scrimmages and custom tournaments, these will let players set rules or allow any card sets they see fit. All players will probably enjoy these from time to time, but advanced players can start playing these immediately."

So not only will there be a way to gather cards that slowly introduces new players to advanced strategies and combos, but there will also be a way for experienced players to completely circumvent the system and just dive into the deep end from the very beginning. It really doesn't get much better than that for a card game, so consider me cautiously optimistic about Artifact's future!

My little musings aside - you can learn more about the upcoming changes, as well as what Valve is planning for Artifact 2.0 in general, over at Steam.