The latest blog post from Valve is fascinating. It details how their original approach to balancing Artifact was to rarely, if ever, balance cards. They wanted bans and balance changes to be few and far between. Why they ever came to that decision I'm not sure, but it's evident in their writing that the studio - now that Artifact is live - wasn't happy with it. 

A common pattern in physical card games is to design around the goal of never changing cards, and to only make card changes or bans in extremely rare cases. Our initial approach to the game was to follow this type of methodology and keep balancing changes as a last resort, in large part because we thought players valued immutability very highly.

On that basis, Valve have chosen a path that will see them actively and regularly balance cards. This is a great decision and one that has been met with much praise from its community. It will inevitably be incredibly health for the game, especially when there are certain cards that are clearly too strong. What's also great about this new blog post, is the fact the first balance pass hits all the right spots, bringing Axe down a peg, while also buffing some key abilities/Heroes.

If that wasn't good enough, progression is finally here and brings opportunities to gain account levels and rewards, such as icons, tickets and card packs (plenty of them!).

For full details from the blog, take a look here.