Genshin Impact players salivating over artifact improvements teased by Hoyoverse after 3 years

After nearly three years of tedious artifact grinding, Genshin Impact players are feeling quietly optimistic about the quality-of-life changes that developer Hoyoverse is teasing for a future update. 

The latest Genshin Impact Developers Discussion post confirms several upcoming quality-of-life updates and hints at more in the works. Firstly, the artifact inventory cap is being increased once again, this time from 1,500 to 1,800 in the 4.0 Fontaine update due in two weeks. 

Additionally, the big regional update will add eight more artifact sets to the exchange strongbox, letting players trade three bad artifacts for a new artifact of a specific set. The new sets cover everything up to the Sumeru region, including Inazuma's highly sought-after Emblem set. Destroying artifacts in your inventory has also been optimized to allow heaps of four-star artifacts at once, though this is one feature many players likely won't touch since they probably already tear through low-grade artifacts to level their five-stars.

More tantalizingly, Hoyoverse says "more optimizations for artifacts are currently in the plans." This includes:

• "Locking of artifacts: The dev team has been looking for ways to reduce the cost of managing artifacts and improve your experience. We will optimize the locking function in the future, allowing Travelers to lock Artifacts that they want more easily." 
• "Equipping of artifacts: Regarding the current cumbersome process of equipping Artifacts, we are currently discussing a new plan to help Travelers select and equip Artifacts as quickly as possible."

Hoyoverse says it's still "in the midst of discussing specific plans" for these changes and will share more in the future. Many players are hoping that the changes for equipping artifacts, in particular, will lead to a long-requested loadout feature that lets you easily swap and share pieces across multiple characters. I've always gotten around this hangup by giving each character their own unchanging artifacts and weapons, but I recognize that I can only do that because I've been playing since launch. 

In a separate footnote, the developer says it's also looking at Genshin Impact's daily commission system, which it's deemed "not flexible enough." It's equally unclear when planned changes to this system will arrive, but Hoyoverse says, "When the time comes, Travelers will be able to obtain daily rewards in a new format," which does sound promising. 

The post contains good news for new players looking to dive into Fontaine, too. Rather than clearing three years of content before accessing the new region, Hoyoverse says you can just beat the opening Mondstadt archon quest to unlock a Fontaine waypoint and get started immediately. (That said, the other regions are still a lot of fun to explore.)

Finally, the post confirms that the post-Fontaine battle pass will feature five new weapons, for a total of 10 options. This might be some kind of record for live service games, because apart from the addition of fragile resin, this is the first meaningful update to Genshin's battle pass in nearly three years. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, I suppose. 

Last month, Hoyoverse publicly sided with Genshin Impact voice actors criticizing a third-party recording studio over unpaid wages.