Hi everyone! Elliotte here, developer of the game.
I've largely been working solo on Aeternitas, and I am really grateful and glad for you to have played & enjoyed the game. It means so much to me, so first of all, thank you so much.
On the launch day, I briefly mentioned that I will make a proper announcement over the weekend to reveal the future of Aeternitas and address your suggestions. I am writing this announcement today to let you know exactly that, and to give a brief & tasty introduction to what Aeternitas really is to our new community members. Welcome!
WHAT IS AETERNITAS?
Aeternitas, right now, is a magical-school game with visual-novel and RPG elements that follows the story and rise to fame of Elwin, an ordinary boy thrown into the crossroads of past and future in a large world full of life, legend, and intrigue, where everyone can control the 4 elements. You, as his incarnation, have choices to make for their world.
When I started out as a solo developer for Aeternitas, I had a specific goal for what it would be like as a game. And it was this: Aeternitas is a game created to showcase a grander world & story that's in existence, rather than the opposite where a world is cobbled together to complement a standalone game. And as this suggests, the world of Aeternitas has already been fully constructed from the ground-up, with its own legends, nations, history, and civilizational development which I wish to bring to your interest.
You know how the Star Wars: Expanded Universe had such a treasure trove of legend, depth, and loveable characters, and Episode IV: A New Hope was just the start of that great adventure? Aeternitas is to its new world as A New Hope was for the Star Wars saga. And just as the movie barely scratched the surface of the great ocean in 1977, the same is for Aeternitas in its current iteration. So let's get into the second part of this announcement.
WHAT'S IN IT FOR THE FUTURE?
Aeternitas right now is considered feature-complete when it comes to combat and fundamental gameplay. But as an overwhelming majority of reviews, both positive and on-the-fence pointed out, people want to see more of the story continue beyond Act One, to see more characters, and to see more engaging gameplay within the campus. These are absolutely valid points, and to address your wishes, I will go through each of the top recommended suggestions by category pooled from all reviews, and show you whether it is in the future roadmap.
STORY & GAMEPLAY
1) "We want to see the same quality story continue beyond Act One." (suggested by 12 reviewers)
Answer: This is solidly in the roadmap, and I will gradually solidify the time you spend on campus in a Semester and/or Arc-based story like you would see in TV, Comics, or in Anime.
2) "We want to engage with meaningful quests & conversations with the characters we saw in Act One." (suggested by 10 reviewers)
Answer: This is firmly positioned in the roadmap, and will be integrated along with the semester / arc-based story that I mentioned earlier.
3) "We need more challenges and more meaning beyond simply leveling to 20 and mastering the 4 elements" (suggested by 8 reviewers)
Answer: This is a very valid point and I will seek to expand it and make it more engaging for you. I think improvements in this sector can be wonderfully integrated with the continuation of the story, with a focus on perhaps defeating a mega-powerful rival, villain, or a mix of the two.
4) "The campus just feels way too empty. I would actually enjoy exploring it if things were there that I can fully interact and engage with." (suggested by 7 reviewers)
Answer: Excellent point. I will mark it in my roadmap so that halls and corridors are not just tedious maps you have to slowly traverse through, but are full of students and people walking here and to with their own daily schedules and whom you can take quests and interact with. The charm of Hogwarts in Harry Potter was that, in nearly every chapter, there was a new, exciting place to explore, both fantastical and dangerous. This, from the get-go, will take a lot of work, so I will prioritize on the abovementioned points first.
5) "The professors are too easy to beat even at full strength thanks to morale damage. Lower it or nerf it." (suggested by 6 reviewers + 2 people in the community discussions).
Answer: This I must disagree with. Aeternitas wasn't built to have the difficulty curve of a game like Dark Souls. I understand that a good challenge gives you a sense of mastery & satisfaction when you overcome them, but keep in mind that without morale damage, you will have to spend hours grinding down the ridiculously beefy health of each professor to zero. That is less fun than convincing them to surrender through your smartly executed moves. Later on in the coming story where you face more than 1 opponent, you will find that stacking morale damage combos will be considerably harder because just a single one of their attacks will break your combo. The morale mechanic, however, still serve as a nice alterative to beating everyone into mincemeat, since it gives you the opportunity to adopt a non-violent roleplay path.
6) "There's no explanation of the MP cost or the damage stats of spells or anything like that. Please add it!" (suggested by 5 reviewers)
Answer: Valid point. This is in the roadmap. I am choosing whether to show you a tooltip when you hover over the icons during battle, or within the guidebook. I'm leaning towards the latter, because too much tooltips during heated combat may get confusing.
7) "My party allies are too strong from the get-go. That makes battle and everything so easy and gives me a hard time forming attachment to their actual characters." (mentioned by 3 reviewers)
Answer: I think this is a very valid point. While right now the party allies are available for you from the get-go so you can try various strategies like in sandbox mode, what I ultimately should do is to incrementally give you the ability to recruit & convince them through quests to join your party as you progress through the Story Arc. This would solve the problems with easy battles & lack of personal attachment to the characters.
QUALITY OF LIFE
1) "The campus is so big and your dorms and classes are so far apart from each other that it's tedious to walk to and from while trying to conserve time." (mentioned by 7 reviewers + 3 people in the community discussions)
Answer: That's a valid point. Until each hallway is fully populated with interesting characters and is engaging to walk in, it'd not be an untruth to consider it a chore. I will put in my roadmap to institute a fast travel system that will instantaneously take you to and from various key maps in the academy.
2) "The campus is so big it's actually easy to get lost for a new player." (mentioned by 4 reviewers + 2 people in the community discussions)
Answer: Also a valid point. I will put on my roadmap to include a campus map where you will be able to pinpoint your current location. I may also add some easy-to-see portal graphics to the places where you can press 'space' to travel.
3) "Time passes even though I'm looking through my guidebook. Please make it pause?" (mentioned by 1 person in the community discussions)
Answer: Very valid point. Since time stops when you are browsing through the class menu and such, there's no reason why the same shouldn't happen while you are leisurely looking through the guidebook. I will add this to the roadmap.
4) "Is Controller Support going to be instituted in the future?" (mentioned by 1 person in the community discussions)
Answer: While the game currently doesn't officially support controllers (official support means I've thoroughly playtested it to quality standards), it may in the future, but only after instituting the quality of life additions above. That being said, there are reports of people who've used their controllers out of the box which worked fine, but I would use a mouse & keyboard if unsure.
BUGFIXES
1) "Some party members like Isaac join the battle but can't do anything in combat. This happens after going through battles a couple of times." (mentioned by 3 people in the community discussions)
Answer: I'm getting to the root of the problem. Currently, the solution is to simply save and restart the game. But this can be annoying, so I will try my hardest to fix it.
2) "It's impossible to level beyond level 20, and if you try to, the EXP on the victory / defeat screens looks buggy." (mentioned by 3 people in the community discussions)
Answer: This was due to there being a level cap of 20. I will make a top priority point to remove or extend this cap in the roadmap.
3) "When a party ally tries to use a really powerful battle art, e.g., Supernova but they don't have enough MP, they pass out." (mentioned by 2 people in the community discussions)
Answer: What's happening here is that when they don't have enough MP to use a battle art but do it anyways, it consumes their HP instead (so a heroic sacrifice by one to take out multiple enemies is actually possible). I will put it into the roadmap to make a clearer explanation in the intro that this mechanic exists so that it doesn't confuse new players.
4) "Food timers don't track sleeping, where you can consume a food item and its effects will still be present even if you hibernate for 16 hours in your bed." (mentioned by 1 person in the community discussions)
Answer: This is not actually a bug. I made it so that even if you decide to sleep a bit, the hard work you performed to earn that food will not automatically go to waste. Not conducive to realism since human beings indeed digest food, I agree. But if the food items did expire while people slept, people would either avoid sleeping out of negative consequence avoidance or micromanage when exactly they need to sleep to avoid losses. Both of those are objectively not more fun than the current features in place.
5) "You can't strike up a regular chat with the professors in classes although you can talk to them about your paths of study." (mentioned by 1 person in community discussions)
Answer: That's indeed a bug and ideally shouldn't happen. I will get to the bottom of this and fix it along with the top priority bugfixes above.
6) "There's an issue where if you load a manual save in the dormitory corridor while talking to Robert, you can enter your room and be soft-locked because you can't progress in the conversation." (mentioned by 1 person in the community discussions)
Answer: This is a rare bug, but I think I have a grasp of the issue. This will be medium priority for now since this is highly situational, but I will include it in the roadmap.
Thank you for reading! Stay tuned next week for the exciting first worldbuilding diary on here and on YouTube.
Best,
Elliotte 'Toshinori' Lee, Solo Dev / Series Creator
