Hello, Weavers! 🪄
It is with great pleasure that we are finally ready to share Eternal Strands’ official update and content Roadmap with you! 🛣️⬇️
Thank you again to everyone who played the demo and/or the main game and took the time to share your constructive feedback, comments and thoughts with us. Thanks to your input and insights, we were able to make some updates to Eternal Strands that we believe will make the overall experience that much more enjoyable and smooth for everyone who decides to venture into The Enclave.
In the roadmap, you’ll notice three significant changes in our next patch:
- Movement improvements
- Combat improvements
- Changes to the penalty for deaths from falls
In this article, we want to take the time to explain these upcoming changes in a bit more detail. ⬇️
Movement improvements 🏃🏽♀️➡️
We heard your feedback about the sometimes “slippery” feeling of Brynn’s movements in the game. Some of you described that her walking/running felt a little bit too much like “skating” and that the lack of precision could be frustrating at times.
Something to note about Brynn’s movement is that much of how it feels is intended and attributable to how a 100% physics-based sandbox game like Eternal Strands is designed to work. Being an object that reacts to the physics surrounding her, just like any other object in the world, means that her weight and inertia have an impact on her movement. It can take some time for Brynn to accelerate or decelerate and there is some nuance in how far kinetic magic can displace her (based on weight of gear equipped) or how far she’s pushed by an epic or heavy object hitting her (based on weight of gear equipped and weight + velocity of the object impacting her). All this to say that Brynn’s movement can’t be as snappy or reactive as it is in games that rely on animation.
That said, based on your feedback, we did take a closer look at what we could change that might have an impact on movement precision. Through this investigation, we did indeed identify and make a few subtle but noticeable tweaks that we think improve the overall experience and feeling of gameplay in Eternal Strands. ⬇️
- Brynn’s minimum acceleration speed has been enhanced.
- After the next update, reaching a target speed or slowing down to a full stop will happen quicker. This will decrease the “sliding” players have experienced at almost all weights (except the lightest, which still has some inevitable “skating”).
- Direction changes will be much "snappier".
Combat improvements ⚔️
Now, for combat! Most of you mentioned that you enjoyed the weapons, the mechanics, parrying system and boss fights. We did, however, hear many of you say that you would appreciate more responsiveness from the combat In Eternal Strands. Our designers read through your comments and based on your feedback, identified a series of small changes to implement that, altogether, provide a significant difference in the way combat feels.
Enemy Hit Reactions
- Enemies will react faster, more often, and with more ‘oomph’ when hit by the player.
- We’ve implemented a directional hit reaction system, where enemies will react in the direction relative to the player’s attack. For a perfect example, try hitting the Acalas with the charged combo of the Two-Handed Blade. Their heads get smashed to the ground!
- Some attacks will do heavier reactions (such as the Two-Handed Blade’s first 2 attacks), which will allow you to interrupt enemy attacks.
- Controller rumble/vibration has been added.
Impact VFX
- The visual effects that play when players hit an enemy have been tweaked to be more prominent.
Weapon improvements
Two-Handed Blade
- The standard 2H's base combo will be slightly faster and more reactive.
- The kinetic 2H's ability will be more reliable and consistent, so the angles will be more appropriate while falling, jumping, or running.
- This will improve the kinetic 2H in combat as well! Enemies will get launched with you at the same arc, which will make it easier to attack them mid-air.
Sword & Shield
- The Sword & Shield sprint attack movement distance has been updated to better fit the attack, so you will no longer overshoot the target.
Changes to the death penalty for falls 🕳️
When you add traversal magic to a physics-based game set in a high verticality world with giant enemies... Lots of chaos ensues ❤️🔥. It’s part of (we think) what makes Eternal Strands fun in its own, unique way – and that is definitely intended design. However, in reading your feedback, we did realize that while fun, that chaos can quickly sour an experience if falling to your death is caused by something entirely out of your control (aka: some of the inevitable jank that comes with a physics game). That unpredictability can also discourage riskier experimentation, like creating an ice bridge or testing the kinetic stream’s distance over a cliff, for example.
To limit the frustrations that arise from these types of circumstances, we’ve removed the penalty from falling deaths. After this update, if you try yeeting yourself onto that little island in Upper Dynevron with an ensnaring blast but miss your landing and plummet into the Miasma, you’ll respawn at the nearest Loomgate with all of your loot.
Reddit AMA 🗣️
We are hosting an AMA with some of our devs over on r/EternalStrands tomorrow, Thursday February 27th at 11AM ET. If you have any burning questions about how Eternal Strands was made, what inspired the team, the lore & story in the game, what future features and content we have planned, or anything else you want to know - join us and ask away!
We will of course update this roadmap with more detailed information in the near future, so please continue sharing your valuable feedback and insights with us! We read everything you post and take all of your experiences with Eternal Strands into consideration as we move forward with implementing fixes, updates and content for the game.
We hope to see you in the forums,
- The Yellow Brick Team