Early Access is Almost Here!
Last month we released the Demo and everyone had the chance to get in and play a small slice of the game. It was great to see so many players becoming Necrophage food… I mean having fun.
Some of you have found exploits during the Demo. One player even completed the tech tree. Which would be a victory condition if the Demo included the narrative victories. Thankfully, he was kind enough to share his save and we have addressed the balance issues that led to it (but I’m sure he will find more).
Everyone who played for at least 2 hours was asked to fill out a survey. We ask a lot of questions (thank you to everyone who replied), but there are 2 questions in particular that we use to evaluate if we are ready for EA, “How satisfied are you with the game?” and “Would you recommend the game?”.
Armed with positive results from the Demo, and a long list of improvements we have made since the Demo went out, we are ready to move forward toward Early Access.
There is so much more to experience in the Early Access version of the game. You will encounter doomwraiths, the narrative victory conditions and a few more surprises. Of course, the Kin of Sheredyn and the Aspects remain playable, and we are adding the Necrophage, Last Lords and our science-loving crazed cultists, the Tahuk. We can’t wait to get your impressions.
Early Access is not the final version of the game – instead it is a chance for us to work with the community. We test features, replace them and add content. The game will be fully playable and fun, but balance and AI will improve throughout. We will try things, some of which will work, and some won’t. We expect each update of the game to improve. And we have seen that with each Insiders build, with the Demo, from the Demo to EA, and we will continue that all the way to 1.0 and beyond.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Even after an Insider’s program with thousands of players, we had more players on the first day of the demo than in the entire development of ENDLESS Legend 2. It was great to see some parts of the game resonating well with you, and the parts players were critical of. This helps us prioritize our next steps.
Strengths
Tidefall > This was a core element of the game, and we were happy to see it having a real impact and providing a special experience on Saiadha. The pacing and amount of Monsoon’s and Tidefalls went through a lot of iteration during development (there were once 8 small tidefalls during the game and they were so frequent you started ignoring them), so it was good to see it working out well (at least for the first 90 turns).
Faction Asymmetry > This is always a focus of Amplitude, and it is the same here. We don’t expect every player to love every faction, the fact that players develop strong preference for and against different factions tells us the asymmetry is working. Players appreciated that in the two playable factions in the Demo, and we are excited to share more.
Art and Sound > The world, characters, animations, vfx all helped create a beautiful world to explore. The sound design, from the minor faction’s little jingles to the sounds of the storm and the amazing music were also well received and enjoyed.
Weaknesses
Main Screen UI > The bulk of the critical feedback received was around the UI. A quarter of reviews mentioned UI and only 30% of those comments were positive. In reading all your feedback we realize it’s not as simple as making a few changes and we are looking at something larger. There are instances where we displayed the wrong or not enough information. There were UI and text bugs to fix and we think more is needed here, which will take some time. We are working on concepts to update the main game screen, and will be sharing designs with you to show our direction and get your feedback.
City Flow/UI > There are issues understanding the decisions in the city screen. Adjacency, leveling districts, managing population, and having clear decisions on what to build next were all muddy. This is more than just a UI issue and we are also looking at it as a flow issue and considering things like having Districts work like improvements (so you can just select one from the build list instead of needing to click a tile in the world first). This will take time to change and won’t be in the initial Early Access, but we will be sharing concepts with you to get feedback.
Writing > One of the goals of the game is to get the player closer to the world, both in art and writing. Because of that, there is a lot more writing in ENDLESS Legend 2 than in the first game, and some of it is between characters. We want heroes to feel personal and deep. They may be members of your council, have their own friends and enemies, and they talk directly to you and each other. But this additional granularity also came with issues. For Early Access we have updated the presentation of the dialog, we are cutting lines and events to focus on only the best and most suitable. In some cases, the wrong character would say something, or a character it didn’t make sense for, which we are fixing.
Terrain Readability > Even though the world is beautiful, it was difficult for many players to tell what was important or what was going on. We have made changes to attempt to address this for EA by making foundations more clear (so it’s more obvious that something can be built there), fixed bugs causing blurry graphics, exposed more graphical options to players to adjust to your preferences, reduced the saturation of the terrain slightly, made Grid Lines more visible, made yield icons more readable, and reduced the size of some terrain vegetation that was so large and bright it was easy to confuse with an Anomaly. It’s a difficult balance between providing a lush, detailed world where you can see the leaves blow in the wind during monsoon, and still not have to strain or be confused when trying to see information you need to play.
Next Steps
We have more coming. An unannounced faction, multiplayer, custom factions, etc. But we are waiting before laying out a more specific roadmap. First, we want to get you into Early Access. The feedback from that will guide everything that comes after.
But first, we need to get you all in and playing. We are excited to have you explore Saiadha and hear your feedback. Welcome to ENDLESS Legend 2.
Derek Paxton,
Game Director of ENDLESS Legend 2