As I write this, we are a little less than 24 hours after Endless Legend 2 released in Early Access. We have already had more players than ever before, even beating the Demo numbers.
The response has been incredibly positive, and we took some time last night in the studio to celebrate. It was nice to see the team relax, have a drink and enjoy knowing that their hard work is appreciated. Your kind words and posts made that possible.
But, it is just the beginning.
Update #01
We have gone through your reports and bug reports (thank you for those) and have an update ready to go out today for fixes. We will continue to monitor and patch issues as they come in. Expect more updates as we continue to monitor the forums and the team resolves issues (we are already working on the next update).
These are the issues resolved in today’s update:
Changed the quality level on Steam Deck to ensure framerate is correct by default.
Fixed an issue where the "Kin's Fate" part of the Kin of Sheredyn faction quest could not be continued with upgraded Chosen units.
Fixed an issue where the "A Bitter Truth" part of the Necrophages faction quest could be failed when retreating from a battle.
Fixed missing localization in the "The Holy Grail" part of the Necrophages faction quest.
Fixed an issue where the Last Lord population could not be bought out. We are still looking at other potential issues that could cause this issue.
Fixes Celestial Scrying Tech; +1 Vision Range on Unit effect. Thank you dilgear for the bug report.
Fixed an issue with the unlocking of the "Out of their Depth" achievement.
Fixed a technical issue when hovering the Haven nested tooltip.
Fixed an issue where deprecated localization was used on battle terrain modifiers.
Fixed an issue where a village being subjugated and targeted by corruption could lead to saves being corrupted (pun intended).
Archer, Warrior, Caster and Windows Defender
A particular issue that some users have reported is an error message about Windows Defender. Windows Defender doesn’t recognize the game yet, so it is blocking it. We have a thread on how to resolve it if you run into it. We are working on improving the error message so it points you to a thread on how to fix this if you get the error.
UI/UX
We have seen feedback from both Demo and EA players about the UI in the game. Since the Demo we have been working on a new design that takes your feedback into account. On Thursday, September 25th we plan to share those concepts with you to get your opinion as well before we commit to large scale changes (which are proposing changes to both UI and mechanics to make it easier).
Balance
We are getting a lot of feedback. Especially about the mid to late game and narrative victory conditions, none of which were in the Demo. Our designers are looking at making balance changes there, some of the victory conditions were too easy (population and resources) and some may be impossible on some maps. So, a balance pass is needed.
Percentages of games won by humans:
33% Multitude (Population) victory
33% Annihilation victory
16% Supremacy (Expansion) victory
7% Wealth (Dust) victory
4% Insight (Exploration) victory
2% Stature (Diplomacy) victory
1% Turn Limit
<1% Enlightenment (Science) victory
<1% Acclaim (Wonder) victory (congrats to the 1 person who did this on EA night)
Just because more people win by a method doesn’t mean it’s to easy, it may just be a more fun way to play. But… in this case we see it lining up with your feedback.
Drunken Pathfinding
Pathfinding is remembering too much. We want it to only hold memory of what you mouseover (so you can force a path if you want) when you are holding down the button. But since it’s storing your mouseover information even when you don’t hold it down it often seems to take weird paths (because you didn’t intend to be giving pathing information as you moved the mouse around). It’s something we are looking at fixing.
Other Issues
Please don’t think that if your issue isn’t listed here, it’s because we haven’t heard you. We are also looking at writing, world generation, AI and other areas you have highlighted. Those are coming as well.
Frequently Asked Questions
Multiplayer
We have seen players asking about multiplayer, and negative reviews about the lack of multiplayer. Multiplayer will be added during Early Access, but is not available yet.
Simultaneous Turns
Some players have expressed frustration with simultaneous turns, or more specifically the feeling that they are in a race against the AI to move first. We have made some changes here with the timing of moves, to delay the AI (which seems to work unless the player has a popup) and to keep the AI from targeting things the player has set as a destination. We also made a change for EA where the AI doesn’t get to “store moves” (meaning it can’t). But it’s still frustrating.
There are 2 things we could do here. We could have the AI move separately than the human player, which would increase turn times. Or we could better communicate to the player about when the AI is taking their turn.
We tried the 2nd option by using the display we using in multiplayer games that shows when everyone is taking their turn and has clicked finish. It works well but is very “loud” for something that most players don’t care about. I think we might need to add it as a game option so the players that care about not moving until the AI is finished can choose to do that.
We have work to do here. What are your thoughts?
On to Day 2
Thank you for the great feedback, please keep it coming. I know your top issue may not be fixed immediately but I hope you will see significant changes and improvement with every major update.
And by the end we will have a great game. We are so glad you decided to join us.
Derek Paxton,
Game Director of ENDLESS Legend 2