It's been a week since we launched Eternal Return 1.0.
Thankfully, many players have come to Lumia Island exceeding our expectations. This doesn't mean the game is ready to go, but it does mean that a lot of people have been waiting for the Official Launch.
We sincerely apologize to our players for their patience, and for the many ways in which we've disappointed them, including the UI and other ways in which we've fallen short of their expectations.
And we deeply appreciate all our players for putting up with the discomfort and continuing with Eternal Return.
To share our progress on responding to your valuable feedback, we're pleased to announce that we've reopened the Roadmap website, which has been closed in preparation for Official Launch.
[Eternal Return 1.0 Roadmap]
While we're happy to share relatively long-term plans for things like Character and Skin production, our development plans for the most urgent improvements that still need to be addressed after 4 Hotfixes since the 1.0 launch are primarily prioritized by items that have a concrete timeline for release within a month. We'll be adding items that aren't yet on the Roadmap as we go along.
Of the feedback we have received from you over the past week, the items that will be included in next week's 1.1 update are as follows.
1.1 Aug 3rd Updates
We're making the first round of improvements to the Crafting Guide, which has been the most frequently requested. Clicking on the target will show you the materials you need, and left-clicking on the materials will show you where they appear. Right-click to instantly call in a Remote Drone. When crafting is complete, a function to change the target to the recommended equipment is provided by clicking on it.
You will be able to select a Telephoto Camera from the VPad's shortcuts when you have a Telephoto Camera. You can now easily create multiple cameras, drones, and traps with shortcuts.
In response to feedback that the UI is too small to see, we're increasing the size of the most-used inventory and quickcraft UIs. However, we'll be increasing the size of the equipped gear UI a bit later, as it requires a complete reworking of the layout.
Changes to the camera viewpoint will first be temporarily applied so that you can see the pre-1.0 view when you zoom in with the mouse. We did the quickest thing we could to play with the existing viewpoint, which is usually more favorable to play with a wider one. If we get a lot of feedback after the Patch that people want to play with the old one, we'll be adding 2 options to choose from.
When searching for Saved Plans, the Search by Saved Plan ID feature is now the first priority, making it easier to find if you know the ID. Past Saved Plans becoming invisible from the list as more are added will also be fixed.
And due to many feedback that there is not enough time for the game preparation phase, the time limit for the Character Selection phase will be increased by 10 seconds, and the Background Music will be rearranged accordingly.
We're also adding measures to improve the quality of matchmaking in Normal Matches over the long term. Scores tended to rise gradually as the number of games increased, but we want to improve this to near-zero-sum, more strongly reflect winning and losing streaks, and more accurately measure skills when the number of games increases.
As areas were subdivided, the final temporary safe zones were sometimes too close together. We mitigated this by changing the location of the safe zones in 9 areas.
In the case of the newly added Forging station, many players were frustrated when they couldn't get the skins they wanted due to the lack of a "ceiling" or "recombination" in the Data Box, making "crafting" a difficult process. We can't fix the product structure all at once, but we'll start by breaking up duplicate products, increasing the amount of Vacance Tokens you get, and urgently adding Unclaimed Skin Vouchers that can be purchased with Vacance Tokens. Unclaimed Skin Vouchers consist only of skins that are not available in Store, and will give you one you do not own yet.
Everyone who has previously used Disassemble will receive slightly more Vacance Tokens than the changed amount. We will continue to make improvements to Forging to ensure that everyone who has used it is not disappointed.
Some of the bugs that received a lot of feedback were hotfixed first, but many more will be fixed in 1.1, including the following:
- Using certain Tactical and Character Skills at the same time will no longer cause skills to be activated while moving.
- Martina’s Fast Forward (Q) and Pause (W) will now apply the mark consumption correctly when hitting simultaneously.
- Debi & Marlene’s Crescent Dance (Marlene W) will be available for use in any situation.
- Adaptability will now be affected by % amplification.
- Battle Zone Shuttle’s frozen buff will now work properly.
- Team invites will now be possible during matching.
- You will now be able to see skill effects and projectiles correctly.
- Reviving once on your location in Cobalt Protocol will be fixed.
- Most of the bugs related to tooltips will be fixed together.
Meanwhile, in-game Voice Chat is now available for random matches instead of pre-formed teams. The default is set to "Disable Voice Chat", so if you want to communicate with random team members, please check your settings!
1.2 Aug 17th Updates & Follow-up Updates
Some bugs will take a bit longer to fix.
- A number of issues with matching will be fixed across 1.1 and 1.2.
- Skill damage effects being visible even when in invisible mode will be fixed in update 1.2, as the internal logic related to eye handling needs to be adjusted.
- The Battle Zone wall between Dock and Warehouse (update 1.2) and improvements to the Farming paths on the Chapel side (update 1.3) will also be fixed as soon as the post-processing work is complete.
- Work is also underway to reduce the space for tactical skills on the VPad and organize the information in a more useful way, as well as the ability to view the tactical skills of teammates during the character selection phase, but this has not yet been scheduled.
- A menu where you can check character stats and weapon masteries in the lobby will be added in the 1.3 update.
The Roadmap does not include everything; there are many other improvements and new features in the works for the game outside of it. Also, the timeline shown on the Roadmap is often subject to change as development progresses, and information about new seasons is often shared on other channels before it is published on the Roadmap.
The purpose of the roadmap is to give players a little more insight into our development progress, especially now that we're back up and running and responding to a lot of the feedback we received during the preseason.
We will have more and more information as we move forward. And we'll do our best to make sure improvements are implemented quickly.
We'd love to hear your feedback so we can make Eternal Return even better.
As always thank you for sticking with us!
