Check out the details on our Website.
Eternal Return
PATCH NOTES 0.87.0 - June 21st, 2023
Check out the details on our Website.
12th Dev Journal
Hello Lumia Island survivors!
Today’s Dev Journal will cover changes in Mastery and Crafting.
The defining moments of win or loss are played out by how well you fought - controlling and maneuvering your character against others. However, players spend most of their time in the game trying to improve this defining position even if it’s just slightly more favorable. Mastery, Crafting, and Credits (which we’ll cover in our next Dev Journal) make up the three pillars of character growth in Eternal Return.
Eternal Return is a game with a tremendous amount of information. With so much information to keep track of, you have to open several pop-ups to monitor the character’s status while playing the game, including Mastery (V), Crafting Menu (B), Open Saved Plans list (P), and Scoreboard (Tab). But now, 3 pop-ups, excluding the Scoreboard, will be combined into one - the VPad!
*All preview images released in the Dev Journals are subject to change during the development process.
VPad stands for Vectorized Projection Assistance Display, a vector screen projected from a bracelet on the subject's wrist that allows them to see their current status during the experiment.
Players will now have access to the three pillars of growth - Mastery, Crafting, and Credits - in one glance! And all you need to do is remember your V Key!
The left side of the VPad is reserved for the two kinds of special skills: Weapon Skills and Tactical Skills. Weapon Skills get stronger as you gain weapon mastery, and Tactical Skills get stronger as you buy and upgrade them with Credits.
As for Mastery, it has been simplified into six categories: Weapons, Hunt, Craft, Search, Move, and Defense, while Health and Traps have been removed. However, it's still important to build up your skills evenly, as the overall structure of leveling up as you gain experience remains the same. Another important change is that Weapon Skills now have 3 levels, allowing you to learn your first Weapon Skill faster.
Of the six, the one with the most impact on combat is Weapon Mastery. This is one of Eternal Return's unique systems, but it has also had its ups and downs.
On the other hand, Season 7's Skill Amplification's update was one of our most poorly received updates. Not only did it have some serious unbalancing issues early on in the patch, but it also created some new problems in the long run.
The biggest problem with it is that items have lost their universality. With items having a separation between Skill Amp and Attack Power, there have been many incidents where looting enemies or loot crates do not feel rewarding if they are not fitting items. We've since added an item destruction system to make it a little better, but it's still quite inconvenient and incomplete.
Additionally, it has made Mastery more confusing. Mastery's Skill Amplification has become meaningless for Basic Attack Characters, and vice versa. To improve this, we removed useless masteries and added different mastery effects that match each character's needs. As a result, each character at the moment has different mastery per weapon, making it practically a second passive that needs to be learned.
Even within the development team, there have been many discussions about rolling back the Skill Amplification Update, but there were a lot of downsides and complications to that. First of all, ignoring the changes already made to Characters, Items, Objects, Phases, etc could possibly make this rolling process a "Second Skill Amplification Patch" . Besides the structural problems caused by the Skill Amplification Patch, the first month of Season 7 was a total balancing failure. Even in the past, we had seen some issues in the balancing from introducing new systems such as Augments and Battle Zones, but a rollback that "alters the fundamental formula for all characters and changes all of their skills' weight" would likely cause the same level of confusion and consequences as the Skill Amplification Patch.
Even though the balance was severely destabilized right after the Skill Amplification Update, the previous system also had many flaws. Problems such as "Skill casters having overly powerful Basic Attacks", "Tanks dealing overly strong damage", “DPS characters wearing tank items”, or "Damage being too concentrated in a single skill", were not easy to solve.
So, instead of going backwards, we wanted to find an alternative to solve the current issues. First, we want to address the biggest issue with the Skill Amplification patch - item versatility - in a new way.
To do so, we’re introducing a Reward System. Now, when you eliminate an enemy, their Legendary Equipment will be converted into Rewards. You can get Reward Pouches from enemy corpses and use them to accumulate Credits. The more Legendary Equipment the enemy has, the bigger the reward! Now defeating powerful enemies will get you more than just your honor, you'll be rewarded accordingly for your efforts!
Up until now, fiding 2 or 3 Legendary Equipments from a corpse would instantly result in a drastic increase in the power curve, making it an excessively significant return. But if they weren't useful, players would have to use a rather inconvenient UI to destroy them. However, now we have equalized the expected return and it's made it more convenient.
Air Supplies also had an issue regarding item versatility. We'll cover Air Supplies' changes in more detail in our next Dev Journal, Credits and Game Phase, but to give you a peak of one of its changes, all equipment collected from Legendary Boxes will have adaptive stats, making them useful for both Skill Amplification and Basic Attack builds. Selective Stats, well, select and provide the character's highest stat between Skill Amplification and Attack Power.
(All the values, including the stats exchange ratio, are just examples.)
Once the problem of item versatility for the two ways of obtaining Legendary Equipment, besides crafting, has been solved, the inonvenient destruction function will be removed.
Another big problem, the lack of intuitiveness of Mastery, has gotten worse in subsequent patches to the “Skill Amplification Patch”. To solve the problem of Mastery not being useful for some characters, we individualized it for each of them. As a result, the entry barrier increased, but the expected results were not achieved. There were many conflicting points between the 2 intended directions, one changing the mastery and the other opening up the possibility of alternative builds.
We want to make Mastery simpler and clearer. Weapon Mastery will no longer be individualized per character, and all characters will have only one main effect, either Skill Amplification or Basic Attack Amplification, and all of them will have Attack Speed as a secondary effect. You might be a little skeptical about Attack Speed, but in order to give characters using multiple weapons a different Attack Speed per weapon, this must be attached to Weapon Mastery.
While giving Attack Speed as a secondary effect to a Skill Amplification Character is not completely meaningless for Skill and Basic Attacks combos, or Uninstalling Cameras and Traps, Skill Amp side will be compensated a bit as they scale with Attack Speed a bit less.
Therefore, all test subjects will only have 2 Weapon Masteries. All secondary effects that were added before, such as Omnisyphon and Cooldown Reduction, will be removed.
Simplifying Mastery increases intuitiveness, but it makes it harder to create alternative builds other than the main one used with Skill Amplification or Basic Attacks. We plan to address the variety of builds in the future by working on the differences between Weapon types. For Characters with skill sets that are suitable for playing in both directions, their different weapons will be assigned to different playstyles. If they only have one Weapon type, we'll prioritize adding Weapon types.
The Tactical Skills in the bottom left corner are upgraded by using Credits, as we covered in our last Changes to Accessories, making early game play more diversified. We'll talk more about the types of Tactical Skills in our Dev Stream!
You can organize better by checking the items you obtained through Crafting and Remote Drones on the right side of the VPad. The purpose of this new feature is to connect all Crafting related functions.
As your crafting progresses, you'll see a % progress indicator, and clicking on an incomplete target item will show you the materials needed for that item at a glance.
If you haven't found a material yet, you can call in a Remote Drone directly by pressing the button that has the price on it. We'll be covering more about Credits on our next Dev Journal, but as Credits will now be used more often, we will now display their price, just like in a store! It's time to forget the times when the UI wasn't clear about how to use a Remote Drone.
In addition to letting you call the materials you want from your Crafting Tree, the bottom of the VPad will also give you a separate list of materials that you can order with Remote Drones. For example, if the creator of the Saved Plan recommended something, it will be included here. The most common use of this new feature in early to mid-game is whenever you need to find an item in one area and you don't find it, so you move on to the next one. For example, if you know you should have gotten Glue on Route 1 and you didn't, the item will be automatically added for easy recall.
One of the most important features of the new Crafting Guide is the Process to get Legendary Equipment. While beginners in Eternal Return somehow manage to get used to crafting Epic Equipment, the #1 most challenging task after that was leveling up to Legendary.
So now when you're done crafting your Epic Equipment, it will blink as “Completed” in the Crafting Guide. When you enter the VPad by tapping on the Crafting Guide, you'll be given three options for Legendary Equipment to target in that area.
If you have any of the latter items registered in your Saved Plan, they will come to the top of the list, and the rest will be suggested based on their build types. If you choose one of them, it will be registered as a target. Of course, the materials that can be teleported will also show up again.
This process smoothly leads you to change your target to Legendary Equipment once you have completed your Epic tier. If you do this for all five pieces of equipment - Weapon, Head, Chest, Arm, and Leg - all five will be turned into Legendary. Typically, when crafting a Saved Plan, Weapons are allocated as VF Blood Samples, Head as Tree of Life, Chest as Meteorites, so you can respond according to the materials you get.
But, as you play, you may find yourself picking up Legendary materials that you don't have set up in your Saved Plan. In these cases, Operator Nadja, not VPad, will suggest Legendary Equipment that can be crafted from those materials. We'll cover more of this in the Operator Nadja Dev Journal!
While the process of crafting major equipment is important, crafting Consumables such as food, traps and cameras, is also a big part of the game. Of these, food has a formula that allows you to take any item to campfire , greatly reducing the difficulty of crafting. Beverages are a different story, with an overhaul to the crafting recipe that makes it more of a "any common beverage (white) can be made into a higher-end beverage (green) by combining two different types" concept. As a result, food and drinks are less about crafting with a specific goal in mind and more about improvising as you go.
In the upcoming Dev Journal, changes to “Traps and Cameras” will be introduced. Traps and Cameras will be added to a shortcut in VPad, allowing them to be quickly targeted or called up by a remote drone when needed.
The goal of VPad is to make sure that you only have one pop-up open at any given time, rather than a bunch of different ones. And that you can see it at a glance, rather than having to navigate through multiple tabs like you would in the original Crafting menu.
Moreover, the existing Mastery pop-up (V) and Open Saved Plans List (P, Shift+P) functions will be completely removed, but the Crafting Menu (B) will remain functional. However, all of the most commonly used functions of the Crafting Menu will now also be available on the VPad, so it's unlikely that beginners will ever need to open it. In some cases, experienced players who want to craft items that aren't on their Saved Plans will still be able to use the Item Catalog.
Next Dev Journal will cover changes to Credits and Game Phases. See you there!
Thank you for reading!
You can get WP from the Dev Journals on our web event page.
Web Points(WP) are event points that can be obtained and used throughout the Season 9 web events
Eternal Return 1.0 Dev Stream Survey Draw Winners
We've got some exciting news for you—the winners of the Dev Stream Survey!
First off, thanks to all the survivors who took part in the survey. We appreciate your valuable feedback and promise to work hard on making Eternal Return even better.
Check out the list below to see if you're one of the lucky winners receiving the 1,200 Event NP (7 days) reward!
5 Winners:
- salt****
- か*
- mox***
- ヤンの腓****
- Rivu****
11th Dev Journal
Hello Lumia Island Survivors!
Today’s Dev Journal will cover changes to Ranked System.
Ranked System will be changed from the existing ELO-based relative score system to a method more similar to an evaluation.
Players will now use Ranked Points as an Entry Cost depending on their Ranked tier, start a Ranked Match, and now get points based on their number of kills and placements. Up until now, your point gain and loss were calculated based on the relative difference between your rank and the average rank of other players in the match, and only the final calculated score was displayed. Now, your accumulated score will be shown in real-time and it will clearly indicate how many points you can earn for each additional kill.
Of course, this new scoring system won’t be totally absolute, point gains and losses will still take consideration of the lobby rank to an extent. If there are no adjustments or corrections made for the lobby at all, there is a significant risk that top players may take advantage of the system. If there were no adjustments, top players could decide to only play during less populated hours to take advantage of a lobby with wider MMR lobby gap differences. So, while there will be similar adjustments to those in the current system, the biggest change will be the transparency of the scores during the game.
The higher your tier is, the more expensive the Entry Cost gets. In the lowest tiers, you can move up even with an average performance, but players in the highest tiers must perform well to match their higher Entry Costs.
Overall, Ranked Points are determined by your number of kills and placements - but not all kills have equal value. Kills on the Battle Zone have a relatively low value, similarly to kills that can be reverted through revival.
(The numbers below are just an example and the actual data is subject to change.)
The main goal of the new Ranked System is to provide feedback on your performance in real time. These ranked scores will highlight the most essential mission that players in Eternal Return face: kill and survive. And they provide immediate feedback on how well you've done in fulfilling the said mission.
Also, when you start a Ranked Match, you will start with a negative score because you paid the Entry Cost. But don’t worry! You’ll see your current Ranked Points in the top corner of the screen later on.
The score will increase as you get kills. You may see your score raise even more after a kill if the kill moved you up in placement.
Additionally, being able to see your score on the screen may set the atmosphere of the game. For example, if you're currently at -3 points and you can see that, you’ll know that you need only one more kill to get a positive score. In this case, you may feel stronger emotions during and after the next fight.
Or, let’s say your Ranked Points are still very low even after having played for some time. In this case, you may need to perhaps take a more aggressive push for scores or maybe even play for first.
One of the systems that will see the biggest changes with this new feature is Escape. Instead of using a separate formula to recalculate the score, now extra points will be added to your score upon a successful escape. The number of extra points isn’t that significant so the more kills you get before escaping, the better! However, if you are struggling to get an extra kill, you can escape and finish with a few extra points on top of what you've accumulated during your match. But keep in mind that if you have a very low score, below 0, taking a more adventurous approach might work better for you than just escaping as the latter no longer guarantees an LP gain.
Moreover, the Rootkit can now be purchased from Transfer Console, making it easier to escape. We’ll discuss this in more detail in the Dev Journal regarding Credits. Now, with this change, if someone tries to escape, teams can easily call in an Escape Kit to chase after the first team, meaning there's a higher chance of a fight in the Abandonded Dock.
The result screens will display your score (gained or lost) based on the adjustments from the lobby average. If the average tier of the players you matched with is much higher than yours, you'll earn more points, and if it’s much lower, you'll earn fewer points. Since you will now be able to see your score while you're playing, you can get an approximate estimate of the lobby average ahead of time.
Given that now your real-time Ranked Points will be visible, Placements will be removed. If you're a new player in Ranked Matches, you'll start at 0 points in the Iron Tier, which is easy to get through since it doesn’t have an Entry Cost. At the start of a new season, there is a soft reset, so high-ranking players from the previous season begin at a higher tier. Even skilled new players can be placed quickly to their fitting tier if they are able to perform well.
Additionally, the Promotion and Demotion System will also be changed. There will no longer be promotion matches. Instead, you will now be immediately promoted when you earn enough points to reach a higher tier. Bonus points will be awarded when you successfully move up a tier, preventing you from demoting right away on your next game. If you are demoted from a tier, you will have a one-time demotion protection, which means your score will drop to 0 points. But, if you obtain a negative score again, you will then be demoted. Having visible Ranked Points during the game can be tense enough when Promotion or a Demotion Protection is at stake.
Today, you’ve seen some of the changes that will be made to the Ranked System. But it should be noted that these changes won't solve all the problems with matchmaking and ranked at once. We took inspiration from successful Ranked Systems in other games, which are also constantly experimenting and changing each season. Similarly to those games, by taking them as a reference we will also have many trials and errors due to the differences in game styles.
However, the intense missions and feedback provided by the Ranked Points displayed in real-time in the new system will make the Battle Royale experience even more exciting and immersive!
Next Dev Journal will focus on changes to Mastery and Crafting! Hope to see you then!
Thank you for reading!
You can get WP from the Dev Journals on our web event page.
Web Points(WP) are event points that can be obtained and used throughout the Season 9 web events
Aya's Theme Song - (流星) Shooting Star
Aya's theme song, <(流星) Shooting Star>, has just been released!
Click the link below to check it out. We hope you enjoy!
[Aya's Theme Song - <(流星) Meteor>]
Music by Studio DOMA (www.studiodoma.com)
Dev Stream 1.0 Survey
We will be hosting our Dev Stream on Thurs, June 29th at 3:00 AM (PT)!
We'll link a survey below so you can ask freely what you want and the devs will answer as many questions as they can during the stream!
5 people who participate in the survey will be randomly chosen to receive 1,200 NP (7 days) as a reward, so make sure you send in any questions or comments you have.
Save the date on your calendars and join us on our Official Twitch Channel!
[Stream Details]
1. Survey Period:
- Thurs, June 15th - Sun, June 18th 7:59 AM (PT)
▶▶ Dev Stream Survey
2. Dev Stream Date:
- Korean: Thursday, June 29th, 03:00 (PT)
- English: Thursday, June 29th, 18:00 (PT)
3. Where:
- Korean: NimbleNeuron Official Twitch Channel
- English: Eternal Return Official Twitch Channel
4. Details
* The event reward selection is conducted fairly in private.
* Personal information (such as nicknames) will be used to send out the NP compensation only and all information will be deleted after the draw is completed.
Season 9 Event Skins Notice
As we mentioned before, we are offering 16 new skins throughout the duration of Season 9.
As promised, 15 of those skins will be released through our various web events. However, the last skin will be released through our Official Launch Event.
Due to schedule changes, this is slightly different from what we previously announced, so please check out the new schedule below.
1. Remaining Skins Available through Season 9 Events
- Fire Drill Estelle
- Midnight Aurora Rio
- OP.GG Felix
- Singer-songwriter Priya
2. Skin Given through the Official Launch Event
- Treasure Hunter Lenox
Thank you!
June's Case Log Attendance Bonus Rewards
As mentioned in the previous [Event Website] Steam Login Issue announcement, the additional 2 days of attendance in June's Case Log have been applied and you can now receive your 200 WP right away!
Also, don't worry if you were unable to check your attendance due to the Steam platform login issue. We have checked the login records and applied the attendance for the total missing days.
Please note that the [Additional Attendance Bonus] is different from the total missing days count and will not be included in the total attendance count.
- You will be able to claim right away your [200 WP] from the [Additional Attendance Bonus] in June's Case Log.
- We will confirm and apply the attendance that couldn't be recorded due to Steam's Login Issue collectively.
- The 2 days of the [Additional Attendance Bonus] will not be reflected in the total attendance count.
We apologize again for any inconvenience this may have caused.
Thank you for your patience.
Season 9 Ranked Rewards
We hope you're enjoying it and climbing up that ladder!
Today we're here to show you guys our upcoming Cadet skin and Rewards by Tier!
Check out the details on our Website.
10th Dev Journal
Hello Lumia Island survivors!
Welcome to the 2nd Update to Characters for our official launch.
As a reminder, here are the 5 main areas we are focusing on when making the changes for character updates:
① Kits that are not interactive from the enemy's perspective
② Excessive utility
③ Skills that are too simple or underutilized
④ Low accessibility due to high difficulty
⑤ The desire for the addition of more exciting gimmicks
(Note: All of the images included in this Dev Journal are still in development and are subject to change with official launch.)
Some of the original skill will either be weakened or removed, and some skills will have new features instead. These changes to the skills are not equivalent to making characters more or less powerful. In most cases, when adjusting the utility of a skill, the base stats and power are enhanced. While, in the other hand, some skills' power and base stats may be toned down, but get a new feature instead. Therefore, we'd like you to see these changes as adjustments to the battle structure instead of changes to character power.
Today’s first character is Li Dailin.
When Li Dailin avoids Basic Attacks with Drink Up (W), she will also reduce incoming damage. Drink Up disallows Dailin from attacking, which is already a fairly big restrain. We hope the damage reduction helps the skill become a more distinctive defensive tool.
When using Bottom Shelf (E), the skill will no longer Silence and instead reduce enemies' movement speed, even when empowered.
Striking Tiger (R) will now strike for the same time, even when not empowered. This is to supplement the miniscule duration of the skill when used without any BAC. However, its unenhanced damage is much weaker, so if you want to deal large damage, make sure to pay attention to your BAC.
Before, Li Dailin's combat was based on silencing her enemies to disallow enemies to react. With the new changes, we are adjusting Li Dailin to rely on correctly timed Drink Up to defend herself against enemy hits. From the enemy's perspective, fighting Li Dailin will now be more interactive as well as enhance the mind game associated with Drink Up.
On the other hand, we found that Strong Stomach (P)'s Attack Speed increase from consuming alcohol based drinks was too strong. The passive was first designed to match Li Dailin’s character story settings, but using the passive bonus became a must. We'll be adjusting some of these Passive traits to be weaker, so they become more of an Easter Egg, or delete them later on.
Piolo's skills all have two casts to them, so there are plenty of times when it feels like the battle is never-ending if you come across him on the battlefield.
We’ll be changing Piolo’s skill cooldown so that it now starts from the cast of the second skill rather than from the start of the first skill. This is a relatively simple change, but this will help players keep track of Piolo's cooldowns.
For Unmatched Discipline (P), we’re deleting the conversion from Cooldown Reduction to Attack Speed, and changing the Critical Strike to enhanced Skill Damage. To make up for the changes to his cooldown mechanisms, gaining Stacks of Well-Trained will become a bit easier. We'll also be making various skill adjustments, such as changes to delays, projectile speed, size, and crowd control. Piolo's combat will look more along the line of a Skill Combo, rather than mashing skills off cooldown.
One of the most loved characters by our beginners, Luke, is becoming a tad bit more demanding to pilot. His Evolution aspects are becoming more distinctive as well.
Elbow Grease (W) will now deal Area of Effect damage instead of enhancing his Basic Attacks. If he hits an enemy, he’ll still receive Basic Attack Enhancement just like his current iteration. Players will have to be a bit more cautious with skill usage, while getting a new Area of Effect skill for fights against multiple enemies. However, we will be getting rid of the Crowd Control Reduction attached to the skill.
We’re also switching up the Evolved effects for his skills. If Clean Sweep (Q) is Evolved, damage is greatly increased. Elbow Grease (W)'s previous Evolution bonus of HP recovery will also change. If you start with Clean Sweep (Q), then hit your target with Elbow Grease (W), HP recovery will become even greater.
Additionally, if Dirty Work (E) is Evolved, the cooldown is reset upon slaying an enemy test subject. This will help Luke’s scrimage against multiple enemies on the battlefield.
Another addition is a new Crowd Control effect called “Disrupt” that will apply to Dirty Work (E). While brief, Disrupt will, well, disrupt enemy casts, similar to Silence.
Luke’s current play structure can become a bit monotonous. Through these changes, Luke's skill floor will be raised a bit, but also gain a higher skill ceiling. When played with attention to details, Luke should be able to shine.
Echion is another test subject whose skills can be enhanced. We wanted to strengthen the characteristics of each weapon and make each of his 3 weapons even more distinctive.
Death Adder Echion, who is based around Basic Attacks, suffers from the fact that using abilities can actually do more harm than good. Now, hitting a skill will slightly increase his Attack Speed, and using Envenomization (R) with Death Adder will no longer have pre-delay, allowing Echion to animation cancel.
Black Mamba will now recover a small amount of HP with each skill, instead of just with VF Overflow (R). This feature will offer much more sustainability. On the other hand, other iterations of Echion will not recover HP with Crescent Viper (Q).
Sidewinder, centered around casting skills, will now deal additional damge with his abilities compared to the other iterations.
Hart is another character that also has an unique evolution system. Now each of her skills will only be able to be evolved once. You can evolve 3 out of her 5 skills but you’ll also be able to visually see and experience all of her changes depending on which skill you have enhanced.
Delay (Q) can fire one more time when enhanced. You’ll be able to unleash powerful, fully charged Delay hits with a short cast time.
Overdrive (W) gives buffs to allies (and not just Hart) when enhanced. This will help Hart support her teammates during team battles.
Hart’s signature mobility skill, Flanger (E), is being adjusted to only have two casts. When evolved, the skill will become a three-hit dash skill like it currently is. The third dash is the longest and can go over walls, so players should evolve Flanger if they want more mobility and safety.
If Evolved, Peacemaker (R) will now recover ally HP while they dance. This change is meant to increase stability and help her team out.
Feedback (P) will release two sound waves when enhanced.
Hart’s play style will differ depending on the skills you choose to evolve. We also hope this makes selecting Evolution Points easier and more fun.
Zahir’s main attack, Gandiva (W), will now go through enemies.
Now that all of his skills have become wide-range skills, Zahir will be able to quickly land subsequent hits using Bhargavastra (R). In the right conditions, Zahir will become the best mage for Area of Effect Damage.
However, Eye of Azrael effects stopped Zahir from being intuitive. We will be removing the ability to check where dead bodies are after slaying an enemy. Even with the Eye of Azrael effect, Gandiva will no longer slow the enemy, which makes Zahir's positioning even more important.
Celine had one of the lowest pick rates along with Silvia due to her play difficulty. In Silvia's case, as mentioned in the previous character update, her skills have been revamped already. However, for Celine, a bigger reconstruction was needed.
The biggest change for her is that her Blast Wave (E) will no longer push bombs away. If Celine is allowed to keep her ability to pre-set bombs on the floor to stop initiations from any angle, there was no way for Celine to escape the problem of "being too difficult to pilot while being too difficult to fight".
Explosives Engineer (P) will no longer have Cooldown Reduction when hitting with a skill or Basic Attack. The mechanism of her combo will be moved into Detonate (W) instead, reducing the cooldown for Plasma Bomb for each time an enemy is hit with a bomb.
We're making the continuous use of Plasma Bomb (Q) a little smoother. Magnetic Compulsion (R) will have a short cooldown that increases per fused bomb. The cooldown increase will cap at 4 bombs.
The changes in Celine as a whole are aimed to keep the fun of her continuous combos and her strong presence in area occupation while limiting her active ability to respond. Even with changes to her Cooldown Reduction, players can still make continuous combos if they connect their skills right.
However, the conditions for the Cooldown Reduction are a little more demanding and no longer affected by Cooldown Reduction stats. While pre-setting bombs are still important for Celine, players can no longer change the bombs' positions, which allows her enemies to play around the bombs easier.
There will also be changes regarding skill range and delay. In reality, adjustments to Celine are close to that of a remake. The changes to the character are fairly large-scale. The detailed specs of the skills will be announced at a later date through Patch Notes.
In order to allow for more counterplay against Chloe, we have removed some of her gimmicks. First, when using Puppet Theatre (W) for the second time, she will no longer ground the enemy but instead slow them. Additionally, Soul Link (R) will no longer cleanse debuff effects. Like some of the examples mentioned in Part 1, while gimmicks are being toned down, we will be compensating for the changes as well.
In addition to Chloe, other characters' Ground effects to prevent movement skills have mostly been replaced with effects such as Root or Slow. For Bianca, instead of making enemies Grounded while in Hemostasis (P) during Reign of the Vampire Queen (R), the skill will now slow all enemies hit by the skill.
Eva's Amethyst Flow (E) will now grant a movement speed increase for a short time instead of a dash. Additionally, the existing enhanced Basic Attack has been removed. Now after using the skill, the VF Light effect (in which the Orb falls on top of the target when the skill hits) is triggered for a certain amount of time.
For Telekinesis (P), to compensate for the removal of VF Light, Eva's Basic Attack will periodically be enhanced to deal with Skill Damage with an increased range after a certain amount of time. However, Silence and Vision that are given by the existing enhanced Basic Attack will be removed. The ranges of Phase Vortex (W) and VF Eruption (R) have also been slightly increased.
Overall, we're exchanging the extra effects of her Passive and Amethyst Flow (E), and extending the range of her skills and Passive attacks in battle. Eva's identity will be focused around being a ranged Mage that excels in damage from far away when correctly positioned. However, with the removal of her dash, Eva will have a more difficult time against enemies that are too close to her.
We'll also be changing Nadine’s Wild & Clairvoyant (P). If Nadine attacks Wild Animals within Clairvoyant range, they will be temporarily marked as Wild. If allies defeat marked animals, Nadine will receive the same amount of Wild Stacks as would have if she defeated them herself. This means that if you team up with Nadine, you won't have to give up your precious Wild Animals to her. Now you can take them on together!
Squirrel Trap (W) damage upon individual installation will be removed, but damage from the connected trap will increase. Casting the second trap out of cast range will no longer cause the trap to fail. To fix the clunky control where players accidentally install traps beyond range will cast the second trap at a maximum range in the direction where the cursor is located.
Monkey Wire (E) will now greatly increase Attack Speed only while hanging from a wire. Now it will be much more obvious when Nadine is powered up!
Nadine's overall changes are aimed to polish her skills overall. We're not changing her skills drastically, but we're making various cosmetic improvements to enhance her visuals as well.
Arrows will now reload and be released when using a Basic Attack with the Bow, Bullseye (Q), or Rain of Arrows (D). (The same change has been added to Hyejin's Bow Basic Attack motion.)
For Bullseye (Q), we opted to intensify the sting of the shot by improving the charging and retrieving motion.
Here are a few more visual improvements we've been working on.
We'll be improving the quality of Jan’s effects. This is something we heard from player feedback—don't worry, we hear you loud and clear! We're making Knee Strike (Q)'s floor effects appear sooner than his pre-delay and we're adjusting his wave effect so it appears more accurately to its actual range.
The kicking motion of Tomahawk Roundhouse (W) will be adjusted to match the timing of the hit, as well as the timing of the effect output.
Aiden’s movement animation will also be changed. Previously, he was a bit wobbly when walking, but now he will walk much more smoothly.
Meanwhile, new AI bots will be added to AI Matches. They will also be a bit more stylish with skins as well! Look at the new AIden bot go!
Today, we looked at the second update of the changes that some characters will undergo for Official Launch. We still have 2 more parts regarding character changes so make sure to stay tuned!
The next Dev Journal will cover changes to the Ranked System. Hope to see you there!
Thank you!