[h2]CBT Schedule[/h2]
Eternal Return's Closed Beta Test (CBT) is set to start on June 24th.
We want to apologize for everyone waiting patiently for the game to be playable. We previously mentioned that we were aiming for early June, but for the sake of transparency and respect for our players, want to tell you all the full details on the delay.
[h2]"Fun Test"[/h2]
This week, the entire Eternal Return team conducted an internal "Fun Test" for two days.
This was our way to test a big project before release with only a very simple prototype version.
Our biggest goal is simply to make a game that is fun. Naturally, you can't really know if it's going to be fun if you don't test it, so it's all about quickly making and testing a very rough version to decide the priorities of the project. However, it's difficult to take on several big projects at the same time.
Between the "big projects" to choose from, Team Mode was the one players requested the most. We came up with a few ideas for team mode:
① Increase the number of players in one game from 15 to 18.
② Introduce Duos and Trios. Work with 1-2 teammates in a match.
③ When your HP hits 0, you enter a "downed" state in which a teammate can revive you.
④ Implement a team chat. This "Fun Test" was a very rough version that contained only these 4 elements. (...and we barely used Team Chat since we were sitting right next to each other!)
It was actually more fun than expected, which made it that much more frustrating for us. We see the great potential it has.
Having a team makes it feel like a totally different game.
Players that participated in the initial very first Alpha test might be familiar with this - it's kinda tough to know for sure how fun it will be only a prototype. You can only imagine.
We've all been there when you've played games and ran into things and thought "Oh. It would be fun if it was really polished and worked super well" or "Ah. It'd be fun if it was well made, but it's just kinda frustrating right now!"
We didn't have team matching ready, we had to all input a special code for each team and... well... *sigh*
Communication was a bit complicated. There was only a team chat, and initially, talking was prohibited.
...Except chat wasn't working right and everyone kind of lost it... "DO YOU HAVE PIANO WIRE? I NEED SOME STUPID PIANO WIRE", "ARE YOU FIGHTING?", "SCHOOL SCHOOL SCHOOL!"
[h2]3 weeks[/h2]
Here are the features that we want to implement in Team Mode:
- Connectivity with the Steam Friends
- A lobby to invite your friends and match together.
- Improved Team Mode UI - An overlay where you can see your teammates and their HP, mimimap, match result window, and more...
- Team Chat
- A ping system (Ability to ping the area you want, items/targetted items, attacks, "on the way", etc)
- Team spectate feature
Once you want to try doing something, you know how you keep thinking about it and pushing toward it?
The entire dev team really wants to make this as fast, and polished, as possible to share it and play with all players.
Our preference was to release this
before Early Access, so we're sticking to that. Just like the 1st and 2nd Alpha test, we're expecting to hear a lot of feedback that will cut us deep, so we double our efforts towards bringing out an even more fun team mode by Early Access.
These two days of testing left us with a lot to think about. We're delaying it for about 3 weeks, so we'll work even harder to complete the above list and ensure that it is available from the beginning of the CBT.
It might seem weird to delay testing to develop faster. You might think "But Nimble Neuron, it's not like you're developing the entire game from scratch!"
Sadly, though, the speed of development slows down greatly while the test is taking place T_T
① The dev team also has to actually play the game in order to really know and understand everyone's feedback. There are a lot of moving parts and we cannot predict everything that happens from planning and internal tests.
② We also always keep an eye on player feedback during the tests in order not to miss a thing. Time flies - even when just looking at the Discord chats (It's tough to take your eyes off Discord and get back to work once you started. It's a constant flow of conversation!)
③ We have to make all the quick fixes based on the feedback received. We can't neglect even the small stuff.
④ There are a lot of things to monitor during the test, like CPU, memory, DB, etc. (Little know fact: game servers start to feel lonely if you take your eyes off them - even for a minute!)
[h2]Isol and Li Dailin[/h2]
We held a community vote to decide priority: team mode, or character addition. The answers varied depending on the language/region, but we had a lot of players voting... which, in the end, made us realize that we had to do both...
A lot of players might be sad if we pick team mode over character addition!
Because of this, we'll be trying to work even harder to keep up with the original schedule for the characters, in addition to team mode. Our plan is to release two new playable characters at the start of the CBT on June 24th.
Honestly speaking, we truly want to release this team mode a lot, but we also feel very apologetic for delaying the CBT -- this is why our final decision was to speed up the process for the characters and to do what we can to come up with an even better version of the team mode.
Thank you very much!
