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[/p][p]As I am writing this, it is 7 weeks since ENDLESS Legend 2 released into Early Access. It’s a short time, but it’s been a thrilling ride of great feedback, balance updates and patches. Since releasing Early Access, we have released 23 updates to the game on the main and PTB branches. [/p][p][/p][p]Some feedback from you: [/p]
[p]“I have a little over 20 hours in across 3 play throughs and im calling this my fav 4x ever, even in early access.” - HeadShopGuy [/p][p]“Very pleased with the gameplay and the level of detail of the world. The combination of old and new mechanics is just right. Two small gripes for now: there is a lot of dialog in the quests but its skippable so im not bothered too much, and certain victory conditions are too easy, both for the player and AI.” – Mr. I.O.P. [/p][p]“Arnaud Roy charging like 50 bucks for his new album is ludicrous. The game it comes with is really good though, so I guess I can let it slide.” – TurboGrandpa [/p][p]“Becomes very tedious close to endgame. Game needs endgame crisis or something like this.” – Einzbern [/p][p]“Not enough Horatio.” – Sovereign [/p][p]“Better than Civ8.” – Reece (who is apparently a time traveler) [/p][p]“First 4x game where I actually finished a game.” - Zeel [/p][p]“The mushroom people came to live in my city.” - Octob3r [/p]
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Progress [/h3][p]Last months “State of the Game” covered feedback from Early Access and the key issues we are focused on. I want to keep you updated on progress of everything I mentioned: [/p]
[p]AI[/p]
[p]October Update added better Unit Management [/p][p]November Update adds better AI Expansion (and more) [/p]
[p]UI[/p]
[p]October Updated add clearer Tech Screen
November Update adds a new Main Game Window [/p][p]A new City Construction flow is coming [/p]
[p]Multiplayer[/p]
[p]We released a Multiplayer test [/p]
[p]Simultaneous Turns[/p]
[p]October update added an indicator of other players active turns [/p][p]November update will have this on by default [/p]
[p]Writing[/p]
[p]In progress. Read more about it here: [dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p]
[p]Endgame[/p]
[p]In progress. Read more about it here: [dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p]
[p][/p][p]Let’s discuss each item in more detail. [/p][p][/p][p]
AI [/p][p]A big part of the reason that we do an Early Access is to get feedback on the AI and how to adjust it to make it more fun to play against (this is often very different than making it better at winning). [/p][p]This feedback showed that the AI wasn’t putting enough pressure on the player, who was able to steamroll it by the midgame. This is caused by a variety of issues (balance issues humans are better at identifying and exploiting than the AI is) and has a lot of outcomes (lack of tension, victory being won earlier because players can focus on achieving them instead of other goals, the feeling that the world is too open, etc). [/p][p]In our October Update we focused on the military strategy of the AI. We found issues where it wasn’t upgrading its units as well as human players. Deciding to upgrade requires the AI to consider if it should spend the resources and Dust on unit upgrades as compared to other things with more long-term benefits. But it was underperforming here. We made changes for this (as well as other changes) and noticed that the AI win ratio jumped from 10% to 23%. [/p][p]
Note: There is no magic number with win ratios. We only want to make sure the AI is applying pressure and tension, and this is one way to loosely measure it. [/p][p][/p][p]
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[/p][p][/p][p]For the November update we focused on AI expansion. Taking territories, building camps and cities, etc. It’s still early since the November update is just in PTB (Public Test Branch) but so far, the results are dramatic both in feeling and AI wins, jumping to 43%. [/p][p]I also shared the following chart in the October State of the Game. It displays how the AI and humans are claiming territories across the game. We noticed that the AI was doing this much more slowly than human players, and the factions the AI was expanding with were often very different than humans (with the Necrophage spreading slowly and the Kin quicker, which is the opposite of humans). [/p][p] [/p][p]
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[/p][p][/p][p]Early data from the upcoming November update shows significant improvement. Human players expand at a similar rate but the AI is now keeping up. This is from the PTB, so it’s very limited data, we are looking forward to getting more data when it fully releases. [/p][p][/p][p]
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UI [/p][p]There is a big change coming in the November update. We have redone the main game screen based on player feedback. [/p][p][/p][p]This is what it looked like before: [/p][p]
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[/p][p]And this is after: [/p][p]
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[/p][p]There are lots of changes here but most notably: [/p]
- [p]Empire level buttons now all appear in the upper left. This makes them easier to find as you only have one area to search and simplifies the Turn button. [/p]
- [p]Leader art was removed from the upper left to shrink and make it more streamlined. [/p]
- [p]A lot of wasted space was removed from the upper left panel. [/p]
- [p]Science/turn was added to the upper right panel. [/p]
- [p]Upper right was made thinner to reduce wasted space. [/p]
- [p]Strategic resources display was shrunk and they are no longer buttons. This was a particularly brilliant idea from our UI designer. Having all the strategic resources be buttons took up so much space, but now when you click the single “Manage Resources” button you can get access to all the options you used to have by clicking them. [/p]
- [p]End turn button was shrunk. We enabled the active player indictors by default (it can be disabled in options). [/p]
[p]Overall, a much cleaner design that takes up less space and conveys more information. [/p][p] [/p][p][/p][p]
Simultaneous Turns [/p][p]Speaking of the active player indicators, Simultaneous turns were another issue players had issues with. Turns are still Simultaneous; we don’t want to delay humans by requiring them to wait for the AI to all finish their turns (for players that just want turns to go as quickly as possible). [/p][p]But for players that want the option to not move at the same time as the AI we made some changes. Most importantly the AI no longer holds its turns. Previously the AI was a little evil. If it didn’t have a place it wanted to go to it would save its moves and wait for the human player to go and then move if you got to close to it. Even though this is totally “fair”, a human can do this to a human in a MP game, it feels unfair because it gives the impression that AI is getting 2 turns. [/p][p]We changed it so that the AI must make its moves and then lock its turn. It cannot move again after finishing its turn. And we display which player (human and AI) are still moving, and which are done. If you are a player that doesn’t like to move at the same time as the AI, you can let the AI finish its moves before you take yours. [/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]
Multiplayer [/p][p]To be honest I was surprised at the amount of people requesting Multiplayer, and the amount of negative steam reviews we got because it wasn’t in the first EA build. It is obviously an important feature for you, and we have had fun playing with it internally as well. [/p][p]Earlier this month we made a test build available. We are being extremely cautious here because we know a lot of players are excited for it, and the last thing we want to do is drop a buggy version that causes frustration and damages the impression of the game. [/p][p]We also see a lot of players going quite late in their multiplayer games. The following is the turns reached in the multiplayer games so far. [/p][p][/p][p]
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[/p][p]It’s great to see players going to the late game in MP. [/p][p][/p][p]Overall games have been stable and working. There have been desyncs and reconnecting has resolved them. Because these desyncs have been more common than we like we won’t be adding Multiplayer to the public November update. But… we will keep the multiplayer test branch up and update it with all the new content until we integrate it into the public build. [/p][p]Basically, we want to be extremely clear that we don’t think it is good enough yet (which is what putting it in the public build would mean) but we also want to make it available for those that still want to play with it. And honestly, we appreciate the testing, we capture all the info from desyncs and get them to the developers to fix. [/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]
Writing [/p][p]We are hard at work making writing changes (and translating those changes into many many languages). We are changing to a more Endless Legend 1 style presentation where we set the scene instead of just dropping to dialog. The dialog is both greatly reduced, and more specific to the faction you are playing as, instead of being as generic. [/p][p][/p][p]
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[/p][p]The amazing Slowhands provided more detail. You can read it here: [/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p][p] [/p][p]
Endgame [/p][p]The endgame is also being reworked. Victory conditions will require multiple objectives, path selection will be more important and impacting to player relationships and we will be adding an Armageddon event to the endgame. [/p][p][/p][p]
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[/p][p]You can read more about the intent and details here: [/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p][p][/p][p][/p][h3]
What’s Next? [/h3][p]
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[/p][p]As mentioned, the Writing changes and Endgame changes are coming soon. But another thing that is high on our radar is: [/p][p][/p][p]
City Flow/UI [/p][p]Currently when you build a district you select where you want to place the district, then what district you want to place. This creates 3 problems: [/p]
- [p]There is no place to see all the available districts. Players may not know they can build an extractor or upgrade a Minor Faction village unless they click on the resource or the base Minor Faction village. This will be even more true when we add upgrade districts for Anomalies.[/p]
- [p]Most of the time a player is more concerned with the type of district he wants to build, and the location is secondary. The current flow asks the player to reverse this order, and it feels unintuitive. Mentally you think “I want to build a laboratory.” But the game asks you to put that on hold and pick a location, then come back and select the laboratory.[/p]
- [p]It’s difficult to recommend good options in the current flow. We can’t recommend building on a tile without knowing what you should build since the type of construction is more important than the location. After the change it’s easier for us to recommend both at the type level (your city needs food, you should build a food district) and at the placement level (okay, you have selected a laboratory, here is a good place to put it). [/p]
[p]This is a bigger change and we will need work integrating, but also adopting the UI, feedback and onboarding. But it is currently in process, and we are excited to get it out. [/p][p][/p][p]-- Derek Paxton,[/p][p]Game Director[/p][p][/p][hr][/hr][p][/p][p]Don't forget, we're running an art contest for the co-creation of a new minor faction! If you'd like to see your idea make it into the game, check the details in the
announcement and submit your concept.[/p]