response

I confess, after reading the comments on yesterday’s Endless Legend 2 early access impressions, I am mortally afeared that I’m one of those accursed “positive outliers” I keep reading about in the Gamer Witchfinder Almanac. Seemingly, a fair portion of you were turned off by the recent Steam demo. You may be interested, then, to read specifics about how Amplitude have changed the game in response to demo feedback.

As detailed in a new Steam post, here’s what they think you liked. Firstly, the Tidefall mechanic, whereby the ocean retreats periodically to reveal extra playable terrain, and the regular Monsoons that sweep the land. “This was a core element of the game, and we were happy to see it having a real impact,” the devs write, adding that they tinkered a lot with the quantity of Monsoons and Tidefalls. Apparently, there were once eight smaller Tidefalls to every game of Endless Legend 2, so many that players began ignoring them.

They also reckon you’re keen on the asymmetrical faction design – “always a focus of Amplitude” – and that you’re mostly enjoying the art and sound, including the map design, characters and jingles for stuff like minor factions, or the weird echoey thudding you might hear during Monsoons.

Now for weaknesses. According to Amplitude, the bulk of the negative feedback concerned the user interface. “A quarter of reviews mentioned UI and only 30% of those comments were positive,” they note. “In reading all your feedback we realize it’s not as simple as making a few changes and we are looking at something larger. There are instances where we displayed the wrong or not enough information. There were UI and text bugs to fix and we think more is needed here, which will take some time.”

In particular, they’re looking at making the city screens more intelligible. “Adjacency, leveling districts, managing population, and having clear decisions on what to build next were all muddy,” the devs write. This is a “flow issue”, apparently, which I guess refers to how your eyeballs and attention move from one UI element to the next in the course of urban management.

Amongst other things, they might change up Districts so that you can select them from a construction list like Improvements, rather than picking a tile to build on first. “This will take time to change and won’t be in the initial Early Access, but we will be sharing concepts with you to get feedback,” the devs comment.

To belatedly update my impressions from yesterday, I haven’t had much of a problem with the UI in the early access build, but there were definitely a couple of moments this week when the verdant tile designs made it hard to discern, say, city centres, or units inside cities. It’s definitely rather busy, which is to be expected for a 4X strategy game with such florid factions and a turbulent expanding map. I also sometimes forgot what right-click and left-click do in different contexts. I don’t consider any of these deal-breakers, however.

Following on from those UI thoughts, Amplitude acknowledge that some players have found the colourful world a little too hallucinogenic. They’ve addressed this in early access by making city foundations clearer, so you know to build there, while getting rid of bugs (not the Necrophage) that caused blurriness, and adding more graphics options. They’ve also reduced the colour saturation of the terrain a little and made the all-important hexagonal grid lines more prominent, while shrinking certain fancier vegetation that players kept confusing with Anomalies.

“It’s a difficult balance between providing a lush, detailed world where you can see the leaves blow in the wind during monsoon, and still not have to strain or be confused when trying to see information you need to play,” the developers observe.

In my impressions of Endless Legend 2, I was most critical of the character writing. Demo players were also iffy about this side of the game. In their Steam post, Amplitude note that there are many more words in Endless Legend 2 than the 2014 original, including reams of character dialogue. “We want heroes to feel personal and deep,” they write. “They may be members of your council, have their own friends and enemies, and they talk directly to you and each other. But this additional granularity also came with issues.

“For Early Access we have updated the presentation of the dialog, we are cutting lines and events to focus on only the best and most suitable,” the devs continue. “In some cases, the wrong character would say something, or a character it didn’t make sense for, which we are fixing.” I definitely picked up on a few instances of the latter, but my overarching problem with the character writing is that the focus on characters doesn’t do certain factions justice. The Necrophage are a horde, not a cast. The Aspect are a reef, not an ensemble. That’s what I find attractive about them conceptually, at least.

Endless Legend 2 launches into early access on 22nd September. It’ll start off with five factions. They’re planning to add a sixth plus multiplayer and custom faction support before the 1.0 release next year. If you end up disliking it please don’t burn my house down.

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