There were critics at the Endless Legend 2 demonstration – how is the amplitude responding and changing the early access build?

I confess, after reading the comments about early access impressions of Endless Legend 2 yesterday, I was fatally angry that I was one of the “positive outliers” I keep reading on Gamer Witch Finder Almanac. At first glance, a significant portion of you have been turned off by recent Steam demos. Therefore, you may be interested in reading more about how the amplitude changed the game in response to demo feedback.

As detailed in the new Steam Post, here’s what you think you’ve liked. First, the Tidefall mechanics reveal the oceans periodically retreat to reveal extra playable terrain and the usual monsoons that clean up the land. “This is the core of the game and we were happy to see it really impacted,” the developer wrote, adding that they tinkered with a lot of monsoon and tide. Apparently, every game in Endless Legends 2 once had eight small tidefalls, and many began to ignore the players.

They also consider you to be keen on designing asymmetric territories – “always the focus of amplitude” – and you enjoy art and sounds that include map designs, characters, jingles, or strange echoes you might hear during the monsoon, primarily for things like minor territories.

Now for weaknesses. According to the amplitude, the majority of negative feedback is related to the user interface. “A quarter of the reviews mentioned the UI, and only 30% of those comments were positive,” they point out. “When reading all the feedback, I’ve noticed that it’s not as easy as making some changes and I’m looking at something bigger. I might have shown some incorrect information or enough information. There’s a bug in the UI and text to fix it, and I think I need more here.”

In particular, they are considering making city screens more clear. “It’s all muddy about adjacencies, leveling up districts, managing populations and making clear decisions about what to build next,” the developer wrote. This is a “flow problem” and I think it clearly refers to how you move from a UI element with your eyeball and attention to the next one in the process of urban management.

Above all, they may change districts so they can select them from a construction list like improvements, rather than choosing tiles to build first. “This takes time and won’t be the first early access, but we’ll share the concepts to get feedback,” commented Devs.

To update my impression late from yesterday, I had little issues with the UI with early access builds, but this week there were definitely a few moments when the lush tile designs became difficult to identify urban centers, or units within the city. It’s definitely quite busy. This should be expected in a four times the strategy game with such brilliant terrorism and turbulent expansion maps. I’ve also forgotten what right-click and left-click do in different contexts. But I’m not thinking of any of those who break these deals.

Following these UI ideas, the amplitude acknowledges that some players find the colorful world a bit too hallucinating. They addressed this with early access by making the city more clear, so you know you’ll build there. They also reduced the color saturation of the terrain slightly, made the very important hexagonal gridlines more prominent, and reduced certain fancy vegetation that players continued to confuse with the anomalies.

“It’s a difficult balance to provide a lush, detailed world where you can see the leaves blowing in the wind during a monsoon and not to be burdened or confused when you’re trying to see the information you need to play,” the developer observes.

In my impression of Infinite Legend 2, I was most critical of the character writing. The demo players were also unclear about this side of the game. Note that in Steam Post, the amplitude has more words in Endless Legend 2 than the 2014 original, including Ream of the character’s dialogue. “We want heroes to feel personal and deeply,” they write. “They are members of your council and may have their own friends and enemies, and they will talk directly to you and each other. But there is also a problem with this additional granularity.

“We’ve updated the dialog presentation to get access early. We’ve disconnected lines and events to focus only on the best and most appropriate,” the developer continues. “In some cases, the wrong character would say something, the characters that don’t make sense are things, that’s what we’re fixing.” I’ve definitely taken up some instances of the latter, but my comprehensive problem with character writing is that focusing on characters doesn’t do justice to a particular faction. Necrophages are horde and not cast. The aspect is a coral reef, not an ensemble. That’s what I find conceptually fascinating about them.

Endless Legend 2 will begin early access on September 22nd. Start with five factions. They plan to add support for the sixth plus multiplayer and customizing sides ahead of next year’s 1.0 release. If you hate it, don’t burn my house.