Greetings, Tacticians.
It’s been some time since CB2 ended. Based on the feedback we received, the Ocean Drive Studio team is planning what the next steps would be. As many of you already know, we believe the feedback loop between the community and the studio is an essential part of creating a game. We have our vision of where we want to take our games, but it is a journey we walk together with the community, learning from our community’s ideas and suggestions along the way.
To give you a brief recap about the beta itself, we had over 2,000 players sign up for beta on Steam! We also received much feedback from many different channels. On Feature Upvote, we received about 50 new suggestions, almost 200 new comments, and nearly 400 new upvotes. On Discord, we received more than 50 suggestions/feedback. Last but not least, we had over 70 players provide detailed notes on the survey.
We categorized the feedback into 5 main categories. While the team continues to take a deep dive into each feedback, we wanted to share some of the ideas that are being reviewed, planned, or worked on. Though it is not a complete list, we hope this is an opportunity for you to see how your feedback is impacting the game. Before we start, please note that all changes mentioned here are not final but still work-in-progress, as we take a closer look to check our options, feasibility, resources, and other circumstances.
Story
Baptized in Fire and Blood: You have conquered your first monster fight!
78% of survey respondents told us they completed chapter 4 or more, which means they successfully got through the Hellhoundes. Congratulations on achieving such a feat, Tacticians!
We would like to share some of the feedback we received on the story. Below each topic, you will find our notes either explaining our take on the issue or the steps we’re taking to address it.
- Cutscenes need improvements.
- Trim some dialogue cutscenes to remove parts that are not essential to the story.
- Change some dialogue cutscenes into in-battle events.
- Make some dialogue cutscenes into cinematic 3D cutscenes, as shared in the recent Dev Chat stream.
- Research and improve character fade-in/fade-out transitions in dialogue cutscenes.
- Have both the speaker and the listener show on the screen for dialogue cutscenes.
- While we will review the possibility of pausing cutscenes or progressing through them manually, this may be difficult to implement.
- Story flow can be improved, especially early in the game.
- Rearrange the intro sequence to provide a better flow. Current plan: Tutorial Battle → Post-Battle Cutscene → Animated Illustration → Cinematic Video → Chapter 1.
- Make it possible to re-watch the intro videos.
- Show campaign progress on a map in loading screens.
- Provide better clues for upcoming battles through the story so that you can be better prepared for the fight.
- Story presentation can be improved.
- Add art to chapter title pages, as shown in the recent Dev Chat stream.
- Provide more detailed chapter/progress information in save/load UI, including the chapter numbers and quest titles.
- Provide better guidance on accessing conversation history UI.
- Need better immersion in the world and characters.
- For early parts of the game, we will keep the current focus of establishing the characters, while trimming parts that are not essential to the story flow.
- There were mentions of wanting to see individual personalities more. We believe this will happen naturally as you progress through the story and get to learn more about each character.
Combat
Versatility is key to winning battles!
Did you know that 95.9% of the survey respondents told us that they found weapon swapping useful?
We would like to share some of the feedback we received on combat. Below each topic, you will find our notes either explaining our take on the issue or the steps we’re taking to address it.
- Combat is too difficult.
- Current combat balance is in line with what we intended, especially with progression in mind. We will look into adding an easy difficulty to provide more difficulty options.
- Turn limit makes it hard to enjoy combat.
- We believe the current turn limit still provides room for trying various strategies. While you are not penalized for taking more turns, we would like to provide better visibility for the perks of completing the battle in less turns.
- Weapons/armor/skills/spells/passives do not feel well balanced.
- Some weapons and skills may feel weak early on, but it is within our intentions for the span of the entire game. Please note that they will become stronger as your characters go through level-ups, advancements, etc.
- There were some mentions asking for more use count with healing spells. We believe this is a visibility issue than a balance issue, and will work on providing more information on how to better set up the healer pool.
- While mages are not given normal attacks to keep the combat challenging, we will continue to review this topic.
- Regarding weapon range: some weapons will have additional range when your characters advance to higher-tier classes.
- Allow using consumables on allies/ground tiles.
- We intended to limit consumable use to self. Using certain consumables on ground tiles is already implemented, but we’d be happy to learn if improvements can be made.
- Battlefield designs can be made more interesting.
- Add more easily accessible treasure chests.
- There will be more complex/diverse battlefield scenarios later in the game.
- Monster weak points do not feel well balanced, making monster battles harder.
- We intended monster fights to be a strategic challenge where you utilize various elements, including the order and direction of attacks. We plan to provide more information on the weak point system so that you can utilize all available tools to face these monsters.
- We will also review providing more weak points for the early game monsters, as well as giving different numbers of weak points depending on the campaign difficulty.
- AI makes combat unnecessarily difficult/awkward.
- Improve the AI so that its actions are not so near-sighted but aligns with the overarching objectives.
- Review adding in-battle events that can prevent ally AI from disrupting your actions.
- Combat mechanics can be improved.
- Make combat more dynamic and flexible by adding more strategic tiles.
- Increase the siege HP and damage.
- Fix the bug where spells can be used on gates but deal no damage.
- Elemental synergy system needs to be more prominent.
- Add more strategic tiles to make combat more varied.
- This will also be partially addressed as you gain a bigger mage pool through progression.
- Need skirmishes/side battles.
- Add skirmishes/side battles, but they won’t allow unlimited grinding.
- Need units to provide benefits to each other.
- There are perks from your units being in proximity. We plan to improve the UI to clearly indicate how units in close proximity benefit each other.
Camp
Gotta get this humble merchant more coins!
61.6% of survey respondents told us they bartered with merchants. We’ll have to see what we can do to ensure our good man Porter can look out for a bigger clientele (and himself)!
We would like to share some of the feedback we received on the camp content. Below each topic, you will find our notes either explaining our take on the issue or the steps we’re taking to address it.
- Add more camp activities that are meaningful and fun.
- While it would be difficult to add more activities or conversations, we will work on making the camp content more interesting.
- There will be more activities that require Leadership Points as you progress through the game.
- The camp will grow as you progress through the story.
- Camp is too big/Eden moves too slow in camp.
- Based on feedback from CB1, we settled with Eden’s current speed so that he is not moving unrealistically fast with armor on.
- Give more depth to the Rapport System.
- Unfortunately, it is difficult to implement an inter-character relationship system outside of the rapport with Eden.
- Some characters will have romantic elements in their rapport with Eden, but it will not necessarily be in the form of dating or marriage within the game.
- Rapport does not directly affect battle, but there are beneficial effects from units being in close proximity.
- There were mentions of current rapport buildup feeling slow. The system is to be enjoyed over time, so please feel free to take it slowly.
- The Advancement Ceremony needs a better presentation and system.
- The Advancement Ceremony will go through a revamp.
- Shop item selection can be improved for better utilization.
- We believe this is because CB2 only covered earlier parts of the game. As you progress further into the game, you will find the merchants carrying necessary items and equipment. We are trying to make sure the shops cover the necessities!
Audio/Visual
“It was on the script…”
The addition of VO in CB2 added to the experience in many ways, but we hear that unfortunately there were some hairy moments as well.
We would like to share some of the feedback we received on the audio/visual elements of the game. Below each topic, you will find our notes either explaining our take on the issue or the steps we’re taking to address it.
- Add more/better animations, VOs, sound effects, and BGMs in various aspects of the game (cutscenes, camp, combat, etc.).
- Continue to polish the animations, lip-sync, BGMs, sound effects, etc.
- Review adding more VO, such as camp dialogue, some combat situations, etc.
- Address awkward VO lines, including the Manticore VO shown in the video above.
- In CB2, skills/spells may have looked similar as it is still early in the game. While it is difficult for us to add more effects/animations, we would like to let you know that you will find skills/spells to have more varied visual effects as you progress through the game and learn more of them.
- Unfortunately, it is difficult to add class-based animations and facial expressions in battle at this time.
- Art/images, modeling, etc. can use improvements.
- Reflect lore-based visuals (e.g., Rodrigo’s scar, Sera’s bruises).
- Address lighting issues as best as possible.
- While the highest tier equipment will get visual distinction, it is difficult to do so for all tiers due to limited resources.
- Unfortunately, due to limited resources, it is difficult to add more unique appearances for each character.
- General character renders look good.
- Thank you!
UI/UX
Knowledge is power.
86.3% of survey respondents felt combat UI provided all necessary info for decision-making, and we are seeing what can be done to fill up the 13.7%!
We would like to share some of the feedback we received on the UI/UX of Lost Eidolons. Below each topic, you will find our notes either explaining our take on the issue or the steps we’re taking to address it.
- General keybindings/controls are not always intuitive.
- Check and address the issue.
- Combat settings/controls/UI can have some improvements.
- Review combining the Formation & Explore menus.
- Review the UI around the 2x animation speed feature.
- Look into hotkeys and other combat UI/UX elements.
- We plan to keep the WASD camera movement to be grid-based rather than free-floating.
- Combat UI can include more information.
- Check feasibility of showing more preview info (especially during enemy turn) and adding enemy healing indicators.
- Combat UI can have improved visibility.
- Improve unit visibility by making changes to portraits and HP bars.
- Look into visibility issues for map, tiles, and objects.
- Camp settings/controls/UI can have some improvements.
- It may be difficult to allow changing all keybindings, but we will review if there are additional keys that can be rebound.
- Allow changing the sensitivity for controller stick input.
- Add more tutorials/make tutorials convey the information better.
- Make some UI changes to provide information in a more straightforward manner.
- Elemental synergy information will be provided as an in-battle event.
- Unfortunately, it is difficult to add videos to tutorials at this time.
- Provide more quality-of-life improvements.
- Work on indication/notification for characters that learned new skills/spells.
- Develop a feature for automatically equipping passives.
- Add the option to mute Lost Eidolons when it is running in the background.
- Provide more graphics options (motion blur on/off, FOV change, etc.).
- Allow deleting individual save files.
- Hide mouse cursor during cutscenes.
- Check the issue with the game starting in windowed mode instead of full-screen mode.
- Review making equipment/skills/grimoire features accessible from the character menu.
Hope you enjoyed learning about some of our next steps planned for Lost Eidolons. Once again, thank you so much for your feedback in making the game better!
For more details, stay tuned to our Feature Upvote board. While it may take some time to get everything up-to-date, we do plan to provide the latest information for individual suggestions over there.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to share them on our Discord server!
– The ODS Team
