Hello Lumia Island Survivors,

First, we would like to sincerely apologize for the deep frustration and disappointment many of you are feeling about the current game environment and the way we’ve been communicating. We truly regret that our shortcomings have turned what should have been an enjoyable game experience into a source of stress.

We want to share our honest thoughts on the major topics that you’ve brought up and, more importantly, lay out our immediate action plan to resolve them.

1. Season Extension

The decision to extend Season 7 by two weeks was clearly a mistake on our part. We relied too casually on our past experience, where previous season extensions didn’t result in major negative feedback, and assumed it was necessary to resolve early-season issues, leading us to make a complacent decision.

Moving forward, we will choose not to extend a season as a means to resolve issues caused by ourselves. More importantly, we will make sure to prepare each season thoroughly so that the idea of an extension never needs to be considered in the first place.

2. Balance Patches and Limitations of Preseason Data

We’ve heard your feedback on how this 8.1 patch has fallen short. The main reason we couldn’t make more aggressive changes was due to a severe lack of reliable statistical data during preseason.

For characters, the stats available to the public come from third-party sites that include a wide range of players, many of whom are new, so they aren’t ideal for accurately assessing character power levels. Internally, we analyzed stats from players at around Diamond tier and above, but even this wasn’t highly reliable due to the nature of preseason data. We only made adjustments when the disparities exceeded a certain threshold.

As for items, many still show a large gap between performance and use rates. In some cases, highly effective items were barely used, or vice versa. That’s why we chose to wait for further build testing before making changes.

However, this cautious approach ended up giving the impression that we weren’t doing anything, causing a lot of frustration among our players. 

To resolve that frustration, we are now moving to a much more agile hotfix process. With the ranked season start and higher-quality data rolling in, we’ll roll out balance hotfixes several times before the 8.2 update next week to address statistically problematic areas.

These hotfixes won’t just be number tweaks. We also plan to add a few items needed for a healthier meta. Issues that aren’t resolved through hotfixes will be addressed through subsequent updates.

3. Cooldown Reduction Changes (Skill Haste) & Healing Reduction

We’ve received a lot of feedback asking why Healing Reduction wasn’t adjusted alongside the major overhaul to Cooldown Reduction. We had already been considering reworking Healing Reduction in a future season and believe that, like Cooldown Reduction, it has the potential to be a better mechanic in the long run.

However, changes of this scale tend to offer limited short-term benefits while almost certainly disrupting balance when introduced. 

That said, we don’t think the current situation is as severe as the "Skill Amp Patch" during Early Access, which made the game nearly unplayable, and the data doesn't show extreme outliers at least in current Normal Matches. Given that, we believe a fast hotfix approach will help stabilize balance more effectively than a rollback.

Still, it's a fact that balance fluctuations this season have been more intense than usual. Even with frequent hotfixes, item pick rates are still far from matching actual performance, and we'll need to keep refining as new builds emerge and shift the meta. With that in mind, it’s absolutely valid to question whether changing the Cooldown Reduction formula in Season 8 was the right choice, and for that, we sincerely apologize.

Since Healing Reduction has many of the same issues as Cooldown Reduction, we plan to apply those lessons and approach it more carefully moving forward.

4. Rifts and Warps

At the moment, the main downside of the Rift mechanic is that it punishes players too harshly by consuming Restricted Area timers, which affects the rest of the match. To alleviate this, we’ll add a feature to restore the Restricted Area Explosion timer in the Combat Lab. This change is scheduled for next week’s update.

We’d also like to acknowledge criticism of the Rift’s visual design. The original concept intentionally went for a contrasting look to stand out from the rest of Lumia Island, its drones, consoles, etc. But in doing so, the visuals clashed with the game’s overall aesthetic and many elements were scrapped during development. In hindsight, sticking to a more familiar mechanical style like the Combat Lab might have provided a better experience so we’re looking to improve this going forward.

We expect the Rift system to play a more meaningful role in ranked games. We believe that in ranked games, where there are generally more surviving teams during late game compared to normals, the impact of this mechanic can be much more meaningful from a gameplay perspective. We’ll continue to refine the current shortcomings to ensure this aspect functions as intended.

As for Warps, we’ve received feedback that it feels meaningless. Originally, it was added to encourage more centralized fights when fewer teams remain. And while we will be tweaking it so that it becomes much more limited in ranked matches, if it continues to feel irrelevant or disruptive, we may consider removing it entirely.

5. Character Special Resources UI Display

We’ve also received your feedback in regard to how inconvenient it is to not be able to see the values of certain special resources used by some characters. This is something related to the removal of the SP system in Season 9 and occurred because some system elements were implemented early.

While removing SP through a hotfix could resolve many of these issues, we’ve determined that such a risky change could further destabilize balance in the current environment. Instead, we’ll begin by addressing the characters that have been most negatively affected.

• Silvia and Eva: Special resource indicators will be added to the lower section of the main HUD - (Next Thursday)

• Felix: At 2 stacks, a timer and icon will be displayed to the right of his HP bar for better visibility - (Next Thursday)

• All Characters: Once the SP system is removed, all characters who use special resources will have their gauges displayed on the lower HUD as well - (Season 9)

6. Normal Match Matchmaking

Matchmaking quality in Normal mode and the frustration of facing 3-man premade teams continue to be frequent concerns on global servers as well. In this preseason, we’ve tightened matchmaking parameters and adjusted the queue so that 3-man premade teams stay in their separate queue for a longer period before entering the main queue, helping reduce their frequency in standard matches whenever possible.

With the upcoming AI bot upgrades, we expect queue quality—especially in lower brackets—to improve significantly as well. Additionally, we’re preparing features such as the ‘Exclude Duo Teams’ option, which can also be introduced to global servers once matchmaking stabilizes following the AI bot improvements.

We’ve also identified and are addressing an issue where top-ranked players are occasionally matched with significantly lower-rated opponents in Normal mode. This happens when high-ranked players repeatedly queue with much lower-rated friends, which causes their Normal MMR to drop due to averaging. Moving forward, Normal MMR will no longer decrease for players maintaining a high rank in Ranked Mode.

Both Normal mode MMR protection and the Exclude Duo Teams feature are planned for release in the 8.4 update. We’ll continue to monitor global servers closely and work to provide the best matchmaking experience possible.

7. Quest Book Announcement 

We've received feedback that some of the skin rewards in the 2nd Anniversary Quest Book overlap with those in the Season Pack for Season 8. As a result, players who have purchased the Season Pack will receive the 2nd Anniversary Quest Book for free.

• When the 2nd Anniversary Quest Book is released, it will be immediately granted for free to players who have purchased the Season Pack for Season 8.

• Players who purchase the Quest Book with paid NP, and later decide to purchase the Season Pack will receive a refund for the the paid NP. Further details regarding the refund process will be provided in a future announcement.

8. Future Plans Regarding Season Changes

We have an obsession with making significant changes each season. While having a lot of changes doesn’t necessarily make a season good, we’ve consistently seen very negative feedback whenever there was a lack of changes.

Based on our recent seasonal experiences, we’re now working to categorize different types of changes by whether or not they invalidate the time and effort players have invested into Eternal Return.

Changes like weather, plants, and Lumi are examples of “safe” changes. They add new layers of fun without heavily undermining players’ past experience and progress. Rifts and gadgets also fall into this category - although gadgets still have room for improvement in terms of player experience and design, we believe they fit within this safer scope.

On the other hand, changes like with the cooldown reduction system are “risky” changes, as they can significantly disrupt existing build paths and item familiarity. Removing Solo mode or introducing VLS also fall into this category. In the case of changing the main mode from Solos to Squad, the accompanying overhaul of the entire game made it feel like a fresh new experience, turning a risky change into a positive one. However, with VLS, while we do believe Lumia Island with VLS is better with it than without, that particular season forced a drastic shift in core movement mechanics, making it feel like the gameplay rhythm was completely broken.

If we truly believed that changing the cooldown reduction formula would lead to a better long-term game environment, we should have bundled it with more changes and prepared an entirely new season around it.

Moving forward, we plan to design seasons around safer changes to ensure players don’t feel like their time and effort suddenly become meaningless. We acknowledge and agree with the the important feedback that too many risky changes can actually shorten the game's overall lifespan.

That said, completely avoiding risky changes can also harm the game's longevity. When we do pursue them, we will take the time needed to fully prepare and balance them, so the enjoyment they bring can outweigh any disruptions. 

We’ll also aim to introduce changes in a way that feels more gradual and considerate to players in future seasons. In the case of Warps its impact felt diminished once players could obtain portable VLS from gadgets. Holding back certain gadgets and introducing them mid-season, or rotating them in and out, might have made the changes easier to understand rather than overwhelming players with too many new gadgets all at once.

We apologize to our players for the rough start of Season regarding game changes. While the compensation in this announcement may not fully make up for the disruptions during early season and extended maintenance, we would like to express our sincere apology and gratitude by granting all players 500 NP.

We will listen more closely to your feedback and respond more swiftly with meaningful action to make Eternal Return a better game.

Thank you, as always, for sticking with us.

• Coupon Code: SPLASH20250717

• Coupon Reward: 500 NP

• Valid thru: ~ Wednesday, July 23rd 14:59 (UTC)