Hello Lumia Island Survivors!
We bring you the final Season 8’s Dev Journal. As previously announced, today we’ll be talking about the most difficult and heavy subject of all: the introduction of Skill Haste in Season 8, along with our future direction on fundamental structural changes to the game such as healing reduction, farming, and multi-weapon characters. We also want to hear your thoughts.
Reflections on the Introduction of Skill Haste
As we mentioned during our last season’s dev stream, we believed the Skill Haste system could raise the long-term ceiling of the game. And in fact, many players agreed on the necessity of its long-term introduction. But looking back now, aside from that single point of long-term need, everything else was a mistake.
Issues with the Process and Communication
First, we need to address the unpolished process that ultimately even turned away those who initially supported its long-term need. Out of fear of extreme gameplay scenarios that could arise with Skill Haste, we set the numbers far too conservatively in the beginning. This was poor judgment. We also deeply regret not making more proactive hotfixes during the preseason period. There were clear opportunities to roll out the system more smoothly, but because of bad calls, we missed them.
Communication was also a problem. In the dev stream and announcements, we overstated the outcomes we expected from these changes. Repeatedly citing past examples in that context was also, in hindsight, highly inappropriate. We should have focused only on the patch itself and the road ahead, and for not doing so, we take full responsibility.
Issues with the Decision Itself
Even more fundamental than process or communication, however, was the decision to introduce Skill Haste in Season 8 at all. While we mentioned its long-term necessity, looking back, it was not urgent enough to force into this season.
Even if our process and communication had been smoother, there was no guarantee that a risky change like Skill Haste wouldn’t cause problems. And indeed, while the gap in cooldown reduction did stabilize somewhat, the goal of increasing item build diversity still requires significant further adjustments.
In the end, even for the sake of long-term goals, Season 8 was absolutely not the right time for its introduction.
Improving the Team’s Foundations
The decision to introduce Skill Haste, and the mistakes made throughout, seriously damaged the trust of players, which has always been the greatest driving force behind Eternal Return.
To address this, we’ve determined that structural adjustments to the team itself are necessary. We are currently carrying out, or preparing, the following measures:
To solve the process issues, we are reviewing our operating procedures to allow more agile, rapid responses, and we’ve created a new communication line so player voices can reach decision-makers faster.
To solve communication issues, we’re preparing more active ways to listen to players, including these Dev Journals.
And for the most important matter, decision-making, we are bringing in new members, adjusting responsibilities, and replacing certain leads. More details will be shared in next week’s Dev Stream.
Of course, organizational and personnel issues cannot be fixed overnight. But at the very least, we are fully aware of the problems we face, and we’re working to create a structure that, while it may not immediately show that “things have changed,” will give you reason to expect that “things could change.”
Direction of Change – Safe & Risky Changes
The amount of change still matters. The worst-rated season in Eternal Return’s history was Season 2, when there was too little change. But as we’ve learned by analyzing recent poor results, especially Season 8, it’s not just the amount of change that matters, but the type of change as well.
Season 3 to 5 – Safe Changes
Seasons 3, 4, and 5 each performed better than the one before. The changes during this period were, for the most part, safe changes to existing gameplay, features like Downed Skills, Shards, Weather, Plants, Lumi, Cube and the Mobile Kiosk.
Of course, there were still features that were hard to adapt to, and some that fell short of expectations and left players disappointed. But even when issues arose, they never reached the point of breaking core gameplay. For unpopular features like Foggy Weather or Cubes, we were able to dial back their role or disable them entirely without major disruption.
Season 6 to 8 – Risky Changes
In contrast, Seasons 6, 7 and 8 performed worse than the seasons before them. Looking back, each of these seasons introduced at least one risky change.
Season 6’s introduction of the VLS completely overturned the existing movement system of Hyperloops. While it has now found a stable place on Lumia Island, the time it took to get there was anything but short.
Before the confusion from VLS had even settled, Season 7’s anti-elimination system reshaped early-game flow, increased the number of surviving teams in late-game ranked matches and intensified ABC issues. And in Season 8, Skill Haste shook up existing item builds and gameplay fundamentals, forcing players into a long adjustment period.
Approach to Risky Changes
Risky changes, in other words, are innovative changes. Most long-running live games that have continued to be loved over the years have tried bold, innovative shifts. The problem wasn’t that we attempted such changes, but rather that we forced them three seasons in a row without enough breathing room.
Attempting heavy, disruptive changes one after another put a cognitive burden on players and a workload burden on the dev team. Scars from the previous season hadn’t healed before we introduced new systems without properly stabilizing or refining them. As a result, we delivered seasons that felt chaotic and unfair to play.
Season Strategy – Big Seasons of Innovation, Smaller Seasons of Expansion
From here on, Eternal Return will introduce innovative changes only when we’re fully prepared, concentrating them into specific seasons. During the periods between, we’ll focus on safer, more incremental expansions that give the game time to stabilize.
When a season is centered on innovation, the gameplay environment and balance will inevitably shake more than usual. But this also brings a greater sense of discovery, and since everyone is adapting together in the chaos, the short-term frustration with balance can actually feel less severe. Of course, if left unpolished for too long it will still become unpleasant, but in those innovative seasons we’ll commit all our resources to quick responses and fast stabilization.
Rather than spreading risky experiments across multiple seasons, we’ll group them together into a single “Big Season of Innovation.” Season 1 is a strong example of this strategy—it introduced huge shifts like the move to Squad, the resurrection system, Tactical Skills, removal of Accesories, and character skill changes. Despite the risks, it succeeded as an innovative season.
With this strategy, Seasons 9 and 10 will focus on safe, expansion-based improvements aimed at stabilizing gameplay. At the same time, we’ll use them as preparation for the next Big Season of Innovation.
Structural Improvements for Innovative Changes
To prepare for a Big Season of Innovation, we’d like to discuss some of the current structural issues in Eternal Return and share ideas for how they could be improved. The points below are areas we plan to address once we’ve gathered enough community preparation and consensus.
Healing Reduction
Healing Reduction isn’t serving as a situational counter mechanic against certain comps or characters, it has become something every team feels forced to have. As a result, it essentially occupies one mandatory slot in item builds from early to late game.
On top of that, because healing reduction effects don’t stack, there are added problems: if multiple teammates all pick up healing reduction items, it can actually put the team at a disadvantage instead.
Q1. What are your thoughts on improvements to the Healing Reduction system?
① Healing Reduction should be removed entirely.
② Healing Reduction should come from sources other than items, giving players more freedom in equipment choices.
③ Keep Healing Reduction tied to items, but reduce its overall impact compared to now.
④ Keeping the system as it is now is the best option.
⑤ Other (Short Answer)
Farming and Crafting
Farming and crafting have always been among Eternal Return’s core features. However, their importance has diminished compared to the past ascrafting time has been shortened, equipment slots reduced from six to five, and alternative item acquisition methods have been added.
The issues are most evident in the process of gathering materials for Legendary equipment. After a teammate completes Epic crafting and rejoins the team, searching for Legendary materials often disrupts the entire team’s movement and flow.
Players can try to pre-collect materials during early farming by memorizing recipes, but this leads to problems like inventory management headaches, and it’s difficult to add system-level convenience improvements to alleviate it. As a result, crafting Legendary items has become one of the biggest entry barriers for gameplay.
Rare materials like Tree of Life stand out because acquiring them feels more rewarding and comes with clearer feedback. In contrast, searching for items like Scissors just to combine them with Tree of Life for Legendary crafting raises the learning barrier further, while offering little sense of fun.
Q2. What are your thoughts on lower-tier material collection to craft Legendary equipment?
① Collecting lower-tier materials for crafting Legendary equipment should be completely removed.
② It would be better to reduce the number of lower-tier materials and simplify recipes as much as possible.
③ Keeping things as they are now is the best option.
④ Other opinions (short answer)
Farming Epic Equipment early in the game also involves 1–2 minutes of repetitive collection each match. However, unlike Legendary material farming, this aspect is more deeply tied to the core identity of the game, so we plan to approach it with much greater caution and from a long-term perspective.
Q3. What do you think of the current crafting process of Epic Equipment?
① In the long term, the Epic crafting process also needs major changes.
② Since it’s part of the game’s identity, it would be better to make only small adjustments while preserving its essence.
③ Keeping things as they are now is the best option.
④ Others (short answer)
Multi-Weapon characters
In the early days, when the roster of characters was small, some characters were designed to use two or more weapon types to provide more gameplay variety. Even today, there are still clear differences between weapon types, not just in weapon skills but also in attack range, items, and mastery stats.
However, those differences have been shrinking. Assuming highly skilled players are competing in squads, strong weapon-type distinctions almost always caused balance problems somewhere. As a result, adjustments have been made over time so that, aside from a few exceptions, the differences between weapon types are now mostly limited to weapon skills.
As mentioned earlier, balancing multi-weapon characters is especially difficult. Items and weapon skills are interconnected with other characters, so balance has to be managed primarily through weapon mastery, and that is far from easy. The most extreme case of this issue was seen in Jackie’s rework this season.
There’s also the production side to consider. For the same character, if they have multiple weapon types, creating skins requires animation work on the scale of almost a full new character. Despite the extra development cost, players don’t feel a noticeable difference compared to a single skin. In the long run, reducing weapon types could also help improve overall skin quality.
Q4. What do you think of multi-weapon characters? ① Start by reducing the number of weapons for characters with little difference in playstyle between weapon types. ② Keeping things as they are now is the best option. ③ Others (short answer)
Before wrapping up, we’d like to share the results of the recent survey on abnormal play and smurfing.
In this Dev Journal, we reflected on the introduction of Skill Haste, shared the direction of our season strategy moving forward and outlined long-term ideas for structural improvements to the game.
As we mentioned back in our first Dev Journal, the dev team is taking this current crisis of trust more seriously than any we’ve faced before. Alongside the results of today’s survey, we’ll also be providing further explanation on areas that require more detail during the upcoming Dev Stream, so please join us on September 30 9 PM (ET) / October 1st 1 AM (UTC) for our English Dev Stream!
As always, thank you for sticking with us.
