Please reconsider your balancing for beginners

[Mr. Lotti]

Dear Developers!

First, I want to say: I LOVE YOUR GAME !!!

But I just took a look at your "Avg" Player counts over the last Month, and it almost broke my heart to see how only a few players tried out your game and how fast your player base lost interest in it shortly after, and I don't believe this represents the value of this game at all.

In the following, I would like to point out the biggest "issue" that in my opinion could be the cause of this misery:

Summum Aeterna is by far the hardest and most unforgiving roguelike in the beginning of the game I have ever seen. Given the fact that only ~20% of the players (Steam based) have unlocked and upgraded the tree of eternity to LVL 5, is a clear sign that players lose interest in this game before it even gets started, due to the brutality they are facing not even reaching the first boss every time they try and even if they do just to get slaughtered by it, or shortly after in the next map.

The moment you get some levels into the tree of Eternity, the well of Darkness, your Weapon forge, and your equipment is where the Game actually is getting started, because you have now enough sustain to get through the first stages without struggling to get your health back somehow, just to lose 30% of it again on the next hit.

The face of the game is completely turning upside down from this point on, and you feel yourself getting stronger and stronger as you learn how to use the different weapons, upgrade more and so on...

I have 2 suggestions how this could be addressed in the near future for you to consider:

1. Lower the base damage output of every enemy/trap.

This allows new players to make mistakes (and they will do them since they don't know what is going on in the first place) without being sent back to the city all the time, so they can experience the real game from the beginning and start to learn from the first minute on how to smash these enemies and not get hit themselves doing so.

To not completely break the game in the long turn, an equivalent balance to the "Seed" Levels and their % increase on the world modifiers needs to be implemented. With this the game still gets harder and harder but giving you an easier time on lower Seed levels to actually get some resources in to progress your character.

2. Implement a big Tutorial Map

With a big tutorial map, you can decide on what point exactly you unleash your players into the real game. That way you can let them learn the basics of the game without the frustration of death and the earning basically no resources while doing so, just having to go in there and get killed again for just a few resources.

Once they have spent a fair amount of time in the tutorial map, they get a feeling for how to operate and maneuver in this game, while dying is not as punishing and finally get to beat their first "boss" encounter at the end of the tutorial.

Now being unleashed with a good felling into the real game, you should also introduce them to the Well of darkness and the tree of eternity from the beginning, giving them a decent amount of resources to spend. So that their next adventure in their very first seed has a much higher chance of being fun (and yes, winning/progressing IS fun)

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I really hope this may help you grow your player base, because I would love to see this game going through the charts!

thanks for listening(reading) and all the best!

Mr.Lotti

[Aeternum Game Studios]

Hi there!

Well, first things first, it's great when we receive such detailed feedback from the community. This is the best way to keep improving our game :)

The dev team will read your post and take note of your suggestions. It's key for us to listen to players' experiences.

Sure thing your ideas will help us to make Summum Aeterna a better Roguelite game!

Regards,

[Draxio]

i dropped this game after a few hours of frustrating but good gameplay. It might have gotten easier further on, but i didnt want to waste time on a game i am not enjoying.