EPX Season 3: Q&A With Ndream

by Eternal Paradox | Mar 20, 2024 | Eternal Paradox

The team at Ndream are thrilled to be into Season 3 of Eternal Paradox, and invited the community to bring all their questions for a Q&A with the developers!

The Discord community had a week to submit questions (and we threw in some of our own), and they brought tons of insightful questions. We’ve included much of the translated interview transcript in here, though we took out some of the repeated questions.

Community members that provided names on the form have been credited for their questions. Thank you all for your amazing questions!

Hello! Tell us a little about yourself!

Hello! This is Jaejun Song, Game Producer of EPX!

I am a 4X fan and developer. I have enjoyed playing dozens of 4X games for the past decade, and based on that experience, I have participated in developing three 4X games.

Like any other game producers, I get involved in overall game development, and my main roles include the following:

1. Meeting with lead developers to plan new content;

2. Identify and correct issues related to the live operations;

3. Manage the schedules to ensure smooth progress of development; and

4. Work with Gala Games in making decisions in various tasks, including the above tasks.

How many people currently make up your development team for EPX?

We have 10+ dedicated members in the Planning Team, Program Team and Art Team each. If we add the sound and video guys, who also work on other projects, I’d say about 40 people are involved with EPX.

A lot has happened over the first seasons. Are there any particularly memorable moments?

For me, the most memorable moment would be the Season 1 Conquest.

All users were excited and joined the Conquest, having about x 2.5 times concurrent users than usual. The server went down more than a dozen times due to an unexpected error.

We responded quickly although it was early morning in Korea, and we managed to fix the error and finished the Conquest without having to cancel it.

Many users were understanding and supportive instead of criticizing the dev team for the server downtime, and we were thankful. But I still remember how the sweat was pouring down my back, making phone calls to different developers.

What content would you say had a better response than the development team expected?

Also the Conquest.

We have so far had multiple Conquests, but regardless of the time, we always see the highest number of concurrent users, and all guilds are battling fiercely. Much more than we anticipated.

We definitely felt the passion of the players. They would verbally argue with others, hold in check rally leaders with arrows, or deploy guerilla tactics with a few players.

Conversely, what content was worse than expected?

The Auto Rally system.

The auto rally feature is commonly used in 4X games because it allows you to join rallies even when you are offline. That is why we implemented this feature in EPX.

However, due to the nature of our game, many find it more efficient to collect resources from Resource Sites, and the proportion of individual hunting was high. So, it seems this feature was not as active as we had expected.

We will review the feature, possibly increasing the participation rewards.

Many people have lots of questions and opinions about the new updates for Season 3…

Seasons 3 and 4 would require a greater collaboration between guild members as a guild.

In the first two seasons, we felt that we needed to further strengthen cooperative content within each guild, like requiring guild members to come together at a specific time to play together or communicate for better cooperation.

So this content was our highest development priority. The following content will be introduced as the main content in Seasons 3 and 4.

Season 3: Guild Boss Raid (Doombringer)

– You will summon a boss once every three days and farm it by rallying. Rewards are given based on the kill stage and personal score.

Season 4: Guild Arena

– Same arena battles, but you will compete with another guild for points. You can select one of the other guild’s players to battle against, and when you win, you earn VPs.

Then it was the community’s turn to ask the dev’s their questions, and they covered a lot of ground. We’ve abbreviated the translations of some of the questions and responses to the most relevant bits so that we can cover more here!

We’ll highlight the most impactful, wide-reaching and poignant questions below:

Abendego: When will the team look to do user acquisition through advertising?

We have been trying different marketing campaigns on various platforms. We will find efficient methods to attract new users.

Chachess#8417: Will there be “NFT” fortress/Mercenary Skins for Season 3?

We currently do not have any plan to make NFT Fortress Skin. But it is something worth considering, so we may be able to discuss it after our current plans are put in place.

As for new NFT Mercenaries, our goal is to introduce one new NFT Mercenary per season.

Hongchan1999: Will future seasons have 2 servers, a competitive server with higher rewards and a static server that does not reset?

 EPX was born only with the Season system in mind, so it is not easy to introduce a non-seasonal server. This applies to both technical implementation and balancing aspects. Rather than introducing a non-seasonal server, the more realistic approach would be to increase the rewards enough to motivate players each season. We will work hard to come up with satisfactory rewards.

Hongchan1999: Can you replace Guild Festival mission (promote merc)? It is hard to complete it.

The development team is also aware that it is difficult to promote Mercenaries. It will be made reasonably easier in Season 3.

Hongchan1999: Guild Festival Ranking Rewards need to boosts more, players need more rewards.

Guild Festival Stage Rewards will be partially increased in Season 3. Many say that the Ranking Rewards should be Gems because it is hard to get them elsewhere. We will listen to more feedback from the community and review it. 

Mihailendwill: Will there be a rebalancing of the characters both among themselves and in relation to nft/non-nft

Since there are many users who have already purchased NFTs with their balances in mind, our goal is to minimize balancing modifications. Please let us know, though, if there is anything that seems to need adjustment. 

Mihailendwill: Will there be a change in the % of post-season token distribution?

We don’t have any plan to implement major changes in our Tokenomics.

Mihailendwill: Will there be an increase in guild research? The current one ends in half a season.

Guild Research will also expand to a higher level in Season 3. As you mentioned, we are aware that the top guilds have finished all the research in the middle of the season.

k._f._.c: Will Valentine, Ran, and Ava continue to be “limited” in the sense that they cannot be summoned, and are only available through season rewards, clovers, and contribution, respectively?

Yes, we plan to keep it that way.

The contribution points “retained til end of next season” is a little vague. If I am contribution level 13, does that mean at the beginning of season 3, I will get the rewards for level 13, or the rewards for levels 1-13? Or does it mean I won’t get the rewards again but keep the Group Attributes? Also, on season 4, will it reset to level 1?

The CPs you accumulated this season will be carried over to the next season. Since you accumulated CP to Level 13 in Season 2, you will be Level 13 in Season 3 and will get the rewards for Levels 1 through 13.

However, this data will not be carried over to Season 4. Only the CPs you accumulate in Season 3 will be carried over to Season 4.

k._f._.c: Do you think there are some progression issues with some of the buildings? For example, bringing mine from level 11 to 16 takes WEEKS to pay off, and level 16 to 21 is simply not worth it.

I agree with your opinion regarding the efficiency of Harvester/Farm/Mine/Extractor in the Fortress. We will find a way to improve it.

k._f._.c: Another example is barracks. Even spending hundreds of dollars on the temporary speedups over a season, it’s not really possible (without spending thousands) to get to T10 troops on all barracks, and dark/light is better anyways, so it makes sense to only get one of the dark/light to T9 and then focus on headquarters, forge, and the buildings needed for HQ

Our design had in mind that players will upgrade one or two Barracks based on your deck, rather than upgrading all Barracks. Buildings are subject to reset, so we thought it would be too much to upgrade all Barracks every season.

However, like you mentioned, we also understand players are “forced” to choose either Light or Dark, so we will make improvements to strengthen the merits of other options.

k._f._.c: Will you stop devaluing gems, land grants, and immortal emblems by releasing tomes that make buying things in the shop ineffective? For example, to get a rare mercenary using immortal emblems, it costs $250. I can buy second hand with $50 or less. This is because the tomes gave people many rare (and rarer) NFTs just for $ETIME.

Right now, it may be the most efficient way to purchase Tomes with $ETIME. However, $ETIME NFTs are random, meaning you are not guaranteed to get the Mercenary or the rarity you want. On the other hand, while Immortal Emblems are more expensive, you can get the Mercenary and rarity you want. So, I think different users make different choices based on their preference.

NFTs are one of the most important $ETIME sinks, so we plan to continue to increase these products. At the same time, we will continue to strengthen the benefits of owning this NFT.

If done so, the gap between users who own an NFT and do not own an NFT may widen considerably. While the dev team is aware of this issue, EPX is a Web3 game, so it needs to focus on NFTs and NFTs need to offer enough merits.

What are more $ETIME sinks planned for the future?

We will add $ETIME sinks, but one of the biggest ones to come is Gem products that can be bought with $ETIME. We believe $ETIME will become significantly more attractive because most products can be purchased with Gems.

When can we burn NFTs to get fragments

Burning NFTs to receive Immortal Emblems and Summon Pieces is being considered for Season 5 or 6.

Will guilds have more capacity?

The cap was set at 50 considering the number of users in the server and the season prize. We believe it is appropriate, but if many say it should be increased, we will review it.

When will more servers appear?

We will add new servers when a significant number of new users are recruited.

Will arrows be nerfed to be considered an aggressive action so people can’t use them with shield?

One of the reasons we have arrows is to give lower-level users to stand against higher-level users. Most 4X games tend to have a pay-to-win nature, and the weak often can’t do anything against the strong.

If the shield is removed when arrows are used, lower-level users won’t be able to use them freely for fear of being attacked. With this in mind, we designed it so that arrows can be used with a shield on but only for a limited number of times.

We believe this direction is still valid, but we will listen to more users’ feedback before making a decision.

What do you think of all these questions?

We did several AMAs prior to launching the game, and a lot of questions we had back then were somewhat expected questions. However, it shows these questions came from seasoned players who are very much engaged in the game.

Each and every question gave me a lot to think about. I will quickly discuss with the team and improve the ones I feel need to be addressed now.

Thanks to the EPX team for taking the time to answer so many community questions, and for working hard to make each season of EPX even better than the last!

Jaejun Song from Ndream had the following comments in conclusion to close out the AMA:

We sincerely thank you for your support in EPX Season 1 and 2. We know there is a lot to improve, and we are committed to making the game better with new updates every season.

As I mentioned earlier, the goal for Seasons 3 and 4 is to strengthen guild content: Doombringer (boss raid) in Season 3 and Guild Arena in Season 4. We will strive to make new and better content, focusing particularly on cooperation and competition, taking advantage of the 4X genre.

We will run a few events in Season 3, with coupon codes and separate occupation war rewards. We look forward to your continued support!

Season 3 is already up and rolling! Have you slayed the Doombringer yet?

Are you prepared to show your might in the first Conquest!?