[2023] 16th Dev Journal

A lil somethin somethin: You can find the details for this event on the announcement page here.

Hello Lumia Island survivors!
Today’s Dev Journal will be about the newly added Briefing Room!

Briefing Room is where the first players that finish loading can stay while waiting for other players. Much of the loading time is spent waiting for the slowest computer, and with more people participating than before, there is a higher chance that the slowest computer will be even slower.



Now, if your computer isn't too bad, you can can move your character around the Briefing Room first without waiting for it to load!



Test subjects can try out all skills at level 20 in the Briefing Room. Of course, since you don't have any equipment yet, the power may not come out as much as you want, but you can still try out a skill combo once in a while even if you're new to the character. You can also attack other players, but you become invulnerable when your HP reaches 1. If you want to practice quietly by yourself, you can also try out the skill on a practice dummy that's specific to your Briefing Room.




In addition, you can chat with your team, read skill descriptions, or browse the Item Catalog. You can also press the M key to explore the map of Lumia Island!

However, you cannot use, craft, or discard items, earn credits, or quit the game.

Once all players have finished loading, or a certain amount of time has passed, test subjects in the Briefing Room will be sent to their spawn point after a few seconds. This is before the arrival scene in the hyperloop that we've always seen at the beginning of the game. Of course, the Briefing Room replaces the loading screen for fast-loaders, so the overall game start time doesn't get longer.
Unfortunately, the player with the slowest loading time will start the game without time to enjoy the Briefing Room.



The Briefing Room was one of the earliest features on the roadmap. It's something we've wanted to do since the Alpha test, but it kept getting pushed back because it didn't have a significant impact on the actual gameplay. The biggest value of the Briefing Room, though, is that it lets you immerse yourself a little bit more before you start the game and get you into the mood by saying, "Alright, the game is about to start".




The decayed buildings and streets give Lumia Island an older vibe. The Briefing Room, however, has the feel of a more high-tech lab. That difference in environments gives you the hint that the fight that is about to start is an experiment, and that someone is hosting it and watching you. We want you to feel like you're about to be subjected to an experiment in the name of Battle Royale as you wait in this space for the battle to begin.




And we also wanted to make the presence of the 24 subjects more real, so that you're not just looking at a static profile picture, but you're looking at moving enemies, feeling the tension and thinking to yourself, "Oh, I'm about to fight these subjects." In Team Modes you can meet your team again after going through each other's Saved Plans, but before that happens, gathering together gives a sense of being a united front against the rest.



Of course, for some, this feature might feel like an unnecessary addition, like character dialogs that you can hit the skip button on. The core fun of PvP is the competition and battles that come afterward, and even if you get to feel the emotions we described before, they'll probably wear off after 100 games.

But even this process is part of the Eternal Return world, so we really wanted to include it even if it was forced upon the Official Launch.

Stay tuned for the next Dev Journal, which will focus on Forging and ER Pass!

Thank you!
*All preview images released in the Dev Journals are subject to change during the development process.


You can get WP from the Dev Journals on our {LINK REMOVED}web event page. Web Points(WP) are event points that can be obtained and used throughout the Season 9 web events