The data does not lie, Endless Dungeon has lost 92% of its playerbase in under 3 weeks, not 3 months, 3 WEEKS, the fastest loss of players I have seen in well, ever. now I do know games do lose a good number of players before stabilizing, but not even humankind tanked in player percentage this fast, it still lasted a couple months before reaching similar loss in numbers,  This is a massive Failure for the game, so this begs the question, what went wrong with Endless Dungeon.

After combing through reviews and discussions about the game, I have come to 2 conclusions. Denuvo and Lack of Content.

1 Denuvo: Lets get this one out of the way, Denuvo was by far the most controversial and debated part of the game long before it came out, hundreds of players declaring that they will not buy the game unless denuvo is removed, Denuvo has a very bad reputation, so bad that many see it as malware, so when Denuvo was announced for Endless Dungeon, it immediately generated a backlash from the community, Amplitudes response to the Backlash was met with even further outrage as their response was seemingly picked and torn apart by the community, whats worse is that Amplitude had removed Denuvo from a previous game humankind after it gained similar backlash, so for them to add it to denuvo despite already knowing the community's general opinion on Denuvo, only soured the community''s stance even further.

2 Lack of Content: this is the big one, From many Reviews Ive been reading, Endless Dungeon has barely a third of the content that Dungeon of the Endless has, yet it demands a price 3 times more than DOTE, now I know some people have claimed that they are 2 different games but thats just not the case, they both share the same floor based levels, similar wave mechanics, crystal defense, turrets, names are almost the same etc, Amplitude even tried to shove a ad of Endless Dungeon into DOTE which was removed due to backlash and was not added into any of their other games,  that practically cements that yes Endless Dungeon is a succesor to DOTE. So it was inevitable that the 2 would be compared, and Sadly Endless Dungeon does not hold up, it has 4 floors compared to DOTEs 12, it has only a third of the amount of characters DOTE has, it has fewer enemy types than DOTE, the Item Mechanics DOTE had is replaced with a bare bones 3 tier upgrade system, instead of 4 characters at a time, you can only have 3 in a group in Endless Dungeon, the melee weapons of DOTE are gone in Endless Dungeon, Infact if we move away from DOTE, the game is still lacking, with boss battles lacking any strategy or tactics and are considered very much pushovers, not to mention seemingly untested parts of the game, so much that when Endless Dungeon released, its co-op system was so broken that it punished players for playing co-op in a co-op heavy game, while this is being resolved currently, that fact it happened in the first place is very unacceptable in such circumstances.

and while yes Endless dungeon does have some good traits, its art, lore, graphics, but in the end all of that is secondary to the more important aspects of a game, content, and gameplay, 2 aspects this game appears to be lacking in.

In the End, this game seems to have failed from releasing with a already bad Reputation thanks to Denuvo, and having only a third of the amount of content its predecessor while demanding 3 times the money. Do you agree with these 2 conclusions? or are there parts of the game that I missed or overlooked?

Keep in mind that I haven't played the final release, but I did play a lot of the near-finished closed beta, the final beta, and have read a lot of Steam reviews.  So I think I have a decent idea of the state of the final game, and here is where I think things went wrong (and I'll also add the disclaimer that I mean for this criticism to be constructive):

1. Denuvo, of course.  When you're doing something new, unconventional, or niche, you cannot afford to turn way a single customer.  Denuvo does that immediately because those who understand Denuvo won't buy a game at full price if they buy it at all.  We've already got a few massive topics discussing Denuvo so I won't elaborate on it any more here.

2. This game could never decide whether it was an action game or a strategy game, and the imbalance between the two genres was never resolved in the central game design.  This has been my primary complaint since the very first OpenDev, and I'm seeing a lot of people in the reviews who are in agreement with my previous comments.  What the devs did here was take DotE which is a strategy-heavy game, take out a lot of the strategy, and then add just a nominal amount of action to replace the missing strategy components.  So the result is that the people who played DotE for the strategy will keep playing DotE because they are disappointed that TED doesn't at least have the same amount of strategy as in DotE, and people who play action shooters/crawlers will play about anything else because they are only getting a minimal amount of action content compared to competing action games.  What we have here is an attempt change the fusion of the two genres that doesn't have enough of either genre to appeal to fans on each side of the line, and that was my original conern after playing the game for the first time.

3. Lots of complaints about content being sparse and mechanics that are missing compared to DotE:

-- The Dust mechanic for lighting rooms that was central to DotE's strategy component is gone.  This gets a lot of complaints as do the fixed spawn points that replaced the dark room spawns.

-- The player roster is tiny, and the team size is small.

-- Major modules are mostly gone.  Simple, user-driven generator placement was replaced by RNG'd generators.

-- The various types of weapons were cut down to 2 types of guns.

-- The different pod types are gone.  (Especially an endless mode.)

-- A run is only 4 floors instead of 12.  (Though there are multiple zones per floor this time around - which seems to get ignored in that calculation.)

-- Armor is gone and items are mostly gone.

-- The mainstream, Overwatch-like art style seems to be negatively compared to DotE's more unique pixel art style.

4. Players seem to be complaining that many of the mechanics are over-complicated:

-- Of course, the timed waves took a very simple mechanic (open a door, get a wave) and changed it to this hard-to-understand timer that the devs struggled to deal with and properly balance from Day 1.  I feel like a lot of dev time was wasted on this mechanic when it should have been scrapped immediately in order to focus on other more important core features.  There was absolutely nothing wrong with DotE's door-based wave mechanic, and most action shooters do a room-based "wave" mechanic where enemies only spawn in new rooms.  So I don't understand the amount of effort that was put into trying to force time-based waves into the game.

-- The elemental rock-paper-scissors system isn't really liked.  Most other roguelites go with a status affix system for elemental mechanics because it makes the elements act more like a bonus mechanic, but the "you have to use this element to kill this type of enemy" mechanic in TED really restricts player choice because you basically have to go with whatever element the enemies require that you use.  (And you have to make sure you always have max-level Light turrets on-hand by the final boss.)

-- The fact that the turrets have a limited range makes a lot of the turrets feel pointless.  In DotE, you could put down a turret and expect it to be effective.  TED's turret range mechanics just make it harder to place and use turrets effectively which complicates things a lot.

-- RNG-based upgrades are hard to deal with.  The level progression in DotE was simple and predictable.  You would know how to build out your party based on who was in it, and there was a lot of strategy there.  The fact that TED's upgrade system is "pick one of the RNG'd perks and hope the downside on that perk isn't too bad" makes the upgrade system unappealing.  Same applies to the Crystal Bot upgrades.

-- The blackout mechanic with no payoff just complicates the game and nothing else.

5. It feels like there was too much focus placed on multiplayer before the core design was completely fleshed out.  My initial impression from the first trailer was that you all wanted to attract the Overwatch/Fortnite crowd with a hip, zany co-op shooter.  Based on statements from the devs, the initial lack of single-player balancing during OpenDev, and the comments about final product itself, the multiplayer component appears to have been focused on way too early in the development cycle and initially took away from development of the core mechanics.  Then at some point there was a realization that the core mechanics needed to be strengthened so then development started on things like meta-progression which made the multiplayer take a back seat when it came to details like if only the host gets meta progression rewards or all of the players get them.  So multiplayer initially got too much focus and then not enough which led to some odd results.

6. Unresolved bugs.  I'm sure that you were all busy in the lead-up to release, but I was surprised by the number of unresolved bugs that I'm seeing reported in the final release.  (Like the run-ending bug where the bot can get stuck in a pillar while walking to the final phase of the final boss was reported quite a while ago.)

So that's my take based on personal experience and review comments.  Some of this could be chalked up to people not understanding that this is supposed to be a different game than DotE, but I guess I could see where someone who hasn't read the "this isn't a DotE sequel" disclaimers from Amplitude staff may not understand this.  You all made the right call to delay the game, but even after playing the final beta I felt like the game should have been delayed further (but I'm sure it was too late by then).  I feel like a lot of the delay time was spent working on the meta-progression system, but I guess my expectation was that other core issues would also be improved behind the scenes by release time.  In any case, I hope you'll be able to smooth things over and get out of the Mixed review range soon - this game has a lot of potential.

SpikedWallMan wrote:

Keep in mind that I haven't played the final release, but I did play a lot of the near-finished closed beta, the final beta, and have read a lot of Steam reviews.  So I think I have a decent idea of the state of the final game, and here is where I think things went wrong (and I'll also add the disclaimer that I mean for this criticism to be constructive):

1. Denuvo, of course.  When you're doing something new, unconventional, or niche, you cannot afford to turn way a single customer.  Denuvo does that immediately because those who understand Denuvo won't buy a game at full price if they buy it at all.  We've already got a few massive topics discussing Denuvo so I won't elaborate on it any more here.

2. This game could never decide whether it was an action game or a strategy game, and the imbalance between the two genres was never resolved in the central game design.  This has been my primary complaint since the very first OpenDev, and I'm seeing a lot of people in the reviews who are in agreement with my previous comments.  What the devs did here was take DotE which is a strategy-heavy game, take out a lot of the strategy, and then add just a nominal amount of action to replace the missing strategy components.  So the result is that the people who played DotE for the strategy will keep playing DotE because they are disappointed that TED doesn't at least have the same amount of strategy as in DotE, and people who play action shooters/crawlers will play about anything else because they are only getting a minimal amount of action content compared to competing action games.  What we have here is an attempt change the fusion of the two genres that doesn't have enough of either genre to appeal to fans on each side of the line, and that was my original conern after playing the game for the first time.

3. Lots of complaints about content being sparse and mechanics that are missing compared to DotE:

-- The Dust mechanic for lighting rooms that was central to DotE's strategy component is gone.  This gets a lot of complaints as do the fixed spawn points that replaced the dark room spawns.

-- The player roster is tiny, and the team size is small.

-- Major modules are mostly gone.  Simple, user-driven generator placement was replaced by RNG'd generators.

-- The various types of weapons were cut down to 2 types of guns.

-- The different pod types are gone.  (Especially an endless mode.)

-- A run is only 4 floors instead of 12.  (Though there are multiple zones per floor this time around - which seems to get ignored in that calculation.)

-- Armor is gone and items are mostly gone.

-- The mainstream, Overwatch-like art style seems to be negatively compared to DotE's more unique pixel art style.

4. Players seem to be complaining that many of the mechanics are over-complicated:

-- Of course, the timed waves took a very simple mechanic (open a door, get a wave) and changed it to this hard-to-understand timer that the devs struggled to deal with and properly balance from Day 1.  I feel like a lot of dev time was wasted on this mechanic when it should have been scrapped immediately in order to focus on other more important core features.  There was absolutely nothing wrong with DotE's door-based wave mechanic, and most action shooters do a room-based "wave" mechanic where enemies only spawn in new rooms.  So I don't understand the amount of effort that was put into trying to force time-based waves into the game.

-- The elemental rock-paper-scissors system isn't really liked.  Most other roguelites go with a status affix system for elemental mechanics because it makes the elements act more like a bonus mechanic, but the "you have to use this element to kill this type of enemy" mechanic in TED really restricts player choice because you basically have to go with whatever element the enemies require that you use.  (And you have to make sure you always have max-level Light turrets on-hand by the final boss.)

-- The fact that the turrets have a limited range makes a lot of the turrets feel pointless.  In DotE, you could put down a turret and expect it to be effective.  TED's turret range mechanics just make it harder to place and use turrets effectively which complicates things a lot.

-- RNG-based upgrades are hard to deal with.  The level progression in DotE was simple and predictable.  You would know how to build out your party based on who was in it, and there was a lot of strategy there.  The fact that TED's upgrade system is "pick one of the RNG'd perks and hope the downside on that perk isn't too bad" makes the upgrade system unappealing.  Same applies to the Crystal Bot upgrades.

-- The blackout mechanic with no payoff just complicates the game and nothing else.

5. It feels like there was too much focus placed on multiplayer before the core design was completely fleshed out.  My initial impression from the first trailer was that you all wanted to attract the Overwatch/Fortnite crowd with a hip, zany co-op shooter.  Based on statements from the devs, the initial lack of single-player balancing during OpenDev, and the comments about final product itself, the multiplayer component appears to have been focused on way too early in the development cycle and initially took away from development of the core mechanics.  Then at some point there was a realization that the core mechanics needed to be strengthened so then development started on things like meta-progression which made the multiplayer take a back seat when it came to details like if only the host gets meta progression rewards or all of the players get them.  So multiplayer initially got too much focus and then not enough which led to some odd results.

6. Unresolved bugs.  I'm sure that you were all busy in the lead-up to release, but I was surprised by the number of unresolved bugs that I'm seeing reported in the final release.  (Like the run-ending bug where the bot can get stuck in a pillar while walking to the final phase of the final boss was reported quite a while ago.)

So that's my take based on personal experience and review comments.  Some of this could be chalked up to people not understanding that this is supposed to be a different game than DotE, but I guess I could see where someone who hasn't read the "this isn't a DotE sequel" disclaimers from Amplitude staff may not understand this.  You all made the right call to delay the game, but even after playing the final beta I felt like the game should have been delayed further (but I'm sure it was too late by then).  I feel like a lot of the delay time was spent working on the meta-progression system, but I guess my expectation was that other core issues would also be improved behind the scenes by release time.  In any case, I hope you'll be able to smooth things over and get out of the Mixed review range soon - this game has a lot of potential.

I agree with alot of these statements, While I have no problem with the art design in its own right, it is one of the good things the game has going, I do want to clarify a bit that I dont think its a step in the right direction for the Endless Franchise. Humankind can get away with its simplistic art because its a brand new game with no connection to any other game (outside of easter egg of course) The Endless Franchise already has its own art style down, with a more realistic somewhat gritty look. so while on its own, the art for Endless Dungeon is fine, I do hope this is only for this game wont be the direction for the Franchise in whole.

I do also agree with the Multiplayer part, Amplitude does not have the best track record when it comes to multiplayer which vary between games from somewhat adequate to downright broken, which is why I have a problem with Endless Dungeons more multiplayer focused approach, infact I had a issue with Ampltidues approach to multiplayer in general starting with Humankinds timed events which are usually attributed with Multiplayer heavy games. Its the equivalent of of a person who has just barely graduated in submarine piloting, instead of taking it bit by bit, slowly getting experience, they immediatly try to navigate down to the mariana trench, they are not skilled enough for it yet. I think Amplitudes should have kept Endless Dungeon as a more singleplayer heavy game, but with more focus on the multiplayer being functional and stable.

Coming back 2 months after it released, and its gotten worse, the game can barely break 200 players on a good day now, and is in the double digits. At best, the game can barely retain 2.5% of the players it had just barely 2 months ago, and this is even after the on the rocks update a few weeks ago as well as multiple hotfix patches. Im sorry Amplitude but with the loss of 97.5% of players in just under 2 months, I have to consider this game, a failure.

At the same time, if I take my example (and there must be a lot of people in the same case), we do not play it because there is still no Cross-Gen available... While, as a reminder, the game was sold by putting this feature forward!

By home we bought the game only for that so it is very regrettable!

Moreover, and it is not for lack of asking the question for a while, we have no news to know when it will be available... I think it’s too much!

It appears that despite only being 5 months old, content updates might be slowing down for Endless Dungeon, despite desperately needing content for the price its asking, in the Viggie cocreation/Gameplay style news post, a clipped text indicates that Viggie will be the last hero to be added to the base game as the the post says Viggie will "COMPLETE the Hero roster" this will mean only 9 heroes will be in the base game. That is half of the base game heroes, (make it a third it you count dlc heroes) of Dungeon of the Endless, the game that this one is clearly inspired and based off of. whether this game will have dlc heroes or not is still unknown. 

Now as mentioned before by mutliple people in this thread, the lack of content is one of the major criticism's this game is facing, and being only 5 months old, this game should be getting content updates for atleast a year and that also means more heroes, the fact that Viggie will be the last base game hero and that we will not be seeing any new heroes in the foreseeable future is not a good sign in that regard, especially since this game is constantly breaking its record low player count, as of now, at a daily peak average of 80-90 players or less than 1% of its playercount at launch, this game can not even break 100 players on the steam charts, and is being beaten by not only Dungeon of the Endless, a game that is 10 years old at this point, but also Endless space 1, their very first game back in 2012.

This is going to be my final Update on the game because I honestly dont want to give the impression or belief that im just a hater thats hating on this game. I genuinely, like everyone else, wanted this game to succeed, but as you can see in the pictures below, The chances for this game to suceed is now in the single digit numbers, and the more I watch, the more Im coming to the conclusion that this game is officially dead.While on one hand this is not the first product to have a mostly negative rating, to my knowledge, the first one was the dlc named awakening,and that was a outsourced product, This on the other hand is a full fledged game, made by amplitude themselves and it now has a mostly negative rating, marking the first time a game made by amplitude to have such a low rating.

Yes the reveiw size is small, only 48 players, this however is still bad as that number corresponds to the number of people still playing the game.With a player count in the double digits and dropping, this game went from almost 10,000 players at launch according to the steamDB, to less than half of 1% of that initial playercount, in only under 4-5 months. This game did not last half a year. Have some of their other games reached double digits before, yes, Dungeon of the endless was in the double digits one time, with its all time low being roughly 84 peak players, which was 9 months after it launched, and it came back from that, but the difference is, Dungeon of the endless was a very well liked and positively rated game in this community, the same cannot be said for Endless Dungeon.

As to why it failed, people in this thread have already gone over a good portion of why it failed, so I will give only a brief explanation.

1: denuvo immediately alienated a significant portion of potential players, especially given that this is a niche game.

2:lack of content, this game does not have content worth the price it is asking, and judging from the fact that Viggie will be the last hero in the base game, not even half a year after release, it appears content updates will also be slowing.

3:bugs, according to many reviews and players, this game is incredibly buggy, with multiple game breaking bugs yet to be resolved, and most of those bugs are in the multiplayer aspect, which to many is the main selling point of the game.

4:Its inability to mesh multiple genres well, Endless dungeon is a mix between action and strategy, but its made in a way that satisfies neither side and players will look for other more focused games instead.

Now can this game still be revived, possibly, its going to take a alot of work and change to revive this game, but given both the state of the game, and the fact content updates already appear to be on the down, I do not believe such a revival is possible right now.

Game just needs a lot more content, that would fix 80% of its issue. But I think they might be cutting their loss and moving on sooner rather than later, never allowing this game to reach it's true potential.