And so it begins...Update on last weekends closed beta!

Developer Insight - Game Balance Going Forward. Dev team updates on last weekends incredible closed beta.

Hola Raiders!

Its been a hectic weekend. Huge thanks to everyone who participated, streamed and commented. Now it’s our turn to communicate with you a few key points regarding this closed beta phase.

The number of players taking part in the closed beta has risen sharply. This past weekend test was the biggest we’ve had so far and really pushed our infrastructure hard. This did cause some issues with matchmaking and in particular during the initial hours on Saturday when our servers were under the most stress. Thanks for your patience during this time.

With this session we finally got very different kinds of people to play the game. Console and PC users from different countries and different approaches to solo and multiplayer gaming. This very wide kind of play testing is invaluable to us, it helps us design our data mining processes which will deliver high amounts of information for the future. This ability to match perception with data will be key to providing a good service to you in the long run.

Character and mission balance is another key part of this beta. This is an ongoing process that will evolve as player (and developer!) knowledge of the game advances. However, we understand that there is a knowledgeable player base that has extensive experience in the genre and wants to know more. We’ve made a post  where the design team shares some insights about these topics. Please check it out!

Another of the more pressing issues is to correctly set up the matchmaking system specially because this game has a unique, three way matchmaking system: Raiders, Antagonist and AI each have their own different skill levels that have to be matched. As with any such system, it needs quite a few games to properly position players and, depending on the nature of the changes needed, more beta sessions will be set up to test our new configurations.

Player progression through the game is another aspect on which we've had little insight yet, and will need to be number-crunched as well. How quickly you earn rewards and how you spend them will be the main focus of the next beta session.

Thanks for your input and support!

MercurySteam Dev Team!!