Koei Tecmo Shares What It Learned From The Nioh Alpha Demo

From April 26-May 5, 2016, Koei Tecmo made a Nioh alpha demo available in the PlayStation Store. After people played, it asked them to complete a brief survey detailing their thoughts on the game. Today, the company has released information gathered from the survey and how it will influence the game’s development, also noting that over 850,000 people downloaded and played Nioh while it was available.

Among the data released are a number of graphics showing feedback people from the Americas, Europe, and Asia offered on the Nioh’s action and controls, graphics and atmosphere, character design, stage design, UI, music and sound effects, difficulty and game balance, and overall enjoyment. It also released a figure showing all of the worldwide feedback combined. Most of the feedback was either “very good” or “good,” though people in Japan seemed to take issue with the difficulty and game balance.

Koei Tecmo also provided a list of all the things that will be changed in Nioh, thanks to feedback from people who played the alpha demo and participated in the survey.

Overall

• Add tutorials regarding the game system.
• Adjust balance mainly in the opening sections to make battles fairer.
• Improve controls and camera system.
• Improve the understandability and usability of the US.
• Improve graphic performance.

Details

Tutorials

• Implement a training stage for tutorials on basic controls and core game actions.

Action & Controls

• Improve player & camera behavior during lock-on.
• Change the conditions under which the player character becomes unresponsive when the Ki gauge is empty.
• Expand item shortcut slots.
• Revise the objects which require holding a button and the response to the hold input.
• Improve detection for the half-circle analog stick input.

Enemies

• Adjust attack and defense parameters of enemies.
• Revise enemy pursuit of the player.
• Revise superarmor (stagger/no stagger) for each enemy and attack.
• Adjust Revenant AI.

Level Design/Stages

• Improve exploration elements such as shortcuts, etc.
• Add hints to guide players to boss areas.
• Revise the display of objects that block the view of the player character.
• Adjust fire area damage.

UI

• Improve layout and displayed information.
• Adjust text size.
• When making an offering at a shrine, allow the player to perform all actions at once.

Online

• Improve online synchronization.
• Allow the host to use the Shrine menu during co-op play with a Visitor.
• Adjust the rate at which enemy parameters increase during co-op gameplay.

Other

• Remove durability stat for weapons and armor.
• Adjust the drop rate for equipment.
• Add a new control type.
• Implement a flow to allow players to exit a mission.
• Fix other bugs.

 

Nioh will come to the PlayStation 4 in 2016. Koei Tecmo says people can safely delete the Nioh alpha demo game and save data from your systems, as it won’t cause you to lose the earned Mark of the Conqueror.