Team Ninja and Koei Tecmo are doing something unusual with Nioh. Alpha and beta demos have been released, after which people who played are asked to fill out surveys. These surveys’ results then directly influence the development of the game. The alpha demo survey results’ requests could already be seen in the beta demo, and now we have a list of things that Team Ninja will do to Nioh after the beta demo.
Here’s the full list of changes that will be coming to Nioh , thanks to your input.
Overall
• Fine tune the game balance and pace
• Adjust RPG elements such as player growth and armor parameters
• Further improvements to clarify the interface and make it easier to use
Details
■ Tutorials
• Implement a training stage for tutorials on basic controls and core game actions.
■ Action & Controls
• Revise the TPS controls
• Add and adjust samurai skills
• Adjust the player damage/defeat
• Adjust the methods and performance of lowering the enemy stamina
• Adjust the weight and agility of armor
■ Level Design/Stages
• Adjust position of enemies including the Twilight Missions
• Adjust enemy detection issues
• Adjust collision such as dropping edges
■ Enemies
• Adjust strength and attack power of enemies
• Adjust the AI tracking ability and groupthink
• Add Boss attack variations in the Twilight Missions
• Revise superarmor (stagger/no stagger) and homing abilities
■ RPG
• Expand the maximum number of items (overall and per item)
• Adjust the amount of armor items dropped
• Expand the functions of the Blacksmith, adjust the requirements of Re-Forge and Soul Match
• Implement items when player level is reset
• Revise each type of reward
■ UI
• Improve each type of interface and usability
• Expand the tutorial
■ Camera
• Improve camera behavior in areas of bad visibility and inclines
• Add the ON/OFF option for camera autocorrect
■ Online
• Adjust Revenant drops
• Improve the enemy attack behavior during co-op play
• Fix enemy transparency bugs
• Allow movies to be skipped after the Boss is obliterated in co-op play
■ Other
• Stabilize the frame rate of image optimization
• Fix various problems and bugs
Various charts and graphs were shown, offering a look at people’s level of satisfaction after the Nioh alpha and beta demos. North America and Europe generally seem pretty satisfied, though both regions seem to want some UI and difficulty & game balance tweaking. Japan, meanwhile, is far harder to please, taking issue with difficulty & game balance, UI, stage design, and character design.
It’s really interesting to see how this approach affects Nioh . Perhaps getting people so involved will mean more sales when it comes to the PlayStation 4 on February 9, 2017? I know I’d feel more comfortable buying it, knowing that Team Ninja is paying such close attention.
Source: Nioh