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Nioh: this is what's getting changed based on alpha feedback

Sherif Saed avatar
News by Sherif Saed Contributing Editor
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The Nioh alpha was very successful, and much of player feedback from it will be taken on board.

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Nioh: this is what's getting changed based on alpha feedback

Nioh, the Samurai-based Souls-like RPG from Team Ninja, had a an alpha demo last month.

The alpha was not light on content, whether it's weapons, enemies, bosses, or areas to explore. A lot of Souls players and fans of challenging games in general liked it a lot, myself include. The build wasn't without its issues, however, some technical and others gameplay-related.

Team Ninja sent survey emails to all players who participated in the test, and discussed the results of that in a new update.

The studio also revealed that the alpha was downloaded over 850,000 times. Interestingly, Asian players were a lot more critical of the game's difficultly and balance than the rest of the world.

Here's the breakdown of what Team Ninja is currently working on implementing in the final version, based on alpha feedback. The biggest change, though, is the removal of weapon and armour durability.

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 UI.
  • Improve graphic performance

Tutorials

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

Action and controls

  • Improve player & camera behaviour 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 play.

Other

  • Remove durability stat for weapons and armour.
  • 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 is due for release later this year on PlayStation 4. According to the blog post, it's now safe to delete the game and save files from your PS4, and it won't affect Mark of the Conqueror DLC.

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