As detailed by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe’s content producer Tomas Wallis on Monday, June 16, Halo developer Bungie is now using the aggregated data from Destiny‘s recent Alpha testing to better improve the game’s experience and gameplay.
Even with the PlayStation-exclusive Alpha test being extended in order to conduct “dangerous experiments,” thousands of players jumped in to get an early taste at what Destiny has to offer – it was later revealed that what the Alpha testers experienced was only less than 10 percent of the game’s overall content.
At nearly the end of this year’s E3 last week, Destiny’s senior environment artist Jason Sussman explained how the data from the game’s Alpha will be used to improve the game, as well as what Bungie will be doing with said data later on.
“We actually had one of our multiplayer designers here at E3 all day yesterday watching people play and taking notes,” Sussman explained. “We’re actively watching people and seeing what they do with our game so that we can make adjustments for the Beta (coming later this year) and eventually roll these improvements out to the real game. We want to make sure that everyone is getting the best possible experience.
Even though the alpha has run for just one weekend, the data being collected by Bungie is crucial for the development of the game,” Sussman added. “We’re already making adjustments now – in a lot of ways visually but we’re also balancing things out a little bit. It’s a great way for us to interpret all of the data that goes into our systems.”
As well as the Alpha test providing feedback on how much of a strain thousands of simultaneous players will put on Bungie’s systems, the Alpha also provided the developer important insights into player behaviour concerning the game itself.
“We’re not only monitoring our networking systems to see how we can handle so many players in the game but we’re also monitoring what players use, where they like to go and what people like to do in the crucible.
“We need to think about how we can explain this game to players because it’s really big – how do we do it?” Sussman continues. “Well, by getting the alpha out there we get to show people the game early as well as testing all of our systems so that when the game is finally out there, we’re putting our best foot forward.”
For all those who didn’t get a chance at taking part in the Alpha, the game’s upcoming Beta – which will go live later on in the year – will feature different content.
“The beta test later in the year will contain different content – there will be a difference but what’s key is that every bit of information we’re gathering and the tweaks and adjustments we’re making will carry through to the Beta test,” Sussman noted.
You can read Tomas Wallis’s full report on the matter via the source link below. Destiny is slated to release worldwide on Tuesday, September 9 for Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4. A PC version is currently a “heavy point of discussion” at Activision.
[ PlayStation.Blog ]
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