Weekly Update - November 15th, 2019

Hey there, Ghost Hunters!

Welcome back to our Weekly Update!
We took a bit of a pause on writing these while we focused on the Halloween alpha test, which ran from October 30th until November 2nd.

Happy to say that the alpha ran quite smoothly, no massive issues! Just some performance hiccups and bugs on certain hardware.

We’ve got a lot of data from the alpha to go over - so let’s jump right in!

Always remember, never ghost hunt alone.

Always remember, never ghost hunt alone.

Let’s start out with the biggest statistic, the overall win rate of each team.

Turns out, we were very close to a 50/50 split!

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Compared to Alpha 3 in August, Ghosts won 1.3% more matches. So we’re moving ever closer to a perfect split.

Next test we’re going to split up the win rate tracking by player level, so we’ll be able to see what the win rates look like with new players versus experienced ones. I think that will be very telling - Hunters seem to be easier to pick up, while Ghosts can be a bit tricky for new players. It takes a bit more experience as a Ghost to learn the right times to run away and hide versus go on the offensive.

Overall, it feels like the Hunters do have a slight advantage, assuming both teams are coordinated and relatively experienced with the game mechanics.

Part of this is probably due to the relatively small size of the maps - there aren’t a lot of great hiding spots that the average Hunter wouldn’t already know about.

For the next test, we are working on extending the existing maps, and implementing some randomization of furniture per-room so there’s some variation between matches. That might help out the Ghosts a little bit, but we shall see!

Next up we have our Hunter equipment breakdown.

HunterSelections

Spectral Cannon was the most commonly selected weapon, however this may be a bit biased as this is part of the default loadout for Hunters. Beyond that, though, the weapon is fairly useful in a variety of scenarios it seems.

Seems best with paired with the Fast Recharge perk, reducing the chance of letting a Ghost get away because you were one battery charge short!

Ghostsmasher returns in second place - most often used for probing quickly around a room for Ghosts without needing to expend battery. However, range and damage are a bit lower as a trade-off.

Project X is our new weapon, and comes in third place. Not too surprising, given the speed and harsh spin-up time on the weapon currently. It’s not very good for chasing Ghosts, unless you get them in a long hallway or cornered. It has the highest damage out of any weapon, but before Midnight it is not quite as useful it seems. I often used it for destroying barricades rather quickly, being careful not to overheat the weapon.

After Midnight, an upgraded Project X ended up being very useful. It’s good to defend a position, where the Ghosts have to come to you. Still, though, the speed penalty and charge up time might be just a tiny bit too harsh.

Moving on to Gadgets!

Unsurprisingly, the Radar comes out on top again at 39.7%. Compared to the August alpha test, that is a 4.2% decrease in utilization.

This is likely due to our introduction of the Ectoplasm Buildup mechanic - if Ghosts move around a lot, they become less visible to Radar. This was introduced to try to make the Radar less of a must-pick, and introduce the Pathfinder as the other really important tracking tool.

In short, the Radar is good if the team of Ghosts are camping or hiding in one spot, but near useless if they are all on the move. The Pathfinder is really good if they are all moving around, but near useless if they have been camping. So there’s an element of counter play there, and is often encouraged to have at least one of each on your team.

Defibrillators were our least selected gadget, which makes sense due to their situational nature. I think we need to make it more obvious when a downed Hunter needs a revive and you do not have it equipped - otherwise relies entirely on comms. We’ll see which way works best.

I think this is a good stopping point for this week - we have much more data to unpack, but let’s save that for next week! We hope to see you there.

Thanks so much for reading! Let us know on Discord or Twitter your thoughts on the alpha. Did you feel like Hunters were WAY OP? Or that Ghosts were clearly favored? We’d love to hear it!

That’s it for this week, ghost hunters.

We hope you enjoyed the breakdown! Were the numbers what you expected, or did you think the results were going to lean in another direction? Let us know by reaching out to us via our socials below!

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