Weekly Update - April 17th, 2020 — MIDNIGHT GHOST HUNT

Hey there, Ghost Hunters!

Welcome back to another Weekly Update!

This week, we’re going to dive into some data from our recent alpha test.

Let’s start with one of the most important data points: How balanced were the two teams?

Looks like we had a fairly balanced alpha! Ghosts did appear to have a little bit of an edge - last alpha the Hunters were in that position.

This is probably due to the new size of our existing maps. Both Mansion and Asylum were nearly doubled in size - giving the Ghosts plenty of new places to hide.

We’ve also ensured there is at least two ways out of nearly every room - no more dead ends. This gives the Ghosts a better chance to escape without getting cornered.

We’ve done a fair bit of balancing to help compensate for the larger maps, and it appears we got it fairly close to 50/50 again, which is exciting.

We are looking into ways we can try to get even closer to 50/50 - though it will have to be a light touch. Could be as simple as increasing Spirit cooldown, or as drastic as giving the Hunters another 30 seconds before Midnight.

There’s a lot of things we can try. If you have any suggestions, feel free to let us know on Discord!

A good amount of players may be surprised by the results - much of our feedback contained some variation of “Ghosts OP” or “Hunters OP”.

I think the perceived imbalance is definitely something for us to work on.

I think the most obvious solution is some sort of skill-based matchmaking system so you get placed with players most similar to you. There were many cases of newer players going toe-to-toe with former pro prop hunt players in this test - not surprising that some matches could end up lopsided.

But how does that play into our server browser setup? One drawback of a server browser solution is that you can’t be bound by a matchmaker. You might end up in a lobby full of pros.

We were thinking of showing the average skill rating of the lobby from the server browser so you could have some idea of what kind of match it would be. And we’d have a standard “Quick Play” type button in the main menu to just find a good one for you.

Let us know if you think this is a good idea, or if you can think of a better one. We are all ears!