Happy Friday, Ghosts and Hunters! 👻
It’s been a busy few weeks here at MGH HQ! We’ve been hard at work on new content for our next test, as well as bug fixing and adjusting based on feedback. This week, we thought it would be cool to deep dive some alpha stats from our most recent alpha test!
On Friday, the first day of the alpha, we saw a win rate of 57% for Hunters in our data channels. This was echoed by much of the initial feedback from that day: "Hunters feel too strong"
We took game data, your Discord and Twitter feedback and started working towards a plan to carefully identify which key aspects were causing the balance issues.
We didn’t want to make any massive sweeping changes quickly in an attempt to force balance, instead we tried to focus on nudging certain mechanics a bit to ensure we didn’t go too far and enter into an extremely Ghost-favored meta.
Seemingly small changes can have massive effects on balance overall, so it made sense to start changes softly and observe.
Over two patches, we succeeded in returning to a nearly 50/50 win rate by Sunday evening. Here’s a quick rundown of the main changes we made:
✅ Reduced Ghost footprints from being visible for 25s to 17s to counter the Pathfinder spam meta.
✅ Re-added consume Hunter soul ability to give Ghosts a counter to the Defibrillator again.
✅ Removed sprint from the Cold Blooded perk, made sense to trade mobility for stealth instead of having both.
✅ Lowered Hunter’s sprint speed across the board, was too easy to run away after Midnight forever.
✅ Slightly toned down overall Spectral Cannon and Project X damage.
✅ Slightly increased Ghost’s slingshot attack speed.
✅ Cannon Overload perk removed extra spectral damage, the perk is strong enough with quicker reload speeds.
Alpha Win Rate
Thank you again for your great feedback and discussions, this is proof how you helped us identify and solve the balance issues very quickly.
We know there is still much more to do to have a balanced game, and as we add new mechanics things will likely shift around. But we feel confident we become a more balanced game during every test!
Let us know what you thought about the balance during our latest test on our Discord or Twitter! Do you feel like the balance felt better on Sunday? Did you think Hunters were clearly OP on friday? Do you have any suggestions going forward? We'd love to hear it!
Over and out!
Kite,
Lead Developer
We know there is still much more to do to have a balanced game, and as we add new mechanics things will likely shift around. But we feel confident we become a more balanced game during every test!
Let us know what you thought about the balance during our latest test on our Discord or Twitter! Do you feel like the balance felt better on Sunday? Did you think Hunters were clearly OP on friday? Do you have any suggestions going forward? We'd love to hear it!
Over and out!
Kite,
Lead Developer
WISHLIST MIDNIGHT GHOST HUNT ON STEAM