Open Beta Takeaways
Welcome back, agents! We could not be more thrilled to see so many of you jump into the Open Beta, discover Fragrant Shore and experience crossplay for the first time in DI. We are incredibly grateful for the reception you have given us. With that said, we also have our work cut out for us: We’ve received large amounts of feedback (THANK YOU!) and we are excited to dive into it to make the game better.
Before we get into some of our big takeaways, a few notes: Some of the items you’ll see here we’ve already been working on from previous feedback, that means some of that feedback will land on launch day, but far from all of it. We will note when things are expected to come (on launch or post-launch) to keep expectations aligned with the reality of our work on the game.
This does not mean we think some of this feedback is less important, it simply means that to ship the game we had to make a cut-off eventually and push some things to post launch patches. Now let’s start things off!
TOP Team Priorities
PS5 Stability Issues
We are aware of issues for PS5 users that would lead to crashing in multiple scenarios, especially when playing Fragrant Shore. We are putting this as our highest priority and actively working on getting these issues sorted out as quickly as possible for our PlayStation players.
Agents Balance
Overall balancing of agents is always a very popular topic and we are keeping an eye on agent balance. You can expect a deep dive into balancing changes in the launch day patch notes as well as a continued commitment to update and tweak the game in further post-launch patches around community feedback.
Overall Performance Issues
We have had reports of some performance issues/fps hitches and we are looking at our options to optimize the game further. We have targeted some areas that could definitely benefit from more performance work and this progress will be ongoing in post-launch updates.
Weapon Damage Transparency
We’ve talked about giving more transparent information around weapons in the past. Our first step with this will be a fully interactive DPS board in the training range and pre game lobby. You’ll be able to shoot at dummies set up at multiple different distances to get a feel for damage, distance based drop-off and location damage.
We want to go farther with this in the longer term, but this is an important first step in giving you more information on your loadouts. The next step a bit further down the line will include a full rework of the agent select screen to show granular stats of weapons.
Polish to gunplay
We are making a lot of tweaks to gunplay to refine the experience post-launch. This ranges from tweaking character hitboxes to make hits more reliable, refining recoil on weapons to make aiming smoother and reducing and making the ADS transition snappier.
Overhaul to gameflow
We’ve been combing through feedback since the last few playtests and have been working on some upgrades to the overall gameflow structure of matches.
The first thing you’ll see from this work is a change to a room without vault terminals in the insertion phase of the match. We’ve had a lot of good feedback on the fact that these rooms are not only disappointing, but don’t give much incentive to keep looking after opening a vault terminal.
The tweaks we’ll be adding post launch will guarantee a purple keycard in rooms without a vault terminal and remove the possibility of finding one in rooms that do have one.
This is not the whole extent of the change and we will outline it in more detail soon, but the overall idea is to guarantee a room without a vault terminal is still a worthwhile destination.
Expect this to hit the game post-launch with a detailed run-down in the meantime.
Teams Communication
We’ve received a lot of feedback around non-verbal communication in teams and making it more detailed. We are currently working on a contextual ping when downed to ask your teammates for a revive, but we will look at other opportunities in the future to make the ping more fully fledged and helpful in matches. Feel free to give us more suggestions around this topic in the future.
Team mode adjustments and tweaks
We’ve been gathering feedback around the nature of team matches and how they play out and we have some targeted changes we are testing internally around team mode.
This includes a change to intel that means you won’t be able to loot the same intel as your teammates. We’ve been playing this change for a while and we really like how it slows down the rush heavy nature of teams and gives a bit more strategy and communication to overall looting. We think this makes the overall economy and teamplay aspect of the game more interesting and are excited to see your feedback on it.
We are also aware of a large amount of feedback on the revive mechanics of teams and are in the early days of prototyping a new revive mechanic we MIGHT introduce in the future.
Once again this is all post-launch and we will give you the details soon.
Melee Attack reliability
Melee attacks have gotten better since the days of closed alpha 1, but they still have a good amount of misses that should not happen.
We have ongoing work on melee reliability that should make it much better in the future.
Controller Experience
With our first foray in a fully crossplay test, we received a lot of feedback around how to make the controller experience better.
While some of this feedback will take some time to materialize (like adding more options to fully customize the experience), you can expect improvements in the launch day build of the game.
You’ll see some tweaks to aim assist to make it a bit more useful and adjustments to the quick turn speed when fully holding your joystick to give more control between fine aiming and fast movement.
We’ll continue looking at feedback from our console players and make adjustments in the coming patches.
Vertical Audio
Problems with vertical audio were once again mentioned quite often for this beta. We have been working on this internally and have made progress on making these easier to discern. We expect to have a good first step on this topic soon after launch. We are also looking into tweaking NPC reactions to multi-level fire fights to remove some confusion from their reaction to danger.
Welcome back, agents! We could not be more thrilled to see so many of you jump into the Open Beta, discover Fragrant Shore and experience crossplay for the first time in DI. We are incredibly grateful for the reception you have given us. With that said, we also have our work cut out for us: We’ve received large amounts of feedback (THANK YOU!) and we are excited to dive into it to make the game better.
Before we get into some of our big takeaways, a few notes: Some of the items you’ll see here we’ve already been working on from previous feedback, that means some of that feedback will land on launch day, but far from all of it. We will note when things are expected to come (on launch or post-launch) to keep expectations aligned with the reality of our work on the game.
This does not mean we think some of this feedback is less important, it simply means that to ship the game we had to make a cut-off eventually and push some things to post launch patches. Now let’s start things off!
TOP Team Priorities
PS5 Stability Issues
We are aware of issues for PS5 users that would lead to crashing in multiple scenarios, especially when playing Fragrant Shore. We are putting this as our highest priority and actively working on getting these issues sorted out as quickly as possible for our PlayStation players.
Agents Balance
Overall balancing of agents is always a very popular topic and we are keeping an eye on agent balance. You can expect a deep dive into balancing changes in the launch day patch notes as well as a continued commitment to update and tweak the game in further post-launch patches around community feedback.
Overall Performance Issues
We have had reports of some performance issues/fps hitches and we are looking at our options to optimize the game further. We have targeted some areas that could definitely benefit from more performance work and this progress will be ongoing in post-launch updates.
Weapon Damage Transparency
We’ve talked about giving more transparent information around weapons in the past. Our first step with this will be a fully interactive DPS board in the training range and pre game lobby. You’ll be able to shoot at dummies set up at multiple different distances to get a feel for damage, distance based drop-off and location damage.
We want to go farther with this in the longer term, but this is an important first step in giving you more information on your loadouts. The next step a bit further down the line will include a full rework of the agent select screen to show granular stats of weapons.
Here’s a sneak peak of the dps screen:
You can expect this to hit the game in a post-launch update.
You can expect this to hit the game in a post-launch update.
Polish to gunplay
We are making a lot of tweaks to gunplay to refine the experience post-launch. This ranges from tweaking character hitboxes to make hits more reliable, refining recoil on weapons to make aiming smoother and reducing and making the ADS transition snappier.
Overhaul to gameflow
We’ve been combing through feedback since the last few playtests and have been working on some upgrades to the overall gameflow structure of matches.
The first thing you’ll see from this work is a change to a room without vault terminals in the insertion phase of the match. We’ve had a lot of good feedback on the fact that these rooms are not only disappointing, but don’t give much incentive to keep looking after opening a vault terminal.
The tweaks we’ll be adding post launch will guarantee a purple keycard in rooms without a vault terminal and remove the possibility of finding one in rooms that do have one.
This is not the whole extent of the change and we will outline it in more detail soon, but the overall idea is to guarantee a room without a vault terminal is still a worthwhile destination.
Expect this to hit the game post-launch with a detailed run-down in the meantime.
Teams Communication
We’ve received a lot of feedback around non-verbal communication in teams and making it more detailed. We are currently working on a contextual ping when downed to ask your teammates for a revive, but we will look at other opportunities in the future to make the ping more fully fledged and helpful in matches. Feel free to give us more suggestions around this topic in the future.
Team mode adjustments and tweaks
We’ve been gathering feedback around the nature of team matches and how they play out and we have some targeted changes we are testing internally around team mode.
This includes a change to intel that means you won’t be able to loot the same intel as your teammates. We’ve been playing this change for a while and we really like how it slows down the rush heavy nature of teams and gives a bit more strategy and communication to overall looting. We think this makes the overall economy and teamplay aspect of the game more interesting and are excited to see your feedback on it.
We are also aware of a large amount of feedback on the revive mechanics of teams and are in the early days of prototyping a new revive mechanic we MIGHT introduce in the future.
Once again this is all post-launch and we will give you the details soon.
Melee Attack reliability
Melee attacks have gotten better since the days of closed alpha 1, but they still have a good amount of misses that should not happen.
We have ongoing work on melee reliability that should make it much better in the future.
Controller Experience
With our first foray in a fully crossplay test, we received a lot of feedback around how to make the controller experience better.
While some of this feedback will take some time to materialize (like adding more options to fully customize the experience), you can expect improvements in the launch day build of the game.
You’ll see some tweaks to aim assist to make it a bit more useful and adjustments to the quick turn speed when fully holding your joystick to give more control between fine aiming and fast movement.
We’ll continue looking at feedback from our console players and make adjustments in the coming patches.
Vertical Audio
Problems with vertical audio were once again mentioned quite often for this beta. We have been working on this internally and have made progress on making these easier to discern. We expect to have a good first step on this topic soon after launch. We are also looking into tweaking NPC reactions to multi-level fire fights to remove some confusion from their reaction to danger.
