Open Beta Next Steps
Hail Commanders!
The Realmgates have closed on the Open Beta weekend. Firstly, we would like to thank all those that took part in what was an epic 4 days! We were overwhelmed by the sheer number of players and the amount of gameplay data we were able to collect.
As we stated, our primary goals for the Open Beta were the following:
- To test stability and ‘real world’ network performance
- To test the multiplayer and review balance for the Stormcast Eternals and Orruk Kruleboyz factions, as well as the overall economy and gameplay balance
However, you provided us with much more. With over 7,000 comments across our Discord and socials alone, you provided information on other key areas outside of our Open Beta goals above. The development team are now hard at work addressing as much of this feedback as possible, ahead of the launch...later this year.
What did we learn from Open Beta?
As we mentioned we were overwhelmed by the amount of feedback you provided. Below are just some of the highlights we will be implementing into the game ready for launch:
UI
We understand that being able to quickly review and adapt your strategy during a battle is incredibly important. We listened to your feedback around the UI; here are some of the changes we are making ahead of our release:
We are adding the option to scale the UI for players with large screens
- Players will be able to scale the UI to a size that suits their requirements, allowing them to see more of the battlefield. Messages that appear on screen will also be less intrusive.
Menus will now close when ‘clicked off’
- Players will no longer have to press a hot key or manually close an in-game menu; simply clicking anywhere outside of the menu will auto-close that menu.
Tooltips
- We will be adding Tooltips to ability icons to give players a better understanding of these abilities and what they do.
Accessing Bastion and Conduit menus
- Players can now access these menus simply by clicking on the structure rather than tying these menus to separate hotkeys. This improvement will make upgrading Conduits easier and quicker.
- Capturing Conduits will be made clearer to players by visual feedback displaying Conduit growth and its effect on resource income.
Tech Tree improvements
Changes will be made to how the information is displayed on the Tech Tree including:
- How to increase unit cap size will be clearer
- Units that the Tech upgrades relate to will be clearer
- Items that can be/have been purchased will be clearer
Minimap improvements
- Players will be able to click on the mini-map to move the camera to that location.
Cursor controls on console
There was an issue with the gamma settings for the Open Beta, meaning the reticule was sometimes hard for players to see – this will be addressed.
More information on units
We will be adding a Codex for all units in the game.
Controls
When playing a fast-paced competitive RTS, fluid controls are a vital part in ensuring success on the battlefield. Here are just some of the ways we are improving controls from your feedback during the Open Beta:
Map movement default keys
- The default mapping of the map movement keys will now be WASD. These keys can be remapped for player convenience.
Ability and Retreat key
- We have heard your feedback loud and clear on this one! There will be separate keys for when you wish to use a unit's ability or make that unit retreat.
Retreating
- Units will be able to retreat when not in combat by pressing the retreat key. We are also adding grouped retreat for units (including when not in combat) on a separate key.
Selecting units on gamepad
- We made improvement for players on gamepad (PC or console), making it easier to select units for gamepad users.
Better unit response times to commands
- Units will be more responsive at launch. There were several factors affecting response times to player commands, these are being addressed now.
Double pressing to activate abilities
- Abilities that only affect the casting unit (including retreat) will only require one press of the assigned key or button to activate. There will be some exceptions where an ability requires activating and then targeting.
Camera locking to units when using abilities
- When on mouse or keyboard or whilst in reticule mode on gamepad, the camera will no longer lock to the unit when targeting that unit’s ability. Whilst using DirectStep™ however, the camera will lock to the unit to provide better control.
Ability to change Bastion type
- This should have been available to players during the Open Beta, but wasn’t ready. We can confirm players will have the option to change Bastion types to suit their strategic needs.
Balancing
Difficultly setting were not accurate
- The AI was not balanced for the Open Beta. We would like to thank you for the vast amounts of AI data you helped us gather, even if it meant defeat at the hands of a suspiciously deadly ‘very easy’ AI. We are using this to balance the AI so that at launch the difficulty settings you select will better match your experience in game.
Orruk Kruleboyz unit cap size needed to be higher
- We suspect this was due to it being unclear on how to increase unit squad sizes and the population cap. We are addressing this for launch.
Unit and Economy Balancing
- We received a huge amount of feedback around units that players felt were too powerful/not powerful enough, Bastion strengths and weaknesses and the cost or units and upgrades. We will be incorporating this feedback with the data we have gathered which will factor it into our balancing.
Bastions
- Bastion types and their roles were unclear; menus will accurately reflect their abilities.
Slow resource gathering – early game
We have adjusted this based on telemetry gathered from the Open Beta, we will also be improving the signposting of how region growth links to speed of resource gathering.
Audio
Sound and Music
- Whilst there was no music during battles in the Open Beta, we are happy to confirm our incredible score will be present at launch!
- We will be adding more sounds of combat during engagements, to better reflect the action on screen.
What comes next?
The Open Beta was an enormous success for us. With a huge amount of data we are confident that we not only tested our servers around the world across PC, PlayStation® and Xbox, including cross platform play, but that we also got a good look at the unit balancing and AI in action.
Below are some examples of the gameplay data and ‘heatmaps’ we have been able to pull from the Open Beta to demonstrate player pathing (left) vs. AI pathing (right).
In addition, the above image shows heat map data in relation to PvP player death locations.
We were planning to hold a second Open Beta in August, but with so much data gathered already, and the servers working cleanly in the first Open Beta (though we had a total of around 100 people with connection issues, the team found work-arounds before the end of the Open Beta), we can now shift our focus to implementing this feedback before launch later this year.
We will continue to monitor feedback from all hands-on events where players and partners play Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin.
This includes gamescom.
We are very excited to announce that Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin will be available to play at gamescom in a BIG way!
We will be bringing the world of Age of Sigmar to life in an incredible interactive booth which will have 36 stations for players to try a snapshot of the latest version of Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin, including the above changes. We look forward to hearing what players think of the new gameplay and updates when they get hands-on next month.
We have so much more to show you ahead of our launch, including new factions and new features! Speaking of which, join us for our next Livestream direct from gamescom itself, where we will be giving you a tour of our incredible booth, catching up with Sandro Sammarco (Principal Designer on Realms of Ruin), launching another incredible competition and more – we hope to see you there!
