Team Ninja highlights Nioh demo feedback, planned changes

Better tutorials, for starters

With my Souls mindset, I had a rough time adjusting to Nioh‘s quirks at first, but I got wrapped up in the “dark samurai” action-RPG once I figured out the different character stances and how to keep my stamina usage in check. The recent alpha demo was download over 850,000 times and that has led to plenty of feedback for Team Ninja to take into consideration for the full release later this year.

Let’s dig into it. Here’s a summary directly from the studio:

Overall

• Add tutorials regarding the game system.
• Adjust balance mainly in the opening sections to make battles fairer.
• Improve controls and camera system.
• Improve the understandability and usability of the UI.
• Improve graphic performance

Details

Tutorials

Action & Controls

• Improve player & camera behavior during lock-on.
• Change the conditions under which the player character becomes unresponsive when the Ki Gauge is empty.
• Expand item shortcut slots.
• Revise the objects which require holding a button and the response to the hold input.
• Improve detection for the half-circle analog stick input.

Enemies

• Adjust attack and defense parameters of enemies.
• Revise enemy pursuit of the player.
• Revise superarmor (stagger/no stagger) for each enemy and attack.
• Adjust Revenant AI.

Level Design/Stages

• Improve exploration elements such as shortcuts, etc.
• Add hints to guide players to boss areas.
• Revise the display of objects that block the view of the player character.
• Adjust fire area damage.

UI

• Improve layout and displayed information.
• Adjust text size.
• When making an offering at a shrine, allow the player to perform all actions at once.

Online

• Improve online synchronization.
• Allow the host to use the Shrine menu during co-op play with a Visitor.
• Adjust the rate at which enemy parameters increase during co-op play.

Other

• Remove durability stat for weapons and armor.
• Adjust the drop rate for equipment.
• Add a new control type.
• Implement a flow to allow players to exit a mission.
• Fix other bugs.

Lots of good suggested changes here. I know I missed out on some of the combat system’s nuances, which further tutorial and UI work could help with, and I also wasn’t thrilled about having to frequently repair or swap out my gear for something not broken.

An extra note for those of you running low on storage space: you can safely delete the demo. Doing so won’t jeopardize your Mark of the Conqueror DLC reward for beating the first mission.

Nioh alpha demo survey results [Team Ninja via Polygon]