Evolve Beta: 2.2 Million Matches Played, Monster-Hunter Win Percentage Nearly Even

Turtle Rock Studios on Wednesday published a detailed blog post about Evolve's recently concluded Xbox One beta, which ran January 15-19. The post reveals key statistics about the beta and goes into depth about what the developer learned and how it plans to adjust the game going forward.

Some key numbers from the Evolve beta:

• 2.2 million total games played
• Hunters won 51.5 percent of matches, compared to 48.5 percent for Monsters
• Average game time was 9.9 minutes
• The Assault hunter class caused the most damage

Turtle Rock co-founder Chris Ashton also answered a number of questions about the beta. You can find some highlights below, or read the full blog post here.

Evolve launches February 10 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC.

Matchmaking Changes:

"We made matchmaking changes from the Big Alpha to the Beta and we were able to get confirmation that those were working well. No more level 20 players versus level 1 players and as a result, the stats were staggeringly balanced. But we still had matchmaking rough edges. In some situations we were trying to match people into full games, or parties into games that didn't have enough open slots, so that should be sorted for launch."

On Balance:

"To be honest, when we started making the game, we never really thought about--or worried about--the balance. That's just part of the job. We've had to work through that with every game we've ever made. Our primary concern was always the fun factor. Making sure that the game was incredibly fun for both sides. But I am proud of the balance work we’ve done. Just take a look at what happened with Kraken. We were really pleased to see Kraken fall into place this time. During the Big Alpha he was too strong so we made adjustments and the Beta confirmed we were spot on. He had a 52% win ratio."

General Goals Coming Out Of The Beta:

• Make the Wraith easier to track. Even good Hunters have a hard time keeping tabs on Wraith because she can move so far while cloaked.
• Make the Decoy less spammy. It doesn’t take any skill to keep punching that ability button and let the AI Decoy go to work. We want to increase the “cost” of using it so that people use it more sparingly/strategically.
• Bring Supernova down a notch. It is okay if it’s her primary damage dealer, but it felt a little on the buff side for a while internally and we saw it prove true during the Beta.
• Make Abduction a little easier to land. It’s a really fun ability to use and it was underutilized during the beta.
• Make Warp Blast a threat. This should be a straight forward damage dealer that also has some nice mobility utility.

Wraith-Specific Changes:

• Wraith can no longer warp while cloaked. If she does, the cloak wears off and the Decoy vanishes (just like when you melee attack). This means that when she cloaks, she normally won't get far and it opens the door for skilled players to do smart things like break line of sight before warping away.
• Decoy takes 30% longer to cool down. This immediately makes it 30% less spammy and hopefully results in players saving it for the more opportune moments.
• Supernova damage reduced by 10%. Not a huge change, but it will make a measurable difference.
• Abduction radius increased by .5 meters (now 3.5). This will make it a little more forgiving.
• Warp Blast radius increased by .5 meters (now 8.5). Increasing the radius here has proven a great way to increase the damage output in the past as players are able to hit their targets more often.