Accurate data was harvested by the studio during the test phase

Aug 29, 2014 23:35 GMT  ·  By

Bungie has shared some more details about the many ways in which the Destiny beta stage helped the studio study the first-person shooter experience and how its players went through it, so that it can make necessary changes ahead of the upcoming launch.

Destiny is one of the biggest games of the year as both Bungie and Activision have invested heavily in the multiplayer shooter, and are set to hype it up in all sorts of ways ahead of its release on September 9, worldwide.

Among the key moments for Destiny was the beta stage that took place back in July and allowed fans on PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One to see how the shooter handled and what sort of experience it offered.

According to Bungie's Creative Director, Jonty Barnes, who talked with PSblog, the studio made a big investment in the game and was eager to see how it coped with the pressure of a large scale beta test.

"Let’s make one thing clear, from the very beginning, the Destiny beta was a very big test for us – we put a huge investment into our online infrastructure and we needed to make sure it worked. We tested every part of the game, and each group at Bungie was able to analyse the data and take what they needed from it."

The competitive Crucible multiplayer mode was also under scrutiny during the beta test, as Bungie wanted to see where the action took place and make tweaks, if necessary, to ensure that things are balanced as well as possible.

"On the gameplay design side we got heat maps from all the multiplayer maps to see where the kills were made, where people died and if they fell off the map for example. Also, if there was an area with particularly high traffic, or an area that we thought should have high traffic but didn’t – we could really dig into that data and see if we could make simple changes to help improve things."

Of course, the actual online server infrastructure was also tested during the beta and Lead Concept Artist Jesse van Dijk even admitted that Bungie disabled some systems on purpose to see how the game handled in case those things would break down during launch.

"More than anything we wanted to test our infrastructure at scale and we were really excited to see how everything held up. During the beta we deliberately knocked over a number of systems to see how that would work and if we could handle it."

Destiny is set to debut later next month so expect to hear more of it soon enough.

Destiny screenshots (5 Images)

Destiny's beta was quite popular
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