The Uncharted 2 Multiplayer Beta is about to enter its second week, and we’re already making some tweaks to improve your experience. We are preparing a patch for release in the next few days. Properly applying this patch requires some careful attention on your end: You must watch the screen closely while booting into the beta. As soon as you see the patch message come up in the XMB overlay, you should hit X to accept as quickly as possible.

If you miss the window your PS3 will reset but NOT patch. Simply launch the game and you can try again.

We’ll post a notice on the PlayStation.com UNCHARTED 2 Multiplayer Beta Forum letting you know when the patch goes live, and we’ll also Tweet it out as well on the PlayStation and Naughty Dog Twitter accounts.

Here’s what this beta patch will address:

General

• Grenade explosions now apply damage properly

Matchmaking

• Players should no longer get hung up in matchmaking for long periods of time

Bug Fixes

• Ranks should no longer reset randomly
• Quitting the game will no longer reset the PS3
• Player collision – players should no longer get hung up on each other when moving through the environment
• Player will now be killed if stuck in falling animation for too long
• In Plunder mode, treasures will no longer disappear during matches

Note: ALL RANKS WILL BE RESET WITH THE PATCH

We are also pleased to announce that we will hold four “Play with the Developer” events in the UNCHARTED 2 Multiplayer Beta over the next two weeks, starting today! During these time slots, a lot of us at Naughty Dog will be online playing the game with all of you! You can tell the Dogs apart from other players because they’ll be playing with different models – a pirate for the villains and Drake with a Naughty Dog t-shirt for the heroes.

The dates and times are below:

Tuesday, June 9 – 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM PT (What time is this in my time zone?)
Thursday, June 11 – 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM PT (What time is this in my time zone?)
Tuesday, June 16 – 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM PT (What time is this in my time zone?)
Thursday, June 18 – 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM PT (What time is this in my time zone?)

Join us for some fun!

Everything in the Uncharted 2 multiplayer experience has been designed to get you into the game and playing quickly, so you can just skip this blog post if you’re really that impatient. Just kidding.

When you boot up the beta you’ll find we’ve included 2 playlists for you to try out: co-op and competitive. If you’ve got friends, we’ve made it easy to play together – just hit the triangle button to see your PSN friends list and you can send them an invite, join their party, or just check out their profile. Keep in mind that for the beta, the party size is limited to 5 for competitive and 3 for co-op!

Let’s give you a quick rundown of our two playlists so you can be ready day one…

The competitive playlists contains 2 maps, with 2 game types available on each: Deathmatch and Plunder. Deathmatch is pretty similar to what you’ve come to expect out of “team deathmatch” in other games. Plunder is Naughty Dog’s take on “capture the flag.” At the start of a round, we’ve placed a treasure in a neutral location on the map and the first team to bring it back to their capture chest scores a point – three points to win. What takes this mode into the UNCHARTED universe? Easy; you can now throw the treasure quite a ways in any direction – in some cases, you’ll HAVE to if you want to score a point.

The biggest thing to keep in mind while playing in competitive matches is to keep thinking three dimensionally. There are many, many different places to climb, hide, and shoot from above ground level. The best advice I can give: remember to look up. And keep moving – if you stay in one place too long, you are likely to have your neck snapped from behind or even be pulled off the ledge you are perched on!

As for the cooperative playlist, we’ve put in a snippet of one of our co-op experiences. Our co-op setups are really rocking right now with three people playing as Drake, Sully, and Chloe as they fight their way through a war-torn city to recover a treasure worth a fortune. In this mode, teamwork is everything and running off alone is a sure way to get killed. Thankfully, in most cases – except for, say, being blown up —you’re not out of the game. If you’ve been downed, you can be revived by one of the other players before your timer runs out! If everyone wipes, you start at the last checkpoint you passed, but be careful, if everyone wipes three times the match is over and you have to start over again. Oh, and keep an eye out on the combo meter on the upper right of the screen. Keep your combo meter increasing by getting kills, picking up treasures or completing objectives and you’ll get a multiplier to the points and cash you’re accumulating. Enemy kills are worth different point amounts depending on what gun you used, so experiment to get the best results. I’ll give you a hint, pistols are awesome.

A quick note on your rank and the Profile screen. You are ranked on the total amount of online cash you have earned. This includes both the co-op and competitive modes, so you can rank up either way. In competitive, you earn cash for defeating enemies, and earning medals. In co-op, you earn cash for your point score and by earning medals. You can see your rank both next to your name in the lobby and scoreboard, as well as in the Profile screen. In the Profile screen you can see your rank and how far until the next level, you can select Boosters to give yourself a leg up in competitive multiplayer, and select your player skins for competitive multiplayer. Remember to select your boosters before playing competitive multiplayer, and be aware that boosters do not apply in the co-op playlist.

Before I go, I want to let you know that we are asking all of you for your help. To make this the best game it can possibly be, we want to hear from you. Comments, concerns, things you like, things you hate, we want to hear it all. Keep an eye on the “message of the day screen” in our beta to find out where to leave us feedback and for dates and times you can play with the Dogs!

Hope to see you in the beta!

Justin Richmond
PSN: wildspeculation
Multiplayer Designer
Naughty Dog