Arkheron's Closed Beta begins on the 15th! Before you jump in, we want to walk you through what to expect from matchmaking, regional support, bots, and performance.
Closed Beta Start Times
Closed Beta will include two main modes: Spires and Ascension.
One mode will always be available throughout Closed Beta. Spires will be available most of the time, giving players a consistent way to play, practice, and improve whenever they log in.
Ascension will be available during specific regional play windows. We’re doing it in scheduled windows to help ensure healthy queues and good match quality while we’re in these early phases of building our community.
When Ascension is live in your region, Spires will be temporarily unavailable. When the Ascension window ends, Spires will become available again.
Additionally, you can access the Tutorial, Training, Bot-Ascension, Custom Games at any time.
July 15th
Europe | 6PM BST / 7PM CEST / 5PM UTC
South America | 6PM BRT & ADT / 9PM UTC
North America | 4PM PDT / 7PM EDT / 11PM UTC
July 16th
Asia / Pacific | 10AM JST & KST / 1AM UTC
Ascension Queue Times
Ascension - Arkheron's expanded competitive mode - will run during the following windows:
July 17, 18, 24, 25
Europe | 7PM - 11PM BST / 8PM - 12AM CEST / 6PM - 10PM UTC
South America | 8PM - 12AM ADT & BRT / 11PM - 3AM UTC
North America | 8PM - 12AM EDT / 5PM - 9PM PDT / 12AM - 4AM* UTC (*UTC on the following day)
July 18, 19, 20, 25, 26
Asia / Pacific | 9PM - 12AM JST & KST / 12PM - 3PM UTC
Production Migration
Closed Beta marks our move from our testing environment to a production environment. As a result, we wanted to start with a clean slate from a data perspective. But it also means that players can start earning rewards that they can keep through the launch of the game.
All accounts will start fresh, and any game data from the alpha tests of FNF will not carry over. That includes things like MMR. New test, new you.
Fortunately, our matchmaking system will calibrate quickly, and after a few rounds of Spires or Ascension you'll be matched more closely with your peers.
Matchmaking During Closed Beta
At the start of Closed Beta, everyone’s MMR, or matchmaking rating, will still be calibrating. From the system’s point of view, every player begins as mostly unknown. This means some early matches may have wider skill differences than we’d like, but calibration should happen fairly quickly as players complete more matches.
Arkheron uses MMR to help form matches between teams that are close enough in skill to create a fair game. These skill bands are not public ranks or permanent tiers. They are matchmaking ranges applied to the players currently in queue.
The important part is that these bands are intentionally narrow enough to protect match quality. If enough teams within the right range are online, the system can form a match quickly. If there are not enough teams close enough in skill, the system will keep waiting rather than forcing a bad match.
Players at the far ends of the skill curve may feel this the most, especially very high-skill premade teams. If your team’s combined MMR is much higher than the available teams currently online, there may not be enough teams at your skill level to form a fair match. In those cases, your queue may take much longer, and sometimes may not find a match at all.
If there are not enough teams online at your skill level, solo queue or a different team setup may help matchmaking find a fair match more quickly. This is because your team may no longer sit as far outside the current matchmaking pool.
Throughout Closed Beta, we’ll be actively monitoring match quality, queue times, and edge cases like high-skill premade teams. We expect to tune the system as the player population grows, MMR becomes more accurate, and we see how matchmaking performs in a live Closed Beta environment.
Regional Support & Ping
Arkheron has four base regions for Closed Beta: North America, South America, Europe, and Asia/Pacific.
By default, the game will assign you to the region that should give you the best connection based on ping. You can manually choose a different region, but playing outside your best region may result in higher latency and a laggier experience.
When you queue for a match, matchmaking looks for a high-quality group of players within your selected region. Once enough players have been found, the game chooses the best available server location for that match based on the ping of the full group.
This means your exact server location may change from match to match, even within the same region. For example, if you are playing in North America, one match may be hosted on a server that is better for West Coast players, while another may be hosted somewhere more central or closer to the East Coast, depending on who is in the match.
Language matching is handled separately. When forming teams, we try to place solo players with teammates who share their language. This is a preference, not a guarantee. If there are not enough players with the same language in the matchmaking pool, you may be placed on a team with players who use different languages.
Bot Opponents
Bots help make Arkheron easier to learn, give newer players room to build confidence, and keep matches playable when population or skill distribution would otherwise get in the way.
Players will first encounter bots in Learning Spires, where they provide a lower-pressure way to learn the basics of combat, items, and team fighting. We will also use bot teams in Ascension, especially while we are still calibrating player MMR, testing the bots in real matches, and learning how they perform against human players.
We currently have multiple bot difficulty levels, and we are still actively evolving how they play. Bots will be treated more like players in the matchmaking system. They will have MMR, appear in appropriate skill bands, and adjust over time based on how they perform.
In Ascension, brand new players may see more bot teams in their first matches. This gives players a little more room to learn the camera, controls, items, and match flow before they are thrown fully into the deep end.
As players improve, they should see fewer bot teams. Even our strongest bots are not meant to represent highly skilled players, so experienced players will quickly move beyond the range where bots are useful. At higher skill levels, matches should be made up of human opponents.
During Closed Beta, we will also be intentionally testing bots in live Ascension matches. When the population is healthy, most players should still expect to see a small number of bot teams at the appropriate skill level. This helps us gather better data, tune bot behavior, and understand where bots are helping the experience versus where they are getting in the way.
Our goal is for bots to make Arkheron more approachable without undermining its competitive integrity. They should support learning, matchmaking, and progression, while preserving the long-term meaning of competition against real players. We’ll be actively monitoring how often bots appear, how they perform, and how players respond to them throughout Closed Beta.
Performance
We've updated our minimum and recommended specs since Steam Next Fest, and made significant progress on performance since then. You can read more about that here.
We'll be tracking performance closely throughout Closed Beta, and we'd love your feedback - please share your experience on our Feedback Forum.
Thank You
Thanks so much for jumping into Closed Beta with us. Your feedback shapes how Arkheron plays and feels, and we're excited to see you in the Tower.