I’ve just played through Destiny 2 and all of the DLC that I have access to (Forsaken, Shadowkeep, and Beyond Light), and even though I’m not the type of player that loves repetitive loot grinds, I found it really fascinating that Destiny 2 kept drawing me back.

Destiny has always had amazing gunplay, but I always found the experience to be very overwhelming with so many things to do strewn across the game. The Bounty system has been a big proponent of keeping me engaged and guiding me through the experience, and it’s what I want to explore and dissect in this write-up.

Bounties are optional side missions offered to players by certain vendors scattered throughout the world. The player has to pay a small amount of Glimmer (Destiny 2’s soft currency) to acquire a bounty from a vendor. Each vendor has a set number of bounties, some that refresh daily and some that refresh weekly. However, if players have completed all of the set bounties, they can pay a larger soft currency amount to get a randomly rolled bounty. Bounties require the player to complete specific tasks, which are divided into 3 different categories: location, mode, and activity.

LOCATION

Location bounties are bounties that are based around doing specific tasks within a certain area. There are 6 vendors in this category.

Shaw Han: Shaw Han is one of the first characters you meet in the game, and he’s in charge of the Cosmodrome, the tutorial area. Because of this, all the bounties are meant to be guiding the player through the early player experience by getting the player to interact with core systems.
Example: Defeat combatants on the Cosmodrome with Arc, Void, and Solar damage.

Devrim Kay: Devrim is charge of the EDZ, one of the early areas.
Example: Defeat enemies with Arc damage in the EDZ.

Eris Morn: Eris Morn is in charge of the Moon, the area for Shadowkeep.
Example: Gather Helium Filaments from resources nodes across the Moon.

The Spider: The Spider is unique because he has two types of bounties. The first is location-based, centered around the Tangled Shore, the new area introduced in the Forsaken expansion.
Example: Defeat Cabal in Sorik’s Cut.

Petra Venj: She holds the bounties for The Dreaming City, an area that is unlocked with the completion of the Forsaken expansion.
Example: Explore the Chamber of Starlight in the Dreaming City.

Variks the Loyal: Variks is on Europa, the new area introduced in the latest expansion, Beyond Light.
Example: Using a Pulse Rifle, defeat combatants with precision final blows in Europa Lost Sectors.

MODES

Mode bounties are bounties that center around interacting with a certain mode in Destiny, such as the Strikes or the Crucible. There are 5 vendors in this category.

Commander Zavala: Zavala has Strike bounties, which are repeatable missions that are played with a 3 player fireteam.
Example: In multiple strikes, defeat combatants with Void damage

Lord Shaxx: Shaxx is in charge of the Crucible, which is Destiny’s PvP mode.
Example: Complete Crucible matches and defeat opponents with Void damage. Defeating opponents with Void Supers and Void Power weapons grants the most efficient progress.

The Drifter: The Drifter has Gambit bounties, which is a PvPvE mode.
Example: Eliminate a high-value target in Gambit.

Lectern of Enchantment: This has bounties for Destiny’s Nightmare Hunts, which were introduced in the Shadowkeep expansion. These are essentially difficult boss fights that the player seeks out.
Example: Find the Lost Sector K1 Communion and dispel the Nightmare within.

The Spider: The Spider’s second bounty type is the Wanted Bounties, which has the player traversing the galaxy to hunt down Wanted enemies.
Example: Hunt down the wanted Silent Fang who escaped from the Prison of Elders.

ACTIVITY

Activity bounties are bounties centered around interacting with certain features or mechanics. There are 2 vendors for this category

Banshee-44: Banshee is the weaponsmith of Destiny, and he’s in charge of all combat and weapon based tasks.
Example: Calibrate Sidearms against any target. Earn bonus progress against targets at close range and opposing Guardians.

Suraya Hawthorne: Suraya gives out clan-based bounties, and how clans interact with the other modes and systems in the game.
Example: Complete Nightfall: The Ordeal activities with clanmates. Higher difficulties grant the most efficient progress.

WHAT WORKS?

As you can see, since the bounties pretty much cover every single aspect of the game, the player is always rewarded for what they specifically what they want to do. They are granted the agency of only spending soft currency on what they want to focus on, versus balancing over 40 optional side missions that are active simultaneously.

The bounty system also helps support players partaking in the grind by rewarding them for doing things that they would already do. Because they have to be in a specific area to get certain resources, it may feel really repetitive just circling the same area repeating the same actions over and over. However, having the additional layer of different bounties that have the player focusing on different actions helps spice up the repetition. The ability to roll random bounties with random objectives also rewards players that are solely dedicated to a single activity or mode and makes the time spent feel less “wasteful”.

The bounties also exist in this giant loop of rewards and resources. Some examples of how it works within the larger system:

• Completed bounties often give the player gear and resources, resources that can be used to convert to other resources or gear.
• The completion of the bounties themselves has the player inherently doing actions that will increase the reputation they have with that particular vendor. For example, when you get gear that you don’t want, you can dismantle it to get materials. You donate those materials to the gunsmith vendor, which fills the reputation meter. When you completely fill the reputation, you get a randomly generated piece of Legendary gear (which if you don’t like, can just be dismantled again for more stuff).
• If the player completes all of the set bounties for the week for a specific vendor, they will complete the weekly challenge and receive a piece of Legendary gear.
• Completing bounties also gives a sizable amount of season progress, leading to more rewards, gear, and resources.

One thing that I really appreciate about the way bounties work is the way that they are woven into the fabric of Destiny’s world. Most games would have these objectives on a board or just in a menu. Destiny requires the player to travel to the planet and physically find and walk up to the vendor to help them. The game forces the player to interact with the world to get access to these useful optional objectives.

Some bounties aren’t even accessible until you get past certain story beats in expansions, forcing the player to immerse into the narrative and lore. It makes Destiny feel more alive and less of just a checklist of things to do. In the Dreaming City, a lot of Petra Venj’s bounties don’t even have a specific order, they just have a quote from the vendor. One example is

Our enemies outnumber the awoken, but they cannot outlast the guardians.
- Petra Venj.

This bounty is to have the player kill 100 enemies. It has way more flavor imagining the vendor saying this to the player character, instead of “go kill a huge amount of bad guys”.

WHAT COULD BE IMPROVED?

Although I just mentioned that mixing the bounties in the world and characters, one of the downsides of that is that it’s extremely confusing for new players. For the longest time, I didn’t know what bounties really were and which vendors had what kinds of bounties and which had the rewards that I was looking for. They’re strewn across every location in the game, and as a new player it can be sometimes difficult to parse the icons on a map when you first open it in an attempt to find the important person to talk to.

The bounties also use lots of specific jargon that I wish could be explained within the bounty itself, either on the main modal or in a sub-tab. It could be implemented similar to how Magic the Gathering: Arena and Legends of Runeterra define their keywords with floating modals.

Continuing with the user experience and interface, it is often extremely cluttered and unorganized the way that the bounties are displayed in the player menu. It’s only sorted by the most recent bounties with no ways to filter, or have currently possible bounties appear at the top (for example, having specific location bounties appear when you are in that location). The game does allow you to bookmark specific bounties or quests on the main pause screen, but that feature is like putting a sandbag in front of a flood. It helps, but is more avoiding the main problem of confusing UI/UX.

The onboarding with the function of bounties and resources should be better communicated also. Crating items require the player to understand that certain resources exist with specific vendors, with specific bounties granting resources that can be converted to other currencies at another vendor that requires the player to fly to another planet. It’s the double-edged sword of having the player have to fly between planets to physically interact with the vendors. It does immerse them in the world, but for players that are thousands of hours deep into the game, they don’t want to sit through multiple loading screens just to get all the bounties they need.

Finally, a couple of the challenges are centered around using specific weapons to complete it. However, in Destiny, the player doesn’t have an easily accessible method of attaining a specific weapon. They would have to rely on random chance if one of the weekly bounties is getting kills with a weapon they don’t own. It’s fine if Destiny doesn’t have easy ways to attain weapons, but I wouldn’t create many bounties with that goal if there isn’t. Destiny’s hyper specific bounties in general should also be avoided because of this exact reason.

TAKEAWAYS

It might seem obvious, but rewarding players of all types for specifically what they want to do seems to contribute to Destiny’s amazing retention rates. Players will return day after day to grind the same content, but with the self-driven bounties, they can add just that extra layer of spice to keep players coming back.

Overview

In this one-page pitch, I’ll be exploring an idea for a new hero in Overwatch. This is for Overwatch 2020, the last hero that joining the game being Echo. I’ll be briefly discussing the narrative background, then diving into what niche this character fills, their abilities, how it contributes to Overwatch, and any open questions I still have.

A renowned engineer and infamous omnic supporter, Lola Leblanc has devoted her life to protecting the omnics that she once sought to destroy. From a young age, Lola dreamed of changing the world. So, she did it the best way she knew how: creating. She joined Omnica in the hopes of creating a better future through robotic innovation. One of the best and brightest, she was famous for the level of care she put into each omnium. Lola’s dream fell apart, however, the day that Omnica closed, and only became worse as the Omnic Crisis ravaged the globe. After a lot of internal struggle, Lola approached the leadership in Overwatch. She wanted to fight alongside them against the omnics as penance for the chaos that she felt she had helped cause. When the fighting was done and the dust had settled, she left. Off to find a new life that didn’t involve destroying. But rather, building. Back home in New Orleans, Lola started a home for displaced omniums. She took it upon herself to give them a safe place to hide. To be protected.

I love how diverse the healers in Overwatch are, with each of their primary healing methods being really different but equally effective in the hands of the right player. Looking at the current roster, I noticed that there wasn’t a healer that specialized in setting up defenses (similar to Symmetra and Torbjorn and how they can prepare during defense phases by putting their turrets in the most optimal places), which is a perfect character niche for Lola. Adding Lola to the roster also brings the number of healers up to equal the number of tanks, balancing the character choice more.

Character Overview and Abilities

ROLE

Support

Difficulty

2 Stars

BACKGROUND

Lola has personally built her entire arsenal to keep allies alive and enemies at bay. Dubbed the Protector of New Orleans, she specializes in setting up defenses with her gadgets to build a healing fortress around her team.

Abilities

Primary Fire:

Her main weapon is an energy crossbow that’s extremely powerful, but only holds one bolt and needs to be reloaded after each shot. Because of this, the player must carefully plan their shots as to not miss. Like Ana, the primary attack fires a projectile, instead of hitscan.

When the crossbow bolt hits an enemy, it hurts them. When it hits an ally, it heals them. The crossbow bolt also has piercing qualities, as it can travel through enemies and allies alike when it’s fired. The more it travels through characters, the less effective it becomes. This means that it becomes a smaller and smaller percentage of the base damage or heal. The crossbow cannot fire through walls with this primary fire.

This gives Lola a viable option of on-the-fly, targeted healing in the fray of battle, along with a way to deal heavy damage.

Secondary Fire:

The player can hold down the secondary fire button to charge up the attack (similar to Zenyatta’s hold to charge). The longer the player holds it down, the more effective the crossbow bolt will become. At max charge, it will do 200% damage and heal, and gains the ability to travel through walls. Similar to the primary fire, the more objects that the bolt travels through, the less effective it becomes with each subsequent object. At max charge, the bolt also becomes a hitscan, instantaneously reaching enemies.

This ability raises the skill ceiling, rewarding skilled players with even more damage and healing, but requiring those players to commit to the charge time.

Ability 1— Healing Turrets

One of Lola’s primary methods of healing is the Healing Turret. The player can plant up to 3 turrets at a time, and each turret has a healing area-of-effect around the turret’s location. The healing rate is relatively slow, approximately 16 HP per second (the same as Lucio’s healing effect). Though the healing isn’t quick, the advantage of this is that Lola can put turrets in a variety of places without putting herself in harm’s way, so that is balanced with the slower healing power.

When planting the turret, the player can throw it a short distance, so it can stick on walls or on ceilings. Like other gadgets, the turret can be destroyed by enemy players. The turrets have approximately 150 health (which is between Symmetra’s turrets and Torbjorn’s). Similar to Torbjorn’s turret, Lola’s turrets can last until they are destroyed, and is on an approximately 10 second cooldown. If the player uses the ability while 3 turrets are active, the first turret deployed will be destroyed, and a new one will be placed (first in, first out).

These turrets give the player a lot of flexibility in planning out a situation, and placing them in locations that would both heal their team, but out of the way so that enemy players will find it difficult to destroy. There is also ways of playing with the possibility of placing healing sources, like placing the turrets on different sections of a payload. This should also be fun for enemy’s to fight against Lola too, giving them small objectives throughout the map (searching for the healing turrets and destroying them).

Ability 2— Focused Beam

The Focused Beam ability has all active turrets shoot a focused beam at Lola for about 10 seconds, which she then catches the laser into her gauntlet. The beams will follow her as she walks around. When an ally comes in contact with one of them beams, they get healed very quickly (somewhere between Zenyatta’s orbs and Mercy’s staff). The player has to be within a range of the turrets for them to shoot the beam, but it should be a relatively large range. If the player is near 2 of the turrets, but out of the range of the last one, the 2 turrets should still shoot the beam.

This ability can provide clutch moments in which the player can use this ability to quickly turn the tide of battle. It’s a decently high-skill ability, since the player has to be conscientious of their positioning, along with the positioning of their team members and turrets to provide maximum healing. This ability also gives Lola’s allies some agency in getting healed, as they can see the beam and jump in its path to get some heals. This also gives enemy’s an idea where all the turrets are, so that they can be destroyed.

Ultimate Ability — Wall

Lola places down a wide and short energy wall that damages and slows all enemies a decent distance in front of it, and heals all allies standing a decent distance behind it. Unlike the turret, this cannot be thrown when used. It must be placed down by Lola. The wall must be placed on a stable ground that the player can stand on, so it can’t be placed on the side of walls or on the ceiling like the turrets.

This wall can be destroyed, but has a lot of health. It lasts for about 15 seconds before deactivating. This wall is quickly deployed when the player activates the ultimate. Similar to other hero’s ultimate abilities (like Junkrat’s Rip Tire), if an enemy kills Lola in the wall planting animation before the wall is actually activated, the ultimate will be interrupted and the wall will not deploy.

This ultimate ability further solidifies her role as a healer that sets up defenses with gadgets. The player can use this to defend a point in game modes like Control, blocking off entry ways that the enemy team could take. This can also be placed on the payload and provide a mobile source of both damage and healing.

Passive Ability — Gadget Heal

Whenever one of Lola’s gadgets heal an ally, like the turrets or the wall, she also passively recovers health. This incentives players to properly optimize and use the gadgets in order to self heal.

Open Questions

• Is Lola fully featured enough? She has her turrets and the beam as the primary abilities, should the wall be moved to a regular ability and another ultimate ability be used?
• Is an ability dependent on another ability work well within Overwatch?
• Should the crossbow hold multiple bolts before reloading? Is it too slow?
• Can Lola be used efficiently across all modes? She specializes in defense, but should not be useless while attacking.

In Conclusion

Adding Lola to the roster would bring the number of healers up to equal the number of tanks, balancing the cast further. She also fills a niche in the supports, and allows for more defensive minded players to have a hero that supports this playstyle. Super excited to see what Overwatch 2 brings in terms of new characters. Thanks for reading!

Overview

In XCOM 2, when a soldier dies in battle, they die permanently. This adds to the stakes and anxiety while you play and feels horrible when you lose one of your favorite soldiers. Also, when your soldiers have reached the highest rank, any progress or EXP they gain doesn’t add to anything since they’re already at max level. For both of these reasons, players are encouraged not to send out their best soldiers and to focus on leveling lower level soldiers. The Mentor System’s goal is to alleviate some of the stresses of losing your favorite soldier permanently and to give uses to high-level soldiers that tend to be tucked away on the Avenger.

Mentor System

With the Mentor System, when a soldier reaches the maximum level of Colonel, they have the opportunity to mentor any soldier of lower rank. A mentor can have multiple mentees, but mentees can only have a single mentor. If the mentee soldier ever reaches the rank of Colonel, the mentorship between those two soldiers ends.

To become a mentor, the player must have the Training Center facility. If they do, they can choose two soldiers (a Colonel rank and a lower rank) to go into a mentorship session that lasts 3 days. This also makes them unavailable for combat during this duration. After the session is over, those two soldiers will be in a mentorship together. Being in a mentorship has a lot of perks on both the Strategy and Tactics layers of the game.

Strategy Layer

Any overflow XP and ability points that the Colonel earns can be distributed to mentees. This would be displayed as “Mentor XP” that the mentees can use to level up in the Training Center. All the mentees would share the pool of XP and Ability Points with their specific mentor.

Mentees can also talk to their mentor in a Counseling Session, which adds small positive traits. These sessions would last 4 days, and again, makes both soldiers unavailable for combat during this time period. Examples of these positive traits would be like a permanent 1% gain in Aim or +1 gain in max Will.

The overflow XP and AP would give an incentive for players to continue to use these high-level soldiers in combat, as it would give a lot of lower ranking soldiers the flexibility of having a pool of XP to pull from. The Counseling Sessions also help buff lower level soldiers in the mid- to end-game, making it less discouraging when the player does lose a high-level soldier in battle. These lower level soldiers have been preparing and getting stronger also so you don’t just have weaklings at the very end of the game. It also gives Colonels a use on the strategy layer, when they’re usually just being saved for really difficult missions that require lots of power. The Colonel, in a way, acts as a facility function on the Avenger.

Tactics Layer

When a mentor and mentee go on a mission together, there will be multiple perks. The first is that soldiers that go on battles with mentors get a 10% EXP boost gain for that mission. There is also a passive ability that the mentor has that affects all their mentee soldiers.

Do As I Do — When the mentor soldier does an action, such as move, shoot, hunker down, overwatch, all subsequent actions that are the same action by mentees get an upgrade for that turn. For example, when the mentor dashes to cover, all mentees afterwards will have +1 mobility when they dash. If the mentor takes a shot at an enemy, mentees with have a 5% boost in aim shooting that enemy.

The more days the mentor soldier is a mentor, they can reach the second (and final) tier of Mentor. On that tier. those soldiers have access to this active ability:

Rally — An area of effect ability that removes negative status effects from all mentees in the area. All mentees in the AOE also gain one extra move action for that turn. This can be used once per mission.

These abilities push players to using high-level soldiers in combat, and not just saving them up, having them gather dust in the Avenger menus. Using a Colonel mentor levels up lower level soldiers faster, and gives them a tactical advantage.

Death of a Teacher

Whenever a mentor soldier dies, all the mentor’s mentees will immediately lose a decent portion of Will and gain a fear of the enemy that killed their mentor. Usually when a soldier permanently dies, you lose all of the time and resources invested in that particular soldier. To alleviate some of the heartbreak, the mentee soldiers can share between 25–50% of the total XP and AP that was used and invested in their mentor. The percentage is higher depends on what tier the mentor soldier was on death.

This makes it hurt less when a beloved soldier falls in battle, because that time and money can be re-purposed into other soldiers. However, this comes with the negative of losing Will and gaining a negative trait.

What Does This Contribute to the Game?

XCOM 2: War of the Chosen already has so many awesome systems and mechanics, and this would add another layer of depth on top of those systems by making use of the high-experience soldiers in both the tactics and strategy layer. It also gives players incentive to use colonels in missions since XP is wasted without overflow. Finally, it makes players feel like hopeless and feel like their time was wasted if those time and resources could be used in some way, form or fashion.

Concerns

These are all changes that make the game easier, which would mean that it an overall easier game than the current version. The game would either have to compensate in difficulty through other methods, or balance very carefully. This concept is also similar to soldier bonding, so there would have to be work making the two systems more distinct, or more visually individualized. This feature may also encourage players to never train up non-mentee rookies in battle if they just keep sending out colonels with their mentees. The game should also be balanced in a way that the positives don’t outweigh the negatives too heavily, worst case being players purposefully killing their Colonels to get the positives effects.

Data to Gather

After the feature goes live, these are some of the data points to track to make sure the feature is successful and / or not having unknown ramifications across the rest of the game

• % of a player’s army that are mentors
• # of mentees that a mentor has
• % of colonels that are sent to battle
• % of players that use the mentor system
• % of mentors dying

In Closing

The goal for this new Mentor system would be to help alleviate the gut punch of having a beloved soldier fall in battle, encouraging players to save scum less when they’re play. This also provides multiple uses for high-level soldiers that are usually relegated to the sidelines in fear of losing them forever. I love XCOM 2: War of the Chosen, and hopefully this Mentor system would help enhance the already-amazing design. Thanks for reading!

Overview

Call of Duty Warzone is the latest battle royale mode to enter the arena, and it’s one of the best ones yet. It’s incredibly innovative, from encouraging players to clash instead of hide with the bounty and revival systems to the gulag respawns that give you one more chance if you’re good enough. In this one-page pitch, I will be pitching a new mechanic to add a layer of depth after being downed, facilitates more teamwork in the game, and expands the tactical player toolkit.

New Mechanic: Dragging Teammates

When a player is downed in Warzone, the gameplay essentially ends. That player is now either preparing to go to the gulag or to die completely. At this point, it’s just about waiting. This new mechanic, dragging teammates, would give both the downed player and the player’s teammates new difficult decisions to make in the game, instead of just waiting.

This new mechanic adds different mechanics depending on what state the player is in.

Downed player: In the current game, the player waits to bleed out while they crawl away. With this new mechanic, they can do one of two things. They can either crawl to safety at the cost of a slightly accelerated bleed-out timer, or hold the would to slow the bleed-out at the cost of immobility and being vulnerable to more enemy attacks.

Teammates: In the current game, teammates can go to the downed player, and hold the “revive” button to get them back on their feet after a couple of seconds. With this new mechanic, the teammate can go to the downed player and grab onto them. After grabbing the downed player, the teammate can drag them out of harm’s way.

The teammate can do a couple of base mechanics. They can walk or sprint, at the full speeds of those two options. They can also shoot, but only hip fire (no ADS). They cannot shoot while sprinting, but they can shoot while walking. The wounded player can still hold their wound while being dragged.

What Does This Contribute to the Game?

As stated before, when a player is downed, the decision between staying still and moving isn’t a something to think about. For teammates, there is one decision: do I risk myself to revive my downed teammate, or do I not do that for my own safety?

This new mechanic gives surviving teammates a middle ground that muddies that decision point, making it more difficult and less binary. Since the surviving teammate has full access to their mobility options while dragging a player, the pros and cons of dragging them into safety is less clear-cut, providing players with split-second, heart-pounding decisions in the heat of battle.

This also provides wounded teammates another layer of depth, even after being downed by the enemy. Do I wait for my teammates to drag me out of here, or do I try and go to cover myself to help them out?

This new mechanic provides more decisions points in a Warzone match (a decision point that will happen quite often). It also expands Call of Duty’s already fantastic tactical player toolkit.

Outstanding Questions

• Will this change make matches last longer or have later starts because less players are dying as quickly?
• Is giving the player full mobility too over-powered? Should they only be able to walk, making it a bit harder to save allies?
• Should there be a startup animation to grabbing a downed teammate, or should it be immediate?

Data to Gather

After the feature goes live, these are some of the data points to track to make sure the feature is successful and / or not having unknown ramifications across the rest of the game

• % of players recovering from being downed. More granularity is the % of players that are recovering after being dragged
• % of players that choose to hunker down and stop the wound vs crawling away
• The distance that a player crawls if they choose to crawl
• The time between when a player is downed and when they die. More granularity is indicating whether they bled out vs if they were shot.
• The distance that a player that was downed was dragged by a teammate
• The time between the beginning of the match and when players die, to map out if this feature is causing late starts.

In Closing

Call of Duty Warzone has innovated in so many areas, making one of the best battle royale games out now. This new mechanic would add more decision points in a Warzone match, expand the tactical capabilities of players, and give wounded players tough choices even when they’re down. I’m excited to keep playing the game, and thanks for reading!

Overview

Bleeding Edge is the hero-based, melee-driven multiplayer game from Ninja Theory and it’s been super fun so far. The hero mechanics are super fun and the character designs are unique and creative. However, the game mode shipped with two modes, Objective Control and Power Collection, and I believe that a third mode that focuses on nail-biting and intense moments would make a good game even better.

Bleeding Edge Modes and Overwatch

The current modes, Objective Control and Power Collection, are divided into multiple phases that turn objectives on and off all across the map. This encourages for the teams to split up and scatter across the maps to get the objectives individually. Certain phases in Objective Control will activate and deactivate points , and is usually uncertain why and which points are turning on and off, muddying the match flow. There’s usually not a strong chokepoint in the match’s flow, like Overwatch usually does.

Overwatch isn’t a 1–1 competitor, but should be reference due to both using objective-based game modes and strong hero designs as the main mechanics. Overwatch’s modes usually revolve around very strong chokepoints, whether it be a single point that both teams are vying over, or all of the level chokepoints in an Escort map. These chokepoints in Overwatch create intense back-and-forth battles, and ratchet up the intense and memorable moments of how a team defended or attacked that point.

Bleeding Edge’s mode design does work to facilitate smaller battles in teams, because the combat works really well in 1v1 or 2v2 battles, and maybe the design team doesn’t want too many full-team skirmishes. Those may get too chaotic, or become too unbalanced if any battle becomes a 2v1 fight. Therefore, I want to maintain the current design philosophy of objectives that work to scatter the teams, but also including more chokepoints to facilitate more nail-biting memorable situations. I also specifically want to use the maps that are already in Bleeding Edge, and not design a new map catered for this new mode.

My goals for this new mode are as follows:

• design a mode that works in all of the existing maps
• follows in the design philosophy of the other two modes and scatters the team so that smaller skirmishes and 1v1 battles can be possible
• facilitates more exciting, nail-biting moments that adds in chokepoints in the match flow

New Mode: Bomb Attack

Bomb Attack is a new mode that has an attacking and defending team. The attacking team must capture points A and C to unlock the bomb. The team then must get the bomb, plant it at point B, and defend the point until the bomb timer runs out. The defending team must prevent the bomb from going off, either by defusing the bomb, or preventing the bomb from being planted in the first place. In this mode, we will be using the existing A, B, and C control points that are currently in the game’s maps. The game mode will have a 10 minute time limit.

Mode Structure

Points A and C will be activated from the beginning of the round, and must be captured by the attacking team to unlock the bomb. The defending team will be working to prevent the attacking team from capturing these points. Points A and C are captured when attacking team players stand on the point, similar to how they work now in the game. Progress cannot be removed from the point, it only increases continually. It would take approximately 20 seconds for a point to get captured from 0 to 100%. It would also get captured faster the more teammates that are on it. If an enemy player is on the point, it is contested and the point will not get any progress while contested.

After these points are captured, the bomb will spawn on the map in a random location. There would be multiple possible locations for the bomb, and the game would randomly choose between those locations. After the attacking team picks up the bomb, they must plant the bomb on point B. Planting the bomb takes time, approximately 5 seconds of uninterrupted planting. When the bomb has been planted, a bomb timer will override the match timer. The bomb timer starts at approximately 30 seconds, and counts down to 0. When it reaches 0, the bomb explodes and the attacking team wins. If the defending team manages to defuse the bomb before it explodes, then the defending team wins.

In summary, the win conditions for the attacking team is to plant the bomb and have it explode. For the defending team, the win condition is for the bomb to not explode, either by defusing a planted bomb, or having the match timer running out.

What Does This Mode Contribute?

My goal for this mode is to meet the following criteria:

• design a mode that works in all of the existing maps

This mode utilizes the existing placement for the A, B, and C locations in all of the current maps. It also facilitates the maps’ width by having both teams fighting over A and C at the same time, so there is a strategic decision at the spawn. Should the player go left or right to A or C? This is so players are not railroaded into a specific point for the entire match, similar to how the other two modes scatter the players across the map.

• follows in the design philosophy of the other two modes and scatters the team so that smaller skirmishes and 1v1 battles can be possible

In the beginning of the game, the team’s will be split between points A and C. This both scatters the team so that more smaller battles can happen, but also gives a lot of room for strategy for the first half of the match. Players can split up and get A and C simultaneously at the cost of lack of team power, or get the whole team to tackle a single point, but waste time, or any variation between.

• design a mode that facilitates more exciting, nail-biting moments that adds chokepoints in the match flow

In the second half of the game, there are two chokepoints that bring all players together to create huge tug-of-war battles. The first is picking up the bomb that spawns after A and C are captured. The second is the planting, and subsequent defense, of the bomb. This brings all the heroes from both teams to a single location, and creates those big pushes that can turn the tide of the battle with good teamwork.

The attacking team is racing against the clock, so any second that isn’t spent making progress is time wasted. This makes each objective and chokepoint more intense. After the bomb is planted, each second that passes now increases the excitement, because the timer is now working in favor of the attacking team instead of against it.

For the defending team, the stakes are raised each time the attacking team makes any progress, because the A and C points don’t lose progress, and nothing can make the bomb timer slow down or pause without outright defusing it. It also increases the pressure by forcing the defending team to go on full offense to defuse the bomb.

I think with this mode, it stays in line close enough to the existing design philosophy for game modes, but raises the stakes as the game progresses to create really exciting moments for the players. Hope you enjoyed this pitch, and I’m excited to see how Bleeding Edge evolves!

Overview

In this one-pager pitch, I will pitch and explore an idea of a small feature, mechanic, or system for an existing game. For this post, I’ll be pitching a mechanic for DOOM Eternal called the Lightning Counter.

Lightning Counter

The Doom Slayer has a shoulder-mounted flamethrower that the player uses to get armor shards from enemies. The Lightning Counter would work similarly. The Doom Slayer would have lightning-thrower that would be mounted on the other shoulder, and it counters an enemy’s “Lightning Attack”.

A Lightning Attack is what I’ll be calling attacks that can be countered by the Lighting-Thrower, which are the attacks in which the enemy’s eyes flash green (like the Gladiator’s Shield and the Marauder in the game currently).

When an enemy is about to use a powerful attack, their eyes will flash green right before they execute. This is the window for the player to fire the Lightning-Thrower and do a Lightning Counter. If the player hits the enemy with the Lighting Counter while their eyes are still green, the attack will be canceled and the enemy will be faltered. The Counter has a very small cooldown so the player can’t spam it endlessly, but it would be relatively quick as there could be multiple enemies pulling off Lightning Attacks.

With this new mechanic, every enemy in the game would have at least one powerful attack (except for fodder zombie enemies) where their eyes flash green before they execute the attack. Players don’t have to use the Lightning Counter against Lightning Attacks, as they can still avoid the damage as usual by dashing away. However, they don’t get the benefits of canceling the attack and faltering the enemy.

Methods of avoiding damage in DOOM Eternal are all about smart positioning and learning enemy attack patterns to not get hit. The Lightning Counter will give the player another avenue of preventing damage. This is reminiscent of the Mikiri Counter in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and the Burst Counter in Nioh 2.

What Does This Add To the Game?

This mechanic adds a couple new layers to DOOM. It rewards high-skill plays, rewarding players with a faltered demon to inflict pain upon. It also adds a layer of risk-reward to avoiding damage since you have to be close to a demon to use the Lightning Counter.

The player could potentially get badly damaged trying to pull off a Lightning Counter, so this provides another layer to the combat decisions they have to make. DOOM Eternal is always pushing the player to move around the arena, and the Lightning Counter encourages players to move towards enemies instead of dashing away when attacks are coming.

Lightning Counter raises the skill ceiling with a big risk and reward, thereby encouraging more replays to master the mechanic. It also gives another option for avoiding damage, providing more decision points in the second-to-second combat flow.

Questions and Considerations

These are the outstanding questions and considerations that would have to be taken into account for this new mechanic to be implemented in the current game.

• This mechanic gives the player an option to avoid damage, so the enemies could be tuned to be either slightly more aggressive, or to attack slightly more frequently.
• Enemies that don’t already have a Lightning Attack (everything besides the Marauder and Gladiator Boss) should have an attack that is a Lightning Attack.
• Enemies should only have one Lightning Attack, so the player can learn the attack patterns and animations of enemies.
• Fodder Zombie enemies should not have a Lightning Attack, they should still act primarily as resources
• The Marauder’s current Lightning Attack should be countered with the Lightning Counter, not the Ballista or Super Shotgun.

• The controls would have to change to account for the the Lightning Counter. A possibility would be moving the chainsaw to the “down” button on the D-Pad (as chainsawing enemies is not frequent), and placing the Lightning Counter button on X.
• The Lightning Counter window should be narrow enough for players to have to practice to master it, but too narrow and the majority of players may not find a use for it and just prefer to dodge. However, if the window is too large, players may prefer standing still and using the Lighting Counter instead of constantly moving
• Should the Lightning Counter give the player another benefit on top of faltering the enemy? Should it stagger? Should it drop a resource, like oil for your chainsaw?
• How long should the cooldown be for the Lightning Counter? There should definitely be a cooldown, since if the player misses the Counter, they should not be able to spam the button and still land the Counter. If the player messes up, they have to live with getting hit.
• Enemies in an encounter should be able to only do one Lightning Attack at a time. They can do it after one another, but not at the same time, so the player can focus on one enemy to counter them.

Data to Gather

• % of Successful Lightning Counters out of all attempted Counters. This data would specifically be split into 2 versions: one where it is all fired lightning counters in general, and one where the lightning counter hit an enemy, regardless of if it was timed correctly.

This data is to gauge if the playerbase is executing the mechanic correctly. It’s a pretty high-level mechanic, so it would be expected that the % would start pretty low at first, but slowly rising over time.

• The exact frame of the Lightning Attack of every enemy’s attack when the player uses the counter.

This is to gauge if the animations are working properly and seeing how quickly players are reacting to these attacks.

• After the Lightning Counter is introduced in the campaign or DLC, the # of times a player uses the counter in a level and encounter

This is to gauge if players understand how to use the mechanic, or if players find any use in the mechanic.

• # of times an enemy type is countered

This is to gauge if certain enemies are easier or harder to counter.

• # of times an enemy does a Lightning Attack, and if it landed or not

Similar to the top data point, this is to see if certain Lightning Attacks are harder or easier than the average attack.

• # of times an enemy kills the player with a Lightning Attack vs the # of times an enemy kills the player without a Lightning Attack

Again, similar to the top, but seeing which demons land the fatal hit, making sure there’s no outliers and if the Lightning Attacks are balanced.

In Closing

The goal for the Lightning Counter is to increase the layers of complexity in DOOM Eternal’s already amazing combat and to follow the game’s maximalist design philosophy. Lightning Counter raises the skill ceiling with a big risk and reward and provides more decision points in the second-to-second combat flow.

Overview

In the Pt. 1, I talked about what I thought Black Panther’s character mechanics would be if he had his own game. I went through the camera, overall character mechanics, and the controls.

In Pt. 2 (which is also the final part), I will be going more in-depth with the overall combat system, Black Panther’s gadgets, health recovery, suit modes, abilities, and other aspects of the game besides combat.

Overall Combat System

The goal of the combat system will be focused on encouraging fast and fluid combat while also facilitating the fantasy of being Black Panther: a superhero that can elegantly and efficiently take on multiple enemies at once.

As mentioned in Pt. 1, the player will be fighting a couple enemies at a time, but not as much as Arkham or Spider-Man. The average number of enemies directly engaging the player simultaneously would be around 2–3. There can be more enemies in the overall encounter, but the number of enemies that are directly targeting with the player should be kept low so that Black Panther can flow between offense and defense.

Black Panther has a health bar, an energy bar, gadgets, suit modes, the suit mode’s corresponding abilities, and a combo that increases as the player does certain actions in combat, such as damaging an enemy, parrying (pressing the parry button right before an enemy hit lands will counter the hit), or pulling off perfect dodges (pressing dodge right before an enemy hit lands). If the player is damaged in any way, the combo breaks and goes back to 0.

When the player’s health bar hits zero, they die and return to the last checkpoint. The player uses the energy bar to use the abilities. T’Challa can actively engage groups of enemies, or forced into combat if he is found in a stealth section.

As stated in Pt. 1, this is not an open world game. It is wide linear, so players can approach some enemy encounters from different angles, but it’s about giving the player different entry points, not about giving the player total freedom.

Now that we’ve gone over the basic overview of the combat system, let’s dive dive into the three pillars of Black Panther’s combat mechanics: Melee, Gadgets, and Suit Abilities.

Melee

Black Panther has a single attack button (currently mapped to Square on a PS4 controller), so the player would primarily be using this to damage enemies. There are combos in the game, which is stringing together multiple attacks. There are also pause combos, which uses pauses at certain points in the combo string (similar to Devil May Cry) to unleash new attacks. The single attack button reduces the input complexity for players, so more players can pull off flashy moves. This helps with the target audience, since this isn’t a hardcore combat-focused game but a AAA Blockbuster game. However, it still has a ceiling high enough for skilled players that want something deeper.

As there is a single button for melee attacks, all the different interaction variations for a button press are used for different attacks. For example, holding the attack button charges an attack. The player can also pull off Critical Hits by pressing the Attack button right when the attack hits the enemy. This gives the player +2 combo instead of +1 per hit, incentivizing higher skill play. The difference between Critical Hits and pause combos is when the player be presses the attack button during a combo. For pause combos, the player hits the attack button when the animation has almost ended.

There are different attacks and combos that open up based on what state Black Panther is in. For example, different attacks are available if the attack button is pressed right after a dodge, a sprint, or a parry.

The biggest attack options that open up are in the air after the player jumps. This opens up Air Combat, where the player can do almost any attack in the air as they could on the ground. The player can dash, parry, and use abilities in the air also. This adds more layers to the combat, and opens up possibilities of extending juggles and combos.

This is just mentioning attacks using Black Panther’s base abilities. There are also special traversal abilities Black Panther can do such as wall runs and climbs, and attacks and combos off of these actions also activate unique combos and air combos.

The final layer of complexity comes from Black Panther’s damage system. When the player attacks, it turns on a hitbox on T’Challas active limbs and hits any enemies that come in contact with the hitbox. This allows for the player to hit multiple enemies at once. By default, when Black Panther hits enemies, they become stun-locked in the attack combo. This benefits both average and skilled players because average players can stun-lock multiple enemies with a combo, and skilled players can increase their combo even faster by hitting multiple enemies. Players can even uppercut and do air combos on multiple enemies.

Average players won’t need to learn these skills to succeed. These attacks have very low input complexity and average players can lower the difficulty and button mash their way through. However, for skilled players that want something deeper, this game has a lot of contextual complexity. It challenges players to be quick on their feet to pick a good strategy for the situation they are faced with.

Gadgets

The second pillar of Black Panther’s combat system is the gadgets. Black Panther has access to multiple gadgets that he unlocks over the course of the game. Gadgets are selected using the D-Pad, with each gadget mapped to a direction. Gadgets are used by pressing the gadget button (currently mapped to Triangle on a PS4 controller)

These can be used at any time in combat and are used to give the player some breathing room. Each gadget has multiple levels that can be upgraded over the course of the game, but the main function of each gadget will remain largely the same across levels (just more powerful, or expanded actions).

Gadgets are replenished with a cooldown with charges. The player has a maximum amount of gadget charges, and when a gadget is used, the charges decrease by 1 and a gadget cooldown starts. When the gadget cooldown is complete, the player gains 1 gadget charge. This means that the player can use multiple gadgets back-to-back, but will have to wait to gain the gadget charges for each charge used.

The player can speed up the gadgets cooldown by successfully pulling off defensive actions such as parrying or doing a perfect dodge. The cooldown will also speed up the higher the player’s combo is. This rewards players for high-level play, but doesn’t punish players that don’t want to focus on skilled combat.

Since the Gadgets are mapped to the D-Pad, there are four gadgets, one for each direction. The player can customize which gadgets are mapped to which directions. The directions listed below are the default. The gadgets can be used with any suit mode, so the functionality is very generalized since it exists on top of all of the base attacks and specific suit abilities the player has access to.

Heal (Down) — the most important gadget for the average player would be the heal gadget. when it is used, a player instantly refills a portion of health (approximately 20%). Most new players would have this gadget equipped, but as players progress through the story and receive new gadgets, they will get more skilled and be able to utilize different gadgets. This also means that high-skill players wouldn’t need to have this always equipped and can optimize their DPS by switching through the other gadgets.

Stun (Left) — when used, this gadget will go to the nearest enemy and stun them, meaning that they will freeze in their current position and not be able to do any actions for a set amount of time. This can be used by average players to give themselves breathing room, meaning one less enemy is trying to attack them. For higher skill players, this would help decrease risk of breaking combos, since there would be less enemies to hit them.

Bomb (Up) — when used, this gadget will do damage, knock down, and push back enemies within a radius around where the bomb lands. The damage isn’t so high that it would kill an enemy at full health, but it does deal splash damage to multiple enemies based on how close they are to the bomb’s impact point. This helps give the average players some breathing room since it knocks enemies down and deals some damage. For skilled players, it helps extend combos by doing damage.

Pull (Right) — when used, this gadget will pull all enemies within a radius to a single point (where the gadget landed). Enemies will stay stuck on that location for a short amount of time. This will help new players get breathing room by reducing the amount of enemies that are near them. For new players, this would open up new combo possibilities, like combo-ing a bomb after a pull, and starting a juggle after enemies are knocked into the air with the bomb.

To summarize, all the gadgets provide average players easy methods of getting some breathing room when they are overwhelmed by the combat encounters, and provide skilled players even more opportunities to extend combos and express themselves through the combat system.

Suit Abilities

The final pillar of Black Panther’s combat system is the Suit Abilities. T’Challa has the Black Panther suit that can switch between four different modes on the fly. When the player switches between each mode, the abilities the player has access to also changes. Each ability uses 1 energy, and ultimate abilities use 3 energy. The player can also upgrade this energy bar as the game progresses, with a maximum of 5. When the player uses an ability, each ability for each suit mode will have their own separate cooldown timers(similar to Overwatch). This is so players don’t spam abilities to deplete a full energy bar, but can also switch between suit modes to use abilities while others are on cooldown.

The player uses the abilities with L2 and R2, and uses ultimate abilities with L2 and R2 pressed simultaneously. The player switches between modes by either pressing R1 to cycle through the modes, or by holding down R1 and using the right analog stick to select from a radial menu that displays a high-level description of what each suit is. When the radial menu is active, the game also slows down time for a short period. The time slowdown gives average players time to make a decision between which mode to switch to, but isn’t so long that it can be abused by skilled players to plan out whole strategies.

If players press R1 after a attack lands (the same timing as a critical hit), the suit will fire a small burst in a radius around the player, very lightly damaging nearby enemies and giving the player +1 combo. There is also a small cooldown (approximately 1–2 seconds) on when a player can quick-switch suits. This encourages skilled players to stay in the flow of combat while switching suit modes, without giving players an infinite amount of easy to hit, AOE attacks.

The player has an energy bar that is made up of discrete pieces that is used to activate the abilities. The energy bar refills slowly over time, but with every offensive action the player does (like damaging the enemy, or killing an enemy), it fills faster. The energy bar will also fill faster the higher the player’s combo is.

The following are the four suit modes. The way it is visually indicated is with the accents on the suits. In the movie, it’s shown as purple. In the game, the accents would switch each time the mode switches.

STRENGTH (PURPLE)

Ability 1: Ground Pound — Black Panther jumps into the air and then slams into the ground, moderately damaging and slightly knocking back enemies in a radius where the player lands.

Ability 2: Rocket Punch — Black Panther lunges forward with a powerful punch, knocking back and heavily damaging enemies that come into contact with the punch.

Ultimate: Daggers — Black Panther summons two energy daggers, enhancing the player’s damage for a period of time.

SPEED (BLUE)

Ability 1: Pounce — Black Panther pounces forward, targeting the enemy the player is pointed towards, and deals moderate damage.

Ability 2: Back Slash — Black Panther slices in front of him, dealing moderate damage, while flipping backwards, avoiding all damage while doing so.

Ultimate: Time Slowdown — Black Panther increases his reaction time, slowing down time. Black Panther moves at normal speed while enemies move at 50% speed.

DEFENSE (GREEN)

Ability 1: Push — Black Panther sends enemies flying within a radius around him. This does not damage the enemy, just knocks them back.

Ability 2: Energy Field — Black Panther places a large stationary circular field on the ground. When the player is in this field, their defense is increased. When enemies are in the field, their defense is decreased.

Ultimate: Armor — Black Panther forms a layer of armor on top of his suit. This adds an armor bar on top of the health bar, and the armor does not regenerate. After a set amount of time, the armor will be removed.

STEALTH (WHITE)

Ability 1: Panther Vision — Black Panther uses this to highlight nearby enemies, items, and other points of interest. After the Panther Vision deactivates, the items stay highlighted for a short period of time after before fading away.

Ability 2: Sleep Gas —Black Panther releases Sleeping Gas in a radius around him, causing enemies within the area of effect to fall asleep.

Ultimate: Invisibility — Black Panther turns invisible for a set amount of time.

Other Aspects of the Game

I’ve gone into depth with the overall combat system, but this Black Panther game also has other sections. I won’t explore them too much, but I do want to touch on them to show how the combat system interacts with them. The three aspects I want to mention is stealth, traversal, and skill trees.

One of Black Panther’s main skills is stealth, so the game will feature stealth sections where the player will traverse an area while quietly taking out enemies. The player would be using the Stealth suit mode (as defined above) to progress through these. Because Black Panther’s combat system focuses on taking on 2–3 enemies at once, the punishment for getting caught in stealth sections would be facing many more powerful enemies at once.

Certain open questions remain with stealth that would have to be explored and iterated upon:

• Should the player’s energy bar refill faster during stealth sections so the player can use the stealth abilities more often?
• Since the player wouldn’t be taking out enemies or getting hits in, the energy bar wouldn’t fill as quickly as it would in full-on combat.
• Gadgets should be able to be used in stealth sections. There should be upgrades or multiple versions of gadgets that the player unlocks throughout the game, and certain versions of each (stun, bomb, and pull) that supports a more stealth approach. For example, a bomb upgrade or version could be a mine that explodes when activated (like a C4) vs. on impact.

Another one of Black Panther’s main skills is traversal, specifically parkour. The player can run along walls and climb up walls with ease, and this would be used for platforming challenges throughout the game, as well as enhancing the player’s combat capabilities with attacks that can be done after parkour skills (like attacking after running on a wall).

Finally, the player would be upgrading Black Panther’s skills throughout and getting more powerful. Each one of the suit abilities, gadgets, and melee attacks would have their own separate skill trees. For example, new combos would be unlocked for melee attacks, gadgets would get more powerful or add new variations, and abilities would become more powerful and expand in different ways.

All of these may seem overwhelming for a player, but it would be slowly paced throughout the game so that players can learn each new aspect, as well as having new things unlock to keep player’s attention.

In Conclusion

The goal of the game’s mechanics is to showcase Black Panther’s personality and character through his combat and mechanics, while also pulling from games with a more hardcore combat audience (like Sekiro, Devil May Cry, and Nioh) and fitting them more closely to AAA blockbuster sensibilities. My goal with the mechanics is to provide average players the power fantasy of being T’Challa, and skilled players a ceiling high enough for self-expression through combat.

Thanks for reading, I had a lot of fun designing Black Panther!

Intro

Black Panther is one of the most interesting heroes in the Marvel Universe, and the MCU has done a great job breathing life into the character. However, we haven’t had a game with Black Panther as the main character, so with this write-up, I’ll be pitching my design for Black Panther’s combat mechanics if he had his own game.

First, I’ll go over what this hypothetical game is, so the character mechanics can be designed to fit it. Next, I’ll walk through the 3 C’s for the character: camera, character mechanics, and controls.

Game Overview

Black Panther: The Game is a third-person action-adventure game, divided up into missions that take T’Challa all over the world to help protect Wakanda from the enemies that threaten it. The missions are linear, but the spaces are wide enough so that the player has the freedom to tackle objectives the way they see fit. As he completes missions, he returns to Wakanda to upgrade his suit, gear, and gadgets with the help of Shuri, his genius sister. As the game progresses, the player’s efforts can be seen through the transforming and growing Wakanda.

The combat of Black Panther is focused on fast-paced and intense close-quarters melee, emulating the style of the movies Black Panther MCU, Captain America MCU, The Raid, and Logan.

Camera

Since the game is focused on more intense melee combat, the combat camera must also facilitate that tone. A farther camera, like Marvel’s Spiderman or Arkham Knight wouldn’t fit because it puts the player farther away from the action (making it less visceral). However, a close camera, like God of War, would also not fit because even though the player is right next to the action, Black Panther is also very agile, elegant, and mobile, and a close camera wouldn’t be able to keep up.

The camera that would most fit the fast-paced melee combat and accommodate for Black Panther’s speed is the mid-ranged camera, similar to that of Sekiro and Nioh.

This gives the player enough room to be able to assess the threats around them, while also being close enough for the combat to fill fast and intense.

This camera angle is also a factor into how many enemies that Black Panther can face at one time, since only a couple would be onscreen at once. This has the positive side effect of having each enemy be more of a threat to the player ,versus having many grunts that can be easily taken out, further facilitating the sense of an intense melee brawl.

Character Mechanics Overview

Since the goal of Black Panther: The Game is to have a fast-paced melee combat, his actions should also facilitate that speed, be simple enough for the AAA mainstream player, but have a high enough skill ceiling for combat experts.

These following abilities are Black Panther’s base abilities; things that the player will always have access to in the game.

Move: move around the area at base speed

Attack: attack enemies using a series of different combos

Dodge: Dodge horizontally to avoid getting damaged. This also applies invincibility frames so the player can dodge through hitboxes.

Jump: Jump vertically to access jump combos, clear obstacles, or avoid enemies

Parry: Right before an attack hits, the player can parry the attack and not take damage (similar to Arkham’s counter)

Sprint: Black Panther can sprint, moving at an elevated speed

Lock-On: Locking on will focus Black Panther’s attacks on a single enemy

Within the base abilities, the player has access to many ways of avoiding damage. This suits Black Panther’s character and personality, as he’s a very nimble character, using his agility to jump, dodge, and parry to win fights. Players can also string these abilities with attacks to access to a larger suite of attacks (like attacking after a dodge or a jump).

One note is that there isn’t a Block ability listed. I made this decision because the game should be facilitating Black Panther’s speed, encouraging the player to move and keep the momentum up, not turtle behind a Block ability (and consequentially, making the fight more stagnant).

The player’s offensive ability is limited to a single attack button, simplifying inputs for players that play mainstream AAA action games. However, as stated above, there will be multiple ways of adding new strategies to the attacks so that the skill ceiling is still high enough.The player will also have access to the Special Abilities detailed below, which has a larger toolkit of damage dealing methods.

These following abilities are Black Panther’s special abilities. These won’t be used as often as the base abilities, but they have much more impact.

Use Gadget: Black Panther has an arsenal of gadgets to enhance his combat and stealth that the player can use them at any time (even in the middle of combos)

Switch Gadget: Black Panther can also switch these gadgets at any time, giving the player the ability to string together multiple attacks and gadgets consecutively

Switch Suit: Black Panther has multiple modes that his suit can switch between, each giving him access to different abilities, attack combos, and buffs (more strength, speed, or defense). The player can also switch these suits on the fly, so advanced players can string together multiple types of combos, abilities, and buffs fluidly. This will be communicated visually to the player using the colored lining of the suit (for example, the suit in the movie has a purple lining), switching between colors each time the player switches a suit.

Suit Ability 1, 2, Ultimate: Each suit has access to 3 unique abilities: two regular abilities and one ultimate ability. This is similar to the way abilities and ultimate abilities are structured in Overwatch (2–3 abilities that are used at a consistent rate, with the ultimate firing off once or twice every match).

Controls

For the combat control setup of Black Panther, the player must be able to access the most important functions during the heat of combat. These controls are specifically used for combat encounters, not for the other gameplay sections such as stealth or traversal.

The base abilities are mapped to the face buttons, which are primarily what the player will be using. One aspect of the face buttons is that all of these functions cannot be used simultaneously with camera control (because the player’s right thumb will be either on the face buttons or the right analog stick). Because of this, the abilities will be working based off of where the camera is currently looking, either according to the current locked-on enemy or through a camera system that automatically leans towards what the player is attacking.

Another set of face buttons is the d-pad, which is mapped to switching to specific gadgets. The player will not be using gadgets as often as the suit abilities, so the player’s left thumb will be on the left analog stick more often. This set-up also gives the player more control into which gadgets are being selected.

The shoulder buttons are for abilities that the player should have access to while on-the-move (because of the left analog stick), so these are abilities that the player will be using a lot, almost as much as the face buttons.

Parry is mapped to L1 because it will be something the player will be always using, as it counters incoming enemy attacks with a well-timed press (similar to the counter system in Arkham).

The player can either tap R1 to cycle through suits without slowing down the game, but when the player holds down R1, a small radial menu with the player’s suits will appear, and the player will use the right analog stick to select one. More advanced players will likely prefer to just tap to cycle, as it won’t slow down their momentum. This is mapped to R1 both because it will be used often and because of the convenience of holding down R1 to bring up a radial menu.

When the player switches between suits, this also switches what abilities the player has access to. These are mapped to the two shoulder buttons, L2 and R2. These will be used pretty frequently, but one of the reasons these are mapped to the shoulder buttons is for controller feel, as these abilities are more powerful than regular base abilities on the face buttons. Shoulder buttons feel better when used for bigger abilities. This same logic applies to the ultimate ability, which is mapped to L2 and R2 pressed at the same time. This will be utilized very rarely (maybe once or twice an encounter) so unleashing it should feel good.

Some of the weaknesses of this control scheme is that certain aspects of it are not symmetrical with the rest of the controller. Often, when parry or block is mapped to L1, then R1 should be attack. Same for switching gadgets with the D-Pad. Another is that it does not take in account the other gameplay sections, which may require more real estate on the controller (particularly the D-Pad).

My goal for this control scheme is something that leans into the learned history of most AAA mainstream control schemes (so the player can learn it quickly), and giving the player the most freedom possible to chain together lots of different abilities back-to-back.

In Summary

Black Panther is an extremely interesting character to design for, as his character abilities and mechanics are very specific because the character (both in comics and movies) is very strict in how he operates and fights. This makes the design space very tight, but lots of room for interesting mechanics. My goal was focusing all 3 C’s (Character, Camera, and Controls) to specifically fit Black Panther‘s personality and create a agile, awesome, efficient killer.

In Part 2 of this Black Panther Character Mechanics write-up, I’ll be diving into the specifics of the combat system. You can read it here!

Control is a game released by Remedy in 2019, and it deserves all the critical acclaim it received from critics and players! I loved a lot of things about the game, but especially the off-kilter tone of the game and mind-warping visuals. However, although the combat can be invigorating in the right circumstances, the combat flow is a bit disjointed because of one thing: most enemies use hitscan weapons.

What does hitscan mean? It means that bullets fired by enemies travel through the air and hit the target almost immediately. The reason it’s a problem is because the game wants you to feel like an awesome superhero, with this transforming weapon and a swath of awesome abilities. However, because players have little chance of dodging bullets from faraway enemies, players are more encouraged to hide behind a pillar then flying around and unleashing superhuman chaos.

If I were to make a single change to improve Control, it would be for enemies to use weapons that fire slower-moving projectiles.

Less Time Behind Cover

In most combat encounters in Control, the game spawns a lot of enemies at once wielding hitscan weapons. The player also has very little health, going down after a couple shots. Because of this, the best option is usually hiding behind cover, peeking out to nervously pop off some shots before diving into cover again. The game gives the player lots of fun and crazy abilities to play with, but the game incentives you to use these powers and your arsenal while hiding, not wielding them around the combat arena in their full glory.

The player staying hidden in one location also directly conflicts with the health recovery system. When enemies die, they drop health shards that are collected by running over them. Jesse doesn’t recover any health on her own, so the only option is picking up these shards.

However, when the player is low on health, running out of cover to get health is usually a suicide mission. The safest option is to stay back and hide, equip the sniper version of the Service Weapon, and take enemies out slowly and deliberately. After all enemies are dead, that’s usually the best time to actually recover health, defeating the purpose of the health shards being motivation for the player to move around the arena. If the projectiles weren’t hitscan, this would encourage players to actually leave cover, dodge the enemy bullets, and pick up health.

Enemy AI Surrounding the Player

Another side effect of the hitscan weapons is the enemy AI in the combat arenas. With a combat system that primarily utilizes cover, the player usually needs to keep a defensive front and keep all the enemies on one end while the player hides. However, in the larger combat arenas, the enemy AI tends to move around and flank the player.

This usually results in the enemies surrounding the player from all sides, making the cover the player is one pointless. If the player starts running away, enemies can start firing on their exposed position. The only defensive ability the player has is the shield, which covers only the front side of the player.

Combined with the low overall health, this keeps the player on the retreat, constantly moving backwards and defending instead of utilizing all the offensive abilities and weapons at their disposal. If the enemies utilized slower projectiles, the player could utilize the entirety of larger combat arena spaces and would fit the enemy AI more appropriately.

Facilitating the Superhero Power Fantasy

The moment where the player gains the ability to fly completely changes the way the game is played. Obstacles that used to block, the player can just glide right over. It’s such an awesome feeling, most games don’t give players the ability to just fly over enemies and rain down hell.

All of that goes away however, when the player actually enters the first arena with flight. There isn’t any cover in the air and enemies with hitscan weapons are able to easily pick you out of the sky. This is also especially true in the larger combat arenas where enemies have much longer sight-lines to take you down. You can use the shield, but defeats the purpose of getting a height advantage over the enemies if you don’t utilize your offensive capabilities. If the player could dodge the enemy projectiles, this would facilitate the feeling of the superhero power fantasy, as you wouldn’t get shot out of the sky.

Encouraging More Mod Experimentation

Finally, players would be more incentivized to experiment with the mods system. The mod system is something that the player can use to augment their existing abilities and stats. You can boost the damage of your abilities, make that certain abilities have slower cooldowns, etc.

However, Jesse’s health is so low, it’s smartest to just run with health upgrades so Jesse can survive for a longer time in the combat arenas. If enemies utilized slower moving projectiles, the player would be encouraged to experiment with different builds, accentuating different abilities like dashing or pushing.

In Closing

Control is an incredibly unique game that has a lot of moments that will stick with me for a long time, from psychedelic visuals to secret bosses. The only thing that could improve the game is the combat flow, with enemies utilizing slower, projectile-based weapons instead of hitscan ones.

This would encourage the player not to hide behind cover as often, use the entire combat arena space, fit the enemy AI patterns more appropriately, facilitate the superhero power fantasy, and encourage experimentation with the mod system.

Objective

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine is an action game that champions the power fantasy of being a Space Marine in the brutal and dark Warhammer 40,000 universe. The game’s combat design is satisfying, if a bit unfocused due to cramming in all the design tropes of both hack-and-slash and third-person shooter games. It’s extremely difficult for a game with both melee and shooter mechanics to get both aspects right, and even harder for both systems to mesh cohesively.

In this essay, I’ll be analyzing and iterating on the design with the goal of focusing the combat mechanics and systems.

Combat Analysis

As a general overview of the game, the single-player campaign sees the player moving between locations and battling a smorgasbord of enemies utilizing both melee and ranged weapons.

When playing the game, it seems like lots of polish went into the melee aspect of the game. Combo chains end in juicy slow motion hits to sell the violence and impact. The melee swings are slow and weighty, with long recovery frames (even longer on stuns and combos that end in stun). The game’s combat pacing is also centered around over-the-top executions that reward the player with health.

All of these kills also fill the “Fury” Meter in the bottom left corner. When Fury is activated, all close-quarters kills rewards the player with health (essential encouraging the player to kill enemies with melee). There’s usually hordes of enemies, so lots of health sources for the player to harvest. There’s no defensive options, which encourages a mostly offensive play-style. The dodge roll also doubles as clearing distance towards a health source.

The shooter aspect of the game doesn’t have the same attention to detail that the melee has. The guns don’t have much recoil and most of the guns having a crazy amount of accuracy and range. That diminishes the depth in using the guns, since the player doesn’t have to learn the recoil patterns or prefer certain weapons over others (I used the Bolt Pistol to take out long-range sniper enemies because of the crazy range the guns have).

There also isn’t much satisfaction in using the guns either, since enemies have no hit reaction when being shot (vs. having a big hit reaction when being hit with melee). There are also sections where you get on a turret or sniper to take out waves of enemies (which inherently clashes with the aggressive forward-pushing combat of the executions and “Fury”).

Going All In On Hack & Slash

The player has a huge suite of mechanics at their disposal in the game. From the shooter tropes, the player can aim, shoot, use grenades, reload, has a regenerating shield a la Gears of War, Halo, and Call of Duty. From the hack-and-slash mold, the player can dodge roll, hit, stun, and execute enemies. To iterate on the game’s design, I’ll have to lean one way or another.

To iterate upon this, I’ll be unifying the mechanics under one player motivation. In the original game, players are encouraged to be aggressive with melee, because they can stun enemies and and recover health. However, the regenerating shield suggests that the player should be taking cover, long-range enemies have hitscan weapons, and the player can’t dodge roll through enemy projectiles.

With all of that in mind, I’m going to be leaning into the melee combat aspect of the game, with the player motivation goal of aggressively pushing forward to get kills and executions.

The Combat Iteration

The player mechanics, pared down to focus on melee combat, look something like this:

Shoot, Grenades, Dodge Roll, Hit, Stun, Execute, Move, Sprint, Fury

I’ll go through the mechanics and dive into what’s changing in this iteration.

Shooting:
The shooting will function more like Devil May Cry or Bayonetta, which is used as a combo extender or to reduce a bit of the enemy’s health before the real fight begins. Since it’s more about supporting the melee system, the game no longer needs an aim function as the player won’t be needing to make accurate shots throughout the game. The guns will auto-target enemies based on a combination of distance and priority.

Reloading is also removed and all guns will have infinite ammo. The way that the game will balance the weapons is with the rate of fire, spread and accuracy of the shots, and the strength of each weapon. This also means that ammo won’t be scattered across the levels to act as “secrets” for exploring the levels.

Grenades:
Explosives will now be used as the hidden “secrets” for exploring, and the player will be able to hold a very limited amount. The grenades will be extremely powerful and will be used by players to thin the herd before huge battles.

Dodge Roll:
Before, the player couldn’t use the dodge-roll I-frames on enemy projectiles. In this iteration, the player will be able to dodge roll through projectiles, since they will be needing to dodge enemy fire to get up close and personal.

Melee Attack:
The hack-and-slash combat system will need to have a little more depth, since the design will be hinging on it to hold up the entire game. The system can generally stay the same with hits and stuns being strung together into combos.

To increase the system’s depth, the player will be collecting melee weapons throughout the game that will be permanent upgrades to the player’s arsenal. Instead of switching out the weapon on pick-up, the player will be able to access those weapons at any time (like the original God of War trilogy), with each weapon having its own quirks and perks. For example, the blunt Thunder Hammer could be effective against shields and machine enemies, while bladed weapons like the Power Sword could be more effective against flesh enemies.

Shield System:
The health system will largely remain the same, with the exception of the regenerating shield. The shield will be removed, so players aren’t ever encouraged to just hide behind a rock to heal. For balancing purposes, there could be a very slow health regeneration over time, but nothing too substantial. For boss fights, there should also be sections where waves of enemies spawn, so the player has some opportunity for health recovery.

Enemies:
Currently, enemies are using hit-scan weapons. In this iteration, enemies that have long-ranged weapons should be firing projectiles, so the player has an opportunity to dodge them when the player is making their way towards the enemies.

In Conclusion

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine is a great game with a combat system that needed a little bit more focus. In the original game, the player had access to a huge, unfocused suite of both melee and shooter abilities to take down enemies.

With these changes, the player will now be encouraged to charge directly into battle to utilize their arsenal of blades and hammers to take out enemies and execute them for health drops. This solves the problem of a split player motivation, and hones it in on encouraging a very aggressive melee-driven play-style.