Destiny 2:
Black Armory
Role: Designer - Sandbox Team
Software: In-house Tools - Grognok & Bonobo
Team Size: 5
Development Cycle: 5 months
Destiny 2: Black Armory is the first content drop of the Annual Pass. I joined the Vicarious Visions team to help create content for the weapons team!
- Created, implemented, and iterated on all mods for the Black Armory pack
- Created, implemented, and iterated on the Shield Disorient Perk
My primary duties were to help create, implement and iterate on the 6 new mods we were adding to the pack. Weapon mods are small upgrades you can attach to any weapon in the game except exotics to improve their performance. One of my personal design goals with these new mods were to make them a bit more engaging then the passive benefits existing mods provide. Adding an activator to gain the mod benefits makes them more engaging to use, and it makes the player feel like they're the one in control.
We also experimented with the idea of mods buffing specific perks, think tiered perks in call of duty. Players would be able to take a perk they already like and make it even better! We saw this as an opportunity to take fan favorite perks and make them even stronger, or make niche / situational perks much more useful in their respective situations to see broader usage of the perk. This would create more of an attractive loot pool, therefore increasing the level of chase player's have to acquiring their favorite perk combinations.
In the end we ended up creating perks from both areas. Mods sit in an interesting place in the destiny universe with a lot of potential, and after working with Bungie I think we've shown areas that can be expanded in the future!
I also worked on the Shield Disorient Perk. Initially planned as a mod, it evolved into a perk overtime due to sandbox and project needs. This perk provides a playstyle that isn't too prevalent in the Destiny universe - the support role. Players could focus on landing well placed shots on shielded enemies to help keep a group of enemies crowd control while their teammates can focus on easily taking them out.
This perk also combos well with another shield perk called Disruption Break. One of the main weapon chase appeals for players are god-rolled weapons; weapons that have the best combination of perks possible that roll from the weapon's perk pool. Adding in Shield Disorient we knew we could create another god-roll perk combination, furthering the loot pool of appealing weapons for players to chase and increasing their investment with the game.
