Last time, based on your suggestions, we came up with the following prompts for the Theme of this dungeon:

Core Direction Ideas:

• Near Future Cyber Tech
• Dragons
• Archaeology
• Charismatic, but inhuman mastermind who experiments

Let’s go ahead and apply this concept to our Skeleton:

Theme

• At the dawn of the technological age, humanity began to reflect and explore more deeply upon their origins.
• Driven deeper into the ground after lost wisdom, they came upon the ruins of an ancient civilization
• At first, just ruins, the archaeologists began to discover signs of a communal relationship between saurians and humans
• However, when the venture discovered a cache of magma warmed Dragon’s eggs, the lead archaeologist, Mi’ker Coustaeu, seized the opportunity to hold the last great hope for the return of dinosaurs hostage, espousing the virtues of keeping the extinct tightly under the control of humanity.

Characters

• Mi’ker Cousteau – primary villain, archaeologist, Indiana Jones wanna-be
• Jinelle Thaurma – saurian researcher, combined chicken eggs with dragonic dna to create simple minded “dinosaurs” to serve them
• Digger McGee – excavator, wildly enthusiastic owner of drilling, boring and blasting devices
• Sumac Martell – private securities entrepreneur
• Jordon Grimfang – (Hero) – apprentice Wizardlock, your guide to this dungeon, you shall observe Jordon’s growth during this expansion.

Purpose

• Introduce the Dragon race & Dinosaur pets to the game
• Give players a series of challenges that become increasingly difficult
• Reward loot to players who play fast and well
• Keep players hungry for more from the zone

Memorable Moments

• The Initial Speech by Jordon Grimfang, apprentice Wizardlock, about the great potential for mixing magical power and technological might
  • Frames the experience within the overall game
• The Cave-in – forces the players to make a choice about which boss they will face – as the other will be trapped away forever (till next raid reset)
• The Tracks – signs of a large, living dinosaur
• The Draconic Hatchery – the final resting place of the true Dragon’s eggs
• Mi’ker’s devastation – the attempt to destroy the eggs after losing control – and the return of the Brood Mum who sacrifices herself to protect the eggs.

Structure

Shape

The purpose of the structure in this case is to reinforce the narrative of the dungeon. We need to figure out the overall shape – we know we want there to be a decision point during the “fork in the road” cave-in that ultimately leads to the same place. So let’s rough out that shape.

This is a very simple “shoe boxes with halls” diagram that reflects the overall flow of the raid. The entrance is on the left, each box represents where a boss will be.

Landmarks

Next is to identify any major landmarks. Based the story, we have a series of events we want called out:

• The opening of the raid (Speech)
• The cave-in
• The decision point
• The dinosaur lab
• The final dragon’s nest
• The bosses themselves

At this point, the core idea is there and a talented level designer will work with a concept artist on ideas for these areas. Incredibly talented, the concept artist take the rough idea and forge it into a visual expression the entire art team can get behind.

I don’t have a concept artist on staff to do images for this blog, so let’s pretend this is what the art team came back with:

Now with that visuals asthetic in mind, the idea for how to improve these landmarks becomes clearer!

Now that we know the major playspace will be these pathway areas with golden rails, lets spice the rest of the area up a bit…

Cool, this is finally starting to get somewhere.. We’ve added some footprints to indicate something dangerous lurks ahead! (Maybe the Dino Boss is much harder than the Security boss) We’ve also created the 3 visual concepts we want to sell during this stage.

Flow

Finally, we do a quick flow guide. In this case, the flow is very simple:

This is the optimal, minimum resistance path most players are expected to take as they learn the raid zone. In this case, the flow is very simple, but in a more complex map, there might be more difficult twists, backtracking, dead-ends, etc. In those cases, the flow diagram is doubly important, because it will help you identify un-used or wasted space in your dungeon.

In this case, it’s clear that the Dino Boss is not a needed character. That’s OK – we are planning on an extra, unreachable boss each run. (Or maybe you can split your raid in half and do both simultaneously for an achievement and more loot…)

Okay, next time we’ll talk about how your team might begin executing on each piece of this raid or dungeon – how to support the content with environments, bosses, events, etc.

This is very likely to be a three or four part’er – so hang on to your hats and poke me till it’s done! Alright, let’s do this.

High Level Raid Construction:

1. Theme
   1. Characters
   2. Purpose
   3. Memorable Moments
2. Structure
   1. Shape of Raid
   2. Landmarks
   3. Obstacles
   4. Flow
3. Execution
   1. Environment
   2. Bosses
   3. Events
   4. Filler
   5. Progress Tracking
   6. Support Work
4. Testing
   1. Personal
   2. In-House
   3. PBE
   4. Live
5. Retrospective
   1. What went well
   2. What can be improved
   3. Take-aways for next time

Theme

Ideally, the theme should be a single cohesive concept that pulls the raid together. Molten Core, for example, is all about a lava cave and its denizens. Blackwing Lair was about dragons and experimentation.  Sometimes, the core concept can be clear, but its expressions varied. (For example, Ulduar)

In general, you want to start with a tight, simple theme and expounded upon it heavily in the Structure and Execution phases. This rule applies to most things in game design and leadership – set the core heart and soul, then let the more experienced implementers figure out the details.  This will lead to increased trust across the team and create opportunities for personal craftsmanship to be expressed.

Characters

Characters are the essential cast that will be used to tell the story of the raid.  In a highly complex and well-produced game like WoW, this determines which voice actors will need to be called back, which new characters need to be cast and sets in motion the concept art for any unique forms or gear those character might have.

Characters are weakly broken up into two axis:

Friends / Enemies

Major / Minor

Purpose

All raid zones generally serve a common purpose – create an elaborate shared experience, with trials, challenges and rewards to incentivize a raid group to assault the location.  However, there’s often a deeper plot purpose as well – does the raid advance some major story or capstone some long narrative that’s been built up earlier in the game?

Other times, a raid zone might be there to serve entirely as an experiment. See Malygos (Wrath of the Lich King) and Trial of the Crusader.  In these cases, there’s a hypothesis: “An entirely destructible raid zone is cool.” or  “A series of challenges without a change in location is more cost-effective and interesting”.

The more experimental the hypothesis, the smaller and more focused the raid typically is – as a developer, you want to hedge your bets appropriately. If it you find a new and effective formula, you can always scale it up. By contrast, if its a bomb… it’s better to let it go.

Memorable Moments

Finally, once the theme and purpose is in place, choosing a few key moments to convey the big parts of the story and choosing what you want to showcase and which events are worth the extra investment of time and resources. In WoW terms, this is a mixture of cinematics, events and scripted camera sequences.

Structure

(Image credit: allakazham)

One the overall theme is established, the next challenge is to figure out the physical structure of the raid.  Since most games (and people) think in 2 dimensions, the most common way of doing this is to sketch out a flat top-down drawing of the raid zone.

(Continued Next Time)

Blog followers, why don’t you guys give me a hand here – post some theme ideas and we’ll “build” this new raid zone together.

Core Direction Ideas:

• Near Future Cyber Tech
• Dragons
• Archaeology

(Part 2)

This is part 3 of my 3 part series on the Shade of Aran. You can find part 1 (here) and part 2 (here).

Last time, I had just completed the core abilities and three super abilities for Shade of Aran.

The Benefits of Working Fast

Because the core theme for the Shade of Aran was figured out early on, the raid team knew what his major themes were going to be very quickly. As a result, it was possible to get voice over lines written to perfectly fit the encounter.

Scott had asked me how many unique lines I thought we needed, I told him six should be enough. He chuckled and asked why I needed so many. Grinning sheepishly, I insisted we needed a couple variations for each super ability. Placatingly, he agreed, so long as I roughed out the lines myself. He raised an eyebrow when he saw the line for Atiesh.

Me: Afrasiabi told me you’d object and he told me to say the following.

I unfurled a note from my pocket and read it flatly.

Me: When (not if) Scott objects, just tell him I told you it would be the greatest thing in the game ever and that it will be remembered by anyone with the staff for generations. Legendaries are not meant to be so easily forgotten.

Scott: *exasperated* Fine. It’s just a line anyways.

Little things like this are the benefit of being ahead of the schedule on the job – you have room to add a little extra.

Quality Assured – Let the Iteration Begin!

Version 1)

Arcane:

• DD: Arcane Missiles:
• Super: Explosion
• CC: Polymorph

Fire:

• DD: Fireball
• Super: Flame Wreathe
• CC: Dragon’s Breath

Frost:

• DD: Frost Bolt
• Super: Circular Blizzard
• CC: Chains of Ice

With the above ability layout I contacted the QA team about starting playtesting.  The fight was far from finished, but it wasn’t clear to me what problems needed to be solved most. Fortunately, the QA night lead at the time  was able to pull together 9 other folks (I’ve forgotten your names, if you read this and you were anyone on the Shade of Aran testing team, let me know so I can credit you here! 🙂 to hop on my server, make gear and try out the Shade of Aran.

This was back before the days of hot-loading – any time I found a bug or had a tweak to make to the fight, it required me to shut down the server and reboot it – an agonizing 10 minute long process that wouldn’t even guarantee the updates would work.

After about 10 pulls, they congregated together downstairs and sat on the ping-pong tables in the kitchen. I walked in and was greeted warmly – a shock, considering they had just spent the last hour dying on my behalf.

Their notes were as follows:

• Fight is very flat and predictable.
• Very frustrating when the same super ability is used back to back
• Frustrating to have two forms of CC in Arcane Phase

Wait… two?

… that’s right. I slowed the enemy team so it would create a greater moment of tension to escape the explosion – and allow dispellers to save a sluggish ally if paying attention.

• (continued)
• Being Polymorphed before the explosion sucks – you end up disoriented
• Dragon’s Breath sucks – you often wander out of the Flame Wreath against your control.
• Chasing Aran as he blinks constantly around the room is annoying.
• Too much damage from the constant barrages of Magic.

I removed the polymorph from the Arcane Phase. Then did a little extra work to add a phase-switcher that ensured the same super would never be used back to back and that all three phases would complete before the cycle reset.

Ice -> Fire | Arcane -> The one not picked.

The next step was to remove the blinking around. After two pulls, I could see the melee were running around more than they were dealing damage. It was utterly repetitious. I needed a pace break… or two… badly.

• Shade of Aran runs out of mana.

That’s when I thought back to Geoff’s laughter, I decided we needed a touch of humor. Having just removed Polymorph from Shade, it seemed fitting to put it back in for a homage to the players. I added Mass Polymorph.

Mass Polymorph: Upon reaching 20% mana, Aran polymorphs the entire raid group, then sits down to take a nice relaxing drink. While polymorphed, all players regenerate their health to full. Upon completion, casts Pyroblast.

Pyroblast: Deals 80% of the player’s current health as fire damage.

This sequence was just the break the fight needed. It added a little humor, a pace break, a huge tension moment and plenty of warning beforehand.

• Off-tanks are bored during the fight and it feels strange there are no adds.

Thinking back, I probably should have stopped here, but I remembered Scott’s comment about Water Elementals and felt guilty. I spawned two water elementals when Shade reached 20% health.

Version 2)

It’s not really accurate to say that all of these things happened at once. There were probably 20 or 30 different playtests on Shade, but these were the big iterations. For reference, Shade of Aran looked like this now:

Arcane:

• DD: Arcane Missiles:
• Super: Explosion
• CC: Polymorph

Fire:

• DD: Fireball
• Super: Flame Wreathe
• CC: Dragon’s Breath

Frost:

• DD: Frost Bolt
• Super: Circular Blizzard
• CC: Chains of Ice

40% health – Spawns 2 Water Elementals for 45 seconds. 

20% mana – Cast Mass Polymorph, followed by Empowered Pyroblast

It was then that the raid group just started standing in the middle of the circular blizzard, completely avoiding the attack. Calling to mind Joe Shely’s suggestion, I attached the AoE counterspell to Shade.

During one of these playtests, Scott came in and watched.

Scott: Wait, you added Water Elementals? Really?

Me: Er… yeah?

Scott: Don’t you think that fight has enough going on?

Me: I do, but the guys playing it insist the danger moment is needed.

Scott: Well, you’re not really getting much out of it. The tank just taunts the two elementals and they get ignored until they despawn.

Me: Yeah… what would you do?

Scott: Well, I would make them ranged and force someone to actually get aggro on them. That would mean the same person tanking Shade’s attacks can’t just pick them up and ignore them. Finally, make them last until killed.

Me: Okay, I’ll do it.

Version 3)

Updated.

Arcane:

• DD: Arcane Missiles:
• Super: Explosion
• CC: Polymorph

Fire:

• DD: Fireball
• Super: Flame Wreathe
• CC: Dragon’s Breath

Frost:

• DD: Frost Bolt
• Super: Circular Blizzard
• CC: Chains of Ice

40% health – Spawns 4 Ranged Water Elementals until killed.

20% mana – Cast Mass Polymorph, followed by Empowered Pyroblast

This version went over very well and I decided it was time to add some polish.

Listening to feedback, changing quickly in response to feedback and sticking to a strong theme go far on any fight.

Team Spirit

Me: Hey Scott, now that I’ve added a couple more important abilities to this fight… Can we get more lines?

Scott: Uhm, maybe… how important is it?

Often in your life, when people ask you how important something is, they will ask you this needing a clear answer of priorities. Other times, they just want to be assured their effort is going to be appreciated. This was the latter case.

Me: Important.

Scott: Well, we had to delay VO by a week or two anyways.

Realizing I had no idea how Voice-Overs worked, I figured I should ask.

Me: Do we just grab someone from the office at random… or is there a process here?

Scott: Oh, yeah, well, its pretty simple, you fill out a sheet with each line and a hired actor reads it. Often picked from four or five different voice actors who sent a sample into our VO guy.

Me: That’s it?

Scott: Pretty much.  Its a lot more process than it used to be back when we grabbed random people from the office to record lines.

Note that the process now is dramatically different. 

Scott: Well, we’re in luck, this time we’ve got Micky helping us out. You should go downstairs and meet him. Maybe if you ask really nicely, he’ll add in the lines you need.

Me: I am! How did you know?

Micky: Scott sent me an email. Hahah, how can I help you?

I went through a quick explanation of the situation and how I needed  more lines to handle the situation where Shade of Aran sits to drink and summons the water elementals. 

Micky: Well, you have great timing! We’re not recording that for another week and I’m actually going to finish the lines in a couple of days. Do you mind explaining the situation to me? Some of these situations don’t make sense.

We looked at the lines together, they were brilliant. Thankfully, the quotes I wrote for the two variations of each super ability went the way of the dinosaurs (with the exception of “Burn you hellish fiends!”). However, it was then that I realized that the writing team had no idea how the fights played out so they generally made very generic lines that could fit anywhere into an encounter. 

Me: Did anyone sit down and explain to you the encounter?

Micky: No! But I would love to!

Together, we ran through the abilities, talked about the funny things that had happened during the QA testing and generally laughed about how players would feel when turned into sheep. 

Micky: Thank you! I am really excited to work on this now. I promise some of these lines… well, I’ll make sure they’re alright and the actor does ’em justice.

He gave a wry grin as I left the office. 

It was then that I realized just how important knowing your writers can be. When connected and aware of the situation, they are ready, willing and excited to do the best work possible to suit their characters.

Exciting and inspiring the people you work with directly dramatically improves the quality of their work.

I had a similar experience working with artists and the other designers. Scott helped me get some strong “cast” VFX to make it clearer when Shade was swapping between super abilities. Rob Foote helped find an environmental artist to fix a collision issue in the ceiling.

Shipping It

I worked with the raid team, testing the fight over and over again until we got it tuned just right. The mana costs and health thresholds raced against each other in a tight fashion. The raid seemed to be in a great place. I will always remember fondly those afternoons of watching the QA team patiently rehearsing Shade while I figured out the right damage and health amounts to pace the fight out correctly.

It was a huge testament to their patience and tenacity that the fight turned out as well as it did. Unfortunately, it came with a cost I didn’t realize.

Scott: Hey, when is Shade going to be finished?

Me: He’s pretty close… why do you ask?

Scott: Well, apparently, you’ve used more than four times the QA time of any other designer in the last month… and they’re starting to believe that you don’t have a clue of what you’re doing.

Me: What?!? Well, I mean this is my first boss.

Scott: Yeah… Look, this doesn’t have to be perfect. Finish up what you’re doing today, I want you to help me spawn the trash in the rest of the dungeon.

Me: Well, crap, the last thing I need to do is come up with a game over timer. They’ve found a way to drag the fight out for 20 minutes by bringing six healers to avoid risk in the fight.

Scott: Well, hurry up. Reuse something or just death touch them. I dunno, but be quick about it.

I rushed and brought back the old Volley spells – spawning four Mirror Images of Aran, if the fight went on past 12 minutes. It was simple, dirty and got the job done.

Sometimes simple is the best way to handle exploits.

Finally, almost a year after working on Shade, he went live. Delighted, I got my raid group together and we ran Karazhan, chipping away at the bosses, week after week, until we finally got to Aran. Once there, we were about to pull when my raid leading buddy, “Bloodywolf” whispered me.

[Bloodywolf] whispers: You should really link them to the chant video.

You whisper: Chant video?

<iframe width=”420″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2GPY-P2we4″ frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>

… horrified, I realized my mistake.

Flame Wreathe targeted 3 raid members at random, the intention being that those three people would not leave their circles… but I forgot to add a check to confirm that the person leaving the flame wreathe was the one who was targeted by it.

I rushed into work to fix it…

Scott: What are you doing?

Me: I NEED to fix Flame Wreath.

Scott: What? Why?

Me:  They aren’t playing it the way it’s supposed to go… they’re making everyone stop moving.

Scott: Well, whatever you do, those changes won’t get in until 2.2, when the next raid zone goes out, at which point it won’t matter as much.  So… no, you’re not changing anything.  Players will have spent months learning this strategy and I don’t think you should change it on them.

Me: What?!

Scott: Yes. Don’t change it. Next time, make better use of your QA time and keep something like this from slipping through.

I will confess, I was aghast. I knew there was a core of truth to what he was saying… but it still bothers me to this day that the mechanic was never fixed. I also can’t deny that I still feel bitter about that call. It’s a long, unsightly, if meme-creating blemish on my work. I considered going back every expansion and quietly patching it in.  But sometimes, a mistake is twice as memorable as a victory. 

I will admit, after that point, I was far more fearful of asking for QA time on my future raids – something that stuck and nagged at me for years.

Me: Hey Scott, now that you’ve played it. What is the one thing that you would have changed about the fight?

Scott: *turned back* I get the whole tension thing, but I still don’t think you ever needed those Water Elementals.

Me: … Yeah. Perhaps not.

Nothing you create can be perfect. But by straining to try, you achieve something better than “just good enough”. When you reflect, it’s easy to be distracted by the negatives. It’s easy to forget in a moment all of the hard work and effort that goes into crafting even the simplest raid boss.