by Magistrate - 6 years ago     show comments

Encounters–or the big, flashy, climatic boss fights players see in dungeons and raids–are among World of Warcraft‘s most iconic features, as well as its most refined. Today, Blizzard brought an encounter design workshop closer than it’s ever been: directly in front of players at this year’s BlizzCon.

Brainstorming of any kind is a chaotic, energetic stage where anything can happen. As such, organizing it into a post somewhat streamlines and simplifies an otherwise highly organic experience. If this kind of thing interests you, be sure to watch its VOD when it becomes available with your BlizzCon 2017 Virtual Pass.

Preproduction

A dungeon concept has to exist before any real work can begin on its bosses. A Preproduction Meeting helps to answer a couple key questions:

• What is the setting for this dungeon?
• What is its story and lore?
• What is the cast of bosses and characters?

Generally speaking, the setting, story, and end boss are known upfront. These elements help decide the direction for other bosses, the layout of the dungeon, and where the dungeon will be located in the open world.

For our example, the team had already decided on a dungeon in Stormsong Valley. From here, the quest designer assigned to the zone helps fill in a lot of gaps, bringing the lore, races, culture, and geography into play. Stormsong Valley has some distinguishing features that shape how this dungeon will develop:

• It’s part of the Alliance-controlled continent of Kul’tiras, a human-heavy zone.
• Stormsong Valley is the northern most zone of Kul’tiras, visually beautiful and traditional.
• The Valley is a center of production for Kul’tiras: food, materials, and, most importantly, ship construction.
• The people of Stormsong are almost single-mindedly determined to produce the highest volume of the most powerful ships in the Kul’tiras (and Alliance) navy.

Moreover, Stormsong Valley is largely controlled by the Sea Priests, a powerful and domineering religious order that has power over the sea, storms, and wind. The Sea Priests can do something that sets the Kul’tiras navy apart from any other in the Alliance or the world: they bless and enchant each ship with runic bindings, granting them the power of the sea, itself. They do this from their stronghold, the Shrine of the Storm. This fortress, by necessity, would also have to border on the sea. This will be the setting for the dungeon.

All of these lore and geographic elements contribute to the scope of the dungeon. From here, the dungeon goes into an Art Kickoff Meeting.

From here, artists and level designers take the dungeon to the visual level. This phase asks questions like:

• What is the physical space of the dungeon?
• What are the dungeons rooms, and what are their purposes?

The Shrine of the Storm will take many nautical themes to heart, including the enormous kraken figure that serves as its dramatic centerpiece. This and other details are inspired from concept art, which in turn inspires the designers to hone in on certain themes and concepts.

This concept brought some interesting features forward:

• Shrine of the Storm takes place on an island.
• Bridges play a central role in the structure and traversing of this island.
• The kraken is a central, dramatic icon binding the dungeon and area together.
• A channel runs under the main bridge, where newly-christened ships pass through.
• The island and surrounding areas are rife with cliffs and ledges.
• There is a central structure or chamber.

All of these elements help develop the 3D block out of the dungeon, which helps the encounter team see a physical, unfinished space to work with. While the art team is working on polishing up this outer zone, the next phase of the dungeon design begins: production.

Production

A dungeon includes several bosses, and Shrine of the Storm is no exception. For the limited-time workshop, the team focused on the first boss of the dungeon, although they have noted dungeon spaces for at least three.

Above, players enter the (tentatively designed) dungeon at the usual swirly marker in the bottom-middle. From here, the cliffs and geography come into play: players hike up the underside of the Shrine, underneath the main bridge and kraken body, skirting the deadly drop to the channel below.

The first boss will be located on the first skull marker–on a raised platform overlooking the channel and looking up to the Shrine.

From here, the architecture theme of bridges places players on a wide, lower bridge spanning the channel, overlooking ships below. They wind through the rocky, tiered countryside to the second boss marker, and then cross the dramatic main bridge. Across the main bridge, they cross under a huge kraken tentacle, and then into the Shrine proper to face the final boss.

For our workshop, the team brainstormed the first boss, located on the raised platform.

Brainstorming

This first boss, they determined, will be an immense, powerful water elemental–possibly larger than any water elemental we’ve ever seen.

“There are no bad ideas!” While this is the motto of brainstorming for Blizzard, this means developers will raise many, many bad ideas. But every bad idea can inspire a good one in a team environment, and this collaborative process is what they thrive on.

While the workshop is much more all over the place, concerns essentially boil down to these:

• What is the goal of the encounter?
• What is the boss’s theme?
• How does the boss move (if at all)?
• What are the main phases of the fight?
• What are the boss’s main abilities?
• How does each roll (DPS, Healer, Tank) interact with the boss?

There are encounters where the boss is more ambiguous, like the furnace in Blackrock Foundry. For this encounter, the team decided on a single entity, a water elemental. The goal is to defeat the elemental.

They decided along the way that the water elemental would have two themes: a water theme and a void theme. The void theme stems from the Sea Priests, who seem to have some connection to this power, however indirectly. The tentacles on its face (“chintacles”) also play into the void vibe.

While many elementals (Immerseus, Ragnaros, etc.) remain stationary, the team decided this elemental would be more mobile. This may include walking around the platform, and it may involve transforming into a tidal wave and rushing across the platform.

For most dungeon encounters, the team tries to keep bosses to at most two phases, and with only a handful of mechanics.

Encounter Ideas (Tentative)

• Phase A: Players face off against the immense water elemental, dealing damage, staying alive, and trying to remain on the platform.
  • Elemental might rush across the platform in an immense tidal wave, dealing big damage and possibly knocking players off the platform.
  • Elemental might use a water jet “hadouken” beam to deal damage and shoot a single player off the platform.
  • Elemental might slam its hands down on the platform, devouring a single player with its “chintacles” or shooting the tentacles into the floor, causing them to rise in random locations for players to avoid.
• Phase B: When players burn down a percentage of the boss’s health, or when a boss energy meter reaches a certain point, phase B begins. The elemental will either melt or break into several copies of itself, all of which have the same abilities as the main boss (water jet, tidal wave, devour players), making this phase damage-intense and likely to knock players off. The focus of this phase is to remove water from the boss so it’s only a void creature in the next phase.
  • Each “add” (mini version of the boss) has a health pool. When it’s killed, it either deals more damage to the main boss or leaves behind a puddle of purified water, detracting from the water of the main boss in phase A.
  • Players might be able to focus on cleave or AoE for added damage against a group of the adds.
  • The adds would probably be threat immune, so DPS have to burn them down before their combined mechanics wipe the group.
  • After all adds are defeated, the boss coalesces again and we return to phase A.
  • Another idea the team tossed around: have one of the adds randomly have either the elementals’ bracers or some kind of “heart”–when this add is killed, players can attack this object to deal damage to the boss and force phase A again.
• Phase A (part 2): Elemental is now reduced to its void form and players must continue burning it down in a possibly higher-damage version of the original phase A.

Clarification

At this point, there’s a lot of ideas on the table. The lead encounter designer assigned to the boss would have to iron out things like how and when tanks gain agro of the boss, or what phases are especially challenging for healers.

Other considerations might be more mechanical. For instance, if either the tidal wave or water jets are so quick that they necessitate a mobility spell (like Blink, Charge, etc.), that might not be fair to classes. The fight should be doable without requiring such abilities, as some classes don’t have them–at the same time, a mobility spell should still make the encounter easier, as it’s another tool at the player’s hands.

Final Phases

From here, the lead encounter designer will sit down to make a paper design–a written plan of final decisions for the encounter based on brainstorming work. This process may take hours or several days, but when they’re done, the encounter designer will email it off to the rest of the team.

From here, the encounter will be a loop of feedback and iteration, smoothing out the encounter until it’s ready for playtesting. The team (and possibly others) will challenge the boss with many different team compositions before marking it ready for alpha/beta or PTR testing by a larger group of Blizzard employees or players.

While this overview of a workshop is probably much shorter than is typical for Blizzard, this boss will actually be one in the game, and many of these ideas will be taken into consideration as this first boss of Shrine of the Storm is designed. So, look forward to seeing our watery friend in Kul’tiras–as the battle for Azeroth begins!