Conditional Finality
I was given the privilege of being the design owner for the Lightfall Raid’s exotic weapon, given almost completely free reign on its design, with the only stipulation being that the weapon features two damage elements as part of its function. Based off of the stipulation, I quickly came up with a weapon that would fill multiple roles that players have been looking for, and also have its own colorful flair. Conditional Finality is the Destiny franchise’s first double barrel shotgun, and features the unique ability to fire different damage types out of each barrel, with each damage type giving unique effects to enemies it hits. The first shot will freeze enemies in place, borrowing verbs from the Stasis class in the abilities sandbox, and the second barrel will ignite enemies in a solar explosion, borrowing verbs from the Solar class in the abilities sandbox. The weapon also initially had mechanics to change its fire rate and to make frozen enemies vulnerable to solar damage to further incentivize the weapon’s “freeze and melt” identity, but these had to be scrapped due to technical limitations. I think that it ended up being for the best, however, as the weapon landed extremely well within the community, praised for both its fun factor and for not being so powerful that it encroaches on other sandbox elements or becomes unfun to play against.
A few of the weapons design elements also arose from situations that I personally wanted a better tool to use, especially in PvP. First and foremost, a shotgun that handled well and hit hard was desperately needed, and what better gun to fit that fantasy that a sawed off double barrel shotgun? The range isn’t the best, but when your back is against the wall and you need to quickly pull out a weapon that says “you should back up”, the paracausal coach shotgun does a good job at it. More importantly, Destiny’s PvP features a massive amount of different sandbox elements that can change the effective HP of an enemy player. Damage resist, overshield, healing over time, headshot reduction, reflective shields, etc. Conditional’s inherent freezing nature serves as an equalizer for players that fight against one of these many elements, as getting denied a kill due to one of these elements doesn’t matter too much when the enemy is frozen in place afterwards, or is on about a half second of borrowed time as they get ready to spontaneously combust. This both allows the weapon to serve as a sort of counter to various elements that change the default feel of fights, and a reinforce of the fantasy for a space shotgun that puts down anything that gets in your face, regardless of their strength.
Finally, though I was the design owner of Conditional, working on any exotic weapon is a massive collaboration effort as I worked with members from multiple teams across the studio to make sure the weapon landed properly within the game. Collaboration with teams like Raid and Dungeon, Narrative, Concept Art, VFX, SFX, and Abilities (to name a few), shows the amount of work required to put out an exotic into the game, and also shows my ability to collaborate with others in order to produce content for a release.
Weapon Perks
In the short 4 months I interned at Bungie, I went from having no knowledge of the engine whatsoever to designing
and implementing multiple weapon perks that are a staple part of the player’s experience today.
Back to back comparison of ability regen without and
with utilizing Bray Inheritance.
Bray Inheritance
A simple perk that rewards the player ability energy for dealing damage. The perk originally was slightly more complex and was intended to reward energy when reloading based upon hits landed beforehand (essentially a “cash in your hits” for energy system), but I realized that one of the weapons the perk was tied with was a sword. Swords can’t be reloaded (at least none of them currently), so I made a quick pivot the slightly less fancy, but still useful version that is in the game today.
Target Lock
A perk that gradually escalates the damage of the weapon it’s on over time with just one caveat: You can’t miss and you can’t stop shooting, or it gets completely reset. The original idea came from the classic perk High Impact Reserves, which gave the player gradually increasing weapon damage as their magazine size decreased, starting at the bottom half of the magazine. In theory, the perk is quite strong! Free weapon damage, and all you have to do is shoot your gun, you don’t even need to shoot at a target. The issue came with the inherent downside of the design: the best way to make use of the perk is to dump half of your bullets into a wall every time you reload, both wasting time and halving your effective ammo per magazine. Target Lock gets around this issue by providing the buff through a much more natural gameplay loop, at cost of having a much higher skill requirement to activate. The result was interesting: While the perk’s relative effectiveness was fairly in-line compared to other options, its pick rate amongst players was significantly higher. Destiny players really like perks that reward you for being skilled in duels, even if most players are better off with easier, less powerful options.
Comparison of short burst damage on target,
to a full on target spray with Target Lock.
Debug stats with Perfect Float, note “airborne_effectiveness” and “aim_deflection” stats changing to increase airborne accuracy
and reduce incoming flinch.
Perfect Float
The first perk that I made and implemented, done with the help of the newest member of the team aside from myself. The design is fairly simple: The player receives less flinch from enemy fire and increased weapon effectiveness in the air while they are in heavy combat (combat is defined as having dealt or received damage at least once every x seconds, for y amount of time). This perk is a great example of Tiger’s ability to create new perks by mixing and matching aspects of already existing perks. For this example, I was able to take the activator from the already existing Frenzy perk (Increased damage and weapon stats for being in combat) with the effects of Air Assault (kills grant increased airborne weapon effectiveness) and No Distractions (aiming down sights for a short period decreases weapon flinch). By combining the activation requirement of one perk with the effects of two other perks, I was able to create and ship a brand new perk within my first few weeks of Interning. The result was a staple perk that simply rewards the player for active gameplay, which also synergizes with another perk in the sandbox to greatly increase the quality of a weapon’s feel.
Keep Away
Keep Away’s creation as pretty simple: Take an already existing perk that’s a favorite in the community, and flip it around the make something new. The already existing perk Threat Detector rewards the player with various close range-benefiting stats for being close to other enemies (things like weapon handling, reload speed, etc.). Keep Away simply does the opposite, reward the player with long range-benefiting stats (range, accuracy) for not being close to other enemies. Stick it on a weapon that people already prefer to use at range, and it turns out to be pretty dang desirable. Perhaps even too desirable, in hindsight I’d probably give it a cooldown before being able to become active again after being deactivated from close enemies, but it’s better have something ship a little hot instead of a little cold.
Debug stats with Keep Away, note changes to “firing_accuracy” and reload duration when not near enemies. Also note the yellow accuracy cone expanding when the perk is inactive at the end of the clip.
Comparison of sustaining glaive shield energy without
and with Replenishing Aegis
Replenishing Aegis
Shortened Barrel
This isn’t a perk in the sense of all the others, but actually a novel barrel type that influences the base stats of the weapon that it goes on. I made this trait specifically for my exotic sawn-off Double Barrel shotgun, both to push it towards the desired stat package and to really set in the exotic’s unique identity that the existing barrels wouldn’t have fulfilled. The effects of the trait itself are simple: Less range, less stability, much more handling – Pretty much what you would expect from shortening a barrel on a weapon.
Legendary Weapons
Over the course of Seasons 19 and 20, I was also responsible for the design and implementation of a little over a dozen new and reprised “Legendary Weapons”. While going into detail on each weapon isn’t necessary as they don’t have near the individual depth of other sandbox elements I worked on, I think the quantity of the weapons added is a decent demonstration of my ability to add a large amount of sandbox elements for a retail release, with some of the weapons becoming a new staple in many player’s loadouts, such as the reprised Ikelos SMG v1.0.3 or the Retrofit Escapade light machine gun.
The one notable exception to the bunch was The Immortal submachine gun, a new reward for the high end PvP game mode Trials of Osiris. While most legendary weapons are similar to each other in strength, those rewarded from high end activities such as raids or the Trials of Osiris playlist are given a little extra juice in order to stand out from the pack. And boy was it juiced – While the gun itself was within the bounds of what a Trials of Osiris weapon should be in terms of its stats and perk package, I poked and prodded around with the gun to find the absolute optimal way of reaching those bounds. The result was an incredibly potent weapon in PvP, and one of the highest populations for the Trials of Osiris playlist in Destiny 2. This came at a cost, however, as the weapon rapidly rose to the top of the charts for usage in PvP activities, and in turn drew players’ ire. I quickly learned that while most players want Trials weapons do be decent at PvP, the only two types that the community really enjoys sitting at the top are Shotguns and Handcannons. Anything else, and the net fun starts to quickly careen negative. The weapon has since been nerfed and sits at a more modest position, but the entire ordeal was an important lesson of flying too close the weapon sandbox’s sun.