Medium: PC, Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG)
For: Carbine Studios
Title: Game Designer
Tools: Proprietary
As a designer on WildStar, I was often tasked with being a problem solver. One of the major design goals for WildStar was to assess the current state of its systems and note improvements all around. This includes things like quality-of-life, player facing improvements; as well as internal systems to improve both performance and process, eventually taking ownership of those systems.
Systems Design:
I was the owner for the tutorial system of WildStar, an event driven system that flashes small or large pop-ups to the player, conveying information. Implementing tutorials is a complex process that requires both art and engineering involvement, due to the way the Tutorial system was originally designed. I was originally brought on board to create tutorials, but was eventually given the system to help improve the quality of the process and to help convey to engineering exactly what the needs are for each tutorial.
I was also responsible for are the Holo-wardrobe system, as well as the Guild social system. The holo-wardrobe system allowed players to store their armor sets across their account, apply looks or other costumes to their character, and well as adjusting the color (“dyeing”) of each outfit. I am responsible for creating and setting the prices for each dye, as well as working with art to create armor sets and costumes.
The Guild system is the typical guild system seen in most MMOs, where like-minded players with similar interests are able to talk to each other on a dedicated chat channel.
Being able to navigate a database and handle large amounts of data allowed me to track and edit in-game interactables and vendors.
I also did design work for microtransactions and in-store purchases when the game was transitioning from paid subscription to free-to-play. Because of my ability to keep track and work safely with large amounts of data, I was brought on board late in the process to make sure our store was populated correctly. I also created items for sale in the store, such as costumes and new mounts.
Technical Design:
There was work that I did that was non-player facing, but generally valuable to Carbine and WildStar as a whole. I wrote design specs for redoing how designers create new actions and spells in WildStar (sample below), as well as faction transfers (sample below). I also overhauled the designer pipeline to help localization identify groups of content. I also established metrics for tracking and analysis.
