Thread by @JordanAjlouni

For four years I was a combat designer on Deep Silver Volition's Agents of Mayhem and lead designer on the AoM DLC.
I learned a ton of design lessons from my work making kits for our agents and I wanted to dive deeper into my work.

So let's talk about the character Kingpin.

Quick recap for those who don't know. Agents of Mayhem is a third person open world action-shooter that focused on fast, nearly frenetic movement and explosive action.

You played with a squad of three agents each with a weapon, a special ability, and a super ability

At any time, you can instantly swap to another agent in your squad.

We designed agents from the top down based on their visual and narrative concept. We wanted them to have unique gameplay while still complementing each other.

Kingpin was a hard one to get right.

Kingpin is an alternate reality Pierce from Saints Row where he becomes a successful gang leader.

In a world of futuristic cyber pirates, Russian super soldiers with ice powers, and John Wick style super assassins, "Street Gang Leader" isn't much of a backstory to work with.

Our initial rough design gave him a short range SMG and Molotov cocktails. This was a time where our designs were a bit more grounded, but when wanted to turn our agents into SUPER agents, Kingpin was lagging behind
I was tasked with redesigning Kingpin's kit to stand out.

When it comes to ideating, I start by finding the constraints and inspirations.

Pierce was our biggest throwback to the Saints Row games so I looked towards the player's abilities in Saints Row and I landed on the weapon wheel.

The Saints Row weapon wheel allows the player to instantly swap between 8 weapons. The combat, and therefore the weapon wheel, focuses on letting the player play how they want. It's a celebration of variety and isn't overly concerned with things like ammo or perfect balance.

So I wanted to translate that celebration of weapon variety into a game with much more rigid rules and an eye towards balance.

Additionally, I couldn't just add in a weapon wheel. The player has to track 3 kits while playing so a single agent can't be that complex or "heavy".

There was also another issue. No one agent can be the "right" answer. Why would a player swap to their other two agents when they already have the perfect agent? The versatility required by the weapon wheel guaranteed Kingpin would overshadow other agents.

I wanted weapon variety but with heavy restrictions. So I had Kingpin cycle between three weapons in a set rotation. To dissuade players from just cycling back to their favorite, they could powerup their current weapon through use to gain an extra effect when they swapped.

The tree weapons were...
An SMG - Good damage output, and satisfying.
"Charge" Pistol - AoE damage, hold to charge fire
Flare Gun - Arcing attacks, applies DoT stacks in a large radius.
(My love for Flare Guns as a weapon in games runs deep and is worth its own twitter thread)

I want like to take this tweet to, once again, formally apologize to the VFX team. I took one agent and turned it into three agents worth of work for them.
@landofkirk2 @glittervelocity @smb_ryan, I am forever in your debt.

Long story short, the kit didn't work. I didn't say this was a success story.

Tracking what weapon you had, what weapon was next, the current weapon's charge, and the playstyle of all three weapons blew up Kingpin's complexity budget. Worst yet, players ignored the kit and only used their preferred weapon.

At this point, deadlines were approaching and we needed to lock in the agents' kits. So we had to go into triage mode. We couldn't redesign Kingpin and we had to reuse as much as possible because it was too expensive to make anything new.

The solution was to simplify. We split up the three weapons so you can only equip one weapon at a time but can change them at base via the progression system.
Each weapon supported a different playstyle to make him a jack of all trades agent to fit into any squad.

The kit didn't work as well in practice.
The flare gun and the charge pistol were hidden behind a random loot based progression system so most players only used the SMG.
As a result, Kingpin lost a lot of stand out power since he was a little bit of everything.

And that's how he shipped! He wasn't a failure but also wasn't an outright success.

Here's his kit: agents-of-mayhem.fandom.com/wiki/Kingpin

I didn't even get into his mayhem ability, the incredible animations by @EricBalistrieri, how I had to sell everyone on flare guns, or why his reload animation is him throwing away his weapon and teleporting in a new gun (so we didn't have to animate three reload anims).

Kingpin wasn't my favorite agent I made, but I learned A LOT about design, collaboration, and scope from him. (Plus, the flare gun is my favorite weapon I designed. It is the only weapon that rewards the game's verticality and triple jump. It also looked INCREDIBLE.)

Anyway, thanks for reading! Agents of Mayhem wasn't a financial success, but it was a creative one. The team did amazing work and the ONLY reason it shipped was from the dedication and talent of those in the trenches. I miss you, my AoM team <3

After a night's sleep, I remembered one more design takeaway from this thread and honestly I should have led with it.

It is really easy to over design.

It seems like you can always add more to a design to get the experience you want.

The truth is, if it might sound too complicated, it 100% is. If it sounds fine, it's likely still too complicated, and if it seems too simple, you've probably found the sweet spot.

So check yourself. When you have a complex feature, ask yourself "What's the simplest version of this that would deliver the same core experience". It's a good exercise and truthfully, that simplification is usually the right answer.

One last shout out, the all remote AA studio I currently work at, Digimancy Entertainment, is hiring! We are working on an unannounced AA Action RPG. The team is full of wonderful, experienced people. Come work with me!
digimancygames.com/jobs

Sooooo this is the most viral I've ever been, so my sound cloud is my indie game company, @oil_leak_games! Give us a follow and check out our new game, Mechanical MainFrame, as part of the Locally Sourced Winter Bundle!
itch.io/b/786/locally-…