Raid Design Thread:

This thread is about Eater of Worlds and why having an experience goal is important when you don't have endless time to iterate on a design.

https://twitter.com/trexus183/status/1261689192897294338

I think my first pitch for Eater of Worlds was, "what if Ravenholm (HL2) was on the Leviathan? And this is the place where NOBODY onboard the ship wants to go anymore because something awful happened?"

(Kinda what Crown of Sorrows ended up being, I guess?)

1) I often hear from players, "Why are bosses just scaled up versions of existing enemies?"

This is a tale about #gamedev that's pretty common among most studios. Stay a while and listen...

[thread] 2) You're a designer and just started early design work on the next project. You're in a meeting talking about what the next boss will/should be.

The lead says, "We have 6 months from start to launch, which means in reality, we have a lot less time."

During dev on Crota, we would frantically move from one side of the arena to the other when Crota moved. It never occurred to us that people would stand on the center windowsill, negating the purpose of his movement.

We learned a lot from that raid. Player containment is not a thing. If players can get somewhere, they will, even if it doesn’t seem advantageous at the time.

Everywhere in your encounter space needs to have a purpose. If it doesn’t, try to cut it.