Because it's not just about 'is there good gameplay there?,' but is it actually Ghost Recon Online gameplay," he says. Points will move, levels will change, and it can take a while before we start to hone in on what actually feels great. "At the early conception of a map, these maps will go through radical changes.
I think that's really where the dark magic of level design comes from, taking that feedback and turning it through. And then the level designers will take that feedback. "We talk about the firefights we had, whether it was fun, whether it actually felt engaging. But they also discuss the user stories people have had on each map. So, the level designer will say, 'I've got this map that's ready to go.' And so we'll get a bunch of developers into it, they'll play through it, and we'll do a couple of things."įirst, they look at heat maps, of course, seeing where people are spending time in the maps. "They'll run through it, and then they'll put it into the game. "They'll create a map that they think is fun and they'll build it in SketchUp," says Blunt. This game has been in development for three years." Map creationMap design starts with the level designers creating something they think might be fun. The reality is that this is something that's taken time to tune. "Our lead weapon designer knows more weapons than I would ever care to imagine, but basically her life is in numbers, and making sure that those key elements of the weapons do not make something that's overpowered. "We have designers just completely focused on the weapons," he added. At the end of the day, it becomes a huge, complex system of nested powers and dependencies. "So, once we've got that, then we've got the weapons system on top of that, which again, from the stats perspective, is balanced in such a way that you never have something that feels like it's overpowered against each other," he adds. Then there was a case of looking at purely systems' design - so you've got three classes, they've each got two abilities, and so how are those abilities going to work in such a way that they counteract each other? You want to have a system that is always balanced, and so you effectively design the small pieces, make sure that they're balanced, and then layer on top of that," he said.
"I think the first thing that we did was work on having a fluid cover system. "Essentially, we're building the game out of core principles," Blunt told us.
A starting point for skillsetsIn the case of GRO, they began with basic rock-paper-scissors principles for their skills, layering and nesting them as time went on. We spoke to Ubisoft Singapore's Ghost Recon Online producer Adrian Blunt to learn five important tentpoles for the creation of a new free-to-play third-person shooter. This business model is a unique challenge for any core-oriented game, as more of the industry leans in that direction.
GHOST RECON 1 IS UNFAIR SERIES
Ghost Recon Online (released in summer last year) was the first game in Ubisoft's Ghost Recon series to be built for free-to-play from the ground up.