Destiny 2 - Crota’s End Raid
Crota’s End is the latest raid added to MMO / FPS Destiny 2 - it is a 6-player endgame activity that requires a high degree of teamwork, coordination, and mastery. The raid was adapted from its Destiny 1 version but was extensively redesigned to fit into Destiny 2.
Studio: Bungie
Team Size: Large AAA
Platforms: PC, Playstation, Xbox
My Role: Associate Technical Designer (Object Tech)
My responsibilities:
Create complex game objects and character buffs via in-engine setup and scripting.
Collaborate with activity designers, world artists, VFX artists, and audio designers to make sure content is easy to work with for all disciplines.
Work with the design team and test via playtests and design discussions to iterate on the raid.
More Detail
Object Tech
My primary role at Bungie is to set up complex game objects. My objects need to be easy to work with for the activity designers who drive the vision for encounters in Destiny. It’s also essential that they be easy to use for world artists, VFX artists and audio designers. I was the primary person responsible for object tech for the Crota’s End raid.
A great example of this work is the Chalice of Light, which is an object that appears in all of the encounters in Crota’s End, and serves as a mechanical through-line that ties the raid together. The initial concept for the object was created by an activity designer. I took the design and worked with the team to realize the object in-game, and to iterate on our approach to the Chalice and all its related mechanics.
Players can interact with the Chalice to receive a buff, which they then must pass around via further interactions. If the Chalice is passed at the right time, players receive an Enlighted buff that allows them to activate various different mechanics throughout the raid. If the Chalice is passed too early the Enlightenment is wasted, and if it’s passed too late the player holding the Chalice is killed. This setup enforces tight teamwork for players who want to succeed in the raid. I was responsible for implementing these rules in-game, and making sure they were robust and difficult to exploit.
Cross-Discipline Collaboration
I worked closely with world artists, VFX artists and audio designers to make sure our objects were beautifully depicted in-game. We also created many details that made the raid’s mechanics more readable to players.
For example, there are a couple encounters in the raid where players control a zone to build a phantom bridge, allowing them to progress. These zones are threatened by enemies, so players will be preoccupied with combat and do not necessarily have an easy opportunity to turn their camera and look at the bridge, so it can be hard to know how much of it is built. We implemented VFX and audio details that are perceptible anywhere in the control zone, so players intuitively understand the status of the bridge without looking at it. The largest effects fire off when the bridge is completely built, which gets the players attention and helps them understand the state of the encounter has progressed.
I helped create features like this by communicating closely with my artist and audio designer colleagues, and making sure any data they needed from game objects or scripts to create their effects were exposed to them in a user-friendly way.
Design and Iteration
I was an active participant in design discussion and playtests throughout the development of the raid. I worked closely with activity design, test and other disciplines to collaboratively move the raid towards a higher and higher level of quality.
We were able to quickly react to learnings from regular playtesting to iterate on our designs, and improve every encounter in the activity. I often lead the charge on prototypes and rapid iterations on the object tech side of the raid.
Ultimately, the raid was warmly received by the Destiny community, and I am really proud of my work on it.