On World Boss I supported the design team and delivered critical feedback. My work included:

  • Constant playtesting and balancing feedback as a long-time FPS player
  • Direction on controls, game feel, weapon feel, player movement
  • Core Game Loop and World Boss mechanic ideation
  • Level Design and Level Blockout assistance
  • Solving for low and high skill players
  • Designed Experience Gem system
  • Championing high framerates and high gameplay readability

World Boss was a collaborative effort between Playside Studios and popular Youtubers “Fresh” and “Lazarbeam”. The inception of the game idea being, what would a .IO game look like as a multiplayer shooter? That may sound easier than it looks, but it became quite the challenge for the team to reconcile this core idea with the reality of a skill-based shooter.

It was a fun design challenge.

In general, .IO games are “flat”. Meaning, the skill ceiling is quite low, with a low barrier of entry. The appeal is that any player can jump in and with luck and patience find their way to the upper echelons and a major threat.

However, with an FPS game, the skill difference between players becomes much more apparent and harder to design for. Knowing this, I helped the Youtubers and our game designers shape the game design to level the playing field for lower and higher skill players.

Being a skill-based FPS, high skill players could quickly rock a server with good aim and movement. To combat this, I pushed to implement a few key aspects that could put high skill players in positions of risk, and give lower skilled players ways to climb up the leaderboard without directly confronting skilled players.

Flying Drones
These harmless units spawn and fly around the map and drop a decent amount Experience Gems when destroyed. They don’t require much aim to destroy, and they also can be found in lower-action parts of the map, where skilled players likely aren’t.

Kill XP
Players that kill enemies that are lower level than them don’t receive as much experience. Conversely, Players that kill enemies that are higher level receive a lot of experience. This is a soft incentive for high skill players to seek out higher level enemies and not waste as much time killing lower skilled players. An emergent runoff effect here is that you’ll often see groups of lower skilled players grouping up on higher skilled players, aiming for those big XP jumps.

Generators
Generators are large stationary objects that drop huge amounts of Experience Gems when attacked. They don’t require much effort to destroy and can be found, again, in lower-action parts of the map (and around the middle of the map too, for brave players).

To help facilitate leveling the playing field, and to create more dynamic and emergent combat, I introduced physicality to the experience system in the form of Experience Gems. It’s a simple technique, but not only does it get players to take risks by having to go out in the open and in odd areas to pick up Gems, but it also just feels much more rewarding to pickup experience rather than just having it as a UI element.

This was soon iterated on to add multiple tiers of Gems, further making it more visceral and important to kill higher level Players, as they may start dropping Yellow and Red Gems which grant lots more experience.