Destiny 2: Forsaken
I was one of three designers that created Gambit, the new hybrid PvE/PvP competitive game mode added in Destiny 2: Forsaken. Gambit pits two teams against each other in separate but geometrically identical arenas as they seek to defeat enemies of humanity as fast as possible. The twist is that teams can periodically invade the other arena and wreak havoc against other Guardians.
How the Gambit Mode Works
Enemy AI spawn in continual waves around the map to engage players.
Defeated enemies drop Motes of Light, which Guardians can pick up and secure in a Bank in the center of the map.
Guardians can carry a maximum of 15 motes at a time. If they die before depositing, all carried motes are lost.
Depositing 5 or more motes at a time sends a “Blocker” - a Taken combatant which locks down access to a Bank as long as it lives - to the other team’s bank. Depositing 10 or 15 at once sends increasingly powerful Blockers, so players are incentivized towards risky behavior!
When a team’s Bank reaches 25 and 50 mote thresholds, an invasion portal opens which allows one player to enter the enemy team’s arena for a short time. This invader can see waypoints for all enemy players, including the number of motes each player is carrying. Defeating an enemy player that was carrying 15 motes is just delicious.
As soon as a team reaches 75 motes, a Primeval boss emerges from their Bank. The first team to defeat a Primeval wins the round.
Death Heals Primeval
Gambit originally ended as soon as one team reached 100 motes. In extremely rare cases where neither team hit 100 motes AND both teams had the same number of motes, we spawned in a tie-breaker miniboss. The first time this finally happened in a play test (several months into development) we loved it so much that we wanted to make it part of the core experience. Having a boss to rally your team around at the end of a round provided a compelling social beat.
One of the greatest challenges in creating a boss fight in destiny, especially in a competitive setting, is the DPS delta between coordinated and uncoordinated teams. The combinations of certain multiplicative abilities and exotic weapons allowed highly engaged players to melt a boss significantly (5X or more) faster than less engaged players of the same power level. We needed to find a way to give matchmade teams a fighting chance without negating the payoff that preplanning and teamwork rightfully brings coordinated teams. This was a bit of a tightrope.
Messaging for the weakening state of the Primeval is conveyed through a player status effect called "Primeval Slayer." The effect begins stacking on players automatically, 30 seconds after their Primeval has spawned. However, we found this mechanic alone to have a chilling effect in games where players would sit on their hands until the stacks began building.
We created the Primeval Envoys, a pair of powerful Taken Wizards that appear alongside the Primeval itself. Killing the Envoys shortcircuits the 30 second timer and starts building stacks of Primeval Slayer for you team immediately. Or, if you’ve already begun accruing stacks, it earns your team an additional stack.
The route we took was a high health boss that could withstand the worst melting strategies for ~20 seconds, then gradually weaken over time. This allowed coordinated teams to build a lead while still providing lagging teams a fighting chance to invade. This was crucical because the Taken Primeval bosses in Gambit feed on player death. Whenever an enemy player is killed, their Primeval recovers a % of its max health. This allows a successful invasion to totally flip the script in Gambit.
To add to the drama, once a Primeval has spawned, we replace that team's mote progress UI at the top of the screen with the health bar of the boss they're fighting. With both teams fighting a boss, it looks a bit like Street Fighter.
Creating Replayable, Reusable Encounters
Encounter markup in Destiny is usually 1:1, creating a set of firing areas and scripted behaviors for a single set of combatants. Destiny combatant races differ greatly in their placement and use; Fallen have snipers that might need to hang back, while the Hive have no snipers and may rely on brute numbers to overwhelm players.
Gambit encounters needed to have the quality feel of a handcrafted mission but they also needed to support mutiple factions (and multiple encounter types within each faction), so our standard method of markup wasn't going to be an option. I created a single set markups per map that could work for all races and encounter types by distilling the best parts of Bungie encounter practices into a flexible, master encounter system that could leverage squad metadata. This told the squads which firing areas were relevant for them.
Anchor combatants usually need to hover aroung the middle/rear of each front, ascribing value to environmental ‘hero’ set pieces. Ranged fodder should provide close support to anchors but not get close that they’re lost underfoot. Overflow ranged fodder should seek out high ground away from the fray.
Highly valuable player vantage points, such as key pieces of cover, should be fought over. For example, players taking a hut that overlooks a miniboss should be the highest priority for melee combatants to attack. After several melee combatants die in the attempt, they cede the ground to players.
Thanks to the power of metadata (and Bungie's fantastic encounter tools), we were able to craft a large number of "hand crafted" encounters in record time.
