RPG Mechanics for Hero Progression
Identifying the Problem Space
Mythforce launched into Early access with four characters, each having three active abilities.
For each of these twelve abilities I designed three upgrades, then documented & completed approval stakeholder review processes on them. These intentionally varied in scope, with creative vision holders stating each improvement should be visibly noticeable to players.
User flow
Players level up a character by completing dungeon runs with them. On reaching certain levels, they are awarded character-specific ability points that may now be assigned on the Loadout menu before any new run. They are required to activate ability upgrades of varying costs.
Example Ability — Familiar
BASE ABILITY
Maggie summons a stationary turret for 15 seconds: shoots Arcane projectiles to attack enemies in range
UPGRADE A
Increases rate of fire, changes to Fire element attack
[requires flame VFX added to be visibly noticeable]
UPGRADE B
Increases size & damage, but reduces the rate of fire
UPGRADE C
Adds Homing, increases effective range, travels slow
These upgrades for Familiar can be activated in any combination. Players may combine all these upgrades ( A+B+C ) to allow Maggie’s turret to shoot flaming, large, homing projectiles.
Or they may choose to distribute those ability points more evenly across her other abilities.
Adapting to Design and Production Constraints
As we adjusted the scope and combat design constraints, I sought gameplay programmers’ and other designers’ input to update the original set of 36 ability upgrade proposals.
Gradually our production team reduced the scope to delivering 24/36 and then down again to 12/36—only one functional upgrade per ability—for Early Access Launch. These abilities were intended to become part of the drip feed of content to create excitement for early adopters.
However, thanks to strategic design choices, we had 24 fully-implemented upgrades before launch. In addition to the 12 base abilities. All of these upgrades were submitted to the build for the next content patch.
I participated in the UI design process for the Loadout menu (see expanded header image) that allows selecting Ability Upgrades in Early Access versions of MythForce.
The UI team alerted me they could not deliver a functional Loadout menu six weeks before build lock. Without it, players would be missing content for upgrades & hero progression. So, for the Early Access launch build, the front-end is one I designed & implemented in Blueprint myself.
My self-directed UI implementation tasks included adding dynamic text to display in the menu. These fields read Data Asset attributes from the ability upgrade being referenced.
When the player selected options from their Loadout, these dynamic texts fields provided marked up statistical and contextual information to help them make decisions.
When the gameplay values of any ability are tuned by designers, the player-facing values seen in the Loadout menu automatically display new values.
This UI design for the Loadout menu also describes the upgrade cost of each ability. Upgrade cost was intended as an intermediate Early Access feature.
But the console release of MythForce diverted from these plans, introducing the Constellation metagame upgrade system instead.
