Destiny 2: Season of Plunder

General Information

Role: Activity Designer

Genre: MMO, FPS, Live Service

Engine: Proprietary Bungie Engine

Platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One, PS5, Xbox Series X/S

Developer: Bungie, Inc.

Release Date: August 23, 2022

Tools

Overview

Season of Plunder was my first full production cycle for a Destiny 2 seasonal content release. During this release I served as an activity designer primarily on the Pirate Hideout set of missions and was later brought onto the Ketchcrash activity to help finish it out. During this time I brought multiple short missions from concept to finished product. I worked closely with the World Art, Tech Design, VFX, Audio, and Test teams to ensure the missions met experience and quality goals.

Responsibilities

Took missions from concept to polished final product:

  • Created and pitched concepts
  • Wrote and maintained detailed documentation
  • Designed, scripted, and iterated on mission flow
  • Designed, scripted, and iterated on combat encounters
  • Ran regular playtests to receive feedback and identify risks and issues
  • Polished features and fixed bugs

Collaborated with other disciplines:

  • Worked with the World Art team to identify locations to place the missions and make adjustments to complement the combat and gameplay present
  • Worked with the Feature Owner and World Art to find creative ways to reuse spaces and reduce scope
  • Coordinated with Tech Design, VFX, and Audio to request assets necessary to create the intended experience
  • Collaborated with Production to plan features, cost tasks, and identify risks
  • Worked closely with the Test team to ensure a high level of quality

My Work

I was responsible for four of eight short Pirate Hideout missions and helped to iterate on and close out a single boss encounter for the Ketchcrash activity. The Pirate Hideout missions were short capstone missions to end each week of the main seasonal quest. During these missions players seek out Pirate Lords and the relics they guard.

Pirate Hideout: The Brute

The Brute is the first Pirate Lord players encounter during the main Season of Plunder quest. This hideout is within tunnels on a barren asteroid and the Pirate Lord is a Cabal defector who has a reputation for brutality. My goal was to accentuate the size of the boss to reinforce their physical presence and reputation so it was paired with smaller Fallen fodder units and regularly placed on high ground.

Pirate Hideout: The Sharpshooter

The Sharpshooter is the second Pirate Lord players encounter. Their hideout is on an icy asteroid and features a Pirate Lord who is an expert marksman with fanatical followers. My goal for this mission was to reinforce the players’ feeling of exposure in open areas by utilizing a wide open combat space that the boss could look down on. The mission also features a small number of powerful sniper units and many melee units to flush players out of cover.

Pirate Hideout: The Beast Tamer

The Beast Tamer is the fourth Pirate Lord players encounter and inhabits an abandoned asteroid facility. They are a Fallen who tames Cabal warbeasts and fights alongside them as the leader of the pack. This hideout features less combat than others to tease another force at work searching for the relics same as the Guardian. The mission features a relatively small, circular arena and powerful warbeast combatants that attack the player from multiple sides imitating wolves hunting.

Pirate Hideout: The Scrapworker

The Scrapworker is the seventh and second to last hideout players encounter. The Pirate Lord within is a coward and a tinker who hides behind robotic minions. This hideout features the same location as The Beast Tamer but utilizes flying units to give the space a new feel. The mission has exclusively robotic Fallen combatants other than the boss, who remains invisible or behind a shield for large parts of the fight to reinforce their cowardice.

Ketchcrash - Boss: Aye-I, Privateer

Aye-I, Privateer is one of the three possible boss encounters for the Ketchcrash activity. Ketchcrash is a repeatable, 6-player, "offensive" type activity. During the activity players assault and board an enemy ship and play through two randomly chosen encounters before ending on the deck of the enemy ship and confronting a boss. Aye-I, Privateer is shank, a mechanical flying Fallen unit, who regularly becomes shielded by other combatants. These support units must be destroyed before the boss can be damaged. Once the boss falls to a low enough health it enrages and chases players around the deck of the ship with dangerous electrical energy arcing out of its body.

I was brought on toward the end of the development for this boss to iterate on the shielding mechanic and polish the flow and combat experience.