Development Role: Systems Design
Applications: Google Sheets, Affinity Designer
Summary: These are personal class concepts I designed for fun for Gears 5 that could be integrated into Escape or Horde mode. I thought it would be fun to plan what new characters could be added with what skills and abilities they would bring to the game as a personal solo project. Each class is planned with 15 skill cards in game (some cards are cards that already exist in Gears 5), what levels they acquire them, perks if they would be in Horde mode, and how their ultimate and passive skills would work in gameplay. I used Google Sheets to plan out all the skill cards involved, and then created a formal document in Affinity Designer.
Note: All the values I wrote up in the documentation are rough estimations of how I think it would feel balanced, with some values based on actual skill cards in the game.
Applications: Google Sheets, Affinity Designer
Summary: These are personal class concepts I designed for fun for Gears 5 that could be integrated into Escape or Horde mode. I thought it would be fun to plan what new characters could be added with what skills and abilities they would bring to the game as a personal solo project. Each class is planned with 15 skill cards in game (some cards are cards that already exist in Gears 5), what levels they acquire them, perks if they would be in Horde mode, and how their ultimate and passive skills would work in gameplay. I used Google Sheets to plan out all the skill cards involved, and then created a formal document in Affinity Designer.
Note: All the values I wrote up in the documentation are rough estimations of how I think it would feel balanced, with some values based on actual skill cards in the game.
The Medic (Escape Mode)
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Why A Medic?: The Escape mode in Gears 5 makes it difficult and challenging to find ammo as it is. This forces players to make some rash decisions in the middle of combat. It is also very easy to get shot down in Escape with how the enemies maneuver around you. The Medic can bring the team back from a failure when the Medic is the only player left and they can revive their downed teammates with the Ultimate ability, Siphon, and get a second chance. Offensively, the Medic also has skill cards inflict bleeding on enemies and benefit from it. This can be a secondary role for the Medic to focus on, when teammates are healthy and can be greatly beneficial for players when the modifier for enemies having health regeneration is on.
The Ultimate: Siphon gives the Medic both a supportive and offensive role in that it can bring the players back from a losing fight in an instant. Reviving currently downed teammates and recovering health by going on the offensive can save a lot groups from getting killed. I hesitated at first adding in the ability to revive downed teammates at first, but the ability itself just felt like an offensive ability as itself without the revive bonus. I decided to add it in and give the Medic a more powerful feeling of "I brought the game back when we were about to lose" to the player. However, Siphon could potentially work without reviving it's teammates as well. I would need to test this, of course, to see how players would use Siphon with or without it reviving teammates as well. Passive Ability: There are a LOT of times when you go to revive someone and they just end up getting knocked down again by gunfire or by an enemy just punching them again. The passive from the Medic gives the revived a 2 second window of high damage resistance, which gives just enough time for them to get away and reposition themselves. With them still taking damage at a 80% damage resistance, they still get the feeling of being in danger and run away from it, without abusing it by the medic just reviving them over and over again. If players would end up using this to overpower enemies and encounters, I would probably drop it to 50%. *This documentation was written up in late September, 2019. |
The Controller (Escape Mode)
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Is Controller Even A Role?: Think of the Controller as the person to turn to when you see a large group about to overwhelm you, or you see a large group of enemies that has a few baddies you REALLY don't have time to deal with. Either that, or you can think of the Controller as Mr. Freeze from Batman. The Controller manages big groups and uses their ultimate and skill cards to stop enemies grouping up and just walking up and running you over, at first. The Controller's ice abilities also makes puns really easy to make with them!
Ultimate Beam: With the player moving and aiming like how they would aiming any gun in Gears 5, the player shoots an ice beam with effects that can turn this ultimate into focus ability on bigger enemies, like wardens or scions, or a crowd control ability by freezing the ground and slowing down all enemies that try to approach. Skill Cards: Along side improving the ultimate Cryo Beam, I wanted to make the cryo cannon in Gears 5 feel more powerful, since I've noticed some players run past it or use it sparingly. With some cards focusing on improving the cryo cannon, I also have some skill cards improve explosives reaching farther and all heavy weapons performing better to help deal with swarms of enemies. *This documentation was written up in late September, 2019. |
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Well, Originally... I had started to plan the Controller with a different ultimate in mind where instead of a beam shooting ice, it would just be a radial blast that freezed all the enemies around the player. Seeing how as I wanted a player class to stop enemies from advancing, I created an ability that would save the team from when there were too many enemies around them with Flash Freeze. However, I realized after creating all the skill cards, that this ultimate had two core problems.
1. The range was extremely limited. This was my original intention in that I imagined it would feel good for the player to suddenly stop all the enemies immediately around them, but that's not a scenario that happens often. If they wanted to use their ultimate offensively, they would have to cause a second problem with the ultimate. 2. In order to use it effectively, you'd have to run INTO the enemy groups. In Gears 5, it's pretty easy to get knocked down if you're not careful. This ability goes against that and would require the player eat a ton of bullets to get up to the enemies and use it properly. Overall, this made the ultimate not that useful in that it would have been to restricted in its use and rarely used. Which lead to me changing it from a radial blast into an manually aimed laser beam. |
Chairman Prescott as Support (Horde Mode)
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The Big Cheese: Prescott wasn't always known in the story as someone that would jump into a fight and would really on the gears to fight for him. So, I created a class for him that would focus on providing benefits to the team and summon in more AI units to help the team overall. I purposely had Prescott focus on pistols for his offensive options, because pistols aren't known for dealing a lot of damage and I didn't want Prescott to feel too powerful. His role is to help the team by getting more power, supplying more manpower, or even marking enemies with benefits.
Three's Company: I had originally planned to have 4 Onyx guards spawn with Prescott, but I started to think that it would have been too powerful, and crowded for 5 players to navigate around. When the Onyx Guards show up, I want them to feel like seeing them makes them go "Oh, the Onyx Guards are here!" and I think setting them to the hardest AI of advanced difficulty would really help the team and feel like a good ultimate. Especially if they start doing damage, force enemies to focus on them, and they come to revive anyone that needs it. *This documentation was written up in early October, 2019. |
Clayton Carmine as Heavy (Horde Mode)
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Where's The Big Guns?: In Gears 5, the character Sarah Connor has skill cards that compliment a player that wants to focus on heavy weapons in Horde mode and Escape. However, they just feel like little compliments, rather than a play style focused around them. This is where I brought in Clayton Carmine. Clayton has a few skill cards from Sarah Connor's card list and a lot more beyond them to facilitate players that want to carry a Trishot around, or try using the Mulcher for a match. It was also kind of fun to imagine someone picking up a Buzzkill and having more saws bounce around and hitting more enemies and how hilarious it would be to fill a hallway up with saws bouncing off of enemies. Since heavy weapons are only limited to heavy enemies, I complimented Clayton players with a skill to help charge up their ultimate, while eliminating scions or DR-1s in the process. Along with that, I felt like having only the weapons locker at the fabricator was necessary for Clayton, since when a heavy weapon runs out of ammo, it's pretty difficult to resupply it.
Where's The Big PUNCHES?: So, my idea for Clayton's ultimate just sprang up on me while I was thinking of another game: Doom. I just had the thought of "What if Clayton just got the berserk powerup from Doom and started punching everything?" Then I realized how much fun it was and committed to it. The idea of Clayton going berserk and just punching everything until they explode, sounded ridiculous enough that I loved it. While Lahni has melee cards to help with melee overall in Escape mode, I wanted Revengeance for Clayton to be a sudden surge to just start carving through enemies or pushing enemies back out of a base. Also, the idea of seeing a player run up to a scion and just kicking them into a crowd of enemies and blowing up sounded too much fun to not workshop. *This documentation was written up in mid-late October 2019. |
