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. Each class is planned with 15 skill cards in game, what levels they acquire them, perks if they would be in Horde mode, and how their ultimate and passive skills would work in gameplay.

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)

Why A Medic?: 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.

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 adding in the ability to revive downed teammates, but the ability felt like an offensive ability without the revive, instead of a supportive. I added it to 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.

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 person a 2 second window of high damage resistance, which gives them just enough time to get away. With them still taking damage at a 80% damage resistance, they still get the feeling of being in danger and running away, 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)

Why This Class?: I just wanted Mr. Freeze from Batman in the game dealing with large groups by shooting ice beams.

Ultimate Beam: 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 with 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. All contributing to the feeling of being prepared for crowds with a number of choices.

​*This documentation was written up in late September, 2019.
Originally: I had started to plan the Controller with a different ultimate where it would just be a radial blast that would freeze all the enemies around the player. I wanted a class to stop enemies from advancing. So, I created an ability that would save the team when there are too many enemies nearby with Flash Freeze. However, I realized that the ultimate had two core problems.
  1. The range was extremely limited. I imagined it would feel good for the player to suddenly stop all the enemies around them, but that's not a scenario that happens often.
  2. In order to use it offensively, you'd have to run INTO the enemy groups. This ability goes against staying away from enemies on higher difficulties and would require the player to run into gunfire to get up to the enemies and use it properly.
Overall, this made the ultimate not that useful in most situations.

Chairman Prescott as Support (Horde Mode)

The Big Cheese: This class was built on the lore of the character Prescott and would focus on providing benefits to the team and summoning in more AI units to help. I also have 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.

The Ultimate: When the Onyx Guards show up, I want the players to see them and feel "Oh, the Onyx Guards are here!" and be more confident that the AI controlled guards are helping.

*This documentation was written up in early October, 2019.

Clayton Carmine as Heavy (Horde Mode)

Where's The Big Guns?: In Gears 5, the character Sarah Connor has a skill card that compliments a player that wants to focus on heavy weapons in Horde mode and Escape. However, that's the only card like it for the character, rather than a play style focused around it. 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. 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?: My idea for Clayton's ultimate just sprang up on me while I was thinking Doom. I just had the thought of "What if Clayton just got the berserk powerup from Doom and started punching everything?" 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.

*This documentation was written up in mid-late October 2019.