D2 - Episode: Heresy | Evan Graziano

Gameplay Loop

This release was my first opportunity to own the entirety of the seasonal gameplay loop and, while it did probably end up being one of my more stressful releases, it was also one of the most satisfying. The work I got to do on this update touched on all the things I love most about systems design, with some of the highlights including -

Path of Resolve/Ambition Identity and Progression
Seasonal Vendor and Reputation
Runic Enhancement and Mysterium Upgrades
Tome of Want
Seasonal Currency and Reward Allocation

…also, I really lucked out with the narrative for this episode. When designing systems, I personally like to take the general story/aesthetic into consideration when I’m shaping different systems. I’m sure I’m not alone, but I feel that by complementing the underlying narrative, as opposed to, say, designing in more of a vacuum, you can create much more immersive and engaging systems, which will ultimately help to create a stronger identity for the game/release. I’ve gone into a bit more detail on some of these systems, below.

Upgrades: Runic Enhancement

Another reason that I was so excited to work on the loop for this release was the heavy blending with the roguelite genre, and figuring out what that might look like in Destiny 2. With the Mysterium upgrades (which I detail more below), all of the benefits were passive. That is, once earned, the player would be inherently stronger, but they aren’t necessarily incentivized to play any differently – they’ll just notice that the activities get a bit easier over time.

With the Runic Enhancement upgrades, I wanted a slightly more active system where players would have a reason to change their builds up over time, and focusing on effects that could influence gameplay actions within the space. The inspiration for this came from Hades 2, in the form of the “Grasp of the Arcana” system. I liked that I felt incentivized to switch up my playstyle if I wanted to maximize the number of trait points being used, as I earned them, and sought to recreate that experience.

Additionally, I was also able to use this system to solve a few problems in other areas of the design that I had been running into -

I wanted to somewhat minimize the loss of power when swapping from the more progressed path, to the lesser. Also, I really didn’t want a system where upgrades would be disabled/removed based on active path
I wanted to continue to incentivize runs of The Nether and Court of Blades activities in later acts, when they were no longer the new hotness

With regards to the first issue – each of the two available paths were setup with unique reputation tracks. As each path progressed, it would receive increased stats in The Nether, as well as a handful of path-centric upgrades. However, these improvements were only active while the corresponding path was, which meant that swapping to a less used path resulted in a loss of power. Therefore, by at least taking both paths’ reputation progression into consideration for the sake of the Runic Enhancement point cap, I could ensure that there was some level of progression that carried over and was able to avoid any instances of deactivating or removing upgrades when going from the more progressed path to the least.

Additionally, the hope was that by having this combined point cap, it would help to incentivize completion of each track which, in turn, would allow for more powerful builds to experiment with in each of the core activities.

Upgrades: Mysterium

As mentioned above, the bonuses associated with these upgrades were a bit more passive, in that they would provide noticeable benefit, but not in a way that would really warrant switching up your playstyle – Boon stack multipliers, Damage and Mitigation Buffs, Economy Modifiers, etc. These were essentially our version of incremental meta upgrades, albeit in a much smaller scale.

Unlike many true roguelites, we were a bit more constrained in the types and magnitudes of bonuses that we could provide. Roguelites are built to account for scaling power and rewards, and the potential for “broken” builds, whereas we still needed to ensure that we weren’t creating a single source of loot that invalidated the rest of the game’s reward economy.

As with many incremental upgrade systems, these were initially intended to have a currency cost. However, I decided to pivot away from this due to the following –

Both of the core currencies were already associated with the ‘end-game’ gear grind. I think it’s alright to have some overlap (as we did with Runic Enhancement costs), but the Mysterium upgrades were intended to be a much longer term grind, and I worried that constantly having to make the trade-off would negatively impact the reward experience.
A big part of this release was trying to find meaningful ways to work ‘mystery’ or ‘secrets’ into our features, and provide fun surprises for the players over the course of the release. In that sense, I had already had a small number of “discoverable” upgrades planned. However, since we were already a bit more limited in the number of upgrades tiers, and I was already a bit concerned about currency costs, I decided to lean harder into the identity and have all of these be discoverable through associated actions, particular path usage, progression milestones, etc.

Tome of Want

The concept for the Tome of Want was sort of a culmination of assorted goals that were set earlier on in development –

We wanted to explore a slightly different relationship with vendors and, for reward focusing in particular, the aim was to have it tie more directly into gameplay
We had a new inventory slot created for the Tonic Capsule, in the prior episode, that we were hoping to continue using
We needed a new way to provide Artifact Perk Boosts to players, since they were tied to Tonics, in the previous episode

Additionally, I drew a lot of inspiration from the work that was done with the aforementioned Tonic Capsule, and many of my decisions were derived from learnings there, as well as some of my own experiential preferences -

Materials
- The Tonic Capsule had a lot of materials. Like, a ton. With that being said, I do think it was a really cool idea, and I feel that the Tonic Capsule was definitely one of the more novel seasonal features that we’ve seen over the years. However, I wanted the Tome to be a bit simpler.
- I didn’t want to restrict materials to particular locations – if you were playing any seasonal content, you could receive scriptures. And even if you weren’t playing seasonal content, players still had the ‘path minigames’ and currency purchase options to acquire them. I liked that the tonic materials incentivized different types of activities, but am a bit more of the mindset that, if a player wants to run a bunch of one activity (and it’s not breaking anything), let them.
- Even in their shipped state, where the scriptures could be combined in a ‘category’ and ‘subcategory’ fashion, there were more than I would have liked. However, the only real alternative would have been to make the subcategories more restrictive – so instead of choosing a specific weapon, maybe you could only choose the slot. It would have been a lot cleaner, and easier to setup, but the reward experience would have taken too big hit and I decided to stick with the slightly more robust offerings.
Vendors
- One of my bigger goals with the Tome was to remove the vendor component that existed with crafting tonics. Given our push to make focusing a more active part of gameplay, it felt somewhat contradictory to still require players to load back into the seasonal space for some aspect of these rituals. This was a lot of the motivation behind the decision to have dropped materials used directly in the ritual, as opposed to having an accompanying crafting/application step. And while the UX, isn’t quite as clean as I would have liked (I was sorta pushing our functionality to the limit, here), it was also the reasoning for having scriptures purchases available directly from the tome.
Artifact Boosts
- These didn’t actually end up in the Tome until later iterations, but I’m really glad they did. Beyond their effect on gameplay, I think the inclusion really helped to sell the identity of this item.
- In terms of how they functioned, well, that didn’t change a ton. I knew early on that I wanted to try and make the management of these buffs a bit more seamless, so the intent was to always have them ‘turn on’ through the use of another seasonal system. And while I thought they were a really cool addition with tonics, I didn’t love the idea of players having to manage both these, and the Tome rituals, which ultimately contributed to my combining of the two.
Focus Duration
- This was a fun one to sort out. I knew pretty early on that I wanted to move away from timers, in that they required extra management from the player, and I didn’t love the feeling an added pressure to be as efficient as possible with my limited time.
- I landed on the ‘ritual charges’ (number of rewards earnable), as it at least helped to alleviate the latter – players could simply play the game, knowing that they would always get the maximum number of rewards for the currency spent. It still did require a level of management, unfortunately, but options there proved to be a bit more limited than I would have liked.
Focus Rewards
- This was one of the bigger changes that I wanted to make to focusing with the tonic system – guaranteed armor/weapon drops. With the earlier version of the tonic capsule, you were only provided an increased chance to receive the armor or weapon you wanted – not a guarantee. So thankfully, by the time my work began, we were able to see how the experience had played out with tonics, and could warrant the upgrade.
  - For some additional context – gear/rewards are definitely something you need to be careful with, especially in a game like Destiny. If something goes live that doesn’t feel great, or is underpowered, it’s a lot easier to justify a buff. Yea, the experience may have started a bit rough, but its pure positives from thereon out. If something makes it live that’s too strong, however, you may start with some positive reception, but that can quickly shift as balance, or reward cadence, starts to break down. Additionally, any further adjustments are effectively nerfing the player experience, which very rarely goes well.