Patch 56 - Legendary Items: Four Star
Systems Designer
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This update is my third major contribution to Fallout 76.
For this update, I worked on pitching & developing the next rank of Fallout 76’s legendary system: Four Star Legendary Items.
With the release of Gleaming Depths, we wanted to provide appealing rewards for players who complete our most challenging content yet, and thus, it was decided that Four Star Items would be the primary reward method.
This involved me to develop Design Documents, Presentations to stakeholders, Prototypes & Playtesting
Powerful Rewards Await you!
Four Star Items are powerful by design. These items serve as proof that you have survived deadly encounters, and(or) engaged with our Raids.
This feature was a collaboration across multiple Systems Designers within the team, as coming up with multiple appealing options was a challenge. Working alongside other Designers made this feature even better. I’m pretty happy with the direction the feature went with.
To ensure the right amount of balance is done, I’ve developed simulations in Excel on how long would it take players to find these powerful items.
So shiny!
To make these items a little bit more special, I coordinated with UI & Code departments to develop new exposed variables for Systems to engage with, and to also show a little bit more “pissas” for the items!
To ensure that players can get these powerful items outside of extremely challenging content, I designed for our Appalachian creatures to have a chance to appear as four star enemies as well. However those are extremely rare, and players will have to use all of their arsenal if they hope to survive…
Post-Mortem
- This was my second time bringing a concept into a full production process by myself. I felt more confident.
- This initiative required me to use Excel Magic. I think the results of the simulations provided fruitful results to ensure the feature can meet the expectations set.
- My favorite effects are “Fracturer’s”and “Choo-Choo’s” 🙂