For Janthir Wilds, I designed many of the new enemies including, the titanspawn.

Nearly all of the minions for the titans (world bosses) were developed by me. Except for two which were handed off midway through to the designer of the titan due to their complicated systems he was still developing at the time.

These enemies were tricky to design due to some of their reliance on the systems and fighting styles of the specific boss they were the minions of. It was my job to plus up and flesh out the original designs that were given to me.

I designed each monster to have their own unique fighting style niche even if they existed in the context of a subgroup of minions for a titan.

Each monster reused older rigs that were reskinned. But, I modified their animations to make sure they looked different from others on the same rig, to ensure this difference I also utilized our new vfx / old vfx to create a distinct visualized personality in each attack.

Combat design, especially stuff like this, is by far the most fun kind of design for me as it allows me to think deeply about the player experience and actively create exciting scenarios of dynamic risk and reward.

The Fumaroller and the Ventshot

These two titanspawn have become my favorite of the ones I have worked on, they are minions of the titan, Ura.

I designed them to be diametrically opposed minions on the battlefield ensuring that ranged players and melee players are equally engaged. Their attacks are designed to keep them in the niche where they fight the best.

The Ventshot specifically has two dodge attacks which allow the creature to gain extra distance for its ranged attacks, but also close in for a quick yet devastating melee attack.

The Fumaroller then specifically targets groups of players with its constraining aoes and close range projectile attacks, then it can close in on those groups by using it's telegraphed charge attack which can stun players.

In addition to these mechanical differences, I also made the animations of the Ventshot faster than those of the Fumaroller to create a stronger visual difference which players can even see through any visual noise.

Since these creatures designs were also going to be used as minibosses, I ensured that the mechanics they shared with the titan boss, Ura, were only on the highest ranks of the creatures, Champion and Legendary. However, I also designed a more approachable version of these mechanics for the elite and champion versions of the enemies in an effort to tutorialize players.

Learning Moment

The overall demand of uniformity with the titan boss’ design led to some issues down the line for two of the minions in particular, the Rot Strider and Blighted Beast. In accordance with the way the titan boss worked these two creatures put down aoes which corrupted the buffs of players into debuffs. The aim was to help tutorialize the players, however these aoe's were far more deadly than we had realized. When I was needed elsewhere in the project I had gotten so busy and siloed that I wasn't around to watch players as I had normally done with other creatures. This along with very little feedback about them allowed these creatures to slip by our usual standards.

A week before launch when I finally had time to help playtest new content I noticed these two enemies were painful to fight. But, the build had already locked down. On launch day I saw multiple players making posts about how difficult these enemies were, thankfully in a playful manner, but I immediately requested to do hotfix. In the same day I had a modified and more balanced / toned down their aoes and tweaked their overall designs. What I had figured out is that when in large groups players often give each other buffs and so unknowing players walk into these aoe's and die quickly.

This was an amazing teaching moment which taught me so much about what could create massive issues later in a combat design, and thankfully the fix was as simple as a day two patch. This also helped me highlight how we can test more rigorously and proactively, so I built some new ways we could test our creatures in our weekly internal reviews to ensure we catch these early on.