Practical Systems Design in
the Context of Darkspore
Paul Sottosanti
Overview of the Talk
The Systems of Darkspore
Some Design Goals and How We Achieved Them
Things We Tried That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Their Solutions
Where Did We Still Fail?
Spread throughout: Relevant Systems Design Advice
Systems of Darkspore
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
The Constraints
The game takes place in a sci-fi setting.
There must be at least 100 different heroes to collect.
The game must have Spore in the name.
Heroes can’t temporarily level up during gameplay (as in the MOBA genre).
Players can’t equip loot during a level.
The game is F2P…er, actually it’s a traditional boxed product.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Early Important Decisions
Placement choices in the editor are not going to affect gameplay.
Ugliness: Forces players to choose between power and aesthetics. Most will choose power.
Gaming the system: Players will just copy the most successful placements.
Creative Freedom: Wanted to enable the maximum amount.
Players can’t create their own creatures from scratch.
Recognizability
Collectibility
Animation Quality
“Sporn”: Speaks for itself.
Players will level up, not heroes.
Easy hero swapping
No skill trees: No way we could create enough abilities. Heroes had to be complete packages.
The “chain game” will be the focus of how players interact with the PvE content.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
The Chain Game
Originated when the game was F2P and didn’t have a traditional campaign.
Wanted to bring back a sense of risk and adrenaline to gaming.
Was a great hook for the press.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
The Genesis Types
Inspired by the Magic: the Gathering color wheel.
Allowed players to process the huge variety of heroes and enemies more easily.
Allowed us to create other systems like type resistances.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Hero Stats and Classes
Three classes of heroes.
Sentinels: Strength focused, high health, close range.
Ravagers: Dexterity focused, fast movement/attacks, high crit/dodge, close/medium range.
Tempests: Mind focused, slow movement and attacks, high power/resist, long range.
Each class has its damage increased by a different primary stat.
Five secondary stats that are also increased through the primary stats.
Around fifty tertiary stats that are all percentage based.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Stat Caps
Enabled visual stat displays.
Allowed us to have a “best” primary stat and still make you want other stats.
Helped with balance.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Catalysts
Needed something to replace loot for in-level upgrades.
Gave players something to talk about and trade.
Allowed heroes to grow in power on long chains.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Objectives and Medals
Encourage you to play through the level for real instead of skipping content.
Medals affect your chance of getting rare loot when you cash out.
Had a hard time getting people to understand the formula.
We decided early on that we wouldn’t reward playing more than four planets in a row.
Clashed with player expecations…
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Systems Design Advice #1
Always be aware of the most efficient path that players can take to their goal. Your
decisions will shape how many players interact with the game.
Make sure the most efficient path is also a fun one!
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Elite Enemies
Added to provide intensity spikes and some additional randomness.
Increased health, damage, and size.
Each one also had 1-4 affixes that made it more powerful.
Switched to using the higher level model to make them stand out and give a preview.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Gating Progression
Most RPGs use level and experience as a progression gate.
Huge penalties for fighting enemies high above you in level.
But we don't have that...our progression gate has to be the quality of your loot.
Hero progression is now essentially sharable, easy to swap in new heroes.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Difficulty Scaling
How to scale enemy health and damage? Linear scaling eventually fades…
110 is 10% harder than 100
510 is only 2% harder than 500
Need enemy health and damage to scale exponentially all the way up.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Difficulty Scaling
Tried 10% per level…
100% health on level 1
110% health on level 2
121% health on level 3
133% health on level 4
146% health on level 5
But it felt flat, needed something to break it up.
Added the concept of sublevels. 6% per minor level, 24% per major level.
100% health on level 1-1
106% health on level 1-2
112% health on level 1-3
119% health and a boss on level 1-4
148% health on level 2-1
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
In-Depth Look at the Loot System
What makes a good randomized loot system?
Provides excitement to players when they find rare or powerful items.
Provides something worth talking about (and potentially trading) with other players.
Makes players go back to underused skills or (in this case) characters.
Provides replay value through adding goals; players want to farm specific bosses.
Upgrades make you noticeably more powerful.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
In-Depth Look at the Loot System
Looked at Diablo’s loot system…
Random level restricted affixes, higher level unlocks new affixes (e.g. “whale” -> “mammoth”).
"Unique" hand-tuned items like Eaglehorn at a fixed level with a fixed look.
Randomness both within the affixes and the uniques.
Rings have a distinctive sound and are always magical.
Powerful items have lots of different stats on them and crazy numbers like +200% attack speed.
Wacky attributes like light radius and chance to find magic items.
Visual changes! Leveled up skills, shattering enemies with your icy sword.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
In-Depth Look at the Loot System
And World of Warcraft’s…
Items have a fixed number of points based on the item level.
There are suffixes that are essentially percentage-based stat distributions.
Greens and blues use those suffixes for the most part.
Epics have hand-tuned stats and are a fixed level with a fixed look.
Neither of these were quite right for our purposes.
For the chain game we needed higher level loot to be clearly better than lower level,
so Diablo style wouldn’t work. WoW loot was closer but still needed some tweaks…
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
In-Depth Look at the Loot System
Darkspore’s loot system:
Like WoW, items have a fixed number of item points based on the item level, with bonus points for having a
larger variety of different stats on the item.
Green items get a suffix which is a percentage-based distribution of stat points.
Blue items get an item level bonus and also get a “prefix”, which takes 25% of the item points and distributes
those in its own way.
Purples get a bigger bonus and two “prefixes”, with each prefix gets 20% of the points.
Suffixes and prefixes are restricted based on the slot of the item.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
In-Depth Look at the Loot System
The initial item points formula:
Figure out the item level. 1-1 drops level 11 items, 2-3 drops level 23 items, etc. The boss of 1-4 (and the cash
out loot for 1-4) is level 20 to boost you up to the next major level.
Add a level bonus for blue items (+10) and purple items (+20).
Start with a base number of item points: 50.
Factor in the item level exponentially, with items getting 5% better per level.
Add in a 10% bonus for each different stat on the item (after factoring in suffixes and prefixes).
Item Points = 50 * 1.05 ^ itemLevel * (1 + 0.1 * numStats)
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Systems Design Advice #2
Make sure any numbers that you might want to change frequently are tunable by
designers.
Be sure to always build in tuning knobs to your systems if you might need them.
For items and other objects that players own, decide up front if you want tuning
changes to be retroactive or not. This changes how the engineers build it and has a
huge effect on your control and player perception.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
In-Depth Look at the Loot System
Determining the actual item stats:
Take the item points (let’s say, 200) and divide them based on the percentages defined by the suffix.
For example, “of Expertise” was 50% Strength and 50% Dexterity, so the item spends 100 on each.
Those stats cost 10 points each, so this item has +10 Strength and +10 Dexterity.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
In-Depth Look at the Loot System
Final item points formula: 50 * (1.05...1.03)^itemLevel * (1 + 0.2 * numStats)
The stat variety bonus increased to 20%.
The 5% per item level changed to be 5%/4%/3% depending on how far into the game you were (at high gear
levels you can give smaller percentage bonuses and they still feel like big upgrades).
The item level bonuses for rarity changed to +5 and +10.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Systems Design Advice #3
Identify which systems need to be player understandable and which can be as
complicated as you need.
Treat them very differently!
Chain game reward formula is the former. The item points formula is the latter.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
In-Depth Look at the Loot System
One problem with traditional loot systems: eventually characters of the same class all
look the same, because the best items all have a fixed look.
Decided that our “unique” items with hand-tuned stat blocks would be allowed to have a variety of models.
Naming was difficult; eventually settled on using a possessive name to indicate the stats (e.g. Electra’s Wings).
All of our “unique” items scaled in level, so if you found one you liked early you could still find a higher level
version later on at max level.
Also they had rare and epic versions. Imagine playing Diablo 2 and finding an epic Eaglehorn.
Eventually these items were reserved solely for cash out loot.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
In-Depth Look at the Loot System
Hero Item Slots
Traditional RPGs have around 12-18 item slots. With Darkspore we settled on six per hero.
Problem: In Darkspore many of the items can go anywhere on your hero, but traditionally they are named after
the placement.
Solution: three of the slots are bound to a location and named after it (hands, feet, weapon) and three are
freeform placement and named after their purpose (offense, defense, utility).
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Systems Design Advice #4
Set up structures at a deep level. Humans find structure comforting and it's exciting to
your hardcore players when you break the structure later.
Darkspore example: Restricting stats based on item slots.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
In-Depth Look at the Loot System
Weapons
One of the main factors in making the heroes feel special and unique was the basic attack.
Problem: Can’t allow heroes to use any weapon. Breaks animations and flavor.
Solution: Weapons are hero specific (though all four variants can use it).
New problem: Can be very difficult to find a weapon for a specific hero.
New solution: Added a weapon store where you can buy slightly weak weapons if you haven’t found one for
that hero in awhile.
Unexpected but awesome benefit: Finding weapons drives players to try out new heroes better than any other
mechanic. This alone made it worth it.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
In-Depth Look at the Loot System
Another traditional problem: having to replace items that you think look awesome
when the stats are obsolete.
Added slots for “detail” items.
Unfortunately it didn’t work with hands, feet or weapons; we had a strange technical limitation where
equipped items couldn’t be invisible.
Considered the Guild Wars 2 solution of letting you merge the stats of one item with the look of another…
We also let you stack multiple of the same model in one detail slot if you had them.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
In-Depth Look at the Loot System
Cutting Down the Possibility Matrix
The decision space of having up to 100 heroes crossed with hundreds of items is insane.
Restricted all in-level items based on type.
Used a stat system that allowed for obvious gear choices.
Added other very specific stats: increased DoT damage, increased pet health, etc.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Design Goals
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Can Always Play With Your Friends Profitably
Chose to “sidekick” players down instead of up.
Gave the higher level player reasonable loot for their level.
PvP was also sidekicked; all loot was scaled as though it had been found on 6-4.
Players are unsurprisingly resistant to being nerfed like this.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Encourage Hero Swapping
Picking up a capsule restored health or power to your entire squad.
Elites had affixes like “thorns” to encourage swapping on the fly.
Swapping cleared all debuffs and knocked back nearby enemies.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Don’t Reward Idling
Because we had increased risk we knew players would use any tactics to win.
Games with health or mana regen lead to idling.
The only way to get health or power back is to kill enemies.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
All Heroes Should Be Viable Throughout the Game
Later heroes are not better, just different.
It’s okay that some variants are better in PvE and some are better in PvP.
This is really, really difficult to pull off! But a fine goal.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Systems Design Advice #5
Excel is your best friend. You need to be able to explore systems and perform balance
passes with spreadsheets quickly.
Don't be afraid to make spreadsheets that are just for you that aren't especially usable
for anyone else. Be efficient.
When doing balance passes use conditional formatting to make outliers stand out
visually.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Energy as a Third Resource
Originally we had health, mana and energy.
Energy was the “squad” resource, overdrive and swapping used it.
The Problems
Too much to keep track of.
Running out of energy was miserable.
Players didn’t want to use it at all.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Item Name Color Denoting Power Instead of Rarity
Trying to fix the “problem” that greens are routinely better than purples.
Use the name (prefix) to denote rarity instead.
The Problems
People are programmed now to have a visceral reaction to the color.
Not worth it!
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Systems Design Advice #6
Don't reinvent the wheel unless you're really, really sure it's worth it. Conform to
player expectations everywhere you can.
Frees up player brain space for understanding everything else.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
White Items as “Trash Loot”
White items originally had a huge item points penalty and only had health.
Intended to almost always be sold.
The Problems
Needed them to be viable hole fillers.
Five type restrictions and six slots = tough to find items for specific purposes.
New Solution!
Whites are only -5 item levels and get a basic suffix named after the classes.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Catalysts That Expire Based on Time
Catalysts would last anywhere from a minute to several days after being found.
Gave them an additional axis of rarity and encouraged people to keep playing.
The Problems
Some team members thought it was evil.
Confusing for players to keep track, plus hard to implement.
New Solution!
Catalysts only expire when you cash out.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Catalyst Merging
Original idea with catalysts was to make it more like the Horadric Cube.
Three in a row of the same color or all different colors would merge into new catalysts.
The Problems
Was pretty horrible when it happened accidentally.
Players kept asking for a button to merge them.
New Solution!
Catalysts now have link bonuses instead. No more irreversibility.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Systems Design Advice #7
Evaluating playtester feedback:
Look for their reactions, NOT their solutions. “I don’t like x” is useful, “I don’t like x
because of y” is great, and “You should do x” is useless. Trust the player’s gut
(intuition) but don’t trust their reasoning as they do NOT have the same mental
context you do as the designer."
From Doublebuffered.com’s writeup of Jamie
Griesemer’s Design in Detail GDC 2010 talk
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Problems and Solutions
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Enemy Type Resistance
Many players didn’t realize what was going on.
Doing less damage didn’t cause players to switch, it just frustrated them.
Solution
Flip it around. Enemies instead deal double damage to heroes of the same type.
Now it’s exciting and the increased damage forces you to switch.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Systems Design Advice #8
Use positive encouragement instead of negative reinforcement where possible,
especially when the mechanical result is the same.
Famous example: World of Warcraft rested XP.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Ravagers and Tempests with No Health
Base stats don’t scale like in other games because of no hero leveling.
Heroes with no Health or Strength loot would die almost instantly.
Solution
Instead of Armor as a base stat on all items (which we didn’t have), use Health.
New Problem
Other stats are problematic too.
Not enough power to use abilities or no chance to crit.
New Solution
Increase the health on Defense items, other slots get their own base stat(s).
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Power Costs Didn’t Scale
In traditional RPGs skills level up, which increases their mana cost.
Darkspore has no skill ranks…
Solution
Power costs scale when the primary stat is increased.
Balance it so the extra damage is worth the extra power.
Opens up a support strategy with low primary stat, high sustainability.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Hero Collecting Doesn’t Matter Enough
When just building one squad and getting a choice of planets, players don’t need to
care about any of their other heroes.
Solution
Take inspiration from Plants vs Zombies.
Build three squads, get assigned a planet, choose which squad to use.
Why not let players build them on the fly? Creates strategy and frees them from
having to keep all of their creatures up to date.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Additive Damage Coefficients
In many RPGs, ability damage = X + (stat * coefficient).
Darkspore has no skill leveling, so the coefficient was even more important than usual.
The Problem
Keeping the coefficients and base damages synced up perfectly was difficult.
Eventually the hidden coefficient is the only meaningful number.
New Solution!
Use multiplicative coefficients. Damage = X * (1 + (stat * 0.04)).
Could now easily change player ability damage globally by tweaking one number.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Players Are Getting Separated in Co-Op
Different hero speeds plus natural inclination to run off on your own.
We want you to play together!
Solution
Operatives (inspired by Left 4 Dead) threaten players who are alone.
All heroes get to travel at Ravager speed when out of combat.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Systems Design Advice #9
Don’t be afraid to use systems from other games if they solve your problems. Your
game can borrow pieces without being derivative, especially if you iterate.
There are lots of other smart people who have spent a lot of time thinking about
problems like yours, take advantage of it!
Darkspore borrowed systems from: Borderlands, Call of Duty, Warcraft 3, Left 4 Dead,
Team Fortress 2, Plants vs Zombies, and so on.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Where We Still Failed
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Editor Fatigue
Editing for the first time is awesome. So much customization!
The 500th time…less awesome.
People had to spend 15-20 minutes just equipping loot after a level.
Maybe should have just gone the traditional route and focused on one hero…
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
“Unique” Items Didn’t Feel Unique
Unique items had: scaling levels, variable looks, wacky names, and rare/epic versions.
They lost their individual identities due to all the variables.
Most people didn’t even use the prefix to refer to them.
Also, players couldn’t farm for specific items anywhere.
We wanted to have specific planet loot tables but never had time to add them.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
No Way to Start Over
Players love rolling alts and experiencing the game again for a variety of reasons:
Use newfound knowledge.
Start over with a friend who’s new to the game.
Parents want to let their kids play without screwing up their game.
Wanted to add a hardcore mode but never found the resources.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Audience Confusion
Couldn’t decide if we were building a game for mastery players or creative players.
Tried to build it for both…
Ended up pleasing no one.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Players Didn’t See Chaining as a Viable Option
We thought players would be willing to start below their max progression to get a
chain going in order to beat a hard level.
Elites added too much randomness to whether or not you could beat a level.
Made chaining worthless at higher levels.
Not enough internal testing of the high levels, plus a beta level cap.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Plants vs Zombies Design Didn’t Work Out
96 different unique types of enemies, 25 unique heroes.
Difficult to make enough obvious counters that players will understand.
See Trenched for an example of doing it right.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Systems Design Advice #10
Avoid bias however you can. Don't get attached to the classes you primarily play or
the ones you designed.
DO play all the classes though. Get good at your own game.
Don’t make changes based on emotion. Wait until you’ve calmed down.
Systems of Darkspore
Design Goals
Ideas That Didn’t Work Out
Problems and Solutions
Where We Still Failed
Questions?
Thanks!
Paul Sottosanti
@psotto
Slides will be available at:
www.interestingchoices.com
(feel free to come up and ask for a collectible business card!)