New Skill Development - Part 3

Ivan, one of our effects artists, was assigned to work on the new Warcry skills. Abyssal Cry was chosen to have its effects made first, and then Inspiring Cry would be based on it once we were happy with the look.

The skill has three effect components:
The AoE Circle - This is the 'warcry' part of the skill; This is a Chaos skill, so should have purple/black effects.
A debuff - This is a slowing effect, and symbolizes that the affected target will explode when slain.
An explosion - This is a simple chaos explosion effect, and it'll happen in great numbers when it occurs.

Ivan created the effects, and they were hooked up on our prototype. Two issues became apparent: Firstly, the debuff effect looked too similar to a Curse icon, so it had to be changed. It looked cool though, so we kept the effect in the game files for use on future monster curses. You'll notice in the screenshot below that the monsters look like they're also affected by Warlord's Mark - We used this effect to represent a monster being Taunted.



The second problem was that the small chaos explosion didn't cover up the corpses being destroyed when they died. We could either increase the explosion in size and add chunks of body parts much like Detonate Dead, or we could create something more tailored to the skill; I fell in love with the idea of the skill creating micro-singularities that sucked the monster corpses out of existence, and Ivan rolled with the idea.

After trying out a few iterations like a solid black orb and a cloud of purple smoke, Ivan created a version with a purple cloud explosion followed by a sucking black vortex.

Inspiring Cry's effects were simple by comparison, and Ivan created something we were happy with on his first attempt; He used a golden colour palette, and created a simple buff effect to get across the idea of the player being empowered by the warcry without creating too much visual clutter when used on multiple allies.

Once the effects were complete, George, one of our concept artists, created icons for use on the skill, buff and debuff effects.



Meanwhile, we experimented with a new Taunt mechanic. This causes monsters to attack only the enemy that has taunted them for a set duration. A prototype was set up on Warcry skills and Decoy totem. The Quality Assurance team have been testing out this Taunt mechanic, finding problems and exploits. Here is an example of one of the reports from Jason:



We're continuing to work on the Taunt mechanic. It lasts for 3 seconds, and applies to all monsters other than Unique monsters. This may change based on our continued experimentation with Taunt, and we may add items, passives, or supports that modify the Taunt mechanic for characters that want to specialize in Taunting.

I'll leave you today with a video of the new Inspiring Cry and Abyssal Cry effects. I hope you've enjoyed this glimpse into skill development, and that you have fun with Inspiring Cry and Abyssal Cry!