Balita
Learn more about the redisign of the Extraction Winch System coming with the launch of the Season 1: Samhain of Hood: Outlaws & Legends.
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Andrew Willans
Redesigning the Extraction Winch for Season One
From the very beginnings of Hood, the final heist phase of extracting the treasure with the winch was a controversial mechanic. We explored multiple designs and prototypes throughout the game’s development, with the goal of providing additional tension and an opportunity to catch up in what is effectively a capture-the-flag objective. The single, shared progress bar we shipped with delivered the tension and the opportunity to clutch save a match, but it could also create frustration if victory was stolen at the last second. In Season One we have radically changed how progress is gained and victory earned, but our journey to this iteration revealed some interesting aspects regarding player motivation, and what people consider to be fair.
The Medieval Conveyor Belt
During our early prototyping, one of the first things we discovered was how much fun the player-on-player encounters were. Yes, we were making a game that blended stealth and combat, but when heists completed with mininal team interactions it nearly always felt anti-climactic. We had designed our maps to create natural choke points, but this alone was not sufficient to ensure teams met during the match; we needed objectives. Stealing the key and getting into the vault were both successful ways to increase the frequency of interactions, but simply dropping the treasure chest in a zone lacked the excitement of attacking and defending between the teams. It was all over far too quickly, and often the team playing catchup simply couldn’t arrive in time to challenge their rivals.We knew we needed some kind of prolonged interaction for the finale of the heist in order to provide the catchup opportunity, and bring tension for the team in the lead. One of our early versions of this medieval MacGuffin was a wooden conveyor belt. Teams loaded the chest onto the device and remained in the scoring zone as it moved towards the victory threshold. If they were killed or moved from the zone then progress was paused, and would continue once they (or the enemy team) returned to the zone. This was fun to play, but it also freed up the entire team to defend, and so in our second interation required a player to perform an interaction to move the chest to victory. This was a good tradeoff, and required more tactics and synergy between the team and the character classes they were using.
The physical design of the winch then changed to look more believable within the context of the world (using ropes and grapples) and less like a Leonardo da Vinci fever dream. Mechanically the winch delivered everything we wanted in terms of tension and risk/reward.
The Winch Rats
One of the most interesting aspects of the winch mechanic was how ownership could transfer based on the team currently interacting with it. This lead to the creation and iteration of several notches within the progress bar that banked a teams efforts during extraction, and also gave them a reward for their participation (a share of the gold).
Under this design it was also possible to steal a win at the last second since the final notch was the one that ended the heist and declared victory to the team that completed the extraction. This was possibly one of the most polarising aspects of the design. We had created a moment in a game about stealing where your victory could be stolen from you at the last second, and while a lot of players really enjoyed it, some weren’t so happy when on the receiving end. So much so, that the term “winch rats” became a phrase to describe the tactics of letting the other team do all the work, and then sweeping in at the last moment to claim the win.All That Glitters
We had underestimated just how important this win was to some players. Throughout the heist we offered many opportunities to earn XP and gold (the only 2 economies within the game). The key stealing, vault opening and winch loading objectives were heavily rewarded with XP, and even the act of carrying the chest would double the recharge speed of the player’s ultimate ability. Players also gained gold from every notch they claimed on the winch. So essentially, the team that performed all the objectives still has the potential to end the heist with more XP than the enemy team, and a ton of gold to reward them for their efforts.
Ultimately though, having the win stolen at the last minute lead to concerns over the fairness of the game rules, and the most logical step was to move to a system where playing the objectives gave the team a more significant gameplay advantage in the extraction phase. Rope Tension
The double progress bar was not an entirely new design. We’d explored different versions of this throughout development, but the trick was finding a balance that preserved the tension and still provided the opportunity to clutch victory from the jaws of defeat. The original winch had just 3 notches, so progress was lost quite quickly if you were knocked off mid-extraction. This was exciting, but also lead to a lot of stalemate situations as players respawned and quickly returned to the winch battle. We changed this to 6 notches for the game’s release to ensure more gold and banked progress could be saved across the teams, and to reduce these stalemate situations.
In this new version we’ve kept the 6-notch progress bar, and mirrored it for both teams. This way, we preserve the incentive to claim the notches, but also ensure that progress is per team. If your team has done nothing, then you start from zero when you get your hands on it for the first time. We also now award notches for completing the game objectives prior to the winching phase. Stealing the key, unlocking the vault, and loading the chest will each bank you one notch of progress on the extraction bar. Each notch counts for approximately 10% progress, so a team that completes all 3 objectives will have a guaranteed 30% banked when they begin winching.
With all of these changes we’ve rebalanced timings to ensure that there is still sufficient time to catch up and claim a win, but things now feel a lot fairer if your team has been putting in all the hard work. Time will tell of course, and that’s the beauty of a live game. We’ll be watching the streams and forums to see how the community reacts, now that the exterminators have been in to get rid of those cheeky winch rats.
Andrew Willans - Game Director, Hood:Outlaws and Legends