Systems Designer

Primary Systems Designer on 20+ key features for Ashes of Creations Node Systems (Later renamed the Settlement systems)

Sold 200k+ copies on steam with a peak CCU of 30k according to Steam DB

Mayorship - Player Made Guide

Mayorship systems were the primary way players could shape the world. Once elected a Mayor could:

  • Request and pay players for materials through the Buy Order System

  • Construct, Maintain, and Upgrade buildings within the node, providing players zone-wide buffs and core crafting services

  • Initiate Mayoral Commissions, providing activities for players within the node and providing bonuses to players if enough complete it

  • Initiate Node to Node Wars

A core goal is a mayor cannot give a single city the power to do everything. Creating reasons for players to move around the world.

During my time on Ashes I worked as the core designer on these features, taking them from game design documents, to implemented features. I collaborated with engineers, UX, Audio and various other designers to take these features to release.

Towns and Crates - Livesteam (Timestamp 59m)

Defined Key goals for the crate system for the Steam Early Access release.

Worked with engineering, technical design, art, and UX to adapt the existing crate system from something that was only in UI space to something that existed in world.

This provided the backbone for the commodity, construction crate, personal crates, and sport fishing system.

Led multiple iterations of this feature between its initial implementation to its final steam release

Node War - Livestream

Mayors could initiate Node Wars, allowing the citizens of nodes to fight against each other in sanctioned PvP.

Territory War was the first Node war implemented, creating a PvX experience, where players would fight over bandit camps and special gatherables with loot that needed to be collected and turned in to unlock a penultimate control point that needed to be captured to end the war.

Mayors gained unique abilities that could only be used during war, with skillful timing they could change the tide of battle.

During my time on Ashes I took this feature from game design documents to an implemented feature, working closely with engineering, UI, art, and combat designers to take this to release. Eventually handing off the feature to another designer, who I worked with to develop standards and best practices for the war systems so more war types could be developed.

World Boss - Livesteam

Created this world boss using unreal engine blueprints and behavior trees.

Coordinating with VFX, Animation, Audio, and class designers to create and iterate on a dynamic world boss fight.