Wayfinder

Available on Steam!

Genre: Action MMORPG

Engine: Unreal 4

Studio: Airship Syndicate

Role: Associate Designer - Narrative Team

As an associate designer on the narrative team, I was tasked with designing side quests for players to explore the open world of Evenor, writing stub dialogue for quests and NPCS, implementing it and final dialogue once reviewed by our writers, brainstorming new ideas for quests within the world that highlighted unique locations and events, and working with the other disciplinary teams to bring the world of Wayfinder to life.

Responsibilities and Duties

• Created 52 individual quests over 17 quest chains for side content and live events.

  • Designed the main story quests for the winter holiday themed live event.

  • Designed quests for key NPCS in important areas to highlight their motives and personalities

  • Created original characters for the world of Wayfinder and designed quests around their unique issues and relationships.

• Authored item descriptions for quests and accessories.

• Wrote stub dialogue for side quests and some main story quests to guide writers to tone and information needed.

• Scripted items and encounters used in quests using Unreal blueprinting.

• Created design documentation for quests for other departments to easily read and understand.

• Implemented dialogue and animations of NPCs for chatter and environmental storytelling.

Designing Side Quests

Quests for Wayfinder needed to accomplish three things:

• Tell interesting stories that helped to fill out the world and its inhabitants

• Take players to interesting places and support player exploration of the world

• Guide players to events and landmarks created by combat and world teams

With these goals in mind, I worked with the other designers on the narrative team to brainstorm ideas for interesting stories to tell within the world of Wayfinder.

While working in the Highlands area, I was given four main NPCs that needed quests that fleshed out their personalities and led players to interesting areas. After working with the world team to discuss where they were located and what interesting content they wanted to highlight, I created quests that led players to those places while telling engaging stories.

As part of the process, I also wrote out stub dialogue that was passed on to our writing team to help convey the emotion and information I wanted at every step in the quest. I worked closely with the writers to edit and re-word dialogue as necessary to strike a balance between giving players important information and expanding upon the lore of the world.

For the next area of the world, Frostmarch, I was tasked with creating side quests for three new NPCs. For these quests, I focused on different aspects of the characters and how the the world ending events in Wayfinder might affect all three of them. Specifically for the Seeker Avala quest line, I focused on telling a story that could only work in the world of Wayfinder with its specific lore and setting. This allowed space to further develop the relationship between major NPCs while also expanding parts of the lore that was only briefly touched on during the main story quests.

Creating Quest Items and Encounters

Part of my quest process was creating items and blueprinting simple interactions with them to help facilitate the player experience. I would kitbash static meshes together and use simple VFX in order to bring the player’s attention to important items. Once past the prototype stage, I worked directly with artists, programmers, and the VFX team in creating the finalized assets that are used in game by players.

Occasionally quests would need specific events or enemies that were unique to them. I worked directly with the combat and event teams to brainstorm how these would work, helped to script and implement them, and helped to clear any bugs or other intricacies that occurred once implemented in build.

Since Wayfinder is a live service title, special short-term limited time events and content are a normal part of the development cycle. For the winter holidays, Wayfinder created the holiday of “Eventide”. I was responsible for designing the main story quest of Eventide to take players through the main content of the event.

• Created a narrative wrapper for guiding players through the limited time events and dungeons

• Expanded on the characterization of multiple NPCs

• Created stub dialogue and ideas for rewards for completing the quest line

• Worked with art, icons, events, and programming to create fun and memorable content that all players would experience.

• Used new dialogue tools to call dialogue via blueprint scripting at key moments.

In all games I work on, I try to hide a fox in the world somehow. My fox in Wayfinder is the housing item given at the end of the Seeker Avala Eventide quest line. Since it is the “main story” quest of the event, all players who complete it get this adorable (badly) crocheted fox to put in their apartment. I am quite proud I got to incorporate my love of crochet with my love of foxes in the quest.