Raids
Some of the most fun and interesting times I had on Destiny were when I was working on the raids. Raids are such a unique and interesting component of content drops. For the most part they are pretty disjoint from the rest of the content being released but are also generally regarded as the pinnacle activities of any content drop despite how small of a fraction of the community participates in them.
I was fortunate enough to be able to work on multiple raids while working on Destiny the 2 that I had the largest contributions to were Spire of Stars and the Crown of Sorrows.
Spire of Stars
What a fun day! Never thought I would be on the other side of a raid! https://t.co/qirMZ0RQZf
— Yeruot (@Yeruot) May 12, 2018
For the Spire of Stars raid I was fortunate enough to get the chance to work a bit on the core mechanic and well as create content for the encounters. I was able to work with another more senior engineer on the Relic that was used in Spire of Stars. As well as the adapted version for the Strange Terrain strike. A lot of work was done to make sure both of these objects worked in varying networked scenarios and in all the ways players would accidentally, or in terms of my friends, intentionally try to, lose the ball.
I also got the chance to add some set piece moments to the final 2 encounters where ships are destroyed by weapons fired from the leviathan! These weapon strikes were a giant laser, a missile barrage, and a nuclear strike. Since these happen during a very hectic encounter it’s really hard to get video of them but I found an alright one of the laser cutting a ship down the middle.
Crown of Sorrows
For the Crown of Sorrows, I was actually able to design and define the early prototype for the core raid mechanic!
Since I was on the team at the beginning I was able to be a part of defining and implementing the core concepts and ideas for the raid.
There is a lot that I wish I had been able to do with the designs here some that I felt would have been extremely unique for a raid and that I still haven’t seen to this day. Unfortunately, at the same time ideas were being worked on for this I was also working on the Black Armory puzzles. Designs changed and were iterated on from original concepts I had come up with and moved away from some of the original ideas I personally felt strongly for. I still have some of the original ideas in my back pocket for the future!
There isn’t anything specific I’d like to point out! You can check out a full raid guide below!