Rocket Arena
Rocket Arena was an Unreal Engine 4 PvP competitive third person shooter. Cross-play was available for PS4, Xbox One, Steam, and Origin. Use the unique abilities of 12+ different characters to blast opponents out of arenas.
Time your dodges to evade attacks, lead your targets to hit shots, and use items like the Rocket Magnet to block enemy projectiles for a time. Use rockets to jump, climb, and explore the environment, and if you get KO'd, you can fly back into the arena.
Developer: Final Strike Games
Release date: July 13, 2020
My Role: Multiplayer Game Designer
Official Website: https://www.ea.com/games/rocket-arena
Responsibilities
•Fixed a variety of gameplay and UI bugs to support 12+ playable characters
•Tuned balance values informed by backend data and design leadership during 3 seasons of live service support on a competitive PvP shooter
•Implemented new weapons, abilities, and items using the Gameplay Ability System
•Helped switch the camera perspective from 1st to 3rd person, focusing on camera and controls systems
•Authored camera animations and logic controlling character animations for melee and projectile attacks
•Created basic design tools and helper functions to speed up level markup and gameplay debugging
•Contributed and collected feedback in regular internal playtests
Example: Season 2 character abilities, Leef
Designs for most RA playable characters were originated by the lead character designer. For the season 2 update I had the opportunity to design and implement the new playable character, Leef, from concept through production.
"Leef wields powerful archaic magic, and is one of the oldest and most peculiar creatures on Crater. His kind were thought to have vanished eons ago along with their fabled home, the Realm of the Ancients. Despite his unfathomable age, Leef still approaches life with an innocent, childlike wonder.
Accompanying Leef is Flitt, his insect-like best friend. In the arena, Leef sends Flitt out to ensnare opponents mid-air in a magic vortex. With his foes trapped, Leef flings spiraling Arcane Rockets towards them from his magic-imbued wooden staff. Successful hits will power up the staff until it's fully charged, turning Leef's next Arcane Rocket into a Charged Beam that can pierce through multiple targets at once.
Appropriately for a creature lost to history, Leef is also highly elusive. Utilizing his mind-bending Warp Dash, Leef can quickly curve around cover or zip through enemies, damaging them along the way!"
Community Gameplay Examples
Live service support
Example patch notes from a title update containing numerous fixes, tuning, and balance changes I contributed to:
Beta vs. launch camera perspectives
I worked on an internal team of designers and engineers responsible for assessing the viability of changing the game perspective for all characters from 1st person to 3rd person view. This required a range of changes to camera settings, weapon and ability functionality and much more to ensure combat mechanics worked as expected in the new perspective.
Example community gameplay showing 1st person perspective in public beta
