1. Project Synopsis
This is a Character Rework Concept I created for the mobile game Marvel Contest of Champions. I redesigned Rogue's kit from the ground up, taking inspiration form other characters in the game and her character from the comics. I also received feedback on my design from a Champion Designer that works on the game. This was created and iterated on in a week as a challenge to myself to design a rework for a game I love to play.
2. Introduction (What is Marvel: Contest of Champions?)
Marvel Contest of Champions (MCOC) is a mobile fighting game developed by Kabam & Released in 2014. You Collect and fight against different Marvel Characters as you aim to take on tougher and tougher challenges. Each champion has unique abilities and playstyles that give them a situational edge over other choices.
Similarly to Pokémon, each champion in the game belongs to a class, which have a positive and one negative relationship to another class.
Champion Designers start with class and build their designs off of those, determining abilities, potential matchups, strengths, weakness, and and playstyles. Rogue, being a pre-established champion is part of the Mutant class.
The Class Wheel, as presented in-game.
The six classes are Mystic, Cosmic, Tech, Mutant, Skill, and Science.
3. Design Goals
Going Into this project, I looked at Rogue's current issues and created a few Design Goals which I want to achieve with the rework.
1. Update Rogue to modern mutant standards. Rogue is nearly 10 years old, and has fallen out of line with how modern mutant champions are designed. I'd like to align her kit with modern mutant design philosophy.
2. Maintain Rogue's fantasy as an ability stealer. Rogue as a comic-book character has the power to copy superpowers and knowledge from the people she touches. I'd like to express this fantasy throughout her kit.
3. Give her far reaching cross-class utility. As an ability stealer, It makes sense that rogue should be viable not only against your normal skill matchups, but across classes.
4. Research
After identifying problems with Rogue and setting some design goals, I decided to find some inspiration for her new kit from a variety of sources.
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Marvel Wiki, to research the power set of Rogue
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In-game champion screen, that details Rogue's current kit
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Other champions' kits, such as Photon, Captain Marvel, and Purgatory
to research powers and intended Champion fantasy.
to reference which abilities I which to keep, modify, or remove form the current kit.
Other champion kits to draw inspiration.
to research powers and intended Champion fantasy.
5. Design Decisions
Photon/Captain Marvel Style Ramp
Rogue Increases her damage in a similar manner to both Photon and Captain Marvel. They all have a charge building phase, where you build up power, and a charge drain phase, where you expend that power for damage. The main reason I chose to do this was to make Rogue's playstyle similar to Captain Marvel, who Rogue stole her base powerset from in the comics.
Charge Build Phase
Purgatory Kills Champions and Captures their "Souls" for Future Fights.
Charge Drain Phase
Purgatory-Esque Cross-Fight Evolution
Purgatory is a champion with the ability to capture a champions "soul" after they are defeated. Reworked Rogue has a similar ability called Template Recall where Rogue can steal class abilities off of champions during the fight and maintain the abilities throughout the rest of the quest. I decided to give her this ability to support the ability stealer fantasy.
Incorporating both Prowess and Daunted Effects
Mutants as a class are generally champions that deal tons of damage via massive special attacks. Some effects that they have to facilitate this are Prowess and Daunted. Currently there are NO Mutant champions that both gain prowess and apply daunted. I decided to give Rogue both, so that she can engage in content that asks for both effects. The effects do the same thing but use different means of achieving them.
Prowess is a buff that increases special attack damage dealt by a given %. Mutant champions generally place these buffs on themselves to enhance their special attacks.
Daunted is a debuff that increases special attack damage taken by a given %. Mutants tend to place this on the enemy to make them more vulnerable to special attacks.
Allowing Damage Phase Extension
While Rogue's new kit holds many aforementioned similarities to champions that currently exist within the game, the big differentiator within her kit is the fact that she can extend her the length of her damage phase way past her normal limit of around 20 seconds. I made this decision so that her kit promotes aggressive play to maintain her damage similar to her old kit while making it a more desirable goal through better damage payoffs.
Photon/Captain Marvel
Rogue
Gain Charges Until Max (25)
Can No Longer Gain Charges Until Depleted Completely
Gain Charges Until Max (40)
Can Still Gain Charges in Depletion Phase
6. Critique and Feedback
After I felt I got the design to a good place I decided to share it with someone with deep knowledge of the game:
Champion Designer at Kabam
Positive
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"The Robot/Armor Restriction Is nice"
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"You Get points for capping the Life Steal %"
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"Including the Balancing Levers is Nice"
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"Taking some inspiration form Purg[atory] ... is a very defensible direction. I like that choice."
Negative
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"Generally I think the recall abilities are a bit much. You did a good job of picking class appropriate abilities for most of the part, but I think there are just too many of them ... the final result is probably too strong but the base kit will feel slightly lackluster."
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"The number of effects infringes too much on other classes. You can get away with a little bit of other class identities, but this many probably just makes her too flexible."
Neutral/Clarification
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"What's the target for reverse controls Immunity in a Mutant?"
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"You'd ... get a lot of pushback for including both Daunted and Prowess in the same kit... Was there a goal for using both?"
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"Do you have a reason a Mutant should have access to Power Steal?"
"Overall this is a solid run, man"
7. Takeaways
I feel like I learned a lot by making this design:
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I should lean further into the class system and make sure that class identity is enforced throughout the design, unless my explicit goal is to bend class identity a bit.
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Every ability added to a champion should reinforce the design goals, I think I did an okay job at this for this design, but I can always do better.
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Building off of pre-established designs creates familiarity for both designers and players. It is a good foundation when used situationally.
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Feedback is extremely important for evolving your designs, whether that be iterative feedback through prototyping, or critique from players or designers.
I hope to take all of these lesson forward into my future designs, as they all seem widely applicable to many different scenarios.