Marathon
Bungie (Tiger Engine)
Primary Duties
Senior Weapon Designer on Marathon.
Design owner for eight weapons from concept to ship, including prototyping, balancing, and overseeing collaboration.
Created and maintained large-scale TTK balance sheet with direct-from-source data import and complex simulation.
Designed and owned ‘Contraband’ weapon rarity tier and lead design on the first weapon of this tier – Biotoxic Disinjector
Designed and owned ‘Gold Mod’ and ‘Unique Weapons’ systems.
Served as subject matter expert and technical problem POC for weapons and mods.
Owned Weapons
As one of the longest-serving designers on Marathon’s Weapons & Equipment team, I played a crucial part in defining, building, and balancing our weapon sandbox. I was the design owner on the following weapons:
Biotoxic Disinjector - The game’s first CONTRABAND rarity weapon, it gives up the ability to ADS in exchange for two fire modes. The primary mode fires a burst of three sticky grenades, which explode on proximity to targets. The secondary mode is a powerful sustained beam. This weapon is unmoddable, and therefore does not have a Gold Mod.
V22 Volt Thrower - A fusion SMG that features a target-locking and homing mechanism. Sustained fire overheats the weapon, lowering rate of fire over time. The Gold Mod for this weapon creates a powerful explosion after several rounds land in succession, harkening back to the Needler.
Hardline PR - A semi-automatic marksman rifle with a very high rate of fire. The Gold Mod for this weapon reduces the player’s Heat (Stamina) on headshots and grants a stacking “Micro-Adrenaline” buff, increasing Agility and Heat Capacity.
WSTR - A double-barrel shotgun with extreme damage at close range. The Gold Mod for this weapon adds an alternate ‘slug’ fire mode, allowing high-skill shots at further ranges.
BRRT SMG - An SMG that fires full-auto in 5-round bursts. The Gold Mod for this weapon fires all five rounds in a burst simultaneously, converting it into an extremely powerful shotgun analogue.
KKV-9SD - An SMG with an integral suppressor and an extremely high rate of fire. The Gold Mod for this weapon grants massive magazine capacity and restores health when breaking an opponent’s shield, granting high sustainability at the cost of high ammo consumption.
Repeater HPR - A lever-action marksman rifle with high damage and a relatively low rate of fire. The Gold Mod for this weapon increases rate of fire with each successful shot on target, but this effect degrades when a shot is missed.
V85 Circuit Breaker - A fusion shotgun that allows players to charge up for different levels of effect. There are three charges by default, each adding more projectiles and increasing damage. The Gold Mod adds an additional charge level, which has extreme range, pierces targets, and ricochets off of world geometry.
Gold Mods & Unique Weapons
I was the owner of the Gold Mod and Unique Weapons systems. Gold Mods are weapon-specific weapon mods that drive novel gameplay and reinforce the fantasy of a given weapon. “Unique Weapons” are special variants of base weapons with designer-defined mods and additional benefits, which were our team’s most cost-efficient seasonal offering. As these could break our normal rules for mod compatibility, and the fixed rolls could target very specific power bands, they were used both reactively and proactively to engage players using largely existing content.
Gold Mods
Every moddable weapon in the game has a Gold Mod. These are specific to the individual weapon, and should always follow these design pillars:
It is the best choice for the mod slot in which it appears.
It is always an improvement, there are no contexts where it would be better to replace with a lower-level mod.
It reinforces the fantasy of the weapon.
e.g. the Repeater HPR, a lever-action rifle, has a strong “cowboy” fantasy. The gold mod reinforces this by doubling down on the rapid hammering of the lever, bringing to mind wild west shootouts.
Where possible, it should only make sense on its owner weapon.
e.g. the V85 Circuit Breaker is the only weapon with multiple charge levels. The gold mod centers this by adding an additional level.
It should signpost strongly towards other buildcrafting elements.
e.g. the KKV-9SD’s gold mod sparks a heal effect, which gets enhanced by other buildcrafting elements that support heal speed & amount.
It leaves room for other mods, including Gold, to be introduced to the sandbox.
While weapons only launch with a single Gold Mod, they are a relatively low-cost content multiplier. Room needs to be left for future Gold Mods to come online as Seasons progress, as they can be given additional value as time goes on.
Unique Weapons
Unique Weapons served as our artifacts - items with a sense of history. They are special named variants of existing weapons, with specific mod loadouts and additional “sweetener” effects. These mod configurations do not need to follow our rules for compatibility, as we designed the system to maximize flexibility and reduce ongoing engineering costs.
They began as top-end pinnacle rewards granted by the game’s hardest content, but quickly became the Weapons team’s fastest, cheapest way to multiply our existing content in a live environment. A few weeks into the game’s first season, we were able to ship a collection of “Bluniques” in just a handful of days.
They also served as a strong narrative conduit - because these were specific guns with a sense of history, that history could point towards the mysteries in the story and the history of the game’s universe.
TTK Balancing
I created and maintained a large-scale time-to-kill (TTK) calculator & balance sheet in Excel. This featured direct import from live data and a variety of complex simulations & calculations to give an overall view of various weapons’ performances at any in-game range band. The sheet showed many variants of TTK, allowing a more in-depth look at performance under different conditions. Designers were able to set data overrides on the workbook’s front page to allow fast calculations for proposed changes.
As my NDA precludes my showing of the sheet using actual data, the screenshot below has many redactions and points to fake “garbage” data, but should serve as an indicator of overall scale and complexity. This is the front “overview” page and skips many tabs of calculations & data sourcing.
Description
A massive ghost ship hangs in low orbit over a lost colony on Tau Ceti IV. The 30,000 souls who call this place home have disappeared without a trace. Strange signals hint at mysterious artifacts, long-dormant AI, and troves of untold riches.
Become a Runner in Bungie’s upcoming sci-fi PvP extraction shooter, Marathon. You are a cybernetic mercenary venturing into the unknown in a fight for survival and fortune where any run can lead to greatness.