Problem: New combat systems had been added to the game without proper onboarding to teach players to use them. This alienated returning players and created endgame players who were struggling because they never adopted systems that were now integral to the game.

Objective: Rewrite the onboarding flow through the introduction of each new mechanic to ensure thorough teaching and a pace that doesn't overwhelm the player with too much new information.

Result: Players now have in-game answers to their questions. New players will be comprehensively introduced to new mechanics during their main quest experience, no longer causing confusion when endgame content utilizes a mechanic they never properly understood.

When you make your first character in Wizard101, your first quest is a scripted combat tutorial that explains the basic foundations of combat--turn order, health/mana, hanging effects that increase or decrease damage, etc. This tutorial is scripted to override the rules that govern combat encounters, such as a 30 second timer to choose your spell, in order to insert dialogue to explain mechanics or highlight information on your screen.

Since its release, Wizard101's combat systems have grown massively. From new spell mechanics to different ways of acquiring the power cost for your spells, designers built on the foundation over time, introducing new concepts with content releases and a host of new spells to experiment with. 

However, these new systems were not accompanied with new combat tutorials to explain them. The original tutorials were made by a programmer, and no current designer knew how they were scripted or how to make more. Players simply had to trial-and-error their way to understanding or consult the forums for an explanation.

As a returning player who had experienced the bombarding feeling of new mechanics that alienates your understanding of the game, it was important to me to reintroduce these systems with combat tutorials at a pace that graduates with the content. Players need enough time to master everything in their toolset before they are given something new to experiment with.

I deconstructed existing Lua tutorials to learn their behaviors, wrote the outlines for beat-by-beat what the player should be doing and how the narrator is explaining each step, and integrated these new tutorials into the quest flow. In the first rollout, we backfilled tutorials for existing combat systems Archmastery and the Magic Wheel and created one for the newest mechanic, Spell Fusion. The following year, we reinvented Shadow magic as Shadow Pacts and adjusted Shadow's entire onboarding flow with a new combat tutorial to teach it. We have several more mechanics that will get this treatment in the future!

Players praised the tutorials for their comprehensive and progressive teaching of the systems. Now, when returning players ask in community spaces "How do I use Archmastery?" other players will point them to the tutorials as the method of learning. Several returning players have even stated they chose to simply start over with a new character for the full onboarding experience at the pace we've set in the game.

(Of course, we would prefer players have the tools to get up to speed without restarting the whole game over, but that's for a future initiative)

The Marketplace of Ideas is a street in Selenopolis themed after Wizard101's magic school of Myth. One of Myth magic's famous characteristics is the ability to summon minions, non-player creatures that will aid you in that battle instance. From this alone I knew I wanted to build an experience surrounding the summoning of outside aid in battle and the feeling of companionship with that character. Selenopolis is an area inspired by Egypt, and we were exploring the gods of Egyptian mythology in the storyline.

I picked four of the gods and their magical school counterparts that would create a varied experience with each companion, providing a strategic choice which the player calls to their aid in each battle.

In order to build a connection between the player and the companion, it was important that the player and the companion can play strategically together. Players in Wizard101 have reached significant power spikes, so a mob that feels comparable to the power level of a player is rare. I wanted to create an experience where players were glad to have the companion with them, rather than wishing it was simply another player. But the god shouldn't simply come in and win the battle for them--that wouldn't build connection between the two either.

I designed each god as a mirrored combat experience. First, the player opposes them in battle, during which the god has a specific puzzle strategy that must be utilized to defeat them. These fights are framed as the god teaching the player how to act, and it was important the player had to use the god's strategy to win the combat or else I couldn't guarantee they'd learned what they needed to learn for when they have the god as an ally.

Then, when the god joins them in battle as an ally, they begin their puzzle again, instructing the player how to act. Only this time, it isn't used against the player, it is the way to combo with them. Executing the puzzle correctly will trigger the god to cast their own spell against the Bard, doing mass amounts of damage.

While designing these mirrored combats, it was essential the puzzle for when the god is the player's enemy and when they are their ally were exactly the same so players learned what they needed to do to strategize with their companion. That meant any behavior I selected needed to also work in the second fight, and not interfere with any of the Bard's own behaviors.

The narrative team provided us with these creature concepts and their place in the storyline before their encounters were designed. Many factors contributed to my decision to design these battles (colloquially known as the Irk battles, as Irk is the creature classification of these little ball monsters) as intentionally difficult encounters.

Difficult bosses in Wizard101 were often designed to be straight puzzles--players must solve the riddle to learn the one solution to defeating it. With the large power spikes in the game, it's difficult at this stage to challenge players in any other way with the current combat toolset. However, at the time many players were asking for exactly this: bosses that challenge their dominant strategies without strictly limiting options to do so. The Irks were my attempt at providing that experience, using each Irk to put pressure on the player's abilities in different ways.

• Rage overwhelms the player by dealing gradual damage very quickly, requiring the player to think and act fast

• Desperation stacks defenses the player must remove or hit around

• Despair stops buffs but accelerates player damage itself

• Paranoia reacts off of the player's actions trying to anticipate their next move, encouraging the player to think about the order they execute their strategy

Additional design considerations:

• Each Irk is stylistically and thematically very different. There was good design space to link a series of battles together that could provide a very different experience depending on which you were fighting. While I designed the structure of their fights to be similar, the strategies players utilized against each varied widely.

• These battles were solo encounters, serving as a sort of skill check towards progressing to end-game content. Players who were struggling ended up socializing more, seeking guidance from players in common spaces of the world to talk strategy.

• Each Irk battle takes place at the end of a mini-arc in Wallaru's storyline. I thought it valuable to approach these battles as a sort of palette-cleanser, a capstone at the end of each milestone to shift the players' focus. Otherwise, our players tend to rush through our content without really consuming it.

• While players face many bosses throughout Wallaru's storyline, Wallaru is the concluding world of the Arc 4 narrative. Freddie Kroaker may be the main antagonist of Wallaru, but these Irks are about Daesin, the only thread the player has to the greater Arc 4 story during Wallaru until the concluding final battle after defeating Freddie Kroaker. I wanted these battles to be notable, to remind the player what the greater threat is.

• Similarly, this is not an easy task they have with Daesin. Daesin has been attempting to grapple with his emotions in all of Arc 4, and this is the culmination of that. It is not an easy task to overcome complex emotions such as Desperation, Despair, and it should not be easy to overcome the personification of them either.