Guild Wars 2 : Building the Dungeons
In the latest Guild Wars 2 developer blog, Arena.Net's William Fairfield gives readers an inside look at how the dungeons are designed. When designing a dungeon, Fairfield says, the flow of the dungeon, adequate challenges and the necessity for players to use strategic skills.
It begins-as most things do-with an idea. The designer responsible for the dungeon will sit down with Jeff Grubb and work out the story that we are trying to tell inside the dungeon. Then they will set down a paper design of the dungeon. Once the paper design is finished, we have a meeting that includes our environmental artists, the design lead, the dungeon team, and several members of QA. In this meeting, the designer responsible for the dungeon will lay out his plan. We discuss the plan and suggest changes we think could help bring the various parts of the dungeon together.
After this, the designer will go back and begin implementation. Iteration is a huge part of this process, and at several points, the dungeon is played and scrutinized not just by the dungeon team but by members of QA and design as well. Feedback is given and changes are made based on that feedback. This process will continue, often for weeks, until the dungeon is in a state we are all happy with. When we finally feel it is ready, we have the entire company play the dungeon in an all call session. This gives us much-needed feedback from many different levels and styles of players before we start the process again, polishing the dungeon as we learn more.