Lennox Overview
Lennox is a talented gunslinger who relies on sharp shooting and high damage weaponry to win a fight. He always has a trick up his sleeve to get out of trouble. Lennox is equipped with two powerful handguns, an exploding knife, and the ability to fully heal himself. He is extremely effective at long and medium range, making him a formidable opponent when it comes to locking down lanes. With a perk that allows Lennox to automatically reload weapons as he is swapping between them, he always has a fully loaded weapon to rely on during combat.
My Responsibilities for this Character:
Lennox’s kit was handed to me with a first pass at his guns and abilities already in place. It was up to me to iron out any design problems with the kit
Update his playable prototype with any design changes
Translate player feedback into actionable iteration steps
Drive playtest feedback around specific kit questions trying to be answered
Come up with a plan for what gameplay feedback is needed to properly surface kit mechanics
Collberated with supporting content teams to ensure clear gameplay that supports fantasy goals
Balance Kit
Polish game feel
Create kit Variants used for monetization
Kit Breakdown
HL-4 Bell Ringer HEavy Hangun
The Bell Ringer is designed for long range engagements. It's perfect for landing critical shots when distance and accuracy matter most. With 6 bullets in the magazine, Lennox is challenged to land consistent headshots to take down opponents.
Gameplay Goals
Allow Lennox to dominate in long range engagements
Deal enough damage to let Lennox hold down a lane
Reliance on precision shots for effective play
Implementation Challenges
Visually conveying the deadliness of Bell Ringer without breaking the perception of it being a handgun.
As we started creating final art for kits, there were several iterations needed to properly convey the strength of this weapon. The first designs were too small, making it feel like it wouldn't do much damage. We pivoted to a larger version, but this was starting to make people read it as a sawed off shotgun. We ended up keeping the larger size of the gun, but we slimed down the width of the barrel to more closely resemble a revolver.
Chesterly Model 3 Revolver
The Chesterly is ideal for short to medium range combat. Its high rate of fire can overwhelm opponents in tight situations. This allows Lennox to finish off opponents quickly instead of waiting for their primary weapon to reload.
Gameplay Goals
Double-down on the gunslinger fantasy by giving Lennox another weapon to switch to when they run out of ammo on their primary
Allow Lennox to be effective when precision play is not ideal
Implementation Challenges
Getting players to switch to their secondary when they run out of ammo on their primary
Playtesting we found that players were not often utilizing their secondary weapon. We took two steps to address this. Firstly, we lowered the magazine size of the primary weapon. We wanted it to be just effective enough to take out players with moderate health if they were consistently landing head shots. Leaving the secondary as a backup option for likely misses. We also implemented the Gunslinger Perk which lets people reload their weapon if they are swapping to a gun with an empty magazine. This way the player can continuously burn through a magazine and swap their weapon for continuous use of their guns without any reloads.
Exploding Knife
The Exploding Knife is a thrown projectile that is deadliest when directly hitting an opponent. The knife itself does damage on impact, followed by an explosive AOE damage.
Gameplay Goals
Give Lennox a strong opener to a fight and allows for easier follow up with his weapons
Diversify offensive skills needed to excel with the kit
Implementation Challenges
Players were overly reliant on using the throwing knife in combat, diminishing the gunslinger fantasy
Lennox’s throwing knife used to do more damage and the player started out with 2. This incentivized players to unload both before following up with their weapon. This was diminishing to the gunslinger fantasy as it pushed his weapons to be used as a finisher instead of his primary damage output. To fix this issue we lowered the damage of the throwing knife and started out Lennox with one knife instead of two. Lennox can still work up to the power of having multiple knives, but now he must exercise his gun skill in order to gain the advantage.
Claxton Healing
Lennox has a self heal that slowly regenerates his health over time. If Lennox is shot while healing, it is disrupted and cancels the heal.
Gameplay Goals
Allow Lennox to heal when he is out of combat
Give Lennox the power of self-sustainability so he can guard lanes
Implementation Challenges
Finding a health model that didn’t cause Lennox to retreat to heal in the middle of combat
When Lennox’s kit was first given to me, their healing ability used energy. The player would hold down the ability button to drain the energy bar and heal themselves. They gained energy back when damaging enemies. This caused Lennox to retreat to cover mid-combat to heal after getting a few shots off on the enemy. To stop this, I changed the resource model to use charges. Charges are regained when Lennox kills an enemy. This made it so Lennox had to fully commit to a fight in order to gain their health back.
Gunslinger Reload Perk
When Lennox expends a weapon, and their stowed weapon is also depleted, they are able to swap to their stowed weapon and automatically reload it. This allows Lennox to never run out of ammo by continuously swapping between weapons.
Gameplay Goals
Incentivize players to utilize their secondary weapon
Give Lennox a trick reload to help fulfill the gunslinger fantasy
Implementation Challenges
Effectively signal to the player they are able to reload their stowed weapon mid-combat
Mid-combat is a difficult time to signal to the player that a time sensitive action is available to them since they are so focused on tracking their opponent. To surface this perk we put a UI element right under the reticle, where the player is the most focused. This is a depleting progress bar that is used to represent the time the player has left to activate the perk. We had plans of adding a special final shot sound for each weapon that would trigger when the perk becomes available, but this was postponed due to budgetary reasons.