Portfolio: My work for Forgotten Empires on Age of Mythology: Tale of the Dragon as Lead Balance Designer
About Age of Mythology: Tale of The Dragon
Tale of the Dragon is the first expansion that Age of Mythology has received in over a decade after its support ended.
- Platform: Steam
- Developers: Forgotten Empires (my employer at the time) and Skybox Labs.
- Publisher: Microsoft Studios
Main Features
- New Civilization: Chinese
- New fully voiced Chinese Campaign
- 7 new Random Maps
- One new Unit for each Original Civilization
My Role as Lead Balance Designer
My involvement with the project has started before the product itself was approved. I took part in various brainstorming sessions and proposal reviews that would later define the nature of the project regarding content (China theme), scope (amount of missions, units, maps), staff requirements, and more.
During the production phase, I subcontracted a team of top competitive players. This Balance Team contributed tremendously to the Chinese faction designs, and helped iterate on the original factions’ balance.
I was esentially in charge of everything related to multiplayer, as well as organizing the Balance Team’s activities and tasks. This included:
- Creating/Iterating Designs with the Balance Team and reporting to Directors
- Implementing unit behaviors, stats
- Iterating balance changes based on team feedback
- Guiding the random map scripters to achieve desired map spawn types
- Guiding the animators to get desired unit behaviours
- Organizing Playtests
- Reporting gameplay code bugs and prioritizing them
- Providing campaign feedback
Examples of Implemented Designs:
Key Units
Counter System
The Chinese Hard Counter Units work quite differently from the norm of the game. Generally, the counter system is: Infantry>Cavalry>Archers>Infantry. Each faction usually has a hard counter unit that shares the class with what they counter – for example, the Egyptian Axeman is an Infantry unit that hard counters other Infantry.
The Chinese however utilize the following:
Chinese Economy
