Snipers vs Thieves: The Heist

Game Link

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.playstack.snipersvsthieves.heist 

iOS: https://apps.apple.com/app/snipers-vs-thieves/id1159723495  

Project Context

I was brought into the project early in my professional career to work alongside behemoth games publisher Playstack, delivering design work at regular milestones ahead of soft launch across global territories.

Detailed Contribution

Meta & retention systems design

• Live-ops design planning and implementation including bi-weekly objectives and XP rewards on rotation

• Divisions and level progression XP, reward milestones design and in-engine implementation 

Monetization Design

• Economy design planning and in-engine implementation across the entire game to ensure sinks & faucets felt fair and frequent for the end user. This included the cost of shop items, balancing of rare and time-limited live-ops weapons, gadgets and cosmetics, loot box rarity percentage balancing and their rewards alongside a time-limited, ad-incentivised loot box system rewarding ad-triggered loot rewards of different rarities from tokens earned from playing and winning

• Season pass progression, rewards and pricing strategies for two paid-for (premium and premier+) tiers

Core Gameplay Features & Balancing

• Full loadout and equipment menu UX redesign including top menu presentation, equip logic with multiple equip slots for the same item type and isolated design for weapons and gadgets of multiple rarities, upgrade levels, stats, and costs

• Friends & invite system including handling accepting/declining requests, sending requests, pending requests, removing friends, temporary recently met contacts, chat functionality, online/offline friend display and presentation of party members in lobby 

• Performance medals (otherwise known as badges or trophies) across bronze, silver and gold tiers that reflect sequential (e.g 'kill 5 opponents without dying') or one-off activities ('Finish as the match MVP') for post-match rewards

• Design of an emoji system comprised of a bottom-anchored button for minimal intrusion and 4 emoji slots synchronised from the respective module from the loadout menu, alongside the visual presentation of confetti and a suitably-sized emoji appearing to the side of the user for taunting or reaction purposes. 

• Weapons and gadget balancing across a variety of classes and weapon types including bespoke values for three post-FTUE, first matches against AI opponents of gradually harder difficulties. This included bespoke health values, weapon and gadget damage and cool-down values for AI opponents

FTUE & Onboarding Design

• Text writing, scenario outline, enemy and player placements, enemy difficulty, weapon damage, staggered onboarding content and reward unlocks and various other detailed design plans for a 20-minute onboarding and FTUE

Results

With the aid of the Head of Production and the experience of several staff members across all areas of development, all content was approved by the publisher and rolled out into production builds throughout all phases of soft launch.

What Didn't Go So Well

As the sole designer on the project at the time (supported by Head of Production and a previous, more experienced designer who moved onto other projects) I didn't spend enough time playing each implemented feature before roll out, with the priority being on getting planned-for content designed then out the door.

The FTUE Processes suffered the most from this lack of play. Playtest Cloud results were that people found the full FTUE (roughly 10 minutes of screen-led assistance) and truncated matches (3 reduced-length games) boring. For a mobile game in global launch, this would have killed D1 retention.

What I'll Do Better Going Forward

Experience since then has made me understand users want micro-FTUE moments and the ability to skip all FTUE in favour of 'just getting stuck in.' This includes a FTUE that introduces users to gameplay and meta-features without freezing gameplay and is triggered once non-sequentially when the users perform an action or enter a significant screen for the first time