The Spirit of Dread

                   I recently started playing the new MOBA Dawngate. There are many aspects of Dawngate that I enjoy over the other titles in the MOBA genre. I have decided to design a couple of shapers. First is the Spirit of Dread. This is a top-down design, which means that I am trying to start with the flavor and create a kit to fit, rather than starting with a mechanic and building bottom up. So, what does it mean to dread? Merriam-Webster defines dread as: to fear greatly, to regard with awe. Also, to feel extreme reluctance to meet or face; to be apprehensive or fearful. Most importantly it is defined as a person or thing that causes fear. But how is dread used as a word in the modern day? What images come to mind when you hear the word dread? For me, the first thing I think of is Judge Dredd. Dredd is an implacable fighter. He is seemingly invincible and works his way through hundreds of crimes, ceaselessly moving toward his goal. A quick search through various other media corroborates this as the basic modern idea of something dreadful. Dread is the feeling we get when we fear the inevitable. It has actually somewhat merged with the idea of being doomed. The specific imagery of a heavily armored, unstoppable force already has strong associations with the word dread ever since the Royal Navy named a battleship the Dreadnaught. This left a strong enough impression that dreadnaught became a class of ship and has since spread to media, such as the Space Marine’s interred brothers in Warhammer 40k. Now the term Dreadnaught obviously means that it doesn’t afraid of anything, but they also inspired fear all their own. This is leading me down the path of having Dawngate’s first armor bound character. Now in fantasy armor tend to equate to knights. Dawngate feels like a poor place to have knights proper. The aesthetic of the game is clearly more Eastern influenced, thought there are some characters that wear plate and mail. The point is that he should be like Ser Gregor Clegane, enormous and inexorable. The specifics of the art direction and the character himself will come later. Now that we have some idea of the concept, what is the execution? Ideas are useless on their own, its what you do with them. So we have an enormous unstoppable force. It would be poor to make him a ranged character or a mage. We want him to be visceral and full of action. This pushes us to make him melee. A character wearing as much armor as the Spirit of Dread would naturally lend himself to being a tank. This doesn’t feel overly compelling on its own. Making a bland “slow tanky dude” is not especially interesting. Voluc already does the armored character thing. What can we do to differentiate our shaper? Well what specifically does Voluc do? He has a singular slow, and does a lot of damage. He is also a drain tank, stealing life from those around him to make himself live. He does nothing to protect his allies other than to force them to attack him. He, like all non-assassin melee, is susceptible to kiting. Who else in Dawngate fulfills a tanky role? Raina, Flinn, Desecrator, Khagen, and Kel are true tanks. There are many bruisers as well, including Voluc. What is the difference between a bruiser and a tank? Bruisers are in-between tanks and assassins. Assassins tend to have little to no cc, but lots of burst damage and mobility.  Tanks are the opposite. Tanks have several ccs, and tend to have lowered mobility. In order for a tank to function though, they have to still be threatening, and as such usually do damage in a way that ramps up over time, or is flat but very consistent. Tanks also tend to be the primary initiators in a composition, where Assassins like looking for solo targets. Take Khagen for example. The way his Spirit Sands mechanic works makes him a larger threat the longer the fight goes on. Raina is an example of the other type of tank, dealing ok damage while protecting her carry. While not a high amount of damage, just being survivable ensures that over the course of an engagement she will do significant damage to the enemy. Bruisers fall somewhere on this spectrum. Basko is closer to an assassin than a tank since all of his abilities want to GO IN. Marah feels more closer to a tank. She gets beefy and uses her cc to lock down targets that are trying to penetrate your teams front line.  To differentiate our new shaper, where should we put him on the spectrum? Well, being on the heavy end of a tank feels most correct. Your enemies should want to run away from Dread. Dread should be something you are scared of. How do we accomplish this? There are a number of ways. First though, it is important to have a Hook. There should be something that makes people say, “Oh that’s cool.” Right up front, that will be the art and the style. Before people really see abilities or get a feel for how a shaper plays, they are going to see the art. Mechanically though, there also has to be a Hook. Tess’ W is a Hook. It is something that is uniquely hers. The Hook is the skill that you build around. To use an example from another MOBA, Braum’s shield is definitely his Hook. What mechanic can we make our Dread shaper have? Well, my first thought is that dread is specifically something that people are afraid to face. I will start from his passive. All the names are working and will be machined into proper titles later. “Aura of Fear” – Pure Shaper. Enemies that face Dread have their armor and magic resist reduced by X-Y. Plug in numbers for now are 5 + 1/level. At 20 this would be a reduction of 25. These numbers are entirely work around, just stating simple clean numbers for the sake of discussion. More important is the feel of the skill. This gives us a solid starting place and a great hook. The ability has to be strong enough to matter or people will just stand and fight anyway. The range of the passive is also critical. Too low an aura range and he won’t be effective, too large and and pressure on the backline will be overwhelming. Right now we’ll call it 800 range. This is a decent middling distance. This passive gives us several knobs to tune and a clear but subtle objective the moment Dread is in a game. Dread wants to fight people that are facing him. The enemies don’t want to face Dread. The subtleties that underlie this basic premise are huge. Opposing divers want to slip past him to hit the backline and drop his passive. This forces Dread to try and back up to get in front of the divers, giving ground to the enemy. It also means that he would have excellent dueling potential, since standing and fighting him would put you at a disadvantage.  Since enemies don’t want to be facing Dread, he is going to be pursuing. This gives us opportunity to build weakness and strength in the shaper. If he has too long a range or too fast a speed he would be too strong in a 1v1 setting. So building the kit we want to be mindful that he doesn’t get overlong a reach. In short, we don’t want him to be able to manipulate The Gap too often. Mages and ranged should be strong toward him, but other melee should have a very hard time fighting Dread. Flavor-wise this works out perfectly. Melee have no choice but to fight their fear head-on while ranged characters try to stay out of its reach. Obviously, since this is the core mechanic that the shaper revolves around, it should be what he is trying to manipulate in gameplay. Successful Dreads should be trying to keep people looking at them as much as possible. The question is why wouldn’t people just eat the debuff and fight him? What does he do that’s threatening enough to get the enemy to run away? Specifically, why don’t people want to be inside the range of his passive? Well, some sort of ability that keeps you next to him would become scary fast. If him getting next to you kept you next to him then running away would be difficult. Perma-slows are not good gameplay though. We don’t want to shut off options, we just want to constrict them. This leads to E: Wave of Fear – Flat 2 second cooldown, reduces movment speed by 10/20/30/40/50% for 1 second. Range 500 yards, PBAoE. I set the range there so the ability just barely doesn’t catch auto-attackers as they attack from range. If you can get them in range as they pause to attack you are in business, but making it too easy would defeat the purpose of the shaper. Shapers clearly do have a lot of open ended applications. Ashabel Hunter is a thing. Basko Tact is a thing. That said, we definitely want to tailor our shaper to have a role that suits him, much how Flinn’s W is clearly suited to the Hunter role. I propose that we add damage to his E, not significant in one cast, but eating multiple casts adds up quickly. For now, 20/40/60/80/100 + 1/2/3/4/5% of  Max health magic damage. I don’t know which part of this ability should be scalar with power. Regardless, we now have an ability that makes people not want to get caught in it. Eating one E will likely lead to eating more Es, which add up fast if the ability is ranked first. Now that we have enemy shapers trying to stand in the sweet spot outside of the range of Wave of Fear, what element of play/counter play can we add that can shake up this dynamic of range? We don’t want to make it too easy one way or the other. 2 things come to mind, let Dread close distance at normal speed, but unhindered by cc, and give him a skillshot that has cc attached to it. Skill shots normally go on Q, so Q: Dread Stare – Skillshot nuke. deals 40/80/120/160/200 (+0.4) magic damage to the target and causes a 0.75 second fear. 13/12/11/10/9 second cooldown. This is the skill that makes Dread non-binary and as such will require the most tuning. If Dread gets on someone he is by design difficult to shake. This is the ability in his core kit that lets him close distance. If its too reliable than he is too good. If you can’t ever land q then Dread is awful. Luckily with skillshots, there are tons of knobs to turn. Missile speed, missile width, as well as cooldown, whether it passes through minions, etc. Now we come to the last two abilities, his W and his ultimate. I know what I want the abilities to simulate, I am just unsure which should go where. As such we will speak in abstract and divine. I had the idea above for Dread to be able to walk through anything, but at normal speed. The other idea is to force the opposition to face you. These take the form of a CC dispel and a taunt respectively. If the cc dispel is on his W it should look like this: Inexorable, W – Remove all non-suppression CC and gain 30% tenacity for 5 seconds. 30/25/20/15/10 second cooldown. If the CC immunity is his ultimate then it should look more like the: Inexorable R – Break all CC and become immune to CC for 5/6/7 seconds. While Inexorable is active, Dread regenerates 5% of his maximum health per second. 180/150/120 second cooldown. Both abilities are strong and CC is a very touchy subject to monkey with. The other ability would then be either: Face your Fear, W – Taunt target shaper to hit you for 0.5 – 1.5 seconds. 10 second cooldown at all ranks. Or, Face your Fear, R – Dread Taunts all enemies within 800 range for 1/2/3 seconds.  160/140/120 second cooldown. These two skills in concert work to get the enemy to deal with wither your passive or your Wave of Fear. A note on the Taunt, even in its ultimate version it does not prevent you from taking other actions. Either kit encapsulates the feeling of Dread. You do not want to see this guy charging at you.
Edited some numbers on second look, so the two kits as of now are:
Passive – Aura of Fear: Reduce the resistances of enemy units that are facing Dread by 5+ 1 per level.
Q – Dread Stare: Dread fires a blast in a line. The first enemy hit takes 40/80/120/160/200 (+0.4) magic damage and is feared for 0.75 seconds. 13/12/11/10/9 second cooldown.
W - Remove all non-suppression CC and gain 30% tenacity for 5 seconds. 30/27/24/21/18 second cooldown.
E- Wave of Terror: Dread unleashes a wave of energy, dealing 20/40/60/80/100 (+0.1) + 1/2/3/4/5% of the enemies maximum health as magic damage. The wave slows enemies by 10/20/30/40/50% for 0.5 seconds. 2 second cooldown.
R – Face Your Fear : Dread Taunts all enemies within 800 range for 1/2/3 seconds.  160/140/120 second cooldown.
Or,
Passive – Aura of Fear: Reduce the resistances of enemy units that are facing Dread by 5+ 1 per level.
Q – Dread Stare: Dread fires a blast in a line. The first enemy hit takes 40/80/120/160/200 (+0.4) magic damage and is feared for 0.75 seconds. 13/12/11/10/9 second cooldown.
W – Face your Fear, W – Taunt target shaper to hit you for 0.5 – 1.5 seconds. 10 second cooldown at all ranks.
E- Wave of Terror: Dread unleashes a wave of energy, dealing 20/40/60/80/100 (+0.1) + 1/2/3/4/5% of the enemies maximum health as magic damage. The wave slows enemies by 10/20/30/40/50% for 0.5 seconds. 2 second cooldown.
R –  Inexorable: Break all CC and become immune to CC for 5/6/7 seconds. While Inexorable is active, Dread regenerates 5% of his maximum health per second. 180/150/120 second cooldown.
Both kits would require massive tuning, and the W/R flipflop is all about which moment feels bigger, taunting multiple people into bad fights or breaking free of the opponents CC and getting to just run at them full tilt. Essentially, is the rest of the kit more Olaf or more Galio.
Now that we have mechanics that we want the shaper to be working with, it comes time to set his base stats and his stat ratios. The base health of all tanks is identical at 530 + 78/level. The highest base health in the game is Renzo at 540 + 83/level, followed closely by Freia at 540 + 80/level. We definitely want Dread to be beefy, but we also want him to work for it. 520 + 75/level seems like a decent compromise. In general, having some lower base stats seems like a good point of balance for his late game being difficult to deal with. Specifially though, his scaling with haste needs to be lower than normal. His cooldowns are all very powerful, and movement speed should be a premium stat. One of the largest deliniations between bruisers and tanks is the attack power ratio. Bruisers get 1:1 where tanks get 0.8:1. I would argue that Dread is a case where if he gets to you he should hit like a train, and that he should get a 1:1 ratio.
Roles:
With this set of abilities, Dread would make a great Hunter. His E lets him smash jungle camps. His ganks would be predicated on his ability to land his skillshot and co-ordinate with his teammates. The kit that has his Taunt as his R would be better suited to a fast clear to 6 to get double cc, whereas the other kit would have him looking to get onto a lane as soon as he has all three basic abilities. either Kit would play decently as Tact or Glad, though having Inexorable as his ult and a single target taunt lends him to being a Tact more easily. Having an AoE taunt would require quite some padding to withstand the damage, so getting a Gladiator’s income will help him. Changes to Predator might help him be successful there, but probably not.
Lore and art:
Now that we have a mechanical and theoretical understanding of the character, its time to have him set in a location, give him a history, a name, a story.
Lore:
Counted among the North’s armies are a widely feared vanguard.  The Hands of Winter are chosen in early adolescence for their size. They are “recruited” from orphanages. As wards of the state, they are suitable for military service. The training is harsh and many candidates are dropped either from the military, into a lesser unit, or an early grave. Grond was such orphan once. After three decades of combat he was named First Hand. His presence alone, all seven feet of towering muscle and armor. It was said that Death himself would lose to The Hands of Winter. This was put to the test when nations began to clash over control of the Dawngate, and the Hands of Winter were thrust into an engagement with the barbarian hordes of the East. After hours of fighting, all of his company lay dead. Grond prayed to make his last stand. To leave his enemy in fear. He bonded with the Spirit of Dread in that moment. His features twisted and he became something wholly inhuman. The sight of him drove the barbarians back but he chased them down, rolling through their ranks as a wave of death and sorrow.
Art:
Below are some pieces that capture the feel of the character.





All of these images are of a warrior to be feared as one fears death itself. For art direction, A tall armor bound character carrying a menacing weapon and huge tower shield, face obscured by hood, the tatters of a cloak or robes about his shoulders. He looks almost mechanical in his movements. We should get the sense that he is not quite human anymore. The armor is worked into devices of death, and his particle effects are spectral. Remember he is the Spirit of Dread, Grond the Relentless.

The Gap

Often in games you will hear references to the gap. Most frequently in relation to gapclosers as moves that specific characters receive. However, no one ever explicitly states what the gap is. The working definition I have made for the gap is, When one player can attack another without the possibility of reprisal. Generally we see this as a form of range advantage. The first place I came across the term was in the MMO-RPG World of Warcraft. It was used when talking about the interplay between ranged and melee characters.

This is the gap. The ranged character can hit the melee character without fear of being hit in return. This principle crosses several genres though. It is not confined to MMOs. It also makes it presence known in MOBAs, RTS, Fighting games, and even Chess.  This idea is at the center of many of these genres and has many names. Range, gapclosers, escapes, and so on all belong to the same principle.  Some concrete examples are in order. I will be going through quite a few so that people unfamiliar with various genres of games can still follow along.
MOBAs/MMOs:
These two get lumped together since their gameplay is so similar. To pull away the complexity, imagine there is a character with a ranged attack and a character with a melee attack. All other factors being equal, the ranged character can attack and move and be dealing damage to the melee character without taking damage in return. This move is referred to as kiting. This is the work of the Gap. The ranged character never has to do anything additional and will win the fight. He/She can just keep taking shots at the melee character without being afraid of taking incoming damage. For more concrete examples, picture Ashe versus Udyr, or a Frost Mage versus a Warrior. These match-ups show a clear weakness for the melee to get on top of their opponent to do damage provided no external forces exist. More telling is Caitlyn’s dominance during the early game. Just having 100 range on other ad carries allowed her to be a prominent force in the professional scene for quite some time as getting the odd autoattack in without reprisal would eventually force the other adc to go back to base.
Fighting Games:
A major delineation of characters in fighting games is Fireball vs non-Fireball.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSDYCfHdVwA
In the video, we see that Ryu is able to attack from virtually anywhere on screen and keep Zangief at bay. Zangief has to overcome the Gap in order to attack Ryu. Each matchup has its own Gap. Fighting games have the Gap more than other examples since unlike MMOs, MOBAs, or RTS games there are no external factors that alter the dynamic.
RTS:
In real time strategy games, range is a critical component to a unit’s strength. So many decisions have to account for range. I’ll speak in depth here about Protoss units since I think they have many examples. The Zealot is a fine unit that drops off as the games goes on, not because their damage is poor, but because they just die before they can close the Gap to deal damage. They have an upgrade that lets them Charge up to units and they become a significant threat again. The Stalker has decent damage but its claim to fame in the early game is its range and speed. These attributes let the Stalker have significant control. Stalkers have an upgrade called Blink that allows them to instantly teleport a short distance. This enhances the attributes of the Stalker by ensuring that they can close the Gap on targets of opportunity or flee from bad situations, opening a Gap from the danger.  The Sentry has a basic ability called Forcefield, which creates barriers, either allowing friendlies to escape or trapping enemy units. The Colossus is a pillar of Protoss strategy, and when does it become the crazy death machine? When its range goes from 6 to 9. This means that the Gap the enemy has to overcome to attack it on the ground is enormous, and more importantly, they have to go through all your other units. These are just some simple ones. Think of the various patches in SC2′s history. What did they do early in Wings of Liberty’s lifetime when Zerg were struggling? They buffed Roach range by 1. That meant Roaches made a better concave and couldn’t be kited as easily. They could also hit Photon Cannons from behind building walls. RTS games lean on the Gap to make the units interact in interesting ways.
These are just some simple examples. The Gap exists across the board. But why bother to define it? Can’t we just be happy with the various terminologies that these games have for the Gap and be satisfied? Two reasons jump to mind.  First is the idea of Asymmetry. Asymmetry has some broad meanings and some very specific ones. I’m going to argue in favor of asymmetric multi-player games. Asymmetric balance is incredibly difficult to pull off. Starcraft: Brood War was a phenomenon.  It had three separate races that all managed to be unique and well balanced. Asymmetry is valuable because if executed properly it adds to the dynamism of the game, specifically as a way to capture your initial audience. The Gap is inherent asymmetry. It exists to confer a starting advantage to different pieces, leading to areas where some pieces are strong and other times weak.  In whatever game you are playing, having room to explore and having games play out differently each time keeps people playing. Having your various pieces be strong in different situations gives lots of room to explore. League of Legends and other highly competitive games grow naturally from their fan base. The larger the number of people playing the game, the larger the scene around the game becomes. While asymmetry is not necessary for a good game, or for replay value, it adds a dynamic that symmetrical games can’t hope to have. The initial value of asymmetry is the “hook” that it provides. Letting players experience different match ups help them feel out limitations and strengths naturally.
Symmetrical games tend to feel like Rock, Paper, Scissors to beginners When everyone has access to the same options they feel how far behind the curve they are when they are starting out. This is problem tends to shrink as a player progresses, and even in symmetrical games the emergent asymmetry of the positions are usually the result of attempting to set up an artificial gap. Take a Terran mirror match in Starcraft. This is a symmetrical match up since both players start with the same resources and available strategies. However, as the game progresses, one player goes for Medivacs and another goes for bio backed up by tanks. This emergent asymmetry is a result of the players each trying to get into a position were they have a Gap over their opponent. The dropping player is trying to use his mobile force to stay away from reprisal, hitting in places and leaving before his opponent’s stronger force can react. The Tanking player is trying to set up positions where his tanks can do maximum damage without fear of his opponent being able to get to the tanks due to their massive range and damage.
However, the big reason to discuss the Gap in broad terms is because of how many decisions designers have to make surrounding it. Things that are almost invisible nowadays. Should a ranged character and a melee character do the same amount of damage with their autoattack? How fast should the characters move? Does turning happen instantly or is their some delay? How fast should attacks be? All of these decisions are predicated on the Gap. We expect melee characters to do more damage because they have to first close distance to do damage. We expect melee characters to have higher movement speed so they aren’t as easy to kite. Turing speed is an important aspect or many games because it reduces the effectiveness of kiting. Ghostcrawler and Morello have both talked about the “Arms race” between ranged and melee characters and this is exactly why. Finding a balance point for the Gap is difficult.
All of what I’ve presented should be fairly self-evident. Its just a formalization of a concept that’s been rattling around in the head anyone who plays games. The next bit is different. What is Crowd Control? It is a way to stop an opponent from taking action. The Gap as I defined it is when one player can attack another without the possibility of reprisal. Being stunned or otherwise controlled is an incarnation of the Gap. This is why crowd control is so powerful and difficult to balance. For melee characters it can even function as a traditional gapcloser and let them get right up on their opponent. This is part of what makes crowd control abilities so sought out. If you are behind a stun or root can let you have a moment when your opponent’s advantage is meaningless. CC gives you the option of coming back in situations where you are behind. It also lets you pick off people that are out of position.
The Gap is a core part of modern game design, but how far back does it go? How long have we been playing around the Gap? Well, the Gap is why basketball players tend to be the tallest around. That extra bit of height gives the taller player a zone where he can control the ball and not have the enemy be able to interfere. American Football is all about creating a Gap for wither your Quarterback or your Running Back. You have blockers and attackers. Chess is about setting up inequalities, spaces where you can attack and not suffer reprisals.  The Gap can be seen at work in games throughout history.
One of the keys to understanding design is understanding the Gap. Looking for areas where the Gap is too large or too small. Seeing the space as an area alive with advantage and disadvantage.
Lef