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Wickland is a competitive, first person, dueling game and the goal is very simple, kill your opponent. Both players start as human characters with the ability to morph into other beast characters that are scattered around the map. The beasts are unique, which means that once a beast has been taken by a player, it will not respawn until the beast has been killed. When a beast is killed however, it will respawn after 15 seconds at the same location where it was first picked up. Other types of items are also available and placed strategically around the map. Potions restore your health while armor restore your armor value, with armor absorbing 80% of all incoming damage. Potions will respawn every 35 seconds, while armor will respawn every 25 seconds. Armor and potions are very important resources to help players succeed in defeating their opponents; therefore, learning how to time and fight for items are important skills to master!
A great ability that all characters have access to is the ability to wall jump. Wall jumping is simple to execute but difficult to master. Simply jump towards a wall at a slight angle, while holding down any directional key, and hit jump again as you touch the wall. Player will gain a temporary boost in speed when executing a wall jump. To maintain this speed boost, quickly jump again upon landing. This skill is vital in chasing or retreating from opponents, and if done right, a player can quickly traverse the whole map within seconds.
To ease new players into this competitive mindset, we are experimenting ideas where players need to feel that they are part of a team, a clan, or a club that is similar to a Kendo club, where the members involved belong under the same dojo, under the same “sensei”. When it comes to competing, the dojo will organize line-ups such that the students who fight each other are somewhat equal in skill, and overall, as a team, tries to win the competition as each member tries their best to score in their own individual 1 on 1 matches. This “common” goal, or team-oriented achievement can make the game a much more social experience that can help bring in new players to enjoy 1 on 1 game type that they may otherwise not. This is a very interesting dynamic that isn’t incorporated in competitive FPS games, and it is much more interesting for our small team to explore than to simply add game modes from existing games. There are many things we can learn from traditional 1 on 1 sports, and the worst thing to do for our game is to look at the other FPS games out there, and become a copy cat by simply cloning modes that have been done to death before.
The non-stop attrition: When all of the teams merged together to create the "new" Doom team 2 years ago, there was around 140+ developers to make the game. Now, there is only around 50. The non-stop attrition has gotten so bad, that they had to contract outside the company for the multiplayer portion of the game, and we have contractors doing a bulk of our art work.