New Dragon Age: Dreadwolf Community Update Discusses Skill Tree System, Skill Progression & More

dragon age dreadwolf

BioWare has released a new Dragon Age: Dreadwolf community update, in which it goes over the development of the new Skill Tree system and skill progression as an example of its game design process. The post also includes a Community Spotlight showcasing Dragon Age and Mass Effect fan art, and reveals that future community updates will answer a number of fan questions collected across social media platforms.

Dragon Age: Dreadwolf Skill Tree System Design Process:

BioWare explains that three key types of game designers are involved with the development of a typical RPG:

  • Systems Designers work on a variety of features across the game, like skill trees and difficulty levels. Their goal is to create a vision for features that will directly impact the player’s experience.
  • User Experience (UX) Designers, collaboratively with systems designers, take the vision and explore how players will interact with it by creating mock-ups and early user flows.
  • Technical UX Designers then build it in-engine, working with the systems and UX designers in a constant back-and-forth, keeping the player’s experience and usability in mind at all times.

Each gameplay feature developed usually passes through that hierarchy in order.

Due to the “self-insert” nature of RPGs, each gameplay feature must derive from an identified player desire. At BioWare, systems designers will typically write up a one-pager detailing the solution they want to develop for a given player desire with competitive analyses of implementation methods. For example, a one-pager for the Skill Tree feature characteristic of RPGs identifies player desires and key information:

  • As a Player, I can drive my character’s power through node acquisition
    • Nodes grant significant power gains. Each purchase feels meaningful
    • All node purchases are additive power gains; nothing feels like a useless purchase to get to “real” nodes
    • A variety of types of nodes grow the character in multiple ways, not just stats
  • As a Player, I can explore the various nodes in the skill tree and make a plan
    • Player must be able to fully navigate the skill tree regardless of investments
    • Nodes have clear descriptions and videos where applicable
    • Player has an understanding of how many total points they have to work with

After outlining this information in the one-pager, the designers were able to distinguish particular design goals with the feature:

dragon age dreadwolf skill tree

Once the vision of the feature has been established, the UX designers begin brainstorming the implementation of the feature in relation to the game’s user interface and other features. An initial design sketch of the Skill Tree system is as follows:

dragon age dreadwolf skill tree

After the design has been tentatively finalized, the Technical UX designers begin work on implementing the feature within the game using the UX designers’ mock-ups as a point of reference. Once the feature becomes usable within the game, the development team reviews the feature and incorporates tester feedback to redesign the feature as necessary until the right balance is found “between the designer’s vision and the player experience.”

Community Spotlight:

A new Community Spotlight also showcases fan art of Dragon Age and BioWare’s Mass Effect IP. A few pieces are shared below:

Josephine by Lohyna:

dragon age dreadwolf release date

Wrex by GeiraHod:

dragon age dreadwolf gameplay

BioWare has also announced that it will be answering a number of fan questions collected across social media platforms with each new community update. The full community update blog post with more sketches and community art can be found here.

Dragon Age: Dreadwolf has no release window yet, and no confirmed platforms. That said, it’s a no-brainer to think that it will be released on the PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC.

While there is no release window has been announced as of yet, but the game is currently in a fully-playable alpha stage. Check out leaked gameplay from an early build, providing fans with a first look at the game’s God of War-inspired combat.

Top Games and Upcoming Releases