David Vacas “Valli” Interview
Who is David Vacas “Valli”?
I’m David Vacas, although if you call me that, not even my best friends will know who you mean. Let’s start over.
Hey, I’m Valli. Video game designer and programmer. I love video games, board games [and sweets too, yes, that has to be included]. I’ve worked on many games like Bluey and Dora, as well as porting games to all platforms.
What is your role at Artax Games? And in DOBA?
Although I’ve had different roles within the company, starting out as a programmer on DOBA’s predecessor, right now I focus on design.
As for DOBA, I’m the Lead Designer and Game Director. I’m responsible for defining and detailing mechanics, balancing values, levels, and decision-making, while also making sure everything stays cohesive and consistent across all departments.
What has been the biggest challenge when balancing the different dogs?
In games like this, where different playstyles mix with multiple win conditions and combinations of abilities, balancing the whole system is always the biggest challenge. Slightly changing a single value can alter the entire system and the game’s inherent “meta.” [If I hadn’t written this myself, I’d say Chatty — ChatGPT for non-friends — wrote this paragraph.]
As I mention in the next question [HOW? Can I see the future O.O?], every dog has strengths and weaknesses that define them, and that always guides the balancing process. That makes it slightly easier to decide what values can or cannot be adjusted, because the most important thing, in my opinion, is preserving each dog’s essence, personality, and unique playstyle compared to the others.
What’s your creative process for defining a new dog’s style?
[Get ready, because I’m going all out on this question.]
When defining new dog playstyles, several points are important:
Unique Essence
It’s important to give each one a unique essence that sets them apart, because two identical characters aren’t fun [they’re adorable and we’d all want to cuddle them, but we came here to play].
To do this, the first thing we have to do is look at the possibilities we’re working with. In this case, due to production limitations, the only way to differentiate them was through parameter tuning. [I’ve been fighting for a long time to let us add passive abilities to the dogs. I have some really fun ideas for them, things could get crazy and very fun. So those of you reading this, join me in this fight and help us achi… no, no, I’m not doing anything, just talking to the readers… no no, I’m not starting a revolution to finally get my passives… sir, let go of my arm… Leave me alone, I’m a free person fighting for what we want and you can’t stop us93U!]
Once you know the tools you can use, you have to squeeze every bit of potential out of them so that each character feels different.
With great power comes great weakness
One essential thing characters must have is strengths and weaknesses that allow experienced players to maximize the good parts and minimize the bad ones.
This also allows for more unique and distinctive characters, giving them an extra touch of depth.
It also partially helps with balancing, because it’s important to understand which strengths and weaknesses define a character in order to preserve their essence.
The Most Important Thing
They must always, absolutely always, be fun to play. It sounds obvious, but it really isn’t. I could give examples of unique ideas that followed all the previous points I mentioned and tested well in theory, but instantly stopped being fun once implemented.
[Bracket-speaking me can give you an example. Actually several, but this could go on forever. Once, there was a crazy idea where I tested an aggressive dog that, instead of peeing over the map, cleaned it. All its “pee” abilities became cleaning abilities, and we even planned for it to be a dachshund acting like a floor roller. But when we tested it a bit, beyond the technical and production problems, it just didn’t feel good. It wasn’t fun. In a relatively fast-paced game like this, basing your gameplay around reducing and ruining someone else’s progress sounds fun, but it doesn’t really work because you’re not proactively pursuing your own victory or creating fun moments during the match. Of course, it could work with more care, more time, and most importantly: real passive abilities [keep reading to learn more about this [yes, that was three brackets in a row, which is why I’m not a narrative designer — let’s proceed to close the bible I just handed you]]]]
Feeling Powerful
For me, one of the keys in many games is the feeling they give you while playing. In this case, it’s essential that when you play, you feel like you’re doing really powerful things.
Throughout development, many people came up to me saying things like: “Whoa, this dog is super strong!”, “That ability is insane!”, etc. But then someone else would come along talking about a completely different ability they’d tried and thought was overpowered too.
Making players feel like the things they do and choose are powerful — or that they played really well — is very important in video games.
Chapter 22,222: The End of the Wall of Text
Using all the previous points as reference, I’m always looking for new gameplay styles, mechanics we don’t already have, ideas from other games, or even styles from completely different genres that we can adapt into ours [this is usually very interesting because it leads to really fun new ideas].
Personally, and to finish up, one thing I especially enjoy is looking at the tools I have and squeezing every bit out of them, turning them around 360° and extracting all the potential they have. I love this part of design.
[End of the play. The audience applauds, clearly relieved they can finally get up and go pee.]
Which dog do you prefer playing? And which one is your favorite?
[I think I’ve completely taken over this interview, so I’m answering however I want :P]
As usually happens, I can’t pick just one child, so I’m going to say three. [If you’ve read this far, I doubt you’ll complain about me adding more info.]
AlmostHusky
Back when DOBA was still tiny and nothing like what it is today, there wasn’t even a husky in the game, nor were there plans to add one. As a husky fan, I created one myself using the game’s customization and skins. So for a very, very long time, this shiba was my favorite dog: AlmostHusky.
Max
This is the dog I currently use the most. He has a great balance of strengths and weaknesses — if other players know how to counter him, he can struggle a lot, but if you take advantage of his speed and mana pool, you can create huge ability combos.
Sunny
I think this is the most mechanically unique dog. I’ll keep its playstyle and unique mechanics secret so you can discover them yourselves, but it’s probably the dog whose build differs the most from the others and has the greatest impact. From here, I recommend using the shield — the rest is up to you 😊
[Writing this made me realize all my favorites are black and white. Maybe it’s because of huskies, old movies, mimes, zebras… I’ll investigate.]
Tell us a DOBA secret that only you know.
The German Shepherd had a different name for a long time because it referenced one of my favorite movies. Production and marketing removed the name, but in our hearts he’ll always be Sam. [For those who don’t know the movie reference: I Am Legend.]
And any funny anecdotes?
There are many things that happened throughout development, but I’ll stick with all the times that, while testing gameplay, mechanics, and bugs, we ended up seriously competing against each other within the team and laughing at the ridiculous things we did to one another.
