[Hero Concept] The Director

[DirectorLyric]

Hello everyone, I posted the character select art for my OC on twitter and someone suggested I should post it to the forums so! Here I am! The Director is a character I've had for a long time and exists mostly for my own enjoyment, so if any of the abilities or gameplay elements are actually trash then I am soo so sorry

And yes, I know the Tags "Light, Camer, Action" were right there, I just didn't like them okay sue me

Abilities

* Some details (Upgrades, cooldown, radius, duration etc.) not included for my sanity

The Director’s Revenge

A large megaphone that projects Director’s words as Physical bullets, damaging enemies for 49 damage

Fall off range 22-30

Heavy Hitter - Close range


Ability1: Fixed in Post

Manifest a small reel of film from your pocket and grapple an enemy with it, dealing spirit damage and temporarily disabling a random ability and reversing the damage caused by that ability in the last 10 seconds over time.

Ability 2: Nickelodeon-Knockout

3 charges | Charge cooldown: 5 | Cooldown: 20
Extend a film camera and slam it into the ground up to 3 times, if all 3 consecutive hits make contact with the target a large flash emits from the camera, temporarily blinding them


Ability3: Dollie-Zoom

Wind up a track that quickly snaps you forward in a straight line, pulling and dealing a devastating hit to a singular target and knockback to anyone within 1ms of the tracks.

Ability 4: Casting call

Form your hands into a coyote and take control of any member(s) of the enemy team, leaving them devoid of color and replacing their player input with a friendly bot. The effect is disrupted if the affected enemy becomes critical or if The Director dies.

Damage to the enemy team done by “Actor’s” is converted into Healing for The Director and anyone within a 10m radius

7m <-> | 3s windup time | 10s duration

Background

" Since the dawn of time, man has needed someone to tell them what to do, The Director is that someone. The Director has had many titles and lived many lives the many eons it's been on earth, many of those lives fueled by a tyrannical desire to control and puppet mankind as if it was its own personal plaything. But everything has to change sometime.

Commodity became curiosity, curiosity became compassion, and The Director grew to love mankind, falling in-love with their art and culture. Now The Director has turned over a new leaf, committing its life to the art of cinema and the betterment of its industry. It hopes one day its karma will balance, and it can get back into humanities good graces.

Lore
The Director's says its motivations for joining the ritual are to become better liked and accepted by humanity but confides in few it's true desire is to become human itself.

The Director's exact species is unknown, it is referred to as a "Pincher" by select members of the cast, but this term seems to be used in a derogatory manner.

The Director's exact age is unknown, but it says to have been around since before cavemen.

The Director claims to be hunted by a group of people called "The Estate", it doesn't know exactly who they are but theorize they are the offspring of its previous victims coming to take revenge.

The Director is from a different plain of reality but is unable to make its way back.

The Director speaks Spanish and had lived in Peru for a long time before moving to New York.

The Director is a long-term resident at The Baroness.

The Director is an enjoyer and collector of human arts, specifically art depicting itself through-out the ages.

The Director is unable to see or be seen in color due to its unique genetic makeup and its relation to light, the only consistent outlier of this rule is the red scarf it wears. The Director's says it is its favorite gift but doesn't share who it is from.

The Director cannot dream.


Gallery

Icons
Gloat - Neutral - Critical

 

[bloodfrost27]

Today i learnt nickelodeon is an actual term. Oh my god, nickel - odeon. Wow. Anyway moveset is fire, the characters theming is a perfect fit for the game and you came up with some really creative ways of incorporating that theme into the kit. Kudos. Art is also wonderful ofc

 

[volkgang]

Excellent art!

Though I'm confused on his ult. So basically the player can't do anything for the 10 seconds. Can the bot uses the person's abilities? What about cooldowns? Let's say you ult a guy and the bot immediately uses his ult? Does this mean when the player takes back control, do they still have their ult or has it been wasted by you? Even if we don't allow bots to use ults, what about normal abilities with longer cooldowns?

You could have it so the bot has their own cooldowns and not use the player's, I have played against bots, they aren't great (Except at parrying). I doubt they could do a lot of healing if you rely on a bot's ability to do damage for it.

His ability 1 - So it's just a dice roll? What if it is an ult? What if the ability is being channeled? Could it hypothetically disable those during a channel or it will simply not roll for that ability (Leaving you with 1-3 which can be in your favour). This ability seems either whatever to utterly broken, and fitting for a character more like Wraith who gambles.

I like the 2 and 3.

The Lore:
Pretty cool. You think he'd have knowledge and some sort of relationship with the Doorman and the Patrons due to what he is? Talk about filming something in the Baroness which the Doorman accepts (or doesn't accept because it might disrupt the guests.)

Which characters would he dislike the most?

 

[DirectorLyric]

Excellent art!

Though I'm confused on his ult. So basically the player can't do anything for the 10 seconds. Can the bot uses the person's abilities? What about cooldowns? Let's say you ult a guy and the bot immediately uses his ult? Does this mean when the player takes back control, do they still have their ult or has it been wasted by you? Even if we don't allow bots to use ults, what about normal abilities with longer cooldowns?

You could have it so the bot has their own cooldowns and not use the player's, I have played against bots, they aren't great (Except at parrying). I doubt they could do a lot of healing if you rely on a bot's ability to do damage for it.

His ability 1 - So it's just a dice roll? What if it is an ult? What if the ability is being channeled? Could it hypothetically disable those during a channel or it will simply not roll for that ability (Leaving you with 1-3 which can be in your favour). This ability seems either whatever to utterly broken, and fitting for a character more like Wraith who gambles.

I like the 2 and 3.

The Lore:
Pretty cool. You think he'd have knowledge and some sort of relationship with the Doorman and the Patrons due to what he is? Talk about filming something in the Baroness which the Doorman accepts (or doesn't accept because it might disrupt the guests.)

Which characters would he dislike the most?

Great questions! The way I imagined it the bots are basically allowed to us any and all abilities, including ults, and the cooldowns are the exact same. The healing factor isn't really the main meat of the ability in my mind, just an added bonus, it's more about just shifting the numbers for a single fight in favor of your team, general disorienting the enemy and encouraging you to keep your distance and place farther away from it if that makes any sense.

For 1 I imagined it being able to disable channels. Its extreme situational and chance based used was very intentional, I wanted to incorporate some level of chance/unexpectedness cause that's very much so what being on a film set is like, you can plan for 1000 things, and 1001 different things will go wrong, so you gotta improvise and try and make it work .

The Director does have way back relationships with both The Doorman and patrons. The Patrons don't like it for a multitude of reasons, The Doorman and The Director are sort of olds friends who are meeting back up for a first time in a very long time, they're completely different then how they last saw each-other. The Director doesn't really film around the Baroness, at least not without Doorman's express permission, it lounges around a lot and writes and smokes mostly.

I think Director hates Apollo the most, Apollo knows the kind of person it used to be and the horrible things it used to do and is not interested in pretending like it could be anything better than that. The Director tries very hard to be polite and civil, but it is very quick to anger, I think Apollo just sets it off in so many ways.

 

[volkgang]

Great questions! The way I imagined it the bots are basically allowed to us any and all abilities, including ults, and the cooldowns are the exact same. The healing factor isn't really the main meat of the ability in my mind, just an added bonus, it's more about just shifting the numbers for a single fight in favor of your team, general disorienting the enemy and encouraging you to keep your distance and place farther away from it if that makes any sense.

For 1 I imagined it being able to disable channels. Its extreme situational and chance based used was very intentional, I wanted to incorporate some level of chance/unexpectedness cause that's very much so what being on a film set is like, you can plan for 1000 things, and 1001 different things will go wrong, so you gotta improvise and try and make it work .

The Director does have way back relationships with both The Doorman and patrons. The Patrons don't like it for a multitude of reasons, The Doorman and The Director are sort of olds friends who are meeting back up for a first time in a very long time, they're completely different then how they last saw each-other. The Director doesn't really film around the Baroness, at least not without Doorman's express permission, it lounges around a lot and writes and smokes mostly.

I think Director hates Apollo the most, Apollo knows the kind of person it used to be and the horrible things it used to do and is not interested in pretending like it could be anything better than that. The Director tries very hard to be polite and civil, but it is very quick to anger, I think Apollo just sets it off in so many ways.

With the ult, that's my question. Let's do an example. An enemy player is ulted. His 1 and 3 are on cooldown. So the bot has it's 1 and 3 on cooldown?

Let's say the bot uses it's ultimate immediately. The player is then back in control. Is their ult on cooldown? I can see it being an incredibly unfun ult if you get turned into a bot and then it wastes all your abilities and items.

With the 1 - I respect the reasoning and get it now thematically. It cancelling channels is interesting. From what I noticed, players hate losing control in general. You hate losing due to things out of your control with no counterplay. For instance, the Seven stun does strip control by stunning, but you are given enough time to make a decision on where to go. So even if you lose control, you feel like you can mitigate it with your decisions.

With this ability, I can see players hating playing against him since you don't know what part of your kit will you lose. I assume abilities during cooldown can be disabled, else you can make it so if they only have 1 ability charged, you just prevent them from using it.

Still I get the idea and can see a form of it being made fun to play against.

Interesting you picked Apollo. So you're saying the LASH has a chance of starring in one of his films?

What character would he like the most (among the mortals)?

 

[Convict]

great concept, would become one of my mains

 

[ponyvonchristmas]

CAN WE PLAY BARBIES I WOULD LIKE TO DRAW YOUR GUY THANK YOU

 

[DirectorLyric]

CAN WE PLAY BARBIES I WOULD LIKE TO DRAW YOUR GUY THANK YOU

YES WE CAN !! Totally go for it and show me I'd love to see it !!!

 

[DirectorLyric]

With the ult, that's my question. Let's do an example. An enemy player is ulted. His 1 and 3 are on cooldown. So the bot has it's 1 and 3 on cooldown?

Let's say the bot uses it's ultimate immediately. The player is then back in control. Is their ult on cooldown? I can see it being an incredibly unfun ult if you get turned into a bot and then it wastes all your abilities and items.

With the 1 - I respect the reasoning and get it now thematically. It cancelling channels is interesting. From what I noticed, players hate losing control in general. You hate losing due to things out of your control with no counterplay. For instance, the Seven stun does strip control by stunning, but you are given enough time to make a decision on where to go. So even if you lose control, you feel like you can mitigate it with your decisions.

With this ability, I can see players hating playing against him since you don't know what part of your kit will you lose. I assume abilities during cooldown can be disabled, else you can make it so if they only have 1 ability charged, you just prevent them from using it.

Still I get the idea and can see a form of it being made fun to play against.

Interesting you picked Apollo. So you're saying the LASH has a chance of starring in one of his films?

What character would he like the most (among the mortals)?

Sorry haha it was 2 am and I explained it poorly, yes my initial thought was that the bot would share all of the players cooldowns. So if the player had no 1, so did the bot, if the bot ulted and the player survived, they would be without an ult. That is what I initially intended it to be, but upon further consideration I think giving the "Actor's" their own separate cooldowns would realistically be better gameplay wise, even though the original idea again plays into the unexpected nature and loss of autonomy I'm going for, there definitely wouldn't be enough chance for counterplay in a lot of scenarios.

Director definitely could be annoying to fight, its designed to be invasive and overbearing and encourages players not to fight it alone and to know in advance a good escape route for if you're caught without a certain ability you really rely on. The thought behind it is to encourage both The Director and its victim to get creative with how they would change their playstyles to account for the loss of an ability. I think the idea of that sort of gameplay is fun, almost like brain teaser for your own knowledge on how you can use your character with limited utility. But I definitely see the other side

The Director actually has alot of fondness for Lash, and a weird mix of hatred. He reminds it of itself when it was younger, which endears The Director but also pisses it off. I think Lash would assume The Director wants him in a movie, but Director doesn't make the kind of Pictures that really suit Lash, at least in my opinion. The Director likes Paige alot, finds her very sweet and charming, they bond over their love of romance and appreciation for the arts. I think she gets to see early versions of its scripts and acts as a beta reader for some of them. Paige is one of the few The Director confides its true wish to be human with.

 

[DirectorLyric]

I wanted to add this to the first post but FORGOT cause im a BUM but this is what I imagine The Director sounding like, or at least very close ! *Dated audio crunch not included.

Claude Rains' Invisible man I think is perfect because his mood switches are very similar to that of Director's, along with his cadence and laugh. Claude Rains was also originally a theater performer before doing movies, and The Director also has a history of theater!

View attachment copy_3AC7918D-6E3E-4C34-BB88-EA18B6BB6698.mov

 

[mikro236]

Love the idea of some film industry rep in the game.

For the ult, what if instead it allowed you to film an enemy and create a clone of them, that you can direct in some way, e.g. tell it who to attack?

 

[DirectorLyric]

Love the idea of some film industry rep in the game.

For the ult, what if instead it allowed you to film an enemy and create a clone of them, that you can direct in some way, e.g. tell it who to attack?

Thank you!

Not a bad idea! I had an idea sort of similar to that, but ultimately decided it wasn't as thematically in line with Director as much as I would've liked. A core idea in Director's lore and kit is the loss of autonomy and control, and I think having a player be completely take over plays with that theme better than just a clone!

 

[Player114514]

多么健康的笑容，让人看了都止不住跟着大笑。
我提一个个人的额........技能改动，可能有些冒昧。
比如整个战场都是导演的片场。那如果我是导演的话，我就会有这样的一个技能。

整个技能持续时间为一秒，
我选中一个敌人，然后手里会不断的从敌人人物的身体内抽取出老式电影的胶卷。而敌人会在这个持续引导的技能过程中不断倒带，直到一秒结束或者导演终止这个技能。

演员就应该到他该到的位置去。

 

[lgbrokhoff]

Alright so first of all, his lore sounds sick as hell. I'm biased towards things like this because my oc was a member of the OSIC and I'm all for expanding upon it in any way, including potential subjects of interest who could have interesting conversations with Haze and Seven. On top of that, I am a Doorman main, and his character is my favorite out of the entire game, so a character who stays at the Baroness consistently, and could have even a kinship with the Doorman sounds anazing to me, overall, this is just a doubly interesting backstory to me. The design, obviously, is fucking amazing, incredibly unique and well drawn. I do have a few things to say about each of the abilities.

1. Fixed in Post is a really cool concept, incredibly creative and fitting name, which I love. For balancing, I'd assume that this is a skillshot? And I'd also guess that you would have to exclude ultimate abilities, because otherwise of course you'd be able to reliably turn the tides back of an entire team fight from a well placed ult using just a single ability rather than having to be reactive, which would definitely screw with the meta. I would also say it would probably have to only rewind a certain percentage of the damage or else it would still be incredibly busted. Other than that, genius idea for an ability, I personally think it would probably be cooler if it gave you recast time to enter the keybind for any of your first, second, or third abilities, so you could specifically target that ability on the enemy, which would majorly increase the skill ceiling and overall just reward a good understanding of other kits the same way Sinclair does.

2. The ability seems really sweet and sounds like it would be ridiculously fun to use, but I don't understand if you're saying that the ability would have three very quick recasts like Apollo's flawless advance, and then have charges on top of that, or if you're consuming the charges as the casts mentioned, and you need to get three casts consecutively to apply the blind. As for the blind, a full flashbang effect sounds somewhat broken, but I could imagine like a heavily intensified, stylized form of Doormans bell daze that reduces bullet accuracy, as WELL as ability and item placement accuracy, and just makes their screen shaky, bright, and flashy.

3. All around, pretty straightforward burst damage ability, not much to say because it sounds like a very base dash, similar to Shivs, but I could definitely imagine alot of unique utility stemming off of it in the sane way that Shivs dash gains that echo hit. For example, when you say winding up, do you mean you could charge up the dash, and control the distance? Because that would be quite interesting. A highly telegraphed but high mobility ability that deals alot of damage is always a nice thing to see in a kit.

4. Interesting concept, but... I personally really dislike the idea of losing control of your character in competitive games, it just seems really cheesy, I could imagine like creating a carbon copy of the character the enemy is playing that can fight for you with their abilities, which would definitely not be broken in all honesty considering it would possibly end up feeding half the time, but worst case scenario still provides a numbers advantage and damage sponge. I actually COULD see the taking control working though, under the condition that if it runs out due to them falling to critical, they are healed to full, or at least for a specific percentage of their max health, so that they don't regain control in your frontlines and immediately get murdered.

 

[volkgang]

Sorry haha it was 2 am and I explained it poorly, yes my initial thought was that the bot would share all of the players cooldowns. So if the player had no 1, so did the bot, if the bot ulted and the player survived, they would be without an ult. That is what I initially intended it to be, but upon further consideration I think giving the "Actor's" their own separate cooldowns would realistically be better gameplay wise, even though the original idea again plays into the unexpected nature and loss of autonomy I'm going for, there definitely wouldn't be enough chance for counterplay in a lot of scenarios.

Director definitely could be annoying to fight, its designed to be invasive and overbearing and encourages players not to fight it alone and to know in advance a good escape route for if you're caught without a certain ability you really rely on. The thought behind it is to encourage both The Director and its victim to get creative with how they would change their playstyles to account for the loss of an ability. I think the idea of that sort of gameplay is fun, almost like brain teaser for your own knowledge on how you can use your character with limited utility. But I definitely see the other side

The Director actually has alot of fondness for Lash, and a weird mix of hatred. He reminds it of itself when it was younger, which endears The Director but also pisses it off. I think Lash would assume The Director wants him in a movie, but Director doesn't make the kind of Pictures that really suit Lash, at least in my opinion. The Director likes Paige alot, finds her very sweet and charming, they bond over their love of romance and appreciation for the arts. I think she gets to see early versions of its scripts and acts as a beta reader for some of them. Paige is one of the few The Director confides its true wish to be human with.

GAMEPLAY
I personally would push for separate cooldowns because you don't want players to feel like they lost such a huge ability purely on chance.

I like rogue-lites and get the appeal of randomness and adapting to situations on the fly. That is fun. However this is a multiplayer game where there's people on both sides. Unless there's some skill to pulling off random ability turnoffs, then a lot of the time the reaction would just be frustration. It sounds fun until you actually play against it with upgrades and cooldowns. I get your side but it has to be tempered.

Look at characters who disable others for more than a short time with similar ultimates.
Dynamo sacrifices his ability to act and move to possibly stop a group in a small area around him and can be killed for this.
Krill and Mo can't move while they are stunning someone with their ultimate and can be killed for this.
The Doorman channels and then puts a player in the Baroness. If the Doorman didn't screw over the player with debuffs right before the channel, they have to escape with their own movement skill (stamina or an ability). The player also doesn't take damage from anything else in the map.

With this ult, you channel for 3s and then bam, you can move around (and continue to disable other players) and fight. The player you just ulted is now an ally and can take friendly fire. It can waste abilities and items with long cooldowns.

So you have a more effective Doorman ult, as you can force someone (and it's not a skill shot or ability that much timing) to get rid of abilities, get rid of most of their health, and get into a terrible position (bots overextend) WHILE you get to still move around and fight. If we compare the value of the ults, this ult has an incredible value while requiring less work and no commitment. And it's all RNG so it's not consistent (and therefore you don't 'pull off that sick win' because you personally did something, but because you got lucky with the bot throwing the match).

Again, the other abilities are fine and I can see the 1 working while the ult being very hard to make fun.

I am interested in seeing what upgrades each ability would get, as they can change how an ability is used and played. For instance, Venator's shotgun's final upgrade makes his melee blessed, allowing for a heavy damage melee build if you work with that upgrade. Pocket's Affliction can be upgraded to prevent any healing. Wraith's Fuller Auto grants infinite ammo. Now not all upgrades are huge but I'm just curious on what they would. If you want an easy way to make a graphic of abilities, use Deadmock

LORE
I'm imagining such conversations based on what you said.
Lash: "No worries Director, you already have your leading man for your next picture."
Director: "You don't even know what I'm filming! Can you be the leading man in a surrealist romantic drama?"
Lash: "Please, the Lash can win any heart. Have you seen *this* moustache?"
Director: "This is a question of acting. (mumbles) Why am I continuing this conversation?"
Lash: "The Lash easily draws an audience in."

I know you said Paige and him would have a connection but I have a funny idea of how book fans react to an adaption.
Paige: "Oh my god, it's really you! I loooove some of your adaptations of books! I especially loved *insert the film you wanted the Director to have made*!"
Director: "Always a pleasure to meet a fan!"
Paige: " 'Course, some changes I heavily disagree with and make it inferior to the book, but still! Great work bringing it to life!"
Director: "Always a pleasure to meet a critic."