Progression, Economy, And Balance

Use when the question is how value enters, changes, leaves, and becomes meaningful over time.

Progression Model

Map layers:

• skill progression: player learns, executes, predicts, improvises;
• content progression: new spaces, enemies, rules, quests, modes, or social contexts;
• power progression: stats, gear, abilities, upgrades, collection strength;
• status progression: rank, prestige, cosmetics, mastery badges, social recognition;
• narrative or identity progression: role, relationship, authorship, belonging.

Good progression changes decision space; weak progression only increments numbers.

Economy And Rewards

For each reward/resource, inspect:

• source: how it enters the economy;
• sink: how it leaves;
• stockpile risk: when players accumulate too much;
• scarcity risk: when players cannot act;
• conversion: exchange rates, crafting, upgrades, trade, premium substitution;
• utility: what meaningful choice the resource enables;
• segment stress: novice, expert, casual, whale, free, latecomer, lapsed player.

Reward checks: immediacy, meaning, agency, variety, reinvestment, fairness, fatigue risk. Watch inflation, dead currencies, bottlenecks, forced modes, opaque exchange rates, and reward paths that short-circuit the core loop.

Balance Review

Balance means multiple viable strategies with readable strengths, weaknesses, and counters. Use:

• power curves for cost-to-output expectations;
• Fermi-style estimates for unknown quantities;
• point budgets for comparing complex items;
• deliberate over/under tests to locate tuning ranges;
• dominant-strategy checks across player skill, mode, and meta state;
• negative-space checks for options nobody uses.

Preserve interesting asymmetry; avoid one obvious answer or interchangeable options.

Commercial And Ethical Boundaries

Commercial systems need value perception, pacing, content capacity, and trust. Do not recommend:

• pay-to-win pressure;
• artificial deficit that blocks core play;
• opaque gambling-like reward loops;
• sunk-cost traps;
• appointment mechanics that punish normal life;
• battle passes that require unhealthy time commitment or force narrow playstyles.

Reframe those requests into value, choice, catch-up, clarity, and player-respecting cadence.

Output

Return:

• progression layer map;
• economy source/sink table in prose or Markdown;
• reward health diagnosis;
• balance risks and dominant-strategy checks;
• tuning hypotheses;
• validation probes.

Use ../../references/contracts.md for reusable balance/economy reviews.