Balance game economies and progression
Connects rewards, spending and unlocks into a progression model players can understand. Compares different player paths and checks that tuning does not duplicate rewards or invalidate existing progress.
game-economy-progression-balance
See how it helpsWhen is it useful?
Use when virtual rewards or progression gates create unwanted scarcity, inflation or dead ends.
What does it help you do?
- Compares new, returning and advanced player paths with explicit time assumptions.
- Checks consumable gates, reward replay and quantity limits.
- Documents tuning assumptions and migration effects before changing existing progress.
Try asking this
Balance crafting materials for the first three weapon upgrades. Estimate gains and costs for cautious, fast and returning players, then compare with playtest results. Check that a required key cannot be spent into a dead end and that loading an older save does not grant an already claimed upgrade again.
Detailed documentation
Read the skill’s original instructions, examples and checks in their authored language.
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Resource Economies and Progression
Map virtual currencies/resources, sources, sinks, caps, unlock gates and intended session lengths. Separate authored definitions, per-player runtime state and persisted progress. This concerns game design rather than real-world investment advice.
- Express inflow/outflow with units and time assumptions. Check whether the economy reaches the intended equilibrium, inflation, scarcity or growth and identify self-reinforcing loops.
- Model representative new, returning and advanced player paths; include failure, optional activities and variance. An average reward rate can conceal impossible gates or extreme tails.
- Define reward idempotency, quantity bounds, overflow and transaction atomicity with the implementation role. Replaying events or loading saves must not grant rewards twice.
- Check unlock dependencies and soft locks with obtainable resources/abilities, including consumable keys or spendable resources. Model those as quantities when they can be consumed.
- Preserve existing saves and entitlements. For tuning changes, specify versioning/migration, grandfathering and the user-visible consequence before applying a destructive rebalance.
- Evaluate whether rewards support meaningful decisions and the core loop. Treat retention/conversion projections as hypotheses; changes to paid economies or store settings require explicit scope.
Deliver a source/sink table, progression scenarios, sensitivity analysis and known assumptions. Compare estimates with appropriately scoped play evidence before claiming the pace works.
References: Jesse Schell's design lenses and the publisher's Game Balance overview. This is original guidance and includes no copied book content.
Included files 1
SKILL.md
About this skill package
game-economy-progression-balance
game-economy-progression-balance: Turn game ideas into testable loops, balanced combat and economies, readable progression and evidence from play.
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game-economy-progression-balance
game-economy-progression-balance: Turn game ideas into testable loops, balanced combat and economies, readable progression and evidence from play.
Includes the complete skill and its supporting files (1 files). The exact authored scope is preserved below.
Original skill description (source language)
Use when modeling virtual game resources, sources/sinks, unlock costs, progression pacing, reward tables or safe changes to existing player progress.
Install the skill, review its source and trust settings, then enable it for the relevant project or agent.
Requirements
- Orqestria installed on your computer.