By name: progression-economy-balance description: "Design and critique progression, rewards, power curves, economies, currencies, sinks, sources, balance, pacing, and tuning hypotheses. Use for reward loops, upgrades, unlocks, economy pacing, dominant strategies, or balance reviews. Do not use for implementation, analytics instrumentation, or monetization dark patterns."
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.