Just to prevent any possible confusion; this is a game design question, not a graphics design question.
Some background:
I’m the technical half of an emerging studio, and we recently completed a MVP of a minigames/round based styled game. A small sponsored run on desktop and mobile was done to market test the game, and we were excited by the results. Players really enjoyed the mechanics, but they were not buying into the progression systems.
Players earn a soft currency, ‘credits’, for surviving until the end of a round. These credits can be used to purchase a variety of items. These items are currently modified catalog gears, split between health regeneration and navigation, with a few additional ‘filler’ items such as pets.
We noticed most players were not opening the shop what so ever, which we thought was the cause of the lack of progression engagement. We redesigned the lobby to better facilitate the behaviors we observed, and changed a fixed damage value to rng to make health regeneration items have more viability.
After another sponsored run to test the changes; we were pleased with the reception of the redesigned lobby, and had nearly all players opening the shop. However very few players were buying any items after the first ‘conversion’ purchase.
We think this is due in part to the higher costs of the items, but we’re weary to lower the prices as they make the game very easy.
The problems:
The difficulty of the game can’t really increase with the progression of the player, and we’ve ensured its always possible to win as a new player. The fact that player progression effectively lowers difficulty seems like a giant shot in our own feet as far as player retention goes.
We’ve monetized the more game-breaking items, but not a single one of our 5,000ish players have purchased any. I’m partially thankful they haven’t as it totally kills the fun of the game, but we’re also watching the end of our runway getting closer and closer with every sponsored run.
We don’t have the resources to produce cosmetic only progression items ourselves, and can’t really afford to outsource any.
Our current thoughts:
We’ve been spit balling ideas back and forth, and our best theoretical approach is to replace the gear items with what’s sort of a class based skill tree. Players would have to make trade-offs with what aspects of the mechanic they upgrade, as it would lower the potential of the other aspects of that mechanic.
For example; we have a jumping mechanic triggered when players touch lava. This takes a bit of health, and sets character velocity on a horizontal and vertical component. Players would have 3 aspects of this mechanic to upgrade;
- a damage reduction allowing for more uses per round
- increased horizontal movement speed
- increased vertical movement speed
This would allow players to build the mechanic to their own specifications. A player could ignore the damage reduction and instead spend only on one or both of the movement speeds, resulting in them only being able to use the jump once per round but to great effect. Another player could focus on damage reduction with minimal movement speed, allowing them to make many short hops around, almost like a stone being skipped.
Our monetization would be to sell stat resets, allowing for players to rebuild to try or tweak their approaches. This isn’t preferable to either of us as we both feel like it’s something all players should be allowed to do, but we aren’t sure what else we could sell to fund the game’s expansion.
Thank you for reading!
I would love to hear any and all opinions or thoughts you have on both our existing design and our idea to correct it, as well as any ideas you may have in a totally different direction than the one we’ve taken.
(this was on our easiest map)