How Gacha Games Control Player Progression with In-Game Currency

Part of game design is controlling how in-game currencies work because he pace of acquiring resources directly affects your progression within the game. These unlocks levels, chapters, stats, equipment and other stuff that make your life better. I get the part where is elementary considering most that are probably reading this has already played a mobile on their phones.

You don't want to make the game too easy that it encourages boredom. You don't want to make the game too hard that people lose patience and rage quit. You don't want to make the game be too RNG because because unexpected rewards can have an intense dopamine kick but these also cause feelings of contempt when luck wasn't in your favor.

The screenshots were taken from my gameplay Nikke: Goddess of Victory. In the image below you'll see a window indicating that in order to upgrade my unit from level 160 to 161, I'd need the following resources in credits, chips, and cores respectively. It also display the expected rewards for doing so.

This interface takes in many forms throughout mobile games and if broken down into the basic form it's just like any other crafting game where in order to produce unit C, you need to combine enough unit A and B to get the outcome. And even adding some complexity like producing unit E requires combining C and D (produced by A + C). And it can be as simple as using cash currency to convert into in-game resource currency (A to B).

We upgrade our units as a prerequisite to access more content within the game. It's also a mark of progression from point A to point B. As seen below the game says the recommended power to take on the stage challenge is 77,310 while my current power is sitting at 61,047. This is the numerical value devs expected the player should have at the bare minimum to clear the challenge.

But depending on the game, these requirements may or may not force the player to grind further to progress. In this game's case, I can still challenge the stage despite not meeting the recommended power where some games would tell you to come back again when you're tall enough. Naturally, I had a hard time clearing the stage because the enemies would have a higher defense stat that my offense stat and this boils down the the basic numbers game where I didn't meet the bare minimum by design therefore I'm hard stuck in that level.

But in the event that I do clear the game stage, the next one would be more punishing and so on until I hit a brick wall. Always remember that when games try to tell you these are the recommended numbers to run, it's what they expected the average player would accomplish relative to the challenge they set. When I checked the "Clear Info" on the window it shows me the different players that accomplished the stage and their team composition. This stage on screen had their team at 200-220 levels per unit.

The fact that I even progressed this far meant that I'm being an outlier in those numbers. I'm currently rank 1 and rank 3 in PVP in two separate categories as predominantly a F2P gamer and the secret is just being particular about the the stats and number crunch because average gamers don't really think much about 1% increase in attack value isn't much but when when you have 100,000 power + 1%, that subtle change in buff means a difference to the world. And this is how I managed to beat the expected difficulty levels. But don't take that rank 1 in PVP claim seriously, the game is separated by servers and sub-servers so the fact that I'm in the leaderboard as a F2P just means I'm being a big fish in a small pond (sub server).

In Nikke, the currency paid in real money is called gems seen at the top left. You can exchange it to buy more credits, chips and cores which are required to upgrade units in the game. While some games would offer options to upgrade features in the game that help you acquire more resources directly, like this building A which produces Credits can be upgraded to produce more credit per hour, Nikke doesn't have that option.

The use of the time element in stalling player progression. Below is an image of an outpost where it generates resources per minute and it shows the amount of resources I have accumulated over time.

Yellow refers to the credit, Blue for chips, Green for experience, and Red for cores. Some games would have less resources while others would complicate it further by having subcategories. Remember, anything in game that can be used as a material to convert something for the other is a resource and indirectly a currency. Even the equipment that randomly dropped here can be used as a material to upgrade something else. But what I'll emphasize more is the gap in pace in how resources are collected.

There are more chips produced per minute relative to the other resources. Credits and Chips are used for upgrading units most of the time but there are levels where in order to progress further you would need cores to do that. Now cores are produced at a rate of 46 cores per hour instead of minutes. This is one way to control player progression because players may have to wait for hours, days to weeks to get one unit passed a threshold for leveling.

Of course there's still the option to pay cash and shorten the waiting period and this is how they make money by using inconvenience and impatience of a player already loving the game. But instead of looking at the mechanic as cash grab, you can also think of the slow pace as letting the players touch grass while you as a dev come up with new content to get them hooked. And if they want to power through the game with cash, they can do so but it'll be expensive.

At some point, there has to be moments by design where players have to be stuck for while because it's a gacha game and it's in their best interest that you don't clear the game fast before they can publish out new content. Unlike an offline that you may have purchased one time, gacha games make money off how long you can keep playing and the probability of you spending more increases the longer you play.

There are mechanisms in game where you can exchange gems for cores, or credits for cores, or these cores get handed out during quests and special events.

That's why special events get a lot of traffic because there are more rewards from quests during these events which hastens player progression. And these events are intended to introduce new content where players will sink their time and money into.

Most of the time, an average player wouldn't really think much about the thought put into the mechanics within the game to make a good gaming experience. It's far easier to spot bad game design when it doesn't work. It's a fair trade that devs make money from invested players and players that don't want to wait just to enjoy more content.

And lastly, below is how balanced the game can be when it comes to player progression from the overall server. It's unrealistic to expect I'd get close to ~80% of the achievers because of the challenge content. The event was already for players that are at the end game and are waiting for new story content chapters.

This is a fair assessment relative to the overall progression I've made throughout the game being halfway there.

Thanks for your time.