Deriving a Design Pattern from the Mechanics Progression of Character Skills
This article follows my process in completing the Mechanics Progression Pattern Exercise. This is designed for a group, but I have completed it individually here.
The following is my raw work. I edited it for grammar and clarity, but it shows the process of grappling with a design mechanic and writing out all of the steps in the pattern exercise. It is, as intended, a bit ugly!
Warm Up Example
Work with your group to identify a game with progression systems.
The Secret World
List and describe each element of the game that has progression.
- Ability Progression: Skill Wheel — Hundreds of skills could be unlocked, allowing extremely flexible character progression. It was easy to spend points in ways that did not advance the character’s power enough to progress in the game without dying.
— AP (Ability Points, active skills) — Mainly allowed flexibility
— SP (Skill Points, passive abilities) — Mainly gated gear and sets of skills and drove power progression. - Gear Progression: Talismans
— Level: This was gated by Skill points and raised regularly as the player advanced through the story.
— Quality: This did not matter until the highest gear level, when it provides a slower, more grind-focused progression through end-game content. - Lore Collection — Short stories are broken up into parts and scattered around the world. By collecting these and completing the stories non-linearly, the player gains an understanding of the game world. (Similar to Dark Souls, but more ordered)
- Narrative Progression — The game had a primary narrative progression as the player moved through the main story and the zones of the game, but ‘Issues’ were released monthly during the first several years after the game’s release that added narrative content in a secondary progression path.
- Dungeon Difficulty — Instanced dungeons are available in different difficulties. Access to the ‘Nightmare Difficulty’ is gated by a set of tests/challenges the player must pass to demonstrate skill.
- Zone Access / Zone Difficulty — Some zones have blocked access that is unlocked by story progression. Many areas are accessible but deadly to lower-level characters.
- PvP Rank Progression — Winning in PvP increases player rank and unlocks cosmetic items.
- Museum Collection (Props/Theater) — Collecting dropped items allows the player to complete dioramas in their private museum. This paired to some degree with the lore collection.
- Agies System (Damage and Shields)
- Counsel of Venice Certification — This was used to gate endgame content but also existed as an extensive skill challenge that could be completed any time after it was unlocked for significant resource rewards.
- Enemy Difficulty — Enemies become more difficult as the player moves through the game, both through increasing damage numbers and through more complex behaviors.
- Gated Main Questline — The main story progression was linear and, at various points, gated by character development.
- Side Quests — Side quests allowed players to gain enough AP and SP to advance along the main quest line. It was not possible to complete the game without completing some side quests.
What mechanics does each involve?
- Combat
— AP/SP progression is driven by combat
— Enemie’s progression keeps combat interesting.
— Combat difficulty gates exploration/collection - Exploration
— Lore is gathered through Exploration
— Quests are acquired through exploration - Collecting
— Lore and Gear are collected through exploration.
— Later, Museum items were added as collectibles.
— Better gear is crafted through resource collection. - Quests
— Different types of quests were available, supporting different play styles: Story, Action, Investigation, Stealth, and Sidequests
— Quests are acquired through exploration.
What resources does each involve?
- AP and SP — generated through Combat.
- Crafting Resources — generated by breaking down unneeded gear items, used for crafting better gear.
- Health
— Combat revolves around player and creature health in a standard way.
— End-game health interacts with a damage type/shield type system that creates a new layer of ‘resetable’ progression for each new damage type. - Knowledge
— Gained through exploration
— Combat allows learning enemy behaviors - Skill
— Combat increases a player’s skill - Time
— Many of the progression systems create grind and have a significant cost in time
— Many abilities operate off of time on the micro-scale in combat.
How does the progression affect the economies of the game?
Most of the progression-related resources work together to create an economy that drives and gates exploration.
Mechanics Progression Pattern Exercise
Pick and describe a mechanic that you know can change over time within the context of a single game.
Character Skills — Specifically, player choice can enhance and expand skills acquired over time through an explicit choice-based in-game system such as skill trees or item enhancement. (This is the broadest interpretation of this exercise, so choosing a skill like stealth or jumping is also appropriate. Having done several exercises on these specific mechanics in previous exercises, I am focusing on a higher-level progression system here, but the exercise does not require that.)
Name 10 games that use this mechanic and in which the mechanic is not static throughout the game.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard
Path of Exile
The Secret World
World of Warcraft
Baulder’s Gate III
Ori and the Will of the Wisps
Bioshock
Civilization III
League of Legends
Invisible Sun
For each game, describe:
Introduced: the way the mechanic is introduced
Changes: the way that the mechanic changes
Result: how the mechanic is different by the end of the game
Dragon Age: The Veilguard (Single Player) — Introduced: The use of each skill progression system is presented in a non-diegetic tutorial. — Changes: Skills advance primarily through a skill tree, but items, primarily weapons and armor, provide skill bonuses and modifiers. There are both incremental +X% enhancements, and new versions of skills or related skills become available. The unblocked or acquired enhancements are static, other than the choice of whether to acquire them, but the process of putting together a ‘build’ provides a great deal of player choice. — Result: End-game versions of any character can be unique in their play style and power level. It is possible to build ‘broken’ characters that do not function well. It is possible to reset skill advancement to try to do a better job late in the game when the player understands the systems well.
Path of Exile 2 (Single Player, co-op multiplayer) — Introduced: Basic systems are presented in a non-diegetic tutorial. The systems are very complex, and the tutorial describes the UI but does not help the player understand how the systems work together to create a player experience. (Most games don’t, but the complexity of the systems in PoE2 makes it more evident.) — Changes: Character classes start the same, but the breadth of the skill trees and item enhancements create various play styles. This is similar to The Veilguard but taken to an extreme. — Result: This is a service-style game intended to be played over multiple ‘seasons’ with new characters for many years. The broad and complex skill system provides the needed replayability for the game’s intended lifespan. However, the level of complexity means that the first time a player engages with the game, their skill advancement choices are often not meaningful or require research outside of the game.
The Secret World (MMO, PvP, and Co-op) — Introduced: Skills are introduced in a semi-diagetic tutorial system outside the character’s perception but contextualized within the world. The ‘skill wheel system’ is very complex, and like PoE2, much of the player learning about it takes place outside of the game using player-created resources. — Changes: Skills are divided into tiers; each tier is only available when the previous has been completed. This encourages players to focus advancement on a specific skill rather than buying random skills. Each tier is more powerful than the previous, so there is a general progression to a high level of power in a specialized set of skills before other skills are acquired. There are more sets of skills at each tier in a tree structure, so once one set of skills is mastered, it takes less time to master related skills. The number of improvement points available to the player increases over time, so late in the game, it is possible to learn entirely new skill areas in a reasonable time. The tiered skill progression also provides time to master simple versions of skills before more complex versions become available. Some builds are conveyed within the game’s interface. The player is encouraged to experiment but not given further guidance. The design space is extensive enough to support player theory-crafting, and new builds were developed several years after the game’s launch. All skills are available to all characters, and no class is chosen at the beginning of the game; though players choose a ‘faction,’ it only limits the starting preset classes that the player is offered as learning tools. — Result: There is gradual power growth through a level of end-game viability, but there is still a great deal of room to develop skills in different areas. The game is a long-term game intended to be played with a single character, and this system fits that design.
World of Warcraft (MMO, PvP, and co-op) — Introduced: The skills system and the advancement mechanics are introduced through non-diegetic tutorials. The game has undergone many iterations, implementing different styles of ability progression. — Changes: Early versions were similar to the branching found in PoE 2, though much simpler. Later this was simplified to only allow ‘viable’ character builds. Even later, the branching trees were revised and reimplemented, but skill resets were allowed. Skill points are earned through killing creatures and completing quests; skills advance the player’s level, and each level grants a static number of points for skill advancement. Skills are limited by the class chosen at the beginning of the game and are never changeable. — Result: Various builds are possible for each class but are relatively well-defined and well-known to player communities. This information is not conveyed to the player directly through the game but through player interaction within player guilds or through research on fan websites.
Baulder’s Gate III (Single player) — Introduced: Skill advancement is introduced through non-diegetic tutorials. Skill advancement is driven by levels granted by experience gained primarily from killing monsters. Sets of advancement choices are made at each level. — Changes: Some skills become more powerful as the character levels. New, more powerful skills are available at each level. Character classes are chosen at the start of the game and can not be changed. — Result: Character power advancement is well-defined, though different builds are possible. Creating different builds is possible, and some degree of effectiveness is important, but skill progression and customization are more about expressing different characters, the mechanical progression has a role-playing element if not focus. Many abilities have non-combat uses and create different play experiences rather than more or less effective ones.
Ori and the Will of the Wisps (Single player) — Introduced: Abilities are introduced through non-diegetic tutorial text. New skills are trained through careful level design, and player skill is built in-game intentionally. Changes: Some skills are acquired through collection at specific locations in the game. Some abilities are earned through purchases with collected resources; a few are earned through in-game events. Many skills are upgraded with in-game resources. Result: Key skills for Metroidvania progression are introduced at fixed points to control the progression and add structure to the game. Many skills that increase combat effectiveness or survivability are acquired with resources and allow the player to control their experience. The few skills awarded by in-game events provide mechanical rewards for narrative progression. Skill progression creates a sense of growing power but also creates an increase in the skill floor and ceiling for play as the game progresses.
Bioshock (Single player) — Introduced: There are minimal semi-diegetic explanations of skills as they are granted, and the skill system is presented as diegetic to the game world. It is even key to the narrative. Players are sometimes required to use particular skills to pass particular obstacles, but largely, they are just available as tools to facilitate gameplay style or create situational advantage (e.g., lightning in water). Changes: New skills are available as the game progresses. Most of the skills are not required for the game, three are though one of them is only required once. Result: Skill progression is mostly about customizing the playstyle and reducing the difficulty of the game by taking advantage of enemy skill weakness. Making the use of the skills acquired through the use of ‘Plasmids’ optional fits with the transhumanist narrative and allows the player to resist or embrace their use.
Civilization III (Single-player, PvP) — Introduced: Progression of skills (technologies) is heavily tutorialized in a largely non-diegetic way, though the technologies themselves are core to the game/narrative premise. Early in the game, some skills include gameplay tutorialization. Changes: Skills advance along skill trees with the resulting state of the player, creating very different play experiences. The choice of which skills to advance may be influenced by the state or the game world rather than by player preference. For example, if you start near an ocean, you may want to develop related skills. Result: A major aspect of the gameplay is choosing what skills to pursue when to advance them, etc. Skill choice is a major driver of the core gameplay loops, more than in any other of the games listed here.
League of Legends — (Multiplayer team PvP) Introduced: The basic game tutorial teaches the skill acquisition mechanics, but the mechanics of the actual skills are largely not taught by the game, and only text descriptions are available. Players have to practice with the skills to understand their utility or read guides online. Changes: Skills are advanced by purchase through resource gathering during the game. The game features stateless matches, so the process of skill acquisition is repeated (mostly) from the beginning of each game. Result: The choice and optimization of skills are core drivers of gameplay; it can be a tactical choice based on the other players in a given match. Skill use and effectiveness are highly dependent on the player’s skill level.
Invisible Sun — (Multiplayer Co-op) Introduced: The game is physical with printed rules, so skills are introduced in the rules. It would be very difficult for the players to understand all the skills to make informed choices at the beginning of play. Changes: Skills are acquired through spending in-game resources. There are many different tracks of skill acquisition, some are linear, some are in trees, and others are discreet but have a vast number of skills. For instance the game includes over 800 discreet spells that players can learn. Some skills are gated by the equivalent of player levels. (It’s not exactly ‘levels,’ but for the purpose of this exercise it is similar enough.) Result: These systems create a lot of player customization that is more play style-focused than power gain-focused. There is a progression in power level across all of the skill systems so players do gain power over time, but specific skill choice isn’t as important here. The fiction of the game world is that the characters have almost godlike powers, and the game is more about what they will do with them than whether they will succeed at particular tasks. The game includes unique mechanics that require ‘sub-optimal’ gameplay choices in order to generate the resources needed for skill advancement.
For each game, describe the effect of the changing mechanic. Be specific as to how the way the mechanic changes produces this effect.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard — The intent of the skills progression is to allow players to customize their primary character, and then to customize their secondary characters to provide the needed support. Secondarily, it provides a general increase in power alongside the increase in complexity and flexibility. While this is good in theory, the balance in this game seems to be off from the intent. Fighting, in general, on normal difficulty is easy enough that the player does not need to focus on it, and the complexity scales at a rate that quickly exceeds player understanding if they are not focusing on it. Resources for leveling skills come from advancement and seem relatively balanced, but too many systems are introduced without the need to engage with them, let alone master them.
A contrast to this would be Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth, where the player hits the first boss and will be unable to beat them if they have not engaged with the systems made available up to that point in the game.
Path of Exile 2 — I think PoE suffers from the same problem as The Veilguard, though their skills progression seems to be better designed. Also, many dedicated players will play the game at higher and higher levels of difficulty, necessitating gradually mastering the incredibly complex skill tree. In the case of both games, it may be a good choice to make the base game ‘easy’ for players who do not wish to engage with the more complex mechanics. In the case of PoE,2 I think the balance level for normal difficulty makes the game feel like a bit of a grind since combat is relatively repetitive if not set to higher levels of difficulty.
Persona 5 would be another good example of this problem. It has very deep progression systems, but normal difficulty makes them almost completely irrelevant.
The Secret World — The intent here was to create a horror game as well as an MMO. The initial balance was very difficult, and players could not advance beyond the first few zones without engaging with the progression systems and creating a ‘viable’ build. This contributed to the failure of the game in the mainstream, as this kind of progression was not common in the genre. Finding a balance between enough challenge to force engagement with progression systems and accessibility is difficult. Better guidance in the earlier parts of the game could probably have addressed the problem, but just adding more forced tutorials (which were done later) would not have solved the problem. The learning needed to be integrated into the first areas of the game in a way that did not make players feel like they were being healed back.
World of Warcraft — The intended experience here is almost purely a power fantasy. The player gets more and more powerful with little friction for a significant portion of the game. Only when the player reaches ‘endgame’ play does the difficulty increase steeply. At this point, that difficulty is mostly intended to slow player progress as new content is developed. However, the end game progression has been balanced at this point to create a compelling, if not ‘fun’ experience. The changes in the way that progression worked over time were attempts to give the players a better experience at the expense of their feelings of autonomy and then to create a feeling of freedom without allowing players to ruin their experience permanently. While I would not say that the problem is solved, the changes did have their intended effect.
Baulder’s Gate III — Progression here serves the usual needs of the perceived increase in power and customization. This is achieved through the application of powers in combat. However, progression also creates a sense of autonomy and creates the feeling that the skills perused by a player make a difference by having non-combat situations where player skills have a direct effect on gameplay. For instance, using a transform power which can be used in combat to transform into a tiny spider to get through a small space.
Ori and the Will of the Wisps — Skill progression here unlocks more and more of the world, but the increasing complexity of using the skills creates a balance for the increased power they provide.
Bioshock — Skills serve largely to provide variety and to create more puzzle-like combat where cleverly applying skills makes fighting easier. The balance of difficulty makes it possible to ignore large parts of this progression.
Civilization III — Understanding the best way to engage with the progression systems is one of the core gameplay loops. The difficulty of finding the best solutions here is balanced to encourage repeated play.
League of Legends — Progression here is relatively simple in terms of an individual character. There is room for the player to master and understand the gameplay effects of each progression path, but for individual characters, they are relatively simple in comparison to the above examples. However, the real complexity of the system is the interaction of the progression of groups of characters. In an 8-player game, the interactions of the skill progression of the different characters are vastly complex. Given that the game has several hundred characters to choose from, this creates an incredible amount of replayability and room for a dynamic metagame.
Invisible Sun — Progression systems in this game allow players to explore the conceptual space of the game. They do provide an increase in player power, but that is almost incidental compared to the ways that they shape player behavior and allow players to influence the storytelling of the game.
Consider your answers to 3 and 4 across all 10 games and list each of the patterns you recognize.
- Skill Floor and Skill Ceiling delta modulate the experience of power and perception of game difficulty.
- Raising the skill floor without raising the player’s power/survivability increases perceived difficulty, and raising power/survivability without raising the skill floor decreases perceived difficulty.
- Increasing skill options beyond the expected experience of a single player can be an effective way to create repeated play. This works best in multiplayer games with short matches or in live service games where players will explore the design space for years.
- Sufficient difficulty is needed to drive player engagement with mechanical progression.
- Insufficient mechanical progression forces player skill progression, but this can prevent the engagement of players who are not easily capable of the required skill levels.
- Skill progression and power progression are linked, but they are not the same. While new or improved skills usually grant additional power, they may also add complexity and require the player to use additional skill. Power progression can exist without skill progression, which directly results in making the game harder or easier.
Record one or more of the patterns you observe in the pattern library.
I present the final pattern derived from this work in the next part of this article here:
