Progression Design

---
name: progression-design
description: Design player progression through capability, challenge, content, mastery, rewards, pacing, prerequisites, catch-up, and long-term goals without turning time spent into the only progression axis.
---
# Progression Design

Use when a game needs levels, unlocks, skill trees, equipment tiers, chapters, ranks, mastery, reputation, or another long-term advancement structure.

## Procedure
1. Define what progression should change for the player: capability, expression, access, challenge, status, knowledge, or strategic options.
2. Map the major stages from onboarding through mastery and identify what the player should understand and desire at each stage.
3. Define prerequisites, unlock conditions, branching choices, gates, and catch-up or respec behavior where relevant.
4. Pace new mechanics or content so players can practice before additional complexity arrives.
5. Align rewards with the behavior and mastery the game wants to reinforce rather than rewarding every activity identically.
6. Identify grind walls, dead-end builds, runaway advantages, mandatory choices, and progression that invalidates earlier content too quickly.
7. Model time or effort ranges across representative player cohorts, then test with actual play and telemetry.
8. Define extension points for future content without relying on infinite vertical number inflation.

## Decision rules
- Progression should change meaningful player possibilities, not only increase numbers.
- Time investment and skill mastery are different axes and can be rewarded differently.
- Choice is not meaningful when one branch is mathematically mandatory.
- Catch-up and respec rules should match the cost of experimentation the game intends.

## Quality gate
Progression is ready when stages have clear player meaning, unlock pacing supports learning, choices and rewards create intended incentives, grind and dead-end risks are controlled, and modeled advancement is validated with representative player behavior.