Investment Design

Core Responsibilities:

Engage players for over 1000 hours
Structure reward pacing
Balance an economy, mitigating for inflation
Develop social systems to support player bonds
Develop a business model and design corresponding monetization systems
Manage and organize a large Excel spreadsheet

Academic

Solo

12 weeks

Gameplay Loops for core, progression, and meta systems.

Overview

This is 12 week project focused on developing monetization and retention systems for a Gacha Action RPG. Both monetization and retention systems have been a big passion of mine for a long time, and I was incredibly excited to take this course. This project gave me a ton of practice with developing long tail systems, further insights into the business of games, and experience managing a much more complex spreadsheet than my other projects could afford.

Lessons

Social systems are very powerful for retention
Infinite resource sinks, finite sources
Make considerations for usability on larger scale spreadsheets
Quantic foundry's models are awesome

Final GDD/Pitch Deck for the project, delivered 11/24/25

Modeling progression systems for an ARPG is quite a tall task. When deciding on a direction, I ultimately determined that my end goal was to chart out reward pacing over time. I created the model to try and get the most accurate representation of how rewards would be paced throughout the player's experience.

I started with Character Leveling, added Gear, then quantified the average increase in player power at each level. That power increase got summed, then compared to the enemy difficulty scaling to create a scalar. This scalar represents the player's increase in farming efficiency over time, and was looped in to all of the earn rates throughout the rest of the sheet.

I added in data about what level major rewards would come in, then graphed those levels over time, with markers at each reward, resulting in the graph to the right.

To bring the 100 hour experience to 1000+ hours, I added character collection and seasonal resets. Players can unlock and level up different characters through a gacha system, each with their own playstyle. Seasonal resets are inspired by Path of Exile, reinforcing replayability and giving a fresh start to bring players back on a regular basis.

Because I built the need for multiple characters into the endgame, I think my numbers ended up a little high in terms of hours to complete. Looking back, I probably would've kept the same pacing for rewards, but cut 20-40 hours off of the progression experience so players could get to other characters faster. Regardless, I'm very happy with what the model is capable of in terms of facilitating a discussion around these types of decisions.

Character Progression model.

Model to determine the effect of player power on earn rate at each level.

Graph of all major progression related rewards throughout the player experience.

While my economy had many different sections, here I'll be focusing on the economy for my pseudo-premium currency, Stardust, and the earn rates for limited time characters. My goal was to model earn rates for Stardust between both hardcore and casual player cohorts, and chart out how long it would take on average for players to earn specific characters.

Starting with earn rates, I modeled out each Stardust source over time, along with my other currencies. Stardust was a unique case in that it comes from strictly limited sources to prevent inflation and give design a tight control over how much is introduced over time. I then converted this data into a graph represented over days instead of hours to make it more understandable.

Using this data, I could set a cost for each randomized character pull, and get data for the number of total pulls earned for each cohort over the course of the season. I shot for players earning one specific limited time character every season, on average. I used a monte carlo simulation to determine that average, factoring in my hard and soft pity system, and tweaked until I hit the anchor.

Of all the sections in this project, this is the one I would definitely like to do more with. If I had extra time, I would like to go deeper into the statistics for the gacha system, looking at standard deviations and where my pity system ends up on the bell curve. The earn rate model also could use some touching up to better represent the player experience as the game progresses, particularly as players level their 2nd-4th characters each season, and getting more accuracy in achievement earn rates.

Economy model for each major resource in the game.

Stardust earn rates per day, split by player cohort.

Character drop rates & average attempts for specific milestones

Average number of pulls to meet specific character related thresholds, by player cohort

Designing social systems for an ARPG is an interesting challenge. Traditionally, social interactions in these games are centered around Self-Indulgence and Interdependence. Instead of trying to push players outside of that box, I tried to lean into it.

Of the systems I developed, my favorite was the Mercenary System, an evolution of Support Characters from Honkai: Star Rail.

During a season, players can list a character as a mercenary for a given amount of time. During this time the character's owner can't use them, but other players can pay a set fee to gain access for a limited time. Friends' mercenaries are more likely to appear. This system provided a wide range of benefits across different areas:

Effects:

Newer players are exposed to powerful versions of characters they may not have.
Increases visibility of friends' progress.
- "Oh, I saw that you got ______ to level 80 this week, I used them for a while and they're really strong!"
Adds an appointment mechanic, with players logging in to collect their rewards.
Helps segue players into content that expects you to have multiple characters.
- This also helps make this feature a core part of progression.
High end players are encouraged to build extra characters.

I was really happy with how much this system was able to accomplish for the greater design of the game with a relatively elegant design.

Honkai: Star Rail, Support Characters

Social Goals:

Focus on asymmetric, loose tie relationships
Core social systems surround the longest tail, non-premium content (Gear)
Provide at least one system to enhance synchronous play with friends

Social Systems:

Friends List
- Add other players to interact more
Player Trade
- Exchange gear and scrolls to upgrade faster
Mercenaries
- Hire unused characters from other players
Co-op Dungeons
- Farm endgame activities with friends

When looking at how to monetize this game, I had a strong direction with my Gacha system, but wanted to do some experimentation with my other elements. I went with a free to play business model, with a focus on microtransactions. Of these microtransactions, the ones I found the most interesting were the subscription adjacent systems. I've been learning recently the value of systems that can provide recurring income with a cheap development cost, and I wanted to introduce at least two of these into this project.

As part of my progression loop, a new season is introduced every three months, along with a progression reset, new characters, etc. Each season also comes with a battle pass, with both a free and premium track. Unlike traditional battle passes, which use an XP based system, this game uses milestone based unlocks. When reaching major progression milestones (end of story, first endgame dungeon, final boss, etc.) the corresponding reward in the pass is unlocked. This serves as a monetization system, a reward system, and a goal communication system, all wrapped into one. It also reduces the total number of rewards that need to be given out, increasing the sustainability of the system.

I also proposed a simple system called the Daily Doubler, inspired by World of Tanks's XP doubler, and Honkai Star Rail's Express Supply Pass. This system allows players to purchase doubled daily rewards for a set amount of time. Each Daily Doubler package comes with a Stardust bonus, rewarding more Stardust for longer activations. This serves as a simple, low development cost way to bring in regular income, and reinforce the daily reward system's retention.

Honkai: Star Rail's Battle Passes provide substantial value to the player, without needing to create new assets every time.

In Path Of Exile 2, defeating a Pinnacle Boss like Xesht is a major milestone for players each League.

Honkai: Star Rail's Express Supply Pass

If you found this interesting, I'd love to talk more about it!

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Zach Burris

Investment Design

Core Responsibilities:

Overview

Lessons

Extra Resources