Different Content Progression Methods in Mobile RPGs

This is not a scientific or comprehensive study. Instead, this is just quick observational research I performed for my own purposes and thought may be of use for someone else.

In every chapter, I will associate the content upgrade method with a particular game. This doesn’t mean that the method originates from that particular game, just that I first encountered it there.

I will also only consider the basic elements of those methods, that are available to the player from get-go, so if those methods evolve 20 days into the game — it’s only natural, but won’t be discussed here.

1. Card Collection (Rage of Bahamut-like)

This method was quite popular in the past, in the days of Rage of Bahamut, Blood Brothers, and other games that don’t exist anymore. Actually I think it was the only option apart from plain “level-up using gold”.

Rage of Bahamut

The method revolves mainly around cards, although any other entity can be feasibly used.

Cards have:

• level
• stars
• rarity

1 Level

You raise the card level by consuming other cards. For example, to upgrade the “Generic Archer” card from level 1 to level 2, you can sacrifice any other cards.

In this system, cards of low rarity are usually only useful for this kind of consumption. Sometimes to stress it the cards with obvious names like “Experience Card”, or “Potion of Experience” are introduced.

Usually, if the player tries to consume a high rarity card, he is warned about that.

2 Stars

Stars are upgraded by consuming the cards of the same type, same star amount. To make it harder, sometimes the cards need to also be of the same level.

The progression is usually a simple arithmetic one: you need two 2-star “Generic Archer” cards to get a 3-star one, two 3-star cards to get a 4-star one, etc.

3 Rarity

Card rarity in this system usually indicates if you should sacrifice this card or not; also, high-rarity cards often have higher star evolution potential.

I personally feel that this system is rarely used “as is” in contemporary games; some successor systems are used instead. It is still worth noting though: first, because of historical significance; second, because Empires & Puzzles uses it, while still being quite successful.

Subjective pros:

• relatively easy to understand

Subjective cons:

• less deep than you may have wanted, so you’ll need to make a lot of content and continue making it to stay afloat — or add some deepening systems;
• card sacrificing/consumption is used in different contexts but with similar mechanism;
• in the beginning, it may be difficult for the player to understand which cards to sacrifice and which not to;
• the act of sacrificing itself may be psychologically painful for some players.

2. Card Collection 2.0 (Idle Heroes/AFK arena-like)

Idle Heroes

Idle Heroes

Relatively close to the previous one. I’d call it the closest successor.

Entities have:

• level
• tier
• stars
• items

1 Level

You raise the entity level by spending Resource A. Resource A is usually obtained from battles or from “AFK” farming. Resource A can also be obtained by sacrificing cards.

2 Tier

Tier is actually a gate which caps the level. So, for example, to upgrade “Generic Archer” from level 1 to level 20, you just need to spend Resource A; to upgrade it from level 20 to level 21, you need to raise its tier; then to upgrade from level 21 to level 40 it’s just Resource A again, and then another tier gate, repeat ad nauseam.

You raise tier by spending Resource A and Resource B. Resource B is usually obtained from a separate game mechanic (like an infinite tower), from shops and by sacrificing cards.

3 Stars

To raise stars you need a specific collection of specific-starred heroes. Any heroes of any star amount may be required.

AFK arena

Note that if we’re talking about AFK arena, they use colors instead of stars; the principle stays the same, although they have stars, too. Confusing, right?

4 Items

Items are a bit of a separate upgrading branch. Unlike some other variations, you can freely insert any items in any heroes, remove them, insert in other heroes, etc. There may be some locking mechanics like “you need hero level X to be able to insert this item”.

Subjective pros:

• still more or less clear for understanding
• some predecessor problems are solved:
• this system is deeper — to upgrade your hero to 5 stars you may need any amount of any heroes of any star amount
• there are usually less “trash drop” cards, rarity is better defined, so it’s easier to understand what cards to sacrifice
• addition of proxy resources (Resource A and Resource B) helps more clearly divide upgrading levels from upgrading stars

Subjective cons:

• actually, I don’t really see them yet

3. Heroes Charge

This one was a bit revolutionary — for me, personally, not necessarily for the genre — because it was the first game I encountered chronologically which

• didn’t have the sacrificing mechanic
• was still as deep as the Mariana Trench
• didn’t “upgrade” heroes visually when you upgraded them in any way. Well, it added new animations to them.

So the heroes have

• level
• stars
• skills
• color
• items

1 Level

You raise the hero level by using them in battles or by using the XP potions. This improves stats, since a lot of games that employ this system have a warcraft- or dota-like RPG stat system, with strength, intellect, agility, etc having a growth rate per level.

2 Stars

Stars are upgraded using hero-specific fragments, which you need a certain amount per star. So it’s one of the most interesting things about this system, in my opinion, since it allows for a pretty deep gacha, while at the same time replacing sacrifice. So you never need to think “oh, but what heroes do I sacrifice and what do I keep?”, because you keep all of them. Forever.

3 Skills

Skills are what makes each hero unique. The heroes usually have one “ultimate” active skill that you activate manually, and three other automatic or passive skills that you gradually unlocked. The skills have levels and can be upgraded using some common resources, like gold. The skill’s level is usually locked by the hero’s level.

4 Color

Color gives a small stat boost, while also serving as a lock for hero skills. So let’s say your hero starts on color gray/white. Some games use the “rarity” terminology here, e.g. white = common, green — uncommon, blue = rare, etc. While maybe useful as a cognitive tool, I’ve also felt uneasy with this, because the real meaning of colors has nothing to do with rarity — you can upgrade any hero to any color. To upgrade the color you need to assemble a collection of items.

5 Items

Items give heroes stat boost when inserted. Unlike with the previous system, here every color has a predefined collection of items for each hero. When you assemble it and raise the hero’s color, that collection is absorbed by the hero, leaving you to collect a new one. Once inserted, items can’t be gouged back.

Subjective pros:

• as deep as it gets
• hero fragments are a good alternative to card sacrificing. The player doesn’t need to destroy/reject any content himself, feeling the pain of loss.
• all heroes are presented as having similar potential. You can upgrade any hero to any level, star rating, or color as any other hero. Thus, it would seem that the player can upgrade any hero and never feel disappointed; however, in the end, I’ve never seen in work quite like that. In any game there will be “good heroes” and “trash heroes”, no matter how hard you try to go for something else.

Subjective cons:

• the dark side of depth: the system is very complex and often hard to understand
• hero fragments often lead to a situation where the player needs ~300 fragments, while the chest gives them 3 to 5 at a time, discouraging them from using the gacha chest altogether. With cards and sacrificing this is a bit covered by the fact that, despite every next step growing exponentially in cost, it only asks the player to have several cards at a time.

4. Clash Royale

This is basically the lite option of the previous one.

The heroes (cards, dice, clubs, any entities you like) have:

• level
• rarity
• that’s all, folks

1 Level

To upgrade level, you need to collect a specific number of fragments of that entity and then pay the price in some common resource, like gold coins

2 Rarity

You don’t do anything with it. Here it really does mean rarity. And in some sense they show the card’s power, however, having a deck of common-only cards doesn’t automatically mean failure any more than having a deck of legendary-only cards doesn’t automatically mean success.

Subjective pros:

• the system is much clearer than any of the predecessors
• it is amazingly universal: you can take everything that surrounds combat in Clash Royale and strap it to a vast number of other gameplay mechanics (see Random Dice, Golf Clash, etc etc)
• however to do it successfully that gameplay mechanics have to abide by certain requirements:
• - short gameplay sessions
• - the game rewards experiments — you can viably change your battle deck every battle without being punished for that
• - entities are different and complex enough for you to immediately notice the difference when you change any of them in your battle deck

Subjective cons

• The dark side of being more clear is that the system has less depth. In my experience, you pay for it by having the need to release content a bit more often than in other systems.

Instead of conclusion

If while reading this you felt a burning desire to scoff and say “wait, it works in a completely different way”, or “hey, it actually comes from game X in a slightly different form” — by all means, write a comment! I always seek to expand my knowledge and will be very grateful if you have something to offer for that purpose.