The Pitfalls of Progression

OFF Original Soundtrack album art, by Mortis Ghost

The idea of a level up is so ubiquitous that it's almost synonymous with games themselves. But over the past few years, I've come to develop a scorn for any kind of vertical progression system; that is, progression of pure scale. These are things like stat increases via leveling, objectively better skills, or stronger equipment. Despite their prevalance, I believe that vast majority of games that utilize such systems are worse for it. They disrupt the balance and difficulty curve while undermining accomplishment, all to deliver on an aesthetic that clashes with the core forms of engagement that are often the focus of the work.

Empty Accomplishments

While I acknowledge that players' feelings are very subjective, I would argue that vertical progression systems severely dampen the sense of accomplishment for many. If you find satisfaction in grinding to overcome a challenge, that's a totally valid perspective. But personally, succeeding because my character grew stronger rather than me getting better always feels like a hollow victory.

I think this mindset has stemmed in large part from playing competitive multiplayer games where power is intentionally kept constant and carefully balanced to highlight player skill. In these games, there's little disconnect between your results and your character. It's unquestionably you that's getting better. You might think I'm being a bit reductionist. After all, most games usually mix vertical progression and skill together, so it's not like your skills aren't developing along side your character's. But I still take issue with the ambiguity this creates. Did you really get better, or did the game just get easier?

I feel many progression systems obfuscate this feeling of improvement. I don't feel accomplished when I defeat a difficult boss I was stuck on after grinding for a few hours. I feel like I gave up on solving the problem, but the game begrudgingly allowed me past anyways.

The Balance Sledgehammer

Most games ought to start off easy, and then get more difficult over time as your skills develop. This is what a difficulty curve is, and it's something that vertical progression systems often throw completely out of wack. Many games end up with a wonky backwards difficulty curve where the game is most difficult at the start, which is far from ideal. Of course, it's possible to make the game's challenges ramp up even more to compensate for the player's increase in power, but it's a massive complication to balancing (many games mess it up). Even if executed well, this system still runs the risk of people inadvertently ruining the difficulty for themselves. A vertical progression system is essentially the worst difficulty selection ever created: it's largely opaque, difficult to modulate, and can wildly fluctuate unintentionally.

The solution to the player's scaling power might seem simple. The designer should plan for the average player's power level at any given point in the game and scale challenges accordingly. But the issue is that the designer can only account for just that, the average player. If they backtrack and fight more enemies or rush past a bunch of enemies or decide to grind or miss a powerful piece of equipment, all that careful planning goes out the window. You have to play in a very specific way to make the game balanced for yourself.

There's also the issue of skill checks. Bosses and the like often test the player's knowledge or skill of a specific aspect of the game so that going forward, the designer can safely assume a certain baseline of understanding and design around that. But that all falls apart if a player grinds past a challenge without learning what they were supposed to. It's just yet another way a player could ruin the enjoyment for themselves.

My Way Grind Way

I think the best argument in defense of vertical progression is that it provides a means for players to lower the difficulty in a way that feels authentic and earned compared to picking "easy" on the difficulty selection. I can definitely get behind this sentiment. Grinding or getting better equipment feels cunning preparation, while manually lowering the difficulty in a menu which just feels like capitulation. However, this a silver lining to this style of difficulty modulation that's vastly overshadowed by this system's flaws.

The first of those flaws is rigidness. If a player overlevels themselves to defeat a particularly tough boss, for example, they can't easily lower the difficulty back down to be afterwards. They might be stuck overpowered for the rest of the game. A simple difficulty selection is far superior here because it gives players the flexibility to change things and make accommodations for specific parts rather than the whole game.

The second, larger problem is ambiguity. Suppose you grind to 10 levels higher than the designer expected you to be. That might lower the difficulty to a level just right for you. Or, it could make you so powerful that essentially all challenge is removed; or it could still not be easy enough; or it could be just goldilocks but only for that part of the game — you have zero way of telling. The impact of your progression on the overall experience is completely nebulous. Ideally, a good difficulty system should explain what the experience really is beyond vague descriptors like "hard" to communicate the intended experience. Again, a traditional difficulty system would be a lot better, that at least gives you the labels of "easy" or "hard" to work with.

On Abnegation

The "aesthetics" I refer to in this section are the aesthetics of play, originally outlined in the MDA framework, which I admitedly haven't read yet. I was introduced to the concept from an excellent Extra Credits video, which I'd recommend. I've been talking about balance and strategy and accomplishment, but I also want to address the flipside of that coin: abnegation. It's essentially "play as pastime." It's the appeal of playing a comforting game that doesn't really require much of you just to kill some time and unwind. This aesthetic is where vertical progression systems and the grinding they often encourage really shine. It provides a nice, slow burn of a reward without requiring much moment to moment effort. Games like Clash of Clans or World of Warcraft use this to great effect.

However, this doesn't mean that this is beneficial for every type of game, far from it. The ones that really grind my gears in this respect are RPGs. They're almost always trying to deliver on the aesthetics of challenge and narrative, both of which are severely undercut by this side focus on abnegation. Challenge is completely antithetical to abnegation for obvious reason, and vast swaths of narrative down time dedicated to abnegation aren't very condusive to a well paced plot. I'd argue it's almost impossible to prevent these aesthetics from clashing.

Vertical progression systems aren't inherently bad, but they are terribly misutilized a huge portion of the time in so many games. It's why I have such mixed feelings on games i'd otherwise love wholeheartedly.

The Alternative

While it's perhaps not exactly fair, I've personally developed a disdain for any kind of vertical progression in games. It's why I kept each level in teralite completely self-contained, with absolutely nothing carrying between them other than your own skill. It's also why I'm making a mod for OMORI that removes stat gains from leveling and rebalances the game around a (mostly) static power level.

That mod ties in with the last thing I want to talk about. If vertical progression systems aren't a good fit for RPGs, then what is? Well, progression systems are invaluable tools, undoubtedly. They're great for gradually introducing the game's complexity over time instead of dumping it all at the start, and for showing character growth through gameplay. Removing them completely isn't a good solution. Instead, I think the player should get more options over the course of the game rather than more raw power. I believe a horizontal progression system like this has all of the benefits of progression, without any of the drawbacks I have outlined in this article. That is the hypothesis I aim to prove with my OMORI mod. I eventually scrapped said mod, although I still would like to prove the concept one day in a standalone RPG. Just give me a couple years...

There are some potential pitfalls to this system I'm proposing. Will this make leveling and finding equipment feel unrewarding? Will players just not use the new skills and tactics they unlock if they aren't explicitly more powerful than what they start with? Where do you draw the line on what constitutes an increase in power... surely being stacked on consumable items will grant an advantage, right?

These are all things I'm trying my best to think up solutions to, but of course there's always the possibility that it's a catastrophic failure. Either way, I'll probably make a follow up in a couple months after I finish the mod to reflect on it and the claims made here. But that's all I have for now.

NonGMOTrash
january 21st, 2023
(last modified: feburary 9th, 2025)