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Player Investment Design - Solo Project

Realm of Champions design doc

    Designing systems to increase player investment in live service games. Realm of Champions is a concept of a fantasy open-world MMO centered around large-scale exploration and PvE combat.

    This project intends to increase investment to maintain player retention and monetization through progression, economy, and social systems

Player Archetype: Bounty Hunter
Motivations: Destruction, Power, Design

The target audience are the bounty hunters whose goals would revolve around gaining powerful abilities, but also strongly motivated by customization and being able to curate their characters. Players who favor character progression and cosmetics and who experiment with combinations of abilities and weapons

Game Loops
 

Core: Quest -> Slay enemies -> Complete missions and/or combat encounters -> gain rewards -> new area/quest/enemy 

Short Game Loop: Slay enemy - > complete quest -> gain rewards

Long Game Loop: Group up -> large scale dungeons/raids -> defeat boss -> collect group rewards (team gear, housing, etc) -> rank up

Progression

    Level based character progression with abilities, stat increases, and gear being unlocked. For Realm of Champions I designed the "short" game loop to be non-linear with later levels requiring more experience points, but with the level rewards becoming more and more substantial.

    I believe this contributes to a feeling of accomplishment and challenge as players level up more, and creates some distance between points of progress for hardcore players. The intent is for the short game progression to be completed in approximately 90-100 hours of gameplay

ProgressionGraph_edited.jpg

    The experience required to level up does not stay the same and often increases. The experience to next level, and by proxy the hours required, changes depending on character level. The points where the experience needed spikes are where the character unlocks an ability that is either powerful, or greatly changes the possible play style, and the dip that follows is meant to allow customizations to said ability in a shorter amount of time

Currencies

Unfrictioned currency - Coins

   

Frictioned currency - Renown

    

Premium - Credits

Gain

    Acquired from completing quests and defeating enemies in quests or in world. Less commonly found in treasure chests or regular containers around the world

    Acquired from completing group activities (raids, dungeons, puzzles) and can be obtained from doing difficult missions or challenges 

Acquired through spending of real world money or through deals/specials

Drain

Purchase armor, weapons, food and drink. Additionally, spent on services such as repairs, transportation, upgrading gear and cosmetics for your gear. 

Spent on unlocking upgrades and services, like access to a guild merchant and buying features that can be shared, like houses or furniture items

Buy boosts for character progression and resource gain, and can buy character/mount/pet skins. 

Social

    Players can engage with each other by joining up into groups either at random or directly, and can chat with each other using the text chat, join guilds, gain class/player rank through core game loop, and commend other players

    These interactions would benefit the player community through the sharing of information and resources, and building strong ties with other players to keep playing with. Additionally, having text chat as opposed to voice chat is less direct for those who don't want to talk to strangers

    These social interactions should fall under shared awareness, sharing of success or failure, and team optimization

socialfeatures.png

Risks and Mitigations

    Party and non party chat could be used to harass players and could lead to players belittling others for not playing the "meta" or liking one class more than another. A strategy is to allow players to block players to not see their msg or simply mute the text chat

    Guilds and parties can lead to shared communication or a spread of mass hate from communities that share the same toxicity. An example I thought of was guilds grouping up to grief players and areas at once, though this also relates to the text chat feature. Players can join a guild to find out the guild members demand to be given items for free or loads of money in return. Having the option to have guild finder and guild tags/bio to say what the guild expects out of its members could theoretically help the latter. The ability to ban, mute, and kick unruly players plays a crucial role in creating a positive community

    My goal with the commendations was to allow players to send compliments without the option to give a thumbs down, so people can't hate spam. Additionally making it isolated, so players cant see if other players get commendations, so if a player was the only one to not get a commendation or got way less they wouldn't know

Monetization Model

  • Sell the game, with microtransations

    • Players purchase the base game or expansion​

    • Purchasable non-gameplay content such as skins, alternative mounts, consumables, and houses

    • Some conveinience items like permanent increase to inventory space or personal crafting stations

      • Can also be purchased with in-game currency​​

Strategies and Tactics

  • Base Game plus expansions

  • Cosmetics: Character skins, outfits, emotes, pets, etc.

  • Consumables: XP earned, gold earned, renown, earned, movement speed, etc.

  • Convenience: Inventory, Bank, crafting stations, hirelings

  • Free events with exclusive purchasable items or discounts on non-exclusive items

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