Concept
Progression curves
You might say: the shape of growth
A progression curve relates a measure such as level or time to cumulative progress, capability or cost; distinguish total progress from the marginal cost of the next step.
- What it does
- Controls early accessibility, late-game distance and the rhythm of new understanding.
- Ask
- Should growth be steady, accelerating, bounded or deliberately uneven?
Catalogue: Curve family
- Linear: Each level adds the same amount: E(n)=100(n−1).
- Polynomial: A power such as E(n)=10(n−1)^2 makes later steps grow faster than early steps.
- Exponential: E(n)=2^(n−1)−1 doubles the increment repeatedly, so late growth quickly dominates.
- Logistic / S-curve: E(n)=1000/(1+e^(−(n−5))) starts gently, accelerates in the middle and approaches a cap.
- Pokémon Fast: A shipped cubic group: EXP=4n^3/5, reaching 800,000 at level 100. The cubic formula defines it; Pokémon is where it shipped.
- Pokémon Medium Slow: A shipped cubic group: EXP=6n^3/5−15n^2+100n−140, reaching 1,059,860 at level 100. The cubic formula defines it; Pokémon is where it shipped.
Sources
- Bulbapedia, Experience
The amount of experience points a Pokémon has is tied directly to its level.
- Schreiber, Game Balance Concepts
you need to figure out a relationship between increasing resource costs and increasing benefits.
- Ian Schreiber, Level 3: Transitive Mechanics and Cost Curves, linear, curved and diminishing/increasing cost relationships
you need to figure out a relationship between increasing resource costs and increasing benefits.
- Ian Schreiber, Level 3: Transitive Mechanics and Cost Curves, “Cost Curves”; “Creating a Cost Curve”; “Rules of Thumb”
you need to figure out a relationship between increasing resource costs and increasing benefits.
- Raph Koster, Game design is simple, actually, “Variation and escalation”; “Pacing and balance”
There’s an optimal pacing shape. It looks just like what you see in your literature textbooks when they diagram tension, or whatever: sort of like a rising sine wave.
Use it on your project
teardown-apply: hold "Progression curves" (progression-curves) from the teardown at https://teardownatlas.com/game-design/ against my project
Paste it into a coding agent that has the teardown skills.
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