Idle games excel in retaining players early due to their minimal learning curve, but this also poses a significant design challenge. Here are principles for balancing creativity with the core characteristics of idle games:
Combat in idle games is typically automated, making tutorials straightforward. Players can begin with just a few button instructions. Losing in combat should carry no penalty—no resource consumption or stamina recovery delay. Players should be able to retry immediately, encouraging experimentation.
Many players fear making poor decisions, leading them to research online to ensure their investments are optimal. In idle games, most progression systems eliminate the cost of wrong choices or offer low-cost corrections.
For example:
This principle applies to all live-ops games but is especially crucial for idle games. Given the inherently simple combat mechanics of idle games, they often integrate features from other genres to add depth. However, if all elements from other game types are directly implemented into an idle game, it could complicate the game mode, potentially diminishing its appeal. The challenge is to distill the core essence of these borrowed systems to enhance gameplay while keeping things simple and not overwhelming the player.
A zero-learning-curve approach doesn’t mean designing a game devoid of skill and strategy. In reality, players simply dislike spending extra time researching online but are willing to learn progressively through gameplay.
Idle RPGs deliver casual, stress-free experiences, achieving high Day-1 retention rates, like Mythic Heroes' 70%+. However, mid-to-late gameplay often becomes grindy, leading to retention drop-offs. Recent games like Victory of Goddess: Nikke and AFK Journey address longstanding issues, setting new benchmarks.
Enhanced Narrative & Player Engagement:
The first major shift is the significant enhancement of narrative. AFK Arena achieved its success by streamlining gameplay, removing many of the traditional, tedious elements of RPGs. Features like idle rewards and resonance crystals replaced the grind of leveling up, and dispatch missions simplified side quests. To maintain this simplicity, however, the game also eliminated storylines, dialogue, and map exploration.
While this made the game more accessible and avoided the challenge of meeting the high expectations of story-driven players, it came at the expense of character immersion, a key pillar of RPGs. Without a compelling narrative, players began to view characters as mere numbers and stats. The focus shifted solely to acquiring the most powerful heroes, with the only incentive for spending being to collect the overpowered characters. As a result, late-game monetization relied heavily on releasing increasingly powerful heroes, creating a cycle of power creep and reducing emotional connection with the characters.
In AFK Journey, the narrative and character development have been significantly strengthened. With richer storylines, voice acting, and cinematic cutscenes, players can gradually form deeper emotional connections with the characters.
Victory of Goddess: Nikke also invests heavily in its narrative, but takes a different approach. The game features extensive dialogue with a diverse cast of female characters, allowing players to deepen their understanding of each character's personality. The relationship between the characters and players is designed to feel more like a romance-driven interaction, enhancing emotional immersion. This narrative style has proven especially popular among male players, as it fosters a stronger emotional connection with the characters and intensifies player engagement.
Combat Less "Idle": Balancing Depth and Casual Gameplay
The core concept of Idle games has always been to simplify combat drastically, shifting the focus to Character Progression outside the battlefield. While this makes the game more casual, it also limits the depth, with character designs often feeling restricted. Additionally, the overly simplistic core gameplay leads to a high degree of similarity across various game modes, which is the primary reason players experience the game as "Grindy".
AFK Journey has made refinements to the battlefield strategy depth. While AFK Arena felt repetitive, with battles that were essentially just different backgrounds, AFK Journey introduces simple obstacles, interactive items, and environmental effects. Additionally, hero positioning now plays a more important role, with placement significantly affecting battle outcomes. This reflects the designers' effort to find a new balance between strategic depth and a casual gaming experience.
In this regard, Victory of Goddess: Nikke takes a different approach by offering both manual and auto combat modes. In certain scenarios, particularly in PvP, manual mode provides a clear advantage, allowing players to have more direct involvement in the battles. However, for daily tasks or easier scenarios, auto combat helps save time and effort, preserving the game's idle nature. This balance gives players the option to choose their level of engagement while maintaining the convenience of an idle game.
While both games have evolved in this direction, Victory of Goddess: Nikke's changes are more successful. Its shooting combat mode is ideal for mobile, offering instant feedback with simple taps, making it immersive and engaging. Victory of Goddess: Nikke's combat experience caters to a broader audience, particularly appealing to fans of shooting games on mobile. In comparison, AFK Journey's changes are more focused on optimizing the experience for existing players, with less appeal for attracting new ones.
Map Exploration : Keeping Players Engaged Even When "Stuck"
A key pain point in idle games has been improved: in the mid-to-late stages, players often get "stuck" due to insufficient combat power, leading to a significant drop in gameplay time. This issue becomes more pronounced as players level up.
Explanation: In idle games, combat power serves both as a progression limiter and a key driver of monetization. Players who don’t spend money often face roadblocks, creating a "paywall" that can lead to frustration. As difficulty ramps up in the later stages, even paying players can encounter similar obstacles, leading to a "bottomless pit" of spending. If players remain stuck for extended periods—sometimes for days or even weeks—they may quit due to lack of progress or engaging content.
This issue hasn't been fully resolved, but designers have come up with alternative solutions by adding map exploration to prevent players from feeling like they have nothing to do when they hit a roadblock.
Both games have incorporated large map exploration elements, but AFK Journey takes it further. The game features a richer variety of map elements, including side quests, puzzles, and mini-games. This allows players to stay engaged when they hit roadblocks—exploring the map not only provides a way to pass the time but also rewards them with resources that can help them progress.
Optimizing Player Experience: Last but Not Least
AFK Journey improves the user experience by addressing long-standing player complaints. For example, in AFK Arena, switching weapons between numerous characters was tedious, even with a shared weapon system. In AFK Journey, weapons are now shared by class, allowing players to equip the best weapon for all heroes of that class, improving convenience at the cost of some monetization depth.
Additionally, the Resonance Crystals system has been integrated into the hero development interface, simplifying the process and reducing screen-switching.
In contrast, Victory of Goddess: Nikke’s changes mainly replicate AFK Arena’s UX features, offering little innovation.
Different roles in the dev team focus on different KPIs: investors care about ROI, designers prioritize DAU or retention, and marketing emphasizes conversion rates. This reflects their roles, but some KPIs are foundational to others. Improving revenue by increasing player retention is an indirect approach. It takes time for these new players to gradually start spending, much like digesting food—it needs time to circulate within the system.
However, many times, due to various real-world pressures, game developers are compelled to increase monetization efforts by adding more progression depth and sales offers. While this can boost short-term revenue, it can also lead to resource inflation and widen the gap between P2W and F2P players. This imbalance can weaken the F2P player ecosystem, ultimately causing a decline in retention and engagement.
As a result, you not only face higher UA costs but also risk damaging the game’s reputation, sometimes it is irreversible. Unfortunately, this is a common outcome I’ve witnessed in many games. As a designer, I can’t make business or financial decisions. However, I will strive to propose effective, phased solutions to improve player engagement and assess how long it may take to see results.
Improving revenue by increasing player retention is an indirect approach. It takes time for these new players to gradually start spending, much like digesting food—it needs time to circulate within the system.
Before launching a game, we usually conduct extensive playtests, either internally or with external participants. While this helps improve the game development, it doesn't provide reliable data on market acceptance, as testers may have biases. A better approach is to test in smaller markets, such as Canada for North America or the Philippines and Vietnam for Asia.
Retention rates are crucial during this phase, especially Day 1, Day 7, Day 14, Day 30, and Day 60. Different game types have different retention expectations: hard-core games often have lower retention, while casual games tend to have higher retention.
If Day 1 retention is poor, it indicates an issue with the player on boarding or the core gameplay loop. If Day 1 retention is good but drops sharply by Day 7,It could be due to shallow gameplay or overly aggressive P2W elements that deter F2P players. Players should experience unrestricted play in the first a few days. You can introduce some light pay features , but The focus should be on retention, with conversion feeling like a choice, not pressure.
If both Day 1 and Day 7 retention are successful, but Day 14 and Day 30 show rapid declines, it’s time to introduce more limited-time events. No matter how successful the core game mechanics are, players will start to feel fatigued after more than two weeks of play. Events can temporarily break players out of their daily routine, refreshing their experience and drawing them back into the game, and events can refresh their experience, maintaining engagement.
Long-term retention (Day 60 and beyond) is influenced by the F2P player ecosystem. If F2P players feel hopeless due to exclusive content for paying players, it can lead to issues.
This analyzes key design factors influencing players' decisions to stay or quit over time.
I usually analyze the Conversion Rate and ARPPU together, as looking at either one in isolation is meaningless. To significantly increase the Conversion Rate, you could simply sell a Starter pack at a 99% discount. However, this would result in a decline in ARPPU, as players lose interest when they see other offers with lower discounts. Therefore, to improve both Conversion Rate and ARPPU simultaneously, relying solely on discount sales is not viable. Here are several ways to improve Conversion Rate without negatively impacting ARPPU:
Simpify Your Design: Core gameplay should have some depth, but monetization defenitly “less is more.” In-game purchases are impulsive—the longer players think, the less likely they’ll pay. Players need to instantly understand what they’re getting and what it costs. If you can’t explain it in one or two sentences, it needs to be simplified.
In my experience, we once made a lottery system after an event ended, but explaining how and when to draw, and how prizes were tiered, was too complicated. Ultimately, a simpler design, where players received a random reward immediately after the event, proved to be much more engaging.
Narrative Design: This isn’t about writing a story—many live-ops games don’t have a full storyline. It’s about treating the monetization system as part of your game’s world, rather than copying it directly from other successful games. Today’s players are very savvy; if you simply copy a design without any adaptation, they’ll see right through it.
Sales For a Good Reason:Of course, for any game, sales are one of the primary ways to increase conversion. However, there's a problem: if players know that the developer regularly offers sales items, they may stop purchasing items at regular prices in the store.
The main way to solve this problem is to require players to invest some effort to access these discounted items.For example, offers that require players to reach a specific level or chapter are "progression offers," while "time-limited offers" restrict quantity and availability. Both require players to invest time and effort to access them. However, it's important to avoid oversupplying these offers, as exceeding players' player spending capacity can still lead to ARPPU decline. Measuring player spending capacity is another topic alone.
One of the most recommended approaches for Sales is the Battle Pass. This design not only boosts conversion rates but also significantly increases player engagement, positively impacting DAU and session length. By introducing Milestone Rewards, this model provides players with clear goals and motivation, while also creating a Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)—encouraging players to buy in to avoid missing out on substantial rewards.
In Supercell’s Brawl Stars, the Battle Pass has completely replaced the traditional Monthly Subscription. When comparing the two, it becomes clear that players often hesitate to purchase a Monthly Subscription because they’re unsure if they’ll have enough time to play the game in the upcoming month. However, with the Battle Pass, players can decide to purchase it after completing all the tasks, ensuring they earn rewards regardless of whether they continue playing in the future.
The only drawback of this model is that players who join late in the event may give up on purchasing the pass if they feel they can’t complete the tasks in time. Therefore, providing ways for paying players to catch up is essential, such as offering double experience boosts or allowing players to spend currency to purchase milestones directly.
Additionally, the rewards from the Battle Pass are usually very generous, with F2P players still able to earn substantial rewards. To maintain balance, the rewards for pay track are typically 2 to 3 times greater than free track. However, it’s important not to overuse this system, as it could lead to resource inflation. The balance should be carefully measured based on the players' spending capacity and the depth of the game’s progression.
Description text underneath an imagePhobies
Whales refer to players who spend significantly in a game, and they are naturally the favorites of many game developers. However, in most top-tier games, smart developers tend to limit the spending of whales rather than encourage them. This might sound strange—why would anyone turn down money?
Why?
In reality, it’s to ensure the game’s long-term survival. Excessive spending by individual whales can disrupt game balance, causing other players to lose confidence. Moreover, when whales find they have completely dominated all opponents, they may lose interest and move on to other games.
For example, when creating sales offers, you should always set quantity limits on your offers, and the higher the price of the offer, the smaller the discount. This approach seems entirely opposite to real-world practices, where businesses often give bigger discounts to high-spending customers. However, there are two reasons for this difference:
Unrestricted and irrational spending Whale Players not only damage your game’s balance but also leave your game very soon.
How to bring a declining game’s revenue back to its original level is a challenge that all live-ops game designers frequently face. After watching the talk "GDC 2024: Brawl Stars – Learnings from the Removal of Loot Boxes," I gained significant insights. Here, I’ll share only my personal takeaway, without including any content from the original video.
The original video covers how Brawl Stars, through a series of adjustments, gradually brought the game from its lowest point in history back to its highest revenue levels. One of the biggest changes was the removal of loot boxes, which were replaced by Drop Starr. Although Drop Starr also provides random rewards, it cannot be purchased and is solely used as an immersion-enhancing random reward.
In other words, they took the bold step of removing the primary monetization tool (loot boxes) and replace with the more stable and transparent Starr Road Pass (battle pass). Making such a change in a game with declining revenue is both impressive and daring. When considering the advantages of battle passes I’ve mentioned before, their intent becomes clear: to replace a low-conversion, high-ARPPU monetization strategy with a high-conversion, low-ARPPU approach. This optimizes the ecosystem for low spenders, making the game fairer and thus driving DAU back up.
image is from GDC 2024 Brawl Stars': Learnings from the Removal of Loot Boxes
All their changes—Star Drops, Mega Pigs, Brawl Pass 2, Ranking redesign and community events—focus on player engagement, boosting DAU and retention. Only Brawl Pass 2 was truly aimed at increasing conversion, primarily by lowering its price, increasing value, and shortening its duration.
This is image is from GDC 2025 Brawl Stars': Learnings from the Removal of Loot Boxes
As a result, their DAU increased by 3.9 times within a year, and revenue rose by 8.8 times. However, note that the revenue growth lagged behind the DAU growth—the DAU increased in the second half of 2023, while revenue saw a sudden rise only in 2024. This is an indirect approach to increasing revenue. While it may take longer to see results, it tends to yield stable, long-term effects.
In conclusion, a game’s recovery from a slump depends not only on a solid recovery plan but also on the combined company rescoureces, gameplay quality, and team surport.
Supercell’s loot boxes have a proven track record in games like Clash of Clans and Clash Royale, boosting both conversion and retention rates. So why didn’t they work in Brawl Stars?
As a real-time, action-based game, Brawl Stars has a much higher level of competition than any of Supercell’s previous titles. This intense competition amplifies P2W issues, as even small power gaps directly impact gameplay.
The high randomness of loot boxes further complicated things, making it difficult for F2P and low-spending players to obtain specific heroes they needed.
This created noticeable power gaps between paying and free players, frustrating the F2P community and disrupting balance. Without that balance, Brawl Stars risks losing its competitive integrity and, with it, its player base.
the story we heard is from 2022
Diablo Immortal primarily generates revenue through the sale of legendary gems, bundles, and Eternal Orbs, which directly boost player power. This type of monetization declines over time as the power gap between players widens. High-spending players stop spending once they achieve a significant power advantage, while many small and medium spenders quit due to poor PvP experiences.
Diablo Immortal is the official mobile installment of the Diablo series, which has a massive player base in North America. This led to an immediate influx of players upon release, with over 10 million downloads in just six days, according to official data.
However, the Diablo IP turned out to be a double-edged sword. The core players of the Diablo series are primarily buy-to-play console gamers, who inevitably compare Diablo Immortal with previous Diablo titles rather than evaluating it solely as a mobile game. For these players, the idea of a game that once cost around $100 to fully enjoy now requiring tens of thousands of dollars to max out was simply unacceptable.
Diablo Immortal: Post-Launch Review
Diablo Immortal launched in North America on June 1, 2022, and secured the No. 1 spot on the region’s free games chart. It remained within the top 100 of the free games chart until July 28.
Due to the strong brand recognition of the Diablo series in North America, Diablo Immortal initially received a warm reception. Its graphics, gameplay, and story were well-executed, which helped attract a large number of players early on.
Just 10 days after launch, the official announcement revealed that the game had surpassed 10 million downloads, making it the most pre-ordered product in the Diablo series' history. This early success was largely driven by the established fan base of the franchise and the game’s high production values.
Mid Stage: Issues Arise（2022 7.28-9.28）