Pricing an economy off its difficulty model
Originally published on indiecore.net . Part 8 of 10 on building a word-block puzzle engine. Part 7: testing a level pack you did not write. The first economy paid 20 coins for finishing a level. Every level. It survived about a week of my own play before it was obviously broken, and the reason is a number from part 3. A level's decision load — the total count of real choices the board forces…
The decision load, representing the total count of real choices a board forces across a full solve, varies widely depending on the difficulty tier. It runs from 7.5 on the easiest tier to 96.7 on the hardest, creating a 13× spread. This disparity in pay demonstrates the importance of tying rewards to the work done rather than the 0-10 difficulty rating.
The rating, a percentile comparing against other boards, is less useful for gauging the absolute amount of work required. Coins should pay for work, not for relative performance. The economy.js file provides functions to calculate rewards based on decision load, with a base reward of 6 coins and an additional 0.30 coins per decision.
Star bonuses, awarded as a delta against the highest tier earned, are deliberately small to prevent players from grinding for guaranteed high rewards. A rewarded-video multiplier adds further scaling to rewards, ensuring that harder levels are more valuable to complete. Finally, the daily login chest provides a reward that grows over seven days and then stops, encouraging daily logins while preventing excessive accumulation of coins.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
