Game Economy Design: Combat Power Inflation Part 1

Game Economy Design: Combat Power Inflation
Part 1: How It Happens in Long-Term F2P Games

Combat power inflation is not merely the result of designers choosing larger numbers.

The deeper reason is retention.

▸ Retention logic

In long-term free-to-play games, progression usually has to move forward. Players rarely accept returning to a game and feeling weaker than before.

As the game loop expands, the system expands. And when the system expands, it usually supplies more combat power.

▸ What I mean by combat power

Here, combat power does not only mean a visible number on the UI.

Even if a game does not display a combat power value, there is usually still an internal model that represents the player’s overall numerical combat strength.

▸ System-level logic

At the system level, combat power supply is added together from all unlocked feature growth curves.

Combat Power Supply(Progression Stage) = Sum of all unlocked feature growth curves

Each unlocked feature contributes its own growth curve. The total combat power supply is the aggregate of these contributions.

▸ Simplified model

A simplified way to describe this is:

Combat Power Supply(Progression Stage) ≈ Feature Unlock Count Curve × Average Feature Internal Growth Curve

This means combat power supply grows from two directions:

- More power-providing features are unlocked.
- Each feature continues to grow internally.

▸ Example: equipment is not just equipment

An equipment system can include base stats, rarity, upgrade levels, affixes, set bonuses, gems, enchantments, and more.

So one new feature can already contain several internal growth layers.

▸ Trend abstraction

To abstract the trend:

Feature Unlock Count Curve ≈ B × POWER(Progression Stage, A)

Average Feature Internal Growth Curve ≈ D × POWER(Progression Stage, C)

Then:

Combat Power Supply ≈ B × D × POWER(Progression Stage, A + C)

B and D influence the scale.

A + C determines how steep the final curve becomes.

▸ Design implication

This is why combat power inflation can appear faster than expected.

It is not caused by one number becoming bigger. It is driven by more unlocked features and deeper internal growth layers moving together along the player progression curve.

This is a conceptual trend model, not an exact combat formula.

The point is to show why combat power supply can accelerate when system expansion and internal feature growth happen at the same time.

▸ Economy bridge

Once combat power supply inflation appears, game economy inflation often follows:

Game Economy Inflation Pressure ≈ Combat Power Supply Growth × Cost per Unit Power