Horizontal Design in Summoners War

How Summoners War Stayed Live for 12 Years While Keeping a Top Attacker Under 5,000 Visible ATK
Horizontal Design in Summoners War

1. About the game

Summoners War is a monster-collection turn-based RPG that has operated for 12+ years and passed $3B+ lifetime revenue.

What makes this game valuable as a design case is its long-term visible stat control. After 12 years, it still keeps inflation controlled through two layers:

▸ visible stat control
In this game, the Monster with the highest base ATK is Teshar. In a high-end PvE damage build used for fast clearing, its visible stats are:

• HP 13,628
• ATK 3,992
• DEF 566
• SPD 177
• 100% Crit Rate
• 270% Crit Damage

▸ few core progression systems
It mainly uses 4 core systems to support long-term operation:

• 2 Artifact slots, focused more on property optimisation than level upgrading
• 6 Rune slots, with Rune Power-up capped at +15
• 1 Relic slot in the current version, with Power-up +15
• Monster level and skill-up progression, with max Monster level 40

This shows system control. When you control the number and depth of progression systems, you can reduce the pressure of visible stat inflation.

2. How does it work?

▸ Huge demand for Monster collection

• A huge roster creates a large progression sink and keeps players motivated to collect Monsters from 2★ to 5★, even at endgame.
• The system gives players a strong motivation to collect a huge number of Monsters from 2★ to 5★, even when they are at the endgame level.
• Deep build layer: a deep account can reach around 200 built Monsters.
• Deep chase layer: there are around 160 Light/Dark Nat 5★ chase targets. In common player discussions, a 12-year account may still only own around 5 LD5 units.

▸ Suitable progression lifecycle of one Monster

• After the beginner period, a Monster can reach max level within around 6 hours on a developed account.
• Building one Monster into a content-viable unit may require around 3 weeks of account-level resources, especially through Rune quality, Artifact fit, and skill-ups.
• Each progression step creates frequent progression feedback.

▸ 2 examples to show how it works

• Formal estimate:

- Monster Progression Time = Max(level time, progression resource time) = 21 days
- Monster Demand Number = 200–350
- Potential Progression Capacity ≈ Monster Progression Time × Monster Number
 ≈ 21 days × (200–350)
 ≈ 11–20 years

• Player case:
One long-term moderate-spender account, based on around 9 years of play, has 3 LD5 units and 160 Monsters.

3. Horizontal Design needs support

Summoners War’s long-term live operation is not only built on a large progression sink. Horizontal Design creates the capacity by giving players many Monsters worth building. But large capacity only works when Replacement Design and Pacing Design support it.

I will continue this case with these two design layers in the next parts.