---
title: Meta-Progression Approaches Rejected on Purpose
date: 2026-07-02
status: current
tags: [meta-progression, destiny, decision, graveyard]
fg-type: decision
fg-sources: [.lore/work/brainstorm/shattered-worlds-meta-progression.md]
fg-status: current
---

# Meta-Progression Approaches Rejected on Purpose

These meta-progression shapes were considered and rejected during Destiny design. They are recorded so they aren't re-proposed and re-litigated without remembering why they were cut.

## Banked gold across runs

A persistent currency banked and spent across runs collapses the run economy: every run becomes farming for the next, and the current run stops mattering in its own right. This is the same failure mode [[vision]]'s "grind past the ceiling" anti-goal names directly.

## Play-count card mastery

Unlocking a card variant by playing the base card N times ("play Sprint 50 times to unlock Dash Through") rewards time spent, not skill or decisions made. [[destiny-progression]]'s feat-based unlocks reward *doing* a specific play pattern instead, which teaches the pattern the unlock then rewards.

## Prestige reset of the Destiny tree

A prestige/reset mechanic manufactures grind out of nothing by shrinking the possibility space on a schedule, which runs directly against the vision's core promise that the possibility space only grows across runs (see [[vision]]).

## Permanent stat tracks

HP, energy, and draw ladders that grow with play are the same "flat power that trivializes the summit" problem the vision's Principle 3 already rules out — restated here so it stays dead if proposed again under a different name.

## Corruption: scoped but not chosen

Corruption (a mechanic where power, speed, or reward quality comes with a reality-warping cost) was flagged as thematically strong but high-risk until scoped. Three concrete scopes were sketched and left as alternatives, not decided between: (1) corruption as a cost-on-the-card, shuffling a dead/harmful card into every world's deck per equipped corrupted option; (2) corruption as the world's response, where equipped Destiny power scales threat density and clock speed; (3) corruption as the currency for breaking roguelite law itself (continuing a dead run, rerolling world order, re-entering a failed world). Door 3 was flagged as the most dangerous of the three: "runs are disposable" is load-bearing to the vision, and any continue mechanic, however priced, erodes it. If Corruption is revisited, treat picking one of these three scopes as the first decision, not an afterthought.

Related: [[destiny-progression]], [[vision]]