Why Do Battle Passes Appeal To My Brain?
And how can I use that to my advantage?
I love learning new things about how my brain works! Like, learning why I enjoy Genshin and Star Rail's battle passes, and regularly complete them every patch.
I'll be omitting the paid battle pass from this blog post entirely. There have been far better discussions about the FOMO and terribly manipulative nature of the paid battle pass, and that's not what interests me today.
This started when I was looking at my Star Rail battle pass today. It was at the max level of 50, and that left me feeling rather satisfied. "Nice!” I thought, “I've had this all done for a couple days now, so I’ve been able to take a bit of a break!”
It was a whole task list I didn’t have to think about, and I’d had plenty of time to wind down. It reminded me of that sense of freedom I used to feel in school when I'd finally finish my homework, and be totally free to do anything I want until the next assignment. That's when the thought occurred to me.
The battle pass isn't just a collection of daily, weekly, and monthly(-ish) tasks that give you points and rewards. It has more going on than that.
Most relevant for my purposes, is that after a certain point, your progress level caps out and stops giving you rewards until it next resets. That is to say, there exists a finite amount of work per battle pass period that will provide the maximum reward. It's bounded. Eventually you're able to look at the completed track, and say, "Wow, I did a lot this month," and you have a figure that can reassure you of that fact.
That's huge for a brain like mine. I much prefer finality and definitive accomplishment over the vague, endless climb of progress. If I can't see or imagine the mountain peak within reach, I will stop climbing, and working for myself has made that more clear than ever. Because I could always be doing more work, and my brain loves to remind me of that every five seconds.
A weekly limit like the ones seen in these battle passes could potentially help you avoid exhaustion from overworking.
I've been working on an app that recontextualizes my daily tasks in the form of a gacha game, and I’ve decided I'll be trying to add a customizable monthly battle pass type system into it. The idea is that anything that moves your life forward, such as work-related goals or milestones, will earn you points.
Writing a page of a story, posting a stream clip to YouTube shorts, streaming on Twitch, sitting down with my code for 10 minutes, creating video thumbnails - these are all simple, incremental tasks in my life that could earn me some points in this battle pass. Meanwhile, publishing a release version of an application, a chapter of a story, or a longer stream highlights video are all large task accomplishments that would warrant a much greater point reward.
My app prototype has been quite helpful so far, and has been slowly improving my daily routine.
Daily maintenance tasks won't be included in the battle pass system, as they need to be done every day. They’re also more focused on keeping the present in order, so I think there’s actually a great meaning to come out of separating them. Those are treated more like Genshin's daily commission feature.
There will be a limit to the amount of points that can be earned per-week to discourage overwork. And once you, perhaps, reach level 30, you’ll stop getting rewards from doing work tasks until next month.
My hope is that having point caps will function simultaneously as goals, proofs of effort, and limiting factors against the harmful, exhausting delusion of unbounded grind, growth, and reward.
At the moment, I'm starting by tracking the battle pass system with a digital note I have pinned on my phone, but once I've gotten my app prototype in a shareable state, I'll be working to add it.
I hope you got something out of reading this, and if you wanna follow the development of my productivity app, or hear more of my introspective thoughts, maybe follow me on Twitter (I refuse to call it X) or on the Fediverse, or join my Community Discord Server!
Catch you all later!
~ PrincessAquos ~
