Casual Metas Fail to Earn Their Screen Time
There's a serious question: do the metas matter in any of these casual games? Remember the model for both match and merge is wed to engagement: playing lots of levels to hit fail screens and convert, or completing lots of merges to draw down energy and trigger another purchase. Anything that inhibits my time dedicated to merging or matching effectively reduces this equation and, in turn, revenue.
Spending time decorating in Gardenscapes or completing townspeople's dialogue in Gossip Harbor lowers revenue in this model! This lesson hasn't been lost on the hypercasual crop of titles, as saga maps and metas have been chipped away at in future designs on this basis. Many games will simply have a home screen with a level number (see: Toon Blast).
There's certainly something to be said for these narratives, acquiring users, but do they really matter as much on level 1000 as they do on level 1? Do the benefits of the dialogue tree really outweigh the benefits of more level-end or merge attempts? It's a tough sell, and so is the argument that players are completing the level ends to begin with so that they can unfold more of the narrative. It's certainly a testable hypothesis, yet it's often the narrative supporters who shy away from examining it this way.
There are middle grounds that I'm fond of, too, like letting players default to skipping dialogue or choosing one of the decoration options automatically, similar to auto-battle and squad RPGs. Even something as simple as increasing animation speed for anything done outside of the core matching or merging activity.
The other design puzzle is: what if there is a way to save meta and make it more productive? In many ways, they already feel nonsensical. I'm completing an endless series of food orders for the townspeople, yet they keep coming back asking for more. There is very little gratitude. Instead, why can't I match animal food to feed strays? The meta doesn't give the player a core purpose, identity, or aspiration. Some of the relationships in Gossip Harbor and the newer match/merge games are starting to play with this, but the integration feels adjacent rather than dovetailed.