Is U50's 200k+ DPS Ceiling Healthy for the Long-Term State of the Game?

erickhwk · May 17

Hi everyone,

With Update 50 just around the corner, we are already seeing some absolutely mind-blowing parse numbers, with top-tier players pushing past the 200k+ DPS mark. While the mechanical skill required to hit these numbers is massive and near perfection, I would like to propose a discussion about the current state of power creep and how it aligns with the game's core design.

For a long time, we've heard the mentions to the philosophy of "raising the floor and lowering the ceiling". I completely understand the intent behind this: it’s not necessarily about flat-out nerf hammers, but about improving accessibility so that average players can reach decent, viable DPS numbers more easily.

But looking at the current state of the game, I have to ask: At what point does this philosophy become predatory toward the game's own content? Does the game actually need players pulling 200k+ DPS?

Before the common counterargument comes up: Yes, I know that 200k is achieved by a very small percentage of the player base, and the average casual player isn't hitting anything near that.

However, power creep always trickles down.

When the absolute ceiling shifts to 200k, the "middle tier" easily shifts to 100k+, and 100k DPS is already more than enough to completely melt almost any Veteran DLC dungeon boss, bypassing mechanics entirely. Content that was once designed to be highly engaging, challenging, and tactical is being turned into a completely casual breeze.

We can already see the dramatic consequences of this when comparing base game content to newer DLCs. There is a massive, jarring disconnect in difficulty. Base game Veteran dungeons have become an absolute joke where bosses die in seconds, while newer DLC dungeons feel like they have to be specifically tuned around this absurd damage inflation just to survive for more than a minute. This artificial split shows that the game is struggling to balance its past with its present.

The sense of progression and achievement is actively fading. Trials and dungeons lose their identity when groups can just brute-force through phases that were originally meant to test coordination, positioning, and survival. Instead of learning the fights, we are just exploding them.

If the "floor" keeps rising to meet a "ceiling" that is actually skyrocketing rather than lowering, where do we go from here? Will future content have to be balanced around these astronomical numbers, creating an even wider barrier to entry for newer players? Or will older content just be left to become completely trivialized by raw stat inflation?

I’d love to hear your thoughts, especially from those who have watched the combat meta evolve over the years. Is this level of power creep sustainable, or has the pursuit of accessibility inadvertently broken the game's challenge?

Wuuffyy · May 17

Could revamp old dungeons. I know the argument could be 'but we could nerf a bunch of things instead'... but honestly a lot old content, with/without this level of powercreep, had already become obsolete for a variety of other reasons (enjoyment/difficulty/engagement).

Also, as far as I'm aware, you're making this post now but 150k or so has been the marker for a while. Aside from Signet (which I agree pushes builds too far), many of these builds are around 170-180k with the best player in the best gear and primarily ST with significantly less cleave than the 150k mark.

To be fair, anytime more than 1 target is in play, arc cleave DD is vastly greater than ST DPS as you are hitting 2, 3, 4 targets with that DPS at-the-same-time.

Soarora · May 17

I suspect that once all the class reworks are done, we'll see another U35 where either the content gets buffed or the players get nerfed. This would put all records and clears in a weird spot which is why I want a new difficulty level entirely but I am already in acceptance that numbers will get brought down at some point because... yeah... they cannot keep increasing.

Renato90085 · May 17

It has already happened.new trial hm boss have 300m health

Luneca · May 17

Not sure why it matters in the first place. Damage has been creeping up for a long time in PvP and PvE, and it will continue to do so.

The developers apparently want this. If they didn't they have a strange way of showing it with the decisions they have made and keep making.

Kalthea · May 17

Don't look at the top DPS. Look at the mid-range, the 30-70% of players that aren't going to push up to ridiculous builds and output the most perfect DPS. Raising the floor in this situation is about accessibility of players to engage in content and contribute to a fight.

AlterBlika · May 17

Tbh I don't think they even care about older content. Several gameplay bugs (like that resetting boss in FH when you aren't solo) never get fixed. I doubt they would revamp this at all.

It's a miracle we're getting an option to make overland harder. But at this point base game and early dlc content need this badly as well. I guess this is what you get when you endlessly buff everyone instead of nerfing what's overperforming

erickhwk · May 17

Renato90085 wrote: »

It has already happened.new trial hm boss have 300m health

I'm tired just thinking about the slog, lol.

Wuuffyy wrote: »

Could revamp old dungeons. I know the argument could be 'but we could nerf a bunch of things instead'... but honestly a lot old content, with/without this level of powercreep, had already become obsolete for a variety of other reasons (enjoyment/difficulty/engagement).

Also, as far as I'm aware, you're making this post now but 150k or so has been the marker for a while. Aside from Signet (which I agree pushes builds too far), many of these builds are around 170-180k with the best player in the best gear and primarily ST with significantly less cleave than the 150k mark.

To be fair, anytime more than 1 target is in play, arc cleave DD is vastly greater than ST DPS as you are hitting 2, 3, 4 targets with that DPS at-the-same-time.

Some of the old dungeons are still my absolute favorites. Vaults of Madness is the coolest dungeon in this entire game imo. There's no point in discarding good content; it's a massive waste of the devs' time and effort. A dungeon isn't automatically better just because it's new, nor should it feel like a mini-trial. Look at Lair of Maarselok, that dungeon is just long and tedious, and it's definitely not better than most of the base game content.

Soarora wrote: »

I suspect that once all the class reworks are done, we'll see another U35 where either the content gets buffed or the players get nerfed. This would put all records and clears in a weird spot which is why I want a new difficulty level entirely but I am already in acceptance that numbers will get brought down at some point because... yeah... they cannot keep increasing.

I hope you're right.

Kalthea wrote: »

Don't look at the top DPS. Look at the mid-range, the 30-70% of players that aren't going to push up to ridiculous builds and output the most perfect DPS. Raising the floor in this situation is about accessibility of players to engage in content and contribute to a fight.

Well, I think we agree on the concept of raising the floor, but I guess you're missing the point. Allowing new players to complete the hardest content by just giving them "free" power ends up killing most of the game, which doesn't even need this insane amount of base DPS.

It may sound like an "ok, grandpa, time to take your meds" moment, but I vividly remember when I got the Dro'ma-thra Destroyer achievement, after months of prog with a 35k DPS ceiling, just before Morrowind hit. I've never felt as accomplished in this game as I did on that day. This kind of feeling still ties me to the game to this day, more than 12 years after I started playing it. Imagine robbing a group now of the chance to experience that same feeling of achievement, just because they can smash Rakhatt's face in by pad 3. Recently, I put together a hunter-themed one-bar build for questing, and I'm dealing 100K+ DPS on a dummy! I mean, that's completely crazy.

Wuuffyy · May 17

@erickhwk

“Some of the old dungeons are still my absolute favorites. Vaults of Madness is the coolest dungeon in this entire game imo. There's no point in discarding good content; it's a massive waste of the devs' time and effort. A dungeon isn't automatically better just because it's new, nor should it feel like a mini-trial. Look at Lair of Maarselok, that dungeon is just long and tedious, and it's definitely not better than most of the base game content.”

Not discarding. Reinvigorating, even in difficulty. Realistically, the base game dungeons such as Vault haven’t been remotely challenging since like 30-40-50k dps was considered ‘good’.

It’s great to admire aesthetic and I agree there are a lot of dungeons with amazing aesthetics, but we shouldn’t skirt the fact that they haven’t had relevance for a long time.

Vaqual · May 17

No.

And everytime I see some YouTubers talk about how nice it is to see XY enable another 20k and how that will help with diversity I just want to bang my head into my desk.

People with "nerf=bad, buff=fun-mentality" are a burden on society.

Sluggy · May 18

As a case-in point for the low end: Normally when I do dungeons, I just take a PvP build, toss on a taunt, and queue as the tank role. A few days ago, for once, I decided to go as a DPS role on a pure DK. Half my skillbar was straight up PvP-only utility and healing. 38k Hp. 30k armor. Still wearing PvP gear like Rallying Cry, Trainee, and Druid's with impen and reinforced traits. Still managed to squeak out almost 35k dps on most bosses without doing much more than basic PvP burst combos over and over. Most of the time my damage was sitting over 8k. And again, that's without any damage sets even buffing it.

This is easily enough damage to get through all of the old vet trials on HM while maintaining stats and survival tools that would be excessive for most tanks.

Highwayman · May 18

Since we're talking pve. as long as they keep adding new high end content that takes it into consideration, I don't see a problem. Everyone needs to keep working to stay on top of the content they can do. It keeps everyone moving, so what exactly is the issue? Their business model is keeping everyone busy with something to do, that is the health of the game.

I will admit that pvp is a little more complicated because the content is the players themselves (mostly). Health in pvp is, largely, providing players the opportunity to at least sometimes play scenarios that feel reasonably matched.

BXR_Lonestar · May 18

None of what they are doing is good for the long-term health of the game. Older content is designed with much lower DPS threshholds (some as low as 30k DPS - back when VMOL was first released), and if newer content has to be designed with higher DPS threshholds, its going to make this game much worse.

But TBH, the devs don't have much of a choice. Subclassing, hybridization, standardization of skills has all been bad for the game, but since they remain popular with certain groups of players, they can't change the existing paradigm without upsetting SOME group of players. So in order to avoid completely reverting changes like subclassing, they will just rebalance pure-class builds against subclassing, which will just make the game more unbalanced and more broken because they can't address the baseline issue.

Wuuffyy · May 18

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

SOME group of players.

A lot. A lot of players would be upset. Do we remember the Morrowind sustain changes (mass nerfs)?

That was the first big exodus of player population. Many of those players did not come back.

It is very silly to think that all anyone on these forums seems to really consider is nerf, nerf, nerf, nerf when there are simply better ways of handling issues that don’t involve running more players away, potentially forever, due to intentional game design- 180s.

Simply put the 150k DPS AoE build was already nerfed slightly (recent ‘on monsters’ adjustment) and the 180k dps (200k dps is just your Signet builds… just 0 this mythic atp) is ST which… no one is taking into serious group content anymore outside of a hyper organized group with the amount of cleave new content requires.

You could half DPS (which means ~75k dps on that AoE build for the BEST players) right now and it would make a lot of newer content near unplayable (requires higher dps thresholds and effective cleave) and MUCH of both the base game content and DLC content from the first several years would be negligible-in-difficulty from now.

They really just need to stop increasing DPS at this point and bring up older content. When they introduced subclassing, they adjusted no content despite visible DPS going up 40-50% on top end parses. It’s simply correcting the pathway forward and bringing up antiquated content that will please as many as possible… not nerfing everything in the ground (especially while they are reworking classes one by one) and triggering yet another player base rip.

CatalinaWineMixer2 · May 18

Its more fallout from the broken Subclass system. Its not good at all for the future of the game in any way. They need to institute a dps cap at this point. People are already having to completely stop dps in Trials. The idea was to give us more power. If the game has to be made harder because there are no rules drawbacks and limitations to dps, then we are even more behind than when this train wreck started in the first place. No one should be able to cause that much dps. No one.

Ive said it many times, Subclassing is a broken cherry picking system. It can not and will not ever be balanced. The sooner it is eliminated, the sooner they can start instituting rules to get the out of control combat under control. And have more than 1 meta. And have new actual classes instead of broken exploits by blender builds. Seeing things like this new Mythic and this kind of damage makes my Guilds want to find another game. Everything thing that's happened with combat since U46 makes me want to listening to them.

Kalthea · May 18

erickhwk wrote: »

Well, I think we agree on the concept of raising the floor, but I guess you're missing the point. Allowing new players to complete the hardest content by just giving them "free" power ends up killing most of the game, which doesn't even need this insane amount of base DPS.

Trust, I understand. I was doing Vet Challenge progression post-morrowind on a MagDen since that expansion released. Never managed to get into the game after beta myself, but I get it. The challenges can be difficult to do, and it's a great feeling to get those achievement after pushing for them for so long. But you need to keep in mind what state the environment is in for people. Some folks have less time to play in a day, some folks have physical limitations, situations that prevent them from becoming so good in a game that DPS comes casually, or a lack of game knowledge, or heck, just a lack of luck on farm.

The bigger issue is: which dummy are you testing DPS on? Trial Dummy? Don't do that. It's unrealistic, and buffs you up with numbers you aren't going to see in normal play most of the time. If you compare a Trial dummy vs. a 1m or 3m health dummy you'll notice that the trial dummy just pumps your number up by about 20% (give or take) because of the simulated buffs it gives you. This is also a "Long-Term high skill players are testing against dummies and thinking it means that everyone can achieve the numbers they are." situation.

My take? Play a Healer. Go through some Vet dungeons and watch. Watch as most of the players you come across don't keep up in damage. How they fumble and wander, ignoring mechanics no matter how many times you do them. It may help you understand why upping the floor isn't going to be the worst thing when you go through a vanilla Vet dungeon with a CP1900 that can't even hit 10k dps.

Morvan · May 18

I was worrying about the same thing before subclassing dropped, to my surprise boosting DPS barely had any effect on the average player performance when it comes to newer veteran content, at least in my perspective.

Though I do worry about old content feeling even easier than it already is, though. Not sure if that's really a problem since it can still be challenging for newer players.