What's power creep?

PooPsie337

What is this power creep everyone is speaking of?

VaranisArano

In general, that players get more powerful relative to content over time.

Released content is fairly static, difficulty wise. So as plauers gain gameplay experience, as skills change and DPS increases, players out-grow released content.

For example, when ZOS added 30 CP every patch, max CP players got more powerful relative to old content. Another example, when ZOS buffed light attacks with Summerset, players who use light attack weaving saw increased DPS.

Power Creep is an uneven thing, as not every player benefits equally. An experienced player will generally gain more benefit than an inexperienced player, since they have greater knowledge of mechanics and how to play the game. This is why ESO's nerfs often hurt inexperienced or progression groups worse than the top tier of experienced players.

Jhalin

It’s nothing more than another way of saying our character’s gain strength over time.

It’s not a problem, except when a game has no vertical scale of difficulty, it’s all the same in ESO, from level 1 - cp160.

geonsocal

see: potus...

Tommy_The_Gun

Best and shortest description:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/power_creep
"The situation where updates to a game introduce more powerful units or abilities, leaving the older ones underpowered."

Often it is tied to new paid content (new DLCs, chapters etc.) that have more powerful stuff than base game has, meaning that in order to have access to new stuff (gear skill lines etc.) and stay competitive, you have to pay, making it P2W or at lest in this "Gray" Zone, that is on a verge of P2W.

Danikat

Importantly power creep is different to an immediate, intentional increase in power. If ZOS increased the level or CP cap or introduced new equipment with higher stats (maybe a quality above gold) that wouldn't be power creep.

Power creep is more like if ZOS introduce new sets and/or rebalance skills and on the surface nothing has changed, but players find ways to use the new options to get higher DPS (or better healing or whatever other metric you want to use).

It's difficult to avoid because ZOS want new sets, new skill lines etc. to be used and for that they have to either be as good as what's currently available and filling a niche which current options are missing or slightly better than what's currently available, at least for some builds. So each time they release something they're trying to add to or improve on what's already in the game, and that leads to players 'power' gradually increasing - creeping up if you will.

Hazurko_RaShan

power creep is everyone cp 810 with bis gear

Ratzkifal

The problem that developers are faced with is to make players excited for new content. This is often done through more powerful gear. More power means new content must also be more difficult to match the new power in the game. It's a constant arms race between enemy power and player power that keeps getting worse with every new addition to the game until the numbers get ridiculous and you eventually have the developers do a level squish. WoW is going to have one again soon that's squishing the 120 levels down to 60 and will lower the stat values to be more comprehensible.

ESO is trying to circumvent that problem through horizontal progression and is only partially successful. New item sets in ESO have (in most cases) the same amount of power that old sets do. But they deliver that power differently, which is ZOS' selling point for new content that should make players excited. Unfortunately this requires a whole lot more creativity than simply making the numbers bigger.
Now here is where it becomes tricky for ZOS. If old sets have exactly the same amount of power as new sets, then the insentive to get the new sets is low. So you'll see that newer sets will be ever so slightly more powerful than old ones. Example: Spell Power Cure got replaced by Olorime because the new set had a higher buff uptime than SPC and thus it is prefered despite having "the same power".
Perfected gear is another example of this. Plain False God's devotion is great but nothing special. But the existence of the perfected version is making hardcore players excited as it packs more of a punch than a regular set as a reward for completing harder content. The next bunch of perfected sets will need to pull ahead of perfected FGD or introduce a new niche to occupy, often resulting in new group oriented buffs like Yolnahkriin.

Now there is another problem about this. Old content has been designed around older powerlevels, so it becomes easier as power grows. A good example would be dungeons like veteran City of Ash II which used to be one of the hardest dungeons in the game and is now easily doable by the vast majority of random groups. ZOS obviously wants old content to stay relevant, which means that they either need to buff old content or nerf new content to level the playing field again. Adding to that, that the increase of the CP cap meant a constant influx of power, this resulted in a frustrating chain of nerfs to players in other parts of the game. MOBA games handle this issue by completely changing the meta regularly to keep things interesting. It's difficult for an MMO to take that same route as it means constantly changing old content and for the players it means knowing that your current gear will be nerfed in the future anyway to artificially keep you grinding for the flavor of the month.

The root of the problem is that a lot of players want to feel a sense of progression. They want to see themselves improve and get better. That is the cause of this problem existing. When you can't improve mechanically anymore, it's gotta be your character that gets stronger to keep you invested. The only way around this would be a non-combat progression system, for example one based emotional growth or the story, but that doesn't work for everyone. There will always be players that skip all the dialogue and for them, something like this would never work.

idk

VaranisArano wrote: »

In general, that players get more powerful relative to content over time.

Released content is fairly static, difficulty wise. So as plauers gain gameplay experience, as skills change and DPS increases, players out-grow released content.

For example, when ZOS added 30 CP every patch, max CP players got more powerful relative to old content. Another example, when ZOS buffed light attacks with Summerset, players who use light attack weaving saw increased DPS.

Power Creep is an uneven thing, as not every player benefits equally. An experienced player will generally gain more benefit than an inexperienced player, since they have greater knowledge of mechanics and how to play the game. This is why ESO's nerfs often hurt inexperienced or progression groups worse than the top tier of experienced players.

Pretty much this. But most of it has come from changes Zos has made to skills and added sets. CP has played an extremely small part in it as it has been nerfed pretty heavily and has a very steep diminishing return curve.

ChunkyCat

When you send her too many texts before she can respond to the first. That’s powerfully creepy.

IneedaDollar

Most recent example for power creep is probably the release of the necromancer class and the major vulnerabilty buff.

geonsocal

Hazurko_RaShan wrote: »

power creep is everyone cp 810 with bis gear

you get a bit of a break from this in no cp pvp...at cp 160 it becomes a contest of gear acquisition...

if you're leveling one toon, not too bad...save up coin, level crafting, accumulate mats, identify a couple of zones or dungeons to farm...you're there...

only problem - most of the large scale (if that's your thing ) combat occurs primarily on one map now: kaalgrontiid...where cp very much matters...

ezio45

A fancy term people use for the top tier players getting better at content

Facefister

Ratzkifal wrote: »

The problem that developers are faced with is to make players excited for new content. This is often done through more powerful gear. More power means new content must also be more difficult to match the new power in the game. It's a constant arms race between enemy power and player power that keeps getting worse with every new addition to the game until the numbers get ridiculous and you eventually have the developers do a level squish. WoW is going to have one again soon that's squishing the 120 levels down to 60 and will lower the stat values to be more comprehensible.

ESO is trying to circumvent that problem through horizontal progression and is only partially successful. New item sets in ESO have (in most cases) the same amount of power that old sets do. But they deliver that power differently, which is ZOS' selling point for new content that should make players excited. Unfortunately this requires a whole lot more creativity than simply making the numbers bigger.
Now here is where it becomes tricky for ZOS. If old sets have exactly the same amount of power as new sets, then the insentive to get the new sets is low. So you'll see that newer sets will be ever so slightly more powerful than old ones. Example: Spell Power Cure got replaced by Olorime because the new set had a higher buff uptime than SPC and thus it is prefered despite having "the same power".
Perfected gear is another example of this. Plain False God's devotion is great but nothing special. But the existence of the perfected version is making hardcore players excited as it packs more of a punch than a regular set as a reward for completing harder content. The next bunch of perfected sets will need to pull ahead of perfected FGD or introduce a new niche to occupy, often resulting in new group oriented buffs like Yolnahkriin.

Now there is another problem about this. Old content has been designed around older powerlevels, so it becomes easier as power grows. A good example would be dungeons like veteran City of Ash II which used to be one of the hardest dungeons in the game and is now easily doable by the vast majority of random groups. ZOS obviously wants old content to stay relevant, which means that they either need to buff old content or nerf new content to level the playing field again. Adding to that, that the increase of the CP cap meant a constant influx of power, this resulted in a frustrating chain of nerfs to players in other parts of the game. MOBA games handle this issue by completely changing the meta regularly to keep things interesting. It's difficult for an MMO to take that same route as it means constantly changing old content and for the players it means knowing that your current gear will be nerfed in the future anyway to artificially keep you grinding for the flavor of the month.

The root of the problem is that a lot of players want to feel a sense of progression. They want to see themselves improve and get better. That is the cause of this problem existing. When you can't improve mechanically anymore, it's gotta be your character that gets stronger to keep you invested. The only way around this would be a non-combat progression system, for example one based emotional growth or the story, but that doesn't work for everyone. There will always be players that skip all the dialogue and for them, something like this would never work.

Add a dungeon-wide hardmode. Additionally to that "true" hardmodes, dungeons could also have modifiers like "damage/healing output reduced" or "sets deactivated" or a timer. Those can be activated separately oe all at once for a greater reward. Rewards may be perfected sets and monster sets, golden jewelry, motifs and mounts/pets. But ZoS wont do this, no money in this, crates and skilllines on the store are more important.

WeylandLabs

Power creep - When you use 47 add ons to tell you your dps - Mechanics and what to do in every situation in game. 😂

Morgul667

Basically the fact that players and their toons becomes stronger over time due to game mechanics change (New sets, new cp, new mechanics)