is power creep unavoidable?

Muttsmutt · November 2020

i've been wondering this.
power creep, or in eso's case- the general increase in power of the player leaving old content increasingly easier,
feels like an intrinsic part of a progression system.

kind of... when you reach the top, you must add more above it- a higher top.
therefore the gap between the bottom and the top becomes wider and wider.

this seems unavoidable.
is it? what would be a reasonable way around it?

MaleAmazon · November 2020

No it isn´t unavoidable.

In fact, One Tamriel, back in the day, took care of the problem with zone power creep (if it can be called power creep, but I think it is analogous).

Of course, now every zone is easy

There are ways around power creep, such as implementing difficulty settings that work on the player, but in the style of Diablo 3. So once you had 2x the DPS and health etc, you would do 0.5x damage and take 2x. Something like that.

You can also implement more content with quickest clear being important than just clearing, or more content with no end, like wave after wave of ever stronger monsters until you inevitably die. That would mean people would have stuff to do without getting better equipment.

ZOS has also looked at old sets, and Twice-Born Star is still one of my absolute favourites, yet it is old as dirt.

So yeah, power creep is a thing, but it doesn´t need to be that bad, and IMO it isn´t in ESO.

universal_wrath · November 2020

Muttsmutt wrote: »

i've been wondering this.
power creep, or in eso's case- the general increase in power of the player leaving old content increasingly easier,
feels like an intrinsic part of a progression system.

kind of... when you reach the top, you must add more above it- a higher top.
therefore the gap between the bottom and the top becomes wider and wider.

this seems unavoidable.
is it? what would be a reasonable way around it?

Giving monsters in general increase resistances and for some bosses special damage mitigtion . Also, bosses vecome immune on certain mechanics to enforce players doing that mechanics, like 2nd and 3rd bosses in riuns of mazzatun. If you don't do mechan8cs for these 2 bosses you wipe. Also, unavoidable damage either direct or dot that offset that healing power of DDs to empowered healers qnd encourge bringing them over to groups. Another way is to touch on how easy it is for player to crit in this game. Critical dqmage meant to reward players when it happeneds rarely, but how do you reward if it happens more than regualr attacks? Cut down on crititcal chance and incr3ase tge power of critical damage to 200% instead of 150%. If you want to build for all crjtical chance, you can do that, but it will not performe as good qs reular weapon/spell damage builds.

There are mqny more ways to prevent power creep and thses are just view of them.

Mindcr0w · November 2020

Is power creep unavoidable? No.

Is it a real problem that many MMO'S have to deal with? Yes.

Are there measures ZOS could take to alleviate the issue? Yes.

Given ZOS' track record, is anything they do likely to exacerbate the issue rather than fix it? Probably.

Recapitated · November 2020

When people talk about the gap between the bottom and the top, they usually refer to a difference in player skill and buff coordination, not player stats. Power creep is a different conversation referring to both the bottom and the top having access to a lot more damage.

idk · November 2020

Most of the power creep is avoidable. Changes Zos makes every update is the main source. This comes from new sets they add to the game and change they make to the skills.

However, power creep is a good thing in MMORPGs when it is limited and controlled better than we see here. It allows players that are just below the skill level required to clear challenging content to be able to clear it, eventually. Nevertheless, in ESO that power creep has run amok as much of the end game content has been trivialized by the extreme power creep we have experienced.

Where most MMORPGs do a reset with their expansions by raising the character level cap, rebalancing the game, and reworking skills, Zos just trucks along as everything is ok. Unfortunatly everything is not ok since so much of the content is an utter joke because it is so easy.