Power Creep vs. Fun (vs. Business)

[Laurreth]

Extra Credits have an interesting piece on power creep, explaining how it happens, why it's bad, and how to counter it.

 

While I think that SWOR is on a decent track at the moment, the situation may well pick up steam with the upcoming level cap increase, and probably new armor sets and other goodies. There is already an, IMO, huge problem with players being separated unnecessarily by even narrow level gaps (ever tried finding a group to do Esseles in story mode without someone being massively overpowered and making everyone else not getting any advancement from it?), and upping the caps will be damaging in that regard at the high end, where advancing is much more time-consuming. In the end, the power spread will widen drastically, making it even less possible to do content together.

 

I'm already seeing serious issues in PvE content, with some flashpoints definitely being too easy at some point (amazingly, Directive 7 is one of them, even on hard, it's barely challenging apart from some trash encounters that can tax the healer a little). Of course, there could be a 3rd difficulty at some point, but would that be conducive to continued fun? Or would it just serve to widen the divide described above?

 

Conceptually, Guild Wars 2 has a good down-leveling system that may not keep low-level content fresh forever, but enables higher-level players to be useful (and mortal!) companions in such places, enabling them to offer help in positive ways, i.e., without destroying any experience gain in the area or making the entire situation ridiculous by one-hitting anything between narrative scenes.

 

Where do you see places where power creep is already rearing its head? How would you counter it, and kill it while it's still in its infancy? What other systems would you like to see to enable people to play together in fun and "productive" ways?

[Thuggy]

Honestly, I don't think power creep has ever been really factored into the design of this game beyond the nuts and bolts "balance" issues. Going beyond the natural progression of dungeons and ops, even things like the augment system...and how that's expanded over the last few updates rapidly accelerate this effect.

 

In theory, however...Makeb and the level cap increase will hopefully provide an effective "reset button" for the endgame power creep.

[Hartog]

Kinda hope that they aren't going to make current stuff redundant, keeping 'power creep' in check with Makeb. I do vaguely remember them saying that they didn't expect to make the old stuff redundant, or maybe they'll retune stuff to the slightly higher new stats?

 

To answer your question if and where I see powercreep turning up?

Lvl 50s Warzones for one, without the bolster and equalised stats the difference between a fresh 50 and a fully augmented War Hero is still gamebreaking.

Edited July 1, 2012 by Hartog

[Daeada]

Kinda hope that they aren't going to make current stuff redundant, keeping 'power creep' in check with Makeb. I do vaguely remember them saying that they didn't expect to make the old stuff redundant, or maybe they'll retune stuff to the slightly higher new stats?

 

I seem to recall them saying something similar. They said that current raids would not be made completely obsolete by the new gear levels coming out.

 

It's easy to see how they are going to do this. Currently, with 50 cap, Tionese is +1 (51) level worth of stats, Columi is +6 (56), Rakata +8 (58), and Black Hole/Campaign +11 (61). If they give us 5 levels, that will effectively drop BH/Campaign to be the new Columi equivalent.

 

To further support this theory, there is data for level 63 mods and gear in the game, which would be equivalent to Rakata if we get 5 levels. Since the jump from Columi -> Rakata isn't that great, it's safe to assume the jump from BH/Camp -> 63 stuff won't be either. For example, BH Guardian Armor is 57 Str, 60 End, and the next tier is only 60 Str and 64 End.

 

All in all, as long as they keep the passive stat gains from our new levels small (5-10/stat/level) power won't creep too much. The gear foundation is already there, and it's not terribly overpowering.

Edited July 1, 2012 by Daeada

[Elear]

In theory, however...Makeb and the level cap increase will hopefully provide an effective "reset button" for the endgame power creep.

 

Reset button is main reason why power creep appears, and by no means way to counter it.

 

No matter what they want to do, any level increase will cause jump in power, if only by increasing avoidance due to level difference.

Edited July 1, 2012 by Elear

[Spatology]

Kinda hope that they aren't going to make current stuff redundant, keeping 'power creep' in check with Makeb. I do vaguely remember them saying that they didn't expect to make the old stuff redundant, or maybe they'll retune stuff to the slightly higher new stats?

 

To answer your question if and where I see powercreep turning up?

Lvl 50s Warzones for one, without the bolster and equalised stats the difference between a fresh 50 and a fully augmented War Hero is still gamebreaking.

 

War Hero takes forever to farm, i think it is a just reward for someone who has dedicated that much time to farming it. Im a PVE'er and still use BM for the few and far between matches i play. I'm competative in BM.

[Jenzali]

In theory, however...Makeb and the level cap increase will hopefully provide an effective "reset button" for the endgame power creep.

 

A "reset button" is exactly the problem that the video was talking about. It's a symptom of power creep and it's little more than a bandaid in terms of solving the problem.

 

WoW has been having a crisis since the end of the Burning Crusade expansion. Their new progression model is that there is "only one current raid", and everything else is obsolete. Player stats are increasing exponentially, such that having gear from the "current" raid makes you 2 or 3 times more powerful than having gear from the previous. The stats are so inflated that it ruins other aspects of the game to the point where it's not even fun running them anymore. For example, my druid tank can do 5-man dungeons without a healer since he takes almost no damage at all due to ridiculous dodge chance (almost 50%) and mitigation. So these 5 man dungeons are not fun or rewarding at all and there is literally only one thing you do - run that same raid over and over again until the next "reset button".

 

The developers cannot create content faster than it is consumed and so they create 5 difficulty levels of each single raid resulting in unprecedented amounts of burnout. For all I can tell, SWTOR is heading in the same direction, which is why I will no longer PvE. I don't mind if a game copies some aspects of WoW - but it is absolute foolishness to copy the aspects of WoW that failed miserably.

 

Even though I personally think that system is a failure in design, it's surprising how many players love it. They love feeling powerful, they love how there is no chance at all of failure, they love everything being easy and they love charging through dungeons aggroing 5 groups at once and AoEing them down. It's not so much a game as a power trip.

Edited July 1, 2012 by Jenzali

[ChazDoit]

WoW has been having a crisis since the end of the Burning Crusade expansion.

 

Yeah, the crisis of havin 10 million players, so I guess the whole creepy power, reset button talk is kinda pointless, what matters is that they have a lot of subscribers and everyone will think its the best MMO ever.

[Celebrus]

I seem to recall them saying something similar. They said that current raids would not be made completely obsolete by the new gear levels coming out.

 

Do we want them to keep pushing the limit and burn out due to power creep? Or do we want them to keep restatting gear and making us run the same 3 raids like they are making us farm the same 3 daily hubs? Either way, burn out is going to happen, and quickly.

 

They've currently chosen the latter of those two options, and it isn't any better than letting power creep destroy the game, because as it is, content is already stale, and it's not getting any fresher. When Makeb is released people aren't just going to want to dive back into KP and EV because it's fun and they want to see the content for the 30th time, they're going to do it because repeating those ops is the only way to continue to progress.

 

You basically have two choices, burn out due to power creep, or burn out due to rehashed content, it's just a matter of which path the developer decides will keep people paying, because thats all that really matters to them at the end of the day. Your enjoyment is secondary to their quarterly reports, and no, they aren't as closely bound as some people want to believe.

Edited July 1, 2012 by Celebrus

[Jenzali]

Yeah, the crisis of havin 10 million players, so I guess the whole creepy power, reset button talk is kinda pointless, what matters is that they have a lot of subscribers and everyone will think its the best MMO ever.

 

Read my whole post, sir. The last paragraph explains. Also, they most certainly do not have 10 million players right now. Most people who have beaten Dragon Soul simply do not log in unless they want to kill the same 8 bosses for 10 months straight.

Edited July 1, 2012 by Jenzali

[Thuggy]

A "reset button" is exactly the problem that the video was talking about. It's a symptom of power creep and it's little more than a bandaid in terms of solving the problem.

WoW has been having a crisis since the end of the Burning Crusade expansion. Their new progression model is that there is "only one current raid", and everything else is obsolete. Player stats are increasing exponentially, such that having gear from the "current" raid makes you 2 or 3 times more powerful than having gear from the previous. The stats are so inflated that it ruins other aspects of the game to the point where it's not even fun running them anymore. For example, my druid tank can do 5-man dungeons without a healer since he takes almost no damage at all due to ridiculous dodge chance (almost 50%) and mitigation. So these 5 man dungeons are not fun or rewarding at all and there is literally only one thing you do - run that same raid over and over again until the next "reset button".

 

The developers cannot create content faster than it is consumed and so they create 5 difficulty levels of each single raid resulting in unprecedented amounts of burnout. For all I can tell, SWTOR is heading in the same direction, which is why I will no longer PvE. I don't mind if a game copies some aspects of WoW - but it is absolute foolishness to copy the aspects of WoW that failed miserably.

 

I agree with you 100%, but the problem is....as long as you have a vertical / tiered progression system old content will always decay. The video highlighted the reset button in the Zynga example...in a sense that it eliminated all emotional ties to the game. They also framed wow's reset buttons in a positive as "release valves" in the sense that it's almost always easy to catchup on the gear treadmill. Be it through level cap increases or a badge system that rewards items far above the content you're running.

 

As long as developers, and lets be honest....players...are attached to progression based content in MMOs, this will always be an issue. You do content for the rewards, so you have better gear to more challenging content that rewards even better gear. You can delay this by introducing horizontal progression like Alternate advancement systems (which is what i originally hoped Legacy was going to be, how disappoint i am.) But ultimately, any gear based game will have this problem.

 

You can also add more sandbox-type mechanics, but these are really hard to implement in a way that the average player would consider fun and not a grind. There's a reason sandboxes are considered a niche market.

[Daeada]

As long as developers, and lets be honest....players...are attached to progression based content in MMOs, this will always be an issue. You do content for the rewards, so you have better gear to more challenging content that rewards even better gear. You can delay this by introducing horizontal progression like Alternate advancement systems (which is what i originally hoped Legacy was going to be, how disappoint i am.) But ultimately, any gear based game will have this problem.

 

This is one thing Final Fantasy XI did extremely well handling. The game released in 2002 with a level cap of 50, released it's first expansion in 2003, expanding cap 75 and stayed there until the first Abyssea addon released in 2010. That 7 year period they kept adding different forms of endgame with different situationally useful rewards, and added alternative progression in the form of merits (passive stat increases, cooldown reductions, etc.). The game was still gear based, but managed a nice balance of horizontal progression and prevention of burnout.

 

One thing that assisted this, though, was the ability to level all classes on a single character instead of needing alts. With 20 different classes with both primary (leveling) and alternative (merits) advancement, and 6 or so different endgame activity types to participate in, players stayed subbed for long periods of time without burning out on repetitive content.

 

In this past year, they have hit their final level cap (99), and have updated all previous endgame activities to be still viable at the new cap. They are also developing a brand new expansion, which will add another new form of endgame, to be released next year. The game is a decade old and still going strong, which is a rarity in this genre.