Why power creep is bad in 4 paragraphs or fewer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill

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The hedonic treadmill, also known as hedonic adaptation, is the observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes.

Or, to paraphrase my Economics textbook from a few years ago: You find people who have 1 million dollars telling themselves, "if only I had 1.2 million dollars, I would be truly happy." Then, you find people who have 1.2 million dollars telling themselves, "if only I had 1.5 million dollars, I would be truly happy." Where does it stop? The answer is that it doesn't. Even people who make 2 billion dollars annually find themselves saying, "If only I could make a few more million a year, I would be truly happy."

It seems to me that the Path of Enlightenment lies not in higher DPS and Movement Speed numbers, but within.

You didn't demonstrate your title - that power creep is bad - only that it won't make people more happy than they were last league.

What you didn't address was whether or not the game needs power creep to feel different and to give people a reason to come back. It obviously does, and that is shown by what you've already said.

People have a million dollars of fun in this game. Power creep happens, and it's GGG saying 'hey, you can have 1.2 million dollars of fun in this league'. People think that will mean more fun, but really they're coming back for the same amount of happiness. And that's not 'bad'. Everyone wins.

Fair enough. For me, it's a bit annoying as I tend to hover around the 200,000 DPS-dollars mark, and then DPS-prices increase everywhere, but instead of seeking new sources of DPS-income I prefer stability; I like to know I can buy the same DPS-sandwiches with the same DPS-dollars I make now as I know for sure I can make 4 years in the future.

I usually do end up taking advantage of some new sources of DPS-income, though, so in practice I never experience too much of real DPS-price increase...



Anyway, I didn't mean for this to become too serious; that's why I posted it in Off Topic instead of Feedback & Suggestions :P but of course if anyone wants to take it serious, a mod can always move it :P

All good, I don't mean to be overly harsh, and it's always a message worth delivering that 'things' don't make you happy - YOU make you happy. It seems the sooner you realize this, the better off you are.

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innervation wrote:

What you didn't address was whether or not the game needs power creep to feel different and to give people a reason to come back. It obviously does, and that is shown by what you've already said.

People have a million dollars of fun in this game. Power creep happens, and it's GGG saying 'hey, you can have 1.2 million dollars of fun in this league'. People think that will mean more fun, but really they're coming back for the same amount of happiness.

The ideal situation combines power creep with planned obsolescence, that is, the retirement of collectable content that is more than 1 year (or whatever arbitrary duration) old. While GGG has done this through "legacy item" nerfs, the better strategy is to rely on the "league-only" item concept more and less on nerfing overpowered items. After all, if all new items have a limited drop window, they will soon be irrelevant for temporary leagues regardless of power level.

The point is that the power creep of newness combined with a "nerf creep" of eliminating older powerful items can allow collectable content to remain at a relatively static power level, as new designs fill the niches left by those removed (as opposed to one-upping them). However, such a model doesn't allow for continuous balance between archetypes; it's inherently a shifting imbalance model.

if we're still talking about PoE, power creep trivializes existing content, essentially invalidating it and making it obsolete.

I dont really see the connection to hedonic treadmill here, adghar

and I dont see the logical link either ;)

being power hungry is different than having a power creep.
a ton of people are power hungry, but that doesnt mean they dictate any terms nor does it mean theyre getting that power

being power hungry isnt necessarily a bad thing per se, as some of that greed/power lust can be good motivation.

whereas, power creep is almost always bad, because it renders something that was useful before - into something very trivial at best and useless at worst.

if I were to get a real-world example of power creep, companies selling new versions of product and always pushing you to upgrade their products, would be the #1 example. the previous product was just fine, but theyre pulling support and calling it obsolete just to sell new versions.

in case of this real-world example, you can understand why though. in case with something like PoE, better handling of content and balancing couldve prevented the power creep or at least kept it at 'everything inflates' level.

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adghar wrote:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill

"

The hedonic treadmill, also known as hedonic adaptation, is the observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes.

Or, to paraphrase my Economics textbook from a few years ago: You find people who have 1 million dollars telling themselves, "if only I had 1.2 million dollars, I would be truly happy." Then, you find people who have 1.2 million dollars telling themselves, "if only I had 1.5 million dollars, I would be truly happy." Where does it stop? The answer is that it doesn't. Even people who make 2 billion dollars annually find themselves saying, "If only I could make a few more million a year, I would be truly happy."

It seems to me that the Path of Enlightenment lies not in higher DPS and Movement Speed numbers, but within.

Imo hedonic tredmill is focusing on different aspect of life than greed you described.

Anyway.. there is breakpoint in human salary, from which he is not seeking new job. In our country its 6000$ which is 5x average salary. Once man has that amount of money per month, he doesnt feel stress and overall is happy and can "progress" with own life in whatever direction he desire. If human can progress ("work on himself") than is in state of happiness, or much better word - satisfaction.

Regards PoE - for me in Poe is great when I delete whole screen with one click, kill pretty confidently all bosses, than I feel satisfaction. Than I am ready to play new character (or another game) and return back to Wraeclast to feel again mentioned satisfaction.

This only works on stupid people. A smarter person would look and see that the 1.2m they're being offered is worth a bit less than when they initially asked for it.

Sure a bazillion DPS sounds like fun, but when everything has a bazillion HP and defenses, then what's the point when I was looking to faceroll shit with a bazillion DPS?

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MrSmiley21 wrote:

This only works on stupid people. A smarter person would look and see that the 1.2m they're being offered is worth a bit less than when they initially asked for it.

Sure a bazillion DPS sounds like fun, but when everything has a bazillion HP and defenses, then what's the point when I was looking to faceroll shit with a bazillion DPS?

you're confusing power creep(player power rising VS content) with simple number inflation (player power and mobs power rose up so it's still status quo, only numbers were multiplied for no real reason)

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MrSmiley21 wrote:

This only works on stupid people. A smarter person would look and see that the 1.2m they're being offered is worth a bit less than when they initially asked for it.

Sure a bazillion DPS sounds like fun, but when everything has a bazillion HP and defenses, then what's the point when I was looking to faceroll shit with a bazillion DPS?

I think the point of the concept of the hedonic treadmill is that even if enemy defenses remain static while DPS increases, the level of happiness is unlikely to increase. The implication of that is: simply multiplying droprates by a coefficient doesn't substantially change happiness.

I actually agree with that, assuming a fixed amount of content: I don't believe doubling the droprate would increase total happiness in a single playthrough of fixed content length. However, that playthrough would likely complete faster, resulting in higher happiness per unit time. Still, the net result of an increased droprate would likely not be increased player happiness, but players being just as happy after "completing" your game within a shorter duration.

Meaningful complexity is a better way to achieve happiness per playthrough, in terms of both combat- and item-oriented gameplay.