To everyone whos scared of power creep

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MasterTBC wrote:

There is a big part of players that will just play acts and not even progress to maps

You need to make sure to buff these guys in early game
because to be honest using the same leveling gear over and over will get dull quickly

If anything, those players should have an interesting level experience, not a snooze fest where if they pick skills like winter orb, most things just die without interacting with the player at all.

And you don't need leveling gear for that.

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BloodPuddles420 wrote:

I've never heard power creep used in this way, because it's not possible to keep old content relevant while progressing an ARPG. The whole point is collecting loot and powering up your character. Like that Grim Dawn reference, that only goes so far. Once you max out and keep getting better gear afterwards all of that previous content is gonna be easy. I also massively prefer it that way, static things in games are way better. It seems dumb killing a boss no problem, then 20 levels later you're way more powerful and get one shotted by them. But yeah, anyways, I've always heard power creep used as you've pretty much completed your character, and are doing an extremely lengthy grind to squeeze any more power out of them.

It's how power-creep is defined though. Hence why I'm saying it's not a bad thing INHERENTLY, in capital with a big side-glance towards rob here. Every expansion of the game (not league) adds power-creep necessarily in some way. That's the good part of power-creep, providing content respective to the new power available.

What we have though is the bad part, in-game options providing trivialization of the content at the time which it shouldn't be trivial. As already mentioned, after you've beat the content already, min-maxing can go sky-high, it's no issue then, you've had your challenge, now it's time to see how much you can squeeze out of your build to make that content as trivial as possible.

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MasterTBC wrote:

There is a big part of players that will just play acts and not even progress to maps

You need to make sure to buff these guys in early game
because to be honest using the same leveling gear over and over will get dull quickly

Before you're saying that you should ask yourself the question as to why the majority of people never get to mapping.

For a beginner Act 1-10 take roughly... 30 hours? 40 hours? That's the length of a full-priced title. The majority of people don't play more then an hour a day, on and off. Hence they won't reach the stage of mapping easily.

The options to do so are there though, and with knowledge very easy to obtain. The balance is to provide people with a clear look on how to progress, what to upgrade, and how to squeeze the most out of their character. That's what PoE fails miserably in. Hence we have a large disparity between the speed of 'casual' players, and the speed of experienced players who invest quite a bit of time into the game.

The solution for that are proper in-game guides explaining things, as well as in-game tutorials leading new players along their way, all through act 1-10, not only explaining the base-mechanics... which PoE already fails badly in. They missed to implement those things which are fairly common in newer games, it's an oversight which never has been alleviated.

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Fruz wrote:

If anything, those players should have an interesting level experience, not a snooze fest where if they pick skills like winter orb, most things just die without interacting with the player at all.

And you don't need leveling gear for that.

And that's exactly the issue, the disparity between different skills is massive. Or rather... how different skills interact with the amalgam of mods available is just ridiculous by now. Hence a major balancing problem, one which is only getting worse as more and more powerful mods are available at the earlier stages of the game, making the already implemented content easier each time.

Act 1-10 was fine without Abyss Jewels, Delve Fossils and Synthezized bases. With the implementation of those the balance for leveling became skewed massively, it was and is a bad design-choice as those mechanics were simply slapped onto existing gameplay rather then used to build up towards new challenges in the game.

Up to level 60 there isn't even a proper build diversity
Its basically the same for every build

Use the most op skill and the best leveling gear or be creepingly slow

The "actual" game that most players get is incredibly shallow and one dimensional

Its not surprising they lose interest in the game rather quickly

The one handed leveling uniques for example are the same.
Doesnt matter wether you use Ranger, Marauder, Duelist or Templar to level.
They will use the exact same weapons and skills because who would choose to use a bad skill (Never seen a build guide making bad choices on purpose unless its some kind of meme build)

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MasterTBC wrote:

Up to level 60 there isn't even a proper build diversity
Its basically the same for every build

It really, really isn't.
I don't know if you've been running the same kind of build during leveling only, but what you just said .... could hardly be more wrong at this point.

I don't like powercreep. I know you can so-so clear the whole game wearing nothing but uniques, but the scizzors between the top rare gear and uniques is becoming ridiculous.

The fact that I will never get my hands on the top rare items due to lack of time investment, should that be an excuse that the top items should not matter to me? What kind of sick logic is that?

Making 95% of game negligible by releasing more crazy stuff every league, it is sign that the game is fundamentally not rewarding for repetitive play and the only way to attract players back is to release more crazy stuff. Unfortunately that's the way GGG decided to "keep things fresh"

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alhazred70 wrote:

1% of the player base kills end game bosses.

Power creep might suck for the 1% but I doubt the other 99% are worried too much. My guess is GGG knows they can't ignore the fact that 80% of the players never progress past yellow maps (and only 70% into white maps). (numbers taken from GGG public statements from the past two years, mostly Chris on podcasts)

They have been unflinchingly and intentionally creeping the power of the players forward since Ascendancy. Wether you like that or not I seriously doubt they are going to pump the brakes when the people complaining that the game is too easy are always people playing meta builds and OP skills. OR The Project PT's of the community I.e. the unapologetic Masochists.

Currently playing Life based Melee phys only gladiator.. feels like I'm going to hit THE USUAL brick wall when i get to red maps on it, Vortex Cold snap was a faceroll... ofc it was. Stop using other peoples meta-gaming (which literally means someone else gamed the game for you and gave you the solutions) and the game doesn't feel easy at. fucking. all.

Am I defending Power creep? Sorta? Kinda? Yeah I guess... I recognize that it sucks to make the game easier for Mathil, and people like him that can make 5k life do Uber elder where I fail on 9k life. But I also recognize that the "sweet spot" the right balance of letting at least a high percentage of players using a good percentage of well made builds; feel powerful and have fun playing is still FAR FROM WHERE WE'RE AT RIGHT NOW.

Do a 300+ delve on a life based melee* build and then come tell us how trivial the game is and how power creep has ruined it. The truth is though they really aren't best served catering only to the 1% only the people who meta game and RMT their way to 50 exalts worth of gear (which lets face it is POE's dirty little secret).

inb4 the 1% insert their stories about how they downed Uber elder with 5 alchs of gear and 2 linked Vigilant Strike using a white Driftwood Sceptre.

* as always by melee I mean actual melee

I hear where you are coming from. I don't really have a problem with the current levels of power creep. I would if it was like warframe, where you A) don't have a new economy every 3 months, and B) doesn't get legit content updates often with new levels of challenge to accomodate the power creep. In that game I have a problem with it because I can and have, literally beat a sortie mission with 1 hand and not my best gear (these are the daily "tough" missions there). There is a point where the game becomes so unflinchingly and cringeworthingly easy that it's a serious problem that makes the game flat out unfun for vets.

I view most of the people complaining about power creep right now as not having worked their way to the new cortex bosses, because if they did they'd shut their pieholes when they realize the boss slaps you for 7k a tick.

There is new challenge appropriate to the power creep.

Granted, if you're an esports champ no lifer, no game AI will ever satisfy you because it just won't, either you get to the point where everything one shots you and just bad luck from a stray shot means you lose which is cheap AF, or it's too easy when you're that good, and that's just how it goes.

I can't say the game is especially hard. Last league was my first one, I started halfway through and still killed uber elder first time through and of course, no RMT.

If I can do it, anyone theoretically "could" do it, just many players won't.

Frankly, I'm happy that 70% of players don't get to white maps because 70% of players completely blow chunks. Average people are exactly that, completely unremarkable. I'm not special or anything, but it's nice to have some challenge in the game, and if the game is too easy, you can handicap yourself with supported game modes like HC and SSF, and you can always play suboptimal builds too.

When you build a game only for the general population it is far too fucking easy because most people are happy with candy crush on casual mode. When you build it for only the most hardcore players, it becomes unplayable for 95% of people. I feel like PoE has a nice balance where anyone "CAN" beat the main boss trial, but very few people actually will.

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Kulze wrote:

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BloodPuddles420 wrote:

I've never heard power creep used in this way, because it's not possible to keep old content relevant while progressing an ARPG. The whole point is collecting loot and powering up your character. Like that Grim Dawn reference, that only goes so far. Once you max out and keep getting better gear afterwards all of that previous content is gonna be easy. I also massively prefer it that way, static things in games are way better. It seems dumb killing a boss no problem, then 20 levels later you're way more powerful and get one shotted by them. But yeah, anyways, I've always heard power creep used as you've pretty much completed your character, and are doing an extremely lengthy grind to squeeze any more power out of them.

It's how power-creep is defined though. Hence why I'm saying it's not a bad thing INHERENTLY, in capital with a big side-glance towards rob here. Every expansion of the game (not league) adds power-creep necessarily in some way. That's the good part of power-creep, providing content respective to the new power available.

What we have though is the bad part, in-game options providing trivialization of the content at the time which it shouldn't be trivial. As already mentioned, after you've beat the content already, min-maxing can go sky-high, it's no issue then, you've had your challenge, now it's time to see how much you can squeeze out of your build to make that content as trivial as possible.

"

MasterTBC wrote:

There is a big part of players that will just play acts and not even progress to maps

You need to make sure to buff these guys in early game
because to be honest using the same leveling gear over and over will get dull quickly

Before you're saying that you should ask yourself the question as to why the majority of people never get to mapping.

For a beginner Act 1-10 take roughly... 30 hours? 40 hours? That's the length of a full-priced title. The majority of people don't play more then an hour a day, on and off. Hence they won't reach the stage of mapping easily.

The options to do so are there though, and with knowledge very easy to obtain. The balance is to provide people with a clear look on how to progress, what to upgrade, and how to squeeze the most out of their character. That's what PoE fails miserably in. Hence we have a large disparity between the speed of 'casual' players, and the speed of experienced players who invest quite a bit of time into the game.

The solution for that are proper in-game guides explaining things, as well as in-game tutorials leading new players along their way, all through act 1-10, not only explaining the base-mechanics... which PoE already fails badly in. They missed to implement those things which are fairly common in newer games, it's an oversight which never has been alleviated.

"

Fruz wrote:

If anything, those players should have an interesting level experience, not a snooze fest where if they pick skills like winter orb, most things just die without interacting with the player at all.

And you don't need leveling gear for that.

And that's exactly the issue, the disparity between different skills is massive. Or rather... how different skills interact with the amalgam of mods available is just ridiculous by now. Hence a major balancing problem, one which is only getting worse as more and more powerful mods are available at the earlier stages of the game, making the already implemented content easier each time.

Act 1-10 was fine without Abyss Jewels, Delve Fossils and Synthezized bases. With the implementation of those the balance for leveling became skewed massively, it was and is a bad design-choice as those mechanics were simply slapped onto existing gameplay rather then used to build up towards new challenges in the game.

"Act 1-10 was fine without Abyss Jewels, Delve Fossils and Synthezized bases. With the implementation of those the balance for leveling became skewed massively, it was and is a bad design-choice as those mechanics were simply slapped onto existing gameplay rather then used to build up towards new challenges in the game."

I'm kind of of the mind that it's still fine with them. The acts are so easy, I've managed to clear them quickly without bothering to ever use any of these things until mapping... why would you bother or waste the resources/time?

Going out of your way to acquire these things will likely take longer than just running through and murdering everything. Investing in gear outside of maybe changing some socket links/colors seems to me to be an entirely horrible waste of time at that stage since you'll outlevel it so quick it's ridiculous.

Lets say you do want to get that godly 6x abyss jewel and socket it onto your level 20 whatever. Firstly, it's not going to be as powerful because you're not as powerful, and secondly, where did you get 6x from to spend at level 20?

Either you already cleared the game legit, at which point, whatever, you already beat the game, or you violated ToS and did some RMT.

It's just easier to run through and clear everything in your path and level up until you're out of acts... I mean, they literally hand you all the upgrades you need as quest rewards to clear kitava both times. At what point does it become wise to dump fossils on ilvl 30 gear? I just don't see this as very relevant, maybe on paper, but in practice it's a bad argument.

At most, maybe there is 5 bosses that might kill you through 10 acts if you don't know the fight and don't suck terribly and even if they do, just die through the encounter. Until act 6 there is no penalty, and 6-10 the 5% you lose you can get back in a matter of minutes. It's not like when you're level 98 and you lose 10% and you invested like 10x in breaches that's all gone now.

Wait.

1% of the total playerbase beats the endgame content, and we're still complaining about power creep?!

This feels like yet another extremely silly thing to complain about. The "power creep" we see is, by and large, entirely reserved for the kind of people who can reasonably afford to get, well, whatever they want. The guys who have 10ex+ by the end of the first day in a new league (side note - jesus fucking christ how the fuck does that work?!).

I'm playing one of the most basic meta builds imaginable (life elementalist WOrb), and I've hit a brick wall because I don't have enough HP to stop myself from being one-shot by the Minotaur Guardian and I can't dodge consistently enough or deal damage fast enough to kill him anyways. The next real upgrades for my build are all in the multiple ex range, and I'm over level 90 so I'm not hitting any more major upgrades any time soon. And as people keep pointing out, Winter Orb is basically "easy mode" for this game; it's an absolutely nutty skill and very easy to use.

At the end of the day, if you're the kind of person affected by this "power creep" - if you can afford to craft those perfect Onslaught Move Speed implicit boots, if you can afford to craft that +7 gem level bow, if you understand the mechanics and play constantly enough to get access to all the best shit - then your difficulty in playing the game is entirely determined by you. You could trivialize the content with your +7 gem level bow and shaped quiver, or you could... not. You're complaining that a game you've completely mastered is "too easy" when you take every step you can to make it easier for yourself. Want a bigger challenge? Use a substandard build. Use substandard gear. Opt for the 6L Atziri's Disfavour and Cyclone instead of the 6L +7 Bow and Arc. Go life instead of ES.

But the rest of us? The literally 99% of players who struggle with or never reach endgame content? This power creep is unlikely to ever reach us, and is a gigantic boon when it does.

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Budget_player_cadet wrote:

I'm playing one of the most basic meta builds imaginable (life elementalist WOrb), and I've hit a brick wall because I don't have enough HP to stop myself from being one-shot by the Minotaur Guardian and I can't dodge consistently enough or deal damage fast enough to kill him anyways

In short, you didn't build your character properly enough (pretty much 0 defensive utility flask for example), but the power creep still allowed you to crush everything until this point ...
And now you hit a wall all at once, it isn't progressive, it isn't gradual.


Power creep is amazing, isn't it ?

(not saying that your char is super bad, just that it's not optimized, so one of the highest boss is kicking your butt, which likely should have happened before if it wasn't for the power creep)

Yes, that's entirely true, you'll usually get everything needed in acts very quickly, and you'll run through them without an issue. The only one being time and lack of knowledge of how to build up a working character, something which is a chore for anyone never having played an ARPG before. The major bottle-neck.

Hence why I'm saying: It needs the proper framework to put 'weaker' players closer to those with a lot of experience. The solution GGG chose is the least enjoyable one. 'Since most players won't be able to beat the content as they lack knowledge, make content easy enough so they can run it anyway.' That's literally the best example of bad game-design.

Also, it can be useful to dumb fossils during leveling onto items. The 'common' player gets Niko, since it's a new game-mechanic they test it out therefore, getting a few fossils along the way probably. This league for instance I had troubles getting a proper pair of gloves, all which dropped were literally garbage, utter garbage. So, I threw a prismatic and pristine on it, done for the acts. Well.. I upgraded them at red maps for a bit more life and res, and that's it. I wore them literally until T14 since there was no point in taking others. Wearing ilvl 50 gloves until lvl 90. That is an issue.

I'm not saying that it's not easy, I'm saying that the balance is majorly screwed. Sure, you won't pick up a perfect abyss jewel - besides the point the lvl requirement won't allow you to wear it - but... you'll have access to a lot more things during leveling which weren't accessible before, making easy content... even easier. And that is an issue.

More and more content by now becomes trivial. ilvl 83 memory fragments? Pfff... like a normal map. Sure, the mobs are a little stronger, but you won't mention the difference, syndicate is harder, einhar mobs are harder, delving is harder. Nexus bosses? Well, just another random boss which falls fairly quickly, Cortex just provides more of the same loot, you'll get the same things - besides uniques - at the weaker ones anyway.

Upon entering maps then the amount of mods gets even more insane, as soon as elder/shaper bases drop your character literally spirals out of control in moments. Something as extra chaos damage, crit multi, double damage. One of them will be unlocked fairly quickly.

Now as an example take other ARPGs which do well, don't take their 'feeling' into account, just how gear-progression is handled.
The simplest example is Grim Dawn, as it's a very popular one: You're always roughly fighting mobs around your level (unlike PoE), mods dropping there are always relevant for your level, just not the right mod-type on the items, as well as combination. Mobs are balanced in a way they won't one-hit you, you need to build decently to do quite a lot of damage.
Dungeon Siege 1 (Yes... 1!): You're leveling up your character by using the skill you want, it stays with you therefore. You can't over-level harshly since exp return for the skill becomes minimal, and you won't be under-leveled by a large margin either, you're getting enough exp to get you up to content. And that's from a game which is soon 20 years old! They made progression smoother then PoE has.
Or take one absolutely different, Sacred 1. While the open-world made it a bit unbalanced, as long as you followed the main-progression, you always had 'decent' equipment compared to content. It didn't matter if you just started out or were towards end-game, with the exception of a few badly balanced uniques the level of power was fairly steady. You could go with some more powerful options, making the game rather easy if you knew what you did, or you had times were you struggled lightly if you messed up along the way.

That's how a proper healthy progression is supposed to be. PoE offers a more speedy play-style, sure, but that doesn't mean that trivializing content while doing act 1-10 should be possible, and neither should it before T16. As you reach T16 it can START to happen, before it SHOULDN'T happen. That's the little detail which is kinda... major... mandatory for enjoyment and replayability for the casual player, never feeling over- or underwhelmed by a huge margin.
Items should matter, definitely, but while they need to do that, they aren't supposed to overshoot their intended goal. That we are doing right now, blatantly.