Why is power creep an issue?

At how many useless skills there are out there, that won't see the sunlight due to gearchecks, powercreep is actually good.

/e Of course there's levels of powercreep.
Instakilling doesn't create much emotion.

My personal opinion:
a) Destroying the content, one-shotting endgame bosses on 20 c - not okay
b) Doing the same on high budget - I don't have a problem with it. If someone has worked hard for their currency why shouldn't they have a right to blast through the content, dealing billions of damage, one-shotting Sirus etc?

But the thing is that scenario 'b' could be only done by an overwhelming minority like streamers, content creators or people who had a lot of time to play.

Over the leagues I've tried different builds and I could never destroy endgame bosses even with a decent budget like 50 ex - the game was always challenging. And again I understand 50 ex is not much for the category of players I mentioned above, but I believe that it's still a decent amount for the majority of the players.

Yet because 1% consisting of streamers, content creators and 'no-lifers' could one-shot Sirus GGG took it personally and decided to overnerf the game for everyone even though 99% would never accomplish the same.

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dagul23 wrote:

Do people get bored as soon as their character gets powerful?

In my opinion, nope.

Number go up = Happiness

This is of course coming from someone who finds the most enjoyment in the game from making builds and testing new concepts though. I see a powerful character that absolutely smashes all the content in the game with their bare fists as a tool for generating currency for more fun builds.

That doesn't change the fact that I like seeing my DPS get higher and higher regardless of which build I play, the faster I go and the harder I hit the more I feel compelled to improve even further beyond what I currently have.

Characters that exceed my expectations become archetypal for further ideas, each concept expanding into further ways to create new and interesting builds to approach the game with.

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Anecdotally, in my experience of introducing a lot of new faces to PoE and helping them over the initial hurdle of knowledge, I find that many players get stuck in a rut with endgame content. They get to T16 maps with their build they have copied off a guide, they do sirus a few times, get frustrated with the lack of loot dropping (The vast majority of people do NOT do juicing strats with scarabs, sextant blocking, delirium orbs etc), and most of all find it difficult to think outside the box and invent new ways to improve the build they are playing outside the guidance of the person that wrote said guide in the first place.

The very few that have broken through the wall and realised both the fun of build making & the fact that they were missing out on the “true” endgame are the ones that have stuck around the longest. Despite the fact that scourge is a pretty mediocre league in terms of the mechanic, it’s the one that’s held both my attention and that of my friends for pretty much the longest time since ritual. That’s down to: “true” endgame farming strategies being both challenging and very rewarding this league (Nemesis 3, Blight ravaged maps, etc), the new layer of aspirational content challenging players to make stronger builds than previously required, very fun new chase items to go after, and of course the total rejig of the skilltree which makes the creation of new builds feel fresher than usual and has been a blast to figure out.

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Take all of this as you will, in the end, it’s just my opinion. The tl;dr is that player power is really a non-issue as far as I’m concerned, the real issue lies with a mixture of not having challenging enough content to warrant improving builds beyond a point (Which GGG have acknowledged and partially rectified this league), and players with not enough foresight also not being able to manage their expectations. If people can’t be bothered to make their own build or set up complex atlas strategies, the fact of the matter is that they are missing out on parts of the game. That’s totally fine of course if that’s how they want to play the game, but yeah.

Everyone enjoys PoE differently, there’s no “correct” way to play the game. My only advice is that if people are bored by following a build guide and just doing alch and go T16s, then they should try something new, they might just be surprised. 😊

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voonvoon wrote:

Because everything becomes meaningless and a giant pulp of gray nothingness. POE has a million abilities also within monsters and they mean absolutly nothing. Does anyone EVER consider any ability of a rare or even on maps with extra abilities on monsters? Short of a few things like reflect modifiers, nothing means anything. We all just zoom around and one button packs and go "Ooooh" at all the explosions .. and that's it. The same applies to drops. Chests mean nothing at all .. why are they even in the game. Drops are so random, that nothing matters related to them. The only exception being a few rare supertopend boss drops.

GGG wants a few things to be more meaningful .. and I get that. It's far from perfect, but yes, I dreaded the shipwreck cave a bit back a few years due to the flicker strike mobs in there. Nowadays? LOL....

I don't have a problem with that. Actually, I think I'd enjoy it. But for that to happen, they would need to SIGNIFICANTLY reduce both, visual screen clutter and mob density. It is impossible to tell what happens on the screen nowadays, especially if you also play minions. So the only solution is to kill them before they kill you and/or make their abilities meaningless.

But the biggest problem I see with power is that it is unchecked. There should be a soft and a hard cap on both, player and monster power. There should be diminising returns. If you know how much dps a player (average) is expected to do, you can balance encounters accordingly. Likewise, If you know how much damage a monster can do, you can adjust you defences/ehp pool to survive it.

This doesn't seem to be what's going on right now. As both, player and monster damage can get out of control, to the point where we can insta phase bosses and some of our defences/ehp seem meaningless.

The more powerful it gets the more fun i have...for me at least

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esostaks wrote:

My personal opinion:
a) Destroying the content, one-shotting endgame bosses on 20 c - not okay
b) Doing the same on high budget - I don't have a problem with it. If someone has worked hard for their currency why shouldn't they have a right to blast through the content, dealing billions of damage, one-shotting Sirus etc?

But the thing is that scenario 'b' could be only done by an overwhelming minority like streamers, content creators or people who had a lot of time to play.

Over the leagues I've tried different builds and I could never destroy endgame bosses even with a decent budget like 50 ex - the game was always challenging. And again I understand 50 ex is not much for the category of players I mentioned above, but I believe that it's still a decent amount for the majority of the players.

Yet because 1% consisting of streamers, content creators and 'no-lifers' could one-shot Sirus GGG took it personally and decided to overnerf the game for everyone even though 99% would never accomplish the same.

I see it the same way; as a casual player, I have never seen endgame, because I can't spend 10 hours a day on the game.
And lately I've been playing less and less because of that,because what's the point if I never get to the endgame content?
I wouldn't divide the game into HC and SC,but into Pro and Casual leagues;where you can scale up or down the numbers.
In Pro more damage,more protection,other aggravating mechanics,e.g. time limit for bosses.
In Casual, all of this could be scaled down,so that players with less time,less proism,less currency can experience the endgame.

Sorry for my weak english,this is not my native language!:)

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Ruffleberg wrote:

In the context of PoE, power creep has made all content before T16s a waste of time. There is no point in farming gear earlier because you don't need it to do the content.

Allowing the majority of players to reach and farm the highest content leads to everything losing value and people having nothing to progress.

There is no strategy in the mindless rush to T16s. You don't think about the atlas just full complete it. Don't think about Watchstones just socket all of them. Do all Maven passives without thinking about your farming strat. Just farm T16s for a few weeks then complain about the game being too easy.

Tell me one league where the playerbase complained about the game being too easy.

Every league is the same. Majority whines about getting oneshotted, Sirus being a idiotic fight and map sustain being crap.
Literally, every game.

For some reason, it feels like the leagues which have the most broken builds with the biggest powercreep and are the most profitable are the best performing leagues.

Poverty stricken leagues where players feel like they're weak somehow, seem to be performing worse. GGG seems to think that, if they slow down player progression they will improve retention. Doesn't seem to be working.

When people, especially casuals, have a better reason to play the game, more of them will stay. The retention numbers for this league is actually looking really problematic.

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Deadandlivin wrote:

"

Ruffleberg wrote:

In the context of PoE, power creep has made all content before T16s a waste of time. There is no point in farming gear earlier because you don't need it to do the content.

Allowing the majority of players to reach and farm the highest content leads to everything losing value and people having nothing to progress.

There is no strategy in the mindless rush to T16s. You don't think about the atlas just full complete it. Don't think about Watchstones just socket all of them. Do all Maven passives without thinking about your farming strat. Just farm T16s for a few weeks then complain about the game being too easy.

Tell me one league where the playerbase complained about the game being too easy.

Every league is the same. Majority whines about getting oneshotted, Sirus being a idiotic fight and map sustain being crap.
Literally, every game.

For some reason, it feels like the leagues which have the most broken builds with the biggest powercreep and are the most profitable are the best performing leagues.

Poverty stricken leagues where players feel like they're weak somehow, seem to be performing worse. GGG seems to think that, if they slow down player progression they will improve retention. Doesn't seem to be working.

When people, especially casuals, have a better reason to play the game, more of them will stay. The retention numbers for this league is actually looking really problematic.

The irony is that this league isn't even wealth gated. There's tons of budget ways to earn Ex that casuals can do that easily sell 2-5 ex.

Even Flasks right now are selling 20-40c above ilevel 84 due to the new flask system.

Lab getting certain enchants is an instant 2-5 ex win on a helmet.

Dual Aztoatl Corrupts (really easy to get just running low level Atzoatl quests) sell 5-10 ex

Dual corrupt + a good scourge can be 20 ex.

Then there's freebie Stacked decks which can have cards worth 1-6 ex.

Even Alt Q gems aren't hard content, and aren't really Marker gated once you have items on your rogues. Some sell 2-10 ex.

Just today I sold enough in these categories to buy a SECOND Crest of Desire, made 8 40-80c Flasks, and started working a 4th perfect suffix ring for my Herald of Thunder ring (level 22 HoT/40% Reduced effect of Curses/+3% Frenzy Charge on Kill/+1 Min Frenzy). What's funny about these rings is.... they start out as 10c items.

Not only is power creep good, but it's mandatory for this genre. The glory days of D2 were just a decade long power creep, and everyone loved it. Trying to remove power creep doesn't leave most builds in a bad spot, but in an unplayable spot. The top builds using the top gear are still zooming, and all the nerfs did was remove the amount of builds and people who are allowed to zoom.

It's low skill ceiling pve by default, so who gives a shit if some dude in some country likes playing some build? You aren't a professional moba player because you choose TR over Spectral Throw. We are playing a genre of game where someone could rmt a bunch of batshit crazy gear and be "the best player on the internet", but god forbid we let someone kill a T16 map boss with a Winter Orb build that's under a 200ex budget....

The problem with how GGG handles power creep is that they generally treat everything as broken that needs to be fixed and not just the actual top builds pushing the ceiling of power.