Be careful what you ask for: Gear progression and power creep

The forum meta appears to be focusing on itemization/gearing of late. While I respect the opinions of people requesting easier access to better gear, I want to ensure everyone understands the impact of what they are asking.

Let us assume PoE is based around pseudo-random itemization resulting in a normal probability distribution of player power (ability to kill a monster of equal level). If we plot the difficulty of killing things against the player population, we would get a curve that looks like this (it's a weather graph, but assume cold=players that have really bad luck/bad gear; hot=players that are lucky/can faceroll content):


As more players find/gamble/craft/trade items, the average player will have access to better gear. Over time, assuming the game's difficulty doesn't change, it means the average player will kill monsters more easily. This is an increase in mean. Because there is nothing that destroys good items once they are in the game, the curve will continue to shift to the right. This is known as power creep.

Based on my understanding of the game, GGG intended to slow power creep through the crafting/drop rates. The other way GGG counters this is by introducing harder monsters/new content, so that as the curve moves to the right, so too will the difficulty in killing things. That is why they have scheduled content updates. Ironically, if this is done effectively, the playerbase won't really notice anything, as progression will feel the same.

What about an item sink? Not likely, as it would have to be voluntary (i.e. consume item via animate guardian), and I don't think anyone would voluntary give up their good gear for no real reason. Involuntary (item durability/breaking) gear loss would simply put the playerbase up in arms.

Now here's the thing: What I see some people asking for is for these drop/roll rates to go up and/or to increase the certainty of results from using orbs. If this was to happen, it will accelerate the shift of the average player's killing power to the right. So the question I have for those of you that want this: What are you going to do once you have a character that can easily beat the hardest content of the game? In my opinion, power creep is a very bad thing for the longevity of the game.

For me, the reward/goal is not just to finish the content, but to have that feeling of accomplishment of being better (or luckier) than the average player, be it through skill planning, skill choice, itemization, etc. If everyone else improves at the same rate (i.e. the average moves with me), where will that feeling come from?

GGG already made some amendments to the probability tables for links, to help get those 'cold rollers' closer to the average so they can progress through the game. Because it is only one parameter in the long list of Best In Slot items, it simply serves to increase the variance, or flatten out the curve a little, so the coldest players are more likely to have slightly better gear after the change was implemented.

All that being said, I too would like to see more certainty in crafting, so those that are on the left side of the table can overcome their 'bad luck' by deterministic consumption of orbs. However, in order to retain the excitement, exclusivity and reward of loot drops, the top tier mods should not be craftable, but rather found in the wild (or random orb roll), so there is always that little bit of anticipation when you kill a rare and you find an unidentified yellow!

yeah yeah balance patch makes global warming heard it all before.

Yeah.... They didn't make BiS any easier with linking. 6L rate is unchanged as far as those patch notes are concerned, and 4L is the rough baseline of power required to get anything done.

Power creep is easy enough to avoid if your willing to do it, most games don't do so because players usually don't respond to small numbers as well as big numbers even when they basically provide the same final results.

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Garr0t wrote:

What are you going to do once you have a character that can easily beat the hardest content of the game?

I'll roll a new character. New uniques and skills are constantly being released. By the time one build is "done", many more have opened up. When the "updates" are thrown into the game that add content, I'll hop back on the beefy character to do that content. The more characters I have, the more to keep caught up.

Furthermore, more characters means more MTX for GGG. It also means a need to buy more character slots.

Ultimately, the longevity of the game can be increased by allowing players to create many characters to stay entertained. There will be no need to throttle gear acquisition as hard because it will be split between more characters.

Power creep occurs no matter where you decide to start. Power creep is only a problem because items never leave the economy, only currency.

The issue isn't simply making it easier to get better gear. I don't think anyone wants insta-BIS. What I would like, and what I think others would like, is to find/craft one's own upgrades to progress through the content. Right now, trading is vastly superior to drops/crafting. I'm not just talking about availability. But getting the precise stats for one's build.

The best way to combat power creep isn't to throttle items entering the economy. After all, power creep happens no matter where you start and how much you throttle it. It's taking items out of the economy. BoA, salvaging gear, corpse/gear recovery, hardcore death, etc. My personal preference is BoA crafting because it's a very elegant method to allow a person who wants to invest the time and resources to make their own personal gear and solves the power creep issue.

There is a flaw in that, in the sense that you approach difficulty linearly over time and progression.

I.e, when you say you "move the mean", you mention how the distribution changes objectively. This can only mean that the distribution changes for ALL scenarios in the game, from level 1 content, to level 100 content.
That's not really how I envision it. I'd envision one distribution graph per level of content. One for level 1 content, one for level 10 content, one for level 68 content, etc.

You can easily change these distribution graphs in each content level, just by manipulating all those variables (drops, chances to link, etc) but only in that specific level.

This adds another dimension to power creep. Why? Because of the definition of power creep, players keep getting more powerful. However, by the definition of these "content-level distribution", when you get more powerful you go to a new distribution.

SO, imagine you are in level X. THe mean moves to the right, i.e you are more powerful. You beat that level's content easier, and start "creeping" in power. However, then you level up to level X+1 or arrive at content of level X. Now you are no longer in the previous distribution, that had a higher mean, you are at a new one, maybe with a lower one.
You could do some theoretical work, but I think it's possible to use this in your favor to reduce the number of "cold players", yet making power creep moot.


Basically, yes, you are not supposed to power creep and be uber-powerful at level 80 and faceroll everything. But you are also not supposed to get stuck at 40-60 and hit a brick wall trying to progress to end-game.
In your scenario, trying to solve the 2nd problem would lead to power creep in the 1st one. However if that interpretation is wrong (like I think it is), then you can solve the 2nd problem without influencing the 1st one.
If the 1st one is the problem you are afraid of, then what's stopping us from just trying to solve the 2nd one, and leave those high-levelled players alone?

This is completely beside the point IMO. I don't think anyone is asking for Voltaxic Glare to be dropping on the act 1 shore. However, in my own personal experience, I needed Death's Harp to beat normal Dominus, and it then carried me all the way through cruel (because I couldn't find a single better bow than a first-tier unique!) until I traded for my current one, which is a piece of junk.

Here it is:



Cost me around 5 chaos I think.

For merc dominus, I simply joined a party to get that piss-poor paced quest out of the way, and promptly failed the rare map Dialla gave me (6 deaths for nothing--freaking leapers+devourers+enfeeble).

Just for reference, here's the rest of my gear:



Rings I crafted, boots and gloves I traded for, quiver I traded for, chest, helmet, and belt self-found. With boots and gloves, I had to socket/fuse/recolor them myself.

Is this supposed to be "endgame" gear? Because my DPS is around 900 on lightning arrow with both auras going, and my frenzy is around 3k IIRC? For the record, here's my build:

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgIAAF4EfgW1CC4M8g5ID6sRlhXwGY4Z1xrbI_Yk_SU_JpUs6S9vMHwyATY9OdQ6WD7PSn1QQlFHVUtW-lpIX-Fh4megayRte2_ycFJwu3fUfXV_K3_Ghs6HGYd2iGuMNo2_lembJpuNnaOgn6Gkoi6ly7Ewshm0GrVIu-O95sBRxKLPetN-1CPVANaK2RPdDd2o4dviy-OE51TndOjW6xTtg-4O73rv8PBC8-r5Vvlj_Kv8xf66_sg=

Not sure if it's exactly optimized, but it's a phys/crit/LA build, pretty cookie cutter.

And I was able to clear normal and cruel without much issue until cruel scepter of god, at which point it was just more deaths than I had the entire rest of the game combined in one boss fight.

I'm not saying we need power creep, but IMO, the pace of the gear drops need to keep up with the pace of the difficulty, if the game decides to gear check you.

Or, put another way: anytime a game "gear checks" the player, it's also a reflection of the player "pace checking" the game. So if the player fails a gear check, that's the same exact thing as saying that the game fails a pace check.

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gonzaw wrote:

interpretation

Yes, you are partially correct. This graph is a theoretical construct, as there are two more axes that need to be factored (# of players over time and player level), and the complexity of showing something like that would likely obfuscate what the message is attempting to convey.

Let's assume that for every player level at a particular point in time, one of these graphs exist. Assuming pseudo-random distribution of the relative usefulness of items throughout the population, you will get the curve shown.

The gist is that over time, each time you redraw the same population graph, the average player power at a particular level will creep to the right, due to better items always being added to the economy (be it through trade, craft, or self-found).

Knowing the monster power at each level, GGG can then control the 'average' player's experience by manipulating drop rates/orb rolls. What they can't control is an individual's experience. If for some reason RNGesus is really cruel to a player, they will end up on the left side of the curve throughout their play experience. This is bad, and this is likely why many people are asking for improvements to the itemization.

The point being made is that if obtaining better gear is made easier, players will complete the content more quickly, which leads to challenges in player retention.

Loot based ARPGs at their heart are nothing more than glorified slot machines. I understood this when I found the game, and I enjoy it for what it is. What I see happening when some people are asking for greater certainty in gear progression is like locking two of the reels on the slot machine to always roll a prize. If you keep rolling jackpot, you'll feel great at the start, but then you look around, and you notice everyone else is rolling jackpots too. I think this is bad for the casino, cause everyone will clean house after a few rolls and leave.

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CapitalPunishment wrote:

yeah yeah balance patch makes global warming heard it all before.

you da man ,,, OP dont get it!!