Power Creep?

This is really early to talk about, but how will power creep affect Path of Exile?

Power creep, for those of you who don't know, is the phenomenon where old things become obsolete or underpowered as new things are added. Will the devs continue with linear progression, leaving the low-level chars with content that is several years old? Will they just release a bunch of meh content, so that a level 100 char from today would be just as powerful as a level-100 of the game five years from now? Will they boost old content, so that it doesn't become obsolete?

This game design is one that requires a very delicate balance. They've designed a game where the skill tree is very complicated and it's hard to respec, so you will have to start over. Eventually, our builds will become crap as newer builds are made to combat newer content. However, this will mean that our new characters that we make (because we can't completely respec) will have to grind through the same old content from years ago or will have to start over almost completely due to our old stuff being useless.

The other issue would be if they kept the game about the same, but raised the level cap. No innovative content, no new builds to try, none of that. Just items with higher level requirements for higher stats. Maybe they'll add an act four or a level beyond merciless, so we can beat the game AGAIN. They'll have to stop at some point with that, because the power creep will set in and people will all be upset when their max-level character from now starts to suck compared to the max-level characters that maxed out five years from now due to the balance being off.

Basically, this game is either going to be boring or have MASSIVE power creep in five years. If it has power creep, then we'll all basically have to throw out our old builds and start over every few years. I don't want to do that. How will we stop this?

The level cap likely won't be raised. They will be adding more acts, and I would assume they will remove difficulties when they do. Don't know if you were here when the game transitioned from closed beta to open beta, but previously the game had 2 acts with 4 difficulties, and with open beta changed to 3 acts with 3 difficulties. I imagine when they release a fourth act the game will have 2 difficulties, and later on they'll have enough acts where they won't need to force you to re-do the same content to get to higher levels and not have any difficulty levels.

The level cap needs to be raised from 100 to 105 but have each level DO NOTHING other than give +2 to all attributes or something pointless like that.

Item affix tiers should NOT be incrementally increased. this would be the worst kind of power creep.

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Nephalim wrote:

The level cap needs to be raised from 100 to 105 but have each level DO NOTHING other than give +2 to all attributes or something pointless like that.

Item affix tiers should NOT be incrementally increased. this would be the worst kind of power creep.

No, it wouldn't. Power creep is expected (and preferable) on a level-to-level basis. We want pretty much every level-50 item to be better than every level-45 item. The same applies to tiers. In fact, they are already incrementally increasing. You go from Lacquered to Studded to Ribbed to Fortified, etc. and each affix is inarguably better than the previous affix. That's what makes it boring and unchanging. You get a higher-tier equipment set and pwn, you move further in the story to where it starts to get really hard, you get a higher-tier equipment set, repeat. That, or you get a higher-tier item every level and it stays pretty easy until endgame when they max the levels.

What bad power creep is is when the new content changes the game so much that the builds built around the old content become worthless. This game is designed to make characters static. If you want to change a lot, then you have to start over.

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I don't think there will be the problem that low level characters will be "stuck" with obsolete stuff...it's not like an MMO where even the low levels take a while...no one is low level for very long. Re-rolling is a prevalent thing in this game, so obsolete gear/builds are replaced easily.

But, I doubt they'd change the current item stuff, and if they add more tiers and raise the level cap, that's fine...as they add more acts, maybe they'll reduce the game to 2 difficulty levels, or something like that.

I don't think "power creep" will be an issue in PoE as it is in traditional MMOs. If you want to see horrible power creep, compared release Aion with the current state of that game with the new classes and content they just added. OH. EMM. GEE. The "Abyss" which was the PvP realm of the game, a constant battle over fortresses, control of which allowed access to instances....has been completely obsolete since the majority of characters hit the new level caps and new PvP realms, and are completely overpowered for the older content. That game is FUBAR.

But, to get back on topic, no I don't think PoE will have the problems you describe. These are people with nothing else on their plates besides PoE. And that's a good thing. I honestly don't know how they do it, I probably would hate the game by now if I worked on it like 80+ hours a week like it seems they do...

Actually, at a fundamental level of the way the permanent leagues work, we already have a form of power creep. As people play longer on the same league, they accumulate more currency and find more items. More items mean a higher chance of finding a high-quality, near best-in-slot item, and more currency gives players the means to create best-in-slot items.

Uniques and powerful new skills aside, if you were to compare the average power of rare equipment among level 80 characters near open beta release to the same now, you would definitely see a lot more powerful equipment.

If it's a game designed to have you rerun the whole thing every four months, then it will DEFINITELY die out. People will get bored over time.

Is it really that bad to have to level a new character in FIVE YEARS?

You somehow managed to make a game sound like a career.

*But i get the point on the power creep.