Power Creep is bad. Period.

[BluelitHalo]

Wouldn't be a problem if they followed this simple design pattern: the more tedious or rare that a weapon is to acquire, the more powerful it must be. The most basic implementation of this is level-based gear progression in typical MMOs.  It's a wonder why DE didn't take pointers from them when balancing weapons and imposing MR requirements.

[armedpoop]

6 hours ago, BlackCoMerc said:

And this is the mentality that will eventually kill the game.

Let me ask you another way: If you KNOW FOR A FACT That everything you obtain will eventually become obsolete when DE decides they want to sell more Plat, why would you EVER buy ANYTHING?

Is the concern about Power Creep making a little more sense now?

If you want your game to last - and I am not convinced DE does - then eventually, you have to create interesting play styles and side grades people will want, without obsoleting their favorite stuff.

Sure, you CAN do it your way, with blatant power creep. But you do that long enough, and people will just stop buying anything at all, because they already know it will be useless in a month or six. Oh...and you wont sell Forma, either, which I dont think they were selling anyway. Hence its prevalence from relics. Because why power up your current weapons? They will just be obsoleted in a few months and you will need to start the whole process over. 

How long do you do that, before most players get sick of it and just move on? Based on player numbers over a six month period, we've about reached that point.

1st of all, if you are BUYING weapons in this game, then you really shouldnt be worried about power creep at all. You are already skipping majority of the point of actually playing the game. I never even thought people usually buy weapons outright to begin with.

 

Assuming that you meant just getting weapons, id say that 3-6 months is plenty of time to use a weapon and power it up if you really like it. I mean thats like telling people that they shouldnt forma or power up Inaros cause "Inaros Prime will be coming out". Thats literally your own choice to not power something up or not. Hell, I knew for a fact that Synoid Heliocor was gonna be a thing and I still forma'd my heliocor a couple times AND potato'd it, wanna know why? Cause pushing my gear to its potential is FUN to ME. I could care less if a stronger version is going to come out, in this game since we KNOW it usually is the case, why even bother playing any weapons if thats a problem for you? 

5 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

This isn't good reasoning because it means every new weapon release will inevitably make at least one older weapon obsolete, and therefore not worth playing other than for mastery ranking. This isn't good for us players, because we end up having our older weapons invalidated by power creep, but this is also terrible for DE, because it means they end up putting a ton of work into releasing weapons over time, only to end up offering a much smaller pool of truly viable weapons than what they've produced. It makes the game's content pool a lot shallower than it could otherwise be, and is detrimental to the game's health in the long run, because the game's environment ultimately ends up having its difficulty bumped up to match players' increase in strength, as has happened already, which creates additional barriers to entry and an increasingly large number of false, disappointing choices to newer players.

-snip-

Side grades that actually are useful is fine, but something like the mod for ack brunt is literal trash and shouldnt ever be used. If they give you solid reasoning to use a side grade then great. But until we get more things like acid shells or vulcan blitz, side grades are often trash tier. Unique weapons and fun weapons are fine, but they ultimately dont matter when you need to slaughter hundreds of enemies a mission. As long as they dont try to pass off weapons like the Stradavar as a side grade, then thatd be great. 

[Epsik-kun]

I wonder when will people stop using a "powercreep" buzzword in a grinding game.

This game has no meaning and no content without "powercreep". If everything new released is a sidegrade and not an upgrade - there's no objective reasons to get this stuff. "Collecting" is a subjective reason. People want to be rewarded for their efforts. Have you put your effort into maxing something that got rendered obsolete by new update? Well, now you have better tools for getting and maxing this new stuff.

The whole genre works on the illusion of you constantly progressing, remove it - and you'll be one of the first to leave the game due to the lack of content.

[Teridax68]

44 minutes ago, armedpoop said:

Side grades that actually are useful is fine, but something like the mod for ack brunt is literal trash and shouldnt ever be used. If they give you solid reasoning to use a side grade then great. But until we get more things like acid shells or vulcan blitz, side grades are often trash tier. Unique weapons and fun weapons are fine, but they ultimately dont matter when you need to slaughter hundreds of enemies a mission. As long as they dont try to pass off weapons like the Stradavar as a side grade, then thatd be great. 

If a mod or unique weapon trait is bad simply because it's underpowered, it's not really a big deal, because it can be buffed until it gets good (and there's a niche out there for defending squishier allies in the case of the Ack & Brunt). If a weapon has literally nothing unique to it, then that's bad, because unless it changes it's inevitably going to rise to the top or die out on simple DPS comparisons. With a few tweaks and buffs, the Stradavar could be a great weapon choice, because it promises a quick shift between mid-range DPS and accurate long-range semi-auto shots. By contrast, there is practically no reason to pick the vast majority of the game's melee weapons, because they're just hollow shells with randomly distributed, poorly distinguished (and fairly underpowered) stats. "Slaughtering hundreds of enemies" as a requirement covers just one of many mission types, and even then, there are many different ways to kill, which is why the Torid shines in defensive missions despite being mediocre in modes like Exterminate or Capture. Ultimately, I agree that missions and factions could be more differentiated from each other, and I think the Corpus should probably be a faction where enemies are a lot more rare (but stronger), but even now, there are plenty of opportunities to emphasize the differences in playstyle between weapons in a way that makes them interesting beyond just pure damage output.

[(PSN)Lord_Gremlin]

It's a game with heavy rpg-like progression. Items simply need to be tiered by MR. it's good and expected to have MR15 melee that better than MR8 melee and MR20 that is better than MR15. Like in any such game legendary lvl 60 sword is better than common lvl 10 sword.

They simply need to tier items properly. Nikana prime is MR0, dragon nikana MR8. Obviously prime should be MR15 etc.

[armedpoop]

13 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

-snip-

I agree with most of you what you said, except for 1 thing:

There are MUCH better ways of defending squishy frames than that mod for the ack and brunt. That thing is such wasted potential. It shouldve been whenever you block, it makes a larger shield project out of the shield itself that your teamates can shoot thru at of course lowered block efficiency to you. 

[Teridax68]

1 minute ago, armedpoop said:

I agree with most of you what you said, except for 1 thing:

There are MUCH better ways of defending squishy frames than that mod for the ack and brunt. That thing is such wasted potential. It shouldve been whenever you block, it makes a larger shield project out of the shield itself that your teamates can shoot thru at of course lowered block efficiency to you. 

So basically Reinhardt's Barrier Field from Overwatch?

[armedpoop]

1 hour ago, Teridax68 said:

So basically Reinhardt's Barrier Field from Overwatch?

Precisely! At least it would be practical to use and you could do some roleplay, or even have it be a moveable version of volt's full size shield. (with the lowered guard efficiency of course)

[(PSN)WINDMILEYNO]

People arguing that power creep is healthy for the game....

I can't even....

........

Better weapons and better gear(focus schools, syndicate weapons, companions) are always nice to look forward to, but not like this....not making vanilla stalker look like a chump because our dps is higher now...requiring shadow stalker to be a thing, and leaving the old stalker weapons in the dust which is something like what the op was saying, but...

We've gotten to the point where we are arguing this is actually ok for Warframe so I'm going to stop right there are leave well enough alone

[armedpoop]

1 hour ago, (PS4)WINDMILEYNO said:

People arguing that power creep is healthy for the game....

I can't even....

........

Better weapons and better gear(focus schools, syndicate weapons, companions) are always nice to look forward to, but not like this....not making vanilla stalker look like a chump because our dps is higher now...requiring shadow stalker to be a thing, and leaving the old stalker weapons in the dust which is something like what the op was saying, but...

We've gotten to the point where we are arguing this is actually ok for Warframe so I'm going to stop right there are leave well enough alone

You really think that a year one weapon should remain relevant this long into the game? After 3 years a character who has been beefed up (due to lore), their weapons should still be viable 3 years later? Im pretty sure that when they 1st came out they were stronger than some of the current gear as well. 

Yes power creep is fine in warframe as long as it isnt taking massive leaps in power. Like some of the upcoming prime gear is slated to have according to [OMITTED] (which usually isnt right by the by) If the gear get incrementally stronger as time progresses, thats fine, but massive leaps are pretty bad. Again, if the gear wasnt statistically better than whats currently available, you really wouldnt want to get it. (you in general, not YOU specifically. I can confidently speak for myself and many others on this)

[Casval_Rouge]

The thing with power creep is that as long as the game can keep up with it, its fine.  In fact we need power creep so new weapons aren't just mastery fodders.  Sure, in an ideal world new weapons are actually interesting, but that takes a lot more time and unless the balance is there, the weapon will just be gimmicks, not worthwhile to use.  You'll have your fun with it for awhile, but when you are looking to progress in terms of power, you bring your true and tried weapon with 6 formas that is 3 years old because its time to hit end game (whatever that even is). 

Warframe is a game of both progression and collection.  There needs to be both.  Even mastery fodders have their use precisely because there are mastery rank to gain.  But if Boltor Prime + Dakra Prime are still the reigning kings of weapons, not only will there be no variations in the player base, a lot of weapons become inherently unattractive.  Just use the best tools, why bother.

But what if weapons are all the same in terms of power!? So I can just choose what I want for the scenario and what I find fun to play?! That's what we call a pipe dream, never going to happen.  There will always be a dps king, there will always be a tier list.  Look at Starcraft, how many years of updating did it took to balance just 3 races?  Imagine all the weapons, each with their own mechanics and differences be on the same level, it would take ludicrously long to balance.  Then whenever they introduce a new weapon, its all screwed up.  Otherwise they will take forever to come out because internal testing.  Look at Dota, you see how long it takes to release a new hero?  Precisely because it is a competitive game, balance is a high priority, that's why it takes so long to be released.  Warframe can't support that kind of model.  There needs to be new toys to collect every 2 weeks or so.  

So power creep is actually required for this game.  But right now the game don't actually support that.  What we need is the game to infinitely scale so the players find their own level to play.  Stalker is now paper?  Tune up the levels on enemies, done.  I used to only barely last 10 waves in t4?  Now I last 50 because power creep?  Tune up the levels, done.  Not a problem.     

 

[(PSN)WINDMILEYNO]

Warframe as a game is handeling this well? 

When a weapon has better stats, it's not bad. But when people exploit those stats, that becomes an issue

Those leaps and bounds do occur and have been met not by nerfs (because those weapons were meant to make money), but by "tougher" enemies, leaving those older weapons further behind, not just in stats, but in performance. Add on that the new weapons might look better, and then you don't even have decent fashion frame.

This is normal, as you have said. But since when should a pistol blow things up automatically for no ammo cost just by gaining experience? (syndicates)

 

[LuckyCharm]

This whole thing could be fixed by periodic patches to bring the outliers more into line with the rest. I mean, some weapons are laughably weak and even forma'd can barely kill things. And others are so strong that unforma'd still make killing trivial. A patch or two now and then would be easy to throw things back in line and other weapons to emerge as "meta" kind of like league of legends do with their bi-weekly patches for their champions. 

[armedpoop]

2 minutes ago, LuckyCharm said:

This whole thing could be fixed by periodic patches to bring the outliers more into line with the rest. I mean, some weapons are laughably weak and even forma'd can barely kill things. And others are so strong that unforma'd still make killing trivial. A patch or two now and then would be easy to throw things back in line and other weapons to emerge as "meta" kind of like league of legends do with their bi-weekly patches for their champions. 

You really think its that simple? You realize there are over 270 different weapons, right?

[LuckyCharm]

1 minute ago, armedpoop said:

You really think its that simple? You realize there are over 270 different weapons, right?

it really is that simple, start with ones that are too strong and ones that havent been touched in a good long while and work from there. Stuff like.. Synoid simulor and sicurus, soma prime and azima... week by week till you need to go back around again. I mean.. look at the patch notes for most patches, we have had zero changes to weapons besides a couple of bug fixes most times. Like Tonkorframe was the games name for ages before they gave it a bug fix.

wouldn't need to be much each week but something is better than nothing,

[Gireen_AEN]

14 hours ago, Epsik-kun said:

I wonder when will people stop using a "powercreep" buzzword in a grinding game.

This game has no meaning and no content without "powercreep". If everything new released is a sidegrade and not an upgrade - there's no objective reasons to get this stuff. "Collecting" is a subjective reason. People want to be rewarded for their efforts. Have you put your effort into maxing something that got rendered obsolete by new update? Well, now you have better tools for getting and maxing this new stuff.

The whole genre works on the illusion of you constantly progressing, remove it - and you'll be one of the first to leave the game due to the lack of content.

 

6 hours ago, armedpoop said:

You really think that a year one weapon should remain relevant this long into the game? After 3 years a character who has been beefed up (due to lore), their weapons should still be viable 3 years later? Im pretty sure that when they 1st came out they were stronger than some of the current gear as well. 

Yes power creep is fine in warframe as long as it isnt taking massive leaps in power. Like some of the upcoming prime gear is slated to have according to [OMITTED] (which usually isnt right by the by) If the gear get incrementally stronger as time progresses, thats fine, but massive leaps are pretty bad. Again, if the gear wasnt statistically better than whats currently available, you really wouldnt want to get it. (you in general, not YOU specifically. I can confidently speak for myself and many others on this)

League of Legends releases champion after champion that are all sidegrades to the hundreds of others and somehow manages to get people interested enough to buy their skins.

To claim that power creep is necessary because "how else would DE get people to look for new warframes" is a pile of crap. They should get out of game design if the only incentive they can think of for farming new equipment is to give it bigger stats. Making intriguing, original concepts for warframes and weapons that stand on their own is their JOB.

[RealPandemonium]

4 hours ago, Gireen said:

 

League of Legends releases champion after champion that are all sidegrades to the hundreds of others and somehow manages to get people interested enough to buy their skins.

To claim that power creep is necessary because "how else would DE get people to look for new warframes" is a pile of crap. They should get out of game design if the only incentive they can think of for farming new equipment is to give it bigger stats.

LoL has power creep too, both on a micro and macro scale.  It's become integral to Riot's business model; I hope DE doesn't reach a similar conclusion as their game matures.  

[Gireen_AEN]

Just now, RealPandemonium said:

LoL has power creep too, both on a micro and macro scale.  It's become integral to Riot's business model; I hope DE doesn't reach a similar conclusion as their game matures.  

Do you have any justification for this claim?

http://www.lolking.net/charts?region=all&type=champion-winrate&range=monthly&map=sr&queue=1x1&league=ranked

Here is a chart of the highest winrate champions in league of legends according to Lolking, this month in ranked play in all regions. If you can't view the link, then let me read it out to you:

1. Sona

2. Amumu

3. Skarner

4. Anivia

5. Velkoz

6. Ashe

7. Sejuani

8. Ahri

9. Sion

10. Malzahar

I understand that winrates are not the end all be all of determining champion balance, but the fact remains that all of the first five champions on this list. So if you have evidence that Riot routinely releases new champions with objectively better stats in the same manny that warframe does, by all means, present it.

[armedpoop]

51 minutes ago, Gireen said:

 

Bullsh1t. League of Legends releases champion after champion that are all sidegrades to the hundreds of others and somehow manages to get people interested enough to buy their skins.

To claim that power creep is necessary because "how else would DE get people to look for new warframes" is a pile of crap. They should get out of game design if the only incentive they can think of for farming new equipment is to give it bigger stats. Making intriguing, original concepts for warframes and weapons that stand on their own is their JOB.

in other words: If X can do it, Warframe can too! Nice bandwagon fallacy. 

Warframe isnt a competive focused game, sidgegrades here would become boring instantly. Normalizing your player's stats is probably the worst thing to do. You tell me its fun to use an MK1 piece of gear vs the normal version. You tell me its not fun to get a new piece of gear and it NOT have better stats than what you just had and ill call you a liar. 

If your player loses that illusion of progression, then that player will very likely stop playing your game. (this applies in PVE focused games more so than in competitive PVP focused games) Comparing LoL to Warframe is extremely asinine. 

Edited August 15, 2016 by armedpoop

[Gireen_AEN]

19 hours ago, armedpoop said:

Warframe isnt a competive focused game, sidgegrades here would become boring instantly. Normalizing your player's stats is probably the worst thing to do. You tell me its fun to use an MK1 piece of gear vs the normal version. You tell me its not fun to get a new piece of gear and it NOT have better stats than what you just had and ill call you a liar. 

If your player loses that illusion of progression, then that player will very likely stop playing your game. (this applies in PVE focused games more so than in competitive PVP focused games) Comparing LoL to Warframe is extremely asinine. 

"Competitive focused game", huh? Are Magic the Gathering and Hearthstone competitive games? None of those games have serious power creep issues and yet you're making this barrier between Warframe and League of Legends as if Warframe is in some special position as a PVE MMO and couldn't possibly go without power creep unless they want hordes of people saying they're bored and leaving.

Of COURSE you want better gear. ALL players in these types of games like it when objectively stronger equipment comes and nullifies everything before it. Thats why power creep works in the short term. That's why early WoW was plagued with expansions that rendered all before it obsolete, with new dungeons and new weapons and new spells. But eventually the game designers have to get better at their craft or you risk showing your playerbase that the progress that they make is always only temporary and the weapons they love now will be useless 6 months down the road.

 

Edited August 16, 2016 by Gireen

[RealPandemonium]

6 minutes ago, armedpoop said:

in other words: If X can do it, Warframe can too! Nice fallacy. 

Warframe isnt a competive focused game, sidgegrades here would become boring instantly. Normalizing your player's stats is probably the worst thing to do. You tell me its fun to use an MK1 piece of gear vs the normal version. You tell me its not fun to get a new piece of gear and it NOT have better stats than what you just had and ill call you a liar. 

If your player loses that illusion of progression, then that player will very likely stop playing your game. (this applies in PVE focused games more so than in competitive PVP focused games) Comparing LoL to Warframe is extremely asinine. 

The progression illusion is a S#&$ty one.  Sidegrades are what Warframe is all about: customization and variety.  It might feel good for a while after you obtain/discover THE BEST BUILD, but ultimately it gives way to monotony and the trivialization of all content.  Progression only truly happens when you obtain mods; everything else is in your own head.  

[armedpoop]

2 minutes ago, Gireen said:

"Competitive focused game", huh? Does the LCS not exist? Does Magic the Gathering or Hearthstone not have an active professional community? None of those games have serious power creep issues and yet you're making this barrier between them and League of Legends as if Warframe is in some special position as a PVE MMO and couldn't possibly go without power creep unless they want hordes of people saying they're bored and leaving.

Of COURSE you want better gear. ALL players in these types of games like it when objectively stronger equipment comes and nullifies everything before it. Thats why power creep works in the short term. That's why early WoW was plagued with expansions that rendered all before it obsolete, with new dungeons and new weapons and new spells. But eventually the game designers have to get better at their craft or you risk showing your playerbase that the progress that they make is always only temporary and the weapons they love now will be useless 6 months down the road.

 

So you are going to continue using this bandwagon fallacy huh? Cool. 

All the games you listed are PLAYER VS PLAYER FOCUSED. Balance makes sense in a pvp environment, NOT having power creep makes sense in a competitive environment. TCG is WAY different from a PVE FOCUSED 3RD PERSON SHOOTER. If you cant even see the differences between competitive games, and pve games, then I have no idea what to tell you. 

 

6 months? Is that not a significant amount of time to you? Do you really honestly think that 6 months is how long gear should stay the same? (if not longer?) 

 

Also is WoW not actually thriving to this day? Dont millions of people literally still play it? Are you ever gonna stop using this bandwagon fallacy? 

[Gireen_AEN]

"Progression" is not a feeling the player should get when the developers release bigger and badder weapons month after month in an attempt to shoe-horn in an objective. It should be MR, formas, and arcanes, prime weapons, maxed mods, and exilus adapters, giant arsenals, badass syandanas and primed mods. Basically stuff that doesn't go away after a few months, because if it goes away or becomes obsolete in the next patch it's not progression. 

[armedpoop]

1 minute ago, Gireen said:

"Progression" is not a feeling the player should get when the developers release bigger and badder weapons month after month in an attempt to shoe-horn in an objective. It should be MR, formas, and arcanes, prime weapons, maxed mods, and exilus adapters, giant arsenals, badass syandanas and primed mods. Basically stuff that doesn't go away after a few months, because if it goes away or becomes obsolete in the next patch it's not progression. 

A lotta "should's" in your response. We dont live in a perfect world, and this just isnt the case. A few months isnt significant to you? Like how long do you honestly expect you Braton to last you?

[Gireen_AEN]

7 minutes ago, armedpoop said:

So you are going to continue using this bandwagon fallacy huh? Cool. 

All the games you listed are PLAYER VS PLAYER FOCUSED. Balance makes sense in a pvp environment, NOT having power creep makes sense in a competitive environment. TCG is WAY different from a PVE FOCUSED 3RD PERSON SHOOTER. If you cant even see the differences between competitive games, and pve games, then I have no idea what to tell you. 

 

6 months? Is that not a significant amount of time to you? Do you really honestly think that 6 months is how long gear should stay the same? (if not longer?) 

 

Also is WoW not actually thriving to this day? Dont millions of people literally still play it? Are you ever gonna stop using this bandwagon fallacy? 

"Early WoW", dude. WoW changed. The early equipment that became obsolete is still obsolete but they got better at game design and nowadays they release content and expansions that aren't direct upgrades of the previous loot. They added "heroic" difficulties that allowed players to use old dungeons efficiently and generally matured as game developers. It's what I hope happens to DE someday.

Yes, League of Legends is a different game. You have still not explained why PvP games are in a different boat than Warframe, and why power creep is necessary in PvE but not PvP. You can't just say "theyre different bandwagon fallacy smh", that's not an argument.

Edited August 15, 2016 by Gireen