126560-possible-solution-to-power-creep

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This is a topic I've sort of wanted to avoid, not because it's not an issue, but because it's kind of controversial in a way. 
The general jest of Power Creep is that your character grows in power exponentially, and that leaves a lot of older content less relevant. It's awesome watching your character grow in power as you progress further through the veteran dungeons, Genetic Archives, Augmentor's and lastly Datascape! But boy, it has gotten quite out of hand at this point. 
 
There's a great video addressing power creep in gaming; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bxszx60ZwGw
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The problem
 
Now, this has not always been an issue. To get to a point where Power Creep was the least of our issues, we'll have to look all the way back to pre-drop 3. Yes, a time with crappy itemized items & runeslot RNG bonanza. Back then there was a big problem with rune slots being such a major part of your gear upgrades. Essentially you'd be better off crafting your own blues until you get about 3 x fire/fusion runes because the value of said runes are actually enormous and it was a sure way to get Assault Power. It definitely had to be fixed and I agree with the solution Carbine came up with. Heck, I loved the fact that they created a market for Runic Fluxes because it required you to gather/farm materials which other players would buy. 
 
But I feel as though with drop 3, there was a slight oversight. Now all your gear could bypass the rune slot RNG in terms of the amount of rune slots & the combination of rune slots. This essentially meant that you'd now be able to get optimal/desired stats... And a ton of it. 
 
Yes, the rune slots are currently beyond too strong. I'll use my own gear for reference. Notably my sword is the GA elder gem wep. My gear mostly consists of the leftover scraps from DS40 & EG vendor(DS level)
I'll use Assault Power for reference here since it's a easy stat to work out for. (Some of the values were rounded up)
I've unlocked every single rune slot available in my gear (7 Slots per Datascape gear, 2 Slots per Gadget & 5 slots per GA EG Wep)
 
47+65+87+89+105+80+95+78+82+75+21+76 = 900 Assault Power 
 
Okay, a grand total of 900 Assault Power gained through rune slots alone. Now we all know AP has had a fairly decent soft cap at around 3.6k(?) so let's convert it to simple base stat such as Brutality. 
 
900/0.61 = 1475 Brutality. Man, that is actually well above half of my Brutality alone with the gear I've equipped. Now for the double whammy. There are also thresholds for each individual stat. 
Ie. at 1260, 1365. 1470, 1575 & 1680 Brutality you gain additional 24.40 Assault Power on top. That is pretty much the case for any other stat, Moxie, Finesse, Tech, Insight & Grit.
 
Admittedly it's not very hard to hit the thresholds without Rune slots, but in this case it only really adds up. 
I didn't account for any additional Assault Power you might get through rune sets either. 
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My solution
 
1. Either I'd reduce the amount of runes you can realistically gain per item. 7 Rune slots for legendary gear is an absurd amount by any means. 
My proposed change would be; 1 Rune slot for blue gear, 2 Rune slots for Epic, 3 Rune slots for Legendary & 4 Rune slots for Artifact. Personally I think this'll make the runecrafting system a lot more simplistic. All the players I know use a rune addon because at this point it's really difficult to keep count and min max it otherwise. 
 
This change would present an issue regarding rune sets however. I don't really have a solution other than to cut down the amount of runes needed to hit the thresholds per rune set. This would however diminish the rune slot market on the auction house as well. 
 
2. Simply lower the base power you get per rune. Let's say if I got 30 Brutality from my 1st rune slot, I'd now get 10 Brutality. This would ultimately mean that anyone who cares about min max will still continue on with their daily lives, but might rather focus on rune sets instead. For the average joe the upgrades you get through rune slots might be so minuscule he won't feel the need to rune his armor. 
This will probably also affect the rune slot market as well. 
 
And don't worry, I'm not on a casual crusade or anything. I understand people are still progressing GA & DS, so my proposal would be to blanket nerf the HP of bosses by 5 - 10% to make up for the damage loss. This is not a "nerf" I'm asking for unless the runes are changed. 
 
I think it's vital to at least address this issue before the next raid tier (whenever it might be). The problem I addressed might not even be a problem either, but this is just my observations. 
If anyone has anything to add in regards to PvP, feel free. I'm not super PvP savvy and I don't really feel any power creep in regards to PvP. 
 
 
TLDR; Runes are 2 stronk since drop 3. Power Creep happening. My solution is either reduce rune amount or nerf base rune power. 	
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My solution
 
1. Either I'd reduce the amount of runes you can realistically gain per item. 7 Rune slots for legendary gear is an absurd amount by any means. 
My proposed change would be; 1 Rune slot for blue gear, 2 Rune slots for Epic, 3 Rune slots for Legendary & 4 Rune slots for Artifact. Personally I think this'll make the runecrafting system a lot more simplistic. All the players I know use a rune addon because at this point it's really difficult to keep count and min max it otherwise. 
 
This change would present an issue regarding rune sets however. I don't really have a solution other than to cut down the amount of runes needed to hit the thresholds per rune set. This would however diminish the rune slot market on the auction house as well. 
 
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I have the addon but rarely use it with my legendaries, my point is that it is not needed it just simplifies the process. I will agree that the entry barrier to understanding the system can seem daunting at first if you are not used to similar systems in other mmo's.
 
With the introduction of the exceptional runes the process has been made a bit easier to swallow.
 
The solution is a good idea don't get me wrong, I just feel the power creep is a bit lower than you make it. Also, gear doesn't always make the person :).	
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Also, gear doesn't always make the person :).
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The solution is a good idea don't get me wrong, I just feel the power creep is a bit lower than you make it. Also, gear doesn't always make the person :).
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I also kinda wonder if they can't simply merge the normal and eldan rune set who share the same specials, this will half the amount of sets almost and make things quite a bit easier.
 
 
As fir raid gear progression, instead of straight upgrades they could work more with specials that are more beneficial in raids then in dungeons for example, or specials that help with mechanics you encounter in the raid.
 
GW2 doesn't have a raid but they have a kind of hardcore dungeon system a bit like protostar games with different instances per run. They have different tiers and the mobs have a special damage type where you can build resistance to by the loot you get from that instance.
Personally not a huge fan off that in GW2 in the way they implement the grind, but it might work better in a raid like in wildstar.
Maybe they can do that in a form of a rune set, like pvp stats?	
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			I actually don't really think this is a problem. At 1:50 he states how one of the big problems with power creep is that it leads to the abandonment of content. Keep in mind that for WS power creep is intended by devs as an alternative to nerf the content. It allows them to keep all mechanics intact while lowering the difficulty. I don't think in our case it would lead to people not doing content. If anything, the more power creep we see, the more accessible dungeons and raids will be to your average player. 	
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Yeah I kind of like things where they are, Granted I do not have full DS gear so it's not an issue for me. What I would love to see once there is a new raid or an expansion is maybe some hard versions of Dungeons with different rewards. I know people really do not like rehashed content but I love it. 
 
Almost a full year into Wildstar I think they have to have an expansion or a new raid on the horizon. 	
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This is a topic I've sort of wanted to avoid, not because it's not an issue, but because it's kind of controversial in a way. 
The general jest of Power Creep is that your character grows in power exponentially, and that leaves a lot of older content less relevant. It's awesome watching your character grow in power as you progress further through the veteran dungeons, Genetic Archives, Augmentor's and lastly Datascape! But boy, it has gotten quite out of hand at this point. 
 
TLDR; Runes are 2 stronk since drop 3. Power Creep happening. My solution is either reduce rune amount or nerf base rune power. 
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...So your solution to the fact that the top gear is too strong is to nerf the crap out of everyone's gear so that the rest of the game remains challenging to the top 1%? What do you think is going to happen to the bottom 99% when you implement this? Or does that not matter?
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Glad you asked! 
Was my solution to that. Which I wrote in my first post as well. This is mostly aimed at future content. For all I care they could nerf Dungeons/GA/DS by blanket 20%. 
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Right, but see my concern wasn't just about dungeons and raids, my concern is that you're proposing a gamewide nerf of everyone by quite a lot in all content, when the problem you're describing only exists for people in the top gear tiers.
 
If the problem is that power accelerates too rapidly in Glory-level gear, the solution is to make the power growth more shallow for Glory-level gear. Not to revamp the entire gear system.
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What is your concern with a gamewide nerf in all content exactly? I'm aware that shiphands, adventures & farming trash mobs/dailies constitutes as content on it's own, but these elements are already past the point of being trivial w/ regards to your characters power.
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No, those elements are already past the point of being trivial with regards to your character's power. But not everyone is you.
 
You may have noticed, while you one-shot your way through the world content, players who have to swing their weapon multiple times just to kill random world trash. You may have spotted players waiting around near 5-man content because they can't just waltz up by themselves and solo it easily. Or people asking for help with missions. Those people do not share your opinion of how the rest of the game is past the point of being trivial.
 
My concern is that in your quest to make the rest of the game more relevant to the raiders, you're proposing to nerf everyone--including entry-level 50s, casuals, and people who mostly play solo. None of those players are running the dungeons and raids, their endgame progression was capped out much earlier than yours by deliberate game design. Most of those players are, at best, currently increasing their power level through the contract system and will be doing so for quite some time to come because that gear is RNGtastic, all of the most rewarding contracts involve group content, and casuals are... well, casual. They don't farm stuff for 12 hours straight just to maximize their potential.
 
The rest of the game isn't trivially easy to everyone just because it's trivially easy to you. Scaling down all gear just takes those players who aren't at the top and squeezes them out entirely. This game doesn't have enough players to do that. Not even close.
 
So if you really feel that there's a need to make the rest of the game more relevant to top-tier players, either lobby to change the absurdly supralinear power scaling of Glory gear while leaving the rest alone, or--and here's a solution that requires no developer effort at all--try taking that gear off and run the same content in green iLevel 50 gear.
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I get the sentiment here and your concern is whether the mobs die within the first 10 seconds or not. To that I would perhaps rather make it 2 rune slots blue (opposed to 4). 
Mob farming for contracts is genuinely not an issue with or without the rune slots. I'll present to you my esper alt, Razper Kappa. 
 
He is currently using dps AMPs, dps LAS, full blue PvP healing gear w/ epic healing weapon (1300 Assault power). I've currently unlocked 0 AMP & AP because I'm not currently intending to do much of anything with my esper other than PvP. 
He is in a guild that's been inactive for 9 months, nobody online or anything to help me out. Trust me, I'm a solo player 90% of the time if I'm allowed to be. 
Killing outdoor mobs is not even close to time consuming or hard. Making runes weaker than they currently are is a big deal, but it is in no way as big as you make it to be. This won't affect entry level players in a major way unless you truly believe most entry level players step into lvl 50 wearing ilvl 50 greens. 
 
Edit; 
 
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You said exactly what I was thinking.It's like raiders complaining that a boss is too easy or can be cheesed after they've downed it several times and gotten gear upgrades from it. So the boss is buffed, which isn't a problem for the people who already got the gear but it's a very real barrier for people who haven't gotten there yet.
 
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			You'd be better off nerfing the next tier of gear (i.e., reduce the power of the gear that drops from whatever ends up coming after Datascape) to stop the creep. The people who've got raids on farm will not be the ones hurt by this. People who suddenly find their barely adequate for raiding gear even less adequate will be the ones to suffer, not the ones who find their OP gear slightly less OP.	
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Again, this is not a casual crusade I'm leading. This will hit harder at high end players if anything. 
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OP have a valid point and i agree with it.
 
that being said his solution is only a bandaid and not a cure. yes he reduce power gap but not the exponential problem.
 
gw2 did it best by scaling your power back a bit depending on what zone/instance you were in.
with this system the whole world stay relevant and can even get updates that are worth playing for all!
also easier to play with friends...	
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I'm ok with power creep. Power creep is historically how MMOs have made content progressively more accessible. It's clear that this is the goal in WS, particularly with the addition of mini-boss weapons, etc. In my experience, it seems to be working fairly well. There are very few people who could complete raids in the lower levels of gear that the progression guilds tend to. Yes, this means that guilds with DS on farm will be geared to the tits, but really all that is doing is helping them farm content that they have already completed faster.
 
Now, it can get out of hand (i.e. WoW with 500049039343 tiers of gear in one raid tier), but I don't think Wildstar has gotten to this point. I was able to switch back to my old main with 2500 AP and catch up to other players progressing in DS fairly quickly. Yes, GA was made a lot easier by power creep, but it's been outside of progression long enough that this is ok. 
 
Now people are complaining about "geared guilds getting content buffed," but that hasn't really happened. If we are using the pair changes as an example here, which it seems to be, it's a bad one. The difference is that you didn't need to have a full DS clear geared raid to completely trivialize the mechanics. It's not quite the same as power creep when it's not just the uber geared people doing it. Of course the itemization changes played into it, but it really wasn't just a matter of guilds who overgeared them saying they were too easy now. While other fights have definitely been made more accessible by the power creep, it was NOTHING on the scale of what was going on with the pairs. And compared to the tuning of other fights in DS, the pairs that were being cleaved were completely off.  
 
The only thing that I'd love to see in relation to power creep is for Carbine to extend their rallying system so that you have the option to gear rally vet content - like WoW challenge modes, but they wouldn't actually have to change the instances (it would be pretty sweet in any vet content - shiphands, dungeons, raids). Then give that some extra titles/mounts/pets or something (i.e. Complete STL while gear rallied/ Get a gold medal in STL while gear rallied). 	
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			The point still stands that guilds used the cleave mechanic to down the bosses for months and get gear from those bosses which contributed to clearing the other content and getting gear from THAT. There's nothing wrong with doing that, by the way. But they are not going to be affected by the change as much as people who haven't been to the pairs yet.	
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The point still stands that guilds used the cleave mechanic to down the bosses for months and get gear from those bosses which contributed to clearing the other content and getting gear from THAT. There's nothing wrong with doing that, by the way. But they are not going to be affected by the change as much as people who haven't been to the pairs yet.
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I actually don't really think this is a problem. At 1:50 he states how one of the big problems with power creep is that it leads to the abandonment of content. Keep in mind that for WS power creep is intended by devs as an alternative to nerf the content. 
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okay i spent 30sec reading what op wrote and im ready to jump in.
 
power creep.
 
op's idea:
reduce stats allocated by rune slots
reduce hp of bosses
 
1. why reduce boss hp if you are trying to make the content less face rolly? reduce power of players and done. its counter productive to reduce power player then reduce the mobs hp. this is a simple concept but apparently it is lost on some.
2. rune sets! less rune slots means its harder to get rune sets. this is a thought!
3. this does not stop power creep in the slightest. what it does do is makes the gap between stats of DS geared players and non-DS players smaller(ish).
 
overall id say this is op trying to solve the wealth gap not power creep.
 
#yoloswag420blazeit!	
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So raid gear is there to nerf dungeons?
That makes little sense since you need to have dungeons completed to enter a raid.
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they changed the way grit scales i believe but that wasn't the discussion.
 
I think most of the concern is for those in raid gear that strongly out gear the rest of the end content making them trivial at best.
 
 
 
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1. why reduce boss hp if you are trying to make the content less face rolly? reduce power of players and done. its counter productive to reduce power player then reduce the mobs hp. this is a simple concept but apparently it is lost on some.
2. rune sets! less rune slots means its harder to get rune sets. this is a thought!
3. this does not stop power creep in the slightest. what it does do is makes the gap between stats of DS geared players and non-DS players smaller(ish).
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You are missing the point.
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okay i spent 30sec reading what op wrote and im ready to jump in.
 
power creep.
 
op's idea:
reduce stats allocated by rune slots
reduce hp of bosses
 
1. why reduce boss hp if you are trying to make the content less face rolly? reduce power of players and done. its counter productive to reduce power player then reduce the mobs hp. this is a simple concept but apparently it is lost on some.
2. rune sets! less rune slots means its harder to get rune sets. this is a thought!
3. this does not stop power creep in the slightest. what it does do is makes the gap between stats of DS geared players and non-DS players smaller(ish).
 
overall id say this is op trying to solve the wealth gap not power creep.
 
#yoloswag420blazeit!
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yo dont blow my cover like that bro. a mans gotta make money somehow
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Psssst. CK is trolling. 
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Ah, of course. You're both trolling. Suddenly the typo in your OP makes more sense.
 
 
Silly me, should've seen it right away.
 
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Google translate couldn't save me this time... 
 
On-topic: I merely suggested a way they could handle Power Creep. If they were to ever address it, it probably would be a lot different from what I suggested anyways. 
Though to me, there is a undeniable amount of Power Creep going on, and it's not Carbine's way of nerfing the content. Or at least that was definitely not their original intent. 
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			Power creep being an issue? lolwut?	
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Power creep being an issue? lolwut?
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power creep is definitely an issue.
or will be later on.
already if you are DS geared the new content (star comm basin) is a joke.
 
that will only get worst. and is also more demanding on the devs.
what level of content should they develop? when the playerbase is split into so many different power levels...
 
then you will have new players coming into the game and they will queue for stormtalon and get into with a DS geared wrecking crew. it will be lame.
 
honestly there is no excuse to design a game with power creep nowadays.
either do it gw2 style or find a more innovative progression system.
 
thing is "innovation" doesnt rhyme with "wildstar"....
and add this on top of the many reasons why people sailed away.
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New players don't give a crap except to wish they had the gear. If you're in a group of total noobs blowing up a vet dungeon they will be grateful to learn the mechanics without dying instantly and get a quick step on the way to attunement.
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this type of thinking demonstrate why wildstar is being deserted.
was even more obvious in pvp before they "normalized" the gear.
same thing for pve.
the few people left who still like to put in 1000hours to get gear(aka: +1 power "yeah!") are not enough at this point.
 
take my words for it. you won't see AAA mmos being released with that segregating philosophy anymore.
that.is.over.
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You're right. Datascape gear in level 50 pve zones is exactly the reason why WildStar lost all of those subs. Why didn't they think of that 8 months ago?
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