Should Anet address the increasing amount of powercreep?

[Jokuc.3478]

The last couple of years the damage for every build in the game has gone up significantly, the baseline of 30k for a dps class increased to 35k which later reached close to 40 and now we have many builds that do well over 40k dps. This makes encounters and mechanics in older content more trivial for every update, HoT story bosses and dungeon bosses die in a couple of hits and so called "challenge" mode fractal bosses such as Skorvald die so fast you won't even get to see all his mechanics even if the group performs horribly. 

I really wish anet would do something about this awful powercreep. I realize that it's not as easy as just nerfing the damage of everything in the game since newer content such as eod strikes are tuned for the current state of the game and anet would definitely not have the time to go back and tune all old content. But is there something that can be done about this? One of the main appeals gw2 has to people is that old content stay relevant because of the horizontal progression, but even though it stays relevant reward-wise, does it really stay relevant in terms of modern gameplay/fun?

People would probably get angry if their class was nerfed, even if every other class was nerfed with it but I say it's kind of necessary at this point, some numbers are getting ridiculous. Thoughts?

Edited May 17, 2023 by Jokuc.3478

[Helgaley.3619]

2 hours ago, Jokuc.3478 said:

People would probably get angry if their class was nerfed, even if every other class was nerfed with it but I say it's kind of necessary at this point, some numbers are getting ridiculous. Thoughts?

I don't disagree, but I'm curious what kind of ideas you'd have to address power creep without upsetting at least some percentage of the player base?

 

Even though the game has horizontal progression, I think having a marginal power difference between core & expansion content is okay, but it does seem a bit extreme at the moment. Personally, I think the prevalence of quickness & alacrity are big contributors to the power creep, so I would like to see them reigned in. It would be nice if they could be tied to high impact cooldowns rather than them being buffs that certain classes can easily provide on demand. Something like the heroism buff in WoW that provides 20% haste on a 2-3 minute CD. Elementalist already has elite skills with cooldowns of 75, 150, and even 180 seconds, so I wouldn't be upset if Anet gave every class an elite skill that provided either quickness or alacrity on a 120ish second cooldown.

 

I feel like the numbers issue is harder to address since the power creep has gone relatively unchecked for so long, it seems to have become a multifaceted issue... They could always add new phases or mechanics to old content that increases the difficulty, but an easier approach might just be to beef up the HP & toughness of older bosses. I really wish they would address the playability of all professions before making more number adjustments, though.

 

I don't think I've seen this mentioned anywhere yet, but with a 4th expansion confirmed, I would LOVE if they introduced a "vanilla" Guild Wars 2 server that doesn't have any expansion content. It would also be fun if they created raid or group achievements that reward groups for completing current content with groups exclusively made up of the core professions, revenant included.

[Zex Anthon.8673]

Rather than tuning every build down, which is a crapshoot as to how it affects the balance. They should keep 40K as the baseline and buff the boss health, so you actually have to play mechanics.

Let's see how people fair when they have to use updrafts on Gorseval.

Edited May 17, 2023 by Zex Anthon.8673
a word

[Gendalfs.7521]

Only reason for powercreep are boons. No class should instantly generate 25might, nor infinite alac or quickness.

[RenneBright.2473]

7 hours ago, Jokuc.3478 said:

The last couple of years the damage for every build in the game has gone up significantly, the baseline of 30k for a dps class increased to 35k which later reached close to 40 and now we have many builds that do well over 40k dps. This makes encounters and mechanics in older content more trivial for every update, HoT story bosses and dungeon bosses die in a couple of hits and so called "challenge" mode fractal bosses such as Skorvald die so fast you won't even get to see all his mechanics even if the group performs horribly. 

I really wish anet would do something about this awful powercreep. I realize that it's not as easy as just nerfing the damage of everything in the game since newer content such as eod strikes are tuned for the current state of the game and anet would definitely not have the time to go back and tune all old content. But is there something that can be done about this? One of the main appeals gw2 has to people is that old content stay relevant because of the horizontal progression, but even though it stays relevant reward-wise, does it really stay relevant in terms of modern gameplay/fun?

People would probably get angry if their class was nerfed, even if every other class was nerfed with it but I say it's kind of necessary at this point, some numbers are getting ridiculous. Thoughts?

 

1 hour ago, Zex Anthon.8673 said:

Rather than tuning every build down, which is a crapshoot as to how it affects the balance. They should keep 40K as the baseline and buff the boss health, so you actually have to play mechanics.

Let's see how people fair when they have to use updrafts on Gorseval.

35-40k in Fractals with full account augs + stats infusions & pots, why not. But in raids Idk where you're pulling out those numbers, since in the first place, you'll rarely reach 35-40k for every boss excluding all debuffs (CA's, KC's, QTP's).
Gl reaching 40k on Dhuum CM without having Ender's in your camera, Qadim, TL CMs for that matter while jumping over/dodging. I don't think you know how to interpret golem benchmark, and differentiate those from real bosses benchmarks...

 

1 hour ago, Zex Anthon.8673 said:

Rather than tuning every build down, which is a crapshoot as to how it affects the balance. They should keep 40K as the baseline and buff the boss health, so you actually have to play mechanics.

Let's see how people fair when they have to use updrafts on Gorseval.

They already did for most of the CMs, there is no CMs in W1. If you wanna do updrafts, you just go kill TL in CM, that's the same mechanic. And again, gl reaching 40k on an actual boss with actual mechanics, having to dodge/jump over shockwaves etc. because most of the dps pugs don't reach close to that number. Training golem has 0 mechanics, 0 unblockable attacks to dodge, let alone an Ender's echo.
If you wanna play more mechanics, there is W5-7 PoF raids, lots of mechanical roles to fill + W4's HK & MO CM scouts cleaving/saks + EoD Strikes in CMs.

Edited May 17, 2023 by RenneBright.2473

[Dadnir.5038]

Should they?

From my perspective, the true issue is more that nowadays "support" builds have enough damage output that pure dps build aren't really a necessity. The devs have tried to answer this problematic by increasing the pure dps builds damage output while they should have strived to limit the dps output of the support builds.

That said, I kinda understand why they acted like this since the feedback they usually receive can be summarized to: "My class don't do enough damage output, nobody want it in PvE end game parties!"

 

[Burnfall.9573]

14 hours ago, Jokuc.3478 said:

The last couple of years the damage for every build in the game has gone up significantly, the baseline of 30k for a dps class increased to 35k which later reached close to 40 and now we have many builds that do well over 40k dps. This makes encounters and mechanics in older content more trivial for every update, HoT story bosses and dungeon bosses die in a couple of hits and so called "challenge" mode fractal bosses such as Skorvald die so fast you won't even get to see all his mechanics even if the group performs horribly. 

I really wish anet would do something about this awful powercreep. I realize that it's not as easy as just nerfing the damage of everything in the game since newer content such as eod strikes are tuned for the current state of the game and anet would definitely not have the time to go back and tune all old content. But is there something that can be done about this? One of the main appeals gw2 has to people is that old content stay relevant because of the horizontal progression, but even though it stays relevant reward-wise, does it really stay relevant in terms of modern gameplay/fun?

People would probably get angry if their class was nerfed, even if every other class was nerfed with it but I say it's kind of necessary at this point, some numbers are getting ridiculous. Thoughts?

The only solution is Removal- remove everything 

[Mauti.3520]

Power Creep is real, but I am bit surprised to see it narrowed in on just DPS benchmarks. 

 My Condi Weaver had a 40k benchmark 3 yeas ago - It has a 41k Benchmark now. - My Power Soulbeast had a 38k Benchmark 3 years ago - It has a 38k Benchmark now.

Let's take the World Boss Drakkar as an example:
If I compare Drakkar from it's release 3 years ago to now, I was already a happy little dps monkey when I just got some stacks of might and bit of fury shared back then.

Still the Fight took for ever without a premade group back then. Even failed on many, many occasions. The DPS of your DPS geared player was pathetic and average at best most of the time, even when you know what you where doing.

But Today you simply drown in boons and carry spam. Quickness, Might, Prot, Alacrity, Fury, Swiftness, Stability, Barrier, Heals, Rezzes. It's hard to die and enables people deal so much damage. The fact that way more classes can be Support Builds - which is a very good thing in my opinion - and the fact support builds can be considered overpowered as hell, has increased the boon and utility output dramatically, which makes everything in the game tremendously easier. Much easier than going from 35k to 40k as an average dps benchmark. The carry and leverage is much higher, - and much more evenly spread among the classes, rather than some privileged fortune childs like Firebrand and Ren - not the Dps Ceiling I would think

Some fellas  like Gendalf and Dadnir  already touched that matter, given how crazy good "Hybrid" or Support Builds these days are, compared to your humble all in full Berserker geared DPS Holo, Weaver or Soulbeast. Boon Builds on the other hand pump insane numbers and also increase the damage und survivability of up to 4 allies dramatically. 

I am with you in that matter to reduce the power creep and kinda update many old Open World and instanced encounters, but just nerfing the numbers isnt the way to go I would speculate.

One could think about upping the numbers on the bosses instead, for example. I have no really solution or idea, since the matter is relatively complex and the pendulum could easily swing into the opposite direction, making the stuff way too hard again. ^^

 

Edited May 17, 2023 by Mauti.3520

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

We just need to reduce all outgoing damage in PvE by 30% like they did in PvP/WvW years ago. The powercreep is from having many different ways to increase your damage compared to in the past, but they didn't bring down the overall damage ceiling to account for it.

 

I'd rather they not keep nerfing individual classes, stats, traits and so on. This reduces build diversity; players need to have many options for reaching their goal.

Edited May 17, 2023 by SoftFootpaws.9134

[Sobx.1758]

Encounters aren't played like they were designed to since their meechanics can be easly consistently skipped with dps. It doesn't get any clearer than that to understand they should address it.

[Serephen.3420]

I think it's fine if that settle on the caps they have now and don't push much further. It's far too late to think about such changes. And they have always been trying to make the game more accessible for newer players, which is one of the reasons for this.

Edited May 23, 2023 by Serephen.3420
Confused reactions from those who can't make a valid argument? At least some people tried to reply and show their reasoning.

[Jokuc.3478]

17 hours ago, RenneBright.2473 said:

in raids Idk where you're pulling out those numbers,  I don't think you know how to interpret golem benchmark, and differentiate those from real bosses benchmarks..

I am not talking about on-boss numbers when I say 40k dps, I refer to the benchmarks. Thought that was kind of obvious. The point I'm making here is that damage is increasing significantly each year. Not just because of dps specs but just cause of supports being packed with a billion boons. But higher bench numbers do of course translate into higher numbers on boss as well.

 

18 hours ago, Zex Anthon.8673 said:

Rather than tuning every build down, which is a crapshoot as to how it affects the balance. They should keep 40K as the baseline and buff the boss health

I don't know what is the best approach here, nerfing classes or buffing content. Probably buffing older content is a better approach but that is way too much work for them to ever do, especially if you consider all the story and open world stuff as well. It doesn't really matter to me how they would do it I just wish the powercreep is addressed somehow.

[Zex Anthon.8673]

18 hours ago, RenneBright.2473 said:

 

35-40k in Fractals with full account augs + stats infusions & pots, why not. But in raids Idk where you're pulling out those numbers, since in the first place, you'll rarely reach 35-40k for every boss excluding all debuffs (CA's, KC's, QTP's).
Gl reaching 40k on Dhuum CM without having Ender's in your camera, Qadim, TL CMs for that matter while jumping over/dodging. I don't think you know how to interpret golem benchmark, and differentiate those from real bosses benchmarks...

 

They already did for most of the CMs, there is no CMs in W1. If you wanna do updrafts, you just go kill TL in CM, that's the same mechanic. And again, gl reaching 40k on an actual boss with actual mechanics, having to dodge/jump over shockwaves etc. because most of the dps pugs don't reach close to that number. Training golem has 0 mechanics, 0 unblockable attacks to dodge, let alone an Ender's echo.
If you wanna play more mechanics, there is W5-7 PoF raids, lots of mechanical roles to fill + W4's HK & MO CM scouts cleaving/saks + EoD Strikes in CMs.

I think you misunderstand. I never claimed that you can maintain 40K baseline on actual encounters. The golem benchmark is a measure of how well the build performs under ideal conditions. It is a useful metric to represent the builds dps potential. Rather than list off each individual boss benchmark, which isn't readily available, we can use the golem benchmark which snow crows keeps up to date. 

The level of power creep is real. These were the benchmarks from 4 years ago. Average damage has risen close to 20%. We have boon support builds dealing more damage than most of the dps builds back then. As such most content has become trivial. At the same time, there's an argument to be made that bosses like Slothasor are more difficult due to the increased damage. In that situation fixate doesn't have enough time to move the boss before he gets animation locked. Clearly the bosses were not designed for this level of dps.

If mechanics can be skipped due to brute forcing dps and heals then that indicates that the boss is under tuned for the current meta. This is supposed to be challenging content. A flat 20% increase in boss HP would bring us back to 2019 power levels. Then individual bosses like Gorseval can be tuned further, so you can no longer skip mechanics. It is far simpler to adjust the boss than to touch the builds which are relatively balanced right now.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

5 hours ago, Serephen.3420 said:

I think it's fine if that settle on the caps they have now and don't push much further. It's far too late to think about such changes. And they have always been trying to make the game more accessible for newer players, which is one of the reasons for this.

Making the game more accessible to newer or inexperienced players is about raising the damage floor, not lowering the ceiling. Lowering the ceiling and raising the floor at the same time makes it even more accessible.

 

@ Thread:

Doing 2x the damage of another player is considered extreme in other games, but here we consider 10x to be acceptible, and that's only damage versus damage and to say nothing of damage versus support. Its gone completely out of control just like the rest of the game by focusing too much on the new content and never caring about the old content. Its currently possible to complete an explorable dungeon with a full clear and no skips completely solo; this was high-end group content at release and needed massive numbers of tactics and skips even in parties to clear efficiently.

 

Someone posted a video not long ago of them playing Bladesworn in Ascalon Catacombs story and one-shotting the bosses (well, two Dragon Triggers in a few seconds). They solo cleared in just a few minutes, with most of the time spent walking or waypointing around. When a single player has become equal to an entire party, its time to stop.

 

ArenaNet has implied that going forward they're willing to make drastic changes to fix the state of disrepair the game has fallen into, so now is exactly the time to have major changes on the table.

Edited May 18, 2023 by SoftFootpaws.9134

[Serephen.3420]

3 hours ago, Zex Anthon.8673 said:

I think you misunderstand. I never claimed that you can maintain 40K baseline on actual encounters. The golem benchmark is a measure of how well the build performs under ideal conditions. It is a useful metric to represent the builds dps potential. Rather than list off each individual boss benchmark, which isn't readily available, we can use the golem benchmark which snow crows keeps up to date. 

The level of power creep is real. These were the benchmarks from 4 years ago. Average damage has risen close to 20%. We have boon support builds dealing more damage than most of the dps builds back then. As such most content has become trivial. At the same time, there's an argument to be made that bosses like Slothasor are more difficult due to the increased damage. In that situation fixate doesn't have enough time to move the boss before he gets animation locked. Clearly the bosses were not designed for this level of dps.

If mechanics can be skipped due to brute forcing dps and heals then that indicates that the boss is under tuned for the current meta. This is supposed to be challenging content. A flat 20% increase in boss HP would bring us back to 2019 power levels. Then individual bosses like Gorseval can be tuned further, so you can no longer skip mechanics. It is far simpler to adjust the boss than to touch the builds which are relatively balanced right now.

Agreed, updating older content would be better than having to change every build and every new encounter to fit. And upgrade to older content will also be more appealing to most players and be less of a PR nightmare to deal with.

[Gendalfs.7521]

Guys are you refering to few raid bosses that are too easy for you? Because dungeons are not very actual content in this time of games life. Look at LFG, theres no groups doing them, except when they are dailies. Strike missions have CM mode which isnt very easy, I dont talk about natively hard strike missions, like Boneskinner, KO, HT. They arent too easy even without CMs.

Im relatively new player (1 year) and I though you spoke about open world content, but even then soloing Champions and Bounties isnt easy to do solo (ofc theres guys that can do it, I cant).

If you dont agree with boom spam being too much, then yeah, Anet should just increase HP on those few bosses and call it done.

p.s. have you considered that powercreep is your knowledge of game?

[Jobber.6348]

There's a solution for this: Update old content. 

If a nerf is definitely needed, don't nerf classes, nerf boons. Boons are in a state where they flow like water and people take them for granted. They're essentially free stats or passives that constantly tick on a player if the supports or boon dps are playing properly. They're even more prevalent now compared to the past because Anet has made it a point to give every profession the ability to put out core boons like Quick or Alac. If Quick, Alac or Might ever gets a hit, you will see everyone's DPS drop.

I don't want to see players overeliant on boons the same way I don't want to see content require boon setups to even complete. There needs to be a nice balance between the two.  

[Gaiawolf.8261]

On 5/17/2023 at 3:21 AM, Gendalfs.7521 said:

Only reason for powercreep are boons. No class should instantly generate 25might, nor infinite alac or quickness.

 

2 hours ago, Yasai.3549 said:

If a nerf is definitely needed, don't nerf classes, nerf boons. Boons are in a state where they flow like water and people take them for granted. They're essentially free stats or passives that constantly tick on a player if the supports or boon dps are playing properly. They're even more prevalent now compared to the past because Anet has made it a point to give every profession the ability to put out core boons like Quick or Alac. If Quick, Alac or Might ever gets a hit, you will see everyone's DPS drop.

I don't want to see players overeliant on boons the same way I don't want to see content require boon setups to even complete. There needs to be a nice balance between the two.  

These. Cut back on the excessive boon spam, and the balance will partially correct. Most of the powercreep is due to the insane increases of boon uptime in the first place.

Edited May 18, 2023 by Gaiawolf.8261

[Dr Meta.3158]

I wonder if it would be better to just have the normally skipped mechanics happen a lot faster. Could also design encounters to where performing difficult side mechanics deal significant damage to the boss so the raids are less about builds and more about coordinated efforts.

 

[Lily.1935]

Something to note And I'm not sure if this was addressed yet but one of the goals that arena net has set out to do with the new direction for the game is to lower the barrier to entry for end game content like fractals, raids and strikes. And one way to do that is to create more builds which are easier to use and the difference between a Veteran player in your group and a new player in your group isn't so exponentially high. Some players struggle to do 5k DPS on a DPS build while a vet is dealing 30k in a realistic setting. Thats not were arena net wants to be with the game.

So more builds can hit those 37-40k Benchmarks now were as before it was a handful. Now more professions than ever can run quickness and alacrity were as before it was just Chronomancer then it was Renegade and Firebrand. More professions are at the higher end of what the best have been doing since the start of Raids and yeah that's power creep.

However as someone else has pointed out the benchmarks for the Damage builds haven't shifted that far above what they've been at before. Same is true for Support builds. Support builds have been pretty unreasonable before and as of right now they're still extremely powerful. A lot of them are still a bit too close to the full DPS benchmarks which they probably shouldn't be. But that's going to be a tough thing to fix and I'm sure it'll be addressed within the next few balance patches.

Lowering the barrier to entry is a good thing. I say embrace it. The PvE endgame is healthier and more enjoyable now than its ever been...

[mandala.8507]

12 hours ago, Yasai.3549 said:

If a nerf is definitely needed, don't nerf classes, nerf boons. Boons are in a state where they flow like water and people take them for granted. They're essentially free stats or passives that constantly tick on a player if the supports or boon dps are playing properly. They're even more prevalent now compared to the past because Anet has made it a point to give every profession the ability to put out core boons like Quick or Alac. If Quick, Alac or Might ever gets a hit, you will see everyone's DPS drop.

I don't want to see players overeliant on boons the same way I don't want to see content require boon setups to even complete. There needs to be a nice balance between the two.  

Lots of people are making your same recommendation, so I'm just using your comment as a reference.

But there are a couple of things that makes nerfing boons a less satisfying fix than we might think:

1. Firstly, concentration is not capped for boon application currently, and so nerfing the uptime of boons would just shift the support builds into running higher concentration numbers. The boons would still be just as prevalent, but the supports would be having to make huge stat sacrifices to compensate for these nerfs. An example of a build that was like this for a long time was alacrity renegade. You needed a minimum of like 80% boon duration to provide permanent alacrity uptime, and so the dps output of the alac renegade builds was too low to be competitive. By nerfing boon uptimes, you just nerf the damage potential of support builds. The builds would just adjust to the new necessary concentration levels, and so all you really did was nerf the dps of boon supports by making them swap out some gear and maybe spec harder into general boon application traits that they hadn't needed before.
2. And this is a problem because, at some point, the tradeoff in dps for running a dedicated boon support over just running dps without the essential boons like quickness and alacrity starts to level out, and so we could end up right back where the game started with 5 dps players rampaging through the content in full berserker gear, providing boons where they can get away with it (and I know in raids and stuff it would more so look like a dedicated raw healer and the rest of the subgroup dps, but you get the idea).
3. On top of this, and perhaps most important to remember, is that intermittent alacrity and quickness uptime is very unsatisfying from a gameplay perspective. Having permanent uptime is essential for the standardization of buildcraft and rotations in the instanced content of gw2 currently. If taken away, the system falls apart and the knowledge required to truly understand how to play your build optimally skyrockets because boons are constantly fluctuating. This would make the game much harder than it is now to understand in terms of class mechanics and instanced content would have that much greater a barrier to entry.

And maybe you could think of ways the devs could entirely reinvent the wheel to address these concerns, but at that point they're basically developing an entirely new gw2 combat system and burning down over 10 years of work that went into getting the system to where it is now.

...Which is why I think the "nerf boons" angle, while well-intentioned, is impractical and not as simple a remedy as people like to imagine it to be.

[mandala.8507]

Another point I'd like to bring up is that this power creep is likely intentional to increase participation in instanced group content (as others have mentioned).

I'm confident the developers working on game balance can read numbers from a chart and understand they are power creeping the game.

The issue is that power creep doesn't do anything if community expectations shift with the increase in dmg potential.

As people have mentioned, we used to be playing a game where ~30k dps was peak bench for pure dps classes, and now we're playing a game where peak benchmark dps is over 40k for multiple classes.

The reason this won't help with accessibility as much as the devs would like is because community expectations have shifted to match it.

You can clear every normal-mode raid encounter in blue gear right now, but if the community expectation is that your dmg be "X%" of the top dps or go home, whether or not you can is trumped by whether or not you are permitted to do so without getting an earful.

More people won't come in so long as the goalpost continues to move to match the relative dps potential.

So you're mainly just invalidating older content for veterans for minimal returns on new player engagement in instanced content.

Edited May 19, 2023 by mandala.8507

[mandala.8507]

20 hours ago, SoftFootpaws.9134 said:

Doing 2x the damage of another player is considered extreme in other games, but here we consider 10x to be acceptible

Also, this "10x" thing is a genuinely prehistoric take based off a dev comment from before the game's launch that was honestly hyperbolic even then.

I'd say the real differential between someone blasting and someone doing the bare minimum right now is at most a 4x difference, assuming they continue to hit the boss with whatever off-the-cuff skill priority they're doing.

You can see a bigger gap than this show up when you consider burst potential on some fights, but in terms of sustained dps, that 10x number is pure fiction.

[xellink.7568]

Just double boss hp so that people cannot skip mechanics. Prolong enrage timers for groups that like long-suffering. 

[Diskyp.9461]

I dont care of PvE but just bring back bunker amulets in PvP and im fine with this power mongols.