Power creep over the last 10 years

[TomUjain.8206]

Hello everyone,

I'm a long standing player, so i've seen it all - heck, I did the entire world completion before mounts were a thing. I've been here since beta and i've seen a lot of huge changes in this game. The one thing I really do thing I really do stand against though is how every single expansion or major update seems to tip the power creep up and up.

Back in the day, 25k was a very strong benchmark to strive for -- and the majority of the games PVP and PVE content was designed for this. With the addition of all these (arugely) half baked classes and skills thrown in that benchmark has gotten higher and higher. As a result of these new skills the core of the game has not been able to keep up. Due to the sheer amount of swiftness, charge, shadowstep / teleport skills you can get to the other side of the map in a ridiclous amount of time. It is painfully clear a lot of the core design aka the maps, NPCs (stronghold) etc... have not been updated to factor in that players have now become walking nuclear missle silos.

Around 4 years ago - A net went to war on 'bunker' classes (at the time) they were a big problem -- and this was (in my view) where things started to spiral out of control. With the removeal of all the tanky traits / amulets in PVP the result was PVP becoming a reflex match of 'who can get the rotation of high DPS skills off first' -- in solo matches this can be very disheartening if you are dead before can even touch the mouse and it creates a huge rift between the meta heads and the casuals (even in unranked) mixed in with outdated maps and mechanics that have not been updated to reflect the power creep and it is no wonder PVP is in such a dire state.

To shift to PVE briefly -- The fact that world bosses have to be given a temp god mod aka (phases) so players don't smash them down in 10 secs -- speaks volumes, and is a clear sign things are in a dire state. When a doungon (which used to be a struggle with 5) can now be soloed by 1 player -- in under 5 mins, you have a problem. These needs to be a hard cap on the max DPs players can dish out because in PVP and PVE the numbers people dish out these days is just far too high.

 

Would like to hear your thoughts on this,

Tom

 

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

Power creep has kind of ruined the fun in 1v1s . Sustain & mobility is power crept so much that a lot of fights just come down to the matchup. If you are slower than your opponent, then you need to severely outplay them otherwise they will kite and reset forever. If you arent as bunkery as your opponent, you again need to severely outplay them or counter their build to win. Its very rare to have a matchup that comes down to who can trade better or who can read their opponent better. Since pvp is all about node control you just get nearly immortal bunkers and supports that just sit on node or kite when they get outnumbered.

On paper balance is theoretically in a good spot. Pretty much every class has at least 1-2 viable builds. Problem is that most of them arent fun to fight against.

 

[Gotejjeken.1267]

6 minutes ago, Paradoxoglanis.1904 said:

Power creep has kind of ruined the fun in 1v1s . Sustain & mobility is power crept so much that a lot of fights just come down to the matchup. If you are slower than your opponent, then you need to severely outplay them otherwise they will kite and reset forever. If you arent as bunkery as your opponent, you again need to severely outplay them or counter their build to win. Its very rare to have a matchup that comes down to who can trade better or who can read their opponent better. Since pvp is all about node control you just get nearly immortal bunkers and supports that just sit on node or kite when they get outnumbered.

On paper balance is theoretically in a good spot. Pretty much every class has at least 1-2 viable builds. Problem is that most of them arent fun to fight against.

 

Perma Stealth vs. Perma Boons

WHO WINS?

YOU DECIDE 

EPPICPVPBATTLESOFHISTORRRYYY

[DanAlcedo.3281]

3 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Perma Stealth vs. Perma Boons

WHO WINS?

YOU DECIDE 

EPPICPVPBATTLESOFHISTORRRYYY

Why not both? 

[Flowki.7194]

21 hours ago, Paradoxoglanis.1904 said:

Power creep has kind of ruined the fun in 1v1s . Sustain & mobility is power crept so much that a lot of fights just come down to the matchup. If you are slower than your opponent, then you need to severely outplay them otherwise they will kite and reset forever. If you arent as bunkery as your opponent, you again need to severely outplay them or counter their build to win. Its very rare to have a matchup that comes down to who can trade better or who can read their opponent better. Since pvp is all about node control you just get nearly immortal bunkers and supports that just sit on node or kite when they get outnumbered.

On paper balance is theoretically in a good spot. Pretty much every class has at least 1-2 viable builds. Problem is that most of them arent fun to fight against.

 

None of those bunkers are hard enough to justify the tank, and next to none of the roamer specs are risky enough to justify the mobility. It is complete polerisation of low effort vs low risk game play. People choose to play like that, the DEs and druid types.

Edited March 11 by Flowki.7194

[AlPower.2476]

They have to nerf yes or yes:

-Grenade barrage,

- Cornona Burst

-Chilled to the bonnes

-Back stab

-True Shot

- Most of TP insta damage skills

-Ranger smokescale pet and Boar (when merged)

- Ranger horn 4 skill.

- EathShaker

And I'm missiing a lot more of skills

Power creeep  and Hard/Soft CC is ridiculous right now

Edited March 12 by AlPower.2476

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

18 hours ago, AlPower.2476 said:

They have to nerf yes or yes:

-Grenade barrage,

- Cornona Burst

-Chilled to the bonnes

-Back stab

-True Shot

- Most of TP insta damage skills

-Ranger smokescale pet and Boar (when merged)

- Ranger horn 4 skill.

- EathShaker

And I'm missiing a lot more of skills

Power creeep  and Hard/Soft CC is ridiculous right now

 

Most of those skills did two or three times the damage several years ago. Especially the bolded. I used to backstab for 13k vs power mesmers that would send me from standing to defeated if I was so much as marginally wasteful on using consume plasma. There is -more- breathing room comparatively now, not less. 

I'm beginning to suspect people are using the term "power creep" as a stand in for frustration from failing to adapt to skills. I hope I'm wrong about that. 

Edited March 12 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[Eddie.9143]

The standard for the game should be spb and core ranger mirror 1v1s. Anything that gets more ridic or carried away than that needs to be toned down. Those duels are perfect, big brain mind games, and just plain fun 

Edited March 12 by Eddie.9143

[AlPower.2476]

6 hours ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

 

Most of those skills did two or three times the damage several years ago. Especially the bolded. I used to backstab for 13k vs power mesmers that would send me from standing to defeated if I was so much as marginally wasteful on using consume plasma. There is -more- breathing room comparatively now, not less. 

I'm beginning to suspect people are using the term "power creep" as a stand in for frustration from failing to adapt to skills. I hope I'm wrong about that. 

Several years ago people also used to run demolisher, valkyre, marauder with toughness runes,; most focused traits in defensive gameplays (how long has been elixir trait out of meta?)

Damage got nerfed  (hard cc dmg is now null) and then when we had lots of immortal builds, survibality was nerfed too. So, we are almost the same.

Power Creep is: getting almost one shoting from stealth; power creep is :classes doing massive damage in aoe with poor trade offs. (what tradeoff do rangers have in using their pets while they're far away? for example)

Berserker rifle, for example, has massive damage, BUT his trade off is being an easy target to kill once kitted.

Current tradeoffs for broken builds is to pick another broken build. and that's not funny.

And powercreep is the tip of the iceberg. Boon spam, CC/Soft CC spam. and the list could keep getting bigger.

Edited March 13 by AlPower.2476

[Shagie.7612]

6 hours ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

I'm beginning to suspect people are using the term "power creep" as a stand in for frustration from failing to adapt to skills. I hope I'm wrong about that. 

please do explain the massive increase in things like aura uptime and sharing, the speed at which some formerly relatively slow classes like guard and necro can get around the map, damage differences between similar build types, both between and within classes, and honestly the biggest one is just how many more available options some elites have over others

damage may or may not be back to around the levels it was before depending on your build, but i don't understand how someone could look at an elite like vindicator, compare it to core, herald or renegade, and NOT see how much more it has in almost every area, and that's an elite that's not even considered very good atm.

holo is effectively immune to conditions, something no engineer spec before that was able to do (to the same degree and without giving up EVERYTHING to do it), while not being proportionally weaker to strike in exchange for that

are those kinds of things not power creep?

[Endorphin.9147]

On 3/11/2024 at 9:08 PM, AlPower.2476 said:

They have to nerf yes or yes:

-Back stab

This man really just said backstab. For a skill thats meant to assassinate, only time it ever does anything is on the crit strikes line. Outside of that youre hitting like 4-5k on berserker amulet if you're lucky.  If you actually understood thief, youd realise cluster bomb is probably the bigger problem

[Frequency.6407]

19 hours ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

 

Most of those skills did two or three times the damage several years ago. Especially the bolded. I used to backstab for 13k vs power mesmers that would send me from standing to defeated if I was so much as marginally wasteful on using consume plasma. There is -more- breathing room comparatively now, not less. 

I'm beginning to suspect people are using the term "power creep" as a stand in for frustration from failing to adapt to skills. I hope I'm wrong about that. 

By "power creep£ I guess OP meant mobility and boon spam and not just raw damage.

[Downstate.4697]

Mobility creep diminished the point of conquest and made getting kills a better option than defending points. The removal of toughness amulets was probably a good thing to prevent people from 3v1ing on a node and the faster paced gameplay is more interesting to play and watch. Anet needs to keep thing how they are, but remove the strict advantage that getting kills provides such as reducing respawn time or adding a mechanic to prevent excessive bleed out durations.