Power Creep, Stat Crushing, and CR Relevancy

Let me say first off, I know a lot of you are having knee jerk reactions when I mention these topics. Please keep posts civil, no personal attacks. You can criticize my topic, but not the devs nor players for their views. I am not demanding anything nor do I think I speak for anyone else but myself or entitled to anything.

I took two long breaks (which was really just one long break with little time back.) and there are a lot of things that changed and a lot of things that stayed the same. The biggest points are Power Creep and CR Relevancy. The devs created a way of incentivizing newer content by A) making it stronger and having better stronger gear and B) keeping you there by restricting the rewards. On paper this is good, but the game is almost 10 years old now and has a very large number of content that is, for the most part, untouched.

I'm going to divide my discussions of the 3 topics below, but they do related to each other.

• Power Creep
  • The problem: We know it exists in almost all games out there. It's to help keep players wanting to continue to play by giving bigger better rewards. It's an unavoidable problem with development of games in general and really not an issue if handled right. A lot of games, including this one, tackle it with balance passes.
• Stat Crushing
  • Not to be confused with stat flattening, which was a needed change due to the original exponential stat increase that mostly started in T5. It wasn't handled very well then. During the stats revamp, they did stat crushing. Which is bringing down the end of the chart to decrease the overall amount of stats. On paper, this is actually a good thing and I actually think the devs did a good job with this idea, the problem is they didn't do enough nor did they prevent a fast paced power creep. They just restarted it.
• CR Relevancy
  • We all know why this was created, but for the new players, it was created to go with the Monthly Content's single currency that was capped at 100. To prevent players from buying the second best gear (best being crafted) the moment the content was released. It was designed to keep you in the escalator method of always going up, never to go back down. They added an alternative rewards system to alleviate this problem, but it was really not enough. The current problem is, they are still using the antiquated system that is in need of a revamp.

So where am I getting at here? Simple, we can fix two of these and curb the last.
Here's my idea.

1. Stat Crush everything again. Bring the stats down of the players and NPCs massively. This allows for evening out the game to a more transitioned based system that we actually saw in the classic game from T0-T3. If you were a T3 fully geared player, you could still struggle with a T1 instance. A lot of that changed in T4 and especially T5 on. When they initially did the flattening, they didn't adjust stats to bring them closer together, just brought up the middle. When they did the stats revamp and crushed, it also didn't adjust the transitions. There are still leaps and bounds between tiers that really shouldn't be happening.
2. Make gear between DLCs after T4 be an extremely minor increase. It still incentivizes the player to buy new gear, as it still goes up. So instead of 10 to 15 item level jump, make it 3-5. Also adjust CR a bit on how it's weighted to adjust for the dropped gear. (Thus not making dropped gear irrelevant again.)
3. Remove stats from Adaptive Augments and Artifacts. There is NO reason to have stats on these. Let their bonuses be why you are using them in the first place. Often times the negligible stat increase becomes obsolete as you get a new one, but especially in adaptive augments, you may still wish to go to lower content.
4. Fix the tiers after T4. Especially the Monthly Content. There is NO POINT to have content have such drastic CR entries within the same tier. There are too many bumps that hinder player progression.
5. Expand CR Relevancy to include two tiers, previous and current. If stats are closer together, there is no point in thinking content is trivial to that extreme. Plus, current tier would already have DLC currency.

The devs did a great job on stats revamp from what they were removing, but it didn't go far enough to help develop the game to not reach the same point it was before CR Differential. We kind of reaching there again.
While I have your attention, can we revisit Vending Unit - 00? It's funny, that was introduced to older vendor gear that was outpaced by monthly content and cr relevancy, but with the new current system where all gear is the same price regardless of vendor, this is kind of sadly there still. I think having all the non elite styles for 3-5 marks a piece would be great.

On this point in particular, no thanks. We've seen the backlash a simple bug fix caused when they touched one artifact. There's far too much time and money invested into artifacts for the devs to make any sort of sweeping change like this. The potential backlash is far, far too great a risk.

As far as the other stuff, there are a lot of good points.

I'd like to see tiers become tiers again. Not just collections of instances that are in no way comparable stat or difficulty wise. Have each DLC within a tier offer a stat bump but not like it is now. Right now, every DLC is almost treated as a stand alone tier with large stat gains and difficulty resets.

And the relevancy window needs a change badly. Current and previous tier would be perfect.

It would just be the stats on the items themselves, not what bonuses you get while using them. But this one point is more trying to get the even ground for both artifacts and adaptive augments.

If you take away the stats for Augments and Artifacts, what you have left is useless junk until you get to certain breakthroughs. And in-between each breakthrough would be a whole lot of nothing. Stats fill in the gaps for players...and those numbers are accounted for. Besides, Canadian Justice is right, there would be a ridiculous uproar if you dramatically altered items that people have spent time and money on.

The stat bonus you get on them before the breakthrough is almost nonexistent anyways. It really is just the text written on them that is important. I'm not sure why this is a topic of contention. The amount they give is negligible and they are finite, unlike gear. The other option would make them all the same, but we know that would be issues on wanting to rank up future versions of the adaptive ones.

EDIT: In case anyone is thinking the same thing, I don't mean the breakthrough bonuses that give like 1-2% increase to your stats. I'm talking about the gear stats that they have on them that you gain when equipping them.

I respectfully disagree with those suggestions.

You are seriously underestimating people's need to have those "insignificant" numbers. People are REALLY attached to their min/maxing routines, and any disruption in that is not good.

I'm with you on adjusting the item level on gear and adjusting CR relevancy.

Talking with others, I'll retract it. I do still think it should be removed, but I understand the concept of cost and how heated one can get. I can't edit my original post.

Idk I'm up for if content reflects that change

I would agree with removing stats from the Adaptive Augments but not from Artifacts. I see it as a problem that people max the adaptive augments out and then feed them to the next content augments. A lot of the old content required those special abilities to make the elite content playable and people trashing them just makes it that much harder to find a successful group. There are already stats that grow with the character on origin augments no reason to double up the concept with adaptive ones. If they got rid of the stats and the ability to feed these to the new augments I would be happy.

So very many problems getting alts through this solo. I doubt the devs will spend the time to do so but yeah it's a thing that should be done.

Tiers are all different sizes so that's not a specific request. Just expand the CR Relevancy more then what's currently available the window is too small.

Please please add styles to this again. My alts need more clothes and I don't even know where the villain vendors are in the HOD.

Down in the pit's outer ring, near the meta entrance, I believe.

Agreed. Even a slight progression makes players feel they are accomplishing something. This is what a lot of us hate about crafting the OP gear. We do months of grinding and get nothing out of it until the very end.

I used to do old content all the time for the Token of Merits. But it has been years since they added any feats. So some of us have several stacks that have been sitting in our banks. And have no motivation to do older content.

This same lack on interest would happen to Aug/Art if you remove these stats.

I disagree. There are a lot of things wrong with this game which should be fixed first; those above suggestions will not solve those problems, but rather create new ones.

I appreciate the thoughts, but I'm afraid it would be a "No, thank you" from me as well.

While power creep does exist, it's largely irrelevant. It trivializes lower level content, but lower level content has no reason to return to. If anything, it just seems to serve to make certain feats attainable eventually by using further gear in replacement of skill. And I'm actually okay with that, because feats are not just achievements for bragging rights; they are progression tied to stat increases and a certain amount of those are somewhat factored into the scaling of future content.

Not to mention, there is Elite level content. Even a best-gear, max-artifacts, capped SP, character cannot necessarily muscle their way through Elites on stats alone. In DCUO, moreso than any other MMO I've played in the past 20 years, mechanics matter. No amount of gear can overcome certain mistakes. "If you will not lunge Zeus, then he is going to kill us all." Some people simply cannot handle following mechanics, even when a bright red text prints it bold across their screen.

As for CR relevency, you just need to look at it in a different light. In other MMOs, XP is the currency of progression. And XP has a relevency window. When you kill an enemy too many levels below you, it doesn't give XP. It's considered to be "trivial". In DCUO, XP isn't really used for anything more than the 1-30 gameplay, which is pretty much a poor quality tutorial. Progression is mostly about gear. So with the same attitude, that gear progression does not occur if you're killing things trivial to you. The gear they drop will not be upgrades, and they stop dropping currency that could be used for upgrades. It's not any more complicated than that.

Trivial encounters should not grant endgame rewards.

I'm going to say, you probably only read the first half of my post, not my points of change that I'm proposing. As I addressed everything you talked about being the downside.

It's not irrelevant, it makes for less of the game being played and I don't think it would ever go away. Power Creep is part of all games, but it's how it's handled that makes for the longevity of the game. To alleviate it is what this post is about. At T9, you'd still be able to smash lower content, but you wouldn't be able to smash literal content that was released 3 months prior. That's what needs to be fixed, which links to a point below on CR Relevancy.

This is no different from any of my points and I didn't include it because it doesn't matter. The difficulty wouldn't change and eventually you would still out gear it. It would then be a skill based system that goes for the more skilled players. As it is right now, it still falls into the category of power creep. How many "elite" players complain that the content is too easy. Well, power creep. The devs can toss as many face melting mechanics into the mix, but doesn't change the fact that we can just out gear it right away.

I'm going to reiterate, it suffers the same problem as the rest of the game and you will still reach a point where you out gear it.

Two points here that proves you didn't read my post.

1. I'm not asking for it to be removed. I never said to remove it. I said to open it up to two tiers, not 2-3 DLCs. If they crush the stats and brought back a tier system, it would be no issue to do this. You still can't go smash Area 51 for full marks. You can't farm X content that takes 2 minutes of time to get marks. There would be no buying high level gear and suddenly you are max. Plus, it still would prevent you from leveling quickly if you are new. As you still have to purchase vendor gear to go up. (Which are CR locked btw, which prevent you from buying the best gear anyways.)
2. It would also make the two tiers more relevant to the players. The current tier has the end game marks and source marks, the previous has the source marks. Both take time to complete. Nothing would be trivialized.

Also, Source Marks isn't endgame rewards. Never was. It's the currency for everything else. The only endgame rewards are the marks you get from current content, which buys you the best gear. Which you can earn, btw, from the event.

Thankfully that has changed in the Legion episode, and it's awesome.

Some of the things you're suggesting won't stop power creep. As you said power creep is a problem in every game. I'd argue one of the biggest contributers to power creep is artifacts, but thats not to say that stats should be removed from them.

It wouldn't, but it would bring the game closer together. They did stat crushing during the stats revamp. Which allowed them to do more meaningful content. But it's short lived, because they still do giant leaps when it comes to gear thus causing even greater leaps when it comes to content. My idea isn't new to the game and would allow for small baby steps and actually help the leveling process.

I'm sad I can't edit my original post. I still think they don't need stats on them, just the bonus wording from ranking them up, but as other posted, it would cause outrage and problems. I since would retract that idea.

+1 on the first half of your comment.


+1000000 for "And the relevancy window needs a change badly. Current and previous tier would be perfect."