Power Creep, Stat Crushing, and CR Relevancy

+1 from me. I'm indifferent about #3 but I definitely agree with the rest.

Well someone said earlier, I think it was that Khalon fellow, he said something to the effect of if stats were removed, they'd be useless until you get them to x rank, which is not a good thing and I tend to agree with him on that.

That's not what the thread is about. And I have since retract my statement.

I don't know why your posts came in later.

Thank you for your polite response.

I have two questions for you:

1. Can you state what needs to be fixed that isn't caused by the topic?
2. Can you elaborate on what problems would arise if these were done? (Aside from the artifacts/augment one. I've since retract that one.)

IF these changes were made, what does it accomplish? Will it make us play more? What is the incentive to an end-game player to go back to earlier content?

Power creep, as you said, is unavoidable. It goes hand in hand with progression. In most cases, we fight to get stronger stats and the devs create stronger instances as a result. As time passes, previous instances will be left behind; that's unavoidable.

Stat Crushing - that change they did to older instances during that major power overhaul is one, if not the only, thing that I just cannot get over from. Again, it goes back to the idea of Progression. The Time, Effort and money, and money is the least of it, that a player spent on this game; to get his toons up to a certain strength and ability. All of that to be halved, taken away, for the simple reason that the progression had come too high. It is wrong in my point of view, because if they did it once, they will do so again. At that point, what is the point? Why are we playing for stats, if it will all be reduced, so that older content is challenging again.

Cr Relevancy - Don't agree with it but I don't think it will go away. I think it exists as an economic crutch. They do not want an overabundant source for Source Marks, it messes up the value of Source marks.

So again, there are no incentives or rewards, as exists, that will make end-game players go back to earlier content.

Is that the question? What rewards will provide incentive? How to increase the instances available? How do they make them challenging?

Here's a proposal I made. In the game we already have these systems in place: something that boosts a player stats to end-game and a rotating instance with increased reward.

Create a code that will randomly choose an instance and boost the stats of that instance to end-game content; health, damage, defense. All of those are simple identifiable numbers that can be boosted and would instantly make any instance a challenge once again. It doesn't affect our stats, our augments, or artifacts that we worked and/or paid for. Boost a solo/duo, an alert, and raid.

Rewards - will be the current currency. Right now, if the Devs continue with the template of a dlc, we are getting brand new open worlds, new maps but with very limited number of content. If they are going for quality over quantity with their resources, this automatic system will save on their DLC resources in the long term.

So let them make the new DLC this way but have a system that randomly picks up a solo,duo, alert and raid from our lists and boost it up to our level and have it reward with the appropriate currency.

I think this solves the power creep issue you mentioned, makes the limitation of cr relevancy minimal and certainly avoids Stat Crushing. It gives end-game players a reason to play these instances.

I think where things have gotten a bit out of hand and not intentionally is the adding of stats to every thing we do. The adaptive augments, the artifacts, the base gen mods, the tac mods, etc. Theres so many way to pull stats to your character and its designed that way to keep the player engaged to wanting to participate in those activities, even if its a minor stat increase, its there. But what that does is just create a huge pile on affect as we progress further and further through the game, our stats just become so bloated. But thats really an issue in any mmo. You want to make your players feel strong but at what detriment to the rest of the game. You dont want players to feel too weak either. So here we are. Im not sure theres any one answer to solving it.

Slowing the power creep helps prolong content. To where they don't have to just make new content added 2/3rd of the way in to bring them back. It brings it back in line to the original development of the game within the Replay Badge umbrella that caused the game to change to DLC tiers, not real tiers.

I don't understand this reasoning? You felt weakened when everything was brought down? It didn't change the amount of damage you could do to a same CR you were at. The only difference was the number, instead of 10k, it was 1k. It still did a the same percentage of health. The problem comes down to what happened after T4. These jumps around makes the game very awkward to progress, especially for players that started later or were not around during it. Things need to work, or it really is just a game of one DLC content.

CR Relevancy is an antiquated system that should not have been so drastic of change, but it is what it is. Short of introducing another mark system, they just need to rework it. Introducing tiers being closer together, does allow for alleviating the reason why they have it so harsh to begin with.

That is a huge problem and you know it. But I am not going to argue this one, you've already acknowledge it in your comment directly above.

It's one of the questions, not the sole reason for this thread. But thank you for adding to it. It helps.

It doesn't for two reasons:

1. The progression is still leaps and bounds. You just now have one new instance to run.
2. It's no different than the free events, which reward both gear and marks.

Neither of these things address the leaps that is taken to entice new content and rewards being earned. The problems is like skipping 3 steps, when running up stairs. It is quicker, makes for more muscles, but eventually you run out of stairs that can challenge you.
Your idea is interesting, but I feel it would be far more difficult to implement, especially on the T0-T4 era of content. Where they had to set values manually in both CR Differential days and with the Stats Revamp. My idea is literally just adjusting the values down and bringing post T4 instances closer together. The leaps and bounds is an issue and it brings longevity to the game.

As I pointed out to inferno, the number percentages are the same, it's just the values that are altered. Bringing things closer together. There is still progression and power creep. You still have access to all the bonuses and stat gains based on percentages and what not. Just narrower in tiers. Allowing the content to not get out of hand going forward and opening up the tiers to allow for more content.

I'm sorry, I'm trying to understand the context of the initial post. Are you trying to do these changes in regards to the 3 relevant DLCs to our current cr? I got confused with your mention of T4 and thought you were referring to all instances in regards to players at end-game.

The proposal I had is not quite similar to the event version as it shares the reward with the regular and/or elite version. It would basically add to the number of instances available to end game players for other sources of the current currency because in the next DLC we will only have 1 daily instance. Also, I was trying to make older instances become useful to end tier players.

I think you're initial post was trying to deal with the dlcs that are relevant to the player's current CR and not about the huge number of instances that are basically without purpose to the rest of the population?

I'm not a fan of stat crushing, flattening, clamping whatever spin you want to give any of it. I'm quite happy to have them create periodic event instances of old content if you're looking to relive the good ol' days, but not go and make sweeping changes game wide to all content just to make older content more difficult. If you're going back to old content then you're supposed to be able to stomp them that's what progression is.

The last time they attempted any of that it was a hot mess that ultimately just drove players away. It shouldn't happen again.

I wouldnt mind seeing older content get random daily and weekly instances buffed to end game level.

It's game wide. But if they want to just do it from AF3 on, to make it easier for them, it would follow the same result on a smaller scale going forward.

When I say T4 onward, that's when they started to do jumps in stats. All the kings horses and all the kings men, could not return to the old way of progressing. Meaning, they had to develop with replays in mind. The main issue was, the cat went out of the bag with stat increases. T5 was massive content jump, while the gear for players was negligible at best. But because of that, pushed players away, as there wasn't any help. So they brought content down and increased the gear even more. This created a cycle that never got addressed over the years. The closest was stats revamp, but it only fixed CR Differential, not the main creep that was happening.

It's a novel approach, and I would be all for it, but I don't see it working because they would have to manually adjust each piece for balance. They wont do that for little updates like this. They would maybe do it, if it was from AF3 and up.

I'm thinking game wide, doesn't matter for end player or new player. The longevity of the game is in concern and if they just power through like they've been, it's just going to hurt in the long run or result in another balance pass.

In other words you only saw half of my point and I can see why you reacted the way you did. This topic is definitely a trigger topic that shuts down reasoning because of what actually happened with the updates over the years.

Proxy, you of all people surprise me with this post. You didn't read the topic and just wrote your response. I didn't expect you to agree with me, but I did expect something more meaningful than to compare stat crushing with clamping.

I never said power creep would be fixed and that we would be making the entire game available. Never did and I really am surprised you assumed that.

No, I was just pointing out I'm not a fan of any of it including all your original post, no disrespect

But it's not the same thing and was kind of upsetting that you would lump it together.

I probably echo inferno to some extent, what are you actually hoping to accomplish, from an end player experience, what are you hoping will be different? What is wrong really with the way the game is functioning right now?

I answered his question. If you read the initial post, you would know. It's how the game jumps way too fast upward and basically making a single DLC tier. They jump up way too fast and it's not necessary to do. Especially when they do have marks for each new dlc to prevent skipping. It would also help alleviate the problem that came up with how much content per DLC, like that other thread states we have.

There are a lot of things that what I'm proposing corrects.

I'll just be brutally honest, I don't really care as long as I can still ROFLstomp low content should I choose to do so, as for anything else I'm neutral.

I just can't stand the idea of anything that trivializes a players progression by artificially trying to create or should I moreso say re-create a challenge in content that I either don't want a challenge in any more or I've progressed past and deserve to be able to ROFLstomp.

If that wasn't really the intent of your post or objective then apologies

I'm with you on wanting to feel super, I'm trying to promote longevity of the game. I don't like stat clamping and I know the devs agree, that's why the free event versions brings up to entry level, not down ala seasonal events. Once you get past that, your stats take over and you do more damage.

Agreed with part about decreasing stats and expanding cr relevancy. But not agreed with completly removing stats from artifacts. Also about DLC specific augs... I wish this type of augments was removed from the game at all. It's just a cash grab(yeah, we need seals for high ranks breakouts... but we can't earn them without spending real money and that's repeat every DLC.) Besides that ruins expirience in content.

Just no. Power creep is fine. The less time I’m at the mercy of this playerbase, the better. I’m extra cranky right now because it’s been so stingy with OP catalysts, I’m not getting the month off from group content that I usually enjoy around this point of the episode’s lifespan.

Hi 9001BPM,

My proposal would actually help with future content to not be about inflated stats to increase difficulty. The player base toxicity is nothing we can do about it, but this would alleviate a lot of the issue that I know you experience.

As for the catalysts... yeah... I never get the skylands one.