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I think the biggest 'power creep' is experience. Your entire party could have worse dps than another but if they know how to play the raid/strike or fractal they won't wipe as much as people who know their rotation off by heart but just ignore mechanics.
current sword/axe slb with proper gear, boons, conditions, and food is 25.7k on golem after pressing 1 once and then taking your hands off of the keyboard
I completely agree that accessibility is a net positive. Raising the floor and ceiling together is a good thing too! The part where you mentioned about front loading AA(which I think anet has definitely leaned into) helping less exp players focus on mechanics, leaves me wondering; If the bosses phase or die faster due to power creep, players see less mechanics or skip them entirely. I see it pretty often in less experienced PUGs and even in experienced PUGs where players just don't learn or know mechanics because they don't see them or aren't affected by them. Is it a good thing that even though more players are getting into the content, they aren't actually engaging with it in terms of mechanics? Wondering what you think about this Nike :)
@@NikeonaBike hope raids don't get to dungeon level trivial. If people end up abandoning raids that would be pretty sad for the scene and the game's future
The example of people killing VG with ease 5 years from now is funny when you consider that the boss would be like 12 years old at that point LOL. This shit happens in literally every other MMO, and it's a net positive because it makes it easier to get a group going for the older content.
I agree that raising the floor is good and makes raids, etc more accessible. At the same time I agree, skill expression remains the same *within the class/spec/build* because the ceiling is raised simultaneously. However skill expression does not remain the same within the content. If the fights become much shorter due to constant power creep, mechanics aren't a threat anymore, because they don't happen, you just blast through the boss. Now, I'm not saying that we're at that point yet, but we're slowly getting towards it. I guess my ideal scenario would be power creep so that the encounters are accessible, but have the CMs still hard enough that they remain "unaffected" by the power creep. Though this again is an issue with accessibility, but I think that's the middle ground I'd prefer.
Totally agree! I think either what you suggest or possibly Anet actually implements an easy/beginner mode and scales up older normal and CM encounters to match power creep
Probably the simplest way to put it is that anet disguises the vertical progression of gw2 while every other MMO just lays it out in the open. The funny thing is the jade bot offensive/defensive buffs are THE biggest vertical progression mechanic added to gw2 open world but no one seems to actually mind because its not blatantly obvious. As for vertical progression itself, as long as the gear doesn't go past ascended in stats I don't think I would really mind much. As much as everyone praises this game's horizontal progression, it becomes hard for any company to keep your general MMO players interested if they don't see their character power level increase in some form, even if its not a huge leap.
The Jade Bot issue was pretty hotly discussed when the info came out, but was fairly quickly dismissed by most because "it didn't increase damage, so it's not really an issue", completely missing the point.
That was really refreshing to hear this take from someone in the "hardcore" community. I wholeheartedly agree with everything you said. Especially at 8:43 - "But quite frankly, who cares?"
Really insightful and thought provoking take. The gear and build progression with GW2 has been an interesting one and I agree that it’s almost certain that some new change (potentially with this current expansion) will make some big power creep from some sort of ability or power being put on a new feature of gear/mastery/etc., but I still hope they consider adjusting older encounters to be challenging. I don’t mean from a “I don’t want noobs clearing Vale Guard” perspective, but from the point of still keeping it relative enough for new players to trying it instead of it just becoming irrelevantly mindless. Should be interesting either way though.
Pretty much hit the nail on the head, especially your point about auto-attacks being buffed. As much as people (myself included) memed on power rifle mech when it was a thing, it got a lot of people into doing instanced content.
Being able to random pug 10-man VG no problem in 5-10 years might not be impressive anymore, but presumably there would be new content in all that time to match the vertical progression so it's even less of a problem.
As one of those filthy casuals, I can confirm that power creep is awesome. I have 4k hours in gw2, done from beta and two long breaks. I used to totally hate the difficulty of some maps and now with my last playthrough and low rotation class (Mechnaist). i love all areas and even story, which I previously hated. They got my money for expansion and some cosmetics. well done a-net. :)
I think it’s pretty good, casual vertical progression is fine, like you said gear vertical progression would be a problem, but adding mounts with an xpac as the vertical progression, or allowing access to more weapons…..none of that is out of the reach of the more casual player, so the power creep in that situation is perfectly fine
I agree on power creep and vertical progression but at the same the thing often said about GW2 that your build stays relevant even after a long break seems to also somehow hold true, no?
How did you came out with the idea of not liking power creep theres something to do with ego? I hate power creep because i like the game, and when older bosses are exploded in 10 seconds and when game mechanics are ignored because you can out dps or out heal them i don't get to actually play the game, the bosses become punching bags and gameplay quality decreases
I've been doing central Tyria map completion on a Soulbeast and having done it multiple times years ago pre-xpacs, elite specs and skill changes/adjustments over the years make it crystal clear that power creep can be (and in this case is) a thing in a game touting horizontal progression. It's comical how I can steamroll veteran and even champion mobs in the core zones when such mobs in xpac areas would be moderately to very challenging. Bit of copium: With all specs getting access to all weapons (and adding other weapons in the future), perhaps that will slow down a bit of power creep in the future once the absolute mayhem I expect SotO launch balance to be regardless of beta weekends. I'm fine with it whether it does or not. Figure there's likely some new stat combinations in the works that may make new builds possible or revitalize old builds or such. Power creep is fine when in moderation. Wouldn't want it to devolve into 1 spam for CM level content or such, though.
We wouldn't need to raise the skill floor in the first place if Arenanet added more difficulty settings to endgame content like raids that pander to a larger spread in player skill, like Fractals successfully do. Raid CMs are marginally more difficult than NMs, and some raids dont even have a CM version. I would say this was the mistake to begin with. The EoD strikes do a much better job at this with easier NMs and harder CMs, but HT CM is a good example where we could use a third diffuclty mode in between the NM and CM. In my opinion making game modes more accessible should come in the form of am easy difficultly setting rather than with Power Creep.
Rotations are priority skill usage. Not sure what you mean. The way every optimized rotation works is using the most impactful skills as often as possible.
Well, my first raid clears was using Mukluk low intensity builds and i guess for new players is the best way to go, because you can totally pay attention on mechanics and when you are confortable with the mechanics you can try harder builds.
id always advise trying to use a "real" build first because there is a danger of learning with training wheels and not being able to adapt to the transition. But if using a real build isnt effective, trying a low intensity build might be your best bet
Your points about buffing autoattacks remind me of a convo from that leaked discord fiasco (I think it was actually between you and Solar?) about increasing the time it takes for auto chains to reset, allowing for a skill or two to be thrown in without losing out on the backloaded autos. I wonder if concerns about lowering the skill ceiling are holding back even that change?
I'm a new player right now and I really don't think you want a meta with increased focus on basic attacks because basic attacks are boring. They aren't cathartic or interactive so there's no enjoyment. The gameplay is already kinda dated as is and not very exciting to a new player in the year 2024. The frantic skill rotations that develop later in the game (and trying to keep the rotation going when under pressure) is kinda the only thing giving this gameplay system legs. Otherwise the combat is really dull and slow and not really competitive with modern options. In fact I think if you want to power creep the game (which you probably shouldn't since it tends to make gameplay less interactive) you really want to do the opposite and lower ability cooldowns. If you have short enough cooldowns to the point that you always have at least a couple ready to go at any time, that actually creates MORE meaningful choices in combat because at any moment you will need to actively and instantly optimize your rotation for each individual moment, rather than just going through predefined motions that rip through every ability in a line as they become available. Right now, the best rotations are something that are practiced and rigid. If they were more flexible because there were more abilities available to do at any moment, the best rotations would be more intuited or improvised to fit the given moment of gameplay. That honestly sounds like a higher skill ceiling and more fun experience to me.
I feel the way GW2 powercreep doing if fine ... just the balancing of each class (haha) I feel like I can't customize some of my favorite class into what I want to play and not suffer and it feel like it is my fault to not want to play meta. but that's it I'm not game dev what do I know.
I really dont think simply adding new content and new ways to progress is necessarily "vertical" progression. Yes having mounts is better than not having them and having elite specs is better than not having them... and? Of course having progressed more things would give you more benefits. We are playing an MMO. But do I really need these things for 99% of the game? No they also come from simply playing the game rather than grinding for them. I dont really think Im better in the content I've been doing for years because I have more masteries but rather in that i've become better myself.
@@NikeonaBike im saying that simply having progression doesnt mean we have vertical progression. I do agree that having more things makes the game easier but im saying that not having them doesnt gate keep the content
@@Back0 nothing about vertical progression requires content to gate keep you out. You literally say "it gets easier with them" so id say its time to admit it for what it is.
In vertical progression you make old content obsolete. In horizontal progression old content stays relevant. Elite Specializations are literally definition of Horizontal progression. New expansions wont make old expansions obsolete. The 4th expansion adding stuff for Sky Scale is vertical progression but it does not make the old expansion obsolete because you still unlock stuff for Sky Scale by doing the masteries. Examples from Vertical Expansion: You level character to max level. You gear the character to best items possible. You do prep grind to gain access to the new raid. You level all crafting to max. You collect tons of utility items for raids. You complete all zones fully. You do Dailies daily. New expansion hits and all that is now obsolete and pointless. Anything you did is no longer a use. Only thing you keep is the gold you made. The first items from new expansion are better than your old items. You unlock more skills for your profession. Your level cap is rised. You no longer do the old raids or dungeons. Any prep you made is useless as it wont help in new expansion. You can get more gold from new expansion. All crafting you did is now trash becasue they are not the best items no longer. World of Warcraft makes all you did in previous expansion fully obsolete beside few things and any time they made a system they scrap it for the next expansion. It would be like only the most resent Elite Specializations were relevant as the power greep on them is so much that anything else is just bad ... OH WAIT Mechanist is superior to Scrapper and Holosmith 😏and Virtuosa is superior to Mirage and Chronomancer. But not really, you can still play Heal Scrapper if you want but it feels bad man to have to leap finishers or use F5 off cooldown.
Elite specializations was very stricktly vertical progression when the first expansion launched; a vast majority of previous builds because obsolete overnight, simply because the elite specs where better than the basic ones. That the following expansions expanded (mostly) horizontaly on the system doesn't diminish that fact. In fact HoT had another spot of vertical progression by making all Sinister gear obsolete by releasing the Viper's prefix. And PoF did the exact same thing when it introduced Harrier's, making all previous healing gear useless. The only reason it didn't feel like vertical progression is that gear, as a whole, is either cheap acquire, or cheap to stat-swap.
@@AraliciaMoran Few things. 1) Horizontal progression is compounded by many vertical progressions which stay relevant trough the game's life 👍 Y E S vertical progressions are part of horizontal progression. Edit1: 2) Guild Wars 2 is skill based MMORPG. Based on your skill level you can do hardest content with core professions. At the same time people still use CORE stats, the additional stats just opened more builds. Harrier's didn't make all gear useless. Givers are still used to tank. Magi's is still used in some cases to heal. Usually they are mix and not so common. Full Celestial is always better for healers than Harriers what it lacks in healing it makes up in DPS. You can run 20k dps Heal Tempest if you want 😏 And even in core game who used Nomand's at all? New stat combinations just opened more builds to be played. People are optimizing the best build that works in all cases. Harriers are popular healing stats because builds handed to you tell you to take them. You can run full Givers haelers that is fine. You can run Celestial healer that is also fine. You can even run full DPS as "Healer" in some cases and people are not smart enought to notice 😂 Gorseval full dps Tempest using Water Elemental to heal which is 6k base heal! you can pull over 20k benchmark dmg easily while being a healer with Alacrity if you want. GW2 is SKILL BASED! It is up to you. Giver and Sinister are not obsolete, they are just less usefull. I do agree it forces people to prance to other stats but if you were running full givers in HoT you still can run full givers in EoD 😂 you just are the main tank usually and 99% of PUG does not give a duck if you run lower dps as a healer. 3) Yes when Hearth of Throwns released the Elite Specializations were Vertical progression. When Path of Fire as well End of Dragons released Elite Specializations were Horizontal progression 😱 how can that be! you focus on first expansion, yes it is true, but we now have three expansions and unlike other games the first expansion is still played a lot. There is actually argument going that if Sky Scale becomes even better it makes every other mount that much more obsolete 😉 that I do give to you for sure. That would be example of vertical progression expanding the Sky Scale with new content that makes it better which makes other mounts less good because they are not Sky Scale. But that is just one prance of the Horizontal progression! Guild Wars 2's horizontal progression is made from many vertical progressions: WvW PvP Dungeons Dragon Response Missions Fractals Raids Strikes (Dragon Storm is a strike, yes?) Map Evenets World Bosses Bounties Stories Masteires Mounst Skiff Glider Achievements Collections Gear Grind: Ascended and Legendries Elite Specializations Runes and Relics as new system. Infusions Miniatures Cosmetics Jumping Puzzles Racing Exploring & 100% map completion All these things listed above are under vertical progressions by themselves and together they make the Guild Wars 2's Horizontal Progression. 🤔 I'm 100% sure I'm missing some things I don't know and you probably want to argue that jumping puzzles are not vertical progressions. Yes they are. You slowly work on them to complete them and then you move to next one. Expansions added jumping puzzles. Some of the jumping puzzles are made obsolete thanks to mounts that may allow some skips. Azura's JP can be skipped fully for examples 👍 But they did try to place no mount no glide zone on jumping puzzles and there are some challenging ones 🤤
... wow. Your argumentation is all over the place. Please try to te be intelligible instead of sprinkling emojis as if they were a way to make your points for you. 1) This makes absolutely no sense. Vertical progression is a process of increasing the highest level of power; Horizontal progression is a process of diversification, granting more, but not more powerful, options. Few systems can be purely vertical or purely horizontal, but most will tend toward one form of progression; this tendance can shift over time; but vertical progression is not part of horizontal progression. 2) Your opinion that Celestial is always better than Harrier's tells me that you have either no idea of how raids works, or that your a confusing Healers and Healtanks. And while skills are a important part of gameplay in GW2, very few players will willingly hamstrung themselves when newer better options shows up. New prefixes, while supposed to be elements of horizontal progression, can very much become vertical progression if their stat spread is a lot better than existing ones. 3) Has I said in my previous message : the fact that the elite spec system is currently used as a mean of horizontal progression doesn't change the fact that it originally was vertical progression. This show that Arenanet has always been okay with adding a bit of vertical progression to the game; they're just smart enough to not add too much of it at a time, and to not make it impossibly hard to obtain. I have no idea what you attempted to show by listing a bunch of features of the game. That the game is wide ? Sure, but that has little to do with either vertical or horizontal progression.
I agree with most of what you've said but Anet needs to be careful to not diminish the achievements of its long term players... at least not to the point of complete irrelevance. Many MMOs fail in this regard and I'd hate to see GW2 follow this pattern. They should give us something prestigious to work toward or something meaningful to keep. For example, how bad would it feel if Harvest Temple CM became trivial over time? New prestigious rewards don't have to be a skill ceiling based encounter necessarily, but just something that we can be proud of that isn't diminished over time. Legendaries are still sort of prestigious, but even those are becoming increasingly easier to obtain. You should be rewarded for being a better or more committed player. It shouldn't be locked behind endless vertical progression either, but something prestigious needs to exist for the game's end game community.
In fairness, Harvest Temple CM now is significantly easier than it was when it launched. And also unfortunately so many people have bought the title that its totally diminished the achievement for people who did it fairly.
I did HTCM fairly and I don't care that overtime it stops mattering. I still have the personal memories of my time progging it and that imo should be good enough.
I welcome more power creep. Once you have done daily's for long enough you just want to blast through the content and having to find competent people every single time gets annoying.
@@NikeonaBike just no good decent li builds from what I've found. and all the current dps options posted on hardstruck like weaver and catalyst are like playing the piano, coming from someone that has a brain injury anyways
As a competitive person that plays games to improve on my mechanical skill and learn new stuff, I have a different view of how things should go. I really hated the new LI builds when they came out, but realised its a necessary thing for the games health. I agree that everyone needs to be able to enjoy all the content no matter how they go about it hence power creep doesn't bother me that much. What does bother me is that there is no way to express the knowledge and mechanical skill in this scourge/virt/mech LI meta.. I could be playing the hardest characters in the game and end up doing the exact same as someone eating and doing a cvirt rota at the same time. IMO anet should seriously consider having a solution for both sides, because without my side gw2 will just end up very dull and boring to play and to watch at least for me. Not sure what the solution is but hope they find it because I've been playing the game for a long time and I'd hate to leave it behind me. :/
"If this is unnaceptable to you just quit now" ...Well, I'm just cruising the game until Riot releases its MMO. Didn't finish the EoD campaign until March 2023 and I didn't even entered in the new map (Gyala Delve); probably won't buy SotO anyway but thanx for the advice. Is not like I bother with vertivcal progression, but I don't want the monetization that Relics will bring up to the game and the new expansion also brings nothing to PvP/WvW, which are my main game modes.
@@NikeDnT We still don't known (but we will in a month). My educated guess is that ANet will implement a system similar to what they did with the gathering tools: we had a system which worked and they replaced it with a new one in which aside from the regular tools we have unbreakeable gathering tools which not only have much faster animations than the regular ones but also can equip glyphs which provide so much improvements in efficiency that they are MANDATORY if you plan to make decent gold through gathering, and all those enhanced tools and glyphs are obtained mostly though the gemstore. That was both the introduction of a inconvenience (not using them puts players in a clear disadvantage) and the selling of the solution. I think that Relics Will open the gates to the implementation of similar monetization pratices: is a new item slot, which removes the 6th effect from runes (instantly creating an inconvenience, which has to be re-purchased) and ANet will probably find out ways to monetize for “the privilege” of getting back a feature which we already had for free.
@@NikeonaBike Save the gold, I don’t need it. But please, take a look at the roots of my mistrust about the true reasons why Relics will be implemented. Check this issues: 1) We didn’t have new runes in EoD nor recent episodic content. Most of the runes in the game have been retired from PvP, most of stat choices removed and sigils neutered enough that you barely see half dozen of amulets, runes and sigils in use across 27 specs. So the path have been towards simplification and homogeneization for years and years. 2) Most of the runes have the right stats: Monk and Water runes provide healing power, not condition damage, Nightmare runes provide condition damage, not thoughness nor vitality, Scholar and Strenght provide power, etc. So no one needs “better” stats arrangement nor high levels of min-maxing (hell, the power creep is already through the roof, top performers break 25k dps at range using 3 buttons, etc.) 3) The game has a “spaghetti code” so convoluted that current programers try to avoid to touch it as much as theey can, specially for old content and features. My main (Rev) has so many first day bugs that after so much time is clear that Anet will never fix them, due lack of knownledge and resources to do it. The game is full of bugs, some of them game-breaking. And with each new large patch tons of unforeseeen effects arise. ...And YET, despite we didn’t have new runes in ages, despite the metas use only a very small niche of the ones available, despite more power creep isn’t needed, and despite including new item slots arises risks of new unforseen bugs, they CHOSE to make the game more complex, and invalidate the legendary runes main appeal in the proccess…. WHY? Why to take such large risks? To sell us convenience. Is the only logic reason. I don’t known the exact mechanics, but the same way they chose to make EoD masteries character exclusive instead of account shared to push altholism (which in my case ended ikn the opposite: I did the story with my main and my 17 alts never touched it nnor have any jade bot access) they will push Relics so players have to re-grind dozens of 6th rune features across their alts just to stay the same. And Relics probably will have SKINS which will remain mostly behind the gemstore paywall. So: more time wasted in grinding old features and more money if you want your new trinket to look cool, instead of just adding NEW CONTENT so players can pay for contentr instead of paying for recovering convenience lost. I’m not saying that this is exactly what will happen with Relics, but my educated guess is that will be something in the lines of this. Because the concept of Relics is a total nonsense. And is their prerrogative, but just a small clarification: I used to love Blizzard and DICE games, which used to deliver polished games with tons of fun. Until they gradually extracted that fun. Now ; currently has been more that 7 years since the last time I spent a dime in a Blizzard game and 10 years since the last time I bought a game from DICE. The moment GW2 stops being fun and becomes a second job, the moment I’ll stop playing it forever...
"ANet's job is to sell expacs" feels... cynical? Like, I realize they gotta make money, but from my perspective, the job of a game company is to make good games, and making money exists in service to that goal.
The main job of any company is to make money so they can survive. We stay because the game is good, but ultimately if they had to choose, any company would go for making money
Well if part of the way they have to sell expac is to find a way to make the game accessible to players who are less focused on the skill-orientated aspects of the game, then what's the problem? As long as they don't remove skill expression and choice from players who ARE skill-orientated this can in the end only be a good thing for the game. Like Nike said, if your enjoyment of the game depends on other people not being able to access content because they play differently and not because the core game mechanics and systems are compelling then it's really an individual issue... Let the noobs pump! Let the game population thrive! Let the hardcore community have more (hopefully thought out and balanced) toys to push the skill expression to new heights!
Imo it doesn't matter what they do with vertical/horizontal progression. They won't retain new players unless they make rewards in the game actually feel worth it. Very few people want months long grinds for a single piece of gear that isnt even a stat upgrade. That's the least interesting content possible.
GW2 in a tough spot with rewards, there is very little way to make rewards interesting in the game because the cash shop has a monopoly on all the good ideas like mount skins. Gear progression as rewards is a non-starter obviously, so it only leaves cosmetics and frankly those arent a huge motivator since most people don't go nuts to collect every new skin.
