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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9824938" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Well, I would say that usually when "power creep" is used as a game design term, it's very specifically in a negative sense.Mostly because it's usually used in reference to the whole of the game. Moreover, when it is used, it's usually only within a single game's scope. E.g. in MOBAs like League of Legends, it's generally expected that new champions (playable characters) are going to be stupidly overpowered, because Riot Games wants to make money, and they get money when people spend cash to buy a champion while it's still new. It's rare--not impossible, but rare--for new champions to be noticeably weaker than average, but most cases aren't like that. Most cases, the new hotness is in fact some amount of power creep--because it's pushing the (if you'll allow a mixed metaphor) Overton window of character power further toward the high-power end. In LoL's case, usually what happens is, a character debuts OP, gets nerfed a few weeks later, gets de-nerfed a few weeks after that, gets re-nerfed but to a lesser degree, and finally settles down into somewhere more or less normal. This helps forestall long-term power creep--but it's not impossible. For example, although I wasn't playing at the time, there was apparently a period of LoL's lifespan where "assassin" characters, aka glass cannon types who need to be careful lest they get obliterated before they can obliterate their enemies, were almost as good at tanking as actual tanky characters. So...I mean what's the point of playing a beefy character like Malphite, Garen, or Sion when you could instead play an almost-as-beefy Katarina (the stereotypical Stripper Ninja) or the like?Particularly in long-form video games, "power creep" almost always means that late-era stuff outclasses early-era stuff to a severe degree. Each individual step wasn't big, hence the "creep", but the cumulative effect is to leave early options blown away by later ones. That....doesn't realy apply to 5.5e, because it's a new game. Yes, you can choose to play 5.0 options in 5.5e, but you do so at your own risk, and the books kinda tell you that. Hence, in this context, calling it "power creep" is basically only saying "more options got stronger than got weaker with this update", but...that was specifically the intent? It's not like Wizards was concealing the fact that they were addressing balance issues in 5.0. That's one of the biggest reasons 5.5e got made in the first place.</blockquote>

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