Power Creep

I was reading about the level cap increasing from 60 to 70 in an online game, with many new possibilities/abilities. "How do people keep track of so many abilities at such high levels?" I thought. Then I realized yet another reason why I prefer simple games: "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Another version, about Japanese gardening, is "Your garden is not complete until there is nothing else that you can remove."

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Games are sets of artificial (separated from the real world) constraints, even games as "loosey-goosey" in rules as RPGs. Players agree to use and abide by these constraints. The best players are usually those who cope best with those constraints.

"Power Creep virtually always leads to a Broken Base, with the most ‘conservative’ players stating that the new unbalanced content is an insult to the original game (which might be true or not, depending on the case)." --TV Tropes

Good play comes not from having lots of things you can do, many of them really “OP” (overpowered), but from making good use of what you've got. Another case of creativity benefitting from constraints.

Power creep is a common online (video) game problem that we can see in tabletop RPGs. The cause isn't online play, it's the frequent changes and additions to rules and to "content". New "stuff" is more attractive when it's better than the old stuff (duh!), so that's what the makers produce, and over time the entire game sees an increase in power, in what the players can do. (See “The Dilemma of the Simple RPG.”) This must be matched by an increase in the power of the opposition (more dangerous monsters) or the game becomes too easy. Some games handle the escalation better than others, but if the game was well-designed to begin with, power creep is likely to hurt the design.

Make no mistake, I like blowing things up with tac nukes - well, fireballs anyway - and megawatt lasers (lightning bolts). But when you get up into Timestops and other Immense Godlike Powers, I think the GAME suffers in favor of the POWER TRIP. And at the same time it becomes less skillful, less clever, and harder to GM.

I’ve often said, about 1e D&D, that the “sweet spot” for play was 3rd-9^th level. Early on players were too fragile (not a problem in recent editions), and later on the game couldn’t cope well with double-figure levels. It got to the point that (as in WW II armored battles) whoever fired first usually won, because the attack capabilities were so strong. This is especially obvious where surprise is involved. If a game then “power creeps” to where 9^th levels are as strong as 11^th used to be, the situation worsens.

Of course, many players and GMs don't care about skill or cleverness, they care about other things (among them, power trips). What I’ve said is descriptive, not prescriptive. I don't care how you run or play your game (unless I'm involved!).

contributed by Lewis Pulsipher

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Power creep in and of itself is not a problem. Someone earlier, maybe even the original poster, defined 'power creep' as being able to do at 9th level what previously required an 11th level character.

If that was the only problem, then power creep would just be a quirk. You could just change the encounters that you were expecting the party to overcome and overall gameplay wouldn't change. The real problem is that power creep is almost never so tidy. The real problem is (for example) being able to generate the damage of an 11th level character, while only being able to endure the damage of an 8th level character.

I have to agree with the earlier post on this one. If they come out with a super-wizard class that could do everything a regular wizard does, only better and at lower levels, then that's a pure case of power creep. If an old Magic card gave you a 1/1 goblin for one red mana, but a new Magic card gave you a 1/1 goblin with the haste ability for one red mana, then that's power creep.

What you're describing is more like the "Changing Gameplay Priorities" trope. The new way of playing is different than the old way of playing, and the balance changes as some things are buffed and others are nerfed, but it wouldn't really be a case of Power Creep in the traditional sense unless you introduce a new character using the new options and they completely outshine the existing characters because the new options are just better.

 

[Tony Vargas]

No, I'm talking about power creep in shows or literature.

As opposed to 'power creep' in RPGs....

...see? we should have called it 'power inflation.' ;P

That's essentially how a supers game like Champions or its various clones works. They can end up feeling rather generic, though, and doing the specs on a character can be a fair challenge, though.

"Generic system" would be a fair alternative to 'effects based,' if a bit less, well, specific.

I generally agree with your analysis. I would refine the "non-list games" category into "tactical effect" and "narrative wrapper" games.

"tactical" would be unduly limiting. And effect might be 'detect the presence of an element' or 'provide food to a multitude,' for instance. Not everything's combat.

What would a "narrative wrapper" be?

 

[Celebrim]

I have to agree with the earlier post on this one. If they come out with a super-wizard class that could do everything a regular wizard does, only better and at lower levels, then that's a pure case of power creep. If an old Magic card gave you a 1/1 goblin for one red mana, but a new Magic card gave you a 1/1 goblin with the haste ability for one red mana, then that's power creep.

Yes, but not for the reasons you necessarily think. If they come out with a super-wizard class that could do everything a regular wizard does, only better, then that is power creep because if the older game was balanced so that wizard and fighter were viable concepts, then the new super-wizard breaks that balance so that there is now no good reason probably to play a fighter. But we can offer an alternative situation. If in the existing situation, wizards are not viable to play because fighters are already so super, then the new super-wizard could potentially not be power creep at all, as the result of the new super-wizard might simply be that for the first time people feel validated in playing a wizard when they could have played a fighter. In that case, the new super-wizard simply balances the game.

The case of the hasted goblin is important for understanding this topic. If the new hasted goblin causes the average game played by quality decks to finish by turn 3 rather than turn 4, then that is indeed power creep. The game play has changed, resulting in a shorter game which will depend on fewer more optimized strategies involving only a small number of 'best' cards. But the new hasted goblin allows goblin decks to finish by the current standard of turn 4 rather than the turn 5 they needed before, that is not power creep. That's simply increasing the diversity of approaches which meet the games agreed upon standard. MtG's history of power creep and how WotC both manages it and uses it to sell cards would require a thread all its own.

What you're describing is more like the "Changing Gameplay Priorities" trope. The new way of playing is different than the old way of playing...

Hopefully, with the clarifications I just made, you can see what this is not at all true. I'm not at all complaining if now it is viable to play a goblin deck or a wizard, when before those ideas were suboptimal and never part of the 'meta'. I'm not complaining that wizards or dwarves or what have you should be deliberately suboptimal because that's the way it was always done.

and the balance changes as some things are buffed and others are nerfed, but it wouldn't really be a case of Power Creep in the traditional sense unless you introduce a new character using the new options and they completely outshine the existing characters because the new options are just better.

Yes. Exactly. That's just what I said.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Yes, but not for the reasons you necessarily think. If they come out with a super-wizard class that could do everything a regular wizard does, only better, then that is power creep because if the older game was balanced so that wizard and fighter were viable concepts, then the new super-wizard breaks that balance so that there is now no good reason probably to play a fighter. But we can offer an alternative situation. If in the existing situation, wizards are not viable to play because fighters are already so super, then the new super-wizard could potentially not be power creep at all, as the result of the new super-wizard might simply be that for the first time people feel validated in playing a wizard when they could have played a fighter. In that case, the new super-wizard simply balances the game.

We might be getting hung up on terminology here. Power Creep is something that applies to individual elements, like characters or classes. The power of an element creeps up, relative to where it was previously, without regard to any other element. You know that it's a case of power creep whenever you have two options, and you would never choose the older options over the newer one, because the newer one is just better.

To use an example that I hope won't be too controversial, back in the 3.5 days, The Book of Nine Swords introduced a new set of fighter-type classes that were just better than the fighter-type classes in the core book. They got all sorts of interesting powers, and they had different options for different situations that could do things no other fighter-type could do. If you had the option of playing a fighter or a warblade, then you would always choose the warblade, because the best a fighter could hope for was maybe being good at tripping people. Likewise, if you had the option of playing a (PHB2) duskblade or a (PHB) multiclass fighter/wizard/eldritch knight, then you would choose the duskblade, because it was just better. New books came out, and the newer options were just better than the old options, because of power creep. That's what power creep is.

If power creep causes the balance of individual elements to change, or affects the meta in some way, then that's just a result of the power creep rather than the phenomenon itself. Often, power creep will be put in place with the intent of altering the balance of existing elements (to bring fighters more in line with wizards, for example), but it's still power creep regardless of whether the new element changes the balance. (As often as not, power creep is introduced to make profit at the expense of game balance, because nobody would buy a book if it only introduced options that were worse than what you already had.)

 

[Celebrim]

We might be getting hung up on terminology here. Power Creep is something that applies to individual elements, like characters or classes. The power of an element creeps up, relative to where it was previously, without regard to any other element. You know that it's a case of power creep whenever you have two options, and you would never choose the older options over the newer one, because the newer one is just better.

We are getting hung up on terminology, and I will attempt to explain why. I would like to apply the term "power creep" in a negative manner to refer to something specific. But if we apply the term "power creep" as you here define it, as something that applies to individual elements only, then it applies to both acts of balancing and unbalancing our content, or to acts which increase or reduce gameplay.

Thus I define power creep differently. "Power creep" only applies to situations where an existing balanced and viable choice is made slightly better through some process. Very often you see power creep arrive in the form of "wish lists" where designers who wish to introduce new content cram in all the things that they wish something could do because they have a very idealized notion of the thing being designed. This can happen even when the intention is to add flavor, resulting in a class that has extra abilities to capture flavor compared to a generic class that had no specific abilities. Another example is power creep as a form of marketing, where the power curve is crept forward specifically to excite power gamers and encourage them to buy the new content. In both cases, gameplay tends to suffer as a result.

3.5 edition in particular can be considered one long unending case of power creep specifically to help market the content.

To use an example that I hope won't be too controversial, back in the 3.5 days, The Book of Nine Swords...

You are going to cite Bo9S and you don't imagine that you are going to spark controversy. Even though I know where you are coming from here, the problem with Bo9S is that example is so complex that it's impossible to address all the factors that could influence the perception of power creep. Some factors you have to consider is that the fighter really was underpowered to the extent of being unable to fulfill even its stated role in the game. Another issue is that by the time Bo9S came along, they'd introduced so much unbalanced content that many 3.5 advocates and the publishers themselves seem to have adopted an approach of, "Since everything is broken, then nothing is." After all, regardless of how unbalancing something might be, you could also cite some other equally or even more unbalancing combination. Finally, these is the question of whether Bo9S was too radical in what it provided, so that it was overpowered against some reference standard of 'good balance' (whatever that may be) and could not justify itself as a merely better fighter, but actually better than the vast majority of existing options (short of an optimized tier 1 full caster).

If power creep causes the balance of individual elements to change, or affects the meta in some way, then that's just a result of the power creep rather than the phenomenon itself.

The problem with this definition is that there are many ways balance of individual elements might change, that we wouldn't normally call power creep. We'd just call it balancing the game. Think for example on tweaking the balance of a game during beta testing. If some class was performing subpar, we wouldn't think of it as 'power creep' to alter the class to make it more formidable or attractive to play. It's only power creep as the term is normally used if after having done so, we did something that increased the power of the same class yet again. This suggests that power creep is actually tied to the result of changing the meta in some way, and changing the overall balance of the game.

 

[Sunseeker]

No, I'm talking about power creep in shows or literature.
Power creep in games can be defined a bit different though See http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PowerCreepPowerSeep which kind of explains both (or many many Youtube videos on why which show or setting handles power creep well or not)

Actually, that article only explains power seep, and explicitly says not to confuse it with "Power Creep" at the bottom, the subsequent article describes Power Creep appropriately:

A term used in any kind of multi-player game (including Video Games, Collectible Card Game, and Tabletop Games) to describe the process in which newly-added-content can be played along with the old-content, but with the new content being far more powerful/useful in every sense.

This is why power creep is so obvious in TCGs. Because we can all sit down and look at what X used to give us and compare it to what X gives us now. This is inapplicable in the sense this article uses the term, because Greater Lightning Bolt is not intended to be played with along side Lesser Lightning Bolt. It's explicitly GREATER and therefore (to use another MTG term) a replacement effect.

Now, I totally agree with an earlier post by someone who used the term "option creep". That's certainly a valid reason why a game might get unbalanced as leveling continues. Some features are not replacement effects, they are cumulative, additive or multiplicative and designed to syergize with other abilities. The number 3 on it's own is not so dangerous. Nor is the number 4. But 3x4=12 and thats a Big Deal.

Power Creep is a side-effect of needing to sell content. That's why it's common in games with a lot of splat (3.X, Pathfinder, World of Warcraft, TCGs, etc...) and why it is not common in games with little or no splat. The leveling treadmill is a psychological device used to keep human beings invested.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

We are getting hung up on terminology, and I will attempt to explain why. I would like to apply the term "power creep" in a negative manner to refer to something specific. But if we apply the term "power creep" as you here define it, as something that applies to individual elements only, then it applies to both acts of balancing and unbalancing our content, or to acts which increase or reduce gameplay.

It applies to the power of something creeping up over time, which seems straightforward enough. Sword guys used to be able to deal 15 damage in a round, but now they deal 25 damage in a round (describing the effects of adding weapon specialization to a game). Their power crept upward.

Thus I define power creep differently. "Power creep" only applies to situations where an existing balanced and viable choice is made slightly better through some process.

That seems like a pretty narrow definition, and I don't think it's useful enough that it would persuade many people to adopt it. After all, whether or not things are balanced or viable is subject to individual perception; we still have people saying that wizards are more powerful than fighters in 5E, even though fighters have more HP and deal more damage in a round. If they introduced a NuFighter class, which was exactly like the old one except it also had weapon specialization, then we would still have disagreements over whether it was balanced or viable compared to the wizard, but we could all agree that it was just better than the old fighter.

If you co-opt that term for your own use, then in addition to any confusion it would create in the short term, we would lose valuable language for describing the process of individual elements becoming more powerful over time.

 

[Ratskinner]

"tactical" would be unduly limiting. And effect might be 'detect the presence of an element' or 'provide food to a multitude,' for instance. Not everything's combat.

What would a "narrative wrapper" be?

"Tactical" would be the systems where "Power X" is defined and costed by very specific in-game features: "target moves 3 squares, takes 13 stun, is blinded for 6 sec as per the condition on p. 178." However, the system really doesn't care what exactly "Power X" is. Is it a Stun Pistol, Spell, or Mutant Sonic Shout power? Dunno, don't care, pay your points (Hero is a system like this) and write it down. The Big Design Goal in such a system is that the mechanics all work with each other to produce a clear, precise, (usually) tactical or (sometimes) simulation system. Fair, balanced, realistic, or accurate are words they shoot for.

There is, I think, considerable overlap with "list based" games and my "tactical" category. The "non-list" versions just tend to have the costing system laid bare (IME), so a list is unneccesary. They are often billed as "universal" or more "flexible".

"Narrative Wrapper" games are those that don't even have squares or points or seconds. You can probably write down any of those things (Stun Pistol, Spell, or Mutant Sonic Shout) on your character sheet and it doesn't even matter. What matters is that we all agree that your character has such a feature and that it will have corresponding narrative effects. Those effects may show up explicitly in play or not (as aspects or something). There are often rules about avoiding or putting a cost on contradiction, but the difference between a Death Ray and Tickle Gun are semantic...literally. The resolution system may or may not actually care what your character's stats are. I would put the more "outré" versions of Fate in this category, along with a host of quasi-experimental Forge games I have played. They strive for a consistent narrative, and dramatic stories usually with minimal math, even if mechanics can become rather complex. These tend to be the very antithesis of list-based games (IME), the concept of lists with picayune details about weapons, powers, etc. is just pointless for these games.

 

[Tony Vargas]

"Tactical" would be the systems where "Power X" is defined and costed by very specific in-game features: "target moves 3 squares, takes 13 stun, is blinded for 6 sec as per the condition on p. 178." However, the system really doesn't care what exactly "Power X" is. Is it a Stun Pistol, Spell, or Mutant Sonic Shout power? Dunno, don't care, pay your points (Hero is a system like this) and write it down. The Big Design Goal in such a system is that the mechanics all work with each other to produce a clear, precise, (usually) tactical or (sometimes) simulation system. Fair, balanced, realistic, or accurate are words they shoot for.

Except for the odd choice of 'tactical' as label - "Power X" might have nothing to do with combat, could be to do with traveling, solving mysteries, or whatever - that's sounding reasonably Effects-based. That and 'realistic' or 'accurate' being highly optional. You can use an effects based system to create an accurate simulation, you just need to be very careful that you invariably map the effects to something that would 'realistically' cause them. Hero is a good example. You could use it that way, but it was developed for Champions! a super-hero game, a genre not notable for a high degree of realism.

There is, I think, considerable overlap with "list based" games and my "tactical" category. The "non-list" versions just tend to have the costing system laid bare (IME), so a list is unneccesary. They are often billed as "universal" or more "flexible".

You can certainly use an effects-based system to generate a list, or add to a list. The list could become infinite, in theory. It wouldn't experience power creep, because the system isn't being added to.

That's distinct from list-based, a 'list based' system adds to the /system/ as you expand the list. So if you can already kill people, and already have knives, guns, & chainsaws that do that, adding poison or a flaming sword in an effects-based system doesn't add to the system, even if the mechanics may be used a little differently to get there. OTOH, in a list-based system, adding a flaming sword might add a new column to the physical attack matrix and a new way of determining damage, maybe even require adding whole new sub-system for magic, while adding poison might add a mechanic with not even cursory similarity to the attack-resolution sub-systems already in use. List-based systems get very arbitrary and unwieldy.

Where there's maybe overlap is when a list-based system gets tired of coming up with new crap, and decides the next new thing "counts as" something it already has. Poison gets a new sub-system, but the flaming sword "counts as a chainsaw..."
...or when an effects based system hides 'behind a curtain' and the publisher charges you for each new 'skin' they put on the effects.

"Narrative Wrapper" games are those that don't even have squares or points or seconds. You can probably write down any of those things (Stun Pistol, Spell, or Mutant Sonic Shout) on your character sheet and it doesn't even matter. What matters is that we all agree that your character has such a feature and that it will have corresponding narrative effects. Those effects may show up explicitly in play or not (as aspects or something). There are often rules about avoiding or putting a cost on contradiction, but the difference between a Death Ray and Tickle Gun are semantic...literally.

OK, I can see how that's "Narrative" (and even almost Freestyle) but were does 'wrapper' come into it?


"Narrative Wrapper" sounds almost like the old Champions! concept of the 'special effect.' Here's the power, an EB, but there's a special effect when you use it, a bolt of lightning. Sounds like 'wrapping' the mechanic in a 'narrative' (I was in a radiation accident at the nuclear power plant, now my mutant powers let me generate bolts of lighting!)

 

[Imaculata]

We are getting hung up on terminology, and I will attempt to explain why. I would like to apply the term "power creep" in a negative manner to refer to something specific. But if we apply the term "power creep" as you here define it, as something that applies to individual elements only, then it applies to both acts of balancing and unbalancing our content, or to acts which increase or reduce gameplay.

Thus I define power creep differently. "Power creep" only applies to situations where an existing balanced and viable choice is made slightly better through some process. Very often you see power creep arrive in the form of "wish lists" where designers who wish to introduce new content cram in all the things that they wish something could do because they have a very idealized notion of the thing being designed. This can happen even when the intention is to add flavor, resulting in a class that has extra abilities to capture flavor compared to a generic class that had no specific abilities. Another example is power creep as a form of marketing, where the power curve is crept forward specifically to excite power gamers and encourage them to buy the new content. In both cases, gameplay tends to suffer as a result.

I actually think Saelorn's definition is better, and more correct: Power creep is when new content makes the older content redundant, and/or makes it a less desirable option, to the point of eliminating it as an option completely.

So, we're not talking about a choice being made "slightly" better here. We're talking about a new choice that is objectively better, and thus causes people to no longer use the older content that did something similar.

A good DnD example would be if they added a new melee slashing weapon that had the same requirements as a longsword, yet did more damage. Why would anyone still use the longsword, if the new weapon is the same, but better?

This is different from spells that receive a "Greater" version at higher levels, because that is a deliberate upgrade to the lower level spell. Power Creep is when a new addition to the game is objectively better than similar older content, and unintentionally causes the older content to no longer be used, or fall out of favor.

As you can tell from my definition, Power Creep is sometimes in the eye of the beholder. However, its effects are not. For example, a while back Valve released a big new patch for Counter Strike, that included a new revolver. The revolver was so unbalanced that everyone was running around with it, insta-killing anyone, regardless of body armor. People chose it over any other weapon, including the game's most powerful weapons. And every player seemed to be complaining about it.

[video=youtube;7YKE_Dximx4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YKE_Dximx4[/video]

This was such a blatant example of Power Creep, that valve removed the revolver soon afterwards. Normally Power Creep is not quite this obvious and destructive. This was a rare case where this new addition flat out broke an entire game, and pretty much made every other gun redundant.

The reverse also happens, and quite frequently in MMO's. I think we're all familiar with nerfs. And while sometimes this is just a case of players screaming at the slightest change to their favorite weapon/item/skill/feat/class, in some cases the changes are so drastic, that indeed things do fall massively out of favor, to the point of almost being useless.