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Why Powercreep shall and always will be.

Okay, let's take a deep dive into the dark side of alot of player's constant cries.

We're in a gaccha game, uniqueness is bound to run dry, it's how these games work. To add unique units, you need to keep pushing the bar higher, to add newer skills, newer unit types or things akin to that. And eventually, things can and will overlap with frequency, so powercreep is eventually going to happen, it is a given, and it always shall and will be. Hell it's in normal games as we know them, you just haven't noticed it as much, yet.

Skill Slot Examples
You level up after a set amount in some rpg, and reach the pinnacle of what you can do, but find yourself hitting a barrier and need a addition to your arsenal to do more damage. So you upgrade and all your old skills become useful, but weaker than your advanced skills class options. The difference is that here, due to the way gaccha's work, "advanced skills" are released over time and are considered, power creep, over older skills. All games have it to varying degrees. And in a Gaccha, it's a must to maintain the game ever growing.

Units/Alts
So, you leveled up a character in some other game, and proceed to enter the second game or a second chapter. In said second chapter, your character is underleveled. When you reach this point, you need to either change your tactics (refinery and inheritance), or reclass (an alt or newer unit). This is a given, as even in rpg's, you always reach a point where upgrading and leaving behind the old is a must. It'll get stale as there will be the same units over and over, whilst unit/alt releases add variation to the game. And let's be completely honest here.

Alts/Unit additions are always received badly either due to a vocal minority not liking their game not getting the spotlight (I understand FE6's plight, though it's not super popular) and if it were the alt of your fave character, it's not a huge deal, so in truth, alts and units are always a thing that's argued over because no one will ever be truly happy.

BST and Caps

BST and Level Caps are bound to change. Same as levels are added during expansions in games. It's a given, not sure why this is such a huge deal since, logically speaking, the 180 bst units and most high scoring units won't affec the lower ranks at all. They only affect T21 at best/worst and really won't cause too much strife for all the players in 20 or so.

TLDR
Now, as to why, well it overlaps with the same reason uptop. The game would grow stale, units would be so similar there 'd be no point in pulling or playing further, and uniqueness would run dry given that all units would be nearly identical given the limitations placed upon the developers.

It's like asking a developer working on a game to implement a better object for people who reach certain levels, but then telling him that the object can't be stronger than the base object cause it'll cause a riot and people will get pissed cause they don't want to have to see their old stuff grow weaker. And even then, the older players are being given ways to buff up their old stuff to the better levels, so it's not such a huge deal. It's asinine to think that a game can't have some form of powercreep, given how it's in every game, ever. Just in different ways, shapes, forms.

Wanna argue my points, be my guess, I like to chat. With this in mind, it's also been much easier to accept it for what it is. Progress in a game. It's being slowly patched up with forges and refineries and the like so it's much less egregious than some players make it out to be, and given that we may get a skill refinery, well. I wouldn't get angry yet.

PS An answer to Nogitsune as well, while I'm at it. Enjoy the read.

Asked by ArgentSable2 months 1 week ago

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Answers

I see we think alike when reading Nogitsune's post

Yup, we really did XD

Oh wait, you're that person who I always see hanging out in the datamine page when there is an update! thought I recognized your name.

Agree/Disagree

Alts/Seasonals don't function as upgrade to the unit like reclassing. They function as separate units altogether. Refines are more of an upgrade, and no one complains about them.
Skills powercreep is good imo opinion as it does add varety to the game. At least when not overdone and type restricted. (Fighter Skills)
The BST changes don't have to actually happen other than bait whales. They do effect you because stat creep is the powercreep that matters most. If units become too optimized, I will get discouraged to us people I like and quit the game.

I'm not sure if you mentioned it or not didn't read all of the post but we are also about to go into gen 3 units who will have highier bst and their for powercreep, I'm sure in Gen 3 units will get powercreep skills that will powercreep the now powercreep skills, I'm sure we will probably see things like Death Blow 5 giving +10 at some point, we probably will see a L&D 4 with +6 -6 or Swift Sparrow 3 with +6, or a QR4 60%/Vantage 4 80%, or hell tactics 4 giving +8 to the stat, all in all powercreep will always happen

First argument is countered by FGO. I'm not saying all gacha games must be like FGO, but I want people to remember that powercreep will always be a thing, BUT can be made SO SLOW to the point nobody notices it at all (except Merlin, he was busted, but FGO learned their lesson).
Your skill slot argument pertains to MMOs specifically, which are not gacha games. I can go at length to explain why comparing them don't make sense, but it's a massive pain.
Alts are not the reason for powercrept skills, so covering alts in an argument of powercreep doesn't make sense (since you already covered it in the skills portion of the argument). Alts are just given powercrept skills (I personally think the powercreep comes from the other banners, alts tend to be IS experimenting with stuff).
BST. By removing BST scoring, I think people will start shutting up. In the end, it's just super fast unit becomes more faster, or slow unit becomes even slower and bulkier, so there's not much "uniqueness" either way.
Powercreep is NOT NEEDED for people to roll. If people have a character they love, they will roll. If they are interesting, they'll roll. If their skills are weird and experimental, they'll roll. It's not all about min/max-ing,winning, and bragging about your OP builds.

Let summarize this entire post in a shortened manner

IS=$$$

there you go

So, my main contention with this argument is that, in MMO's and other games that you reference, a character isn't locked to one set of stats.

So, in your example a new patch for an MMO is released which means anything up until the new level cap is now not so great. That's fine, your character can build up to that level and be fine and dandy. That's not the case in FEH, where BST is locked.

It would be more like if the new MMO patch was released, but instead of being able to make the character (the one that you have poured your time and effort into and formed an attachment to) is unable to climb to that new level. The only way you could get to the new level is to make a new character, which in some respects invalidates all the value you put into the previous character.

Now, I think FEH isn't terrible at this, tbh. There are few straight-up-better-stats-all-around characters released, and even then there are ways they differentiate between them. Let's take two examples, Mia and Athena, and SY!Tiki and F!Grima.

I dislike the first instance, because in all cases except availability Mia outclasses Athena. If they were to have the same weapons, skills, supports, etc., Mia would outclass Athena due to having a couple extra stat points. Now, while this doesn't mean that Athena is bad, it really doesn't feel good to those who put their value into Athena, and that's bad for IS.

Now, the second example, I'd say, is a bit better on IS's part. Why? They have different PRFs and thus can fill different roles. (It still sucks, though, I really like F!Grima.) If they have different niches, even with the same stats, that's not anywhere near as bad.

Also, with skills, that's not particularly a problem in my opinion, except it means that people who spent to pull for a previous iteration of the skill could have waited and saved that money instead, which again, feels really bad and means that people don't stick around, which again, isn't healthy for IS.

Also, another point is that powercreep is not variety. Powecreep is and upgrade, variety is a sidegrade. I think variety does far more than powercreep in making things fresh and new. It opens new options, powercreep makes the existing options better. DB4 is powercreep over DB3 (and DB3 is powercreep over DB2, if you wanna get technical) whereas something like L&D, Atk bonds, etc., are variety.

I could go on but this is already too long. Hope this explains the other side a bit better.

I think I forgot about that part...variety. I think there's only so many ways which you can go. Maybe I'm just not creative enough, but I'm having trouble imagining more Atk/Spd A-slots that would be a variety and not necessarily an outright powercreep. Atk/Spd Bond and "Push" actually sound nice on those terms.

Powercreep is not bad so long as it doesn't completely stop older units from being usefull against the new ones. I have a hard time to finding it impossible to beat certain combos now with a team that has been powered up from about 4 plus months ago where It was beating almost everything with out a heavy struggle.

Overall I will agree powercreep is good, but I think IS needs to make sure it stays in check. If they don't want to do that, they will need to go back and spoof up the older unit's stats or skills at some ploint. There already a few units that are pretty much not play able anymore.

I'm here to say that in spite of holding off on it, and I've read the whole thing just now. And like I said, I do understand entirely at this point. I literally had not much of an idea as to why powercreep happened, and let alone as to how it was "necessary" and "bound to happen". To me, I thought it was simply the addition of numbers to get people buy more of your product (partly true, but it goes a bit deeper...).

And in truth, skill inheritance and refine was the absolute best version of "powercreep". I really enjoy the flexibility of being able to build your characters in more ways than one.