Power Creep Has Entered The Game
They’re called ‘elite’ for a reason. I think the vertical growth of elite specs are meant to mirror the growth in mob difficulty. Harder areas = more powerful abilities. Of course they get used in all parts of the game anyway, but I didn’t mind my characters getting stronger. It felt natural after being in the game for so many years, like the next step in my character’s story.
HoT has been out for a year. You’re late to the party with your post and observations.
As long as I don’t have to regear with each expansion I’m fine with elite specs that allow me to handle harder content and Masteries that give me new abilities.
They pretty much did the same thing in gw1 with the skills that became better the higher faction you got.
Be careful what you ask for
ANet may give it to you.
ANet may give it to you.
(edited by Just a flesh wound.3589)
They’re called ‘elite’ for a reason. I think the vertical growth of elite specs are meant to mirror the growth in mob difficulty. Harder areas = more powerful abilities. Of course they get used in all parts of the game anyway, but I didn’t mind my characters getting stronger. It felt natural after being in the game for so many years, like the next step in my character’s story.
Except that elite specs were supposed to be side-grades and NOT upgrades. Perhaps poor naming on Anet’s part, but I wouldn’t expect them to be in line with other trait lines. Anet needs a reason for people to buy HoT, and OP elite specs are it.
I don’t think the new Elite Specializations will be OP. I think they will be the new ‘shiny’. A character will always only be able to use one Elite Specialization, at a time. Of course, with only one to choose from, it will seem/be the most favorable. Later, not so much.
Also, the ‘power creep’ is not only from Elite Specializations. Ascended Gear is much more common nowadays, especially lately, when it’s practically given away.
According to the pre-HoT blogs, elite specs were supposed to be horizontal progression, not power creep. They were touted as new options, new ways to play a profession.
However, whatever the truth might be, a lot of players seem to believe the elite specs represent greater effectiveness. From where I sit, it looks less like the raw damage coefficients are that much better, and more like the elite specs are benefiting from better access to boons, which are the source of a great deal of effectiveness in GW2.
Also according to the blogs, new elite specs would also be horizontal progression. It remains to be seen, though, whether the devs would be able to create more new ways to play professions without making them better — whether that’s better than core specs, or better than earlier elites. Fwiw, the 2nd and 3rd GW campaigns introduced skills that were just flat out better, but only for the most part. This was despite the lack of level increase or any changes to stats.
Does it all boil down to selling XPacs? It might. It could also be that it’s not that easy to make new, exciting ways to play professions without crossing a line. Finally, it’s been my observation that there’s more, “That would be so cool!” and less, “What would this break?” in GW2 game design.
From where I sit, it looks less like the raw damage coefficients are that much better
Ignoring the fact that every elite spec offer significantly more raw damage at same or better sustain.
Either way, we knew this from day 1 of HoT. Sure I can hope that any new elite specs “only” offer variations of play but I think we all know they are undoubtedly going to be better than vanilla. Question is if they are better than HoT elites.
I love it when players get 1 year behind. Seriously, today is birthday of HoT, precisely one year since release. And exactly today, one year after release of HoT, some players notice the power creep of expansions, because these must sell.
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Did I just fall into a spacetime wormhole that sent me exactly one year into the past? O.o
Power creep entered the game years ago with the introduction of Ascended gear, something that was advertised to not happen.
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From where I sit, it looks less like the raw damage coefficients are that much better
Ignoring the fact that every elite spec offer significantly more raw damage at same or better sustain.
He ignored nothing. He said that the elite specs provided better access to boons, which, by the way, can mean greater damage with greater sustain. He said the same thing, essentially, that you did when you tried to correct him.
I dont agree at all with new expansion rendering old builds and specs 70% les usefull
Ascended will always be top tier, no more creep there..
Elite specs are most of the time better than core classes but the new Elite specs are side grades to the existing elite specs. This is what they said, if they hold their promise or not, we’ll we’ll see..
It will be interesting to see where anet goes with this.
I would be fine if the new ‘elite’ spec’s had the same amount as the ones from hot and the power creep stops.
If not its just going to keep rendering older content (spec content) more and more irrelevant as time goes on, phasing them out.
Maybe this is a one off? Are ‘elite spec’s the equivalent of World of Warcraft’s “Hero Classes” and maybe we’ll only see elite spec’s once every few expansions and the new ones will have the same ability cap as the old ones?
Ascended will always be top tier, no more creep there..
Elite specs are most of the time better than core classes but the new Elite specs are side grades to the existing elite specs. This is what they said, if they hold their promise or not, we’ll we’ll see..
Remember, that the current elite specs are also supposedly only side-grades to the vanilla classes. That is also what Anet said.
Considering that the elites ended up plain better because Anet wanted them to be incentive to buy the expac, and this very same reasoning will also be true when next expac hits, i just can’t see the new specs to be anything but another upgrade.
When people will be making the choice whether to buy the expac or not, Anet will want the “buy” option to be stacked as much as possible.
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(edited by Astralporing.1957)
The game suffered power creep long before HoT. It’s actually a common problem for most multiplayer games. Buffing Class A to bring it in line with overpowered Class B is generally easier to do than nerfing B and it’s met with less hostility.
It turns out that balancing profs and skills and foes and so on is really hard. Everyone has an opinion, largely based on their narrow experience in the game and almost none of us are willing to believe that ANet knows what they are doing. That makes nearly any decision that ANet makes subject to extreme saltiness.
I don’t think the new elites for the new expansion will be any worse or any better than the HoT ones have been.
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I suspect the power creep will continue with future expansions.
I’d expect future e-specs ti be on par with the current ones.
On the other hand balance will become even more interesting, when we have mutually exclusive trait lines.
I suspect the intention is for us to pick an E-spec most of the time, it’s just not working well yet since we need another 2-3 expansions worth of e-specs for it to shine.
To that end e-specs have to seem better than core trait lines.
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Elite specs have one major limitation over core traits: you can only slot one of them. This major drawback of elite specs over core specs is not seen at the moment because we only have one elite spec available. When he have more then the choice becomes hard. I think power creep from HoT elite specs is fine due to this serious limitation, however, further power creep from the next elite specs is not. The next elite specs should be similar in power with current elite specs and not be objectively better than them. It would be EVEN better if in the next expansion we got 2 elite specs so we get a total of 3 per profession.
As long as you can slot one elite spec at once they can add as many of them as they want.
So year of hot passed? i didn’t buy hot when it started and played w/o elite spec didn’t bothered me much and ofc in pvp/wvw its would be good to see them free for free to play and base game bought. Even now when have hot its refreshing to play non elite spec.
I suggest free rotation one elite spec for spvp and other one in wvw, change every week for free to play players and base game players. Year passed, who know maybe we will get new expansion or even campaign and new elite specs, so it would be welcomed feature.
They’re called ‘elite’ for a reason. I think the vertical growth of elite specs are meant to mirror the growth in mob difficulty. Harder areas = more powerful abilities. Of course they get used in all parts of the game anyway, but I didn’t mind my characters getting stronger. It felt natural after being in the game for so many years, like the next step in my character’s story.
They blatantly stated in a prerelease AMA that specializations were NOT supposed to be an increase in power, just there to add variety to play.
@ O.P.
I think that they are repeating past, core mistakes that were conceptualized along with the profiling of “elite specs” introduced with Heart of Thorns.
Certain elite specs were created to be support oriented, others exclusively damage oriented and others again permit only certain stats.
I’m talking about exclusivity, limitations to only a couple of combinations between traits of the elite spec and the legacy traits( Wind-Arcane Tempest or Fire/Earth Tempest but not Water-Fire Tempest or Water-Earth or any other combinations) and therefore the lack of synergies or options to vary our gameplay – they went exactly the wrong way, instead of opening up more ways for us to play our characters.
And while we’re at it, remember when this game was about weapon swapping ? What HoT did with elite spec weapons was to remove this almost completely. Again because of exclusivity and limitations.
Hopefully before they base another expansion on the very same weak system that’s the source of all our issues (TRAITS), we will see a new and complete system implemented that will allow us to define our play-style with less limitations.
As a suggestion ArenaNet needs to introduce a new window of traits with interactions between them similarly to Path of Exile (ideally)
Example : Your node choice is surrounded by 6 (? imagine it’s in the middle of your progression of choices) other different options you will have choices whether to go towards damage, sustain, defense, utility, etc.
Power Creep happens in any game that new elements are continuously introduced, it does not matter how much the devs wish they could keep everything balanced and relevant but it’s just not humanly possible, ask anyone that plays TCGs.
A completely flat plane over a long period of time is not just impossible it would also be boring. very few people would go through the intentionally set up agony to get a legendary weapon for example if they all had the same base stats as an exotic.
If this is “power creep”, good.
More the merrier.
You could even say gliding is a form of power creep, as it allows you to get to certain places far quicker. Increasing your loot/hour, ability to flee without dying etc.
There is nothing wrong with HoT giving people extra abilities.
Even devs allowing HoT auric multi mapping nets people twice the gold per hour that way, vs normal GW2 people.
As long as things aren’t outrageous, like people doing twice the damage, running twice as fast etc, I think these kinds of “power creep” are acceptable.
Even expected, considering they want to lure people into buying their expansions.
Hopefully the next expansion gives me a pogo stick so I can jump super far… waaaaay further than a normal GW2 guy can jump.
very few people would go through the intentionally set up agony to get a legendary weapon for example if they all had the same base stats as an exotic.
At game launch, all of them where exotic, and with only soldier stats to boot. Many people got them back then.
Teh Ouchies
I suspect that, like many things in this game, elite specialisations are an experiment, and like all experiments they don’t always produce the expected result.
Based on blogs, interviews etc. from before HoT came out Anet clearly intended elite specs to be equal to the existing ones. As people have said that’s hard to do, especially when you also need to make them interesting enough to justify buying the expansion and especially when they’re the shiny new exiting thing everyone will want to play with and so players will go out of their way to find ways to get to use them. (In other words there is more incentive to create a build that includes the elite specs than one which does not, even if the two are actually equally good.)
This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. For example when the game came out they expected explorable dungeons to be incredibly difficult ‘end-game’ content to the point where having a full set of dungeon armour would be a major achievement. They also expected getting a full set of exotics of any kind to be a longish-term goal that would keep players who want stat progression reasonably occupied.
Both of those were almost immediately proven false and they had to put in new systems (Fractals and then Raids and ascended equipment respectively) to address the issue.
I suspect the same is true here. Allowing for the fact that I’m sure they don’t see players feeling that they should buy the expansion/s as a bad thing I think we’ll see future changes to specialisations balancing them out a bit.
It wouldn’t surprise me if whenever we see the next set of elite specs they’re no more powerful than the HoT ones (at least not by design, there’s always the issues of people not knowing how to counter new things and doing things the devs didn’t expect that require balance updates) and maybe some will be designed to counter existing ones. So for example if you know Tempests are currently popular in WvW you’ll pick the “spell-breaker” spec on your Guardian (random, made up example obviously) to shut them down quickly.
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There is power creep with regards to the elite specializations but I swear the people who complain about it think damage is increased 500%. It’s actually not that bad.
When they release the next set of elite specializations, we’ll really see if we get power rush or not.
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I wonder why they are doing this? My only answer would be to push sales of HOT.
What a scandal! :O