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CactusChan -> Power Creep (5/19/2020 23:57:38)
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Recently, Ginger brought to my attention a section of design notes from shortly before Omega was released. In this section, Titan references something known as "power creep", a phenomenon in which more and more powerful items are introduced to a game over time, thereby making old items underpowered and/or obsolete. The section in question is from the December 2012 design notes; you can view the clip here: https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/387423611406909440/712503668859076608/unknown.png
I wanted to highlight this particular concept because Titan specifically labeled it a problem, and yet it's exactly what we've been seeing over the past 18 months or so (or perhaps even longer; I didn't pay super close attention to the meta before Fall of 2018). Each promotional package, starting with the Omega Wolf package and with the exception of the Infernal Gladiator package, introduced at least one item that was almost immediately considered "broken", and required multiple nerfs and several balance changes to prevent players from exploiting their powers. First it was Wolf's Fury, then Blood Bullet, then Captain's Charge, then Frozen Rift and Tactical Reload (aux), and finally Hunter's Mark and Skull Cracker in the current (as of this post) Celtic promo. I won't mention the other cores introduced in those promos, as they weren't as overpowered as the ones I've just mentioned, but many of them were quite strong at the time of their releases and some also received nerfs. Now, many of these items are borderline unusable or outright defunct, due to more powerful alternatives being introduced.
So if one of the purposes of the Omega phase was to eliminate this sort of power creep, why are we seeing it so glaringly obviously now? Personally, I'm sick of seeing each promo introduce at least one overpowered core, which is inevitably exploited and consequently nerfed, and leaves a slew of questionable balance changes in its wake. In my opinion, the recent batch of changes we've received has not been good; as Machaon put in in the BM balance thread, instead of the promo being changed to fit the classes, we've seen the classes changed to fit the promo to a far greater degree. I think NightWraith needs to address the cycle of the power creep, which was the one of the points of Omega from the start.
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