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Power Creep

How many of you play Guild Wars? I'm not talking about Guild Wars 2, but the original game? I'm also not talking about playing it once in a while or letting the game run overnight so you can get the lucky and unlucky achievements. I'm talking about playing the game regularly, at least several hours per week. I'm talking about the original game being the primary game you play during your downtime. I would venture to say that not many can say that,

So the question can be asked - why have you stopped playing? Some will say that they still do, just that it is now called Guild Wars 2. (Sorry, that's cheating.)

The main reason is that there is no new content in the game. When there is no new content in the game, the game became stale - it became boring and we as players walked away.

So additional content being pushed to gamers became the norm. In Guild Wars 2, this appears in the form of the Living Story and Current Events.

But that is not always enough. Even with new content, the games can get stale. Nothing innovative is being created and then some shiny new game comes along and players will gravitate towards that game. Good for gamers but not necessarily good for those who enjoy a specific game nor the publisher who curates the game.

This is the rationale for expansion packs. Not only is there new content but there is typically some innovation in the games. In Guild Wars 2, Heart of Thorns gave us elite specializations and gliding. Path of Fire gave us mounts.

One of the things that players desire in an expansion pack is new spells. This totally makes sense as we gamers want new and innovative abilities.

Let's assume that ArenaNet needed a little infusion of cash. They decided to create five (5) spells for each profession as offer that as a mini expansion pack. Now let's look at a hypothetical example:

Firestorm: 250 damage. 1.25 second casting cost. 25 second recharge, (Not exact we know but enough for our purposes.) Now let's say Arenanet creates Meteor Shower: 250 damage. 1.25 second cast delay with a 25 second recharge. How excited would you be for this? Probably not very as it is a mirror image copy of an existing spell. This spell would definitely not excite us nor would any spell which is strictly worse. So what how does ArenaNet tackle this problem?

Now matter how creative ArenaNet gets with their wording, players will always seek a comparison. Meteor Storm will be compared to Firestorm. Even something Hail or Lavastorm or Burning Rain will get those comparisons. Make the new spells too weak and players will instantly complain and insist that players boycott such an expansion pack.

Management - which has revenue on its mind - doesn't like that reaction. They will tell the coders to make Meteor Storm into something which will quell the potential negative backlash. Let's make spells into something which most gamers, even the free-to-play gamers, will want to spend some money on a potential mini-expansion pack.

This my dear readers - is how power-creep makes its way into games. This menace - is the scourge of gaming.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_video_game_terms#Power_creep

The gradual unbalancing of a game due to successive releases of new content. The phenomenon may be caused by a number of different factors and, in extreme cases, can be damaging to the longevity of the game in which it takes place. Game expansions are usually stronger than previously existing content, giving consumers an incentive to buy it for competitions against other players or as new challenges for the single-player experience. While the average power level within the game rises, older content falls out of balance and becomes regressively outdated or relatively underpowered, effectively rendering it useless from a competitive or challenge-seeking viewpoint.

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