Power creep is a result of poor balancing, the both of them goes hand in hand. And poor balancing and power creep result in the over reliance of meta builds. Everything comes complete in a circle.
In the design process there are usually a couple of routes to increase difficulty of content. One way is to increase the amount of mechanics and AI of of the monsters, like how danmaku games Touhou does it or like Devil May Cry difficulty modes where the AI is significantly more “intelligent”.
The other way is what most MMOs do, introduce more damage and hp to signify higher difficulty. This is what ToS does, but unfortunately this method comes with a fatal flaw. As the level gets higher, the stats of the monsters will get higher and higher. Skills that don’t follow percentage values will start to fall out as non-viable as they can’t chew down the hp of the monster at a comfortable pace.
We start seeing this hasted design choice from 240 level onwards, where the “difficulty curve” starts getting higher (suddenly 90-110k hp mobs) and the R7 classes start to have a big gap in damage compared to the R6 counterparts. In R8 it becomes more evident where a level 1 rank8 skill starts to have damage equal to a full 3 circle rank4-5 class.
This is where balancing starts to crumble. The game is balanced around R8 class damage, and early classes which can’t get to that damage starts to drop off. This power difference creates a rift where only the classes which can proceed comfortably (in both damage and damage mitigation) becomes the meta.
And it spirals down to players feeling frustrated as their build becomes “outdated” due to the power creep the game introduces as “higher difficulty” content. So much as they want a reset.
So yeah, everything is connected. If IMC continues on with this power creep and new class implementation, sooner or later even high damage C7 classes like musketeer will be left in the dust too.
