Is power creep always a bad thing?

[yamas11]

Power creep is usually consider bad as it starts an imbalance in a CCG.  But business wise, it isn't really a bad thing is it? Power creep is one of the main reasons to get people to buy newer cards, and thus forces a change to the meta to keep things fresh.  And it's a way for a late new player to be able to have a decent chance against older players, with being able to buy stuff just from the newer sets.  So it makes money for the CCG this way.

What are your opinions about power creep and if it is truly a bad thing for CCG's?

[Tokimo]

On the other hand power creep discourages old players from picking the game up again. Magic has a lot of players who come and go, including many of the magic designers. If these players came back and the common green was 1G for a 3/3 trample you can imagine they might be a bit frustrated and not bother coming back. Their old decks are now painfully obsolete even in casual play.

Additionally it would make the games faster with an increased emphasis on luck. If you miss your two drop you're down a 2/2 bear often. Now you let your opponents two drop through for 3-4 turns and take 8 damage (not a small number). Now image that two drops are 3/3 tramplers instead. You miss your two drop and suddenly you take 12 damage (more than half your life, damn) over the course of the next 4 turns while catching up to your opponent.

Magic has done huge amounts of research and psychology on this. If I were to pick the single largest advantage that Magic has over an indie CCG it would probably be marketing know-how (even their designers are steeped in psychology, which is essential to their success). They knew that planeswalkers were going to be a knockout. They knew that mythic rares were going to be a knockout. They knew that a rotating standard block was essential for new players to compete. They know that blatant power creep will kill them in the long run.

This seems to be a topic that people continually come along with and say "Hey, look, we could make more money by: raising the cost / force people to buy more cards to play."

There is a sweet spot. Too expensive and your player base suffers and your sales decline, you lose money. Too cheap and your profit margin is tiny, you lose money. Too difficult to collect and players get overwhelmed. Too easy to collect and kids with cash burning a hole in their pocket go elsewhere.

[picks-at-flies]

I think the key to the longevity of CCGs is keeping them fresh while maintaining the status of older cards.  Magic's methods are well documented.  L5R does something similar to Magic.  Over in Rage, we try to provide new strategies and new (and better) answers to old problems (ideally in a way that makes older cards playable in new ways).

[Cyrus]

I think what Magic is doing right now looks a lot like power creep, but they are actually changing the entire game without changing any major rules. By ramping up the overall power of creatures they are changing the dynamics of deck building to be much simpler, and the game itself too. Is this bad? Not really, makes the game more accessible to new players, and more of a challenge for old players to almost relearn the game (but without having to really learn anything new).

I think a lot of games eventually ramp up the power of their creature type cards to make the game a little more straight forward. Star Wars definitely did, I can't say so for other games because I haven't followed them as closely, but VS seems to have as well.

One positive I see for power creep is in designing weaker looking cards for a set that won't be noticed as powerful until some of the more ramped up cards rotate out in Standard. Some whole sets in Magic look just weak overall until they become the backbone of Standard in which case people start to find the most powerful cards within them. Its an interesting and pretty cool dynamic

[moselekm]

My response isn't nearly as articulate as those above.  All I know is back in the day when DBZ CCG came out, I played the first series.  Second series came out, I never bought or played again.  Although I think that Power Creep was to a much higher extreme than normal I believe.

[TheBuck]

Can someone explain to me what power creep is? I've never heard of that term before.

[Cyrus]

When games keep putting out stronger and stronger cards, until the old cards are terribly weak in comparison to newly printed cards

[Trevor]

from http://www.lackeyccg.com/ccgdesign.html,

A long running card game will die quickly from power creep. Power creep is where the cards in a new set largely make obsolete the cards in a previous set. As sets go on, the effect gets worse and worse. Greedy and shortsighted CCG designers may want to make a new set interesting to new players by attempting to up the power level, but this is perhaps the worst thing you can do to your CCG's longevity as a whole. Its bad for a number of reasons. For long time players of the game who have amassed a large collection, its a big "screw you, your hard-earned collection is worthless". It can greatly affect the speed of a game. It can make different deck archetypes obsolete. It can undermine the basic workings of your CCG. It's an awful idea. Stagnation is bad for a CCG, but increasing power level is not the solution. New design space needs to be invented which is of a similar power level as previous cards. And if you ever release an overpowered set, you need to do damage control ASAP to avoid power creep. This damage control could be in the form of banning certain cards, restricting certain cards, making errata, or making new cards to hose problem cards.

It's better to have an under-powered set than an over-powered one. An under-powered set will merely be a dud. An over-powered set will kill your CCG.

[TheBuck]

Thanks Cyrus.