Power Progression (To Infinity and Beyond?)

Craiken

How do you want your character's power level to increase as you play an RPG? This post is intended to explore different options.

I've always considered increasing my character's power (i.e., experiencing vertical power progression) an important and rewarding part of the genre. I might start outside my home city with a rusty sword and a couple of basic skills, but I don't want to stay that way forever. I want to explore the world and fight monsters, gaining new skills and better gear along the way. Eventually, tasks that were impossible at the beginning become doable. By gaining power, I unlock more opportunities in the game.

But how fast should a character gain power? And should the rate of improvement change as time goes on? Here are some options I've seen...

Option #1 - Linear with Cap

With this method, character power increases steadily until progress stops. This is usually achieved by means of a level cap. Characters might still be able to improve in some ways (e.g., learning how to do different types of damage) but their absolute power level is limited. Guild Wars 2 is famous for this style of progression (though I can't say I've played it).



Option #2 - Linear Forever

With this method, character power increases steadily forever. Games like this do actually exist, but the method doesn't lend itself well to an MMO because new players will be hopelessly behind. However, this could be remedied via level boosts or other catch-up mechanisms. Content creation would have to be very fast (probably automated) to continue providing players with challenges.



Option #3 - Exponential

This method starts with slow power gains that gradually ramp up. This is generally considered un-fun and reserved for real-life investment banking.



Option #4 - Asymptotic

This method provides strong growth in character power early on. Improvements are fast at first, but then they slow way down. Character power approaches a limit that it can never exceed. This is like EVE's system for faction standings. Note: You could modify this method slightly to produce logarithmic growth instead. That gives a similar graph but doesn't have a hard limit.



Option #5 - Stop and Go

Any of the previous methods can be combined together. This is how WoW's expansions worked for a long time (at least until I stopped paying attention). Each expansion opened up a new level of power that greatly exceeded the previous expansion's. Old content becomes trivial and often obsolete.




So what do you think? Which system would you like to see in Ashes of Creation?

Ludullu

Logarithmic Stop&Go, but with parallel x1.1 expansions rather than continuous x2 ones. (colors are the expansions)


Each expansion would give an alternative way to get to the 90th percentile of power, while also pushing the ceiling of power by ~10%. And those alternative ways will be faster than the previous versions, but staggered by 1 tier, so if the max tier in Update 1 is 5 then in Update 2 all gear up to tier 4 will get an faster alternative way of acquisition and Upd2 would add a tier 6.

With overenchantment the previous top tier would be more powerful than the basic max tier of the next expansion, but OE would obviously take huge amounts of money/resources and would require constant heavy upkeep.

Imo, this way all the previous top content would still remain valuable, because in time people would just start OEing older gear (because more and more people would be able to clear it, due to higher tiers of gear), which would be on par with newest shit, but would be more available than the stuff that comes from the hardest most contested bosses around. It worked this way in L2 and I liked it quite a bit

edit: oh, also, you can keep adding and removing loot tiers from previous bosses to keep them even more relevant, if you want. I'm sure the pve side of the playerbase would complain so I doubt Intrepid would do it, but I'd be fine with that.