What Power Creep does to Every Card Game

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#hearthstone
#magicthegathering
#pokemontcg
#yugioh

[alexrivera]

I think the inverse situation is more interesting. Old cards that are still good despite power creep. Professor Oak came out in the very first Pokémon set, and its effect is still one of the strongest in the game.

[TKDB]

Hearing Tarmogoyf referred to as a card "from early on in the game's lifespan" made me feel old...

[nicocchi]

I really love Iono and N from Pokémon. They're a draw engine, they're hand disruption, they're a comeback mechanic, all bundled into the visage of fan favorite characters from their respective generations. And because their effect is symmetrical, as much of an annoying hand disruption as they are, there's always the chance your opponent unwittingly ended up helping you by having you draw a better hand. It's such a good card

[drakeblood]

I think there is an amount of appropriate power creep that makes formats fun and fresh. Basically, it’s when new cards offer a chance to replace old staples but it isn’t obvious which is better.

So like for Magic, overlord of the hauntwoods is cheaper than primeval titan and has an even cheaper mode, but worse at getting lands. It fixes mana better than cultivate and gets a big creature eventually but doesn’t give you an extra land. Evaluating it is interesting.

Something like Ajani, Nacatl Pariah is broadly better than most two drops entirely, let alone most white aggro two drops. The question stops being “where is Ajani appropriate over other cards?” Or even “is there a deck for Ajani?” And instead becomes “how do we fit Ajani in?”

Power creep is bad when it prescribes a deck to play. It’s good when it questions what decks you should play.

[masked-feraligatr]

The Yugioh bit is really good, though I also think we’ve even surpassed the “modern” era of the game, where now decks will frequently go for less powerful boards in order to guarantee they can play the next turn, and use the generic hand traps as interruptions. Value has outstripped power

[abrvalg]

You've missed the point in HS that in the past you'd be strapped for resources but now everything generates some BS for half a mana and card draw is no longer premium.

[Niv_]

The reason why power creep is frown upon because it makes old cards irrelevant, and bad designers often used power creep to make the newer set strictly better so players would have to basically start back at step 1 at collecting.

Good power creep can come from story progression, opening new game design, the feel of improvement, and really good if it makes an old strategy more viable.

[naramoro]

Power creep shifts the games core balance out of whack. Starting health, hand size, card draw per turn etc. stays the same while creatures grow stronger and card draw becomes more impactful (because more impactful cards)

[kennydarmawan]

To me, good power creep is by complexity rather than pure power.

[jonathanperigo]

Real quick, fire design did not start with kaladesh. It actually began with Eldraine and ended around kaldheim. This was explicitly stated by maro.

[vinc]

*mentions Lugia vstar* "gives less skilled players wins more often" yeah sounds about right

[Izelor]

The stronger cards get, the more homogenized the games become. That's because you are forced to play those cards, otherwise you lose too fast to be able to play your own build. Usually the best era of a game is around 4-5 years in its life cycle. That's when the game has moved on from basic card designs that are usually boring and/or bad to more complex, stronger, but still reasonable card designs. The game usually stays like this for a few more years, then it all goes downhill from there. When you notice that a game starts pumping up numbers instead of creating new and interesting mechanics, that's when you know it's over for it. For example, Magic has been like this for almost 10 years now.

[KKKuma]

Reason why I quitted heartstone some years ago was not entirely because the powercreep. It was because so many cards that generate cards that generates cards and make infinite value that no way you can take account for. It feel bad and terrible when the game devolved to no strategy at all and depend on entirely luck. At that point why playing anymore and not just gambling or coin toss. This is the first time I see a new hearthstone card for a long time and look like they are still going in that direction.

[MondayMorningDM]

Not to nitpick, just wanted to clarify. Throne of Eldraine was the official start of FIRE design seeing print in MTG. Smuggler's Copter was largely an issue because they pushed the original design of the vehicle card type and underestimated the value and pressure the card could create.

[kiraangle]

Yugioh powercreep sometimes takes place in the form of consistency creep, no longer can windup magician and shark as a two card combo be seen as the makings of a decent deck, now we need the search on normal summon that goes into the l1 that searches the fieldspell and extends, and then the fieldspell searches on activation and extends or protects the combo. 7 cards to your opponents 5 and you havent even done 5 % of a full combo yet. Sometimes you do all that without thr notmal summon too

[MrGogotoon]

One thing I dislike in current Magic is also the complexity creep.
Cards do more and more complex things
it's not necessarily a big power creep but the game becomes more complex and harder to follow with more things to keep track of

[tintillor]

In Digimon, power creep is clear, but there are also cards that are evergreen due to their good design. So, for example, there's a deck that is made with a base of cards from a expansion that is 7 expansions behind the current one. They introduced a mechanic called Burst Digivolve that made gameplay more interesting. Players have to think twice before going full aggro because now the game has reaction in the oponent's turn.

[rayzhang]

Another issue about mtg is the older sets have insanely powerful ways to enable otherwise fine creatures

[soup]

Yugioh has evolved in interesting ways recently. There are no new mechanics releasing, so instead of just powercreeping the previous mechanic, decks try to be more unique.
The link era was just huge combos that would prevent your opponent from playing turn 1, and these decks still exist today, but decks are getting less "all-in" and more consistent/grindy

[goldenarmour]

Fun fact: Maxx "C" was printed 3 years earlier than Fire Hand!