I keep seeing it everywhere and I think I know what it means? Is it just when heroes become bad overtime or become unviable because their counters get buffed? What does it mean exactly?
It means that the overall strength of hero’s, abilities, roles, and etc are far more then they use to be. Usually in answer to introducing new content that is at a higher level then existing content.
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Powercreep has to be in relation to something and that something is health because that never changes except in special cases like Hammond / tanks, but all regular heroes have 200 health. So when they introduce new abilities that do high damage, or healing or barriers and they also tend to buff rather than nerf damage / healing values, then everything is rising except for health which means that in effect health is becoming weaker in relation to everything else. Everyone’s dying quicker.
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Power, but creepy.
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zen is the best example how bad it has gotten with powercreep…
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It’s the general power of the game’s characters.
As more characters get added, the power level may increase if those characters abilities aren’t unique or are especially powerful.
Additionally, every time a character is buffed, the power creep increases. Everytime a character is nerfed, the power level decreases. If more buffs than nerfs are handed around, or if buffs are more significant than nerfs, then that’s the biggest cause of power creep.
Simply put, it’s the slow creeping of the overall strength of characters in an upward direction.
The reason it’s a problem is because not all characters were made to handle such high power, while others can get wildly out of control as time goes on.
You say something is power-crept based on comparison.
Generally new heroes are added to the game power-crept in comparison to older heroes, which creates a new threshold of power level to compete with, making older heroes outdated, so they get buffed too.
Classic example: Genji buffs
They explicitly explained that Genji’s buffs were given to him to compete with Echo and Doomfist, post-released heroes.
You can read it yourself here:
Another example are Ashe’s buffs, despite the fact that she was a post-released hero, there was already a damage output threshold to be competitive and she wasn’t achieving competitiveness:
Agreed. Of the 3 roles the game should be balanced around zen, soldier, and either rein/Winston. When any of those characters are considered too weak the game is in a bad state of creep like now.
Think of this;
During 3-Tank days
Ana could solo heal 2 tanks by herself, Reinhardt had 2000hp on his barrier, D.va could DM for 4 seconds and almost her entire HP pool was armour, and Zarya did more damage and was able to maintain a very high charge longer and easier.
Soldier with 20 damage per bullet was the strongest most used DPS in the game at the time.
Now since then Soldier not only has his 20 damage back, his fall-off has increased (Meaning he can do more damage from further away) and his helix rocket comes off cooldown faster. He’s stronger now than when he was the BEST DPS to use.
He’s seen as too weak in today’s game to be a strong viable pick
THAT is power creep
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