Disclaimer: This was written before the release of Aglaea
Power creep is an understandably controversial term when it comes to gaming, where older characters will slowly lose relevance in favour of newer characters that are both stronger, and more individually capable. As an example, let’s say you had character A. Character A is pretty good, he can do pretty good damage, and can also heal themself with a separate skill, very good, capable character. Then character B comes along. Character B can do more damage than character A, and can also heal while doing damage. For all intents and purposes, Character A, while still good in a bubble, has essentially been power crept by the more capable, desirable, character B
Suffice to say, power creep is like a miracle for gacha games, and it can be a tricky thing to balance, if they want to at all. A good example of how to, and how not to balance power creep can be seen in Honkai Star Rail.
One of the first characters to release for the game was Luocha, a mysterious traveling merchant who carries a strange coffin everywhere he goes. His abilities include healing, removing team debuffs, negating enemy special abilities, and creating a healing field that will passively heal allies with each action they take. Along with being relatively cheap in terms of skill points, the games main resource for performing skills in battle, he’s a very capable healer. Unfortunately for Luocha, the game progressed, and it eventually came to the point where he became outclassed. For example, Huohuo, a ghost hunter with the mannerisms of Luigi, also has a passive healing field, and can also provide energy for allies to use their ultimates. Lingsha, the head doctor of her planets healing division, can do what Luocha does in terms of removing enemy debuffs, but on a team wide scale, while Luocha can only do so one ally at a time. And as for Luocha’s SP usage, Gallagher, a bartender who exists in the land of dreams, can also do the same while also doing substantial damage himself. Overall, while Luocha is still a capable healer, he doesn’t offer a lot else that other healers can, effectively making him largely irrelevant in the games current meta. He’s usable, but not preferable
In contrast, Jing Yuan, a war general, and one of the first characters released in the game, was in a similar situation to Luocha. He’s vulnerable to debuffs and crowd control effects, his summon, the Lightning Lord, is inconsistent and most characters' external buffs don’t apply to it, and his ultimate has issues gathering energy. He’s also the unit that Hoyo will not let die, and no unit epitomizes that more than Sunday. Sunday, who is a disgraced authority figure that is basically Hoyo’s take on Takuto Maruki, in the sense that he tried to remake the world into one that fit his image of perfection, seems specifically designed to solve all of Jing Yuan’s issues and bring him back on top. He can cancel debuffs and CC with his skill, can directly affect both Jing Yuan and Lightning Lord with his damage buffs, and can directly grant Jing Yuan energy with his ultimate. Suffice to say, Sunday has not only made Jing Yuan viable again, but competitive with the games best units. And the funniest part, Sunday does technically powercreep previous supports, but he also helps older units that have fallen behind keep up with the competition
And on the note of supports powercreeping each other, this could be seen as a good thing by introducing new ways of playing these supports. For example, Fugue, a resurrected merchant finding her own path in the universe, was meant to directly replace the main player character in their archetype by basically doing their job in a different, but more effective way. What this resulted in is instead of the MC being powercrept into irrelevance, it became a legit strategy to play these two units together. Since Fugue and the MC are different path archetypes, they have access to different weapons, and its in taking advantage of this fact that the MC can fulfill a new role as a turn advancer using a weapon with this capability, while also adding their previous capabilities to Fugue’s, giving the player the best of both worlds
So in conclusion, power creep is, in my opinion, generally hit or miss. When it misses, it can doom a previously good unit to the bench indefinitely, but when it hits, it can help breathe new life into older units by raising them up or giving them new purpose
BONUS: Green Thing from Planet Jupiter is now available to wishlist on Steam!
I personally played it while at a networking event, and had a really good time with it. It’s a wonderfully bizarre, unique take on the cat and mouse formula that I highly recommend you try!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3338200/Green_Thing_From_The_Planet_Jupiter/
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