[2020] On Power Creep, Perk Eco, Build Variety, Set Bonuses, and engagement Longevity.

In the style of the old forums, here's a long feedback post filled with the ramblings of a player who's been around since the beginning. Bear with me while I address some points of concern, hopes for the future, and suggestions for the betterment of the game. With Slayer's Path around the corner, Dauntless entering a stage of its life where success is critical to following through, and longtime partners openly losing interest in the state of the game for its failure to deliver on timely solutions to problems that were repeatedly assured were temporary only to never see direct action, I think it's important for everyone who's interested in the game to provide critical, thought out feedback. I should point out that at no point do I think any of my suggestions necessarily are going to be actionable, and so my offered solutions are going to be more broad in scope. I have no clue what Slayer's Path Dauntless is going to look like concretely, and so many of my complaints may be addressed in some form or another, although I have seen PHXL perform the same kind of reset before, and it's less of a new album and more of a bringing the needle back to the start of the disc, so take anything I say with a grain of salt. Players are great at finding pain-points, not great at offering solutions, after all.

The first thing to address is the looming specter of Power Creep. What exactly is Power Creep. Avoiding any textbook or google definition, it's a natural consequence of an expanding game attempting to offer attractive and useful new content without it being dead on arrival. Even in a controlled fashion, Power Creep is an inevitability in any game where expanded options over the lifespan of play offer more optimized or powerful choices for players to make, and developers naturally try to provide content which fills empty niches in player options with new content so that the content has a reason to exist in the ecosystem. At its worst, it becomes a runaway stacking of system on top of system on top of system. At its best, it's a slow crawl where the true impact is not fully realized until you view things in retrospect should other adjustments to bring content up with it not follow. Dauntless has a bit of both, and a clear lack of growth on the power floor of content to keep up.

A lot of people will tend to point out a perk indicative of power creep, or perhaps a certain method of using your perk eco, or maybe the more popular scapegoat being lantern power on escalation capacitors. The truth is all of it is important, and none of it is impactful on its own. It's the cumulative effect of all of these sources, none of which compete against one another and which stack in ways that exponentially grow over the power ceiling we had a year ago via their interactions with one another, that has caused the systemic power creep in dauntless. No one thing, no one system, is to blame, and pruning a single system is not going to stave off the lingering effects of a layering of options that are threatening to runaway again the moment they're corralled. A fundamental systemic change needs to happen to the core of how Dauntless tries to layer itself to see the issue put to bed, if only for an amount of time needed to recapture the essence of the game. And many of us are hoping Slayer's Path is what is going to do this. Whether it achieves that is another matter, and one I'm not so confident in because, if the experimental build is anything to go by, it's not so much solving the system as much as it is lengthening the roadway for one aspect of the system to run before it can get out of control.

The main problem of power creep as it has manifested in Dauntless is plainly seen in negative kill times on the Trials leaderboards. It's the canary in the coal mine that makes the problem obvious. Content does not keep up with player power. But why is that? Why can't they just... increase the power of behemoths at the top end if this is a problem? And the answer is, at least as far as I can tell, accessibility to content.

At its core level, the "power floor" - the point where all players can reasonably be expected to sit at a minimum - is extremely low. Absurdly low. I'm not talking recruit gear and gnasher swords. I'm talking, even if you are someone who has +10 armor and weapons, you can make some very bad choices that might seem intuitive (e.g., Full Valomyr Armor) and yet which when compared to someone who does make all the right choices, many of which are NOT intuitive or explained by the game, it will be like looking at two completely different worlds in terms of power. The power floor is a relative reference - relative specifically to the "power ceiling". The player who makes all those right decisions will be absurdly powerful, capable of clearing content in fractions of the time as someone on the power floor. Even if they're both at the same place in progression in the game, the choices you can make that lead you from the power floor to the power ceiling and all the microprogressions you can achieve that are not immediately obvious or visible or even fair make a massive difference. And content has to be developed so that it's reasonable to the power floor.

That's the rub. The power floor isn't just extremely weak - it's also the bar to which content must be set for a "good experience". Because so much of your power doesn't necessarily come from broad strokes of progression, but rather from choices you make within the same tiers of progression and microprogressions along the way (cell acquisition for example being heavily RNG dependent), you cannot design content around the power ceiling as it would exist necessarily in the same tier as the power floor. Doing so would invalidate many of the (admittedly poor) choices players can make and which the game would seem to intuitively encourage. Content that is only "accessible" to players who have extensive knowledge and who make decisions which are not immediately intuitive is not necessarily a bad thing, but Dauntless has such as narrow capacity to produce content that it cannot afford to make that kind of content decision. And as the power ceiling continues to grow, the power floor stays the same, and as the power floor stays the same, the content needs to stay accessible to that power floor while suffering the ill effects of a runaway compounding of strength on strength in the power ceiling.

On the other hand is the role of gear, Perk Eco, and meaningful build decisions. I do not think it's controversial to say that all of the best builds are essentially the same thing - some kind of lowlife build, maybe with predator, maybe with iceborne. And while any other build can take on any kind of content just fine, not only is it worse at doing it, but it commits the worst sin of all - it plays exactly the same. Why would I want to play a build that plays the same way, does the same things, but does it worse than another build? And that's the worst aspect of builds in Dauntless. Anyone that is hoping for some kind of "unsolvable" or "extensive multiple solution" meta is kidding themselves inherently - the meta is always going to be a thing, players are always going to solve the top end optimization problem. Where Dauntless goes wrong however is that all of the off-meta builds are not only worse (even significantly worse), but do nothing different with the formula to redeem themselves. And the only way we see changeups in the meta is with the introduction of overwhelmingly more powerful options, as we clearly see with the Heartbreaker experiment. Dauntless needs to address not just power creep, but also this stagnation of build and play. Longer than any discussions of power creep have been going on there's been a constant ennui of "when will we get something new". Hunting Grounds is attempting to bring the novel to us on one end with a mixup of the content loop. The content loop, however, is not what was broken. Slayer's Path is trying to bring us something new in how we progress. Progression also was not really what was broken. What was broken was the choices we as players have been able to make, specifically that no choice we made actually did anything except make the resulting loop harder or easier. The few times where some interaction opened up a pathway to more choice, such as the Momentum Blades change that allowed it to work with Boreus Chainblades (despite being such a small change), make a much larger impact on the psyche of the community than any new behemoth, any new progression tool, any new layer or wrinkle or mutation of the core loop. Suddently a new way to play the same content even if it was only a little bit different made a huge change in how we perceived the openness and options of the game, and something like Hunting Grounds that is just asking us to play the same stagnant choices in a new way, or Slayer's Path that is telling us we can get to the same stagnant choices in new ways, does little in the scheme of things to solve this platonic boredom that is permeating player interaction. Weapon reworks were the first step many of us felt was being taken to really address it, and Sword has done a fantastic job in a sphere that seems like an island of choice and difficulty in an ocean of options that reward you more for doing less.

This ennui is so pervasive that we have a number of creators who are keeping up with Dauntless only because it's what they're known for, not because they're having fun - or who even have weighed the damage to their immediate bottom line as being less of a threat to their well-being than continuing to play a game which has failed to evolve with them and keep their engagement. That's a major problem when your spokespeople who have built their communities around the game decide to migrate elsewhere. They are your talking heads, and when your talking heads are saying "this isn't fun", whether explicitly with statements of moving on or implicitly by avoiding the game for anything but a paycheck, their audience listens. Dauntless needs to change things up in ways that reinvigorate the marrow of the player's experience and which address the essential problems that cause this sort of long-term fallout of interest in players who have discovered everything the game has to offer.

We need not just a curbing of the Power Creep, but we need more meaningful choices as players. To escape the vagueness of broader statements, however, I have a series of direct suggestions.

1. We need methods of power which do not complement, but which compete against, the existing power system of Perk Eco.
2. We need intuitive choices to carry commensurate intuitive power.
3. We need player options to create interesting outcomes that play differently. Off-meta choices do not need to inherently compete with the meta in terms of raw performance, but rather to offer not-terribly-far-behind options that create very different experiences in their execution.
4. We need the power floor to be raised.
5. We need the power ceiling to be lowered.
6. We need power from microprogressions to have enhanced and specific degrees of control in the player's hands while also lengthening the roadway for player progression.

So what do we need? Well, in my opinion, we need Set Bonuses and a Cell Overhaul. This is a specific solution that is not to be taken as the absolute perfect world, or even one that the devs should necessarily take as a literal guidebook. I'm a player. Players identify problems easily. We do not identify solutions quite so easily, particularly when the devs have also set their sights on those same problems and have other plans well underway in an attempt at solvency.

Why Set Bonuses though?

1. Set Bonuses compete directly against the game's current meta of Perk Eco. While there may be some stacking overlap in getting an optimized perk loadout on top of Set Bonuses, ultimately Set Bonuses are intended to act as a trade-off to the current meta of "make a clownsuit that gives you the perfect stacking set of +3's and +6's to passives" by forcing you to take what might be less-optimal choices in a loadout slot in terms of eco to instead benefit from a set bonus you might value. This also runs the double-feature of possibly providing underutilized perk categories like defense and mobility some light of day at near-topend calculus.
2. Set Bonuses are intuitive, particularly to new players. While I have no concrete data on how new Dauntless players interact with their gear, I'm going to take a shot in the dark and guess that a significant number of them try building a single set of gear because it should make sense that it would provide a cohesive and meaningful benefit. I've had enough people on the discord posting their mono-behemoth "builds" and think they're doing something right. The game seems like that should be a decision that, even if not perfect, provides SOME kind of benefit. Unfortunately, they aren't, and the game never explains to the player why that kind of decisionmaking is one that leads directly to degraded performance.
3. Set Bonuses open the way to meaningfully different and powerful choices that might not be able to exist in perks, more akin to UE's or lanterns than to a series of numbers that get incrementally larger the more of it you stack. What if Charrogg gave you "3 Pieces: Double Stamina and Stamina Regen, but Double Dodging and Sprinting Costs // 5 Pieces: Dealing damage with an attack automatically starts stamina regeneration. As long as you have stamina, gain 20% Damage Reduction." Immediately you might see the opportunities present in a playstyle that goes heavier on stamina consuming attacks, which attempts to capitalize on Charrogg UE's stamina properties, and which might try to bring in synergies with other tools available to you. If each behemoth had more unique set bonus options, even if it ultimately only provides a slight mutation in how we ideate around builds, that has a larger effect on the psyche and perception of options present in the community and the identities we build around our choices as players than something like Hunting Grounds or Slayer's Path.
4. Set Bonuses, by being accessible by simply wearing a set of gear, raises the power floor of players by giving them a consistent, powerful set of reliable build-defining tools that act as a foundation to work off of. We currently have no such foundation.
5. Set Bonuses do not inherently lower the power ceiling - that would be best undertaken through other means, such as a Cell Overhaul - but it also disproportionately affects the power floor more than it does the power ceiling. This means any top end crunch of the power ceiling down into the power floor is going to see a larger net effect with Set Bonuses than without.
6. A concentration of the player's power floor into Set Bonuses enable any overhauls of other systems to be taken with a greater latitude as you are not threatening the foundation of a player's power and experience by carving out a content path that necessarily requires a longer form of engagement. This means microprogressions can take steps to become better systems for the longevity and health of the game without threatening the core of the player experience elsewhere.

So then why a Cell Overhaul? What does that mean? First we have to identify what role Cells serve in a player's build, progress, and identity. The easy answer here is just that they're flexible power. They're tools for players to flex their builds in and out of specific synergies and outcomes they are interested in achieving. Right now, Cells are handed out like candy while also being heavily RNG dependent. These are both problems. When they are the core of your power curve and choice as a player, you need to give them out constantly. When they're RNG, your choices are inherently limited by what a number generator decides to hand you. And while there's some excitement in RNG, there's also profound disappointment. What would a Cell Overhaul look like?

1. Reduce the number of Cells given out to players, and only make them attainable at their base +1 level.
2. Make them rank up not through combination, but through aether dust. Dusting cells to act as fuel for your collection means you are less reliant on specific RNG pulls to progress once you have your entryway. Each level requires exponentially more aether dust to level up, and perhaps some kind of rare material in addition to the dust to hit the limits can provide meaningful breakpoints in progression to control your progress towards without locking away the majority of a player's power.
3. Break perks up into divisions of 10 instead of 6. Make cells progress over +1-+5. Make gear progress similarly - this can even be integrated into the apparent Prestige system we're seeing on the experimental build. Perhaps gear keeps a similar +1/+2/+3 perk progression, and prestiging it grants an inherent +1 to the perk (so 1st prestige makes it +2/+3/+4, and 2nd prestige makes it +3/+4/+5).

With a greater emphasis on Set Bonuses as your foundation of power, this kind of slower Perk progression is not as impactful to a player's perception of power and provides a longer route of engagement and personalization to a player than simply raw power increases like we're seeming to find in Slayer's Path. This means more time spent in the game does not necessarily equate to a disproportionate raw increase in power, but rather in a greater flexibility of choice - one which may increase your raw power levels but only as a consequence of your greater knowledge of the game enabling you to make better use of those choices.

Of course, how would we get old players to engage with the new system, while also preventing a redundancy or incompatibility with the old and the new? Simple. Take a slayer's entire collection of cells. Each cell that they have at least one copy of, they get a +1 of. For each cell, they're turned into a "bin" of dust that is then invested into that +1. If that cell receives enough dust to reach +5 out of that "bin", that bin then has its leftover dust deposited into their dust balance. Repeat for each cell. The player now has a collection of cells that compensated them for their previous collection fairly while still asking them to engage in the new system's identity of cells as a flexible source of power instead of the fundamental source of power.

It is important to recognize that I do not believe that my specific solution is the actual path PHXL ought to necessarily take. It is, admittedly, a pet proposition, the kinds of things that are fun to muse about when theorizing over the problems present in the game's DNA. However, I'm sharing them not to say "Hey PHXL, this is the roadmap to fixing the game", but rather to provide insight on how these fundamental problems that are difficult to explain outside of fairly ambiguous generalizations might have concrete pathways to solvency.

And to lead this back to that realm of ambiguity, I think it's important to state that Dauntless needs some method of holding onto players interest and imagination. The game does so many, many, things absolutely right. The cosmetics, the business model, even the core gameplay loop, is fun and engaging in ways that few games in the market manage to be able to grasp. Its failures are often at the seams - loose threads which do not immediately stand out but which unravel as you pull on them. The way builds and perks progress are on a surface level interesting, and down to their muscles and fat seem to work, but when you get down to the bones reveal a foundation that is not sustainable. And what I am severely worried about in the upcoming reworks with Hunting Grounds and Slayer's Path and Cells/Gear 2.0 is that they're simply exchanging the flesh and leaving the brittle bones beneath. They're replacing the familiar with the novel and in the process not fixing the problems but rather masking them so that it's a harder path for everyone to re-identify and fix them, and that all of the effort that went into that reskinning of a rotting core may alienate invested players who are not only losing the gameplay they have gotten used to, but which has not solved any of the lingering faults that have been straining their enjoyment of the game, and which does not uniquely cause the influx of engagement for new players whom any change would be equally as novel and meaningful/less to.

I do not want to see Dauntless abandon things that work to solve problems in a scorched-earth fashion, nor do I want to see facsimiles of change where they're needed to preserve systems which don't work because they're propping up unsustainable expectations. I am worried that PHXL is perhaps misidentifying both of these things when intaking player feedback and trying to parse it in a meaningful way. I believe that PHXL devs truly do care and want to make the game better and healthier for their playerbase, and that their openness and willingness to engage the community in difficult discussions and to pull highly critical feedback - some of which can even venture into nastiness - into their pool of consciousness are boons that will serve their work in delivering an engaging experience well. I do wish, however, to sound off on thoughts and criticism that have been brewing as a consequence of many discussions on discord, the uncertainty of what exactly is in the future for the game, and the loss of interest from many figureheads in the community at large who have led Dauntless to where it is now and to consolidate that into a readable post where I attempt to address some of the anxieties present in how the game's been heading (or, more accurately, listing) for some time now.

TL;DR - Dauntless is fun, but has some problems, and I may not have perfect solutions but I have ideas on how to identify solutions to collective apprehensions in ways I'm worried the devs are misidentifying.

Also give us a Fashion Show gamemode + queue. It's a massive oversight that so much of the game is built around engaging the Fashion audience but with no formal outlet for them to participate in. "Serve the audience you have" and somesuch folk wisdom.

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