Gear Scores and the Erosion of Mechanical Skill
DesignComments
Which specific titles are we talking about? Some modern gear systems still allow for build variety that bypasses raw stats.
We saw this with early 2000s MMOs. The upside was that it created a standardized language for group composition, which actually made organizing raids more efficient.
This trend is particularly visible in the shift toward live service loops where gear inflation is used to maintain monthly active user counts. It changes the incentive from mastery to retention.
This sounds like the power creep we see in TCGs... where the new cards just have bigger numbers to force people to keep buying packs... I wonder if the psychology is identical.
I disagree that this is solely about retention. From a systems design perspective, gear scores provide a predictable baseline for balancing encounter difficulty across a diverse player base.
The rise of hard mode or no-gear challenges in the modding community proves players still crave that mechanical purity. It shows there is a clear demand for skill-based progression.
The real issue is that gear scores are just an invisible wall for the average player. Why make a boss hard when you can just make the player's sword too weak to do damage?
does the gear score actually replace the skill or just gate the entry?