Game designers are worried about two things when expanding a game: power creep and complex creep.

Expanding the game is what leads to the game becoming more "fun," not power creep. Power creep simply increases the game's luck factor, taking out strategy.

The best way to expand a game without power creep is to create new factions. Urban Rivals does this every six months. Both Skeelz and Frozn have expanded Urban Rivals with minimal power creep. In addition, creating new clans is very friendly for new players, allowing them to easily identify strategies to grow their collection.

The next way to expand a game without power creep is to create new mechanics. For instance, Stop was a new mechanic which has created a small handful of legitimate ELO playable characters. Protection opened up a lot of new design space and has created several playable characters. The new power+damage ability seems like it will also serve an important niche. The problem here then is complexity creep. New mechanics make the game more complex. This is a problem because it alienates new players, and every game needs new player influx to persist.

Rotation is a solution to both power creep and complexity creep but leads to player blowback.

Designers of expanding games, such as "real" CCGs, never feel power creep is an acceptable design strategy. Power creep is a sign that design space is stagnant. It implies lazy designers who haven't put in the work to figure out new design space.

1) Power creep does not increase a game's luck factor. If done correctly, it adds more powerful cards to all available types of deck build at a steady rate. It gradually alters strategies and causes old cards to cycle out naturally, when serious players no longer have any use for them.

2) Designers of "real" CCGs never feel power creep is an acceptable design strategy -- are you kidding me?! Never have I ever seen a real card game without power creep. Take a look at Magic. Back in the day Llanowar Elves used to be pretty amazing. These days, there are cards that after accumulating enough tokens, allow you to walk over to the other player, literally punch him in the nose, and then rip up all of his cards. (This ability is so OP that it actually extends to cards in other CCGs, collectible sports and comic cards, greeting cards, AND last but not least, business cards. But I digress.)

As I have tried to explain time and time again, ELO is not some wounded beast badly in need of medical help, it is doing just fine. It is a rich, strategic format, with many approaches possible. Its biggest problem is that there is a lot of competition in the form of "easymode" DTs, where the odds of winning a CR in any given week are much better for the typical player. People who struggle to make t100 and/or find strong competition stressful are of course going to primarily stick to DTs.

Has WotC printed a burn spell for 1 r strictly better than Lightning Bolt? No. Every year, perhaps only a dozen new cards ever affect the vintage environment, and over the past 5 years of continuous releases, perhaps only a dozen have become permanent true staples in vintage. And nearly all of the cards that see the most vintage play in 4 of the 5 colors were printed in the first five years of Magic's 15+ year history. That's called managing power creep and resisting it by all means possible.

Back in the day Llanowar Elves used to be amazing? LOL Fastbond, Channel, Time Walk, Ancestral, Lotus, Mox, Ritual, Vault, Tutor, Contract from Below... "Back in the day" we were all newbs. Even the best card printed in the last 5 years is a tier or two below the power that was in Alpha.

It seems like there's a lot of confusion regarding "power creep" and "OP cards."

Yeah, "back in the day" there were some reaaaallly OP, unbalanced cards in Magic. As I keep trying to explain, that's NOT relevant to power creep -- that's a totally different phenomenon entirely. UR also has restricted/banned cards that were created early on, and were OP to the point of being destructive to the game. Just because some cards proved to be too powerful and then were excluded from play *does not mean that the power of the average card is decreasing on the whole.*

In Magic, a creature with the same stats but lower casting cost than an older creature is an easy example of power creep. You can find a fair bit of that. Another example of power creep are abilities that are stronger than ones that previously existed -- being able to easily flood the game with a huge army of token creatures, for example, was not always as easily doable as it is today.

The bottom line is that every strategy game with a collectible element has power creep; it's inescapable. This is just the result of the need to keep players interested in new releases. In UR, if cards of each star level were completely equal in utility and raw power, there wouldn't be anything beyond collecting to motivate players to own new cards, right? This is a natural process, and unless handled poorly, it's quite benign.

Kitsune, I think this gentleman http://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=214064 can help us settle the "Power Creep in Magic" debate.

I have started to ignore this thread for two reasons. Firstly, it's boring me, none of this stuff will help you in ELO (last few pages at least) and all we are doing is arguing with each other. Secondly, it's just stupid. Look at ELO as a whole, not power and damage wise. Now, everybody look at the title of the subject, now look at what your talking about.

Revised list of the tier list AFTER these new perma bans:

Tier 1
Junkz
Jungo

Tier 2
Roots
All Stars
Montana
Roots
Uppers
Vortex

Tier 3
Fang Pi Clang
GHEIST
La Junta
Piranas
Skeelz
Ulu Watu

Tier 4
Bangers
Berzerk
Freaks
Nightmare
Pussycats
Rescue
Sakrohm
Sentinel

Tier 5
Frozn

Frozn is completely dead, not worth using in ELO unless they get a great 4*/5* release. Some clans could move up/down but this is (once again) just a rough copy of a tier list to today's ELO.

Guys as a new player I have like zero to contribute,but I must say a big thank you for all the advice and material you have put out there.

It can seem confusing to most of us especially when each one of the good players suggest something else,but it is a nice way of actually saying "everything works,at least for a while"

I particularly liked the 10.000 games Mark before actually suggesting clans/presets in ELO. Malcom Gladwell in his book Outliers has used something similar,called the 10.000 hours Mark,that states in order for someone to be called really good in something he needs 10.000 hours of practice. Guys like Bill Gates,Michael Jordan seem to have practised their craft for this amount of time so it sounds good for me.

Wow for the card in Magic the Gathering,they make me wanna keep my money even more due to the op-ness of newer releases

0 ComeAtMe,thanks for the list,its nice seeing Vortex up there and Roots two times in tier 2 Any chance you can suggest something like top 10 decks (mono/half)?

Thanks a bunch again to all of you

Top 10 decks? Isn't possible.

Umm Nightmare is great i would say, tier 2. they have a whole bunch of solid 2*s (duh) and 3*s as well. 4*s arent that bad, Kenny Cr can be good, Glorg can be useful and for 5*s, Karrion is one of my favs.

Freaks are still doable frankly, as long as Bogdan does not stay in the ban list. I would say tier 3?

La Junta is crap, tried them does not work that well tier 4.

Ulu Watu and Skeelz are debatable but pretty good tier

Cant pick and choose what we like about one game and apply... ignoring other aspects. Magic has changed its formats numerous times - UR will eventually alter the ELO format once again

name one OP card that does not contribute to the power creep. treating the cards as if they belong to one group or the other does not reflect reality. Most of the OP card is high powered. Name one card in the current meta that has 6 power and is considered OP? Aside from a couple of damage reducers.... cant think of any off the top ofmy head