In certain video games like in live-service games, MMOs, MOBAs, and gacha games, the developers must find a way to make revenue and keep their game alive. For the next updates to come, new gear/characters will be more powerful while older characters/gear will become less prominent and thus forgotten.
Powercreep is a video game term meant to represent how later weapons/characters overshadow older characters. This term is mainly used when the game reaches it’s first anniversary and the devs want to celebrate by adding an OP character that includes special and unique attacks
Trading Card Games (e.g., Magic: The Gathering): Older cards like Vampire Nighthawk are rarely used now because new sets introduce creatures that do more for less cost.
Role-Playing Games (e.g., Dungeons & Dragons 5e): Newer subclasses often outperform base game options. Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything introduced subclasses like Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul, which give sorcerers extra spells, fixing a flaw in older subclasses and making them superior
Gacha Games(e.g., Honkai Star Rail & Genshin Impact): Characters like Neuvillette from Genshin and Acheron from Honkai Star Rail completely overshadow all the characters in the game by providing attacks and skills that give One Hit kill effects.
MOBA (e.g., League of Legends): Early champions often had zero mobility, relying entirely on positioning. Newer champions (e.g., Yasuo, Irelia, Akali, K’Sante) frequently have multiple dashes, wall jumps, or movement speed boosts built into their kits.
Why they do it:
The reason power creep occurs is because developers introduce new, stronger content to keep games engaging and profitable. Including special and more powerful abilities that are meant to be used in the endgame content as well as newer story content where enemies have buffed stats.
How to fix it:
A main solution to fix Power Creep in games is to buff the older units/weapons, that way they can be relevant and actually stand a chance against the newer content and characters. In addition to that, balance endgame enemies that way they are massive targets with Health inflation.
Dissida is a spin-off of the beloved franchise, Final Fantasy, It features both the main hero and villain cast from all the previous games. However, during the past year, the series has has a massive decline due to it’s poor choices from the developers.
Created by Square Enix back in December 18 2008, Dissdia was marketed as a 1v1 open arena fighting game where each player chooses a beloved Final Fantasy character spanning from FF1 to FF10. The roster consisted of:
The story of Dissidia Final Fantasy centers on a cosmic war between two gods—Cosmos (Goddess of Harmony) and Chaos (God of Discord)—who summon heroes and villains from across the Final Fantasy series to fight for them
The game included unique mechanics at the time such as different sets of attacks such HP attacks and Bravery Attacks, the latter which only damages a unique counter on each character.
Furthermore, the game still retains what the mainline Final Fantasy games have such as summons to help you in battle, gear to upgrade your character, and even the headline for each HP attack showing how the UI looks in each characters game (ex. Warrior of Light’s HP attack shows his “Shield of Light” attack with a black bar with white metallic strokes on it, but Cloud (the main character from Final Fantasy 7 will have a different one)
EX Moves
Dissidia features a system called Ex, when a character fills up a meter next to their portrait or they collect bells that appear around the battle field, they will enter a EX state, enhancing their attacks to deal more damage and when hitting with an HP attack, allows the character to perform an ultimate attacks that deals massive damage if the player manages to performs ever button prompt correctly that is shown for each character.
The game even got a sequel called Dissidia Duodecim (Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy) in March of 2011, which expanded the character roster and features a story that is set before the story of the first game, which includes the new line of characters.
The roster expanded it’s character which features the (at the time) new characters of the Final Fantasy franchise as well as some character from the previous titles:
Following the previous game, 012 features new mechanics to spice up the combat and feel of the game as a whole:
Assist System: Players can call in allies to assist with combos or disrupt the opponent’s bravery attacks (ex. Aerith)
EX Revenge: A new defensive mechanic allowed players to break out of enemy combos and temporarily freeze them when in EX Mode.
New Combat mode: Added “RPG Mode,” which allows for automated, menu-based action for players less familiar with fighting games.
Character reworks: Many original characters were rebalanced, with characters like Bartz receiving completely new movesets.
Dissida NT (The start of the downfall)
On June 2017, Square Enix announced Final Fantasy Dissidia NT, the new upcoming Dissidia game of the franchise. However, as more info on the game comes, the more upset fans of the Dissdia series become. Dissidia NT was orginially an arcade game in Japan that was directly ported into consoles.
Furthermore, the game has changed many things that the previous titles kept:
The format is now 3v3 rather than 1v1
Characters and moves are now slower and have less impact
Stages are much bigger which is supposed to fit the 3v3 format
Characters having completely different movesets that destroy what made them unique and special (Ex. Golbez is now just a zoner who only uses magical orbs to attack)
The new story is widely criticized, barebones story mode that is generally considered weak compared to its PSP predecessors
The overall experience of the game not only completely changes what made Dissdia so loveable, but it also ruined how many people view the series as a whole. Despite many people trying to revive the game, it ended up with a low player count and was quickly pushed into obscurity.
Potential revival
Squre Enix has relased the newest Dissdia game to try and revive the franchise, called Dissidia Duellum: Final Fantasy, a mobile gacha game released in March 24, 2026. Though it is still new, the game does seem to have some mixed reviews from fans.
Overall, this game was not only my childhood but also the game that I would always return to whenever I am bored or want to replay games that I love the most. I am still hopeful that they will remake the original 012 game from the PSP but I will wait until then.
