History Main / ParabolicPowerCurve

* While it isn't completely fatal, larger bombs and faster fuses can make it very difficult to avoid killing yourself in ''BomberMan''.

Contrast EliteTweak. Compare EmptyLevels, where it's all downhill from the start.

** It is more subtle than that: every single soldier in your army has his or her own KarmaMeter, but your army as a whole has a collective reputation. So if your army is comprised of 80% of war criminals who are sent to the battlefield while the 20% nice guys go to liberate the cities when the Empire's army is gone, the civilians will make their opinions for what they see, and who would listen to survivors of the Evil Empire army talking about the ruthlessness of the liberation army anyway? It may not have been intentional, but one of the most interesting thing about Ogre Battle is that you can get the best ending by being a MagnificentBastard VillainWithGoodPublicity who still has a [[EvenEvilHasStandards sense of decency]].
*** It is actually even more subtle than this in many of the games of the series: Towns have different alignments, themselves. Lawful (or Good in the earlier games) aligned towns are "Liberated" by lawful or good soldier groups, and "Captured" by Neutral or Chaotic or Evil groups. Neutral towns demanded neutral groups. Chaotic (or Evil in earlier games) towns demanded chaotic groups to liberate them. "Liberating" towns pushed you towards getting the good endings, which means that good commanders are sensitive towards the alignments of the cities they take, and make sure to appease their populations (which is part of the reason why alignment changed from "evil" to "chaotic", since you were actually trying to help those people). This process of making groups that "bully" weaker units, or kill higher-aligned units go down in alignment gets complicated in some games, especially Ogre Battle 64, where near the end of the game, the enemies start giving your characters massive boosts in alignment towards being lawful (possibly because they are all demonic enemies), meaning that you have to ''protect your previously overleveled characters from fighting'' because otherwise you will have no units that have alignment low enough to liberate the low-alignent towns. You pretty much have to force at least one powerful unit into retirement, dropping well below level into uselessness just to pimp them out to towns that like bad boys.
*** OgreBattle 64 also had one nasty problem with leveling. Dragons are particularly powerful enemies, and in order to get several powerful magical crests, you've got to defeat two dragons, and a dragon tamer (strengthens dragons) in a random battle in a certain place. If you don't do the battle early enough, the dragons are all extremely strong. Smart players would bring a strong multi-attacker, and two Pumpkin Heads (HP Halving attacks), but those are late game enemies, and only available by recruiting a special character.

[[AC:FirstPersonShooter]]
* In ''RedOrchestra'', medium difficulty settings in Practice mode are easier than the easiest setting, because on the easiest setting, your teammates' AI is so horrendously stupid that it's literally impossible to progress. ([[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard And the opponent AI is always smarter, of course.]]) On higher difficulties, the AIs for both teams are improved considerably, so you at least have a chance.

* In the ultimate difficulty of ''PhantasyStarOnline'', the temporary invincibility after being hit is taken away unless you get completely knocked over. Thus, it's only possible to survive some attacks until your defence gets high enough.

* A rare inversion in ''BillyVsSNAKEMAN'', where Phase Battles are at their hardest at [[NewGamePlus Season 8]]. At higher Seasons, you can deal deal more damage per attack with no penalty, an at lower Seasons, you don't have to put yourself at as much risk to activate some of the bonuses.

** The problem (or lack thereof) is based almost entirely on the player's class. If you spent your twenty levels [[ClassyCatBurglar being nice to people and stealing their stuff when they aren't looking]], the above is true when you get into areas where [[EverythingTryingToKillYou none of the entities around want to talk to you]]. If you're [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy a combat-oriented class]], you won't have the above problem, because you've spent twenty levels killing things. In short, the PPC of Oblivion is very much [[YourMileageMayVary variable]].
** Actually it's still easier at level one, because it requires careful [[MunchKin powergaming]] to keep one's stats leveling up enough with each level. But if you're both level one but your blades skill is 100 while theirs is something appropriate to a level one enemy...

*** Try healing after every fight. Your client's level is based on the player's level as well.
**** around 5% of the time. Friendly [=NPCs=] usually don't level with the player for some reason, and that includes most of the ones that require escort services. Even the ones that do level don't have their equipment level with them, unlike most enemies. At least some of them have the decency to be tagged as essential, meaning they'll get up after being beaten to a bloody pulp, again, and again, and again...
*** It gets worse. Damage, both weapons and magical is capped (stats only go so high), but health is level dependent. So as you level beyond a certain stage, you and your enemies grow more durable, but your damage stays the same, leading to long, drawn out slug fests. Worse still, monster damage does scale with level, forcing the player to rely on a GameBreaker to kill anything at the higher levels, which in turn make things too easy instead.
* ''{{Fallout 3}}'' does it as well. While enemies become progressively tougher, to the point of having frankly absurd hitpoints by level 30, your weapon of choice nearly reaches its maximum potential by level 5.
** While completing quests gives you better and better perks, to the point that a BB gun in the hands of a level 30 character is better than a [[{{BFG}} minigun]] in the hands of a level 5, enemy health scales much faster and much farther than the increased damage you can do even with the best perks and weaponry. The major changeover starts to occur around the time Super Mutant Brutes replace most of the normal Super Mutants. After that, enemies with sky-high health become bog-standard. Some people build specialty characters who can still waste them, but this is difficult and takes a lot of knowledge of the game and usually just the right gear and tactics.
*** It gets even worse if you have the Broken Steel DLC installed. Once you pass level 20 some new monsters start showing up (Albino Rad Scorpion, Feral Ghoul Reaver, Super Mutant Overlord, etc...) who are much tougher than anything that came before them, with the sole exception of the Super Mutant Behemoth.
*** While players may sometimes struggle with the leveling, your ''companions'' ironically have a case of the opposite. When first recruited, a companion like Dogmeat will be at best a distraction for your enemies while you blast them from behind. By the time you hit level 30, Dogmeat can take 2 to 3 '''nukes''' in the face and bounce back up to continue its murder spree. In fact, companions are so overpowered at higher levels that you can comfortably stand back and let them do all the heavy leg work while you loot the corpses of your foes.
**** Note that Dogmeat is only this way because he's ''bugged''!
*** Of course, with proper optimization, a late game character can wipe the floor with anything short of a DLC BossInMooksClothing without effort, leaving even the most powerful companion (and his infinite ammo gattling laser) in the dust. Most players aren't anywhere near as powerful as this on their first playthrough though, as such optimization also requires location of some unique equipment, and perk giving quests, many of which you're not likely to stumble across over the course of a single run.
*** All the above is true, and Fallout 3 was still markedly better about this kind of problem than Oblivion. The simple fact that you get more than one hit/per attack, and can do so from beyond range, balances the game better than Oblivion where even magic didn't always do enough destruction to guarantee victory. Add in ElementalRockPaperScissors, and you have a definite mess. Since bullets don't suffer from that, except for laser/plasma weapons, that's not an issue. Improvements to critical attacks also helped significantly, since the damage wasn't capped for a single attack and was higher all around. None of this accounted for the massive hit points of the Feral Ghoul Reaver. (It starts with 1100 HP, and goes UP.)

** A minor example of this trope. ''FinalFantasy'' has spells that [[OneHitKill kill]]s a character if the character's level was divisible by a certain number. ''FinalFantasyVIII'''s max level is 100 thus making you susceptible to Lv. 5 Death, making that one last level up a considerable disadvantage.
*** Level 99 characters were vulnerable to Lv. 3 Confuse, so that level wasn't so great either.

** Or you can just get an Arithmetician, since those babies are so broken that its basically impossible to lose a battle no matter what the situation. The Thunder God works too.

!!Non-video game examples:

[[AC:{{Anime}} and {{Manga}}]]
* In ''Manga/DragonBall Z'', the characters spend a large portion of the Cell Saga trying to reach the [[PowerLevels power level]] beyond that of the Super Saiyan. When Goku finally makes the breakthrough, he realizes the new form is useless - it has great muscular strength, but those muscles are so heavy and hard to move that the fighter's speed goes down to the point where laying hands on a foe is impossible. Trunks, a less seasoned fighter, doesn't realize this and tries to use the new power on Cell, resulting in a painful slice of humble pie.
** Vegeta also realized this while fighting Cell and powered down. Unfortunately, Prince {{Jerkass}} let his pride get in the way and gave his opponent a free ticket to his final stage.
* Shinji in in ''NeonGenesisEvangelion'' gets progressively more powerful over the course of the show; but when he surpasses Asuka the [[DysfunctionJunction interpersonal dynamics]] that kick in wreak havoc on NERV's ability to fight the Angels.
** Due to the nature of the Evas, it was inevitable anyway. Shinji was basically sitting on a Game Breaker the whole time, so the only way an Angel could be a real threat would be to take advantage of the mentally deranged nature of the entire cast. Which the cast did to themselves anyway.

[[AC:{{Literature}}]]
* In the ''[[ChooseYourOwnAdventure Fighting Fantasy]]'' books, players have to determine Skill, Stamina, and Luck scores at the beginning. Normally, the higher these are, the better. In ''Magehunter'', however, due to body-switching, it's an advantage to start with the lowest Skill and Stamina scores possible.
** In ''Black Vein Prophecy'', you need to fail the first luck check, or you're doomed to wander through the book without a hope of beating it. If you rolled a 6 for your luck (the maximum), it is literally impossible to win.

* In ''DragonballZ'', the characters spend a large portion of the Cell Saga trying to reach the [[PowerLevels power level]] beyond that of the Super Saiyan. When Goku finally makes the breakthrough, he realizes the new form is useless - it has great muscular strength, but those muscles are so heavy and hard to move that the fighter's speed goes down to the point where laying hands on a foe is impossible. Trunks, a less seasoned fighter, doesn't realize this and tries to use the new power on Cell, resulting in a painful slice of humble pie.

* ''TheElderScrolls 4: {{Oblivion}}'' raised quite a furor over this. It was reputedly easier to fight the FinalBoss at level 1 than at level 20.

** In ''Black Vein Prophecy'' you need to fail the first luck check, or you're doomed to wander through the book without a hope of beating it. If you rolled a 6 for your luck (the maximum), it is literally impossible to win.

* The web RPG ''DragonFable'' recently had to rebalance their entire battle scaling system because fights at high levels were getting so tedious people would get bored trying to get through quests where every one of the 10 or 15 battles took 2 minutes to finish. It's been fixed now, though.

** Similarly, Shmups with speed power-ups. One or two are usually necessary to dodge maneuver properly. Some, however, allow you to stack speed-ups far past the point when your ship handles with any sort of controlability. (The ''{{Gradius}}'' series is a prime example; though a few games have a method to speed down, they either cost many more power chips than to speed up or are only accessible at maximum speed.)

[[AC:MMORPGs]]

*** [[LittleBeast This Troper]] calls this strategy [=WCing=] in honor of Wesnoth.

Often shows up when a game uses elements of DynamicDifficulty, such as scaled encounters, but doesn't get the balance right. Occasionally a designer will put this in a game deliberately, as a kind of AntiGrinding, but this is not wise as it tends to infuriate the players - especially if they've gotten so powerful that the game has become {{Unwinnable}}. Sometimes this can be defused by advertising it as a feature, but not always.

[[AC:MMORPG]]

[[AC:[[MMORPG]]

[[AC:[[MMORPG MMORPGs]]]]

[[AC:MMORPGs]]

** Similarly, Shmups with speed power-ups. One or two are usually necessary to dodge maneuver properly. Some, however, allow you to stack speed-ups far past the point when your ship handles with any sort of controlability. (The ''{{Gradius}}'' series is a prime example)

**** around 5% of the time. Friendly NPCs usually don't level with the player for some reason, and that includes most of the ones that require escort services. Even the ones that do level don't have their equipment level with them, unlike most enemies. At least some of them have the decency to be tagged as essential, meaning they'll get up after being beaten to a bloody pulp, again, and again, and again...

* TheElderScrolls 4:''Oblivion'' raised quite a furor over this. It was reputedly easier to fight the FinalBoss at level 1 than at level 20.

* {{Fallout}} 3 does it as well. While enemies become progressively tougher, to the point of having frankly absurd hitpoints by level 30, your weapon of choice nearly reaches its maximum potential by level 5.
*** While completing quests gives you better and better perks, to the point that a BB gun in the hands of a level 30 character is better than a [[{{BFG}} minigun]] in the hands of a level 5, enemy health scales much faster and much farther than the increased damage you can do even with the best perks and weaponry. The major changeover starts to occur around the time Super Mutant Brutes replace most of the normal Super Mutants. After that, enemies with sky-high health become bog-standard. Some people build specialty characters who can still waste them, but this is difficult and takes a lot of knowledge of the game and usually just the right gear and tactics.
**** It gets even worse if you have the Broken Steel DLC installed. Once you pass level 20 some new monsters start showing up (Albino Rad Scorpion, Feral Ghoul Reaver, Super Mutant Overlord, etc...) who are much tougher than anything that came before them, with the sole exception of the Super Mutant Behemoth.
**** While players may sometimes struggle with the leveling, your ''companions'' ironically have a case of the opposite. When first recruited, a companion like Dogmeat will be at best a distraction for your enemies while you blast them from behind. By the time you hit level 30, Dogmeat can take 2 to 3 '''nukes''' in the face and bounce back up to continue its murder spree. In fact, companions are so overpowered at higher levels that you can comfortably stand back and let them do all the heavy leg work while you loot the corpses of your foes.

** A minor example of this trope. FinalFantasy has spells that [[OneHitKill kill]]s a character if the character's level was divisible by a certain number. ''FinalFantasyVIII'''s max level is 100 thus making you susceptible to Lv. 5 Death, making that one last level up a considerable disadvantage.

* The ''FireEmblem'' games and many of their cousins, some of the units have this problem. You can eventually build some of your characters to the point where they can one-shot most enemies easily, at which point they become nearly impossible to keep alive. What happens is, an enemy will move into position and attack. He'll get blown away on the counterattack, but the character will still take some damage. Once the attacker dies, the space he currently occupied is now free and another enemy will move into it, swing for some damage, die on the counterattack, etc. Repeat six or seven times a turn and many characters, particularly the more glass cannon sorts, can end up dead. It is particularly obnoxious with mages, who can easily kill many melee units (due to their low resistances) but having low defense against physical attacks themselves, can easily put themselves in this situation. Some very powerful units, however, either have so many hit points, such high defenses, or are so likely to dodge that they annihilate groups of enemies single-handedly.
** Ditto ''BattleForWesnoth''. Paladins vs. walking corpses and magi vs. almost anything are particularly poignant examples.
*** [[LittleBeast This Troper]] calls this strategy [=WCing=] in honor of Wesnoth.

* Anime example: In ''DragonballZ'', the characters spend a large portion of the Cell Saga trying to reach the [[PowerLevels power level]] beyond that of the Super Saiyan. When Goku finally makes the breakthrough, he realizes the new form is useless - it has great muscular strength, but those muscles are so heavy and hard to move that the fighter's speed goes down to the point where laying hands on a foe is impossible. Trunks, a less seasoned fighter, doesn't realize this and tries to use the new power on Cell, resulting in a painful slice of humble pie.
** Vegeta also realized this while fighting Cell and powered down. Unfortunately, Prince {{Jerkass}} let his pride get in the way and gave his opponent a free ticket to his final stage.

* In the ''[[ChooseYourOwnAdventure Fighting Fantasy]]'' books, players have to determine Skill, Stamina, and Luck scores at the beginning. Normally, the higher these are, the better. In ''Magehunter'', however, due to body-switching, it's an advantage to start with the lowest Skill and Stamina scores possible.
** In Black Vien Prophecy you need to fail the first luck check, or you're doomed to wander through the book without a hope of beating it. If you rolled a 6 for your luck (the maximum), it is literally impossible to win.

* While it isn't completely fatal, larger bombs and faster fuses can make it very difficult to avoid killing yourself in ''BomberMan''.
** Similarly, Shmups with speed power-ups. One or two are usually necessary to dodge maneuver properly. Some, however, allow you to stack speed-ups far past the point when your ship handles with any sort of controlability. (The {{Gradius}} series is a prime example)
* In the ultimate difficulty of ''PhantasyStar Online'', the temporary invincibility after being hit is taken away unless you get completely knocked over. Thus, it's only possible to survive some attacks until your defence gets high enough.
* ''WorldOfWarcraft'' uses this intentionally. Stats granted by items (in particular, ratings that convert to a percentage increase in effectiveness like armor, critical strike chance, dodge chance, etc.) lose relative power as characters level up, encouraging players to seek better gear. This was actually done to avoid the problem of PowerCreepPowerSeep where, given a logical progression of gear at higher levels, players would eventually be running around with 100% crit, haste, dodge, etc., severely breaking game balance.
** One side-effect of this is that items and enchants converted from the old rating system could be [[DiscOneNuke absurdly overpowered]] in the hands of low-level characters -- thus spawning a whole culture around twinking characters for battleground play. (Ironically, this made it so hard for normally leveling characters to compete in [=PvP=] that Blizzard eventually created a new bracket just for twinks.)
** A variant of this sitation occurred with Rage-based tanks (Warriors and Feral Druids), who count on being hit to generate power for their own attacks. With sufficient gear levels, these characters would get hit so seldom that they could not earn enough Rage to generate threat. Again, Blizzard addressed the issue by adding talents and skills that generate Rage (or Mana/RP for Paladins and Death Knights, respectively) when an attack is avoided.
* The [[DifficultyByRegion US and EU releases]] of RPG ''{{The 7th Saga}}'' altered level-up stat gains waaay downward, resulting in lots of ForcedLevelGrinding. It also had boss battles with other characters [[DynamicDifficulty at the same level as yours]] - but with the ''old'' stat gain formula. If you leveled up ''too'' far, their stats would outmatch yours to an unbeatable degree.
* ''FinalFantasyVII'' had a multi-layered version of this: Sephiroth's stats during the final fight are determined by a number of flags activated by the player. The more of these flags activated, the stronger he became. Gaining levels above level 90 were among these flags, as were defeating [[BonusBoss either or both Ruby and Emerald Weapon]], [[GameBreaker acquiring Knights Of The Round]], [[InfinityPlusOneSword acquiring each character's best weapon]], and a couple other possibilities. Note that the fight is still fairly easy if you've achieved any of the above.
* In ''RedOrchestra'', medium difficulty settings in Practice mode are easier than the easiest setting, because on the easiest setting, your teammates' AI is so horrendously stupid that it's literally impossible to progress. ([[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard And the opponent AI is always smarter, of course.]]) On higher difficulties, the AIs for both teams are improved considerably, so you at least have a chance.
* Due to a glitch, this can happen to seriously overleveled characters in Phantasy Star 4. Once a character's level gets a few levels away from 100, their stats begin to drop sharply and they lose skills. This isn't an issue in normal play, however; you can beat the game at around level 45-50, and the experience required to get that high of a level is so massive that it takes very deliberate effort to get that high (XP requirements for a single level up when in the 90s range are more than the total XP need to be able to beat the game).
* The web RPG ''DragonFable'' recently had to rebalance their entire battle scaling system because fights at high levels were getting so tedious people would get bored trying to get through quests where every one of the 10 or 15 battles took 2 minutes to finish. It's been fixed now, though.
* A rare inversion in ''BillyVsSNAKEMAN'', where Phase Battles are at their hardest at [[NewGamePlus Season 8]]. At higher Seasons, you can deal deal more damage per attack with no penalty, an at lower Seasons, you don't have to put yourself at as much risk to activate some of the bonuses.
* Another Anime example: Shinji in in NeonGenesisEvangelion gets progressively more powerful over the course of the show; but when he surpasses Asuka the [[DysfunctionJunction interpersonal dynamics]] that kick in wreak havoc on NERV's ability to fight the Angels.

----

**** It gets even worse if you have the Broken Steel DLC installed. Once you pass level 20 some new monsters start showing up (Albino Rad Scorpion, Ghoul Ravager, Super Mutant Overlord, etc...) who are much tougher than anything that came before them, with the sole exception of the Super Mutant Behemoth.

*** This troper seems to have gotten lucky with his first playthrough. He never had much difficulty blasting apart the craniums of Super Mutant Brutes, providing he had the right guns around (And, with the ease of finding weapons and ammo, this was most of the time).

** Those who understood the junction system well had little difficulty beating the game at level 1.
*** Beating the game at level 1 is actually so hard as to be completely impossible, given Squall starts the game at level 7.

Examples:

----
<<|VideoGameTropes|>>