That’s not quite true in context though. The big difference between high and low numbers, is the gap between bad, ‘good’ and best builds. The bigger the numbers, the greater the gap from S tier to trash and the more obvious it suddenly becomes to everyone how ‘bad’ their build is compared to the best, especially if monster numbers scale infinitely too.
Now that could technically still be the same ratio, but that’s not how it plays out. The meta sees power creep, but often the baseline doesn’t change, it just gets materially worse all the time. Your build that did 100K damage used to be ok because meta was doing 150K, but now you’re doing 125K and the meta is doing 1.5M, feelsbadman.
The key point really though is that infinite scaling in itself isn’t necessarily bad, but, the game must have a point of balance. In Grim Dawn it’s SR30 or Crucible 150 Gladiator. In PoE it’s (kinda, they don’t really balance much) T16 Maps, LE sort of stated at ~300c. For LE, it needs to be clear (i.e. just set c500 and make it notable) and the devs have to show they’re balancing around that.
Exactly, if used as a design principle. Hence, D3 leaned into this heavily. Torment difficulty changes because screw balance, new forced meta each league apparently works well enough. PoE just does new leagues and has such breadth of skills, content and build options that it takes time for the meta to emerge within the *new thing.’ The boredom is there though, look how the numbers always drop back to ~5-10K each league, and who knows how many are bots in that.