What is a "Power Creep"?

Question

I said somewhere that I thought Scizor would be moved to Ubers with its new Fairy busting powers but someome said something about a power creep and that was why it would possibly stay in OU. The same thing occured on a thread on Smogon discussing wether or not Azumarill would move to OU. Just who or what is this power creep?
Ty in advance

Comments

To put it simply, "power creep" refers to how much more powerful the Pokemon are, usually referring to a transfer from one generation to another.

Answer 1

Power creep is the gradual unbalancing of a game due to successive releases of new content. The phenomenon may be caused by a number of different factors and, in extreme cases, can be damaging to the longevity of the game in which it takes place.

As new expansions or updates are released, new game mechanics or effects are introduced, making it increasingly difficult for older content to remain in balance without changes. Usually, this means new content releases grow successively more powerful while older content becomes regressively outdated or relatively underpowered.

What it basically mean is that as the new Pokemon is gradually becoming stronger, older pokes wont be as useful unless they recive new ways of becoming interesting.
For example, if you compare Azumarill with XY capacity in the current OU metagame it most likely function very well there with its distinct perks. But as Azumarill have been boosted, so will its opponents, both in current OU/UU, sort of outweighing its new power with better enemies.
I know this is very confusing, but I hope I made some sense.

Source: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_creep

Answer 2

Well, after a little bit of online research, I think I know what it means. A "power creep" is usually used with relation to the Trading Card Game, but it basically means that things in the newest generation are more powerful than those in previous generations.

This can be seen in several ways: firstly take Persian and Ambipom. This is a pretty basic example I made up myself, but there are undoubtedly more powerful versions of it around.
Persian was introduced in Gen I, and Ambipom in Gen IV, so take a look at their base stats. Ambipom is higher in EVERY SINGLE STAT, with the exception of a tie in speed, and Persian has 5 higher in Special Attack (whoop-dee-doo - neither Pokemon should use that stat anyway). So is there absolutely any reason to reason to use Persian over Ambipom? Not unless you really like Persian's design more. Well, OK, competitively this is why tiers exist. In the Black/White tiers (since we don't know the Gen VI ones) Ambipom is UU while Persian is NU.
A lot of Pokemon show this trend, with Gen I Pokemon (in general) being a little weaker than their later generation counterparts. If you go through and count how many Gen I Pokemon are still in the OU tier, there is only about 10, many of which are only there thanks to changes made in BW (e.g. Venusaur got the ability Cholorphyll, and Cloyster got access to Shell Smash, both of which was simply overpowered in the lower tiers).

This brings me to another point. Power creeps are not about looking at the stats of the new Pokemon. New moves and other new mechanics also play a part. For example, look at the stat boosting moves. Before Gen V, every single stat boosting move never gave more than a net +2 to a Pokemon's stats, with the exception of Belly Drum, but since that halves the health of the user it was hardly ever used anyway, and Amnesia in Gen I only (which was completely overpowered, but changed thanks to the splitting of the Special stat in Gen II). Aside from these exceptions, everything gave a net boost of +2 at most. Now take a look at Gen V. Tail Glow was changed so it gave a +3 boost to Special Attack (Prankster Volbeat with Tail Glow and Baton Pass can be a nightmare to anyone unprepared for it). Shell Smash was also introduced, and completely blew the above rule out of the water. +2 to Attack, Special Attack, and Speed, and
-1 to Defence and Special Defence = a net boost of +4. If the user is holding a White Herb the lowered Defences are negated, giving it a literal +6 boost, with absolutely no drawback. So much for a max of +2.

So, in short, "power creep" is simply a way of saying that with many new generations the Pokemon get stronger, so threats from earlier meta games can seem less powerful in the current meta game, and there are new things to watch out for. In relation to Scizor, it could stay in OU, simply because the tier in general would get more powerful. Lucario is also a good one for Fairy-killing, although it lacks Scizor's resistance to them, and Venusaur and Gengar are potentially other good choices against Fairies. Many of the dragons might also drop a tier (possibly) because they might be completely walled if the opponent sent out an Igglybuff (OK, maybe not an Igglybuff, but you get my point).

Well, I hope my rambling made some limited sense.

Source: Smogon
Some of my examples are also from that page, but some I kinda made up, but they still work.

Comments

This is a very well known concept, both in card games and in various online media.  What old content had to play without, probably as a limiter to their capabilities, other newer content is given freely.  In ideal situations, the new content makes some trade off for that added power, giving you a choice based on playstyle to determine which you use.  However, the natural tendency is to improve upon the past, rather than match it, and so newer content tends to be slightly stronger, whether through higher base stats, better attacks/defenses, some unique utility, high mobility, immunity to CC effects (think flinch), etc.

It's a pretty common problem in a lot of popular games now-a-days.

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yea, that's true. It's just my source said it was more common in the TCG, which is why I mentioned that.