Increasing the Level cap and whatnot, and even increasin a power level is fine, but cannot be the only thing one can do, I feel. Making a good game takes more than just level cap increasing. New features and new maps/stories and whatnot matter a lot. Doom 2 wouldn't for example be quite the game it is today if for example the double barrel shotgun wasn't added and new engine features weren't added to it(remember ultimate doom was enhanced by doom 2's engine). Just setting a map and then increasing the level cap and upping the numbers is very little by itself.
I notice this in that, mmorpg developers are often, because they focus TO much on level and ever increasing gear/level is many of them become one trick ponies. Their methods wouldn't work in other genres, and heck, proven to not work. An example is the original developer of Diablo 3, Jay Wilson, was before that a guy who contributed to WoW. He used the very methods that worked for WoW on diablo 3 and caused it to be compared to other blizzard titles a total disaster, in that it was an EXTREME grind fest with gear being the be-all-end all. He probably wasn't sololy to blame, but the guy who made diablo 1 certainly felt that diablo 3 wasn't a game he'd have made or would have made it differently. That, and Jay's response, lead to Jay resigning from Diablo 3 to move onto other projects...
...Diablo 3 improved many fold since he left in ways that actually made it a good game that wasn't so ludicrously grindy(still a grind but no where near as bad or fake difficulty ridden).
Edit: Course, not all mmorpg developers are that way, paragon studios certainly wasn't a one trick pony, quite the opposite.
Another Edit: Heres a link about the guy. http://www.diablowiki.net/Jay_Wilson
Edit: corrected some things.
This is one of the reasons I loved the fact that CoH didn't increase their level cap and instead focused on other ways to "improve" your character. Considering how many alts most people had, increasing a level cap would only serve to invalidate all the work people had put into a LOT of characters (and divide the playerbase, as not everyone has the same amount of time to go ahead and bump up all their characters to the next level cap)..."what do you need for this task force? A tank? Ok, let me go ahead and switch over to my....oh wait. He hasn't been bumped up to the next level cap yet. :/"
Interesting you guys should use the Diablo series as a comparison... Gear is an important part of the Diablo games...it's not for City of Heroes... In fact, for any aRPG of that style (Dungeon Siege I, II, III, Titan Quest, The Adventures of Van Helsing, Torchlight I, II, Grim Dawn, Path of Exile, etc.) it's about the gear. That's an expected element for those games--so Diablo 3 being "all about the gear" wasn't such a surprise to me--especially since I'd played the other Diablo games and all the other titles I mentioned since 1999. I don't mind a "dangling carrot" gear game, but as someone else pointed out earlier, I agree that it's not something that should be in a superhero game--unless of course it's a very tiny part of it (as in maybe the tech-based heroes that don't actually have supernatural powers and have to use *gear* to pull off their amazing feats...I'm sure having gear-based heroes and non-gear-based heroes in the same game would be a nightmare to balance though).
I think what causes people to bring up Diablo 3 in these kinds of discussions (even though it belongs in an entirely different genre) is because of (like you mentioned) Jay Wilson... He basically tried making Diablo 3 a "partial" MMO. The other two Diablo games (and certainly not ANY of the other aRPG titles except for Path of Exile) require you to be online ALL the time. There were a ton of elements in Diablo 3 that carried directly over from WoW, and although WoW is certainly a success story in terms of MMOs, the Diablo audience (speaking from experience) is NOT the audience that is impressed with WoW game mechanics--or graphics for that matter. I've played D3 since it was released, and I still to this day use the "DarkD3" mod to alter the graphics to be more D2-like. It just doesn't pay to try and make a game that appeals to a certain audience completely different to appeal to another audience. The only reason they got away with it is because they're Blizzard and because D3 was a hugely anticipated title. If you recall, there were a LOT of features announced when D3 was announced that were similar to D2 that didn't make it into the actual released product--which pissed off a LOT of people (check out the Metacritic user scores for reference). This is not even mentioning the whole overhaul to the power/rune/stat system that everyone was used to in D1 & D2. He changed basically
everything--powers, game mechanics, mood, graphics, story/lore, and even killed off everyone's favorite character within the first act of a five-act game. Really the only reason I'm still playing is because a new group of people got put in charge of the game and have slowly been moving things towards Diablo 2 territory and making it playable. I'm still pissed about the story though...
If Jay Wilson were to take over the City of Heroes franchise in the same manner he made Diablo 3, he'd be making City of Heroes 2 look like Minecraft and play like the Call of Duty games. Would that appeal to the City of Heroes core audience? Hell no. I am all about "innovation," but when you totally change EVERYTHING (and market it like not much has changed), you're going to turn a LOT of people off.