How to fix powercreep
Make the gameplay skill based rather than farm based. By skill, not just physical skill, but also intellectual skill as well. I hate metas and metaheads. I delight in destroying metas. I remember glass cannon builds were the "meta" back in Guild Wars 2, but then I started using an engineer build because I play engineer in TF2. And then the engineer build became the meta a month later. But then even that engineer build has an answer, and that is a sustain build, a lowly necromancer minionmancer could destroy bunker engineers, although it could take a while, but it gets the job done. Essentially, I created an anti-meta, but then that anti-meta became the meta, and so I created another build to counter the monster I've created. I wish, dream, desire a game where you can experiment with builds and experimentation is encouraged. Maybe instead of loot based rewards, one could develop another reward system, maybe reputation based reward system. But in-game currencies is tied with real world currencies. And companies run on real world currencies.