I see your problem, but the other problem is that gear and weapons basically have to scale exponentially to make the players feel like they are progressing. And exponential growth does exactly what you describe. If it would grow linearly you would get complaints about a percieved lack of progression.

In fact this was one of the main complaints about carapace armor, that it provided limited extra protection compared to padded. That is mainly because the extra armor is small as a percentage of padded as a whole. In an earlier part of the game that jump would feel satisfying.

In the end we will have 8 biomes. From each biome to the next players are going to want to feel they made progress, and progress as a significant percentage of the previous stats. If you go from 10 to 20 slash that feels a lot better than going from 100 to 110.so you have to go from 100 to 150 or so. This constant demand for extra power leads to the power creep you described.