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A friend and I were discussing the problem of our group mostly having full system mastery in P1 and we hit a fun comparison: Superman writers over the decades had to either reduce his power to tell a good story or change the nature of their story writing.
The end we settled on is that at his peak, Superman doesn't struggle to win, so the writers can't wring much suspense out of that, but the best Superman stories come from his internal decisions of how to win and what to do with each victory.
Does this track with the experiences of other players and GM's?
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The problem is slightly different for GM's in a tabletop RPG. We absolutely could crank up the power of opponents to the point at which players would struggle or be unable to win at all. But our job isn't to kill our players, it's to craft a compelling narrative that is ultimately a power fantasy for their characters. We want to craft an illusion where victory feels hard-earned from the player's perspective, but behind the GM screen we know they were statistically likely to succeed.
For experienced players, the problem isn't that they're too powerful to challenge but rather that they understand the game system well enough to see through the illusion that the GM will never actually challenge them.
You can't actually give them a fight where they have a 50/50 shot of winning, not with any regularity. After just 7 such fights, you have about a 99% chance of having TPK'd at some point. Even fights can create genuinely high stakes, but if you use them more than once in campaign you are statistically likely to kill your own narrative.
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You are right about the challenges writers have telling compelling Superman stories. But moral quandaries are only one way to twist the storytelling style to create interesting stories. Many Superman stories focus more on solving a mystery or solving a problem than they do defeating an enemy. Sure, there usually is an enemy, but once Superman solves the mystery/problem, the boss fight is often just a satisfying capstone.
Superman may have X-Ray vision, but he still needs to figure out where to look to find what he's looking for. He may be able to see atoms (depends on the writer, I think), but he still needs to make his Knowledge: Physics roll to know what to do with that information.
I may just be rambling here, but changing up an adventure in a way that makes the players use their non-combat abilities to discover where to go next may be a good way to tackle high-level play. When players talk about system mastery, they usually mean combat. Other sorts of challenges can be good for the right group of players. But make sure you have a boss fight at the end.
It is indeed an issue that I used to struggle with. "Infinite Cosmic Power... itty bitty living space". A line from a childhood animated film with so much depth and meaning lost to so many people.
The game is only as hard, or as easy, as you choose to make it. We use dice to simulate forces outside of our control, effectively giving up a certain level of agency within the story, and yet then try to mitigate that loss of control with acquiring every kind of modifier to weigh the result in our favor. Somewhere, we lost sight of what we were trying to do, or we never understood it in the first place.
So long as you keep the CR system in mind when making your choices (this goes for both the GM and the players), you can preserve that feeling of challenge and excitement at the unknown. In most cases, naturally, as human error or lack of foresight does allow for outliers on all sides (player, GM, and game designer).
As a player, I limit my instinct to power game and restrict my choices to better fit the narrative and overall story I want to tell from my side of the game. That is how I deal with this issue. As a GM, I tell the kind of story that the players want to experience, and let them worry about what kind of challenges the provoke from the world itself.
You can't actually give them a fight where they have a 50/50 shot of winning, not with any regularity. After just 7 such fights, you have about a 99% chance of having TPK'd at some point. Even fights can create genuinely high stakes, but if you use them more than once in campaign you are statistically likely to kill your own narrative.
Sure you can! You just have to make sure that defeat does not automatically mean death.
Allow for retreats (on both sides). Let the BBEG have other goals. Accept surrenders.
And just the fact the party suffered a defeat can do two things: teach humility, and stoke grudges. Great for storytelling!
Also, regarding the Superman Paradox, by high levels, PCs should be looking to do something different than adventuring. Find ways to invest their riches into greater goals, building a legacy, and finding ways everything they've done matters.
Of course, WBL expectations incentivize PCs never to settle down, never establish a base, never spend coin on anything except combat effectiveness. So, the GM has to be ready to throw encounter balance as written out the window, and help players to see that the way to greatness involves more than the next BBEG fight.
Those fights still need to take place from time to time, but it's worth it to structure them a bit differently, if to at least prevent rocket tag.
But the way to beat the paradox is to recognize that there is something more than larger and larger battles in an attempt to challenge the party.
Don't tell me what the challenge is. Tell me what the challenge means.
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As a GM, you literally have unlimited power to challenge the PCs. You can literally make up whatever you want. It's about the illusion of a "fair fight" and the illusion of challenge that most people agree makes things fun.
Generally speaking, as a GM I try to follow a similar "act" convention that Paizo follows for the structure of their APs. And the final boss fight of each "act/book" is usually something I will adjust/hand craft to provide what I think is a really challenging fight that the PCs still are likely to win (i.e. not TPK) but from a story perspective aren't guaranteed the outcome they want. For example their could be a boss fight where the boss' minions are performing a ritual that the PCs want to stop. Failing to stop the ritual isn't the end of the story, but would make it more challenging (narratively) to get a "happy" ending. If the ritual finishes, the boss will retreat and isn't trying specifically to kill the PCs. So even if a PC goes down, they are less likely to actually die/be killed.
Ultimately challenge is the illusion of a earning victory. In a game where the GM has unlimited power, it is only by choosing to limit that power that the PCs stand a chance. Crafting the "challenge" to seem fair based on the guidelines of the game that results in the players feeling they've won and earned victory through that challenge, that should be the goal of a GM.
In many cases, this is an adventure/campaign design problem. Especially after the internalization of "every encounter must 'challenge' the party" (the four EL equal to APL encounters per day "rule" that was never an actual rule) during the early 3.0 days. See a more complete analysis.
One way to help with this perception is to adopt a more flexible approach. I.e., incorporate a more "sandbox" design so that:
1) There is less of a "treadmill" feeling where the PCs are always fighting against foes of the same relative difficulty;
2) the PCs can feel like "big heroes" by trouncing foes that were "tough" a few levels ago; and
3) there are foes that can wipe the floor with the PCs if they push it (this can be critical if the group values versimilitude and/or a more holistic approach that mixes combat, problem solving, and social interaction; it can also help prevent bad habits [IMO] among players who expect that if they encounter it, they can defeat it immediately).
Yeah, 100% GMs need to have the party fight enemies (preferably from earlier levels) that are APL-1 maybe down to APL-4 so the players can feel how far they've come from the early levels. Enemies that were once a menace are now speedbumps.
And I agree there should also be enemies that players are aware of that (they suspect) can beat them if there were to encounter them directly. And it can be very healthy for PCs to encounter such an enemy indirectly (not "real" combat) and get hurt significantly.
Something like the players come in at the end of a assault on a town, they see the BBEG preparing to leave and the BBEG shoots them with a bow and deals a ton of damage (relative to PCs because the BBEG is 10 levels above the PCs) and then the players no that shouldn't trifle with the BBEG. They need to stop them, but can't challenge them directly. At least not yet.