Are Dragon Ball Characters to powerful?

Something that always bugged me about DBZ is how powerful the characters are suppose to be, but how rarely that's ever displayed. Early on in DBZ, where told that characters are capable of destroying planets. When I was kid, I thought that was insane and how cool it was. However, after going back and thinking about it critically, I realized how silly it was from a story telling perspective. Mainly due to the fact that it sets up expectations, and these expectations rarely ever get met.

Like, when you see a character like Frieza destroy a planet all the way back during the Namek saga while his first form, and then you see a significantly more powerful character (Goku) in the Cell saga distressed over a planet destroying attack, it's just kind of... Eh. Like, that's no impressive. We already knew characters could do that. Heck, they should be able to do it casually but it's always made out to be some type of super impressive feat.

It's just awkward when you realize these guys are suppose to be able to destroy solar systems, but a majority of their fights result in simple collateral damage. I think a clear example of this is shown in Dragon Ball Super. During the BoG arc, Goku and a suppressed Beerus's fight shakes the entire freaking universe! However, later on we have a character way more powerful than these two (Vegito Blue... Note how I said suppressed Beerus) release his most devastating attack and all it manages to do is destroy a city block. Heck, even in the original Z, I honestly wouldn't be able to discern the difference between characters power levels if I were shown the scenes without context.

To me it's like, what's the point of having be this powerful but never really show it off? Plus, from narrative stand point, it's just silly cause it's say the bar high for a lot of the following fights as well as character progression. Look all the lazy explanations, ass pulls, and other weird stuff there doing to justify character power ups in DBS. Caulifa should get slaughtered by SSB Goku, but with the way things are progressing currently, she'll probably be SSJB level by the time the tournament begins.

@gotoucanario: OK, that made me laugh quite a bit.

Power scaling the z-fighters to Goku in the current arc makes them all universal. Goku's base form is universal and he sparred with most of the people on his team. He even used SSJB against Krillen.

In a manner of speaking, yes.

I can understand where you're coming from. I don't consider any character too powerful if they have an interesting story to tell, but the Dragonball franchise has a weird tendency to not use the power the characters supposedly have.

In other franchises I've seen where this power level is achieved battles tend to casually destroy nearby planets as the characters blitz one another through stars and blow away entire solar systems. The characters should have been doing stuff similar to Beerus and Champa's battle back in the Cell Saga, but they weren't.

I feel like Toriyama would've been happier if he kept the power scale closer to what Naruto has. Incredibly powerful, but not so strong that any fighter can easily destroy the planet they are living on. It's not like that scale of power is vital to the stories he wants to tell. Even the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had a multiversal martial arts tournament in which they proved themselves to be some of the greatest martial artists in existence.

@the_man_with_questions: it happens in every form of media, this blast that could of destroyed dimensions didn't even destroy the room