Techniques to adjust the setpoint of a power control loop in a wireless communication system. The setpoint may be adjusted based on frame status indicative of erased/good decoded frames, one or more (typically soft) metrics indicative of the confidence in the decoded results, power surplus/deficit indicative of the difference between the received signal quality and the setpoint, setpoint surplus/deficit indicative of the difference between the setpoint and a threshold Eb/Nt needed for the desired level of performance, or a combination thereof. The metrics may include re-encoded symbol error rate, re-encoded power metric, modified Yamamoto metric, minimum or average LLR among decoded bits, number of decoding iterations, and possibly others. The setpoint may be adjusted in different manners and/or by different amounts depending on the above-noted factors. The techniques may be employed for forward and/or reverse links in CDMA systems.