Incline Who actually likes level caps?

[Robotigan]

I think the fear is that the player will become an unstoppable god that trivializes any gameplay challenge. If you ask me blatant power fantasies are like half the point of RPGs. If you spend all your playthrough grinding every possible enemy, dungeon, and side quest before completing the main quest, you should be able to instantly vaporize the end boss. That's rewarding the player for effectively investing their time.

No one makes the level cap argument for strategy games. Nobody says "No! Your Empire can't be good at everything, you have to specialize!" Of course an Empire can be good at everything if they're really snowballing. Specialization is only soft-enforced by tactical convenience, it's not a hard mandate. At most you'll be told to up the difficulty if you're running away with every game. Level caps are an arbitrary restriction to force the player into a more modest playstyle despite what the systems would otherwise allow. Which to me, is just inelegant game design and feels like the developer is backseat driving.

 

[Robotigan]

Nobody showed up at Dolph Lundgren's door and told him he couldn't be a action movie star because that requires high CHA/STR and he already specced into high INT for an MIT scholarship. I think certain RPG philosophers are so annoyed by all the Dolph roleplayers that they want to impose caps to force more creative characterization. But like no duh every new or casual roleplayer wants to play Dolph Lundgren as one of their very first builds. People start crafting more unique and interesting characters when they're more experienced and start craving variety.

 

[Harthwain]

There is less fun in having all-powerful character who can do anything then there is when you have actual limits and need to think of a way of overcoming the challenge. Limits also mean you need to think what you're picking versus what you're leaving out, because you can't have the cake and eat it too. So I am of the opinion that a well-though game can benefit from having s level cap (or other limits).

 

[Chippy]

Didn't vote because it depends on the game. Fallout 1 should have ditched the level cap and maybe kept the timer in and then maybe I could have done some grinding just to offset the random instant death of a critical a hit. On the other hand BG1 felt like the most authentic RPG I've ever played in the setting it was in, because it felt like I was creating a notable character in Faerun who was at that level. I read the manual which was my introduction to the setting, and I felt like I was creating a character at that level alongside Thalantyr, Taerom, Ulraunt, etc. So every level in BG1 felt significant.

Now characters just piss levels, skill points, weapon proficiencies and feats, etc. And they make the time-honoured mistake of your character being the only competent person in the setting.

 

[Robotigan]

There is less fun in having all-powerful character who can do anything then there is when you have actual limits and need to think of a way of overcoming the challenge. Limits also mean you need to think what you're picking versus what you're leaving out, because you can't have the cake and eat it too. So I am of the opinion that a well-though game can benefit from having s level cap (or other limits).

RPGs and games more broadly have always been about player choice. A level cap is an imposition by the developer on the way the game is _supposed_ to be played. Narrowing the focus of a game can help give it an identity, but the tradeoffs have to be worth it. If you're going to put a hard limit on the player's progression, it needs to be in service of some strategic depth or narrative resolution that justifies the limitation otherwise it's just backseat gaming. "I don't like that the player can be god of everything" isn't a good enough reason unless you can answer why that would hamper the player's experience that's actually backed up by the game itself. To be blunt, most RPGs aren't good enough strategy games to get me to play them that way. And the ones that go hard on their narrative already feel like adventure games with extraneous RPG systems tacked on.

 

[Volourn]

Hard level cap is lazy balancing nonsense. It is cheap. It either punishes those who explore more or punishes those who just want to focus on the main plot (why lol?). Doubly awful are games where you hit the cop way too early. Leveling up is a big part of rpgs for FFS. I prefer no csp ir a cap that the majority if players need not worry about Ala BG/TOB as opposed to BG1. If some player wants to spam random encounters in BG1 and are 'overlevelled' when fighting Sarevok so be it, and good kn them. In essence, fukk off.

 

[Trashos]

You can always have an extremely powerful PC at lower difficulties. Higher difficulties should be about challenge, and making the most of all the systems and resources. If you achieve this by introducing level caps, so be it.

Those of you who want the extremely powerful fantasy hopefully are not insulted that you are not getting this fantasy at some level called INSANELY HARD.

 

[Robotigan]

Those of you who want the extremely powerful fantasy hopefully are not insulted that you are not getting this fantasy at some level called INSANELY HARD.

Devs need to lock higher difficulties behind game completion at a base difficulty first. It shouldn't be this way, but you just know all the hardcore gamers out there are gonna insta-lock the hardest setting available for their very first playthrough and then cry when it doesn't support their completely uninformed guess at a viable build. You have to force these players to play on a learning curve.

 

[Nazrim Eldrak]

I prefer not to have level caps, but the game needs to be designed to understand that.

I can only think of one game that almost got that right, imo.
And this game is "Warlords Battlecry 3".

It was super fun slaughtering enemy waves one by one until my hero was overwhelmed at times.
Over time, the enemies ran out of resources, and that's where I dealt the killing blow.

And the leveling system was fun and quite complex (I would say) with 29 different classes to choose from and over 100 skills (not including spells and caster level).
The hero (and each unit itself) that killed an enemy gains XP. The amount depends on what type of enemy unit was killed.

The units have a level cap of level 20.

The only issue, if I'm not mistaken, is/was an integer overflow on the attack power (max 255) of the player avatar. This could easily be circumvented by not distributing the skill points to attack(when reached max).

 

[Poseidon00]

Level and skill caps are both lame af. Let me pump my skills to superhuman levels, even if I have to seek alternative means than grinding. Reward my effort. Morrowind did this better than almost any other game. don't care how cliche a statement that is.

 

[Crichton]

There's no greater feeling than reaching the level/attribute cap or finding the best weapon and being done with the bullshit. I agree that this shouldn't happen too early, but I think halfway is about right. Games where you only get to use the top level items/spells for the final battle are just wasteful; why even bother implementing them at that point?

 

[RoksCQ]

hell no, Gimp to God is the ideal RPG highway for me. Give me a rough beat down and newb stomping but when the time comes, or should I desire it, give me the ability to crush, punish, slaughter and enjoy doing it. Sometimes you just want the keys to the kingdom to be available if you were to put in the work for it.

 

[0sacred]

It's way more realistic that for an individual to hit a plateau of learning/ growing than it is for an entire gameworld/ continent to get depopulated by said individual.

 

[mondblut]

You can always have an extremely powerful PC at lower difficulties. Higher difficulties should be about challenge, and making the most of all the systems and resources. If you achieve this by introducing level caps, so be it.

Those of you who want the extremely powerful fantasy hopefully are not insulted that you are not getting this fantasy at some level called INSANELY HARD.

I like your train of thought. Instead of stupid hp bloat and similar shit, how about introducing tighter level caps at higher difficulties? That way, we get our power fantasy wiping out armies with enhanced maximized meteor swarms, and those who enjoy having their ballsack twisted get to play through the entire Kingmaker on level 1. Sounds fair to me

 

[Rincewind]

Missing in most game and even Elden Ring. Where just saving progress respawns everything in the area you just emptied a minute ago.

Wait, what? I *hate* it when people fuck around with the save system like that; another reason to stay away from the game.

 

[mondblut]

Missing in most game and even Elden Ring. Where just saving progress respawns everything in the area you just emptied a minute ago.

Elden Ring is a Famicom game?

 

[Raghar]

Why would they need level caps at all? If Game developers wanna to add a challenge, they can add... Something that needs to read clues, and create conclusion from clues. That would increase difficulty by a lot without any level caps.

Another games simply adds time limit. Some players arrive with OP party, other players have hard time.

 

[Lord_Potato]

There's no greater feeling than reaching the level/attribute cap or finding the best weapon and being done with the bullshit. I agree that this shouldn't happen too early, but I think halfway is about right. Games where you only get to use the top level items/spells for the final battle are just wasteful; why even bother implementing them at that point?

And play half a game with final set of equipment? Boring!

Sure, the final armor should not become available before the last mission, but I'd grantcit to the player after like 80% of the game.

 

[Not.AI]

OP is a mouth breather.

: _ (

And play half a game with final set of equipment? Boring!

Exactly. New stuff has to unlock periodically over the whole playthrough. At least become available.

Even when you're not hungry, you still look at the menu. This is the case with all things. All. Variety. Over time.

 

[JarlFrank]

Missing in most game and even Elden Ring. Where just saving progress respawns everything in the area you just emptied a minute ago.

Elden Ring is a Famicom game?

It's one of those save systems where you have to rest at a campfire to save your game, but every time you do it respawns everything in the level.

Same shit as Wizardry 4

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I do like areas that can be cleared though. There is a sense of completion there.

One of the best things about Gothic. Simpler to implement than anything else too.

Missing in most game and even Elden Ring. Where just saving progress respawns everything in the area you just emptied a minute ago.

this will be TLDR possibly

That's what pissed me off about diablo II. You load your game and all areas are respawned. I don't mind if you start a new game with same alt but I guess d2 design would mean double dipping or more on various artifacts. And d2 was more a button masher running sim with rpg elements anyway.

Your oldest iconic games always spawned random encounters.

I swear i recall a few rpgs or arpgs that had the best gear just before the BBEG; and a few times that big baddie would drop the best gear or a piece. Ok. Game is over. WTF, do I need this for? (the rarity you can kill trash mobs afterwards or ..... lol, the BBEG spawns again so you can find another piece of this ultimate gear. DIABLO wasn't the first to do that shit).

I will say, some games I wish I could restart or continue to play after the ending cutscene. Usually, it is JRPGS that i tried that ended. Lunar the Silver Star on SegaCD for example. I had a save before the final dude. My initial tries, I nearly got stomped but beat the game. I then grinded each char to level 99 and tried to find the special usable items that also perm raised stats further beyond 99. Yeah, after that the big bad ass was a fucking joke.

Bardstale DOS. There was the ultimate Mangar loop i had memorized where you finish the game (try not to get desd or lvl drained) and you'd be sure to get a level or more. I did that until my lvl said *99 which means it went higher but never registered what until i transferred to BT2.

MM1 c64 was a bit broken to my knowledge or i had so many levels stacked to train but couldn't because of old age (lots of land before time teleporting and fighting dinos to knock the hourglass around). PC version i just sort of skipped and went to mm2.

The brutality was Wizardry and my impatience. Sure i finished 1-2 but at times i lost parties on both and losing a party on 2-3 when you transferred sucked.

Ultima 1-2 seemed more like Questron games that also never ran out of enemies. Only 3 let me restart my alts and had a roster to boot. 4+ story driven and you couldn't restart (but why would you want to).

I'll note this about Ultima (akalabeth I can't recall a hp cap)
1. You could get to 9999 hp (king or crawl out of dungeons) but level didn't seem to mean a damn thing. Stats could be aquired a few ways but mosly youd just alternate between sign posts untill 99 in each stat. Levels seemed mostly pointless.

Ultima 2... levels seemed pointless. Again visit king and donate to get hp)
Stats bought at hotel california were random and original bug you could flip that if a stat went over 99. Grinding mobs for gold was fucking annoying. If you could sell weapons and armor this would have made shit much easier. Levels seemed meaningless again.

Ultima 3 had a few level caps. You were soft capped at level 5 until each character got the Mark of kings. Then you were hp capped at level 25 (2550 hp). Beyond that and levels were pointless except ro gloat. Stats needed gold at ambrosian shrines. This irked me. Wtf have up to level 99 even register?

Ultima 3 GBA had a part 2 that allowed you to go beyond 99 and collect the hp. Part two was hard as hell compared to the original and if you had the wrong party composition... you were boned (stick with pure dwarf fighter, elf thief, bobbit cleric, fuzzy wizard) because when part two hits you'll take a huge hit right off the bat.

4-5 levels/ho were reduced further. Long gone are the level 99 days. I sometimes wonder what near godly hp would have been like.

If you think early hp in ultima is bad, Questron is far worse. I had so much gold and hp it bled well into the action screen. I further tested this in an emulator with save states and it is laughable.

These are old games. Some shareware/third party games were also near limitless as far as i can remember.

Wizard's Crown/Eternal dagger was skill capped and possibly hp capped.

I believe phantasie was level Capped but after my disk corrupted on c64 I never got s chance to test that. And ... AGE happens. Fear your mortality.

Shard of Spring/Eternal dagger was another game I like to grind but it might have been level capped as well. I just don't recall.

Realms of Darkness/Rogue Alliance might be capped but resetting utility allows you to play the game endlessly. At a certain point you just decimate everything.

I liked SSI games and the reset utility. I think in some games it was a little broken.

PC and console game took me away from many iconic games that were platform computer locked to tha device. I could barely afford the c64 so multiple computers wasn't going to happen. In fact, most of the computer were used ones given by relatives who upgraded to the latest. I was always way behind the curve.

Analysis on each game is much easier today as so many others online can report their experiences. And some people are completionists who grind and seek caps and every bit of data they can find.

 

[Harthwain]

Respawning enemies are supposed to encourage you to delay saving your progress (or upgrading) until you reach next area where you can do so. However, doing so means the risk of dying and so losing your progress. It's risk vs reward thing.

 

[Ereshkigal]

First thing I always do when playing a game with level caps is to find hacks to remove them.

 

[Valdetiosi]

Just don't have levels and caps.
If you want to increase your stats go do stuff that makes sense for stat, like lifting rocks or reading books.

 

[Not.AI]

Respawning enemies are supposed to encourage you to delay saving your progress (or upgrading) until you reach next area where you can do so. However, doing so means the risk of dying and so losing your progress. It's risk vs reward thing.

I suspect it's actually just an oversight.

Considering how much it breaks immersion.

Respawning upon reload might be intentional, risk versus reward. But probably not when merely activating a bonfire "save point", without any reload.

The whole area is clear, the player sits down. Suddenly the whole area is reset. Everything is back. A few seconds have passed. Worse if this happens in the field of vision of the player ... or just outside the field of vision. Like those glitches in Cyberpunk.

Spoiler

Neither should reloading reset areas cleared before the last bonfire was reached. Or at least not instantly - but that could intentional. Could be risk vs. reward.

The biggest immersion breaker is that giant enemies also respawn. Where did they all come from the 7th time? The 27th time?