Poll: RPG's with no level caps?

[Jenova65]

So you're a fan of the Star Ocean series, then?

Honestly never heard of, in fact. Maybe I've found a new series into which to sink my teeth!

Wow, that's pretty neat considering you almost exactly described the gameplay/levelling system of the Star Ocean RPGs.

I love the whole Star Ocean series, I love the game, the battle engine and the endless grinding you can do if you want to!

 

[Lazy Kitty]

No level cap would be nice, but it's impossible.
Eventually the number of bits of the format (like integer (32 bits)) will limit the level, when you reach the highest possible number it can store and you add 1 to it you will get the lowest possible number it can store.

 

[Lonely Swordsman]

Rarely a good idea, since it allows players to just level above the challenge. Much more fun if you have limited points and have to figure out how to use them most effectively.

 

[fd18e3d0-816e-11e4-b4a9-0800200c9a66]

The problem with having an 'unlimited' level cap is that unless you the game somehow makes the game more challenging as you level up it will eventually become boring. Also you can't ever have a game which truly has no cap, if you where to play a no-cap game for long enough (a real long time) you would eventually be limited by the hardware, e.g if the users level is stored as a signed integer then the largets value it can store is
2^15 − 1 = 32 767

But you would have to play for seriously long time for that.

 

[Jenova65]

Levels without new feats, perks, spells (or whatever the game does) are pointless.
Why would I want to keep grinding when all the challenge is gone?
Might aswell have a level cap at some point then.

Higher stats to make your current spells and abilities are pretty rockin'
Then again I'm not the type who needs a shiny new toy every time I do something.

Ditto! Some people like the sense of achievement involved in levelling, this isn't so hard to understand, and besides as you say it improves many things such as potency and raises defence stats, HP, luck and so on. No one minds a reasonable cap but give people who want to level up the opportunity to do so.

Make a sort of in game exp cap, then toss in later bonus areas that aren't related to the story for the people who want to play with levels? Honestly it more or less just annoys me that they tell you to level yourself up and build your character however you want. Then put a cap on it which in a way makes feel pointless. Once you hit a level like 20, you don't feel the great sense of accomplishment you do at 99 or 100 nor do you feel the completion, you still feel like a weak dork who should be getting beaten up by the third boss.

Well, they could do it several ways, couldn't they, by putting in (as you say) non story related side quests that enable players to continue levelling or have an area that you can go to to 'break', a level cap. I mean do BioWare intend to up the level cap with DLC on ME2, meaning that you would have to essentially buy the ability to level higher than 30 (which would be a cheap trick beneath BioWare) if they have DLC and no extra levels there is no evolution, iyswim? They could just put more content in and people wanting to sweat while fighting the final boss don't have to go and explore that part of the game.
With a small level cap the only players not getting what they want are players who like to level up and that sucks.

Well if ME is going to be like DA, then the level cap is going to be upped with an expansion, or DLC. Which to be honest annoys me. It seems like a dick move to make the player pay extra to level up, that's a WoW move.

Exactly! It becomes a marketing ploy and that isn't playing fair, there are still people who don't actually download extras and they never then get the full experience, which since they have bought a game, they should be entitled to. Levelling up shouldn't be something we need to pay extra for, WTF?!

 

[Jenova65]

Rarely a good idea, since it allows players to just level above the challenge. Much more fun if you have limited points and have to figure out how to use them most effectively.

Well that is a debatable point tbh, what with fun being a very subjective issue. What is fun for you might be a restriction for someone else, iyswim?
Your idea of fun is my idea of limitation, of telling me there is something in the game I can never/will never achieve! That is not my idea of fun, real life has enough of those limitations I want to be able to 'fly free', in a game, within the structure that game. In ME2 I want to be able to fully level my already scaled down and limited skill set (in comparison to ME) and I can't.

 

[Foxtrotk72]

My biggest problem with level capping is that is stops you from filling out your stats/skills eg: ME2, even when you've hit max level you can fill several stats but can't fill one or two of them beyond the first dot/square/whatever.

I no what you mean in ME1 you could complete the game again and the cap was 60, but now we have a level 30 cap. still earn xp but no level up

 

[Jenova65]

Levels without new feats, perks, spells (or whatever the game does) are pointless.
Why would I want to keep grinding when all the challenge is gone?
Might aswell have a level cap at some point then.

Higher stats to make your current spells and abilities are pretty rockin'
Then again I'm not the type who needs a shiny new toy every time I do something.

Ditto! Some people like the sense of achievement involved in levelling, this isn't so hard to understand, and besides as you say it improves many things such as potency and raises defence stats, HP, luck and so on. No one minds a reasonable cap but give people who want to level up the opportunity to do so.

Make a sort of in game exp cap, then toss in later bonus areas that aren't related to the story for the people who want to play with levels? Honestly it more or less just annoys me that they tell you to level yourself up and build your character however you want. Then put a cap on it which in a way makes feel pointless. Once you hit a level like 20, you don't feel the great sense of accomplishment you do at 99 or 100 nor do you feel the completion, you still feel like a weak dork who should be getting beaten up by the third boss.

Well, they could do it several ways, couldn't they, by putting in (as you say) non story related side quests that enable players to continue levelling or have an area that you can go to to 'break', a level cap. I mean do BioWare intend to up the level cap with DLC on ME2, meaning that you would have to essentially buy the ability to level higher than 30 (which would be a cheap trick beneath BioWare) if they have DLC and no extra levels there is no evolution, iyswim? They could just put more content in and people wanting to sweat while fighting the final boss don't have to go and explore that part of the game.
With a small level cap the only players not getting what they want are players who like to level up and that sucks.

Well if ME is going to be like DA, then the level cap is going to be upped with an expansion, or DLC. Which to be honest annoys me. It seems like a dick move to make the player pay extra to level up, that's a WoW move.

Exactly! It becomes a marketing ploy and that isn't playing fair, there are still people who don't actually download extras and they never then get the full experience, which since they have bought a game, they should be entitled to. Levelling up shouldn't be something we need to pay extra for, WTF?!

Plus as someone else said, if they're going to raise the cap anyway why not let people level all they want. Add new abilities and spells in with the new expansion, let people relevel if they want. But for what we get until the expansion, let us fucking level with what we have please. Being level 20 for more then 80% of fallout 3 was boring.

When I started my second play of ME2 I was already at the level cap, so for the whole game I knew that was nothing new to learn so I have to play without anything new or start a fresh game every time I play learning the same 5 or 6 skills, that's kind of depressing. I have Fallout but haven't got round to playing it yet and the level cap in that is one of the reasons why.... I will get round to it, but when I own games that let me level to my heart's content there isn't that much to inspire me!

 

[azukar]

Wow, that's pretty neat considering you almost exactly described the gameplay/levelling system of the Star Ocean RPGs.

I enjoy both Star Ocean: First Departure and Star Ocean: Second Evolution, both on the PSP.

And here I was thinking I'd been sooo original with my gameplay mechanic. Seems everything has been done before ^_^ And I bet there's a TVTropes page for exactly that.

Also, if both games are exclusives for the PSP, then they're far out of my territory. Oh well.

 

[Doug]

I can see this idea horribly bad firing by the lack of level capping meaning the Bosses will be so insanity overpowered it will hurt.

 

[Jenova65]

Wow, that's pretty neat considering you almost exactly described the gameplay/levelling system of the Star Ocean RPGs.

I enjoy both Star Ocean: First Departure and Star Ocean: Second Evolution, both on the PSP.

And here I was thinking I'd been sooo original with my gameplay mechanic. Seems everything has been done before ^_^ And I bet there's a TVTropes page for exactly that.

Also, if both games are exclusives for the PSP, then they're far out of my territory. Oh well.

Star Ocean Til The End Of Time is a PS2 game and Star Ocean The Last Hope is on 360 and now PS3!

 

[WillSherman]

This ties into the pen and paper role playing as mentioned in the poll's choices.

I can certainly say that in some situations (especially early on in rpg history as they were almost all D&D based) it made sense to have a level cap. Any game based on the same rules as a pen and paper game has a certain balance and expectation of what level was appropriate for what variety of content as set forth by the tomes that were needed to play those games.

Based within this framework, games like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Pools of Radiance, etc. had a certain number of monsters to work with and set them up accordingly so that the player's level would correspond to the encounters and so that the spells especially did not get out of hand rapidly.

This level cap is/was not so much a restriction imposed on the player as it is/was on the developers by the original base. Of course in the original game DMs would often edit stats and include unique groups to counterbalance this but in the PC versions of the same games you can only do so much of that until it becomes 12 monsters reskinned 20 times over (i.e Final Fantasy XII).

I guess the point I'm trying to make is I'd rather play a relatively short, limited (in terms of level) game than a monsterous boondoggle of repetition.

 

[Doug]

I can see this idea horribly bad firing by the lack of level capping meaning the Bosses will be so insanity overpowered it will hurt.

I love that shit. See: SMT bonus bosses like the Demi-Fiend in DDS, Satan in DDS2 and Elizabeth (I think? I can't remember her name) in Persona 3. In the DDS games your max level is 99 I think, your stats all cap at 99 and your HP and MP cap ant 999. I'm assuming persona 3 is the same since it's been a looong time since I played that game and I didn't like it enough to memorize it. Even at max stats the bonus bosses will rape you.

And yes, the level grinding will be appauling.

 

[Nhilus]

I like having a level cap, it adds a small amount of additional realism to RPGs because there is a limit to how powerful one individual can be, for example, it is, with a lot of training, possible to pull a double decker bus along, but it will never be possible for a human body to lift the bus up in one hand, and I can liken level caps to that sort of reasoning, there are limits to what a person can do, level caps just display these limits in a game friendly way. I mean what fun would fallout 3 be if you could have every perk?