Level Cap

[Kecaw]

To be frank for me this would be a simple solution, no XP cap BUT the more powerful you're character becomes the less XP he get's from low lvl monsters so people would not farm or grind them, yeah sure they could steam roll though them but get little xp.

Naturally saying all that idk. what system of leveling and skills will they use but i dont want something like we had in BG2 expansion when after hiting a certain lvl you got nothing actually just some random skills so you could throw another windmill.

Edited December 17, 2012 by Kecaw

[rjshae]

To be frank for me this would be a simple solution, no XP cap BUT the more powerful you're character becomes the less XP he get's from low lvl monsters so people would not farm or grind them, yeah sure they could steam roll though them but get little xp.

Naturally saying all that idk. what system of leveling and skills will they use but i dont want something like we had in BG2 expansion when after hiting a certain lvl you got nothing actually just some random skills so you could throw another windmill.

I don't think there's going to be much if any XP awarded for grinding. In which case, the available XP may be limited by the number of quests that can be completed.

[mstark]

I'm happy for level caps, and I'm also happy for mods that remove them.

 

I'd love if the games play out as the BG series--an epic, continuous story, where you never directly cared about what level you were as long as it made sense for the part of the story you were in. Level, experience, and items are cool and all, but in this game I'd like to see the story come first, and mechanics & equipment designed to complement it. D&D was only a set of rules used to make telling the story of Baldur's Gate possible. Heck, D&D is designed ground up to be a game system for a DM to tell a story with.

Edited December 17, 2012 by mstark

[Imrix]

the mid level part of the BG series was the good part. Around level 12-14, when you had enough power to feel like a badass, but there were still enemies to realistically challenge you. Fighting endless level 25 grunts in throne of bhaal was terrible.

Disagree completely. I played Baldur's Gate 2 back when it first came out, went back sometime after, had riotously good fun with both. I like the epic stuff.

I don't mind a level cap, but please don't do the monster scaling stuff as with Bethesda's Oblivion, and a bunch of other games.

Yes. Just, please, yes. I loathe level scaling. I avoid it like the plague.

I'm all for scaling, really. I just don't like how it's often done. Problems arise when you're level 10 and have 1,000 hitpoints and do 125 damage, but little Level 2 Goblins still have 20 hitpoints and deal 7 damage (not including your armor's damage reduction). At that point, the Goblins are providing literally no combat challenge.

And this is why I avoid level scaling, because that? The situation you describe? That's not a problem to me. That sounds like a good time. There's something immensely, viscerally satisfying about going back to an early foe that gave you great frustration at the time and stomping them flat because you're five or six levels above his weight class now. I liked the trash encounters in BG2, where you'd travel through Athkatla and get ambushed by bandits, then wipe them out in one or two rounds. It's immensely empowering, because it shows you how far you've come.

 

It means that, when my character levels up, it means something. It means I am not simply maintaining a shinier kind of parity with the world. It means there are challenges out there which I have surpassed.

 

Not every fight has to be an uphill hundred-to-one odds hail mary miracle victory to be a good time, you know.

Edited December 17, 2012 by Imrix

[DeathQuaker]

I'd rather there be no level cap, or if there were a level cap, you would really have to beyond-completionist bust your butt to scrounge every XP in the game to hit it, and you would hit it no earlier than very close to the endgame.

 

What I don't like about level caps is when it is too easy to level, you hit the level cap 3/4 of the way through, and then you have no further character advancement to look forward to. I am about as far from a level grinding type player as you can get (grinding bores me to tears), so if a game lets me hit the level cap, then leveling is too fast or too easy. Whether the level cap is 10 or 100, I don't want to even worry about whether I'm going to hit it until I'm prepping for the end.

Edited December 17, 2012 by DeathQuaker

[ReyVagabond]

Ok...looks like we have plenty of no level cap friends here.

 

Ok my to coppers: for popular vote no level cap. but the XP is done for objective not killing so in the end we recibe a soft level cap of you have done all there is to do, so you cant level no more! not because there is a cap, but because you have done it all! Pray for an expantion and pledge more on the next kickstart!

 

Ho ho ho!

Edited December 17, 2012 by ReyVagabond

[Lephys]

Except then you end up with what happened in Oblivion - every single bandit you met was fully decked out in Daedric armour and wielded some sort of angry demonic soul-stealing mace. And STILL soon became little more than a minor annoyance.

 

True. It has the potential to not be done well enough. What I was getting at is this: an enemy's level is merely an organizational bracket to group together similar mathematical ratings for a variety of factors (damage, hit point pool, armor class, attack speed, etc.). There's a problem to be dealt with no matter which route you go:

 

Option A) Don't scale your enemies at all. Well, now if you incorporate LvL-1 Goblins (we'll just stick with goblins, purely for example's sake) into the game beyond the very early parts, then they're pointless. You can't say "Ha-HAH! Can you get past these GOBLINS to handle this really-important-to-the-main-story situation?! o_O". Because your sheer existence slays the goblins within a 10-foot radius. You're like the Spartans at the Hot Gates. The Goblins' numbers will count for nothing. So, maybe you just don't ever factor Goblins into combat challenges after Level 3. That's a LOT of the game that Goblins are pretty much useless, meaning you're completely restricted from having them be a part of the game world and the story in any way, shape, or fashion. Even though they are potentially useful to the story. It doesn't seem so bad with Goblins, perhaps, but, imagine this happening with any and all enemies that never scale. Bandits suddenly don't exist in the world anymore, because you've become too powerful for them.

 

Option B)Scale your enemies. Now, they can easily be implemented throughout the game as a perpetual part of the story and lore, BUT, you run the risk of ruining the sense of your characters not feeling like they're progressing in prowess.

 

It seems to me that the solution lies somewhere in-between: to make sure they're always getting weaker, relative to you, but maybe not quite as pointless as adhering to hard level numbers-groupings would make them. Thus, you gain the benefit of not having to restrict enemies to level-appropriate zones like an MMO. i.e. "Wolves ONLY live in this one forest, and only different, more difficult enemies will populate other forests because wolves would be far too weak."

 

 

And this is why I avoid level scaling, because that? The situation you describe? That's not a problem to me. That sounds like a good time. There's something immensely, viscerally satisfying about going back to an early foe that gave you great frustration at the time and stomping them flat because you're five or six levels above his weight class now. I liked the trash encounters in BG2, where you'd travel through Athkatla and get ambushed by bandits, then wipe them out in one or two rounds. It's immensely empowering, because it shows you how far you've come.

 

It means that, when my character levels up, it means something. It means I am not simply maintaining a shinier kind of parity with the world. It means there are challenges out there which I have surpassed.

 

True. However, just how easy can you let the enemies get before it stops providing any benefit and starts being pointless? Also, unless you adhere to the restriction I mentioned above, how satisfying would it be to go "Oh no, this next chapter in the story is presenting quite the dilemma! If I don't stop these 300 Goblins, this town will be decimated! *Casts Firestorm* Oh, look at that... they all died instantly." While the pro is that it allows you to feel powerful, there's obviously a reasonable limit to that. If you walked into a room, and all the enemies instantly died, how much satisfaction would you get from literally expending no effort to kill them? All things in moderation,

 

 

Not every fight has to be an uphill hundred-to-one odds hail mary miracle victory to be a good time, you know.

 

Absolutely. But, suggesting that every fight SHOULD be an uphill hundred-to-one odds hail mary is equally as extreme as suggesting every fight should be a cake walk. I know you're not suggesting that, but my point is that, if we obviously want some fights to be more difficult than a cake walk, and we obviously want some fights to be less difficult than climbing a mountain with your teeth and no safety equipment, then the answer must lie somewhere in between.

 

Whether you don't scale the enemies, or you scale the enemies, or you don't cap the player's level or cap the player's level, what's being effected is the possible difference between the player's capabilities and the enemies', and how quickly or slowly the player can progress through that range. The only thing that matters is the player characters' powers RELATIVE to the enemies' powers, and how that's allowed to change over time. If that difference can be too small, then it automatically has the potential to be too great, as well.

 

The real issue here is how to address that power difference to achieve the best sense of progression while still allowing other affected mechanics to flourish.

[ogrezilla]

no artificial level cap. Just have a limited amount of XP available in the world. I absolutely hate when games let you reach the level cap before completing the game. If I'm still completing new things, I should still be gaining XP.

[jivex5k]

I don't want a hard cap, maybe a soft one?

Actually the post above me sounds like a great idea. Just limit the amount of XP available, then you have a cap that isn't really a cap, it's just running out of XP to be had.

Shouldn't be too hard since you are doing away with mob killing XP.

But it also means once the game is done, it's done.

Edited December 18, 2012 by jivex5k

[rjshae]

They would have no need of level caps if they (a) record the character level progression and (b) don't bother providing any higher level benefits. When a sequel is released for a specific level, it can roll the imported PC back to that stage of development and save it in a new character file.

[mstark]

no artificial level cap. Just have a limited amount of XP available in the world. I absolutely hate when games let you reach the level cap before completing the game. If I'm still completing new things, I should still be gaining XP.

This makes a lot of sense, but it sounds like a nightmare to balance, a hard cap might be better for a game like PE. Some players will only go through the main quest, which means it will have to give you enough exp to finish it without trouble, while some people will go and do every single quest available. With no level cap, there's potential to seriously out-level a lot of the content if you want to finish all of it, making it feel severely unbalanced and un-fun.

 

They could make the XP curve exponential, while keeping XP amounts gained throughout the game linear. This would act as a soft cap, where, if you do only the main quest, you might end up at level 8, and if you do all the content you'd end up at level 9-10. You keep getting exp at a similar rate throughout the game, but the amount of exp required for level 9 might equal the exp required to go from level 1-8. It'd make it impossible to reach higher levels until an expansion is released with higher experience rewards, and would also make it easy for modders to allow players to reach higher levels.

Edited December 18, 2012 by mstark

[Karkarov]

Honestly I think there should be no level cap. However, to borrow my own commentary from other threads...

 

In a well designed, balanced, and planned RPG (especially one with objective based XP) there is always only *so* much EXP to go around. While there should be no level cap there should definitely be an over all idea of how powerful the player should be if they do "everything". There also should only be enough EXP in the game to get them to that point and not one step further.

[Tanos]

I don't want a hard cap, maybe a soft one?

Actually the post above me sounds like a great idea. Just limit the amount of XP available, then you have a cap that isn't really a cap, it's just running out of XP to be had.

Shouldn't be too hard since you are doing away with mob killing XP.

But it also means once the game is done, it's done.

I agree. Just make the gaps on the xp to the next level really large on the top levels and there wont be a huge level gap between completionists and more casual gamers to balance with level scaling that supposedly will be in the main quests.

Edited December 19, 2012 by Tanos

[AGX-17]

Last I heard in the updates they were discussing a 12 level cap. Not a thrilling prospect, to me.

 

BTW whats the language policy on this site? We family friendly?

It's family-friendly. Forum Guidlines

 

Still the most hilarious irony considering I haven't seen an Obsidian title that was "family-friendly." I'm sure that'll change when The Stick of Truth comes out.

Edited December 19, 2012 by AGX-17

[entrerix]

no level cap, make 95% of the xp come from completing tasks, so it would take ridiculous amounts of time to "grind" a new level. that way if someone REALLY wanted to grind levels by killing respawning monsters, they could do it, but it would be very time consuming and far from required

[Imrix]

True. However, just how easy can you let the enemies get before it stops providing any benefit and starts being pointless? Also, unless you adhere to the restriction I mentioned above, how satisfying would it be to go "Oh no, this next chapter in the story is presenting quite the dilemma! If I don't stop these 300 Goblins, this town will be decimated! *Casts Firestorm* Oh, look at that... they all died instantly." While the pro is that it allows you to feel powerful, there's obviously a reasonable limit to that. If you walked into a room, and all the enemies instantly died, how much satisfaction would you get from literally expending no effort to kill them? All things in moderation,

As far as Project: Eternity goes, I agree - there are degrees.

 

That said.

 

In a a general sense, I disagree. It is possible to take the situation you propose, and tell an engaging story with it (albeit probably not the kind of story appropriate to Project: Eternity.)

 

If you're familiar with a Pen & Paper RPG called Exalted, you might recognize where I'm going with this. Essentially, a fight doesn't have to be challenging to be part of an interesting story - if the rest of the story is on board with the assumption that "this fight will not be challenging". It helps to put a lot more focus on the 'grand scheme of things' concerns that we would traditionally consider the aftermath.

 

So, let's say you have your story of three hundred goblins reaving through the countryside. The party rolls up, wipes out the army with a brief bout of cataclysmic spellfire. The army is blasted to shreds, its few survivors routed and fleeing. The townships fall over themselves to celebrate your name. Local politicians try to contract the party to leverage similar power on other problems - problems which are maybe not quite so cut-and-dry, morally speaking. Maybe a particularly black-hearted aristocrat tries to strong-arm the party into working for him - people like that can always find ways to bend those who think themselves mighty over a barrel. A loved one held hostage, a slow-acting poison in the wine-glass to which only they hold the antidote, simple lies and half-truths...

 

Alternatively/additionally, a week later, goblin refugees start streaming into town. Women and children, starving and sick. That 'army' that was reaving the countryside? That was every able-bodied goblin, out in the world, trying to plunder enough food for their family to eat this month, because their crops have failed (possibly ruined by Something Worse).

 

The townships are reluctant to take in the families of the ugly, stunted creatures who not a week past were cutting a swathe through the countryside. Still, they're mostly good people - they could be convinced. If somebody tried to convince them. Somebody who, say, feels responsible that hundreds of sentients are starving, filthy and driven to begging for succour from their enemies.

 

But this creates further problems, because the townships (still recovering from the goblin raids, mind you) don't have enough food to tend to all these people. Hm. How to solve that?

 

In summary: "A challenge of non-trivial difficulty" is one route to an engaging story, but it is not the only one.

 

I'm not suggesting Project: Eternity take a leaf out of Exalted's book in this, mind you. I just find argument intellectually stimulating

The real issue here is how to address that power difference to achieve the best sense of progression while still allowing other affected mechanics to flourish.

Agreed. Edited December 19, 2012 by Imrix

[ShadowTiger]

I just thought of something that could work. If we put scaling aside, one of the issues is that players who do all the side quests in RPGs often make themselves really powerful, so when they finally go and do the main quest they are over powered. Players who rush through the main quest and never go and do side quests are usually under powered and will have difficult in some areas.

 

The developers can balance the game by making the main quest really easy, like in Star Wars: The Old Republic, but that is really annoying for players like me. Obviously you can't do the opposite, where you say, sorry you died, go level up a bit.

 

Some games have things like "You are too inexperienced to do this now," there is actually an NPC that says that in Icewind Dale. I think this is a decent way to go. You could also force the player to do a few side quests before progressing to the next part of the main quest by making up an excuse why its not ready yet. We need to martial an army! We need to investigate these clues first! We need to wait for the king to come back from his trip first!

 

In any case, I think that the game should probably have multiple level caps.

 

So lets say the game is split into 5 acts, maybe each act should have its own level cap. That way if you are doing EVERYTHING you don't reach level cap 40 or 50% through the storyline and feel your character flat-line. You will have a series of plateaus but you will eventually reach the next area where you can level up again and experience challenging battles and character growth again with multiple level caps.

 

I think this is a good compromise to keep your characters on track and keep the difficultly balanced without sacrificing one playstyle or another. The key will be deciding how many level caps and how to explain it to the player. It makes sense in 4th edition DND where you have Paragon and Epic tiers. You could easily make it so at a certain part of the storyline at 1/3 and 2/3 completion you get to advance your character to the next tier.

 

If you split the game into 5 acts, and you don't have multiple tiers of character progression, then you may have to resort to story based obstacles like you need to find vials of dragon's blood that you drink to improve your powers. At the end of each act you kill a dragon and get a new type of dragon's blood to drink. This type of thing could work but puts a strain on the writers to make it believable, coherent, and not seem contrived.

 

So for you people who feel strongly either way, how do multiple level caps sound to you? You could potentially have it uncapped for the last act.

Edited December 19, 2012 by ShadowTiger

[mstark]

Some games have things like "You are too inexperienced to do this now," there is actually an NPC that says that in Icewind Dale.

Quick, burn it! Burn it with fire!

 

That said (and done), no, allow me to go wherever I want if I've discovered the area, even if it's earlier than the devs expected me to find it. Was that "too inexperienced to do this" in IWD really an XP block? Isn't it something to do with not having finished a particular quest in order to gain access? Too long since I played it...

Edited December 19, 2012 by mstark

[ShadowTiger]

It looks like maybe this npc was added in the expansion pack and you have to do a few quests first.

 

In Arcanum they had a few NPCs that wouldn't join you if you weren't a certain level, and they were usually connected to main story quests..

[Osvir]

^Suikoden follows this trend too, and it works very well... in Suikoden (107 recruitable characters~). But that is a vast amount of Companions, in a sense you'll only encounter some companions in some cities, or at a certain point in the game, so you'd be "Level 5" on a standard game meeting Forton for the very first time or whatnot. I can see how some companions can't join you because of level restriction, but for a game like P:E? Perhaps not by a level restriction but by a "dialogue" restriction (you locking yourself out from recruiting for a duration of time, allowing you to change the companions mind or lose that companion forever).

 

I prefer "Objectives" (challenges) required to "Recruit" rather than having some "invisible" psuedo statistic for your characters experience. "Ah! Thou is Level 4, sorry I only go with Level 5's! Shape it up honey, maybe you'll get there someday, some way". I'd prefer it to be statistically challenging to recruit (e.g., a level 3 [speech] allows me to recruit a VIP Companion easier than with having a level 2 [speech]).

 

EDIT: One character might require you to be completely and utterly evil, whilst another one might require you to be good and pure. Sorry for off-topic by the way.

Edited December 19, 2012 by Osvir

[JFSOCC]

I believe that:

• There should always be room for growth
  
• There should always remain things to challenge you
  

So no on the XP cap, but the level advantage past a certain point should become ever more marginal.

[Lephys]

In summary: "A challenge of non-trivial difficulty" is one route to an engaging story, but it is not the only one.

 

I'm not suggesting Project: Eternity take a leaf out of Exalted's book in this, mind you. I just find argument intellectually stimulating

 

That was an EXCELLENT example and point, 8D. I'm in mild awe right now. I mean, I hadn't really thought about that type of thing, specifically. But, what I was intending to get at doesn't exclude uses of easier combat for specific reasons. I only meant to observe the fact that, in a game set up as RPGs are, with complex combat systems and character progression being fundamental pylons of the game design, you have to maintain some semblence of combat challenge that generally increases as the story progresses.

 

In other words, purposefully-challenging encounter A takes place before purposefully-challenging encounter B, which comes before purposefully-challenging encounter C. All three encounters (whether they're mandatory story encounters, optional combat challenges as part of some artifact hunt, etc.) should, at whatever time they're undertaken (in chronological order, though) provide a purpose for the progression of the combat capabilities of the player's characters. There could (and should) be encounters in between that aren't intended to do so, and instead support some purpose other than mathematically-represented character progression (such as amazing story segments, other gameplay systems, etc.)

 

Also, I know you're not saying that, in a cRPG, NO combat encounters need to challenge the prowess of the player characters. I just also find argument intellectually stimulating, heh. ^_^

[Imrix]

That was an EXCELLENT example and point, 8D. I'm in mild awe right now.

 

...

 

Also, I know you're not saying that, in a cRPG, NO combat encounters need to challenge the prowess of the player characters. I just also find argument intellectually stimulating, heh. ^_^

Well thank 'ee for the compliment good sir, but alas I think there will be no further stimulation. At this point, what you are saying is not in the least disagreeable to me, and I must consider our opinions reconciled.

[Lephys]

Well thank 'ee for the compliment good sir, but alas I think there will be no further stimulation. At this point, what you are saying is not in the least disagreeable to me, and I must consider our opinions reconciled.

 

... Myyy goddd... I think we've just broken the first rule of Forum Club...

 

... NEVER come to a mutual understanding. o_o

 

It appears the Mayans were 2 days off in their estimation of the apocalypse.