Option to disable level cap?

[motorizer]

 

Edit: Or you could do it the way Skyrim does it with the individual Skill advancements, and then just eliminate the over-all character leveling... but then you'd have to find another way to give the player character health/stamina increases.

 

 

You could just not give the player stamina /health increases, they're usually pretty redundant in games anyway as the enemies just start doing more damage to compensate.

away with it all I say!

just gain skills and abilities.

[Stun]

You could just not give the player stamina /health increases, they're usually pretty redundant in games anyway as the enemies just start doing more damage to compensate.

That's a symptom of level scaling, not leveling itself.

 

I shudder to think of starting a game with the standard 1-8 hp, and then staying that way till end game, even as your spells are doing 50-100 points of damage, and so are your enemies' spells, while your warriors and rogues are flanking opponents on the battle field left and right with their advanced melee combat skills doing far more than 1-8 points of damage per attack.

 

Thankfully, we're getting an RPG here, not some whacked out adventure game masquerading as an RPG. All real RPGs have leveling.

Edited August 18, 2013 by Stun

[Elerond]

 

You could just not give the player stamina /health increases, they're usually pretty redundant in games anyway as the enemies just start doing more damage to compensate.

That's a symptom of level scaling, not leveling itself.

 

I shudder to think of starting a game with the standard 1-8 hp, and then staying that way till end game, even as your spells are doing 50-100 points of damage, and so are your enemies' spells, while your warriors and rogues are flanking opponents on the battle field left and right with their advanced melee combat skills doing far more than 1-8 points of damage per attack.

 

Thankfully, we're getting an RPG here, not some whacked out adventure game masquerading as an RPG. All real RPGs have leveling.

 

There are plenty of good p&p RPG systems that don't have leveling system, Rune Quest for example is excellent and very hard core RPG system that don't have leveling system in it.

Edited August 18, 2013 by Elerond

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

I've never played Rune Quest so I can't comment on that, but Stun does make a good point. In a game where damage output increases around the same rate in. D&D, not having HP gain is not good design*. Take an average single weapon Warrior for example, they start out dealing 3-10 damage per attack round in 3E, and cap off at 44-72 per full attack, without even factoring in criticals or elemental damage and strength boosting magic items. The Spellcatsers have an even higher damage potential, although it is much more resource heavy and can be counteracted more effectively. We could always start off HP designed to work with high-level characters, but that would make low-level combat tedious as hell. Having HP increase with level might not be realistic, but having a system that works well is more important than realism in a game where almost everybody can use the power of their souls to perform supernatural feats.

 

 

*Unless they do a SDC thing like Palladium, but that increases with level instead of HP.

[Lephys]

I shudder to think of starting a game with the standard 1-8 hp, and then staying that way till end game, even as your spells are doing 50-100 points of damage, and so are your enemies' spells, while your warriors and rogues are flanking opponents on the battle field left and right with their advanced melee combat skills doing far more than 1-8 points of damage per attack.

I'm a bit curious here: If you were designing a game in which leveling/progression wasn't ever going to result in the increase of HP pools, what on earth would compel you to start with "this is only this low because the game's designed for it to increase as you go" HP values?

[motorizer]

 

All real RPGs have leveling.

 

Yeah, and I want levelling, interesting levelling, I don't see anything remotely interesting about an increasing HP pool, they could do away with hitpoints altogether as far as I'm concerned...if they can think of something better that is.

[Stun]

 

I shudder to think of starting a game with the standard 1-8 hp, and then staying that way till end game, even as your spells are doing 50-100 points of damage, and so are your enemies' spells, while your warriors and rogues are flanking opponents on the battle field left and right with their advanced melee combat skills doing far more than 1-8 points of damage per attack.

I'm a bit curious here: If you were designing a game in which leveling/progression wasn't ever going to result in the increase of HP pools, what on earth would compel you to start with "this is only this low because the game's designed for it to increase as you go" HP values?

 

LOL touche.

 

But what's the alternative? Making it really high at the start, thus killing any semblance of challenge/threat until damage potentials "catch up" later on?

 

Or worse, keep things the same (damage and health) from beginning to end, thus eliminating that wonderful feeling that all good RPGs have, that you're actually becoming more powerful?

 

Edit: Note.... this discussion strictly assumes a combat centric RPG, as opposed to something like Planescape Torment or whatever where combat does not define the game.

Edited August 18, 2013 by Stun

[Ulquiorra]

I am fan of New Game + feature, so for example i play original campain and at the begining my viligde are atacked by "goblins" and if i play thru the whole campain and then "save" my char and play it again i coud encouter "ogres" of "giants" insted of common golbins ...

 

I think that allowing player to have 1000 level in a game where the "dificulty level" is defined to only 100 is stupidity ... BUT alowing player to level up to level 1000 when he can get only 100 in first time nut make game "dfiicult" ech time .. is the best solution ...

[moridin84]

Isn't them most important and interesting thing about gaining levels getting new skills? In RPGs there is a level cap because they cannot design an infinite number of skills. I guess you could make it so that after a certain level you just get health and damage increases but why bother? 

 

I'm sure the combat in the game will be trivial on the easiest difficulty so adding it in to make the game easier is stupid. In the first place you will probably only spend a few hours (mostly likely less) at "max level" so it will only make the game easier at the very, very, very end of the game. 

 

 

I am fan of New Game + feature, so for example i play original campain and at the begining my viligde are atacked by "goblins" and if i play thru the whole campain and then "save" my char and play it again i coud encouter "ogres" of "giants" insted of common golbins ...

 

I don't think I've seen that happen in any games with a New Game+ feature. Normally the goblins are level 20 instead of level 1. 

Edited August 18, 2013 by moridin84

[Ulquiorra]

 

I am fan of New Game + feature, so for example i play original campain and at the begining my viligde are atacked by "goblins" and if i play thru the whole campain and then "save" my char and play it again i coud encouter "ogres" of "giants" insted of common golbins ...

 

I don't think I've seen that happen in any games with a New Game+ feature. Normally the goblins are level 20 instead of level 1. 

 

Besiacly yes, but if you remember skyrim or morrowing you know that you level was the core what type of creatures you are seeing so for example to level 20 you see mostly bears, wolfs or sibercats but after it you coud encounter trolls, ice trollse etc ...

 

And i thing that whoud not be so hard to input in a new game + feature.

[Lephys]

But what's the alternative? Making it really high at the start, thus killing any semblance of challenge/threat until damage potentials "catch up" later on?

 

Or worse, keep things the same (damage and health) from beginning to end, thus eliminating that wonderful feeling that all good RPGs have, that you're actually becoming more powerful?

Well, when you think about it, the only importance of the values of HP and damage is theirrelationship to one another. I mean, if you start out with 10 HP, and deal 1 damage per hit, and enemies have 5HP (so it takes 5 hits to kill them), then you progress and level up, and gain 10 HP and 1 damage per hit, then you're at 20HP and 2 DMG. Well, if the enemies you meet are now tougher, and they have 10HP, then they STILL take 5 hits. Nothing has actually changed, except that you get a nice psychological feeling from reading the increased numbers.

 

So, the only real important difference is, as I said, the relationship between your ability to damage something, and its HP. There are plenty of other factors at play that can be used to dynamically shift this effectiveness.

 

Look at P:E's miss-graze-hit-crit system. Imagine you're level X, and you have 100HP, and you do 10dmg, and an enemy has 80HP and does 10 damage. You're evenly matched in terms of attack-vs-defense, so you've got, what... 5%-45%-45%-5%, respectively? So, you level up, and you don't gain any health, but your attack and defense increase. Well, now, with the same exact HP value, you face the same enemy again. Only, this time, you've got 0%-35%-55%-10% on your to-hit chance, while the enemy (because of your increased defenseive capabilities) has shifted in the opposite direction with his chances, to 10%-55%-35%-0%. You can no longer miss him, and he can no longer crit you. You have a much greater chance of dealing no less than 10 damage to him, and he has a much greater chance of dealing less than 10 damage to you.

 

If that example were the case, you'd feel plenty more powerful against that foe after you leveled up and improved, than before. All without any HP boost needed. Why? Because his ability to damage your existing HP diminished, and your ability to damage HIS increased. Your HP became more effective, and his became less effective.

 

This is before we even introduce things like armor, and abilities that deal extra damage/ignore armor/deal different types of damage, etc. The tougher enemies become the ones who possess more ways in which to effectively deal damage to you, not the ones who require you to have more and more HP to defeat them.

 

When you get hit hard, in any game, do you say "Oh man, I know how bad that hit was, 'cause it did (enter number here) damage!", or is your first thought something more like "Dear lord! That took off nearly half my health! That guy can probably kill me in just a couple of hits!"? If all you had was a health bar, and no numbers whatsoever, you'd still know which enemies were tougher, and which were weaker, based on how much of that bar they took off when they hit you, and how capable they were of hitting you.

Edited August 18, 2013 by Lephys

[moridin84]

Nothing has actually changed, except that you get a nice psychological feeling from reading the increased numbers.

 

This is actually important though

[Lephys]

This is actually important though

You still get increased numbers, though (attack, defense, skill, equipment values, ability damage/effectiveness modifiers, etc.). ^_^

 

Maybe even the occasional health up. Maybe to represent becoming so rugged as to "shrug off" a bit of damage? Of course, that could also just as easily be thrown in as a small, natural armor boost. 8P

[Stun]

When you get hit hard, in any game, do you say "Oh man, I know how bad that hit was, 'cause it did (enter number here) damage!", or is your first thought something more like "Dear lord! That took off nearly half my health! That guy can probably kill me in just a couple of hits!"? If all you had was a health bar, and no numbers whatsoever, you'd still know which enemies were tougher, and which were weaker, based on how much of that bar they took off when they hit you, and how capable they were of hitting you.

Sure. There's no denying that everything that can work in a triple-digit health system can work equally well in a single or double digit system, so long as you keep the proportunates.

 

Still, I'm having trouble picturing a legendary warrior who kills dragons, demons, saves the world... and has 10 hit points. Tough to take such a system seriously.

 

And none of this says anything about leveling. In a decent system, there should be a huge difference in the pain/damage threshold between a common city urchin and, say, an experienced, battle hardened Barbarian. But if one has 5 health and the other has 30 then I'm not sure the system is representing them correctly. Which is why I'm in favor of a system with a... wider range?

 

But without leveling, I don't know how you'd be able to capture such a concept. I suppose you could just incorporate a "damage resistance" skill to represent toughness, but then, what happens if you've got an experienced, battle-hardened Barbarian who chose to focus strictly on offensive skills instead? Will his damage/pain threeshold be like the common city urchin's? Well, Without a leveling mechanic, it has to. Or am I missing something?

Edited August 19, 2013 by Stun

[Lephys]

Sure. There's no denying that everything that can work in a triple-digit health system can work equally well in a single or double digit system, so long as you keep the proportunates.

 

Still, I'm having trouble picturing a legendary warrior who kills dragons, demons, saves the world... and has 10 hit points. Tough to take such a system seriously.

I never said the number should be 10. I'm only pointing out the lack of necessity in increasing HP pools to progress or differentiate between entity durabilities. Obviously, everyone could have 1 hitpoint, and deal like .034 damage at a time. The reason that would be a terrible idea is that such numbers are extremely unintuitive. Almost the same thing happens when you go too high. "I've got 73,456 HP?! And that thing just did 2,972 damage?! Hang on a second..."

 

And none of this says anything about leveling. In a decent system, there should be a huge difference in the pain/damage threshold between a common city urchin and, say, an experienced, battle hardened Barbarian. But if one has 5 health and the other has 30 then I'm not sure the system is representing them correctly. Which is why I'm in favor of a system with a... wider range?

In regard to sheer amount of damage needed to kill one or the other (i.e. they're both just standing there, like training dummies, without armor, and you're going to fight them), one would think that needing to kill the child 6 times over just to kill the Barbarian would be pretty accurate, perhaps even generous. Obviously, in reality, a single dagger strike would most likely kill them both. But, I personally think the HP difference isn't too much of an exaggeration, given that we're playing a video game, and so much is abstracted. Still, the Barbarian doesn't really ever need to attain 100 hitpoints, up from his 30.

 

The MAIN reason the Barbarian is so hard to kill lies in the difficulty of properly striking him in a damaging fashion, and his tendency to be wearing some manner of armor and/or using his weapons and/or shield to prevent you from doing so whilst he promptly smites you to death. Throw in soul magic/powers, and you've got quite a range, from nooblet to Master Of Not Dying To Your Silly Attacks. All without needing to use increased HP numbers to generate betterment.

 

But without leveling, I don't know how you'd be able to capture such a concept. I suppose you could just incorporate a "damage resistance" skill to represent toughness, but then, what happens if you've got an experienced, battle-hardened Barbarian who chose to focus strictly on offensive skills instead? Will his damage/pain threeshold be like the common city urchin's? Well, Without a leveling mechanic, it has to. Or am I missing something?

You could, indeed. I mentioned the use of a sort of "natural armor." Which, to an extent actually exists. Martial artists can block devastating amounts of force with their muscles (and some would say chi/some other form of energy) that would shatter a normal person's entire ribcage. While this doesn't work as well with blades and the like, it would still apply to an extent. Especially so in an abstractly exaggerated game mechanics environment. But, I would ask... why would there need to be a choice to specifically not improve your "natural armor"? Does he specialize in offense SO WELL that he never beneficially develops his endurance or ability to cope with injuries? To put it another way, you could just as easily ask the same thing about the hitpoint system. "What happens if I focus 100% on offense and never gain any hitpoints? Will I maintain the same amount of hitpoints as a small city child?"

 

You see? Not really anything mandating that offensive specialization and the development of some kind of passive toughness or the increase of an injury threshold be mutually exclusive.

 

For the record, I'm not arguing against a leveling mechanic. Even without that, though, I don't see how you wouldn't improve your toughness, shy of never ever taking damage. In which case, why are you worried about how much damage you're capable of handling at that point? But, I'm not even really arguing specifically against hitpoint inflation. 99.99999% of games have used that, and it's fine. It's not like it's an invalid way to handle the same ideas (the math could potentially be the exact same, either way you do it). I'm simply pointing out that hitpoint inflation is completely unnecessary, and that it'd be quite interesting to see such a game as P:E actually use an alternative method. That's all.

[Karkarov]

If there is a level cap it is there for a reason.  Don't forget the idea is to make a franchise and have a sequel where you continue with the same character.  Some of you may love being over powered and curb stomping everything in sight, and that is ok.  That said.... most people don't enjoy a game when all challenge has been removed from it.

[Stun]

But, I would ask... why would there need to be a choice to specifically not improve your "natural armor"? Does he specialize in offense SO WELL that he never beneficially develops his endurance or ability to cope with injuries? To put it another way, you could just as easily ask the same thing about the hitpoint system. "What happens if I focus 100% on offense and never gain any hitpoints? Will I maintain the same amount of hitpoints as a small city child?"

Well, see, that's why we have a leveling system. With a leveling system, the character automatically gains that "toughness"/Hitpoints every time he gains a level. And it happens before he's asked to choose any new skills.

 

Without a leveling system, that toughness/endurance/hp has to be acquired some other way.

Edited August 19, 2013 by Stun

[Lephys]

Well, see, that's why we have a leveling system. With a leveling system, the character automatically gains that "toughness"/Hitpoints every time he gains a level. And it happens before he's asked to choose any new skills.

 

Without a leveling system, that toughness/endurance/hp has to be acquired some other way.

True enough. But, unless you're not planning on ever having improved skills or capabilities at all, the same effect can be achieved without a separate increase to HP or toughness. So, yes, the general concept of increased toughness/endurance can't be tied to level, if there aren't any levels, but there are still ways of representing it.

 

Legend of Zelda: You don't level (except for that one game, that I know of), but you find Heart Pieces and magically gain health/toughness. This type of approach could even work pretty well with the soul lore in P:E, just for whatever that's worth. At the very least, this is actually more believable than a leveling system that says "You just talked your way through this quest SO WELL that you somehow gained an additional stab's worth of life force, via sheer force of experience! 8D"

 

Again, I'm not specifically saying it's preposterous or stupid to simply increase hitpoints, or that we shouldn't use a leveling system. Obviously an increase in HP versus the unchanged damage value of a foe = increased toughness, really. But, it is mildly silly, only because hitpoints represent a rating of your health/well-being, which shouldn't really expand in capacity. Whereas, something's ability to affect that well-being is quite reasonably variable. It only really becomes blatantly apparent, though, when the increase is too much. When a difference of 3 or 4 levels allows you to strip off all your armor and fight, bare-fisted, against 5 goblins, simply because they only do 3 damage and you now have 100 hitpoints, is a bit silly. Some people are tougher than others, true. But no one naturally becomes THAT resilient to damage.

 

The same thing could be accomplished with the adjustment of the goblins' ability to damage you effectively, not because your skin resists sharpened metal, but because you're so skilled at combat that most of it is second-nature. It's a bit like a master swordsman being able to take on a few sword-wielding novices with only a solid oak branch. He doesn't not-die because he has somehow gained the ability to be sliced 17 times and laughing about it, but rather because he's so effective at melee combat that, even with an unsharpened, highly-ineffective weapon, he can easily prevent the novices from damaging him.

 

I'm all for stretching realism into verisimilitude, for the sake of the fantasy and the nature of the video game, but things can only be stretched so far before they tear. That, and the fact that all of the effects of increasing HP can easily be achieved with other existing mechanics. So, there's almost no reason not to at least consider the possibility of doing things without bloating HP pools.

 

Again, not the end of the world if they didn't do it, but it would certainly be interesting to see it explored.

[Gyges]

The level cap will be upped once the expansion hits the shelves. From what i recall, they noted that they themselves along with a majority of players wanted to continue the players story from the original campaign in regards to the story of the expansion. I'm sure you all remember we hit the stretch goal for an old school expansion pack as well  ?

Edited August 19, 2013 by Gyges

[Archmage Silver]

I don't think this should be a game feature for balance reasons. It's highly probable that a mod will accomplish this very soon after the release anyway.

[Failion]

If the primary fun of the game is leveling up then the game failed, too much focus on hack and slash. Nickle and diming players with a new level cap with each expansion is also a joke. 

[rustypup]

It's an RPG. One of the core attractions of an RPG is the leveling. The gradual drip of additional skills, talents and hardiness that hooks us. I'm not sure where it said anything else on the box, but this is pretty much what I bought in to.

 

Lack of level cap means the entire game will be tied to kit. Which is a horrific idea. May as well switch our minds off and plug away at yet-another-call-of-grinding-warfare..... 

 

Level cap all the way. 

[Gfted1]

It's highly probable that a mod will accomplish this very soon after the release anyway.

 

Aye. Ive got my fingers crossed for a healing mod, resting mod and fast travel mod. Maybe throw in an XP mod if the current model turns into crap.

 

Does anyone know how easy Unity is to mod in comparison to Infinity?

[Kjaamor]

I thought it had been confirmed that combat in and of itself wasn't going to give exp? I'd rather assumed that if they were doing that, they would also be staying away from repeatable quests, and to my mind, that doesn't seem to leave any other avenues to escape the fact that there will be limited exp in the game.

 

So the "cap", as it were, is really defined not by an arbitrary stop-gap, but by the fact that when you have done all the quests in the most exp-rewarding way possible there is no more exp left to get.

 

In terms of either form of cap, it isn't something that really concerns me. I grind as much as the next person, but I haven't played many rpgs where there wasn't some form of ceiling. The only one that bothered me was the one in the original Baldur's Gate, because it came in so low, so soon, in a game whose natural cap was only level 10 (well, technically level 30, I suppose) anyway.

 

What I would say though, is that the limited exp really should necessitate not punishing the player for playing evil-type playthroughs, which so many of the old BI games did. Of course there's another thread for that.

Edited August 20, 2013 by Kjaamor

[JFSOCC]

that'd be true if the designers expected everyone to play every quest. in that case the limits to the rewards would be enough to limit the players levels. But, more likely, players would, without a cap, have vastly different levels as they tackle the last parts of the game.

 

I imagine it to be more likely that they'll add a level cap which most players will reach before the end, since ultimately it's going to be skill, not levels which determine how well you do.