Gearbox Can't Increase Borderlands 2's Level Cap (Without Breaking It)

[Zakarath]

I fully understand what he's getting at, mostly because if I had a few more skill points, I could combine my Siren's Ruin capstone skill (Area slag, acid, lightning, etc. upon phaselock of an enemy) with the enemy grouping and repeating phaselock from the motion tree...

 

[wulfy42]

Ok this is just silly.

First..only 16% of players hit the current cap of lvl 50? So only 16% of players like the game basically?

Second, increasing the level cap is easy, just don't give anymore skill points but instead give "epic" or whatever you want points that go into a new set of "universal" skills (Same for all players.

The skills could be things like:

Absolute damage: Increases total damage of all attacks/guns/powers by 5% per point (1 point per level, max of 5 points invested in the skill)

Max Health: Increases max health by 5% per level (max 10 points invested).

Ammo Regen: Gives 1 ammo regen per second per point. Max of 5 points.

Etc etc. There are tons of universal abilities that could be made (shield based ones etc).

This not only solves the current level cap problem (allowing an increase of 10 levels the first time to 60 total), but provides for future increases as well.

It certainly wouldn't "break" the game doing that..and it would be fun. It would also allow players to grow stronger vs current content..without making them insanely more powerful...and allow for new higher level content to still be playable even by level 50 characters (Lvls post 50 still count at 50 for all base stats etc...it's just the epic abilities that increase).

And yeah, I thought of that in like 2 seconds after reading this post....how can they not come up with something WAAAAY better with a full staff and so many months to think about it?

 

[wulfy42]

Another nice addition would be to have one of the "epic skills" be weapon specialization. It basically brings back weapon spec from the first game...and the more points you invest in it (max 10) the larger the bonus you get as you use a gun more and more (10% of max bonus per point up to a max of 100%).

This would bring back having chars specialize in a few guns..and have no limit on that specialization (although it gets slower and slower).

Using guns would give accuracy/damage/reload speed/fire rate boosts just like in the first game...with the added requirement of needing 10 points in the skill to get the full bonus.

Would be nice to have that back, and thats a great way to add in playability to epic levels.

 

[Falterfire]

I think the specific explodificating combinations are ones where you have multiple Action Skill or Melee overrides in place simultaneously. The 'obvious' answer there is of course to just not allow those specific abilities to be used in combination.

It would've been nice if he'd elaborated on which combinations specifically broke the game.

 

[BenzSmoke]

I'm calling crap that players with more skill points would be OP. I've played with moded characters at my bud's place and, despite having all skills unlocked, I wasn't "one-man-armying" my way through enemies. Sure I felt powerful, but shouldn't you feel powerful at the lvl cap? I know I certainly don't in the regular game when I can get killed in seconds by some pack of bandits with crap weapons, while I'm kited out in all legendarys.

But why are they so concerned with players being OP? I've been completely unable to fight bosses without resorting to bug exploitation and glitches. For example: The Badassasaurus fight in the Torque DLC was completely unwinable, even with a full party. The only way we beat him was by throwing Deliverance (http://borderlands.wikia.com/wiki/Deliverance) under the door over and over until we won. And we're all level 50.
And I know that you can disable his attacks by blowing up barrels on his body, but we couldn't get close. As soon as we exposed any part of our pathetically weak and squishy LVL 50 bodies we got hit with homing missiles and died.

We had to completely give up on the Pete the Invincible fight because we couldn't find any way to glitch him out. Also when he hit us with his AOE Acid Attack and we had to get under the water pipes to wash it off, swarms of lvl 66 spider ants would come out of the pipes and kill us anyway.
And yes I know you're supposed to swap between the two pipes, but trying to think about that sort of thing is a bit hard when you're covered in acid and a guy is chasing you with flamethrowers. It probably would have been winnable if turning on the pipes didn't cause a bunch of Mobs to spawn and try to kill you and you alone before fighting each other.

 

[BenzSmoke]

I fully understand what he's getting at, mostly because if I had a few more skill points, I could combine my Siren's Ruin capstone skill (Area slag, acid, lightning, etc. upon phaselock of an enemy) with the enemy grouping and repeating phaselock from the motion tree...

I did that. It's really really useful, but it's certainly not over powered.

 

[Machine Man 1992]

I understand where they're coming from. I did a little side-by side comparison of the first and second games, and the first game has way lower numbers to crunch. A level 69 machine gun has, at most, less than 700 damage, and sniper rifles max out at about 1200 (if that). BL2 sports pistols that boast 3000 damage and sniper rifles that hit the ten thousand mark. That's math the game has to do every time you fire your gun at an enemy, eventually it's going to hit numbers too big, too quickly to calculate or have numbers that come in an unexpected combination, over taxing the memory and borking the whole system.

 

[Cry Wolf]

I've played with a few people that modded their games to increase their level cap. I chatted with them quite a bit about it and they weren't having any trouble with running those profiles on their non-modded consoles. I call bullshit here. While their combos were scary, the enemies only got much scarier. The game is already unbalanced: giving just a few more points would really help balance things out so we wouldn't have to rely on glitches to stand a chance.

I played with increasing the skills post-level cap once I had "finished" Borderlands 2 on the PC and the results were not hilariously only unbalanced - phase locking and wiping out entire rooms - but I noticed a significant performance drop upon activating phaselock as a Siren. I have no way of knowing if this is enough to crash an Xbox 360 but, given my experience with the console, I can see it happening.

OT: Meh. The game didn't hold my attention after my first run through of the vanillia content so it doesn't really bother me and for those still playing I doubt it's a deal breaker.

EDIT:

I understand where they're coming from. I did a little side-by side comparison of the first and second games, and the first game has way lower numbers to crunch. A level 69 machine gun has, at most, less than 700 damage, and sniper rifles max out at about 1200 (if that). BL2 sports pistols that boast 3000 damage and sniper rifles that hit the ten thousand mark. That's math the game has to do every time you fire your gun at an enemy, eventually it's going to hit numbers too big, too quickly to calculate or have numbers that come in an unexpected combination, over taxing the memory and borking the whole system.

Huh, I didn't even think of that. Thanks for the numbers!

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

This is really unfortunate since you can easily max out your characters before getting into the DLC, basically making all the DLC pointless. I mean, you get new weapons from the DLC but considering the fact that they keep giving away gold keys we're all getting tons of extremely high level loot anyway. In terms of character development this means that there is literally no point to playing the DLCs other than to get badass points.

Now are the DLCs interesting to play? Of course, but it just feels hollow without being able to level up your character while doing it, which is what Borderlands has always been about, the loot and the leveling.

 

[EHKOS]

Well that's a shame. They did it in 1, but I can see why it would be a problem. With all five points in Metal Storm and a few others, I had a few framerate issues. Nothing to ***** about, but I can see how it would fry the system. Although Gearbox is such a cool developer I can say, it's OK man, it's just a little fuck-up, which is a lot more than I can say for others. >.> Visceral

Also I'm in the 16%, I feel special :3

 

[PortalThinker113]

Ok this is just silly.

First..only 16% of players hit the current cap of lvl 50? So only 16% of players like the game basically?

This is what confuses me a little.

I love the game. I've put 50 hours into it, finishing the main quest and the first two DLCs along with a bunch of side quests. I still have not reached the level cap with my single character. Am I doing it wrong? I keep seeing people talk about how easy it is to hit the cap, and I'm really not all that close after 50 hours of one character...

 

[Strazdas]

who the hell invented level cap anyway? what happened to no level cap games? why would you EVER want a level cap? maybe if you fail to program a formula for skills based on level, you know, you fail at basic math. there is no other excuse.

If it will break consoles hardware leave it as is..

But can we get a level cap raise on PC? Our hardware CAN handle it without blowing up..

No, because the industry is trying to be as much up Console ass as possible at the moment.

 

[nuba km]

Guys, without a raise in the level cap I figured out a build were it would be possible to get 2 billion damage on a body shot with a certain gun, and by god the head shot would be way more powerful. This is what they mean will break the game, they are making tougher enemies in the DLC because with the right equipment and loadout you can already be a walking wall of death, hell it is perfectly possible to have a character who has 100%(even 110%) resistance to bullet damage as long as they have killed something recently. If you polish your equipment and you skill tree raid bosses designed for 4 can be beaten by 1 person, without the use of glitches. This is what is meant by it would break the game, the number of extremely powerful combos that will come available with even 5 skill points is insane, meaning they would have to put tough as nails enemies into the game to counter it, but there seems to be many players who with even all skills unlocked have difficulties with current enemies these new enemies could just make the game unplayable for those people.

Ok this is just silly.

First..only 16% of players hit the current cap of lvl 50? So only 16% of players like the game basically?

This is what confuses me a little.

I love the game. I've put 50 hours into it, finishing the main quest and the first two DLCs along with a bunch of side quests. I still have not reached the level cap with my single character. Am I doing it wrong? I keep seeing people talk about how easy it is to hit the cap, and I'm really not all that close after 50 hours of one character...

play through 2 gives way more exp then play through one, the game is desgined with the idea that players go through play through 2 in mind.

Expertise: 3 lv 50 characters

 

[Kaymish]

i loved the quote "it will break out fucking game" sounded cool to me however i want to see them try and blow through my memory all 16 GB of it + page file on SSD
then all he has to worry about is balancing issues that cant be that big a deal

 

[Kyrian007]

Ok this is just silly.

First..only 16% of players hit the current cap of lvl 50? So only 16% of players like the game basically?

Dude a lot of people don't finish games. Something like 80% don't finish your average game. Maybe some finish some games, some finish others, etcetera.

That's why a lot of games have good openings but shit endings because the devs figure people won't get to the end anyway (that and the end gets cut first usually)

I kind of have to agree with wulfy though... specifically because you don't have to beat TVHM to hit the cap. My 1st character hit the cap before the bunker fight, and my second hit it just after Sancuary takes off. And I don't play a lot. I only play if my friends are over and we are split-screening, otherwise I really don't find the game very fun at all singleplayer. Didn't seem to take much at all to cap-out characters.

Which is the problem now. We have not played BL2 for a month or so. We are all capped out, and when we hit 50, we saw no need to do anything but beeline for the final boss and forget all sidequesting. We were saving those for the cap increase... which we will now never see? So gearbox is basically saying there's no point to playing anymore (unless you want to start another character.) Or at least that's what they're saying to me and my friends, we didn't want to waste any questing ep on maxed out characters. I guess we can blast thru main quests in DLC... seems like a waste.

 

[GAunderrated]

It would only break the game if they did the job half-assed and didn't put the attention that they did in BL1. For many people that level cap brought a lot of people back to BL1 because there was a whole new dynamic of skills you could create. That is what many players want, more badass dynamic skill setups. If adding more skills breaks the balance then make the endgame enemies harder to balance it out.

I'm not saying it would be an easy job but Gearbox damn well knew 100% that when they released BL2 eventually people would be asking for the same level cap increase they got in BL1. If they choose to ignore it they will be seen as lazy to many people I have no doubt.

 

[Paradoxrifts]

As far as I'm concerned they already broke their sequel by putting a great deal of emphasis on co-op. It was good enough to put a few of the classes through their paces, and get my main through both the first and second playthrough. The so-called 'end-game content' on the other hand truly lives up to a very literal interpretation.

 

[Something Amyss]

The game is already unbalanced

And this is my biggest problem. Gearbox is being pretty hostile about people expecting that they can increase the level cap (when not only is there precedent, it's teased in the game itself), but list balance as the reason. This game is not meticulously well-balanced; the math already sucks, the disparity between builds is stunning.

No, because the industry is trying to be as much up Console ass as possible at the moment.

Maybe if PC represented more than a fifth of the general market for these things....

It always strikes me as weird that a group that is sometimes less than 5% of the market gets all whiny about consoles getting love. "why u catr to the ppl who atlly play ur gaemz guise?"

 

[Xukog]

Ok this is just silly.

First..only 16% of players hit the current cap of lvl 50? So only 16% of players like the game basically?

Wait...what does one have to do with the other? I don't have a capped character,but It's still one of my favorite games last year.

 

[Ashannon Blackthorn]

I always love the arguements from the masses. So how many of you folks are actual video game designers, computer programmers etc etc? Probably very few of you. So how about you shut up and listen to what ther makers of the games are actually telling you instead of of thinking you know the answers. Jeepers people are never happy. And boy could I see the bitching if Gearbox did raise the cap and shit hit the fan.

Now to you who are designers or programmers, is what Gearbox saying legite? Are there workarounds? Will it just need time?