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

[subtlefuge]

First of all, if anything's giving way first, it's the game engine before your hardware, so stop pissing on the console people. They have things hard enough as it is. Using their fingers to play games, ridiculous.

However, I have little sympathy for them when I came up with a workaround in 10 seconds. Sure, maybe the game can't handle 2 warping, exploding, rocket pod, slag sentries, but why not lock out the 3 original trees at level 50, and open up a new tree specifically designed for late game balance and not breaking the game. It could just have small bonuses, and it could be controlled in a way that it only served to make the characters more adept, but not more of a strain on the engine (or hardware if you prefer to make yourself look better).

In fact, I'm sure my idea isn't the only way that something like this could be implemented. Heck, most of these people have actually studied and devoted their lives to game design, if they wanted to do something like this, they could do it even better. So next time, just tell us you're too lazy or tired of Borderlands to raise the level cap. Don't say we can't handle it.

 

[wooty]

This is not good news for me, I've not touched the game or bought the DLC because.......I don't know, tearing through a game without any gain just feels hollow. The loot seems to be not getting any better either.

I'm just letting the game rot until they find a way to raise the level cap.

 

[Ignatz_Zwakh]

This saddens me, but at least they've solid reasons. Oh well! Time to focus on my Siren.

 

[Alar]

They could always just add another level of progression different from normal levels. Call them 'prestige levels' that you gain only after hitting the cap, and come up with some new abilities for people to use that you can balance with whatever they might possibly have at level 50.

Done and done.

First of all, if anything's giving way first, it's the game engine before your hardware, so stop pissing on the console people. They have things hard enough as it is. Using their fingers to play games, ridiculous.

However, I have little sympathy for them when I came up with a workaround in 10 seconds. Sure, maybe the game can't handle 2 warping, exploding, rocket pod, slag sentries, but why not lock out the 3 original trees at level 50, and open up a new tree specifically designed for late game balance and not breaking the game. It could just have small bonuses, and it could be controlled in a way that it only served to make the characters more adept, but not more of a strain on the engine (or hardware if you prefer to make yourself look better).

In fact, I'm sure my idea isn't the only way that something like this could be implemented. Heck, most of these people have actually studied and devoted their lives to game design, if they wanted to do something like this, they could do it even better. So next time, just tell us you're too lazy or tired of Borderlands to raise the level cap. Don't say we can't handle it.

Yes, this exactly.

 

[Don't taze me bro]

Congratulations Gearbox on a complete lack of foresight when planning your game with future expansions.

Sure, only a small percentage of players have hit the level cap, but it's these players that will be the ones to buy your next planned 'season pass' and extra expansions.

 

[The Lugz]

and please focus on the exact words, "your x box will crash"

thank you xbox 360!

Spoiler: if you feel offended, click

just fun. take it easy.

quoting you because i like your pictures

the thing is, they don't really need higher levels to pile on more skills you could have say a piece of dlc with a laboratory area with some crazed alchemist that experiments on you and lets you buy a tonic of skill to gain levels, but you need 3 levels to get a skill point
or award health or another stat instead of normal skills
or open a new tree of skills, and only let you pick from them when you're over a certain level
call them 'tonic skills'

there's always a way of modifying a system without breaking it, it's just down to creativity and budget
it may just simply be economically unviable

 

[Goofguy]

Allow us to interchange characters as we progress through the game. This means if we hit max lev we can just swap out to a under level character and boost them, I love Claptrap but the idea of doing his starting missions five times is a tad jarring.

That's actually a pretty good idea. Too bad my highest levelled alt is only lvl 16. I don't think he can effectively handle those tough lvl 53 witch doctors.

 

[theultimateend]

So they deliberately made a game that had nowhere to go even though they had plenty of DLC planned for it?

If that's an actual question the answer is "No."

Congratulations Gearbox on a complete lack of foresight when planning your game with future expansions.

Sure, only a small percentage of players have hit the level cap, but it's these players that will be the ones to buy your next planned 'season pass' and extra expansions.

Anything besides anecdotes and hunches to support that?

 

[Defenestra]

A big part of how this game's skills were set up was built around having them interact with eachother in interesting ways. Axton's Longbow turrent enhancement plus the Nuke enhancement makes both of those skill points wildly more useful than they would be if the two skills were taken seporately.

Or Maya bouncing back bullets, and recovering hitpoints when she does damage, and causing damage when she takes health damage. Plus acid clouds that trigger on the ricochet just for fun.

Or all the skills that enhance the terrifying power of Salvadore's Gunzerk, on top of all of the skills that extend his gunzerk.


Y'know how in Saints Row 3, you build up enough upgrades and you're basically unstoppable? Taking no damage, firing nonstop without reloading or running low on ammo?

Y'know how in Skyrim, some arrangements of skills and perks leave you kind of fragile, relative to the monters that come at you, and some of them turn you in to the fucking god of thunder?


They're trying to avoid that. And if they'd rather send us a dissapointing message, advising us that this is going to be hard and not to hold our collective breath on an increased level cap, and that if/when they get one working it will not be straight-up progression off of the current framework than just add some numbers and watch Xboxen burst in to tears and/or flames, then I'm okay with that decision.

(edited for spelling)

 

[FoolKiller]

Pitchford notes that only about 16 percent of players hit level 50 at all.

Well the reason I haven't gotten there (level 50) either on Steam or 360 is I don't want to get there before beating the DLC so I avoid TVH mode. People are waiting for a level increase so they have something to look forward to when playing the rest.

I understand his concerns though. In part 1, I had a level 61 Roland and the only map capable of causing me concern was Secret Armory of General Knoxx. Having said that, I kinda like the idea of having a god character in the game. And it isn't THAT overpowered when you are playing solo.

Hell, they removed some items such as the healing shields which made the game ridiculously easy in the first one.

EDIT:
They also aren't lying about the Xbox having issues. I have an Xbox and my level 35 with all the bells and whistles has severe framerate drops whenever I decide to do some more intense fights. And I'm only playing zero. I don't want to know what would happen if I tried it with Axton and the double turrets.

2nd EDIT:
I think the reason people are fuming an extra bit that no-one seems to mention is that the achievement for getting to level 50 is called Capped Out... For Now. I've never seen something that hints so powerfully at raising the level cap as that.

 

[FoolKiller]

Allow us to interchange characters as we progress through the game. This means if we hit max lev we can just swap out to a under level character and boost them, I love Claptrap but the idea of doing his starting missions five times is a tad jarring.

Good idea.... and agreed. I actually hate doing the mission to kill Flynt. Its a really hard and boring fight when soloing Zero. Until I get to Sanctuary I'm really bored of the game.

 

[Netrigan]

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...

Most of them do it with XP exploits. The recently closed Tiny Tina exploit was among the most popular, but there's a few other areas where you can farm XP fairly quickly.

I think the 16% represents the truly hardcore players. For the first game, I played through all the content on Normal Mode, thoroughly enjoyed myself, but never touched Vault Hunter Mode because I didn't really see the point of playing the entire game again. And only because I found the second game a much more enjoyable experience did I take the time to figure out how to get my character up to Level 50... then do exploits to get the remaining four up there as well.

 

[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...

Most of them do it with XP exploits. The recently closed Tiny Tina exploit was among the most popular, but there's a few other areas where you can farm XP fairly quickly.

I think the 16% represents the truly hardcore players. For the first game, I played through all the content on Normal Mode, thoroughly enjoyed myself, but never touched Vault Hunter Mode because I didn't really see the point of playing the entire game again. And only because I found the second game a much more enjoyable experience did I take the time to figure out how to get my character up to Level 50... then do exploits to get the remaining four up there as well.

Ohhhh... Yeah, that would explain a lot. I haven't used any exploits, my goal was to just to play the game as intended. (Although I did sort of exploit the final boss a bit to beat it solo...) I don't know if I'll ever hit the cap, really- I'd rather start a second character than take the time to get my one up to 50. Personal preference, I suppose.

 

[Dularn]

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?

Not at all, I never hit the current cap and I really like the game. I just had no desire to play through the same content again just to get a gun with higher damage numbers.

I loved playing through it and doing all the DLC, I'd just rather play something new or something in my backlog of games instead of doing it over again for more levels.

 

[jibjab963]

If they are afraid of it being a cake walk when you level up can't they just do another mode beyond True Vault Hunter Mode? I get bored of games if they are to easy so this is a concern for me if it is made to easy. But can't they also release new characters as well? I'm sure people wouldn't mind the lack of level cap raising if they had new people to toy around with. I have already maxed out the Mecromancer and Commando on 360 and I'm currently doing the Siren on the PS3. What they choose to do or not to do is up to them. I however will always love the game.

 

[seditary]

So they deliberately made a game that had nowhere to go even though they had plenty of DLC planned for it?

If that's an actual question the answer is "No."

No its not an actual question, it was rhetorical because anyone who had been paying attention knows the answer is yes because Gearbox screwed up the scaling from the start.

 

[chozo_hybrid]

Once I hit 50 with someone, I just started a new character, tried things a different way etc. What's so hard about that...

I play it for the game play, not to see little stats go up, so it doesn't really bother me. I like the adventures and the cool guns etc.

 

[devotedsniper]

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

Depends how it was coded, if it was just hard coded then it would either require a complete rewrite or a large modification of the level system, if it was done properly it would probably require some tweaking (e.g. disabling skill points after lvl 50). The main issue is console hardware, likely the ps3/360 will run out of memory (there more than likely pushing it to the upper limit when they released the game) where as any half decent gaming rig will have more than enough.

Either way I don't particularly see much point in capping, you can finish the game by level 28 (probably lower) and while there are those perfectionists i would much rather try a different character once i'd capped and finished that current playthrough than want a cap raise. It's not like an mmo where there is a ton of endgame.

 

[Baron von Blitztank]

Heh, bet they feel silly about naming the Level 50 achievement: "Max Level... For Now"

 

[Ledan]

While their honesty is great, coding your game so that you can't change it for fear of breaking it just sounds like poor design/coding to me.
Shame too, I've always liked to max out skills for games like this.