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

[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.

 

[Th37thTrump3t]

I understand people's frustration with this, I too was looking forward to some more level progression with my Gunzerker, but people are acting like Gearbox was just leading us on and then going "SYKE" when in reality they were actually trying but realized that they couldn't in the middle of doing so without making the game extremely unbalanced and potentially breaking the game. At least they had the courtesy of telling us so rather than going along with it and us ending up with a broken game

 

[Vigormortis]

Meanwhile, hitting level 50 gives you an achievement called "Max level ... for now."

Exactly my problem with this whole affair.

Chalk this up to yet another reason I'm still regretting paying sixty bucks for the game. I've yet to even finish my first play-through. And frankly, I'm not even sure I ever will.

I had high hopes, given how much I enjoyed Borderlands (after, annoyingly, having to turn to the community for patches and fixes), that Borderlands 2 would be better. Especially given the promises and hype Gearbox peddled leading up to the release; like saying they were improving the writing.

So, imagine my surprise when I learned that by "better writing" they meant coming up with such pearls of creativeness as "boner fart" and "butt stallion".

Christ I wish I could get my $60 back...

 

[Eggsnham]

I personally like making new characters once I have hit the apex of a previous character's potential. Is this something the player base is really adamant about? Sounds kind of silly to me.

I would have agreed with you had I seen this article a month ago, but since I've hit 50 with my main character in BL2, I realized that being high level was when the game really started. There are all sorts of "raid bosses" (not really worthy of the distinction, being that they're so easy to kill by oneself, but whatever, I'll humor them) and hidden challenges that you can find at higher levels; not to mention the awesome loot you find.

Going from a level 50 character to a level 10 character is a bit of a buzzkill. To me it is, anyways.

Slightly more on topic; I really hope they think up some way to raise the level cap in a way that's satisfactory to them; I don't want to shelf BL2 quite yet, but I'm running out of reasons to keep myself interested in it.

 

[atallishgiraffe]

Honestly, though, if they do manage to find someway to raise the level cap, the enemies are going to level with us.
Why do you guys think that things will be any different at level 61 vs 50?
If they find a way to do it, I'm pretty sure the power balance will be kept the same.

So really, all a level raise will do is make all the legendaries we've farmed for useless....

I'd be much more interested in something else in place of a level cap-raise.

 

[Headsprouter]

Right. Can I see a show of hands for who wants to farm for LEVEL 60 legendary guns?

....

Exactly. We leave the cap as is. Otherwise most of our hard work going for these things has been pointless in the wider scope of things.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

What the fuck does game balance have to with anything? It's a Singleplayer/Co-op RPG. Breaking the game is half the point of progression!

As I've said before, I won't be buying any BL2 DLC until they give a backpack increase and raise the level cap.

 

[GonzoGamer]

That's bull. Anyone played the most recent DLC and agree with this? I've got multiple level 50 characters and some of the new Level 53 enemies are crazy hard even with a good skills combo and full loadout of legendary weapons. Current endgame design basically requires good co-op partners, an increased level cap may strain an xbox's hardware but no way would it break the game for 95% of players. Regardless, they could have let people know this from the start instead of letting us expect the cap raise for 6 months. Very poor form Gearbox, I expected more from you.

Did you even read the article? This obviously isn't something they anticipated. Also, the end game isn't THAT hard. With the right loadouts for each area/raid boss you can solo anything. Sure it may be challenging but what the fuck is the point of playing if you can just roll over everything like in the first game?

Actually, after reading the article, some of the issues seem like things they should've anticipated: like how certain perks might clash or make the character OP. They should've seen that coming at least. It seems like they put a lot of thought into the perks and how they could cap off at 50...just not beyond?
Still, not the biggest deal in the world. At this point I have three characters to completely play through the game with and some really bitchin lv 50 hardware.

 

[RedDeadFred]

That's bull. Anyone played the most recent DLC and agree with this? I've got multiple level 50 characters and some of the new Level 53 enemies are crazy hard even with a good skills combo and full loadout of legendary weapons. Current endgame design basically requires good co-op partners, an increased level cap may strain an xbox's hardware but no way would it break the game for 95% of players. Regardless, they could have let people know this from the start instead of letting us expect the cap raise for 6 months. Very poor form Gearbox, I expected more from you.

Did you even read the article? This obviously isn't something they anticipated. Also, the end game isn't THAT hard. With the right loadouts for each area/raid boss you can solo anything. Sure it may be challenging but what the fuck is the point of playing if you can just roll over everything like in the first game?

Actually, after reading the article, some of the issues seem like things they should've anticipated: like how certain perks might clash or make the character OP. They should've seen that coming at least. It seems like they put a lot of thought into the perks and how they could cap off at 50...just not beyond?
Still, not the biggest deal in the world. At this point I have three characters to completely play through the game with and some really bitchin lv 50 hardware.

The guy I quoted replied to me with the same thing. While I agree that they seem to have realized the balance issues, that doesn't seem to be the major thing preventing them from increasing the level cap. The unanticipated issue is that it could literally break the game. That's what I was referring to. Balance issues can be adjusted by nerfing certain skills when used in combination with others. That doesn't seem to be the major issue.