Poll: RPG's with no level caps?

[Jenova65]

Levels without new feats, perks, spells (or whatever the game does) are pointless.
Why would I want to keep grinding when all the challenge is gone?
Might aswell have a level cap at some point then.

Higher stats to make your current spells and abilities are pretty rockin'
Then again I'm not the type who needs a shiny new toy every time I do something.

Ditto! Some people like the sense of achievement involved in levelling, this isn't so hard to understand, and besides as you say it improves many things such as potency and raises defence stats, HP, luck and so on. No one minds a reasonable cap but give people who want to level up the opportunity to do so.

Make a sort of in game exp cap, then toss in later bonus areas that aren't related to the story for the people who want to play with levels? Honestly it more or less just annoys me that they tell you to level yourself up and build your character however you want. Then put a cap on it which in a way makes feel pointless. Once you hit a level like 20, you don't feel the great sense of accomplishment you do at 99 or 100 nor do you feel the completion, you still feel like a weak dork who should be getting beaten up by the third boss.

Well, they could do it several ways, couldn't they, by putting in (as you say) non story related side quests that enable players to continue levelling or have an area that you can go to to 'break', a level cap. I mean do BioWare intend to up the level cap with DLC on ME2, meaning that you would have to essentially buy the ability to level higher than 30 (which would be a cheap trick beneath BioWare) if they have DLC and no extra levels there is no evolution, iyswim? They could just put more content in and people wanting to sweat while fighting the final boss don't have to go and explore that part of the game.
With a small level cap the only players not getting what they want are players who like to level up and that sucks.

Well if ME is going to be like DA, then the level cap is going to be upped with an expansion, or DLC. Which to be honest annoys me. It seems like a dick move to make the player pay extra to level up, that's a WoW move.

Exactly! It becomes a marketing ploy and that isn't playing fair, there are still people who don't actually download extras and they never then get the full experience, which since they have bought a game, they should be entitled to. Levelling up shouldn't be something we need to pay extra for, WTF?!

Plus as someone else said, if they're going to raise the cap anyway why not let people level all they want. Add new abilities and spells in with the new expansion, let people relevel if they want. But for what we get until the expansion, let us fucking level with what we have please. Being level 20 for more then 80% of fallout 3 was boring.

When I started my second play of ME2 I was already at the level cap, so for the whole game I knew that was nothing new to learn so I have to play without anything new or start a fresh game every time I play learning the same 5 or 6 skills, that's kind of depressing. I have Fallout but haven't got round to playing it yet and the level cap in that is one of the reasons why.... I will get round to it, but when I own games that let me level to my heart's content there isn't that much to inspire me!

That sounds really shitty. White Knight Chronicles does something similar. When you start a new game plus you keep all your points and levels so you get to grind to fifty and then you can "rebirth" which just resets your level and gives you more points so you can grind back to fifty and do it again. YAY LEVEL CAPS!

It is still a great game, don't get me wrong, but it feels like an integral part of the game has been removed, if that makes sense?
Is White Knight Chronicles any good? It is on my list but I have to get the DA expansion and FFXIII to get first.

 

[serialver]

No level cap like Disgaea type?

On console RPGs I would hate two possibilities to this which makers could do to make me mad, first being the mandatory 'Use this one character you never use, you hate, you have left gathering dust as soon as you were allowed to bench them, for a whole dungeon' section and the idea that monsters level up with you, so at level 2000 the huge fucking hard dragon is also now a huge fucking badass hard level 2000 dragon.

Generally games just become grind-a-rific for max levels and everything is generally easy by then anyway, a few exceptions of course.

 

[Halceon]

I prefer no level caps. but levelling forever is just an illusion of progress - you need more xp for each successive level, but the stat increase stays the same. Basically you need an exponential increase in benefits per level to maintain the utility of levelling.

 

[kaziard]

I really like being able to put the extra effort into grinding for a few hours so I can 1-hit-kill the monsters in the next few areas, it gives me a sense of accomplishment that's my hard work has paid off. If I didn't want to do this, I just wouldn't take the extra time to kill monsters without progressing the game.

I really dislike games where the enemies level as you do, because that defeats the whole purpose of bothering to level up in the first place if they're always going to be of equal power.

I don't mind level caps as long as you're still able to get to a high enough level to blast through even the end-game boss. Or have access to Knights of the Round.

ahhh nights of the round + quadra + mimic = o.0 omgpwnt

OT i like games with no cap, take disgaea for example, you could pretty much play forever. Plus its gotta heap of additional content for those crazies getting to level five thousand etc.

 

[CmdrGoob]

Some people have the worst idea of what's fun. The only thing more tedious than grinding is grinding and making the game too easy because you are overleveled.

 

[Deacon Cole]

I have a better idea. How about an RPG without levels? Then you won't need an arbitrary level cap nor wind up so powerful that you can kill planet-eating monstrosities with one hit. Make the game about what you can do, not how well you can do it.

 

[MagnetoHydroDynamics]

I can, as a programmer, say that unless you REALLY go out of your way to remove level caps, it will cap at 9223372036854775807 (or twice that, depending on a number of things).

 

[Tharwen]

IF there was no level cap, Then you'd continue leveling until the game would prevent you from leveling any farther, Ever the best monsters would be easiest for you.

Unless the monsters became proportionally harder to defeat, which I think most games without a level cap do.

 

[Deacon Cole]

IF there was no level cap, Then you'd continue leveling until the game would prevent you from leveling any farther, Ever the best monsters would be easiest for you.

Unless the monsters became proportionally harder to defeat, which I think most games without a level cap do.

That kind of defeats the purpose of leveling up, doesn't it? What is the point of leveling up if the obstacles level up with you?

 

[azukar]

I have a better idea. How about an RPG without levels? Then you won't need an arbitrary level cap nor wind up so powerful that you can kill planet-eating monstrosities with one hit. Make the game about what you can do, not how well you can do it.

Good grief, you may have hit on something here! I guess this is kind of like what Dungeons and Dragons seemed to do with levels - they make you more skilful, not more strongerer.

That said, taking an xp-dependent stat-increasing level system out of an RPG... kinda takes a pretty massive RPG element out of the game.

 

[carpathic]

IF there was no level cap, Then you'd continue leveling until the game would prevent you from leveling any farther, Ever the best monsters would be easiest for you.

That is kind of the point. One of the things Oblivion messed up is that on level 50, a goblin could totally hand you your ass, there was no sense of moving forward.

 

[Jenova65]

I have a better idea. How about an RPG without levels? Then you won't need an arbitrary level cap nor wind up so powerful that you can kill planet-eating monstrosities with one hit. Make the game about what you can do, not how well you can do it.

Good grief, you may have hit on something here! I guess this is kind of like what Dungeons and Dragons seemed to do with levels - they make you more skilful, not more strongerer.

That said, taking an xp-dependent stat-increasing level system out of an RPG... kinda takes a pretty massive RPG element out of the game.

An RPG without levelling is just another action adventure (or other genre) surely? ME2 becomes a shooter with an in depth story, Star Ocean becomes a hack and slash with an in depth story and so on...........
RPG games imply something is on offer, if I say to FPS players we are taking the guns out of your games.. Well, you can imagine!
I am using an extreme example to make a point, I am aware that it is far more complex than this, however, levelling up has become a very integral part of the genre and RPG'ers expect it in the same way that shooter fans expect guns, iyswim?

 

[FoolKiller]

For plain RPG's it doesn't matter because your mainly playing single player.
For MMORPG's you need a level cap so you don't have "Make Love Not Warcraft" problems.

Except GM's wouldn't have an issue with deleting the GOD OF WARCRAFT cause they get bored.

He means so you won't have the one person with no life dominating everyone without being able to be beaten. If GM's deleted characters for being too good... I don't even know what would happen. I don't think any MMO is retarded enough to try it.

I would say lawsuit, seeing as the nature of MMORPG is charging money to play. As long as you didn't cheat to get your character there, they couldn't do anything about it.

OT:
1. There should be no level cap. At least none that stop you from maxing all the stats such as Mass Effect. If I want to sink time into the game and make a superhuman character in a single player game, why not let me?

2. The enemies should not level with you. If they do then what was the point of leveling in the first place?

3. And the concept of power-leveling is the reason for random encounters in old-school RPGs. In games like Mass Effect, it's hard to even get to the max level of 60 in 2 playthroughs (the first caps at 50) as the levels require insane amounts of XP and there are very few enemies that can be killed.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

With. This way I can stop grinding.