Which Type of Level Cap to You Prefer?

[Jerich]

Which type of leveling cap do you prefer for an action MMO? Is there another type I missed that you like even better?

A. Diablo II style cap
Getting to level 80 is relatively easy, getting to 90 can be accomplished by a dedicated gamer, but getting to level 99 is only accomplished by the most hardcore power gamer.

B. Guildwars style cap
Even the most casual of gamers can hit the level cap of 20 in a week or month. Hardcore gamers might meet it in a day. After you reach cap, you mainly play for the story with no further character advancment.

C. WoW style cap
You reach the level cap fairly quickly (somewhere between a week and 6 months depending on how hardcore you are), and then stay there for the rest of the expansion. At that point your entire character progress is upgrading loot or completing achievements. Level caps are raised every expansion, but in reality, most players typically play at max level.

D. EQ style cap
After you reach the level cap, you can keep getting experience to unlock various perks (alternate experience they call it). While it is technically possible to max out a character, few people actually do.

E. No level cap
You can keep advancing forever although each level is more difficult to get than the last.

- Jerich

[ombra]

I have never played EQ, but it sounds good. But i would like to see a game, where is no level cap at all. That would be really interesting too. D2 level cap was also not that bad. The worst lvl cap version is the wow like lvl cap. Nothing other than raiding to do after hitting the level cap.

I think in general level caps are a very bad idea and i hope that the developers in the future dare taking other routes than the standard mmo level cap.

[RnF]

I like both DII style and EQ style. It is nice to get the lvling over with and item hunt. But with EQ it's nice to still have something to work for.

If Torchlight had anything, I would say you should be able to unlock Post Lvl 100 skills by gaining certain amounts of fame through accomplishments (or lvls in the end game dungeon)

I liked how DAOC (Dark Age of Camelot) had perks based off of PVP lvling. It added a second dimension to the game that was really fun.

[Shardz]

The Guild Wars level cap was a joke and I was very disappointed with that, but they did that for PvP reasons and balancing. In Diablo (either of them), I never reached level 99 because that takes some serious time. As much as I played that game for years, I never reached that level. I would love to see unlimited levels with no capping, especially in a game like this where you can venture down very deep. Fate: Traitor Souls bumped the cap up to 199 and that should be fun trying to hit that, but as along as the curves are fairly balanced, no level cap sounds great to me!

[BN1]

This is a deceptively complex question because it is partially a question of where you want development priorities.

Option A: The level cap is an arbitrary place over where the majority of the content is, the differential difficulty in leveling compounded with the need to play content below the level of your player tends to make this an achievement style vanity issue.

Option B: The level cap is arbitrary and is suppose to be tied somewhat towards the experience you get in the storyline. The idea being that the player hits the maximum level through normal gameplay and they aren't provided a ton more content beyond that level but just enough to play around with the character at the pinnacle.

Option C: The WoW style level cap basically presupposes that players are attatched to a character once they spend time leveling it up, and would prefer to keep playing it rather than start a new character, and that the majority of the content is geared towards players at the level cap.

Option D: Is basically making the same assumptions as option C, the only distinction is it does so with a flare of Option A. Namely players are expected to be at the level cap for the majority of the content, but they are allowed to get some minor advantages beyond the scope of the content.

Option E: This option supposes a gameplay mechanic that somehow scales to the player level. Generally games with this option are equally rewarding throughout most of the experience because the experience at high levels isn't signifigantly different. The big examples would be the console tradition of scaling all enemies as relative to the player's level (similar to what was done in Fable, though honestly don't remember if Fable had a cap or not) or create some type of random content that can be infinite (the dungeons/quests in Fate)

If there is a level cap I hope it is more Similar to Guild Wars, where it is reached naturally as the player begins to run out of content. If there isn't a level cap I hope the development team is careful in making the game feel like you are progressing (which tends to be the biggest pittfall of no real cap games).

[Chameleon]

I'd prefer a low level cap where one is able to get and max all the characters skills early. For me, games really start after I've reached max level because then I can get into hunting gear, doing quests, etc. Games where 90% of the game is grinding levels become boring fast.I played D2 for ages and the highest level I got to was 67. The grind was to much for me.


Hey here's a wacky idea...I'd probably like a game more if there was no leveling at all and it was the gear/items/skills/pets that leveled with play instead of me.

[Michael]

I like the Diablo 2 style, where it's very rare to see people at the highest level because of it's difficulty to get there.

The EQ model is kinda cool, too.

[sigreth]

I'd actually like to see no levels. Rarely do you see skill based games. Sure you could add "soft" levels to give skills and judge the difficulty of monsters, but it would be refreshing to not have to worry about leveling, but pushing to get that awesome skill level so you can use those awesome abilities. I know this then brings up an issue of everyone being able to gain every skill in the game becoming more powerful. This however is easily fixed with allowing a total amount of skills learned or having masteries and limiting the amount of skills you can master.

I apologize for the extra dimension added to the simple question of level caps, but removing levels would be fresh and take you off the beaten path of traditional MMORPGs.

[bTomfoolery]

I'd prefer an early endgame, that way you get to the level cap, then you have a ton of options to choose from, rather than just linearly progressing through dozens of levels without any real freedom of choice when it comes to what area you want to go to next.

[Tez]

A mix of the D2 & EQ ideas for me =]

[Jerich]

It sounds like people are at a mix between either the guild wars style leveling cap, or the EQ D2 style leveling cap. I am not sure which I want. I was thinking of a D2 style leveling cap, but do like the EQ style. I never liked the WoW / guildwars style leveling cap because I always hated it when I reached cap and stopped gathering experience. It lost some of the reason to keep leveling. That being said, EQs style was a huge barrier to new players and there are some good reasons to have an early level cap and have the majority of content there.

I think ultimately, current games understand the need for adding money sinks to a game to balance the gold economy, but have ignored the experience economy. I think any game that appeals to the majority of players needs to add a variety of experience sinks into it. I tried to add an example of this here. But that is just one example. Just as a healthy MMO economy has a TON of money sinks, I think there needs to be a TON of experience sinks. I will try to come up with some ideas and post them in the next week or two in a new thread.

- Jerich

[Jerich]

Sorry for the double post.... I wanted to address the no leveling schemes. I think the main reason that leveling schemes have become the dominant force is that it provides a periodic big reward for players. It is more satisfying to get a player level than to just have your skills level one at a time. I think ultimately, a good leveling scheme actually combines the big reward with smaller rewards (WoW and EQ did this with skills). Another reason that leveling schemes are more dominant, is that they give people a metric to gauge character power. This is harder to do in skill based systems.

- Jerich

[Hygiliak]

I always like the idea if skills and attributes increasing with your actions (similar but not equal to Dungeon Siege). Skill prerequisites would be physical attributes and other skills, plus you would need a trainer to initiate you and/or teach you some new tricks.
Aside from that, I would completely replace experience with reputation, you level reflecting mostly how powerful others think you are. This could be altered by countless factors like factions and stuff to make interesting relationships between you and enemies.
Any such leveling scheme would be with dimminishing returns, so there will definitely be a mathematical maximum level, not necessarily achievable. I would NOT use this level as part of pvp combat formulas.

[Needlehawk]

I find myself not caring as much about character level as whether there remain multiple ways to advance my character. What I *really* don't want is for TL to take the "WoW" route at the beginning, where you had all sorts of ways to advance - crafting, experience, quests, new areas to explore; and then hit a wall at level 60 where you were funneled into a single advancement trail - upgrading gear through raiding.

As long as there are multiple ways to advance my character, character level doesn't matter to me that much.

[Qix]

I like unlimited levels personally. But that is hard to implement into an MMO. Later levels get harder and hared to complete with less reward for them.

I personally think Diablo 2 had a great system. But that also revolves around losing more and more xp on death. Something sure to piss off a lot of people playing an MMO.

I despise the gear grind.

I thought I would hate it, but I enjoyed WoW's achievement system, well some of it. It gave you reasons to go back and run an instance with less people, etc. Added more replayability without having to create more in-game assets.

[hawkn]

I'd like a mix of WoW and D2.

[maanto]

Guild Wars shouldn't be included in there. Not because it's not an MMO, but because the system is not based on leveling, but on switching out skill(s) and re-building your character continually.

Guild Wars is more of a card game than an RPG. The fact that you can choose only 8 skills to take with you is more akin to drawing 8 from a "deck" into your "hand" of cards. Sure it has a lot of dungeon crawling, very deep lore, and a lot of hack 'n slash, but the focus was on collecting skills (hundreds upon hundreds of them) like they were loot (and there is also a lot of loot to be had). You could even argue that you can re-allot your skills in other games, but in Guild Wars you can do so at any time in any non-combat area.

The Guild Wars level cap was a joke

I see your joke and raise you 6 million+ copies sold.

[hawkn]

I don't think i'd mind a guild wars style cap, since in a lot of games it just took too much time to get to a respectable level, and so you couldn't do anything but grind until you were a high level.

[Shardz]

The Guild Wars level cap was a joke

I see your joke and raise you 6 million+ copies sold.

Heh! I suppose I should have rephrased that line cause I bought the Guild Wars trilogy and maxed my main character minus all titles. Let's just say that I found the level 20 cap a bit shallow and once you ascended, you could change your secondary profession which was great. But after level 20, it simply prepares you for PvP and even though you keep earning skill points upon leveling, the actual thrill of leveling was gone early on in the game. As much as I love Guild Wars, 50% of the game is centered around PvP...which I don't really play much. I would have liked to see a stronger line between PvP/PvE and simply put the players on equal ground only when they get into a PvP arena.

[maanto]

Oh, I agree. I wouldn't like to see a Guild Wars style cap for this game at all, or for any other game for that matter, other than Guild Wars itself.
I even heard ArenaNet say that they're thinking about changing the cap (increasing it much higher) for their sequel.

And that's another interesting topic you bring up- PvP, and keeping the player's interest in PvP vs PvE.
Personally, I never played PvP in Guild Wars, I chose to just enjoy the campaign's stories and the lore so I can't talk about balance.
However, even though the cap ended at 20, I still had a lot of fun for a long time with some of the harder quests, collecting loot, and playing different characters with and without friends. That's another thing, I didn't mind using AI henchmen to fill my party at times.

Personally, I think it might split into one of 3 things:
1. Having a chaotic un-organized slaughter-fest where anyone can attack anyone else at will (maybe in certain areas), or
2. restrict it to levels, where you can only attack someone who is within your level range +/-5, or
3. Have arenas be the only place for PvP (like Guild Wars, WoW non-PvP servers, etc.)