I think Mount & Blade 2 has a good soft level cap where you can techinically max out; but the exp gain is incrementally increased so much that your character dies of old age before reaching the cap.
M&B2 (also previous titles) is also a masterclass in how to make sure your character is never god-tier overpowered regardless of level. Everyone has (more or less) the exact same amount of health, so no "bullet sponges". Your skills, your character perks and character gear is what make you stand out. But even in some sort hyper mega plate armour, your level 50+ character is going to struggle in close combat against 10 (heck, sometimes even 5) peasants, unless you reduce damage taken or give yourself other perks through difficulty settings. Siege and huge battles never become not dangerous due to the sheer amount of people involved and you being but a single cog in those battles. Indie game Kenshi is another good example of this in my book. Neither game puts the player in the center, so both games I mentioned are a bit different to what Tim typically talks about I would say. Mainly, they are true sandboxes, whereas most games Tim speaks of, even if they're open worlds, a bit more linear and story-based. I'm not sure you can always use open sandbox principles in more linear games, where there is supposed to be a more guided experience. YIkes, this turned out longer than I planned for, sorry for the wall of text.
I really appreciate soft level caps, when your leveling goes as usual until "cap" after which it starts slowing down a lot. Mostly eliminates that sad roof feeling of level cap while restraining out of bounds growth.
true , path of exile does this exceptionally well ,and for this to work you need a penalty for their progress if their character is not strong enough , that makes people want to grind levels less and improve their characters more so they can level up reliably
I wonder about the idea of "soft" level caps, where total levels or stat points are capped primarily not by a hard limit, but by increasing difficulty to obtain, in the sense that past a certain point the sheer amount of experience (or use if you go the route where skills level through being used) to get levels becomes so great that only the most die hard "I want to do everything on one character" folks will ever get past a certain point. This might allow for some wiggle room in those situations where you underestimated the amount of points needed for a particular build, since you might be willing to spend a long time working on that last point or two if that's all you need - while still not making it realistically feasible during a typical playthrough to become the all-in-one master-of-everything build that makes successive playthroughs redundant.
Demon's Souls comes to mind, you can keep levelling but the amount of souls you need to get to the next level gets increasingly more. (I'm not sure if there's a absolute max cap or whether it's a gradual or exponential increase, but the idea is there fore sure.)
@@KingBlackToof Demon/Dark Souls leveling is just a difficulty knob. The more you level, the easier the game becomes. The true leveling in these games is your own skill (and maybe a weapon level which is locked behind story progression). Though it does mimic a classic exponential leveling curve. The cap is level 999 I think. There are soft caps on your stats (most of them cap at 40).
I think some games also do this well by lowering how much a stat gives at breakpoints. A softcap without exploding the price of another level, sometimes both like Elden Ring.
Any time someone's talking about some RPG bandits having equipment worth enough money that you can't help but wonder why they aren't simply retired, it's hard to not chuckle with memories of playing Oblivion.
@@massivive Bethesda can keep level scaling in Oblivion they just need to hard cap certain NPC groups and creature types to certain levels, for example bandits should scale with the player up to level 15 and then not scale past that level, rats should scale up to level 5 and not scale past that level, etc.
I much prefered when the level cap is not outright stated, but hidden by a cap on how much XP there is available in the game. I feel frustrated whenever I hit the cap before completing game, as I feel I'm being punished for being a complenionist. The sweetpost I find for me is to have those impacful late-level perks last longer by lenghtening the time between level up in the late game, so that you can enjoy these power spikes more. But I do get that all of this is incredibly hard to balance with games that have tons of optionnal side quest that get you to those level, which a lot of players will skip. I did like how pillars gave XP for non-combat quest resolution, and how ''killing everything'' was not the optimal move. I don't know how this could be solves in games with enemy respawn.
Level caps are based. The lack of a level cap is one my major complaints about Bethesda games. You'll eventually max out everything so Skyrim and Fallout 4 have no actual builds. I don't know why you see it as "being punished" for being a completionist. To me it feels satisfying to hit a level cap and have finished my build. I'm at my maximum potential clearing out the rest of the game.
@@theobell2002 The problem with the argument that "you'll eventually max out everything" is how much grinding you need to do to get there. It's not something you accomplish by accident. At the time you max out everything, how much unique content is left in the game, and how much have you been grinding?
Personally I'd suggest a cap on skills but not on the player. For example you can level up as much as you want but you're never going to be able to do more than double damage with a certain weapon type or avoid a certain percentage of damage with defense. You can continue to level after that but you have to put the points into alternate weapon skills or non combat skills so you can have a more versatile character but never more powerful one. Like a tank warrior that starts working on archery or diplomacy as he grows older. In this case though you'd have to link hit point gain to a skill rather than more free hit points every time you level.
sorta sounds like how dark souls did caps. the only reason the player level has a cap is because each individual skill is capped at 99. player level is just all the skill levels added together. (there's also some soft caps where most skills start to see diminishing returns)
Hi Tim! My thoughts on level caps are not fully formed and I'm open to changing my mind. I like the idea of "playing as a normal person" and having to make meaningful choices. That's why I often find starting a new save on games refreshing. However, whenever I've hit a level cap in a game, such as in New Vegas, I've felt disappointed. I usually hadn't realized that there even was a level cap. Better communication from the beginning might have helped, such as a visual showing how far I am along a path with a fixed endpoint. I think, for me, the better solution is to have an unlimited level cap which is balanced so that I won't have everything by the end of the main story. But if I want to keep playing and find all of the side content, then the leveling will continue. I'd still have to make choices, but I wouldn't hit an arbitrary barrier. I could also find out what all abilities are and be ready to make informed choices when I start a new save.
Hi Tim. This channel is a treasure! Thanks for everything 😊 Spaniard here, so you're getting a question from across the Pond... What do you think about level scaling? Do you like the game world and enemies to scale up to your character's level so you get a more or less constant challenge, or do you prefer a fixed level system in which some areas get easier over time but you get a (more) real sense of progression? Thanks in avance! 😊
Generally I agree. But mostly due to the fact that enemy scaling feels a bit ridiculous with the bandit example being a big one. I prefer having the lvl cap being high (like being an expert in many skills/weapons) and reaching it needing to be intentionally done by the player. That way I can feel like a "normal guy" or exceptionally talented person if Inwant to put in the effort.
Thanks for the great video and balanced perspective! Personally, I believe that there is value in having the option to become a giga god character regardless of the setting, because it can provided some catharsis to just walk around and squash the most powerful types of enemies by the dozens. That said, I think that such power should generally be reserved for a postgame scenario. If your story driven rpg has no post game because it is designed to end with the story, adding in a means to become a giga god just feels like padding, because in this perspective it quite literally is padding. Additionally, a setting where a postgame makes sense may just not work in whatever setting it is you are working in. This powerlevel also doesn't necessitate infinite progression just a high enough level cap so it is not a compelling reason for either. But I, being a JRPG-fan turned general RPG-fan, have always found myself drawn to the idea of "outgrinding" difficulty, sort of as player-chosen difficulty. If you find yourself unable, mechanically or strategically, to overcome a capstone challenge, presumably a boss fight or scripted scenario, you can fight monsters and get stronger until the gameplay is a breeze. Admittedly, this does devalue the story a bit because if you are curb stomping everything, the stakes don't feel particularily real, but that is a trade-off I personally do not mind in the games I play.
I have to say without a doubt the most satisfying thing I've ever felt in a video game was leveling up in FO3 and FONV. FO4 it was satisfying to level up in but not even close to 3 and NV and I think that's due to the importants of each level which can really only exist with a level cap.
You can fix it simply. Having some way to respec balances out the fun vs realism. Arcanum was rough because you could box yourself into a bad character build by the time you hit the cap. Baldurs Gate 3 has a lvl 12 cap and it was fine because you can respec out of bad choices you made earlier. Restarting the game instead of allowing respeccing is rough because you might be 50 hours in and realize the mistakes you made, it’s not fun for the player at that point. But overall I agree that a level cap for a campaign has always felt better for pacing.
This video made me start thinking about a perk to get at a very late level that could raise the level cap. The idea is to address some of the problems to mention. For example if the level cap is 30, and you've got a raise cap perk at level 28, then that would make that perk more useful for longer. Some of the negative effects could be increasing mob health, damage resistance, and/or level. Using fallout as an example, rad roaches become level 20, might have the a heightened resistance to ballistic damage, totally immune to radiation, and more vulnerable to fire and cold damage. It's still using the level gap approach, but gives the player the option to bump it up a notch near the end. Might need a mechanic to keep track of experience after they hit the level cap and allow them the opportunity to repick the perk if they keep playing?
Could a hybrid approach work? Say there is a level cap but there are ways to circumvent it tied to the story: beating the main quest gives you a reward that lets you keep gaining experience, or maybe each major arc of the story has a level cap (so in Outer Worlds for example, the level cap goes up as you reach new planets that have stronger enemies so that certain areas are the game are always challenging)? In terms of the skills/perks, maybe have some trees that are exclusionary? If your character decides to specialize in weapons then he can't also be an unarmed specialist or if you make an intelligence build then you can't as many combat skills/perks? I agree that level caps help make the world feel more real and less like a game but a game is a game :P I feel that a lot of the negatives are experienced by players who try to do as much content as they can (hopefully because they enjoy the game) and that feels like a real downside that needs some kind of solution.
I think unlimited leveling feels better and adding softcaps on stats would deliver the same restrictions you talked about. You can still level but would gain far less from stats, once you hit level 30 the now softcap. You could easily build a perk system separated from levels imo and would work even better. I think most games that continue to use perk systems just feel dated because they continue to offer the same old, too many choices and some are vastly superior and they make it obvious. Would be better to remove a lot of that choice and just have better options that change gameplay more drastically with even larger downsides.
On an unrelated note, thank you Sir for what you have done to Outer Worlds, in a strange way you managed to keep the cheesy 50's sci-fi vibe when at the same time making very futuristic game.
Thanks for another informative video. I'd like to hear your take in the future on NPC level scaling in RPGs/MMOs. It seems to be something players are pretty divided on.
There's a movement in tabletop role-playing (I'm thinking of DM Scotty's EZD6 and Runehammer's ICRPG specifically) to do away with levels altogether. Admittedly, this is part due to RPGs turning into a bookkeeping nightmare at high levels, which computers are great at handling. However, ditching levels would do away with the problems you mention in CRPGs at a stroke. Naturally, players want a sense of progression, but finding that suit of power armour and massive guns can take care of that. That, and also a damn good story to reveal and resolve, too.
Never much cared for "levelling" myself. My enjoyment of a RPG, especially, always comes from elsewhere, so that's a very interesting movement from my perspective.
I think a primary concern pertaining to uncapped progression is that a lot people, devs and players alike, conceptualize a "stereotype" to how the system must be structured, or that it all must be tied to the same schematic of leveling up, picking from the same perk list, gain the same stat improvements, keep the progression continuous without tapering off the effects of the growth with some sort of diminishing returns and/or changing what special features or abilities you can choose from / improve as the numbers hit the upper bounds of the game. Something I have been toying around with a lot is a separate 'tier' of character progression where you reach a certain point and the rewards for leveling up change to a new set of options based upon the decisions you've already made, and can perfect those ad nauseum. OR a separate infinite progression system alongside the capped levels. (However a bad example of this, in my opinion, is the Borderlands 2 Badass system, and a distant second is Diablo 3's Paragon system, which was a little more love/hate. It's difficult to make the way they designed them rewarding enough to want to use without breaking things down.) If you were to visualize as a spectrum all the possibilities your character can take in a totally uncapped leveling system, they are just infinitely big. with a partially limited or compartmentalized system, it allows the spectrum to continue resembling what your character was before it started progressing beyond the intended boundaries of the game, typically I would choose to taper it off to infinite diminishing returns a little before the math breaks or just slightly after, depending on the mechanic. (e.g. chance of success slightly before, damage slightly after) Another way of looking at it is just the world's longest character class creation process, when you reach a certain level, you stop gaining new class features, but you can expand and improve your current abilities, with your gains slowly diminishing to a point before the game difficulty breaks down, allowing you tackle all but the most brutal encounters which have now become significantly more manageable, but still resemble a risk. **** Wall of text showcasing my own game design experiments with this exact thing below **** A real world example is of my own developing a homebrewed extended game progression for D&D 5e (It's not quite infinite but you will be playing level 20 for a very long time to max anything out): I have developed a robust proficiency system that allows you to apply special augments or bonuses to anything that you can have proficiency in/add your proficiency bonus to, and for EVERY class and subclass. The intention for this system was to flesh out more character diversity, and twist the dial of balance a hairs breadth over WotC's 'esteemed' bounded math, both in favor of and against players, while requiring minimal legwork to append this into your campaign and not needing to change a bunch of game rules on those who are adverse to reinventing the wheel. Every time you level up, you gain Advancement Points equal to your proficiency bonus, and after either a period of downtime or 1d4 long rests, whichever happens first, you gain Advancement Points equal to half your proficiency bonus (Your DM may also reward players with them). You then invest those Advancement Points (AP) in your class, subclass, anything you have proficiency in, such as saving throws, skills or other ability checks, individual sets of equipment like a weapon, armor, shield, tool.. Or even individual spells that are available to you, increasing its rank when you add more points. You then spend the points you have invested on special abilities called advancements on their relevant table, each advancement has its own AP cost to acquire: Spells have a generic table of advancements among themselves, in contrast to classes and subclasses, which have a unique table for each. Saving throws, ability checks, skills, and tools all share an even more genericised table. early-mid game ranks: Rank(#) Minimum Level Minimum Creature CR Required/Maximum AP Proficient(0) - - -/1 Adept(1) - 1/8 1/4 Specialist(2) 2nd 1/2 3/7 Expert(3) 4th 2 5/10 Lets say you just reached 3rd level as a Fighter, you got your suite of Battlemaster maneuvers and your DM tells you he is now giving everyone 1 AP as a reward for making it this far, totalling 7 AP that you have accrued so far: You threw 5 of those points into your Longsword, making you a Longsword Specialist, you're not able to get any Expert advancements, because you need to be a minimum of 4th level to be so, but you're more than happy to spend the points with what you have available, so you spent 2 points to add +1 to the weapon's attack roll, 1 point to add +2 to its damage rolls, and 2 points to allow your attacks with it to cleave an additional enemy within range, keeping the same attack roll for both, but rerolling the damage for each hit.
I’m a big believer in level caps being a good thing. I very much dislike infinite levels because it feels too much like your choices don’t ultimately matter.
@@sharpedog666 most games with no level caps are pay to win games and whales tend to out level everyone. It's not exciting if no matter how much time you invest you will reach a goal and will always be outplayed to such a extreme. If it's a solo player rpg then level means nothing since being level capped won't be needed for endgame
@@Grinningfartking6969no level caps makes leveling "more linked" to the time spent on the game. Of course the designer should be mindful of its decisions and design other systems accordingly, but at the end of the day it is almost meaningless by itself.
@sharpedog666 because you're going to keep leveling in most cases regardless of what you do. Personally I prefer soft level caps where after a while your experience starts to plateau so you CAN still level up past. Certain point but it keeps you thinking about your choices because your next level up might not be for a long while.
@sharpedogg666 I would make the argument that having an infinite level cap sets the expectation that your players will keep playing ad nauseam and therefore the quality of the content will suffer. It’s no longer about what is in the game, vs HOW MUCH is in the game, just look at Fallout 4 where there’s a large amount of radiant quests. That being said, it is definitely a preference, I don’t think one is inherently better than the other, more so execution than anything else.
@@sharpedog666 There is a philosophy pioneered by one of the Civ 4 designers called "Players will optimize the fun out of a game." If you give the players the ability to play in a safe, boring, but effective way, they will often choose that, even if it isn't the most fun. Infinite leveling is one of the more exploitable features in a game that enables people to grind until they're a godlike being and then breeze through the game. This could go against what a lot of games want the experience of the game to be. If you're playing a post-apocalyptic zombie game, then being able to kill every zombie in one punch and being unable to die or be infected takes a lot of the survival aspects out of the game.
Specifically for the issue of perks/anything that has a level requirement close to the level cap, I would consider adding some system of "cheating" the progression system to get those early at a cost of something else. It's usually the case that gameplay-defining progression elements tend to be early-game to mid-game pickups, because having them at the end really makes no sense - but it also feels weird to have some extremely specific perk at Level 5.
That's me. I am that person that complains about level caps and infinitely scaling monsters without level cap. But to be fair - I've never hit the level cap in Fallout and Arcanum so I guess I'm a hypocrite too : ) I remember as I child I was puzzled: why have level caps instead of dishing out rewards with ever increasing experience threshold that you need to reach to level up? Now I see your point. Details are lost to time but I remember that there was a quest in Arcanum where you go to some portal and that portal infinitely produces monsters. I remember a guide in some magazine suggesting that its beneficial to grind those monsters until you reach level cap before you finish that quest and cut the monster flow forever.
I kind of like the unlimited levels approach, but it need to be paired with horizontal character progression to ensure that the encounters are always interesting. What I personally find appealing is the idea that you can earn more skills and option though effort by leveling up beyond of what is required. Let's say you are ment to beat the game with level 50 but you can still level up to level 200 if you want to. Playing through the game 4 differnt time with different skills might be faster than reaching level 200 once, but it gives you options to earn all skills with one character instead. It's an optional reward for the effort you're willing to put in, if you're attached to a particular character and want to experience everything there is with it. This concept wouldn't work in all games. It probably it would only work well in sandbox/open world type games.
I think that they can be good but it depends on the game any game where you are like a normal person should not have infinite leveling. Games like where you are playing a god or someone very powerful. Somebody like a navy seal or like Kratos or some thing. You should have infinite capacity. To improve. Because that game is a power fantasy. There are other games for the fantasy is weakness and they should not have infinite levels things like fallout new Vegas fallout games in general. horror games and games where you are meant to be basically a victim. Who overcomes their victimization you should have level caps or you should have very restricted ability.
I disagree, I think levels quickly lose any fun or interest if there's no sacrifice being made. If I spec into a skill like archery, it should come at the expense of being less good at every other skill for that level. If I can continue to grind until all skill are raised equally, inevitably the challenges will scale with the level and it feels like you're not progressing at all. Leveling should feel like an extension of the character creation process rather than a to do list of abilities to unlock. If the end goal is to always have every skill at 100, why not just let me have them all at the start and make the game harder to balance it. If the game is going to gradually get harder with each upgrade the end result is the same only I'd have more fun using the locked abilities earlier. If choosing those abilities mean missing out on others then there is always a point to levelling up and it always feels like your character is progressing rather than being artificially restricted.
@@SineN0mine3 Well for one there should be no scaling. I explicitly said that it needs to paired with horizontal character progression. A key point I wanted to make is that it is an optinal reward for effort. It's not the end goal unless you make it your own personal end goal. It merely gives you option to play the game in a different way. Naturally it also dosen't work with any game. Party based game and linear story driven game for example are not great for this kind of progression
I love both formats when they fit the game and the "fiction" of said game. but i'm more in favor of no level cap, but to have that in a good way the rewards from leveling need to be more customizable, maybe a system where the player creates the magic like in two worlds or elder scrolls, maybe a system where you get "base" skills and perks by leveling strenght, intelligence, etc... and have the player combine those skills to get new perks and skills. Other thing i really like is the act of improving a skill by using it.
You could allow for more horizontal progression without making you a God, put cap on how much % accuracy you can get, but you can also became good at melee, at stealth at lockpicking etc. HP could be capped, but you could still get points to get new abilities. I don't think it would ruin next playthrough since realistically you will not max everything you will run out of things to do before that happens. And yeah level scaling in in sp rpg sucks, it makes leveling pointless. Also you can place strong enemies in such a way that at start of the game you will have to avoid this enemy but later on you will be able to kill it. Pretty simple thing but very satisfying I think Gothic did that the best.
Hej Tim, ive been thinking about something the itemd of Fallout. There are a lot of items you can not use, "junk" for example is never used in FO2 is i am correct. Do you remember the decision making on adding these? Im a bit torn because on one hand i remember it adding flavour to the game but also the logic of being able to pick up a packade of tv-dinners vs anything eller in the room always made me go for the option "if it doesnt weigh anything it can stan intill i might rin across someone Åsling for it" but also i think that over the years it made me go though two extra scrolling wheels on my mouse. I think the option of having "junk" itams marken as such is good for other reasons but thay also creates a problem where your character seems semi-omnipotent knowing exactly what will and what will not come in handy in the coming adventure
I don't agree with Tim level cap choice as you can have both. Offer ~30 hour story with (soft) level cap and when it's done, allow infinite growth in NG+. For example, Borderlands 2 is a lot of fun with "Badass Rank" which is practically infinite stat growth (capped at 32-bit/10 = 429.496.729). It's like a cheat code reward since you played for so long but it needs to be balanced and changeable if you want to challenge yourself again.
I agree it's usually preferable to have a level cap. The only time I think it's nice to not have one is when experience points are scarce enough that it's not needed. This is essentially a de-facto level cap and this doesn't work for every game, though. Tim: just wanted to let you know how much I've been enjoying these videos. I ripped the entire backlog to mp3 so I can listen while I'm driving or folding laundry. Thanks for all the great entertainment!
Tim your swipe at Fallout 4 falls flat considering that in Fallout 1, if you're wearing power armor a deathclaw can't hurt you unless it lands a critical. The only reason bringing a minigun to fight a deathclaw makes it hard is because deathclaws have enough DT and DR to defang the minigun. Which power armor also does. But by the time you have power armor you'll have found the guaranteed drop for a plasma rifle at least. Which removes basically all threat a deathclaw poses to your character, when paired with power armor. Deathclaws are then more a threat to your companions than to you. Never mind if you're in hardened power armor with a turbo plasma rifle, or the alien blaster, which are the only two weapons better than the plasma rifle. It's not even so scary in the first Fallout, when you take the first deathclaw in combat armor and using a sniper rifle.
I would love to see a game that subverts the expectations of leveling, where you think it's just uncapped and you can grind to become a god, and what happens instead is that rumors about this godlike entity has caused enemy factions to invade the region, and now you suddenly enter a whole new state where there are new enemies, new weapons, everything is stronger, new quests pop up... And you could go the entire game thinking you finished it, and never see this whole "last chapter." Bonus points if there's a second "level" when you think you've seen it all, where hell opens up and demons invade also.
Another alternative that works for me is the progression of only your gear like Outward or Risen or Kingdom Come Deliverance. It all depends on your equipment you find along the way and how you use it. There are no “levels,” just skills and fancy weapons you find that you learn how to use. And your character is just as mushy at the start as he is at the end but you as the player have mastered the combat.
I remember back in the late 90s stumbling upon "Seather's Fallout Fansite" and seeing posts about a fallout character editor called (falche?). I had to dig around a bunch of webrings back then until I could find a working download, and remember how excited I was to give myself "all the perks" (I had already completed more than a half dozen playthroughs by then, but still felt a bit weird editing a save file.) I start running around a town with a fully maxed out character and just remember EVERYONE running away from me, like not even attempting combat. Not certain if it was some combination of presence how fleeing was calculated, but I remember asking around no mutants allowed and the unwashed village and getting laughed at for cheating my way into the "Rambo Effect". Even bypassing a cap, the game punished anyone who wants to play living god, and honestly that's a totally reasonable response to some super-human with main character syndrome rolling up on your home.
I wonder how much simply adding the option in game to have a levelcap or not would affect things from a development perspective. I often/pretty much always end up modding out levelcaps if I can, as I find the restriction weirdly stressful, but I also totally respect your reasons for wanting them as a creator.
Cyberpunk, Fallout 3 and New Vegas were the best at having me replay the game differently Cyberpunk made me rebuild everything, went from being a net runner who was great with pistols, a street samurai who was deadly with shotguns, a assault rifle God with melee and i mixed and matched FALLOUT had me heavily invest into intelligence and i was great with energy weapons😅
I was also wondering what were your thoughts on lvl caps. So far, I completely agree with you. I really dislike the "Get everything in one playthrough" aspect. Also, it lacks the sense of achievement. I like feeling that my character is complete at some point. Thank you for your answer.
I definitely prefer level cap and tight well crafted balancing. I believe level cap makes it easier for game devs to have a general idea of the players power level in any given area which makes encounters feel much better.
I'm pretty sure I've played a couple of games that gave the player an alternative reward if they'd reached the level/experience cap. In that case it was probably just currency or some other type of progression points, but I think there's plenty of design space to explore there.
This is why I love the design of modern Fromsoftware games. In theory there is a max level but it's so high and the requirement for leveling grows the more you level to a point where it usually doesn't make sense spending the currency on new levels. This is combined with a soft cap for stat upgrades, at a certain point upgarding certain stats won't make much difference because it might take two levels for them to even effect any of the values. And on top of this finally we have the fact that the currency for buying items and leveling is the same. Thanks to this last one it's pretty much the only rpg where I never get to a point where I don't have what to spend my money on. There's always another stat you could increase, a weapon you can upgrade, an armor to add to your collection or consumable items you can buy.
I don't like level scaling and no level caps. Maybe I've yet to encounter a game that does it right, but it always feels static. Take Skyrim for example. Early on you get random encounters with bandits in mismatched armor trying to rob you. Later the same random encounter generates the bandits in full Daedric armor. I also can understand the frustration of too low of a level cap when you hit it and still have a ton of game play left. I think Fallout: New Vegas initially had a good balance of level cap, skill points, and game length. The level cap kept the character from becoming too overpowered, and there was just enough game left after hitting that cap. I thought the DLC raising the cap ruined that balance. With the new level cap and perks you get from the DLC, you could almost max out every skill unlike before. The last time I played it, I wanted to restore the balance of the skill points from 30 levels but extend it over 50 levels. I couldn't find an existing mod that did what I wanted, so I did it myself. I reduced the skill points per level to what you got with the original 30 levels, but spread it over 50 levels. In order for it to not take longer to get skills raised due to fewer skill points per level, I made it a tiered system. Up to level 20 you got the same skill points as the vanilla game, then tapered it down from 21-30, and again from 31-40, and again from 41-50. After level 50 you no longer received XP, but I accidentally removed the level cap and didn't take figure in the XP added by the educated perk. I was going to fix it, but I left it in. This way I could still get perks, and the small amount of XP added by educated wasn't overpowering. I never released my mod, I always meant to clean it up and release it.
Level caps are a non-issue. If leveling up takes more and more effort, at some point the player literally runs out of physical time to play. It's a soft-cap. Some people will level more than others, but you can roughly estimate the level an average player will reach. And then at least, given that there is no level cap, one has reason to continue playing at all time without having to forgo character progression.
I am very much a mixed bag on this. On the one hand, I love the feeling of creating a god-like character, especially in a fantasy setting. On the other hand, I like that level caps make your choices matter. The knowledge that one day you'll stop gaining skills and perks makes each new one matter that more. For a long time, I didn't like level caps because it felt too artificial. It was the game designer basically saying "stop playing at this point." I wonder if there's an alternate solution where you can technically keep leveling or improving, but its greatly diminished. Perhaps just making the XP required after the level cap increase exponentially? For something like this to work, we would need to communicate this clearly to the player early on. I'm not sure if there's a good middle ground, but I definitely understand the people who feel frustrated by level caps.
@sharpedog666 Most games have an exponential levelling system, but does it get significantly harder after a certain point? Most exponential systems follow a consistent curve. I'm thinking could a good middle ground be almost a second, new exponential curve that is even steeper than the first.
@@brettabrahamRunescape (at least OSRS) has an extremely steep level curve as you get closer to the cap of 99. Getting to 96 is the halfway point to 99, it's an extreme curve because it is a holdover from the early 2000s runescape classic where people just weren't expected to get 99 in more than 1 of the many skills. Of course this clashes with things like rune plate bodies (a armor that can be equipped at level 40 defense) requiring 99 smiting, because 20 years ago it was the best armor in the game, even though now you can easily just buy much better armor or get it off of a monster drop without spending the absurd amount of time to level smithing.
Hello Tim! I would be curious to hear your thoughts on power scaling vs not scaling monsters/party members to the environment. It seems like you prefer not to scale, how did you come to that decision/preference. Would love to see a video on that!
Level caps are an interesting beast. In practice, most games with levels reach a cap of some sort, but players only really take note if that level cap is usually reached before the end of the game. Some games implement strict level caps because they want to scale up power drastically but want a peak. D&D character power increases exponentially with every level, to the point where level 20 characters are pretty much gods amongst mere mortals. Most campaigns stop WELL before level 20 though, because that amount of player power requires an entirely different set of problems to reasonably challenge compared to the problems of lower tiers of play. Basically if you are playing capped characters you're playing a god game and there's nothing else remotely mechanically challenging the DM can do. Other games, however, enforce strict level caps to push some semblance of balance onto regular levels of play. In something like older Fire Emblem games you were heavily limited in how many level ups most units could get, which combined with randomized growths, stat caps and reduced exp gain when approaching level cap, resulted in various means of encouragement for players to utilize a variety of units rather than try to create a small handful of godlike powerhouses. That said, the effectiveness of doing so still ends up being very high if not near optimal anyway in most cases and the level cap ends up being a minor factor if it matters at all.
I prefer level caps in CRPGs and infinite levels in action games (I consider Dark Souls an action game). But you can have infinite levels without level scaling monsters. From Software games do that. They want to challenge you, but they give options to make it easier for you, if you have the patience to engage with the mwchanics. But with level caps comes the downside of nmstipping advancement way before the end of the game, and then one layer of fun is lost, the most inmediately rewarding: gaining new skills and perks. You can solve this adding oerks that are not based on XP or levels, but given to you by the game's story. When you finally arrive to the final boss' lair, you can choose between two new perks, and so on, some perks scattered through the world by simply accomplishing missions or challenges (kill 100 S tier monsters to get a special perk). Some weapons and armor grant you special perks. Synergy: if you have this perk and this perk you gain this other perk. These synergies can be obtained by reading magazines, so you can still getting new perks at the end of the game. Bandits with a million dollars gear? Why don't they retire? Well, why don't you retire? You cab add a retirement option like in Mortal Shell, or you can treat bandits as people, they are the main characters of their own stories, they don't retire for the same reason you don't: they want "to finish the game". In the end it's the developer who must decide what the intended experience is. In Outer Worlds only using guns and rifles is viable, other styles are possible but not nearly as well designed nor fun, and that's fine, OW is a FPS first, and RPG second.
A big problem in D&D 5e is that most games don’t even get close to level 20 so most players never get to use high-level features, and for the few that do the game gets completely unbalanced because the game was not designed with that high level of characters in mind. Scaling and pacing are big issues with these sorts of things
@@xczechrD&D (not just 5e) is just a terrible system that is only popular based on inertia and name recognition. D&D is pretty antithetical to good game design.
The problem with D&D is thinking it needs to be balanced, when you are high level, it's obvious it will be unbalanced, older editions did it better, you even had some settings with spells levels higher than 9, as Dark Sun, where you would age years and possibly die if you cast them.
@@GeomancerHT Spoken like a player and not a GM. Planning encounters for high-level play in unbalanced systems is a nightmare. It always seems to be either a breeze for the players or a TPK. It's one reason why I don't run D&D but instead I run other, more balanced games.
I like level cap with the possibility of a reset for replayability but carrying something from the previous play. Same character, not a new one, that decided to “relive his experiences/life” again but with different decisions.
removing level caps removes the difficulty for the developer to make leveling and point allocation intuitive and balanced. Lots of old games you can make them a lot harder than intended by designing a crappy character build, since not all skills, stats and perks are created equal.
I like Bloodlines XP system the most, i.e. there are no levels here, just XP points that we spend as we see fit (and the higher level in skill, the more points we need to invest).
That also presents a hard limit requiring multiple playthroughs. A Ventrue might somehow grind out enough xp to learn every skill but they can never learn Celerity.
The Risk of Rain games are a great example of how to implement an unlimited level cap. 1) Build a robust system of item upgrades which are mostly percentage-based and fully stackable 2) Have enemy strength and numbers increase as a function of time 3) pit the player's ability to collect and stack upgrades against the ever-increasing difficulty. It results in a really fun feedback loop where you can basically play the game until it breaks, because you're doing millions of dps and moving so fast you can't see your character, and the engine literally can't render everything that is happening on screen. I guess it substitutes a level cap for limits on hardware + software itself. It's neat. Also, I have never seen a 2D world translated so perfectly into 3D as I have from Risk of Rain 1 to 2. It's a masterclass in game design.
I would say that unlimited level caps would only work with level scaling. If I were making an RPG, I'd make each creature's stats have the player's level as a multiplier or divisor so that they always stay at the level you intend relative to the player. So if they're supposed to be weaker than the player, they will be and stronger as well.
I like level caps it makes me feel like I have to make decisions specifically for a certain type of build or whatnot and it also encourages multiple playthroughs, maybe I want to talk my way out of trouble so charisma playthrough or maybe I want to go guns blazing so strength playthrough
SMT3 Nocturne does this in a really interesting way, it has a level cap of 255 but levels beyond 99 are effectively cosmetic, but at the same time your player character is locked to 8 ability slots. In order to create a build that allows you to clear the end game content you are required to level up while under the effects of Magatama, which impart bonuses to stats, resistances and nullify damage, and add weaknesses as well as causing random status effects like paralysis or potentially healing the party, and learnable abilities are spread across a number of them through the length of the game so you are always working towards the next key part of your build, while also potentially putting you at risk of being instantly killed immediately if you are unlucky in a battle.
It's possible to create absolutely broken builds that literally do turn you into a god and allow you to kill god in one hit as well, so thematically it just works.
A 3rd option is to provide unlimited leveling with diminishing returns. You could implement a rule that causes every level beyond your cap to cost a factor more of XP to reach. Most old-school JRPGs used to do something like this. At some point, the cost to level becomes so high that you assume you will never reach it. But regardless of how far off it is, XP is still worth something.
I prefer level caps when they are done well, as others have said, they make your choices feel impactful. That being said, unlimited scaling is fantastic when done well too. The Souls games are a great example.
@@sharpedog666 Because you have to be more thoughtful. You're consciously making sacrifices in other areas to focus on your strengths, or address glaring weaknesses that have become a problem. Basically in games with a cap and limited skill points, every choice you make in leveling up is more impactful, than without the cap.
As long as it matches the theme of the game contextually, I think uncapped levels can be a great way to increase the sense of progression. On the other hand it can just as easily turn into an unmitigated grindfest that makes you hate the game.
@CainOnGames Hi Tim, Fellow unreal engine dev here with a more technical question. Unreal engine has a newish feature called Gameplay Ability System (GAS). I haven't used it much but it's being touted as potentially the last needed code base for games that all use the same basic systems. The idea being that every game uses damage, damage over time, healing, buffs, debuffs, ailments and other commonly used mechanics. Instead of creating all of these systems from scratch for each new game, devs would be able to use the same GAS code for each new game and focus on fine tuning the gameplay instead of building each mechanic. My question is this, from being in the industry as long as you have this probably isn't the first time you've seen this type of one size fits all system, what were the pitfalls or failings of other similar systems and do you think GAS has a better chance of success since Unreal Engine has such a large market share and we don't have the game engine fragmentation of the 90s when every studio had their own engine (nearly)? And do you personally like GAS? sorry for the run on sentances/being rambly.
So, one thing I really like about Baldur's Gate 1 and that I'm glad Baldur's Gate 3 kept is that the game doesn't go from 1-20 on the level scale (obviously Baldurs Gate 2 does let you go beyond level 20, but that's a direct sequel to the first one and is about becoming a god, so...). In Baldur's Gate 1, you can only get as high as level 6, maybe level 7 as a rogue because of the different xp tracks, and that means that you never get so high level that an encounter with a bunch of kobolds is basically meaningless, but you are also rarely so low level that a given encounter can't be overcome with really skilled play (though you may take casualties). I honestly feel like a D&D CRPG that lets you go from level 1 to 20 or beyond eventually has to stop letting you adventure in certain areas because of how powerful you end up in relation to everybody else, while a game that focuses on a smaller range of levels can more easily allow you to explore the whole area without level scaling.
IMO, level caps are the way to go, but the cap should not be easy to hit in a normal playthrough. I don't think I hit the cap in either Fallout 1 or 2, for instance. The cap is just there to prevent players from grinding a large number of levels past any challenges in the game. KOTOR is an example of a game that I think handles leveling poorly. I typically hit the level cap with multiple missions to go. I find that to be frustrating as a player.
fantastic video, i sort of dream of a infinite or "very high" level cap, where the game just goes crazy insane and all the skills are needed to defeat insane encounters
I feel like Colony Ship handled leveling and skills really well. Could tell it was inspired by Fallout, but added their own spin on things that I felt made skill exp and over all leveling rewarding.
None of the cons you listed are about level caps though. You can scale a system with no cap in such a way it is functionally impossible to learn every skill or become so powerful that you trivialise encounters, even without level scaling. Dark Souls is probably the best example of this. The amount of xp isn't realistically enough to be a jack of all trades in any functional scenario, you hit diminishing returns that mean the end game boss is going to be challenging even if you spent thousands of hours grinding. The biggest advantage I can think of of a level cap is it opens up more design space for "Every level is significant." If you don't cap levels you need to ensure at some point the gains are increasingly marginal, otherwise you start running into the issues you mentioned in your video.
I wish you touched on soft cap. I feel like soft cap avoids some of the cons you mentioned, like losing the xp rewards and god-like character (to a certain extent),.
I totally get what you're saying about not enjoying games where you become an all-powerful god. I really dislike it when games make you so overpowered that nothing's a challenge anymore. I usually quit playing when that happens. Like, take Skyrim for example-I've been playing it for over 10 years, but I've never hit level 85 with any character. I love the early game, but it all goes downhill when I start crushing everything easily, even on legendary mode. I'm all for having a level cap because it gives the game more meaning in my opinion. When they were promoting Cyberpunk 2.0, all they talked about was how insanely powerful your character could get. Lots of folks were excited, but I was worried that the game would lose its challenge. I know some people love the power fantasy, but it just doesn't do it for me. They were showing off MaxTac, talking about how badass they were and how tough an encounter would be, but then they showed gameplay where someone was just steamrolling through waves of MaxTac. That made me pretty skeptical and uneasy about the game.
Arcanum must've had a level cap, because I remember editing my save files to get around that. I honestly think that the best way to deal with a level cap is to claim that there is one, so people are aware of it existing. Then once the player reaches the level cap or maybe beats the game, give them the option to turn the level cap off. Of course you'd have to have big warning signs saying: "This game was developed with the level cap in mind. If you turn the level cap off, your character is going to become overpowered compared to the environment." I think it's always better to give the choice to the player and make them aware of the consequences of their choice.
Arcanum have levelcap of 50, wich is not that hard to hit. I know I managed to score it in every single one playthrough, sometimes at the end of the game, sometimes around 3/4. Ofc there is mod to raise it to IIRC 127.
I prefer infinite levels mostly because i lose motivation to keep playing when i don't see myself improving. Unless your skills can level without level ups- like elder scrolls where you can be level 1 but have some skills at 100. I need a continuous line of progression to keep me from dropping a game.
Fallout 4 has no level cap and you can basically become god but in my experience I hit 90 ish after doing most quest and dlcs and pretty much exploring the game so it's actually hard to become a perfect God.
i think there is a middle ground. you can have the leveling be not totally over after reaching the cap, but require a lot more experience, so much that it would take hours of farming to level even once. that way the average player would finish the game and not become a walking god, but people who prefer that would have the opportunity to grind it out
One of the hardest parts of balancing any RPG must be that by its very nature, leveling up inverts the difficulty curve. Level scaling can cancel that out, but without the constraints those encounters would feel the same no matter what level (or often just more prolonged). Gamers are a bit more savvy to the RPG elements and either grind that extra XP, create a character build or use exploits to take whatever advantage they can. It would be interesting to find out from a programmer's POV what can be done to stop players from optimising the fun out of the game in terms of over levelling or min/maxing builds.
Not having a level cap would work well in a game like the Borderlands Series. If worried about the player character becoming too powerful, just use a soft level cap where they stop gaining skill points. That way I can enjoy - and look forward to - getting new equipment without worrying about becoming overpowered. In a more rpg, and single-player focused game, I like what Cyberpunk 2077 does, specifically the new 2.0 version. It does have a level cap, but: 1. It's fairly high, so you get a lot of upgrade points, and you spend a lot of the game reaching it. 2. When you do reach it, you still have a lot of game left, so you can enjoy being max level. I hate reaching the cap and then, a few quests/fights later, the game ends. 3. Also, by level 40 - 10 whole levels before reaching the cap, 20 if Phantom Liberty is installed - you should have access to most of the good equipment, so like in the previous point, you get to spend plenty of time using it.
I really liked Diablo 2 approach which have very high level cap and new game+. Yeah, there is a level cap of 99, but you will probably never want to reach it, and if you do, this will be the greatest achievement. So you can be whatever strong you want, but if you want a challenge there's always a harder difficulty level. And you still can't max out every skill, so you have to start over to experience everything
I have quit many a game because of running into a level cap. I cant help but lose almost all interest in playing a RPG once my character becomes stuck, essentially, and no, equipment gains dont cut it either. The most egregious example I ever ran into was actually Pillars of Eternity, where I hit the cap before going to the druid town, or whatever it was. (This was a long time ago.) I was stunned that I hit a level cap when I felt I was only half way through the game, I lost all motivation to play anymore, and I never went back. Then, seeing that the expanaions for Pillars only upped the cap by something like 2 more levels, I realized the Obsidian RPG design sensibility just wasn't going to be for me going forward, despite how much I enjoyed previous games by the people there. Too much desire for balance, which I consider antithetical to the player in a game world. The player is the tipper of scales in a game world, so trying to balance the player experience itself robs the player of his/her game-mechanical agency in the name of the developer/designer's agency over the player. As for becoming a walking god... well yeah! If I track down every monster, complete every side-quest, and squeeze every last drop of exp from the game that I can, I damn well better be rewarded with being overpowered beyond the scope of a "normal" player's playthrough.
PoE is a fantastic example of a soft level cap. Getting to level 90 is easy, your build is fully complete by then, you then have an option to level to 100 (hard cap) but it takes forever and you lose exp on death. There is another leveling system -- gearing/crafting. The more you play, the more currency you farm, and you can spend all of that currency on gear. Realistically, you're not gonna get all best-in-slot because fine-tuning the item is a big RNG and it can take forever. With both systems (exp and gear), your character stays roughly at 90% power but leveling to 100% becomes exponentially harder. There's still some sense of progression despite the fact that you're not improving much.
So far there's only 2 kinds of 'unlimited' leveling I've enjoyed, and really there's always some technical cap but Soulsborne games. Take Elden Ring, just to get to the softcap of every skill would take months of grinding and being extremely careful so you don't lose the giant XP bucket you have so you can get just 1 more attribute raised. At some point in those games you just are like 'yeah my characters finished' on stats and you don't really worry about it. So it has that feeling of infinite because yeah, you could level up but man you just can't be bothered to try for that specifically. 2nd would be a hybrid system like Borderlands. It has a level cap for the character and there for a defined 'this is who I am' character, but then there's the badass ranks that go on infinitely with minor bonuses. ESO does this (but has a cap they keep increasing with patchs/expansions). Having a defined character in ESO, but always having this little bonus thing to work on after is nice. Would be nice having something like that in say, Starfield. Because their 'it's all in one bucket' approach makes my character feel like a fraction of a normal human till I'm in my 30s (hah, to real maybe). That's probably more an issue with the entire system being a singular system instead of splitting it up into combat and non-combat stuff.
Gothic 1 & 2, maybe 3, had no level caps but finite xp within the world. You could only gain xp from killing enemies/NPCs and doing quests but there were finite quests, and enemies only respawned at the beginning of new chapters while there were only 3 chapters. So you can never reach some obscene level in the game.
Players need an end point of reference. You want players to beat your game and be excited to try it a different way. What you don't want is to burn them out on some tedious xp grind so that they can squeeze out endless levels. Level caps force creative theory crafting, while uncapped leveling simply tells the player to grind. Good talk, Tim.
Please talk about Temple of Elemental Evil and the work done by modders, did you ever happen to contribute anything to The Circle of Eight modding team, were you a part of that team? I think one of the best things on that patch was removing the level cap and adding crafting and other missing pen and paper features.
I don't like absolute level caps, but I am all for increasingly diminishing returns when advancing beyond the intended "max level". My favourite advancement system is from Warhammer Fantasy RPG (pen and paper), where you advance stats and skills up to a cap determined by your character's profession and then change the profession if you want to be able to advance more and/or learn new things. It doesn't have levels, but total (career) XP earned is a sort of level equivalent.
So one consideration that I think is ... unaccounted for, here: there are some D&D campaigns where after ... however long, years, or more, it's just a power-fantasy game, with characters that the player has absolutely grown attached to. They don't really want to be "challenged" by the average enemy, anymore. They want to feel that "I have toiled, and tarried, and bled, and overcome all of the challenges of this world, and made it through the other side, and can laugh about it" power fantasy feeling. That isn't to say there can't be 0 challenge left; there's always room for Deathclaw Prime, or whatever, hidden away on the map, somewhere, or as an enemy that you previously needed to 100% flee from, or completely flattened some fortified town you had previously visited, so you know it exists out there as a living legend. Other ways you could allow for this power-fantasy and/or character attachment are: 1. post-credit unlock of the cap 2. a UI prompt, or a gameplay option (default false) saying "You've hit the prescribed cap; would you like to opt into power-fantasy mode, understanding that most combat will be underwhelming beyond this point" 3. balancing your expected cap, and then adding another n levels, with scaled XP requirements I'll give you one more player MO. I am pretty autastic. I'm not necessarily looking for a power fantasy... however, I do get attached to characters. Moreover, I actively seek out and complete *every single piece of side-content possible* in a benevolent playthrough (always benevolent, for some reason). One frustration that I had in my first playthrough of Outer Worlds was that I was forced into combat in the last big encounters, because I had discovered and done so much that I capped early. And because of the cap, and hitting the cap earlier than I thought I would, I was a few points off of maxing out any of the things that would have let me ... enter calmly and have a pleasant chat, like the good old days of Fallout 1. I had since made other characters, essentially the same, and went in with a plan for min-maxing to meet the cap... but a few more levels, or a toggle, would have completely alleviated the problem. ...and I still would have made a new character, and gone back and done it again, trying to optimize outcomes. And again, when the DLC landed.
Bottle-caps are better, that's for sure... ...and level caps are also good, it bring challenge and at infinite levelling the procedural generation for most time turns enemies into bullet sponges and that's no fun. While I must admit that with level cap we can easily improve skills into the corner (Arcanum suffers from that).
See, I have a different view. With the original Fallout, I use the mod which allows me to set myself to level 200 with uber points, why? Because I want to experience the story like it's an 80s action film. No other entertainment media can stop you experience a story (imagine a book stopping you unless you can answer questions about the plot)
Infinite levels make me feel like oh God. I just think oh it doesn’t matter I’ll just get that later. Level caps force you to take things with a different level of priority. There are always going to be some things I take nearly every time. Like for most builds I’m taking skilled and I am dumping charisma. At least in new Vegas. In other ones it depends on the game. I do like different builds for different games more so. Like I would definitely play a melee build In fallout two but probably not fallout three just because the Malay in fallout three doesn’t have that many good weapons. That’s just my opinion now. Fallout four has very good melee weapons
I liked the level cap with Arcanum -although I do think the difficulty curve drops towards the end of the game by the time you get there your pretty strong with not much challenge.
Infinite level caps doesn't necessarily mean infinitely strong. Just use a convergent series. An infinite number of additions can have a finite sum. I think in terms of design, this functions more like the capped level scenario, but playing will always feel like you are progressing little by little too. The first point you made was a very valid one though for the rpg genre. I'd like an infinite converging series for an mmorpg (which I mostly play) though.
Thank you for the great video! +1 to level caps. As much as I like the idea of being able to continue a character indefinitely I find that lack of level caps leads to very similar characters or even the same god character (though that can be somewhat ameliorated by the implementation). Similar characters means no meaningful decisions on character progression which is just as important/problematic (to me) as no meaningful choices on narrative/story. I guess one can go the Diablo route where you can keep specializing your character to a small subset of your class skills and simply increase the damage number; that gets old fast for some people (myself included) Anyhow yet another insightful video. Thank you Tim! Have a great day 😊
That’s true it leads only the early game to be drastically different. There will come a point where most builds will look the same. Or at least a lot of builds will look the same. Or similar where everyone has taken 75% of the skills. And they are on endgame Contant.
I don't like hard level caps, they make you feel restrained. The way I do it is soft level cap where every time you level up, the XP required to reach the next level increases exponentially, so at some point it's no longer worth it to keep leveling - BUT, I also make a NG+ mode where you can carry over your levels and unlocked skills and start fresh with faster leveling, until you reach the soft cap, and then you play NG++ mode for another round of leveling up. It really drives the replayability.
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I think Mount & Blade 2 has a good soft level cap where you can techinically max out; but the exp gain is incrementally increased so much that your character dies of old age before reaching the cap.
M&B2 (also previous titles) is also a masterclass in how to make sure your character is never god-tier overpowered regardless of level. Everyone has (more or less) the exact same amount of health, so no "bullet sponges". Your skills, your character perks and character gear is what make you stand out. But even in some sort hyper mega plate armour, your level 50+ character is going to struggle in close combat against 10 (heck, sometimes even 5) peasants, unless you reduce damage taken or give yourself other perks through difficulty settings. Siege and huge battles never become not dangerous due to the sheer amount of people involved and you being but a single cog in those battles. Indie game Kenshi is another good example of this in my book.
Neither game puts the player in the center, so both games I mentioned are a bit different to what Tim typically talks about I would say. Mainly, they are true sandboxes, whereas most games Tim speaks of, even if they're open worlds, a bit more linear and story-based. I'm not sure you can always use open sandbox principles in more linear games, where there is supposed to be a more guided experience. YIkes, this turned out longer than I planned for, sorry for the wall of text.
I really appreciate soft level caps, when your leveling goes as usual until "cap" after which it starts slowing down a lot. Mostly eliminates that sad roof feeling of level cap while restraining out of bounds growth.
true , path of exile does this exceptionally well ,and for this to work you need a penalty for their progress if their character is not strong enough , that makes people want to grind levels less and improve their characters more so they can level up reliably
I wonder about the idea of "soft" level caps, where total levels or stat points are capped primarily not by a hard limit, but by increasing difficulty to obtain, in the sense that past a certain point the sheer amount of experience (or use if you go the route where skills level through being used) to get levels becomes so great that only the most die hard "I want to do everything on one character" folks will ever get past a certain point. This might allow for some wiggle room in those situations where you underestimated the amount of points needed for a particular build, since you might be willing to spend a long time working on that last point or two if that's all you need - while still not making it realistically feasible during a typical playthrough to become the all-in-one master-of-everything build that makes successive playthroughs redundant.
Demon's Souls comes to mind, you can keep levelling but the amount of souls you need to get to the next level gets increasingly more.
(I'm not sure if there's a absolute max cap or whether it's a gradual or exponential increase, but the idea is there fore sure.)
@@KingBlackToofI think there are soft and hard caps on how much benefit you can receive from stats iirc
@@KingBlackToof Demon/Dark Souls leveling is just a difficulty knob. The more you level, the easier the game becomes. The true leveling in these games is your own skill (and maybe a weapon level which is locked behind story progression).
Though it does mimic a classic exponential leveling curve. The cap is level 999 I think. There are soft caps on your stats (most of them cap at 40).
I think some games also do this well by lowering how much a stat gives at breakpoints. A softcap without exploding the price of another level, sometimes both like Elden Ring.
Any time someone's talking about some RPG bandits having equipment worth enough money that you can't help but wonder why they aren't simply retired, it's hard to not chuckle with memories of playing Oblivion.
"Marauders" in full Daedric armor
boy if it so happened that Bethesda were working on a remaster of Oblivion I wonder if they'd leave that particular quirk untouched?
@@massivive Bethesda can keep level scaling in Oblivion they just need to hard cap certain NPC groups and creature types to certain levels, for example bandits should scale with the player up to level 15 and then not scale past that level, rats should scale up to level 5 and not scale past that level, etc.
I much prefered when the level cap is not outright stated, but hidden by a cap on how much XP there is available in the game. I feel frustrated whenever I hit the cap before completing game, as I feel I'm being punished for being a complenionist. The sweetpost I find for me is to have those impacful late-level perks last longer by lenghtening the time between level up in the late game, so that you can enjoy these power spikes more. But I do get that all of this is incredibly hard to balance with games that have tons of optionnal side quest that get you to those level, which a lot of players will skip.
I did like how pillars gave XP for non-combat quest resolution, and how ''killing everything'' was not the optimal move. I don't know how this could be solves in games with enemy respawn.
Level caps are based.
The lack of a level cap is one my major complaints about Bethesda games. You'll eventually max out everything so Skyrim and Fallout 4 have no actual builds.
I don't know why you see it as "being punished" for being a completionist. To me it feels satisfying to hit a level cap and have finished my build. I'm at my maximum potential clearing out the rest of the game.
@@theobell2002 The problem with the argument that "you'll eventually max out everything" is how much grinding you need to do to get there. It's not something you accomplish by accident. At the time you max out everything, how much unique content is left in the game, and how much have you been grinding?
Personally I'd suggest a cap on skills but not on the player. For example you can level up as much as you want but you're never going to be able to do more than double damage with a certain weapon type or avoid a certain percentage of damage with defense. You can continue to level after that but you have to put the points into alternate weapon skills or non combat skills so you can have a more versatile character but never more powerful one. Like a tank warrior that starts working on archery or diplomacy as he grows older. In this case though you'd have to link hit point gain to a skill rather than more free hit points every time you level.
sorta sounds like how dark souls did caps. the only reason the player level has a cap is because each individual skill is capped at 99. player level is just all the skill levels added together. (there's also some soft caps where most skills start to see diminishing returns)
Hi Tim!
My thoughts on level caps are not fully formed and I'm open to changing my mind.
I like the idea of "playing as a normal person" and having to make meaningful choices. That's why I often find starting a new save on games refreshing.
However, whenever I've hit a level cap in a game, such as in New Vegas, I've felt disappointed. I usually hadn't realized that there even was a level cap. Better communication from the beginning might have helped, such as a visual showing how far I am along a path with a fixed endpoint.
I think, for me, the better solution is to have an unlimited level cap which is balanced so that I won't have everything by the end of the main story. But if I want to keep playing and find all of the side content, then the leveling will continue. I'd still have to make choices, but I wouldn't hit an arbitrary barrier. I could also find out what all abilities are and be ready to make informed choices when I start a new save.
Hi Tim. This channel is a treasure! Thanks for everything 😊
Spaniard here, so you're getting a question from across the Pond... What do you think about level scaling? Do you like the game world and enemies to scale up to your character's level so you get a more or less constant challenge, or do you prefer a fixed level system in which some areas get easier over time but you get a (more) real sense of progression?
Thanks in avance! 😊
I think I've listened to you for about 20 hrs over the last two weeks - mostly while I created assets for my game. TY, best content on RUclips.
Generally I agree. But mostly due to the fact that enemy scaling feels a bit ridiculous with the bandit example being a big one. I prefer having the lvl cap being high (like being an expert in many skills/weapons) and reaching it needing to be intentionally done by the player. That way I can feel like a "normal guy" or exceptionally talented person if Inwant to put in the effort.
Thanks for the great video and balanced perspective!
Personally, I believe that there is value in having the option to become a giga god character regardless of the setting, because it can provided some catharsis to just walk around and squash the most powerful types of enemies by the dozens. That said, I think that such power should generally be reserved for a postgame scenario. If your story driven rpg has no post game because it is designed to end with the story, adding in a means to become a giga god just feels like padding, because in this perspective it quite literally is padding. Additionally, a setting where a postgame makes sense may just not work in whatever setting it is you are working in. This powerlevel also doesn't necessitate infinite progression just a high enough level cap so it is not a compelling reason for either.
But I, being a JRPG-fan turned general RPG-fan, have always found myself drawn to the idea of "outgrinding" difficulty, sort of as player-chosen difficulty. If you find yourself unable, mechanically or strategically, to overcome a capstone challenge, presumably a boss fight or scripted scenario, you can fight monsters and get stronger until the gameplay is a breeze. Admittedly, this does devalue the story a bit because if you are curb stomping everything, the stakes don't feel particularily real, but that is a trade-off I personally do not mind in the games I play.
I have to say without a doubt the most satisfying thing I've ever felt in a video game was leveling up in FO3 and FONV. FO4 it was satisfying to level up in but not even close to 3 and NV and I think that's due to the importants of each level which can really only exist with a level cap.
Just discovered your channel a few days ago already watched a bunch of your vids! I really enjoy what you have to say!! Thanks for doing them!!!
You can fix it simply. Having some way to respec balances out the fun vs realism.
Arcanum was rough because you could box yourself into a bad character build by the time you hit the cap. Baldurs Gate 3 has a lvl 12 cap and it was fine because you can respec out of bad choices you made earlier.
Restarting the game instead of allowing respeccing is rough because you might be 50 hours in and realize the mistakes you made, it’s not fun for the player at that point. But overall I agree that a level cap for a campaign has always felt better for pacing.
This video made me start thinking about a perk to get at a very late level that could raise the level cap.
The idea is to address some of the problems to mention.
For example if the level cap is 30, and you've got a raise cap perk at level 28, then that would make that perk more useful for longer. Some of the negative effects could be increasing mob health, damage resistance, and/or level.
Using fallout as an example, rad roaches become level 20, might have the a heightened resistance to ballistic damage, totally immune to radiation, and more vulnerable to fire and cold damage.
It's still using the level gap approach, but gives the player the option to bump it up a notch near the end.
Might need a mechanic to keep track of experience after they hit the level cap and allow them the opportunity to repick the perk if they keep playing?
Could a hybrid approach work? Say there is a level cap but there are ways to circumvent it tied to the story: beating the main quest gives you a reward that lets you keep gaining experience, or maybe each major arc of the story has a level cap (so in Outer Worlds for example, the level cap goes up as you reach new planets that have stronger enemies so that certain areas are the game are always challenging)?
In terms of the skills/perks, maybe have some trees that are exclusionary? If your character decides to specialize in weapons then he can't also be an unarmed specialist or if you make an intelligence build then you can't as many combat skills/perks?
I agree that level caps help make the world feel more real and less like a game but a game is a game :P I feel that a lot of the negatives are experienced by players who try to do as much content as they can (hopefully because they enjoy the game) and that feels like a real downside that needs some kind of solution.
I think unlimited leveling feels better and adding softcaps on stats would deliver the same restrictions you talked about. You can still level but would gain far less from stats, once you hit level 30 the now softcap. You could easily build a perk system separated from levels imo and would work even better.
I think most games that continue to use perk systems just feel dated because they continue to offer the same old, too many choices and some are vastly superior and they make it obvious. Would be better to remove a lot of that choice and just have better options that change gameplay more drastically with even larger downsides.
On an unrelated note, thank you Sir for what you have done to Outer Worlds, in a strange way you managed to keep the cheesy 50's sci-fi vibe when at the same time making very futuristic game.
Thanks for another informative video. I'd like to hear your take in the future on NPC level scaling in RPGs/MMOs. It seems to be something players are pretty divided on.
It's great that you explain the trade-offs for having a cap or not having a cap.
Was just talking about all this issues while playing BG3 with my buddy last night, thanks for another good talk Tim!
There's a movement in tabletop role-playing (I'm thinking of DM Scotty's EZD6 and Runehammer's ICRPG specifically) to do away with levels altogether. Admittedly, this is part due to RPGs turning into a bookkeeping nightmare at high levels, which computers are great at handling. However, ditching levels would do away with the problems you mention in CRPGs at a stroke.
Naturally, players want a sense of progression, but finding that suit of power armour and massive guns can take care of that. That, and also a damn good story to reveal and resolve, too.
Never much cared for "levelling" myself. My enjoyment of a RPG, especially, always comes from elsewhere, so that's a very interesting movement from my perspective.
I think a primary concern pertaining to uncapped progression is that a lot people, devs and players alike, conceptualize a "stereotype" to how the system must be structured, or that it all must be tied to the same schematic of leveling up, picking from the same perk list, gain the same stat improvements, keep the progression continuous without tapering off the effects of the growth with some sort of diminishing returns and/or changing what special features or abilities you can choose from / improve as the numbers hit the upper bounds of the game.
Something I have been toying around with a lot is a separate 'tier' of character progression where you reach a certain point and the rewards for leveling up change to a new set of options based upon the decisions you've already made, and can perfect those ad nauseum. OR a separate infinite progression system alongside the capped levels. (However a bad example of this, in my opinion, is the Borderlands 2 Badass system, and a distant second is Diablo 3's Paragon system, which was a little more love/hate. It's difficult to make the way they designed them rewarding enough to want to use without breaking things down.)
If you were to visualize as a spectrum all the possibilities your character can take in a totally uncapped leveling system, they are just infinitely big. with a partially limited or compartmentalized system, it allows the spectrum to continue resembling what your character was before it started progressing beyond the intended boundaries of the game, typically I would choose to taper it off to infinite diminishing returns a little before the math breaks or just slightly after, depending on the mechanic. (e.g. chance of success slightly before, damage slightly after)
Another way of looking at it is just the world's longest character class creation process, when you reach a certain level, you stop gaining new class features, but you can expand and improve your current abilities, with your gains slowly diminishing to a point before the game difficulty breaks down, allowing you tackle all but the most brutal encounters which have now become significantly more manageable, but still resemble a risk.
**** Wall of text showcasing my own game design experiments with this exact thing below ****
A real world example is of my own developing a homebrewed extended game progression for D&D 5e (It's not quite infinite but you will be playing level 20 for a very long time to max anything out):
I have developed a robust proficiency system that allows you to apply special augments or bonuses to anything that you can have proficiency in/add your proficiency bonus to, and for EVERY class and subclass. The intention for this system was to flesh out more character diversity, and twist the dial of balance a hairs breadth over WotC's 'esteemed' bounded math, both in favor of and against players, while requiring minimal legwork to append this into your campaign and not needing to change a bunch of game rules on those who are adverse to reinventing the wheel.
Every time you level up, you gain Advancement Points equal to your proficiency bonus, and after either a period of downtime or 1d4 long rests, whichever happens first, you gain Advancement Points equal to half your proficiency bonus (Your DM may also reward players with them). You then invest those Advancement Points (AP) in your class, subclass, anything you have proficiency in, such as saving throws, skills or other ability checks, individual sets of equipment like a weapon, armor, shield, tool.. Or even individual spells that are available to you, increasing its rank when you add more points. You then spend the points you have invested on special abilities called advancements on their relevant table, each advancement has its own AP cost to acquire:
Spells have a generic table of advancements among themselves, in contrast to classes and subclasses, which have a unique table for each.
Saving throws, ability checks, skills, and tools all share an even more genericised table.
early-mid game ranks:
Rank(#) Minimum Level Minimum Creature CR Required/Maximum AP
Proficient(0) - - -/1
Adept(1) - 1/8 1/4
Specialist(2) 2nd 1/2 3/7
Expert(3) 4th 2 5/10
Lets say you just reached 3rd level as a Fighter, you got your suite of Battlemaster maneuvers and your DM tells you he is now giving everyone 1 AP as a reward for making it this far, totalling 7 AP that you have accrued so far:
You threw 5 of those points into your Longsword, making you a Longsword Specialist, you're not able to get any Expert advancements, because you need to be a minimum of 4th level to be so, but you're more than happy to spend the points with what you have available, so you spent 2 points to add +1 to the weapon's attack roll, 1 point to add +2 to its damage rolls, and 2 points to allow your attacks with it to cleave an additional enemy within range, keeping the same attack roll for both, but rerolling the damage for each hit.
I’m a big believer in level caps being a good thing. I very much dislike infinite levels because it feels too much like your choices don’t ultimately matter.
@@sharpedog666 most games with no level caps are pay to win games and whales tend to out level everyone. It's not exciting if no matter how much time you invest you will reach a goal and will always be outplayed to such a extreme. If it's a solo player rpg then level means nothing since being level capped won't be needed for endgame
@@Grinningfartking6969no level caps makes leveling "more linked" to the time spent on the game. Of course the designer should be mindful of its decisions and design other systems accordingly, but at the end of the day it is almost meaningless by itself.
@sharpedog666 because you're going to keep leveling in most cases regardless of what you do.
Personally I prefer soft level caps where after a while your experience starts to plateau so you CAN still level up past. Certain point but it keeps you thinking about your choices because your next level up might not be for a long while.
@sharpedogg666 I would make the argument that having an infinite level cap sets the expectation that your players will keep playing ad nauseam and therefore the quality of the content will suffer. It’s no longer about what is in the game, vs HOW MUCH is in the game, just look at Fallout 4 where there’s a large amount of radiant quests.
That being said, it is definitely a preference, I don’t think one is inherently better than the other, more so execution than anything else.
@@sharpedog666 There is a philosophy pioneered by one of the Civ 4 designers called "Players will optimize the fun out of a game." If you give the players the ability to play in a safe, boring, but effective way, they will often choose that, even if it isn't the most fun. Infinite leveling is one of the more exploitable features in a game that enables people to grind until they're a godlike being and then breeze through the game. This could go against what a lot of games want the experience of the game to be. If you're playing a post-apocalyptic zombie game, then being able to kill every zombie in one punch and being unable to die or be infected takes a lot of the survival aspects out of the game.
Specifically for the issue of perks/anything that has a level requirement close to the level cap, I would consider adding some system of "cheating" the progression system to get those early at a cost of something else. It's usually the case that gameplay-defining progression elements tend to be early-game to mid-game pickups, because having them at the end really makes no sense - but it also feels weird to have some extremely specific perk at Level 5.
That's me. I am that person that complains about level caps and infinitely scaling monsters without level cap.
But to be fair - I've never hit the level cap in Fallout and Arcanum so I guess I'm a hypocrite too : )
I remember as I child I was puzzled: why have level caps instead of dishing out rewards with ever increasing experience threshold that you need to reach to level up? Now I see your point.
Details are lost to time but I remember that there was a quest in Arcanum where you go to some portal and that portal infinitely produces monsters. I remember a guide in some magazine suggesting that its beneficial to grind those monsters until you reach level cap before you finish that quest and cut the monster flow forever.
Level cap with enough opportunities to max out and branch out is my to go way.
I kind of like the unlimited levels approach, but it need to be paired with horizontal character progression to ensure that the encounters are always interesting. What I personally find appealing is the idea that you can earn more skills and option though effort by leveling up beyond of what is required. Let's say you are ment to beat the game with level 50 but you can still level up to level 200 if you want to. Playing through the game 4 differnt time with different skills might be faster than reaching level 200 once, but it gives you options to earn all skills with one character instead.
It's an optional reward for the effort you're willing to put in, if you're attached to a particular character and want to experience everything there is with it. This concept wouldn't work in all games. It probably it would only work well in sandbox/open world type games.
I think that they can be good but it depends on the game any game where you are like a normal person should not have infinite leveling. Games like where you are playing a god or someone very powerful. Somebody like a navy seal or like Kratos or some thing. You should have infinite capacity. To improve. Because that game is a power fantasy. There are other games for the fantasy is weakness and they should not have infinite levels things like fallout new Vegas fallout games in general. horror games and games where you are meant to be basically a victim. Who overcomes their victimization you should have level caps or you should have very restricted ability.
I disagree, I think levels quickly lose any fun or interest if there's no sacrifice being made.
If I spec into a skill like archery, it should come at the expense of being less good at every other skill for that level.
If I can continue to grind until all skill are raised equally, inevitably the challenges will scale with the level and it feels like you're not progressing at all.
Leveling should feel like an extension of the character creation process rather than a to do list of abilities to unlock.
If the end goal is to always have every skill at 100, why not just let me have them all at the start and make the game harder to balance it. If the game is going to gradually get harder with each upgrade the end result is the same only I'd have more fun using the locked abilities earlier.
If choosing those abilities mean missing out on others then there is always a point to levelling up and it always feels like your character is progressing rather than being artificially restricted.
@@SineN0mine3 Well for one there should be no scaling. I explicitly said that it needs to paired with horizontal character progression.
A key point I wanted to make is that it is an optinal reward for effort. It's not the end goal unless you make it your own personal end goal. It merely gives you option to play the game in a different way. Naturally it also dosen't work with any game. Party based game and linear story driven game for example are not great for this kind of progression
I love both formats when they fit the game and the "fiction" of said game.
but i'm more in favor of no level cap, but to have that in a good way the rewards from leveling need to be more customizable, maybe a system where the player creates the magic like in two worlds or elder scrolls, maybe a system where you get "base" skills and perks by leveling strenght, intelligence, etc... and have the player combine those skills to get new perks and skills.
Other thing i really like is the act of improving a skill by using it.
You could allow for more horizontal progression without making you a God, put cap on how much % accuracy you can get, but you can also became good at melee, at stealth at lockpicking etc. HP could be capped, but you could still get points to get new abilities. I don't think it would ruin next playthrough since realistically you will not max everything you will run out of things to do before that happens.
And yeah level scaling in in sp rpg sucks, it makes leveling pointless. Also you can place strong enemies in such a way that at start of the game you will have to avoid this enemy but later on you will be able to kill it. Pretty simple thing but very satisfying I think Gothic did that the best.
Hej Tim, ive been thinking about something the itemd of Fallout. There are a lot of items you can not use, "junk" for example is never used in FO2 is i am correct. Do you remember the decision making on adding these? Im a bit torn because on one hand i remember it adding flavour to the game but also the logic of being able to pick up a packade of tv-dinners vs anything eller in the room always made me go for the option "if it doesnt weigh anything it can stan intill i might rin across someone Åsling for it" but also i think that over the years it made me go though two extra scrolling wheels on my mouse. I think the option of having "junk" itams marken as such is good for other reasons but thay also creates a problem where your character seems semi-omnipotent knowing exactly what will and what will not come in handy in the coming adventure
I don't agree with Tim level cap choice as you can have both. Offer ~30 hour story with (soft) level cap and when it's done, allow infinite growth in NG+.
For example, Borderlands 2 is a lot of fun with "Badass Rank" which is practically infinite stat growth (capped at 32-bit/10 = 429.496.729). It's like a cheat code reward since you played for so long but it needs to be balanced and changeable if you want to challenge yourself again.
I agree it's usually preferable to have a level cap. The only time I think it's nice to not have one is when experience points are scarce enough that it's not needed. This is essentially a de-facto level cap and this doesn't work for every game, though.
Tim: just wanted to let you know how much I've been enjoying these videos. I ripped the entire backlog to mp3 so I can listen while I'm driving or folding laundry. Thanks for all the great entertainment!
Tim your swipe at Fallout 4 falls flat considering that in Fallout 1, if you're wearing power armor a deathclaw can't hurt you unless it lands a critical. The only reason bringing a minigun to fight a deathclaw makes it hard is because deathclaws have enough DT and DR to defang the minigun. Which power armor also does. But by the time you have power armor you'll have found the guaranteed drop for a plasma rifle at least. Which removes basically all threat a deathclaw poses to your character, when paired with power armor. Deathclaws are then more a threat to your companions than to you. Never mind if you're in hardened power armor with a turbo plasma rifle, or the alien blaster, which are the only two weapons better than the plasma rifle. It's not even so scary in the first Fallout, when you take the first deathclaw in combat armor and using a sniper rifle.
I would love to see a game that subverts the expectations of leveling, where you think it's just uncapped and you can grind to become a god, and what happens instead is that rumors about this godlike entity has caused enemy factions to invade the region, and now you suddenly enter a whole new state where there are new enemies, new weapons, everything is stronger, new quests pop up...
And you could go the entire game thinking you finished it, and never see this whole "last chapter."
Bonus points if there's a second "level" when you think you've seen it all, where hell opens up and demons invade also.
Another alternative that works for me is the progression of only your gear like Outward or Risen or Kingdom Come Deliverance. It all depends on your equipment you find along the way and how you use it. There are no “levels,” just skills and fancy weapons you find that you learn how to use. And your character is just as mushy at the start as he is at the end but you as the player have mastered the combat.
I remember back in the late 90s stumbling upon "Seather's Fallout Fansite" and seeing posts about a fallout character editor called (falche?). I had to dig around a bunch of webrings back then until I could find a working download, and remember how excited I was to give myself "all the perks" (I had already completed more than a half dozen playthroughs by then, but still felt a bit weird editing a save file.) I start running around a town with a fully maxed out character and just remember EVERYONE running away from me, like not even attempting combat. Not certain if it was some combination of presence how fleeing was calculated, but I remember asking around no mutants allowed and the unwashed village and getting laughed at for cheating my way into the "Rambo Effect". Even bypassing a cap, the game punished anyone who wants to play living god, and honestly that's a totally reasonable response to some super-human with main character syndrome rolling up on your home.
I wonder how much simply adding the option in game to have a levelcap or not would affect things from a development perspective. I often/pretty much always end up modding out levelcaps if I can, as I find the restriction weirdly stressful, but I also totally respect your reasons for wanting them as a creator.
Cyberpunk, Fallout 3 and New Vegas were the best at having me replay the game differently
Cyberpunk made me rebuild everything, went from being a net runner who was great with pistols, a street samurai who was deadly with shotguns, a assault rifle God with melee and i mixed and matched
FALLOUT had me heavily invest into intelligence and i was great with energy weapons😅
I was also wondering what were your thoughts on lvl caps. So far, I completely agree with you. I really dislike the "Get everything in one playthrough" aspect. Also, it lacks the sense of achievement. I like feeling that my character is complete at some point.
Thank you for your answer.
I love this videos. I am working on my first game and these videos have so much great experience
I definitely prefer level cap and tight well crafted balancing. I believe level cap makes it easier for game devs to have a general idea of the players power level in any given area which makes encounters feel much better.
I'm pretty sure I've played a couple of games that gave the player an alternative reward if they'd reached the level/experience cap.
In that case it was probably just currency or some other type of progression points, but I think there's plenty of design space to explore there.
This is why I love the design of modern Fromsoftware games. In theory there is a max level but it's so high and the requirement for leveling grows the more you level to a point where it usually doesn't make sense spending the currency on new levels. This is combined with a soft cap for stat upgrades, at a certain point upgarding certain stats won't make much difference because it might take two levels for them to even effect any of the values. And on top of this finally we have the fact that the currency for buying items and leveling is the same. Thanks to this last one it's pretty much the only rpg where I never get to a point where I don't have what to spend my money on. There's always another stat you could increase, a weapon you can upgrade, an armor to add to your collection or consumable items you can buy.
I don't like level scaling and no level caps. Maybe I've yet to encounter a game that does it right, but it always feels static. Take Skyrim for example. Early on you get random encounters with bandits in mismatched armor trying to rob you. Later the same random encounter generates the bandits in full Daedric armor. I also can understand the frustration of too low of a level cap when you hit it and still have a ton of game play left.
I think Fallout: New Vegas initially had a good balance of level cap, skill points, and game length. The level cap kept the character from becoming too overpowered, and there was just enough game left after hitting that cap. I thought the DLC raising the cap ruined that balance. With the new level cap and perks you get from the DLC, you could almost max out every skill unlike before.
The last time I played it, I wanted to restore the balance of the skill points from 30 levels but extend it over 50 levels. I couldn't find an existing mod that did what I wanted, so I did it myself. I reduced the skill points per level to what you got with the original 30 levels, but spread it over 50 levels. In order for it to not take longer to get skills raised due to fewer skill points per level, I made it a tiered system. Up to level 20 you got the same skill points as the vanilla game, then tapered it down from 21-30, and again from 31-40, and again from 41-50. After level 50 you no longer received XP, but I accidentally removed the level cap and didn't take figure in the XP added by the educated perk. I was going to fix it, but I left it in. This way I could still get perks, and the small amount of XP added by educated wasn't overpowering.
I never released my mod, I always meant to clean it up and release it.
Level caps are a non-issue. If leveling up takes more and more effort, at some point the player literally runs out of physical time to play. It's a soft-cap. Some people will level more than others, but you can roughly estimate the level an average player will reach. And then at least, given that there is no level cap, one has reason to continue playing at all time without having to forgo character progression.
I am very much a mixed bag on this. On the one hand, I love the feeling of creating a god-like character, especially in a fantasy setting.
On the other hand, I like that level caps make your choices matter. The knowledge that one day you'll stop gaining skills and perks makes each new one matter that more.
For a long time, I didn't like level caps because it felt too artificial. It was the game designer basically saying "stop playing at this point."
I wonder if there's an alternate solution where you can technically keep leveling or improving, but its greatly diminished. Perhaps just making the XP required after the level cap increase exponentially? For something like this to work, we would need to communicate this clearly to the player early on.
I'm not sure if there's a good middle ground, but I definitely understand the people who feel frustrated by level caps.
@sharpedog666 Most games have an exponential levelling system, but does it get significantly harder after a certain point? Most exponential systems follow a consistent curve.
I'm thinking could a good middle ground be almost a second, new exponential curve that is even steeper than the first.
@@brettabrahamRunescape (at least OSRS) has an extremely steep level curve as you get closer to the cap of 99.
Getting to 96 is the halfway point to 99, it's an extreme curve because it is a holdover from the early 2000s runescape classic where people just weren't expected to get 99 in more than 1 of the many skills.
Of course this clashes with things like rune plate bodies (a armor that can be equipped at level 40 defense) requiring 99 smiting, because 20 years ago it was the best armor in the game, even though now you can easily just buy much better armor or get it off of a monster drop without spending the absurd amount of time to level smithing.
Hello Tim! I would be curious to hear your thoughts on power scaling vs not scaling monsters/party members to the environment. It seems like you prefer not to scale, how did you come to that decision/preference. Would love to see a video on that!
Level caps are an interesting beast. In practice, most games with levels reach a cap of some sort, but players only really take note if that level cap is usually reached before the end of the game.
Some games implement strict level caps because they want to scale up power drastically but want a peak. D&D character power increases exponentially with every level, to the point where level 20 characters are pretty much gods amongst mere mortals. Most campaigns stop WELL before level 20 though, because that amount of player power requires an entirely different set of problems to reasonably challenge compared to the problems of lower tiers of play. Basically if you are playing capped characters you're playing a god game and there's nothing else remotely mechanically challenging the DM can do.
Other games, however, enforce strict level caps to push some semblance of balance onto regular levels of play. In something like older Fire Emblem games you were heavily limited in how many level ups most units could get, which combined with randomized growths, stat caps and reduced exp gain when approaching level cap, resulted in various means of encouragement for players to utilize a variety of units rather than try to create a small handful of godlike powerhouses. That said, the effectiveness of doing so still ends up being very high if not near optimal anyway in most cases and the level cap ends up being a minor factor if it matters at all.
I prefer level caps in CRPGs and infinite levels in action games (I consider Dark Souls an action game).
But you can have infinite levels without level scaling monsters. From Software games do that. They want to challenge you, but they give options to make it easier for you, if you have the patience to engage with the mwchanics.
But with level caps comes the downside of nmstipping advancement way before the end of the game, and then one layer of fun is lost, the most inmediately rewarding: gaining new skills and perks. You can solve this adding oerks that are not based on XP or levels, but given to you by the game's story. When you finally arrive to the final boss' lair, you can choose between two new perks, and so on, some perks scattered through the world by simply accomplishing missions or challenges (kill 100 S tier monsters to get a special perk).
Some weapons and armor grant you special perks.
Synergy: if you have this perk and this perk you gain this other perk. These synergies can be obtained by reading magazines, so you can still getting new perks at the end of the game.
Bandits with a million dollars gear? Why don't they retire? Well, why don't you retire? You cab add a retirement option like in Mortal Shell, or you can treat bandits as people, they are the main characters of their own stories, they don't retire for the same reason you don't: they want "to finish the game".
In the end it's the developer who must decide what the intended experience is. In Outer Worlds only using guns and rifles is viable, other styles are possible but not nearly as well designed nor fun, and that's fine, OW is a FPS first, and RPG second.
A big problem in D&D 5e is that most games don’t even get close to level 20 so most players never get to use high-level features, and for the few that do the game gets completely unbalanced because the game was not designed with that high level of characters in mind. Scaling and pacing are big issues with these sorts of things
There are other RPGs that do high-level play just fine.
@@xczechrD&D (not just 5e) is just a terrible system that is only popular based on inertia and name recognition.
D&D is pretty antithetical to good game design.
The problem with D&D is thinking it needs to be balanced, when you are high level, it's obvious it will be unbalanced, older editions did it better, you even had some settings with spells levels higher than 9, as Dark Sun, where you would age years and possibly die if you cast them.
@@GeomancerHT Spoken like a player and not a GM. Planning encounters for high-level play in unbalanced systems is a nightmare. It always seems to be either a breeze for the players or a TPK. It's one reason why I don't run D&D but instead I run other, more balanced games.
Less is MORE!
Limitations breed creativity.
I love level caps :)
I like both, the SPECIAL stats helped a bit towards locking stuff out so theres always that, maybe its possible to make those even more impactful
I like level cap with the possibility of a reset for replayability but carrying something from the previous play. Same character, not a new one, that decided to “relive his experiences/life” again but with different decisions.
removing level caps removes the difficulty for the developer to make leveling and point allocation intuitive and balanced. Lots of old games you can make them a lot harder than intended by designing a crappy character build, since not all skills, stats and perks are created equal.
I like Bloodlines XP system the most, i.e. there are no levels here, just XP points that we spend as we see fit (and the higher level in skill, the more points we need to invest).
That also presents a hard limit requiring multiple playthroughs. A Ventrue might somehow grind out enough xp to learn every skill but they can never learn Celerity.
@@totalvoid6234 Yes, which adds to replayability. Like I said, this system is the best.
Hard Level Caps do well with New Game+ mode especially if the enemy is level scaled only in NG+.
The Risk of Rain games are a great example of how to implement an unlimited level cap. 1) Build a robust system of item upgrades which are mostly percentage-based and fully stackable 2) Have enemy strength and numbers increase as a function of time 3) pit the player's ability to collect and stack upgrades against the ever-increasing difficulty. It results in a really fun feedback loop where you can basically play the game until it breaks, because you're doing millions of dps and moving so fast you can't see your character, and the engine literally can't render everything that is happening on screen. I guess it substitutes a level cap for limits on hardware + software itself. It's neat.
Also, I have never seen a 2D world translated so perfectly into 3D as I have from Risk of Rain 1 to 2. It's a masterclass in game design.
8:10 That bandit is in it for the love of the game. Banditry isn't his profession, it's his passion.
I would say that unlimited level caps would only work with level scaling. If I were making an RPG, I'd make each creature's stats have the player's level as a multiplier or divisor so that they always stay at the level you intend relative to the player. So if they're supposed to be weaker than the player, they will be and stronger as well.
I like level caps it makes me feel like I have to make decisions specifically for a certain type of build or whatnot and it also encourages multiple playthroughs, maybe I want to talk my way out of trouble so charisma playthrough or maybe I want to go guns blazing so strength playthrough
Tim, I absolutely adore this youtube content, but what the world needs is Tim Cain's series of books about how to make good videogames
SMT3 Nocturne does this in a really interesting way, it has a level cap of 255 but levels beyond 99 are effectively cosmetic, but at the same time your player character is locked to 8 ability slots.
In order to create a build that allows you to clear the end game content you are required to level up while under the effects of Magatama, which impart bonuses to stats, resistances and nullify damage, and add weaknesses as well as causing random status effects like paralysis or potentially healing the party, and learnable abilities are spread across a number of them through the length of the game so you are always working towards the next key part of your build, while also potentially putting you at risk of being instantly killed immediately if you are unlucky in a battle.
It's possible to create absolutely broken builds that literally do turn you into a god and allow you to kill god in one hit as well, so thematically it just works.
A 3rd option is to provide unlimited leveling with diminishing returns. You could implement a rule that causes every level beyond your cap to cost a factor more of XP to reach. Most old-school JRPGs used to do something like this. At some point, the cost to level becomes so high that you assume you will never reach it. But regardless of how far off it is, XP is still worth something.
I prefer level caps when they are done well, as others have said, they make your choices feel impactful. That being said, unlimited scaling is fantastic when done well too. The Souls games are a great example.
@@sharpedog666 Because you have to be more thoughtful. You're consciously making sacrifices in other areas to focus on your strengths, or address glaring weaknesses that have become a problem. Basically in games with a cap and limited skill points, every choice you make in leveling up is more impactful, than without the cap.
As long as it matches the theme of the game contextually, I think uncapped levels can be a great way to increase the sense of progression.
On the other hand it can just as easily turn into an unmitigated grindfest that makes you hate the game.
@CainOnGames
Hi Tim,
Fellow unreal engine dev here with a more technical question. Unreal engine has a newish feature called Gameplay Ability System (GAS). I haven't used it much but it's being touted as potentially the last needed code base for games that all use the same basic systems. The idea being that every game uses damage, damage over time, healing, buffs, debuffs, ailments and other commonly used mechanics. Instead of creating all of these systems from scratch for each new game, devs would be able to use the same GAS code for each new game and focus on fine tuning the gameplay instead of building each mechanic.
My question is this, from being in the industry as long as you have this probably isn't the first time you've seen this type of one size fits all system, what were the pitfalls or failings of other similar systems and do you think GAS has a better chance of success since Unreal Engine has such a large market share and we don't have the game engine fragmentation of the 90s when every studio had their own engine (nearly)? And do you personally like GAS?
sorry for the run on sentances/being rambly.
So, one thing I really like about Baldur's Gate 1 and that I'm glad Baldur's Gate 3 kept is that the game doesn't go from 1-20 on the level scale (obviously Baldurs Gate 2 does let you go beyond level 20, but that's a direct sequel to the first one and is about becoming a god, so...). In Baldur's Gate 1, you can only get as high as level 6, maybe level 7 as a rogue because of the different xp tracks, and that means that you never get so high level that an encounter with a bunch of kobolds is basically meaningless, but you are also rarely so low level that a given encounter can't be overcome with really skilled play (though you may take casualties). I honestly feel like a D&D CRPG that lets you go from level 1 to 20 or beyond eventually has to stop letting you adventure in certain areas because of how powerful you end up in relation to everybody else, while a game that focuses on a smaller range of levels can more easily allow you to explore the whole area without level scaling.
IMO, level caps are the way to go, but the cap should not be easy to hit in a normal playthrough. I don't think I hit the cap in either Fallout 1 or 2, for instance. The cap is just there to prevent players from grinding a large number of levels past any challenges in the game.
KOTOR is an example of a game that I think handles leveling poorly. I typically hit the level cap with multiple missions to go. I find that to be frustrating as a player.
fantastic video, i sort of dream of a infinite or "very high" level cap, where the game just goes crazy insane and all the skills are needed to defeat insane encounters
I feel like Colony Ship handled leveling and skills really well. Could tell it was inspired by Fallout, but added their own spin on things that I felt made skill exp and over all leveling rewarding.
None of the cons you listed are about level caps though. You can scale a system with no cap in such a way it is functionally impossible to learn every skill or become so powerful that you trivialise encounters, even without level scaling. Dark Souls is probably the best example of this. The amount of xp isn't realistically enough to be a jack of all trades in any functional scenario, you hit diminishing returns that mean the end game boss is going to be challenging even if you spent thousands of hours grinding.
The biggest advantage I can think of of a level cap is it opens up more design space for "Every level is significant." If you don't cap levels you need to ensure at some point the gains are increasingly marginal, otherwise you start running into the issues you mentioned in your video.
I wish you touched on soft cap. I feel like soft cap avoids some of the cons you mentioned, like losing the xp rewards and god-like character (to a certain extent),.
the wealthy bandit made me chuckle, that’s so true
I totally get what you're saying about not enjoying games where you become an all-powerful god. I really dislike it when games make you so overpowered that nothing's a challenge anymore. I usually quit playing when that happens. Like, take Skyrim for example-I've been playing it for over 10 years, but I've never hit level 85 with any character. I love the early game, but it all goes downhill when I start crushing everything easily, even on legendary mode.
I'm all for having a level cap because it gives the game more meaning in my opinion.
When they were promoting Cyberpunk 2.0, all they talked about was how insanely powerful your character could get. Lots of folks were excited, but I was worried that the game would lose its challenge. I know some people love the power fantasy, but it just doesn't do it for me. They were showing off MaxTac, talking about how badass they were and how tough an encounter would be, but then they showed gameplay where someone was just steamrolling through waves of MaxTac. That made me pretty skeptical and uneasy about the game.
Arcanum must've had a level cap, because I remember editing my save files to get around that.
I honestly think that the best way to deal with a level cap is to claim that there is one, so people are aware of it existing. Then once the player reaches the level cap or maybe beats the game, give them the option to turn the level cap off. Of course you'd have to have big warning signs saying: "This game was developed with the level cap in mind. If you turn the level cap off, your character is going to become overpowered compared to the environment."
I think it's always better to give the choice to the player and make them aware of the consequences of their choice.
Arcanum have levelcap of 50, wich is not that hard to hit. I know I managed to score it in every single one playthrough, sometimes at the end of the game, sometimes around 3/4. Ofc there is mod to raise it to IIRC 127.
I prefer infinite levels mostly because i lose motivation to keep playing when i don't see myself improving. Unless your skills can level without level ups- like elder scrolls where you can be level 1 but have some skills at 100. I need a continuous line of progression to keep me from dropping a game.
Fallout 4 has no level cap and you can basically become god but in my experience I hit 90 ish after doing most quest and dlcs and pretty much exploring the game so it's actually hard to become a perfect God.
There is a pretty significant portion of the playerbase that WANT to become walking gods that the game can no longer challenge.
i think there is a middle ground. you can have the leveling be not totally over after reaching the cap, but require a lot more experience, so much that it would take hours of farming to level even once.
that way the average player would finish the game and not become a walking god, but people who prefer that would have the opportunity to grind it out
One of the hardest parts of balancing any RPG must be that by its very nature, leveling up inverts the difficulty curve.
Level scaling can cancel that out, but without the constraints those encounters would feel the same no matter what level (or often just more prolonged).
Gamers are a bit more savvy to the RPG elements and either grind that extra XP, create a character build or use exploits to take whatever advantage they can.
It would be interesting to find out from a programmer's POV what can be done to stop players from optimising the fun out of the game in terms of over levelling or min/maxing builds.
Level Cap with an option to respec seems like a good compromise.
Not having a level cap would work well in a game like the Borderlands Series.
If worried about the player character becoming too powerful, just use a soft level cap where they stop gaining skill points.
That way I can enjoy - and look forward to - getting new equipment without worrying about becoming overpowered.
In a more rpg, and single-player focused game, I like what Cyberpunk 2077 does, specifically the new 2.0 version.
It does have a level cap, but:
1. It's fairly high, so you get a lot of upgrade points, and you spend a lot of the game reaching it.
2. When you do reach it, you still have a lot of game left, so you can enjoy being max level.
I hate reaching the cap and then, a few quests/fights later, the game ends.
3. Also, by level 40 - 10 whole levels before reaching the cap, 20 if Phantom Liberty is installed - you should have access to most of the good equipment, so like in the previous point, you get to spend plenty of time using it.
I really liked Diablo 2 approach which have very high level cap and new game+. Yeah, there is a level cap of 99, but you will probably never want to reach it, and if you do, this will be the greatest achievement. So you can be whatever strong you want, but if you want a challenge there's always a harder difficulty level. And you still can't max out every skill, so you have to start over to experience everything
I have quit many a game because of running into a level cap. I cant help but lose almost all interest in playing a RPG once my character becomes stuck, essentially, and no, equipment gains dont cut it either. The most egregious example I ever ran into was actually Pillars of Eternity, where I hit the cap before going to the druid town, or whatever it was. (This was a long time ago.) I was stunned that I hit a level cap when I felt I was only half way through the game, I lost all motivation to play anymore, and I never went back. Then, seeing that the expanaions for Pillars only upped the cap by something like 2 more levels, I realized the Obsidian RPG design sensibility just wasn't going to be for me going forward, despite how much I enjoyed previous games by the people there. Too much desire for balance, which I consider antithetical to the player in a game world. The player is the tipper of scales in a game world, so trying to balance the player experience itself robs the player of his/her game-mechanical agency in the name of the developer/designer's agency over the player. As for becoming a walking god... well yeah! If I track down every monster, complete every side-quest, and squeeze every last drop of exp from the game that I can, I damn well better be rewarded with being overpowered beyond the scope of a "normal" player's playthrough.
PoE is a fantastic example of a soft level cap. Getting to level 90 is easy, your build is fully complete by then, you then have an option to level to 100 (hard cap) but it takes forever and you lose exp on death. There is another leveling system -- gearing/crafting. The more you play, the more currency you farm, and you can spend all of that currency on gear. Realistically, you're not gonna get all best-in-slot because fine-tuning the item is a big RNG and it can take forever. With both systems (exp and gear), your character stays roughly at 90% power but leveling to 100% becomes exponentially harder. There's still some sense of progression despite the fact that you're not improving much.
So far there's only 2 kinds of 'unlimited' leveling I've enjoyed, and really there's always some technical cap but Soulsborne games. Take Elden Ring, just to get to the softcap of every skill would take months of grinding and being extremely careful so you don't lose the giant XP bucket you have so you can get just 1 more attribute raised. At some point in those games you just are like 'yeah my characters finished' on stats and you don't really worry about it. So it has that feeling of infinite because yeah, you could level up but man you just can't be bothered to try for that specifically.
2nd would be a hybrid system like Borderlands. It has a level cap for the character and there for a defined 'this is who I am' character, but then there's the badass ranks that go on infinitely with minor bonuses. ESO does this (but has a cap they keep increasing with patchs/expansions). Having a defined character in ESO, but always having this little bonus thing to work on after is nice. Would be nice having something like that in say, Starfield. Because their 'it's all in one bucket' approach makes my character feel like a fraction of a normal human till I'm in my 30s (hah, to real maybe). That's probably more an issue with the entire system being a singular system instead of splitting it up into combat and non-combat stuff.
You should make outerworlds 2 have co op! I like to play through games with my friends.
Gothic 1 & 2, maybe 3, had no level caps but finite xp within the world. You could only gain xp from killing enemies/NPCs and doing quests but there were finite quests, and enemies only respawned at the beginning of new chapters while there were only 3 chapters. So you can never reach some obscene level in the game.
Players need an end point of reference. You want players to beat your game and be excited to try it a different way. What you don't want is to burn them out on some tedious xp grind so that they can squeeze out endless levels. Level caps force creative theory crafting, while uncapped leveling simply tells the player to grind. Good talk, Tim.
A lot of what you said made me think of the chalice dungeons in Bloodborne. There the infinite scaling works really well storywise.
But the dungeons don't infinitely scale, they get to depth 5 and that's it.
Please talk about Temple of Elemental Evil and the work done by modders, did you ever happen to contribute anything to The Circle of Eight modding team, were you a part of that team?
I think one of the best things on that patch was removing the level cap and adding crafting and other missing pen and paper features.
I don't like absolute level caps, but I am all for increasingly diminishing returns when advancing beyond the intended "max level".
My favourite advancement system is from Warhammer Fantasy RPG (pen and paper), where you advance stats and skills up to a cap determined by your character's profession and then change the profession if you want to be able to advance more and/or learn new things. It doesn't have levels, but total (career) XP earned is a sort of level equivalent.
So one consideration that I think is ... unaccounted for, here:
there are some D&D campaigns where after ... however long, years, or more, it's just a power-fantasy game, with characters that the player has absolutely grown attached to. They don't really want to be "challenged" by the average enemy, anymore. They want to feel that "I have toiled, and tarried, and bled, and overcome all of the challenges of this world, and made it through the other side, and can laugh about it" power fantasy feeling.
That isn't to say there can't be 0 challenge left; there's always room for Deathclaw Prime, or whatever, hidden away on the map, somewhere, or as an enemy that you previously needed to 100% flee from, or completely flattened some fortified town you had previously visited, so you know it exists out there as a living legend.
Other ways you could allow for this power-fantasy and/or character attachment are:
1. post-credit unlock of the cap
2. a UI prompt, or a gameplay option (default false) saying "You've hit the prescribed cap; would you like to opt into power-fantasy mode, understanding that most combat will be underwhelming beyond this point"
3. balancing your expected cap, and then adding another n levels, with scaled XP requirements
I'll give you one more player MO. I am pretty autastic. I'm not necessarily looking for a power fantasy... however, I do get attached to characters. Moreover, I actively seek out and complete *every single piece of side-content possible* in a benevolent playthrough (always benevolent, for some reason). One frustration that I had in my first playthrough of Outer Worlds was that I was forced into combat in the last big encounters, because I had discovered and done so much that I capped early. And because of the cap, and hitting the cap earlier than I thought I would, I was a few points off of maxing out any of the things that would have let me ... enter calmly and have a pleasant chat, like the good old days of Fallout 1.
I had since made other characters, essentially the same, and went in with a plan for min-maxing to meet the cap... but a few more levels, or a toggle, would have completely alleviated the problem.
...and I still would have made a new character, and gone back and done it again, trying to optimize outcomes. And again, when the DLC landed.
Bottle-caps are better, that's for sure...
...and level caps are also good, it bring challenge and at infinite levelling the procedural generation for most time turns enemies into bullet sponges and that's no fun. While I must admit that with level cap we can easily improve skills into the corner (Arcanum suffers from that).
See, I have a different view.
With the original Fallout, I use the mod which allows me to set myself to level 200 with uber points, why? Because I want to experience the story like it's an 80s action film.
No other entertainment media can stop you experience a story (imagine a book stopping you unless you can answer questions about the plot)
Infinite levels make me feel like oh God. I just think oh it doesn’t matter I’ll just get that later. Level caps force you to take things with a different level of priority. There are always going to be some things I take nearly every time. Like for most builds I’m taking skilled and I am dumping charisma. At least in new Vegas. In other ones it depends on the game. I do like different builds for different games more so. Like I would definitely play a melee build In fallout two but probably not fallout three just because the Malay in fallout three doesn’t have that many good weapons. That’s just my opinion now. Fallout four has very good melee weapons
I liked the level cap with Arcanum -although I do think the difficulty curve drops towards the end of the game by the time you get there your pretty strong with not much challenge.
Infinite level caps doesn't necessarily mean infinitely strong. Just use a convergent series. An infinite number of additions can have a finite sum. I think in terms of design, this functions more like the capped level scenario, but playing will always feel like you are progressing little by little too. The first point you made was a very valid one though for the rpg genre. I'd like an infinite converging series for an mmorpg (which I mostly play) though.
Thank you for the great video!
+1 to level caps. As much as I like the idea of being able to continue a character indefinitely I find that lack of level caps leads to very similar characters or even the same god character (though that can be somewhat ameliorated by the implementation). Similar characters means no meaningful decisions on character progression which is just as important/problematic (to me) as no meaningful choices on narrative/story.
I guess one can go the Diablo route where you can keep specializing your character to a small subset of your class skills and simply increase the damage number; that gets old fast for some people (myself included)
Anyhow yet another insightful video. Thank you Tim! Have a great day 😊
That’s true it leads only the early game to be drastically different. There will come a point where most builds will look the same. Or at least a lot of builds will look the same. Or similar where everyone has taken 75% of the skills. And they are on endgame Contant.
I don't like hard level caps, they make you feel restrained. The way I do it is soft level cap where every time you level up, the XP required to reach the next level increases exponentially, so at some point it's no longer worth it to keep leveling - BUT, I also make a NG+ mode where you can carry over your levels and unlocked skills and start fresh with faster leveling, until you reach the soft cap, and then you play NG++ mode for another round of leveling up. It really drives the replayability.