Low (in comparison) Level Caps

[Galenmereth]

As for MMOs being played for the "social" aspect.  I'd have to argue that such a thing would really only be valid if you were trying to say those people are morons.  Now, that's nothing against standard MMO players.  I enjoy MMOs too.  I don't play many of them anymore for lack of time or because they're all super grindtastic...  But, I do enjoy well-designed MMOs and play those.  If you had EVER taken a look in any given chat box in an MMO, it's filled with so much spam, that a normal player wouldn't bother typing into it 'cause nobody will see your message.  Random trade junk that doesn't need to be said, millions of guild join requests from random people just clicking on you cause you wandered into town, tons of raid speak and people standing around for hours on end trying to get a group together to go for a raid, or wait for a raid to even reset or restart, money scams, beggars, people buying or selling characters/accounts, etcetera.

Depends on the MMO and systems in place for chatting. For example, I play GW2 for the social aspects of my WvW guild (server vs. server vs. server 24/7 persistent warfare, akin to Ultima Online) and map chat in WvW (giving commands, scouting and warning people about movement of the enemy etc.). That game I play only for the social aspect, because the PvE bit (that is, players vs. AI opponents) I got bored of a long time ago. We also use voice comms for commanding larger armies to make sure every player knows what to do immediately (instead of having to stop, type, and move on, which high-tier competition doesn't allow for). Map chat is seldomly filled with spam, because people quickly put such people on ignore lists; we're a semi-serious WvW server, so map chat is always relevant. There's no trading or anything of that going on because you have a trading post system for that.

So it depends on the MMO and the gameplay

 

[Tai_MT]

Depends on the MMO and systems in place for chatting. For example, I play GW2 for the social aspects of my WvW guild (server vs. server vs. server 24/7 persistent warfare, akin to Ultima Online) and map chat in WvW (giving commands, scouting and warning people about movement of the enemy etc.). That game I play only for the social aspect, because the PvE bit (that is, players vs. AI opponents) I got bored of a long time ago. We also use voice comms for commanding larger armies to make sure every player knows what to do immediately (instead of having to stop, type, and move on, which high-tier competition doesn't allow for). Map chat is seldomly filled with spam, because people quickly put such people on ignore lists; we're a semi-serious WvW server, so map chat is always relevant. There's no trading or anything of that going on because you have a trading post system for that.

So it depends on the MMO and the gameplay

GW2 is one of the those rare few games that takes all my gripes about every MMO to date and simply FIXES them.  Grindy Quests?  Gone.  Takes days of playtime to hit max level?  Gone.  Takes forever get a group for a raid?  Fixed.  Holy Trinity ever dominant?  Gone!

I love Guild Wars 2 for one other major reason.  People are HELPFUL.  Chat is rarely, if ever, spammed with anything.  Whether you're doing PvP, PvE, or WvWvW.  It's easy to have a private conversation with someone or invite random people to parties in order to complete a Quest together.

GW2 does one thing that no other MMO I've played before has ever done.  Made teamwork essential while also being easy.  You don't need a guild to tackle a dungeon.  Just ask people to join you.  You'll find other people who want to do it as well.  Likewise, in WvWvW, you don't need a guild or a party or the blue icon people to get some help.  Request it, put the waypoint in, a few people will show up to help out.

I spent most of my time in every MMO to date playing solo.  The "team" experience was always God-awful, or took too long to arrange with too many randoms.  In GW2, that behavior is gone from me.  Someone requests help and I'm nearby, I'll go help them out.  It's such a strange experience in an MMO.  People are nice, people are helpful, and people will stop and have a conversation with you just because they've got nothing else to do while going for map completion.  People don't spam guild invites or ask for gold, and very few people are walking around with "the best" equipment.  Best of all, there's NO GRIND.  Unless you're grinding mats, which you don't have to do, 'cause just getting to level 80 is usually enough to get a skill to halfway done at least.

But, GW2 is the exception to the rule of MMOs.  Every other MMO you play does not run like that.  At least, none of the others I've played.  I've played a lot...

 

[Eurgh]

I have a difficulty setting, so i made a very high level cap, since you'd need to be a much higher level to even consider fighting something on the hardest difficulty. 

Although, i did get carried away and make the level cap 10,000.

 

[Galenmereth]

But, GW2 is the exception to the rule of MMOs.  Every other MMO you play does not run like that.  At least, none of the others I've played.  I've played a lot...

I figured it might be. I stopped playing MMO's for a long time after I quit WoW. Before that I played most of them for at least a while, but the longest relationships were with FFXI and WoW. The only reason I got back into MMO's was because GW2 seemed so different, and when I tried it, it turned out to be true

 

[Eschaton]

If one designs their game system effectively, then the player doesn't need absurd high levels to beat the game or high challenges. 

 

[Eurgh]

If one designs their game system effectively, then the player doesn't need absurd high levels to beat the game or high challenges. 

If that was aimed at me, it is entirely possible to do such things at around level 50-60. On normal difficulty atleast, the hardest difficulty; is the hardest difficulty for a reason. It's not really suggested for a first play through, it's more there to be used when you're in new game + so that you still have a challenge when you're playing.

 

[Eschaton]

If that was aimed at me, it is entirely possible to do such things at around level 50-60. On normal difficulty atleast (sic), the hardest difficulty; is the hardest difficulty for a reason. It's not really suggested for a first play through, it's more there to be used when you're in new game + so that you still have a challenge when you're playing.

Yes, it was.

If you only need to be level 50-60 to beat the game on normal (precluding 'easy'), but need to literally be over nine thousand to finish the hardest difficulty, then this illustrates an extreme power disparity between difficulty levels.  Is the reward for playing Hard Mode being able to see damage popups numbering in the billions?  How do you grind on a New Game Plus if the enemies you're fighting in order to get you from the 50-60 level range to over nine thousand if the normal enemies have stats that will killify you instantly?  If the experience curve is forgiving at all, then your game must have years of gameplay.

Also, Eurgh... I'm sorry for being a dick like that.

Also - and I know this is a little late -

For example, "why does the player has to start at level 1?"

Because one is the first level.  If you're going to start at a level that isn't the first one, what is the point of having a first level, or any levels before the level at which you start?

 

[West Mains]

, then this illustrates an extreme power disparity between difficulty levels.  Is the reward for playing Hard Mode being able to see damage popups numbering in the billions?  

To be fair, I'd like to see that in an RPGMaker game. 

But then I'm the kind of guy that thinks 2-hit kills is perfectly acceptable from regular enemies because TBS is more about mindlessly choosing your strongest attack all the time. 

But yeah. The reward, I think, in new game plus would be seeing areas that you couldn't access at your strongest during the first playthrough. In RPG Terms, a dungeon where you need to be level 200 before you can even hope to get to the boss, because the enemies pile of status effects and have strengths that make it impossible to do so. Oh, and Hard Mode should always restrict effective items to costs in ridiculous numbers where it'd take an hour of grinding to get like, three. But like I said. Im the kind of guy that thinks 2-hit kills are completely acceptable.

 

[Eschaton]

Even more ranting....

How do you make the player feel like he's gotten stronger when he levels up if there are tens of thousands of levels?  Each and every one of those levels have noticeable power differences between them?  Not one of those levels is empty?

Right there, is another benefit of low level caps; few if no empty levels.  Each level has a noticeable difference in power and effectiveness of the player character(s) than the level or levels before it.  It is much easier to see the difference in effectiveness between an Eighth-level character and a Ninth-level character than it is to see the difference in effectiveness between a nine-thousand-four-hundred-and-sixth-leveled character and a nine-thousand-four-hundred-and-seventh-leveled character.

I would not want to be the guy to design each benefit a level would give the player character(s) if there were thousands or hundreds of levels.

Again, I'm sorry for being a douche Eurgh, you have seemed to become a target of my ranting :/

 

[Espon]

In Disgaea, you gain levels so quickly (sometimes multiple at a time) that it's kind of a smooth increase over time instead of sudden jumps in power from a single level.  You won't notice any difference between 8000 and 8001 but you would see a difference you compare 8000 to 9000 (ignoring the intended imbalances the games offer).

 

[Eschaton]

Don't you think earning multiple levels at a time kind of devalues them?

 

[West Mains]

I would not want to be the guy to design each benefit a level would give the player character(s) if there were thousands or hundreds of levels.

Maybe I have "problems", but I love the idea of balancing thousands of levels. 

Also, I think I said it before, but I find level-caps to be really limiting. They always stop before the player gets a real sense that they're powerful. I think to put it best, it'd makes people feel like they're only "just powerful enough" to beat everything. Like i said, I only believe in using artificial caps that maximize time and energy needed to get to higher levels beyond a certain plateau, not that I wouldn't make those beyond levels as rewarding, too. 

 

[Espon]

Don't you think earning multiple levels at a time kind of devalues them?

That's kind of the point of the game.  No way would a player want to level from 1 to 9999, gaining each level one at a time, and the developers didn't intend for it either.

It's even possible to rebirth characters back to level 1 with carried base stats so they'll be a lot stronger once they reach 9999 again.

 

[Tai_MT]

Even more ranting....

How do you make the player feel like he's gotten stronger when he levels up if there are tens of thousands of levels?  Each and every one of those levels have noticeable power differences between them?  Not one of those levels is empty?

Right there, is another benefit of low level caps; few if no empty levels.  Each level has a noticeable difference in power and effectiveness of the player character(s) than the level or levels before it.  It is much easier to see the difference in effectiveness between an Eighth-level character and a Ninth-level character than it is to see the difference in effectiveness between a nine-thousand-four-hundred-and-sixth-leveled character and a nine-thousand-four-hundred-and-seventh-leveled character.

I would not want to be the guy to design each benefit a level would give the player character(s) if there were thousands or hundreds of levels.

Again, I'm sorry for being a douche Eurgh, you have seemed to become a target of my ranting :/

You've never played Fallout 3 or Fallout New Vegas, have you?  Low level cap, no real discernible difference in your level other than MAYBE you took a perk to improve one of your stats.  Unless you're jacking a ton of points into a specific stat, there's really no noticeable difference in levels except for HP and the enemies get harder.  Even with a Firearms skill of 100 (maxed out), you're only getting something like 10 extra damage out of each gun that falls into that particular category.  And when you're level 20, facing some of the strongest monsters in the game... 10 extra damage isn't worth much.  Well, unless you're playing on Easy.  But, if you're doing that, you can ignore your leveling up altogether.

No matter what kind of game you're playing, high level cap or low level cap, there is VERY LITTLE discernible difference in one level to the next.  The differences usually lie in gaps of 5 or 10 levels.  At level 5, you are definitely much stronger than you were at level 1.  At level 10, you are way stronger than you were at level 1.  However, what's the difference between level 5 and 6?  Uh, maybe you learned a new skill?  Game programmers seldom try to use a level up system in the way you described...  That is...  Every single level up feels significant.  This is because it would require rebalancing the game for every single possibility of those levels.  On top of which, this is much more work that a dev team would have to do in playing around with stats and creating new monsters...  And most devs are on a timed schedule....  Or they're lazy.  Either way, no monster for every single level, so there's no need for a new level to feel significant.  All it has to do is raise stats by enough that it stacks up over time to make you Uber later in the game.  All one has to do is look at Pokémon as an example.  2 attack every single level?  Doesn't seem like much...  Until you're hitting something like 50-60 level range and you've got an extra 100 or 120 points in Attack that you wouldn't have had otherwise.  This large chunk can be all the difference in that game at those levels.  Especially if you learned how to EV train or were breeding a specific kind of Pokémon for high Attack power.  There is very little, if any, real difference in those games from level to level, but once you start going in increments of 10 levels, you notice big differences.

 

[West Mains]

@Tai_MT

Fallout doesn't really work. i always play a Martial Artist/Unarmed build in Fallout. By about level 15 or so,  you're a walking tank if you've not completely fudged your SPECIAL stats up. That's kind of the problem [but also part of the fun] with Fallout: having good knowledge of SPECIAL equates to decimating the enemy early on.

Also if you've got a Firearms skill of 100 and you're only getting an extra 10 damage, ya done goof'd up somethin' bad. Most skills hit their uber-effectiveness at around 70+.

 

[Eschaton]

I will agree that most modern games aren't well balanced due to time constraints imposed upon the developers.

But, I vehemently disagree with the idea of thousands of levels being necessary in a game.  If it takes five or ten levels to make any real progression then those levels are empty.  Why not take all the weak gains and low experience thresholds and put them into just one level out of sixty or thirty levels?  You gain a level, you get a marked increase in performance.  Yes, it escalates, which forces the player to develop new strategies with their current build.

 

[Eurgh]

The main point of my extremely high level cap, is mainly just to give the player the ability to keep going. On the hardest difficulty, you'll probably have to be a considerable amount of levels higher. Of course, you won't exactly need to be level 1000, but you would most likely need to be a high level. Although, upon testing the battles with the high tier bosses, a suitable plan of action would have to be introduced. I've made it so (the majority) of bosses are immune to just being slugged with a plethora of powerful attacks. The elemental bosses are clearly set up for you to use your brain and use an attack that would be highly effective. 

But, as i said with the high level cap, in my personal opinion; i don't like single player games that have a restricting level cap. I like to feel like i can keep growing when i put the time an effort into it. 

I have higher and higher tier boss rooms, in which you WILL need to be a higher level to actually stand a chance. But, yeah... that's only really because i enjoy clocking days of play time into a game.

 

[Eschaton]

The way I plan on setting up is you can only reach the thirtieth level before you enter the final dungeon...after doing EVERY SIDEQUEST and KILLING EVERY ON-MAP ENCOUNTER before the final dungeon.  If you want that last lousy point, you're going to earn it, but you'll definitely get it.

 

[Zechnophobe]

JRPGs tend to have ridiculously high level caps.  Some are over nine thousand (WHAT!?  NINE THOUSAND!?).  The usual is either 99 or 100.  Most of the time, these level caps are unnecessary, even when taking the side quests and bonus bosses.

When I entered my BioWare/Obsidian RPG phase, I've noticed very low level caps that could be comfortably reached by the end of the game.

The earlier editions of D&D capped your characters at 20, regardless of the numbers of classes in which you took those levels you had. (Jesus, I only speak English, and I barely speak it that well!).  Later editions introduced Epic characters that surpassed 20, but these characters tended to be Olympian Gods. 

I found that I liked this.

I found that this process really placed a lot of emphasis on your build over raw grinding; it helped you set your build and character progression in stone.  You had to choose what role your character played in combat and stick with it; any deviations, and your build is sub-optimal.  Game with very high level caps allow you access to most or all customization options, rendering the nonlinear progression pointless.

I've come to prefer it.  Others might disagree.

Anyway, what are your thoughts on low level caps?

Levelling up is a reward to the player. Think about what that means for a good moment. Games are ultimately reward giving machines, that dole out rewards at certain intervals. Sometimes those rewards are big, sometimes small. A good game generally has a rythm of small rewards punctuated by big ones.

If you want to have a level up be a rarer thing, then you should probably consider it a punctuated reward, that is a big thing amidst a sea of smaller ones. Compare Disgaea to Baldur's Gate 2 (or similar). Disgaea can have you get multiple levels in a single fight, and on multiple different characters. They happen all the time and all they do is bump the stats (and occasionally the skills) of the character. The normal level up is pretty mundane. In comparison, going into the item world (Disgaea's Crafting system.. sorta) Could take HOURS of gameplay just to improve a single item up to its maximum strength. In this case, level ups are small rewards, but item improvement is a big one.

Baldur's Gate 2 does this rather the opposite. You find little magic items fairly commonly. Quest rewards, vendors, random chests, etc. But you level up each character only a dozen or so times during the 40+ hours of gameplay.

My advice to you, is to really think about how you plan to reward the player. If you make one thing rare, consider making something else more common. At any given moment consider "What is the player looking forward to now? What is fun RIGHT NOW?" and if you don't have a good answer, consider tweaking things.

 

[West Mains]

I just remembered something else:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reward_system

Levelling up feeds this like there ain't no tomorrow.