Level Cap increase to 75!

xenolith666

How bout a level cap increase? We've been sitting at 70 since the Elemental Evil expansion! Thanx

thefiresidecat

nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. we have had level cap increases with il. il is the real level after 70. imo you could get rid of level all together and just count il. because that's what matters. there is a huge difference between an ilevel 1400 level 70 and a 4300 ilvl 70.. and we are getting another one of these level increases with il as of the 20th.

sundance777

Only if I get credit for the 200 billion overflow points I have already....

ecrana

I wouldn't go so far as to call the June 20 update an IL increase. More like a recalculation of how IL is scored. I'm against increasing the player level but not strongly enough to care if they actually went through with it.

thegravelnome

In the name of all that is Holy why would you wish for this? I know that it sound good on paper, however when the level-cap went from 60 to 70 it caused Untold misery upon the community of having all of their equipment scrapped and having to scrounge new everything. I'm afraid I have to disagree with you on raising the level cap.

mahburg

thegravelnome#9466 said:

In the name of all that is Holy why would you wish for this? I know that it sound good on paper, however when the level-cap went from 60 to 70 it caused Untold misery upon the community of having all of their equipment scrapped and having to scrounge new everything. I'm afraid I have to disagree with you on raising the level cap.

Agreed not to mention the power points we lost beyond seventy, it was carnage!

thefiresidecat

nightmare. yes not again please. just il. and yes it is an actual increase because it's counting things that weren't counted before.

ecrana

thefiresidecat said:

and yes it is an actual increase because it's counting things that weren't counted before.

A valid point so I concede.

thegravelnome#9466 said:

however when the level-cap went from 60 to 70 it caused Untold misery upon the community of having all of their equipment scrapped and having to scrounge new everything. I'm afraid I have to disagree with you on raising the level cap.

I've heard this argument before and it's always swayed me. After giving it more thought I find it a weak reason to not increase the level cap though. Let me start by saying that I didn't begin playing NW until after the last level cap raise though my wife was playing so I did see the effect it had.

But in the time I've been playing new gear has come out multiple times, new armor, new weapons, new artifacts, etc etc etc. To say no to raising the levels from 70 to 75 because it makes your gear inferior seems like a weak argument. It's no different really than relic gear coming out and making twisted inferior. You choose to grind it our or you don't.

Regardless, I still think IL is the true level in NW. I just can't make a good argument against the game raising level past 70 anymore. Maybe I'm missing something having missed out on the chaos of the 60 to 70 changes. Or maybe it's just overblown since that was the first time people were forced to swap out gear. I can't say since I wasn't playing at that point.

thegravelnome

Ecrana,
Perhaps if I explain why I was so irritated about the increase level cap and how it directly affected gameplay you will understand why I do not wish to have to have every piece of my gear made obsolete again. The part that really upset me, as well as a lot of other players, is that overnight we went from being able to run well of dragons, perfectly normally without any problems, to being one shotted by the lowest level mobs in the same environment. this angered a great many people including myself. The solution they found to being able to add higher-level content without irritating the entire player base yet again, is to offer new equipment of a higher item level. This system I find much more acceptable than the previous system of effectively being downgraded overnight. I can still run the same content I was running yesterday however I will not succeed in running the new content until I get the new gear. I also thought it was very interesting to offer armor specific to an area such as everfrost resistance. Finally there was a reason to grind specifically for new possibly less powerful gear due to the impact it would have upon the environment that you were playing in. It made having multiple sets of gear relevant as opposed to one set to rule them all. I love this game and enjoy the Daily Grind to be honest. however taking away content that I was able to run yesterday and placing it behind a new level cap is something that no player base is ever going to greet with smiles and cheers.

ltsmithneko

Personally I wouldn't mind seeing a new level cap, just not right now. Classes still need to be tweaked, PvP included. A new cap means all Soft caps, and Hard caps would change becoming much higher and intern making you less effective. This would add alot more stress on the developers, forcing them to even more things on top of the current things. (raher not see that...) Once the cap is increase Professions/Gear/jewlery/Artifacts/Mounts would most likely need to have another tier in rairty, enchantments would not be forgotten either.

So if ya want to pretty much start from square one then yes increase the level. c:

omegarealities

Let's get through the Item Level increase before we even start to think about any of character level increase. I am sure there are going to be many tweaks before it works as intended.

ecrana

Thanks thegravelnome for the backstory. That does sound like a hellish experience and one that would have irritated me as well.

But is that not an example of poor implementation of the level increase? In a perfect world the makers should be able to handle increasing the level cap without breaking the game. I know that might be asking a lot.

Regardless, I'm still against raising the cap.

thegravelnome

I'm glad to see that we agree lol. And yes in a perfect world it can be done without pissing off the player base. What would be necessary is to have a large amount of fresh content set at the level of the new level cap and the developers would have to be willing to have other areas that until now are the elite areas become a ghost town. Given the amount of work they put into these areas I don't see them allowing that. which would mean the only alternative would be to raise the requirements to be in those areas to the new level cap and that would <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> everybody off yet again. Yes it's doable yes we would be able to get through it and once again become elite players but it would also drive off a great many of people who have already dealt this once and have no desire to do it again

meraks

thegravelnome#9466 said:

I'm glad to see that we agree lol. And yes in a perfect world it can be done without pissing off the player base.

Perhaps the wrong choice of words in this case... /snicker

omegarealities

meraks#0999 said:

thegravelnome#9466 said:

I'm glad to see that we agree lol. And yes in a perfect world it can be done without pissing off the player base.

Perhaps the wrong choice of words in this case... /snicker

LOL!

thefiresidecat

imo they could get rid of the level all together and just make level il.. that would make more sense to me. yeah maybe they could implement it better.. but do we trust them to do that? lol. I think it's fine as it is. they've got a path and it works. why beg them to change what is currently working?

sundance777

Personally I didn't mind the level change from 60 to 70 all that much, and I liked that there was new quests to go along with that change. The biggest part of the level change that was problematic for me and people I ran with at the time, is after running the new content you were not leveled up fully and you had to just repeat content over and over just for the sake of levels. This issues was mostly addressed with the rework of the EE campaign.

I also agree that having to obtain new gear was a pain, I think I finally had my shade-walkers set (or whatever it was) for about ten whole days before it was obsolete. But I don't think that was because of the level cap change, it was more about the change of how to obtain gear and the entry requirements for content no longer matched your new item level. If there was a spot to go and get decent gear immediately after finishing the leveling content, that would have been much smoother.

To me the issues were more about not planning out the progression for players well enough and the thing that probably upset most of us was the 40+ hour grind to do the content, then put on the levels and still not be high enough item level to run the T2 dungeon for the good gear leaving us to change gear three or four times in the process.

jaime4312

@ecrana#2080

Items getting outperformed by others is one thing but being rendered completely worthless is a different one and that's why most people (including myself) will be against your suggestion. Besides, like others explained already, this game has a lot of things (bugs, balance, pvp etc) that need to be addressed before any level cap increase gets implemented.

majorcharvenak

Four words--Elemental Evil Gated Quests.

For my brothers and sisters on console-- If you didn't like that grind then why practice misery and ask for more? I know (more hope actually) they'd probably have a tighter story and maybe a new dungeon with a level cap increase. However, If Cryptic continued with, what I call, the 'Circle of Life' then we might see a return of those gawd-awful gated quests for level progression, in addition to the equipment wreckage. Where you get X number of quests to kill Y number of monsters with a maximum of Z quests that can be taken per day. After you hit that cap - Sucks to be you! Go and kill some Poweries in Sharandar or something while you wait for the timer. Sorry, but I'd rather have my toenails extracted while lying on a bed of white hot nails with no anesthesia, than go through that nightmare again. Overall, I think the devs have been doing a pretty good job with the expansions they've released since Mod 6, despite each of their respective problems.

In theory, I agree with you OP. It would be nice to see the level cap incrementally increase with the new content (and as others have posted) without making the existing zones unplayable. In practice, and with all the other things with the game the devs need to work on (bug fixes, class balance, foundry, pvp etc.), I'd rather they focus on those than take the easy way of scrapping together fetch and kill quests, reused maps and overpowered mobs and calling it an expansion to satisfy a level cap increase. Just my two coppers.

mordekai

Ideally in any RPG (table top through to LRP and all in between) there is a balance of power between the character's stats and those of the character's gear.

As gear gets better, it tips the balance and eventually there will come a point where character stats become less relevant than the gear they possess. One could make a case that the upcoming changes to both IL and load outs will hasten this, and possibly even render it null, but if the aim is to maintain that balance, there may come a point where perhaps some form of bonus Feat reward, (like XP based Power Points) is needed to stop the entire build of your character being how much purple and gold gear you have, and just enough power points to get one load outs worth of powers to rank four. I'ts not like you'll need more than that with load outs, after all.

The thing is, I don't think we're even near to that point YET, but as and when more powerful gear comes out in the future, character advancement post L70 will be something they need to keep an eye on.

missdayum

No thanks but I rather like to see a next tier for enchantments...not really either.

dread4moor

You Xbone folks want another level grind?
Good luck with that.
On PC?
Not just no.
Haaaaaaiiiiiil no!

mordekai

dread4moor said:

You Xbone folks want another level grind?

Good luck with that.

On PC?

Not just no.

Haaaaaaiiiiiil no!

But in what way is it really any different to the grind associated with the new gear in the last two mods? Apart from the opportunity to be more creative with character based advancement options.

I'm not saying I'm for a new level cap, cos right now I'm not. But " Oh, the grind... the terrible grind" as an argument for not doing it seems a tad redundant when that's what you have to do any way.

Unless, of course, on PC there's no grind for Ascended or Relic sets.

You see one of the most frequent moans I read on these fora is that every time a new weapon set comes out that surpasses the last lot is that the grind for the last set is regarded as wasted. At least if you were grinding for new feats and powers through an increased level cap you'd get to keep and utilise the existing ones.

Again, just to reiterate, I'm NOT in favour of a new level cap. I just don't see how grinding for XP is worse than grinding for specialist refinement items with built in obsolescence.

thefiresidecat

why does the level 70 marker matter to people when the il has been raised? we have new gear and new weapons to work for. it's not stagnating. we've seen before resetting the end cap level changes EVERYTHING. and in a bad way.... why would you want that? do you really want all your gear that you've worked SO hard for to be obsolete? your plus five rings that you've been in the same freakin dungeons day after day after day to earn? the sets that you spent HOURS earning the rp to get to orange to be garbage? the weapons that you spent weeks and months BEGGING to be let into an msva to complete... down the toilet.

honestly? if you want that then I have some cat o nines for you... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4q6eaLn2mY

mordekai

So, what about when new equipment renders the old obsolete?
Unless there is no further advancement in gear the new will replace the old.

Despite what some people may have suggested, I'm not buýing that anyone went fishing for the fun of it cos they weren't bothered about the new gear.

Why is Elemental Evil gear now available for manufacture on the professions? Because its effectively obsolete as far as grinding out elemental motes vs time spent gaining Relic and Ascended is concerned.

Again, I'm not advocating an increased level cap right now. But at some point, your character becomes less important than its gear.

The thing about doing something second time round is that they can do it differently. It wouldn't have to be delivered the same way. Look how campaign advancement has changed.
It's entirely possible to run a campaign where each achievement gränts a new level,rather than a boon, with maybe a new tier of powers and an extra couple of feats. Rather than dumping new L75 equipment en masse it could be introduced slowly, like they do now with the more advanced L70.
it doesn't have to be "grind for level... immediately followed by a grind for a whole new inventory of gear"

They might even use it as a new plateau for class based gear balance, so as the new L75 gear was released via mods and sub mods they can use the experience they now have to avoid having to go back and nerf every man and his dog in order for people to stop complaining about how unfair something on one character is.

And, once more, I'm not advocating it, and I certainly don't think we are close to needing it, but I just think its eminently do-able, as long as it were thought through and everything relevant were taken into consideration.

thefiresidecat

why would it render everything obsolete? is there a single piece of level 65 gear that you'd wear? the level caps mean all the dungeons become MUCH harder. all of a sudden the difficulty of say master spell plague is no longer the difficulty of a level 70 but the difficulty of a level 75. so like 5 times as hard as it is now. so lets say it had good rewards and you actually wanted to be there. it's not likely you'd be able to enter that dungeon again for months. it's not likely they'd do five levels if they raised the cap it would probably be ten levels again. elemental evil was a long campaign but they had it so if you spent 10 hours a day you could push thru it in a week. they haven't been doing that. the recent material has been gated to be more like a month to two months to complete so I'd expect that. then if you didn't have a path to new artifacts and artifact weapons you'd have to grind that out too. so again given the way they roll another month or two and all the things would need grinding. then you'd have to either spend millions on rp for the next double rp or grind for many months to get enough to get all the things back up to legendary. THEN you could finally enter that dungeon that you'd been able to do just fine before.

again I ask WHY.. why would you want this when IL increases are the same damn thing as a level increase without making anything absolutely obsolete?? until you are at max il you're not even at max level. level 70 means NOTHING in this game as far as being done wiht your levelling quest. the new mods they introduce with new story line is new story line. bundling it with level increase is meaningless.

Personally unless they start over and give us neverwinter 2. I never want to see the level increased again. ever. I'd rather they just got rid of it.

majorcharvenak

thefiresidecat said:

why would it render everything obsolete? is there a single piece of level 65 gear that you'd wear? the level caps mean all the dungeons become MUCH harder. all of a sudden the difficulty of say master spell plague is no longer the difficulty of a level 70 but the difficulty of a level 75. so like 5 times as hard as it is now. so lets say it had good rewards and you actually wanted to be there. it's not likely you'd be able to enter that dungeon again for months. it's not likely they'd do five levels if they raised the cap it would probably be ten levels again. elemental evil was a long campaign but they had it so if you spent 10 hours a day you could push thru it in a week. they haven't been doing that. the recent material has been gated to be more like a month to two months to complete so I'd expect that. then if you didn't have a path to new artifacts and artifact weapons you'd have to grind that out too. so again given the way they roll another month or two and all the things would need grinding. then you'd have to either spend millions on rp for the next double rp or grind for many months to get enough to get all the things back up to legendary. THEN you could finally enter that dungeon that you'd been able to do just fine before.

again I ask WHY.. why would you want this when IL increases are the same damn thing as a level increase without making anything absolutely obsolete?? until you are at max il you're not even at max level. level 70 means NOTHING in this game as far as being done wiht your levelling quest. the new mods they introduce with new story line is new story line. bundling it with level increase is meaningless.

Personally unless they start over and give us neverwinter 2. I never want to see the level increased again. ever. I'd rather they just got rid of it.

^ What they said.

mordekai

First, why would any of the things you said would happen, happen?
What immutable rule means that a level increase at the top end would require new entry requirements for existing content?
The point of an extended level cap wouyld be to give those already at the top end something else to work toward. Not a requirement for everyone who just hit 70.
What is it trhat stops them from doing it differently to the way they did it last time?

What if everything 70 and below remained exactly as it is?
What if it weren't the natural imediate progression that when you hit 70 you immediately go for 71?
What if you had to work toward it at a much slower rate?
What if the new level increase were done through a campaign that required the character to have achieved X% of the other campaigns? Instead of a boon that may or may not even apply to your character, what about giving players a character class based option to increase existing powers and feats?
What if new gear were introduced slowly alongside new L70 gear?
What if new content were gated at 70, and 75? The way current dungeons are gated at 70 and the relevant campaign levels.
They don't need any more sub 70 dungeons, so if they are creating dual versions of dungeons, why not make one 70 and one 75? (That woiuld avoid that long winded grind for whatvere it was you were on about... wouldn't NEED to happen. You;d be able to do everything you already could with asolutely no problems at all.)

You are confident none of that could hapen, so I would like to know why.

I'm asking because I don't understand why there is an assumption that because it was the worst thing ever before that it couldn't possibly be done differently and better.

Once more, I;m not saying I want it, iso in answer yto the repeated "why would you want that... aaarghh it;s terrible" ... I DON'T want to see a level increase right now, and I don;t think we are yet near to needing one, I just don't see why, when it eventually gets to the point where the gear you own means far more than the character you create, the balance will need to swing back with something oither than a couple of half hearted generic boon choices every six months.


Extended IL is the new Level Cap Increase? Really?
Actually it's the exact opposite.
Character Level is the reflection of the Character, Item Level is the reflection of what they own.
Good RPGs base character effectiveness on a balance of the two, not just allow one to overshadow the other by adding elements from the other.

If we're on the subject of badly planned half-arsed ideas that's another thread.
IL's bad enough as it is, but if people could buy a HAMSTER load of insignia of prosperity to boost their powers and feats and earn some more HP, I'd probably be complaining about that mess even more.



At least witha level increase you know they earned it rather than just bought it.

majorcharvenak

Because @mordekai, what you list as a possible solutions...Cryptic tried with the PC with Mod 6. Not sure if you were on PC or you started on Xbox when it went live but a nightmare. As others have mentioned, gear that folks worked hard to obtain was no longer supported, and to make matters worse, the "new" green leveling gear was better than the epics everyone had. Campaigns like Sharandar and Dread Ring, suddenly had their trash mobs boosted to mini-boss killing machines which was only adjusted later on. The Dungeons and skirmishes for those now are currently gated so...now you just slide the goal post from 70 to 75 where currently at 60 + DL and MoH are available. Bottom line: The reason why some folks like @dread4moor, @thefiresidecat, myself and others are adamantly resistant to the suggestion is that, we went that shocking change and would not care to have it repeated. Crypic increasing the level cap makes sense, in theory, but its the implementation was a bitter one for the playerbase...one we will LONG remember.

Now with that said, I suspect that sometime in the near future Cryptic will look to increase the level cap from 70 to 80 (since it would be in 10 level increments), and if they do, I hope the Devs on the Neverwinter team talk to and take a look at what the STO team did with respect to raising the level cap from 50 to 60. I don't know if they did, and just decided it wasn't worth it or didn't think to...Not privy company conversations. For any STO players also enjoying NW, say what you will about Delta Rising's problems and faults, but the level progression and equipment changes were MUCH smoother imho when compared to the changes when Elemental Evil went live. I say that because you can/could run the new content with the same vessel and endgame gear you had before the level increase. The newer T6 vessels, abilities, and upgrading your just made it much easier, but it was (and is still) doable with a T5 (maybe even a T4) vessel and standard Mk XII drops from missions. So if the Devs choose to implement a level cap the way STO did - develop leveling content, while enabling the current crop of level 70s to level using their current gear, while at the same time, not having loot drops of green +7 Cruel Plate of Armor Smiting popping up that's comparable (or gawd forbid - better) to a Dragonflight or elemental infused set a player is currently wearing, I'd say we'd good to go and possibly more supportive.

thefiresidecat

majorcharvenak said:

Because @mordekai, what you list as a possible solutions...Cryptic tried with the PC with Mod 6. Not sure if you were on PC or you started on Xbox when it went live but a nightmare. As others have mentioned, gear that folks worked hard to obtain was no longer supported, and to make matters worse, the "new" green leveling gear was better than the epics everyone had. Campaigns like Sharandar and Dread Ring, suddenly had their trash mobs boosted to mini-boss killing machines which was only adjusted later on. The Dungeons and skirmishes for those now are currently gated so...now you just slide the goal post from 70 to 75 where currently at 60 + DL and MoH are available. Bottom line: The reason why some folks like @dread4moor, @thefiresidecat, myself and others are adamantly resistant to the suggestion is that, we went that shocking change and would not care to have it repeated. Crypic increasing the level cap makes sense, in theory, but its the implementation was a bitter one for the playerbase...one we will LONG remember.

Now with that said, I suspect that sometime in the near future Cryptic will look to increase the level cap from 70 to 80 (since it would be in 10 level increments), and if they do, I hope the Devs on the Neverwinter team talk to and take a look at what the STO team did with respect to raising the level cap from 50 to 60. I don't know if they did, and just decided it wasn't worth it or didn't think to...Not privy company conversations. For any STO players also enjoying NW, say what you will about Delta Rising's problems and faults, but the level progression and equipment changes were MUCH smoother imho when compared to the changes when Elemental Evil went live. I say that because you can/could run the new content with the same vessel and endgame gear you had before the level increase. The newer T6 vessels, abilities, and upgrading your just made it much easier, but it was (and is still) doable with a T5 (maybe even a T4) vessel and standard Mk XII drops from missions. So if the Devs choose to implement a level cap the way STO did - develop leveling content, while enabling the current crop of level 70s to level using their current gear, while at the same time, not having loot drops of green +7 Cruel Plate of Armor Smiting popping up that's comparable (or gawd forbid - better) to a Dragonflight or elemental infused set a player is currently wearing, I'd say we'd good to go and possibly more supportive.

I really do suspect they've just decided to keep raising ilvl and leave level alone. they have been raising it somewhat regularly. it continues the grind for people without being hateful.

@mordekai#1901 what Major said..

majorcharvenak

Looks like that's the plan for Mod 12 @thefiresidecat based on what they're putting out in the latest dev blog.