Why Raise the Level Cap Again?

[Grayseven]

Apparently people missed the part about the "exciting new story line" in the developers road map...

 

They won't just raise the cap and not have anything to do in order to raise it. Common sense should tell you that. The fact that new additions related to this new story line they have mentioned (but not in detail) will apparently start with the two flashpoints on the home planets should be enough of a clue to let people know that they aren't going to expect you to spend time in old content leveling up 5 more levels...

[NoFishing]

For better or worse, endgame in SWTOR is a gear grind. We do FPs and ops to get better gear so we can do the next tier of FPs and ops.

 

So it terms of obsoleting old content, it really doesn't matter if the level cap gets raised, because old content becomes obsolete simply by virtue of better gear. At the point that RotHC was released, we had 2 "current" raids: EC and TfB. EV and KP HM were tuned for 56 gear, and were ridiculously easy in 63 gear. And the only FP that wasn't a snooze-fest was LI.

 

The problem with new tiers of gear is that they consume the stat budget that the game is built around. While endurance, power, and main stat are (mostly) linear, other stats encounter severe diminishing returns at some point that means you get much less of a boost from new tiers of gear than what you want. Bumping the level cap resets this stat budget, since the denominator in all the DR functions becomes 60 instead of 55. So in addition to giving players something new to do, periodic bumps in the level cap are necessary to make the gear grind viable.

 

As far as the timing goes, all indications thus far is that the Makeb-sized expansion and level cap bump will not arrive until late this year...probably October, possibly December. An October bump would be roughly 15 months after RotHC came, which itself was roughly 14 months after launch. The timing works out nicely.

Edited March 24, 2014 by NoFishing

[ZionHalcyon]

For better or worse, endgame in SWTOR is a gear grind. We do FPs and ops to get better gear so we can do the next tier of FPs and ops.

 

So it terms of obsoleting old content, it really doesn't matter if the level cap gets raised, because old content becomes obsolete simply by virtue of better gear. At the point that RotHC was released, we had 2 "current" raids: EC and TfB. EV and KP HM were tuned for 56 gear, and were ridiculously easy in 63 gear. And the only FP that wasn't a snooze-fest was LI.

 

The problem with new tiers of gear is that they consume the stat budget that the game is built around. While endurance, power, and main stat are (mostly) linear, other stats encounter severe diminishing returns at some point that means you get much less of a boost from new tiers of gear than what you want. Bumping the level cap resets this stat budget, since the denominator in all the DR functions becomes 60 instead of 55. So in addition to giving players something new to do, periodic bumps in the level cap are necessary to make the gear grind viable.

 

As far as the timing goes, all indications thus far is that the Makeb-sized expansion and level cap bump will not arrive until late this year...probably October, possibly December. An October bump would be roughly 15 months after RotHC came, which itself was roughly 14 months after launch. The timing works out nicely.

 

I'm thinking its December myself, if there is talk of it possibly getting pushed till next year.

[DarthDymond]

I'm thinking its December myself, if there is talk of it possibly getting pushed till next year.

Given that Strongholds will span the June (2.8) and August (2.9) patches, I would expect there to be at least one "normal" patch in between, before they roll out the next expansion.

 

So yeah, I would strongly suspect October will be 2.10 and then 3.0 with the RotHC-sized expansion will drop in December.

[waterboytkd]

So, I think Bioware should take the less-traveled road: 3.0 should come with a level cap DECREASE. Bring us back to level 50!

[JimG]

People can only run the same end-game content over and over so many times before they die of boredom. Obviously the level cap needs to be raised eventually. It's been 1 year since the last level cap increase. They said they would have an announcement soon about the next cap increase but didn't say when the actual cap increase will occur. Considering they have already announced strongholds with a F2P release of August and they indicated there would be big ROTHC-like update this year, then that probably includes the cap increase and probably isn't happening until sometime after August. So you're looking at basically 1.5 years in between level cap increases. Are people seriously suggesting that's too frequent for cap increases?

[PavSalco]

I hope if it does come to pass sooner than expected they tune the xp gain waaaaay down and provide a bit more levelling content than we got on Makeb, as 50-55 was so quick and easy it almost felt pointless.

+1

I would like to see the raise of the level cap, but it needs to be done properly. The XP gain should be slow.

[dbears]

Yeah, that's a my bad.

 

Apologies.

 

Someone admitting a mistake and apologizing on these forums?

 

What is going on here? Lol.

 

Good on you sir/ma'am.

[Divona]

I dont see any issues raising level caps. I have myself many many lvl 55 alts and its natural that you have to start working again from scratch to get geared again.

 

Only thing i hope they will look into when raisin level cap is crafting times and artifact quality missions. Already now they take bit less than 3h to complete. I would not be happy to see them go up to 5h with new level gathering missions.

[mike_is_valid]

they didn't say anything about crafting or did i missed it? I would not be surprised if crafting stays as it is now. With ROTHC they announced the skill increase to 450 several times.

[Grayseven]

they didn't say anything about crafting or did i missed it? I would not be surprised if crafting stays as it is now. With ROTHC they announced the skill increase to 450 several times.

 

Since they are adding in crafted stuff for strongholds, it's safe to assume crafting will see an increase as well. They haven't announced everything about the expansion yet and a lot of this is supposition based on past observations, but raising the level cap normally also raises everything else, crafting included.

[LeonBraun]

Since they are adding in crafted stuff for strongholds, it's safe to assume crafting will see an increase as well. They haven't announced everything about the expansion yet and a lot of this is supposition based on past observations, but raising the level cap normally also raises everything else, crafting included.

 

There is nothing wrong with crafting in this game. In fact it better than any other MMO I've played, and I've played most of them.

[DarthTHC]

There is nothing wrong with crafting in this game. In fact it better than any other MMO I've played, and I've played most of them.

 

Star Wars: Galaxies called. It's sad you never tried it.

[Raansu]

Star Wars: Galaxies called. It's sad you never tried it.

 

SWG crafting was a horrible grind fest and SWG in general was a garbage game. Remove the rose colored glasses and wake up.

[DarthTHC]

SWG crafting was a horrible grind fest and SWG in general was a garbage game. Remove the rose colored glasses and wake up.

 

The game wasn't garbage, until after the NGE.

 

The crafting system was rich and complex. It let crafters create items that had a greater range of differentiators than "price", which is all most MMO's seem to do today. That's boring and uncreative.

 

Here in this game, wow, I get to create exactly the same stims and augments and armorings and everything that everyone else does. How do I get anyone to buy MY stuff? Price it lower. That's it. I can't make it better regardless the time, effort, or research I put into it. I can't tailor to tanks or DD's or healers. Feh.

Edited March 25, 2014 by DarthTHC

[WookieIsshe]

SWG crafting was a horrible grind fest and SWG in general was a garbage game. Remove the rose colored glasses and wake up.

 

Raansu I know you don't believe that. SWG had the most innovative crafting system ever seen in a video game of any type PERIOD.

[kirorx]

SWG crafting was a horrible grind fest and SWG in general was a garbage game. Remove the rose colored glasses and wake up.

 

A lot of people that didn't like SWG were just lazy and couldn't get groups for end game content because no group finder meant actual relationships with other players had to be developed

[Rasen]

To be fair from my point of view as always SWG sucked in so many ways. It wasn't fun. SWG fanboys should grasp the fact that there are people who did not like SWG at all. I'm not going to go to your forums and bash it though just as I hope the same is reciprocated.

 

Regardless crafting in this game is not good at all. It is outdated. That's why it fails currently. Bioware has made many changes to the game and the last two remaining relics of SWTOR vanilla is crafting and legacy. Both need major revamps to account for the new progressions, Cartel Market and so much more. Biochem and Cybertech are the only worthwhile crew skills today. That is not the sign of a healthy crafting system.

[oslek]

Star Wars: Galaxies called. It's sad you never tried it.

 

Reality answered by saying that SWG shut down.

Edited April 2, 2014 by oslek

[Sarfux]

Cause ending in an odd number sucks when even numbers are way superiour.

 

I agree. I like seeing 50,60,70. I always liked that. I can't STANd when max level is 55, 65, 75 stuff like that. It just doesn't feel..complete.

[Raansu]

A lot of people that didn't like SWG were just lazy and couldn't get groups for end game content because no group finder meant actual relationships with other players had to be developed

 

Erm, I played FF11 for 8 years which required groups to even level up lol.

[Dawginole]

Why raise the cap? Because this is an rpg. Frankly I think we should have gotten 10 lvls last time and this one should be going to 70.

 

I'm not surprised that people don't want a lvl cap increase as this is a care bear mmo. They may have to grind out xp for a few weeks to get back to cap and that would be soooo hard.

 

rpg's are about leveling your toons and all mmo's have level cap increases to allow people to get bigger and badder. It also closes gear gap. New players will be able to hit 60 and have stats equivalent to players in NiM 81's.

 

The lvl cap in this game is far too low as it is. If they came out and straight up said that there would never be a level cap increase again and the game would just add a new 55 raid every six months I'd quit. That would be so boring.

[Raansu]

Why raise the cap? Because this is an rpg. Frankly I think we should have gotten 10 lvls last time and this one should be going to 70.

 

I'm not surprised that people don't want a lvl cap increase as this is a care bear mmo. They may have to grind out xp for a few weeks to get back to cap and that would be soooo hard.

 

rpg's are about leveling your toons and all mmo's have level cap increases to allow people to get bigger and badder. It also closes gear gap. New players will be able to hit 60 and have stats equivalent to players in NiM 81's.

 

The lvl cap in this game is far too low as it is. If they came out and straight up said that there would never be a level cap increase again and the game would just add a new 55 raid every six months I'd quit. That would be so boring.

 

And spending 5 hours leveling back to cap only to find out that those 5 levels made all the current content completely obsolete is entertaining? Give me a break. There are better things that could be spent on this game than a lazy/half-assed level increase. The level cap should of never even been raised to 55. The greatest thing about FF11 was that it scaled horizontally instead of vertically and the minute they decided to raise that cap after being at 75 for 10 years guess what happened? It killed the game. That game went from having a ridiculous amount of end game content that even the most hard core raiders barely kept up with to having absolutely zero content to do.

[Dawginole]

The level cap should of never even been raised to 55. The greatest thing about FF11 was that it scaled horizontally instead of vertically and the minute they decided to raise that cap after being at 75 for 10 years guess what happened? It killed the game. That game went from having a ridiculous amount of end game content that even the most hard core raiders barely kept up with to having absolutely zero content to do.

 

This information is factually incorrect. When FFXI was released in Spring of 2002 in Japan it had a level 30 level cap. This was raised to a level 40 level cap upon release of the Japanese PC version that same Winter. In Fall of 2003 for the NA PC launch the level cap was increased to level 50 and introduced the level 40-50 Artifact gear quest lines. In Spring of 2004 for the NA PS2 release of the game, our game included Rise of the Zilart which for the NA PC and JP PC/PS2 players was the first add on expansion that had to be purchased separately. This expansion in 2004 increased the level cap to level 75 and introduced end game content that would then grow horizontally through Wings of the Goddess.

 

The point is that even FFXI had micro level cap increases in it's first two years until they were able to push up to the 75 cap which it sat at for roughly 5 years prior to the next increase. The push to 99 was inevitable and had to be done as server populations were droping and required mass migrations or mergers.

 

Two things with this:

 

1) If BW is planning to do a 5 level increase every 1.5 years then I agree with you. That's ridiculous and is actually hurting end game content. This game needs a massive massive expansion twice to three times the size of Makeb that pushes the level cap to 80 and then stays there for a minimum of 3 years, and I don't think the one coming is going to do that.

 

2) You are correct, FFXI had well developed horizontal growth in end game. SWTOR has about 5% of the available end game content compared to FFXI by the point of Treasures of Aht Urgan. But the SWTOR devs are either afraid of losing casual players or simply unimaginative (The latter seems legit considering these devs have come up with nothing for PvP or WPvP in over two years and are now asking the forum for ideas this week.). This game simply cannot live for long if the "end game" is simply a new operation and a new flashpoint every six months. It needs different types of end game content. What do you do in end game in SWTOR? You raid, then raid the same op in HM, then in NM. Compare that to Dynamis, Relic Weapons, AF2, Sky, Sea, Limbus, Assaults, Besieged (HELLO?! Copy Besieged for faction v. faction even if it's PvE, duh...), ENMs, HNMs, Stronghold NM's, Salvage, Einherjar, Zeni NM's, and then of course Abbyssea.

 

You may think I'm disagreeing with you but I'm really not. I think there definitely needs to be a level cap increase. But I think that it needs to be done intelligently with a massive end game in mind that features more than operations and mini-operations (flashpoints). These 5 level increase are a waste of time. I completely agree with that. I think they should be shooting this thing up to a minimum of 65, and then plan a massive expansion that would take us to 80 and sit there for 3-4 years to then give them a chance to develop end game content that was more than kill trash > kill boss > kill trash > kill boss > repeat.

[Styxx]

Why raise the cap? Because this is an rpg. Frankly I think we should have gotten 10 lvls last time and this one should be going to 70.

 

Hell yeah! Let`s bring back Korean MMORPG`s where max level takes you 6 months @ 14 hours per day! Oh.. top gear has only 60% success rate on recipes only! Mats drop at 5% chance from one mob only! We ain`t hardcore enough yo!