Level progression in RPGs

[rusty_shackleford]

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What are some RPGs that have lots of optional content and good level/difficulty progression?

[SpellSword]

Baldur's Gate 1 had that same problem as well, so unfortunately being stuck at the level cap has been part of the series from the beginning. If you clear all the areas before visiting the mines you'll hit max level. Every new quest ends with "Here you go, 1,000,000 EXP!" ... not a very thrilling reward when that may as well be 0.

What are some RPGs that have lots of optional content and good level/difficulty progression?

Chrono Trigger.gif

[dagal]

Cool gif but why is the best girl wearing a mask?

[Tweed]

Baldur's Gate 1 had that same problem as well, so unfortunately being stuck at the level cap has been part of the series from the beginning. If you clear all the areas before visiting the mines you'll hit max level. Every new quest ends with "Here you go, 1,000,000 EXP!" ... not a very thrilling reward when that may as well be 0.

What are some RPGs that have lots of optional content and good level/difficulty progression?

Why is Robo wearing a skirt?

[Tweed]

What are some RPGs that have lots of optional content and good level/difficulty progression?

Ultima VII sans Forge of Virtue, but even then that mostly effects the Avatar himself. Everyone else has to find specific trainers and pay for training in attributes that they need and running off half-cocked will get most of the party killed.

Fallout 1 and 2 probably apply, you'll be done with Fallout 1 long before hitting the cap unless you grind. Fallout 2 will get you closer to hitting max before its over, but you can get locked out of some content depending on what you do.

Otherwise, most games have ****** pacing. In New Vegas you need to install a mod to reduce experience gains or else you'll be capped long before you've finished the all the DLC.

[SpellSword]

Cool gif but why is the best girl wearing a mask?

► Isn't it her glasses?

Chrono Trigger.gif

Why is Robo wearing a skirt?

► As for the what appears to be a skirt on Robo, I think those are supposed to be the leather sections visible on this image:

Robo.jpg

At least, that is my hope...

[wndrbr]

It annoys me how in most of the modern open-world games with levelling, your progression is tied to the main story in a rather crappy and in-your-face way. Like, for example, you need 1000 XP points to get to the next level. Side quests give you 5, 10 or 20 XP, while the next main story quest nets you 950 XP. It's blatant and gay and **** and it makes me feel like I'm not a master of my own levelling. May as well get rid of XP numbers, and hard-tie progression to the story. Witcher games did that, some others too (forgot which ones). Those are fake rpgs, but still.

[rusty_shackleford]

I think level scaling is one solution if it's actually justified rather than "bandits now have dwarven armor", but more like "the dark lord has grown stronger and reinforced his soldiers"

[wndrbr]

If we're talking about proper open-world RPGs (not the fake storyfag action-adventures, but the ones that don't hold your hand and give you plenty of optional content that can possibly skew you progression), then the best way of handling this is to use soft caps instead of hard caps.

Let the player continue progressing, just make it so that those extra talent points put into certain stats beyond their original threshold don't give player too much benefit.

Each point put into STR increases your melee damage by 5 and load capacity by 2 lbs, however once you hit 100 (the first softcap) STR starts giving you 2 points in melee damage and 1 lbs of extra carrying capacity. And then once you hit 150 (the second softcap) STR starts giving you 1 point in bonus melee damage and stops increasing your carrying capacity.

Perhaps even introduce 'early softcaps', to prevent players from becoming a jack-of-all-trades by stopping levelling their main attributes and starting putting extra level-ups into the ones that weren't originally important for their build.

[rusty_shackleford]

If we're talking about proper open-world RPGs (not the fake storyfag action-adventures, but the ones that don't hold your hand and give you plenty of optional content that can possibly skew you progression), then the best way of handling this is to use soft caps instead of hard caps.

Let the player continue progressing, just make it so that those extra talent points put into certain stats beyond their original threshold don't give player too much benefit.

Each point put into STR increases your melee damage by 5 and load capacity by 2 lbs, however once you hit 100 (the first softcap) STR starts giving you 2 points in melee damage and 1 lbs of extra carrying capacity. And then once you hit 150 (the second softcap) STR starts giving you 1 point in bonus melee damage and stops increasing your carrying capacity.

Perhaps even introduce 'early softcaps', to prevent players from becoming a jack-of-all-trades by stopping levelling their main attributes and starting putting extra level-ups into the ones that weren't originally important for their build.

This is approaching the problem from another angle: making the character progression linear or even logistic rather than snowballing power.

[wndrbr]

I think level scaling is one solution if it's actually justified rather than "bandits now have dwarven armor", but more like "the dark lord has grown stronger and reinforced his soldiers"

another solution is not to have rpgs with an overly huge difference between levels, where a lv2 character is vastly stronger than lv1 one.

Bandits can go from rags to battered quilted/fur jackets, to leather armor, to scavenged breastplates. Bandits can also be replaced with mercenaries, or deserted soldiers. It would make sense for a professionally trained soldier to be stronger and more dangerous than some common thug.