Who here WANTS GW2 to have a level cap...

Yes, maybe 30....but hey it all depends on how the levels are handled.

yes capped...and capped to 0 ! (there should be an option in the poll for "NO LEVELS!")

i don't enjoy levelling . it's just a waste of time and an incovenience. i do not know anyone who enjoys it either.
everyone i know just looks for faster ways of gettin to max level as they see it as a limbo where u cant use your char to its full potetntial.
when rerolling a new char those few hours wasted to get to 20 and get max armour and some core skills is allready enough waste of time before u can finally enjoy the game for what it really is.
the only ppl who want high levels are noobs hoping that time spent on the game will separate them from the rest of the userbase

time> skill forever. it should be gw pilosophy till the end.
remove levelling....its just an inconveninece and just a way to punish a newbie for being a newbie.

I don't want there to be a level cap as long as it doesn't affect your gameplay horrendously.

Consider a graph like the square root of x; it starts out by going up really fast, but then it levels out eventually. So rapid level progression until about level 20-40, then the increase is marginal at best.

Well, it doesn't. Even log(x) type functions that are often applied in related situations won't level out (leveling out means that the function has a finite value at infinity). Try something like A0 + (A - A0) (1 - exp(-x/c)) where A0 and A are lowest and highest possible values for the attribute modified by experience level x and c is a scaling factor for the progress rate. The first derivative is positive everywhere but the function never gets values above a certain limit (in this case A), i.e., it levels out while also at the same time never ceases to grow.

Edit: to demonstrate how it would work, let's say that c = 20 is the 'reference' level. Then at level x = 0 your attribute is at A0, i.e., minimum. At x = 10 you're about 40% on your way to the max attribute, at x = 20 you're 63% there, at x = 40 you're at 86%, at x = 80 you're only 2% short of max, at x = 160 you're missing 0.04% of the max and so on. You can always increase your attribute but it will never go beyond a certain cap. This may sound contradictory but it isn't

I'm going to re-port my vote for level cap of 100. I do not like no level cap, I do not like low level cap. I believe it should take the entire length of the game to reach max level. If you can beat a game in 30 days, then you shouldnt be able to max level in 29 days. If it takes 6 months to beat the game, then you should not get max level for 6 months.

Lazy gamers who do not want to do the work should simply find an easier game that suits their needs. If gw2 caters to a lazy community then those of us looking for a good game will have to look elsewhere.

I also believe that levels should grant nice bonuses and that the highest levels grant the highest bonuses. Otherwise getting to the final level will feel pointless. The game can still be balanced since it is more important for it to be balanced than fun I guess.


But some of the ideas I have read seems that some of you simply want to ruin gw2 so that it fails. I hope anet doesnt listen to any of us. Atleast then we have a chance.

Then you also believe that once you've done all that work to get to that max level, 90%+ of the content should be obsolete? I mean, wouldn't it be better to be able to play 100% of the content, 100% of the time? And by play, I don't mean running around as a level 100+ stomping on level 10's. Seriously, it may be fun at first, but that's gotta get old after a while...

I think a limitless level would be great for the game, even if it is entirely artificial in terms of effect. People who get off on numbers will have more incentive to play PvE after everything is all said and done. I know I like seeing big numbers.

PvE: Limitless, and PvP: Limited would be the way to do it.

level cap please anet...30 maybe 40..

otherwise GW2 is gonna be "i'm better than you, cos my character has xxx million exp, and is level 450." and i will never be buying it.

skill > how little life you have

lack of a level cap will be the hero title of GW2 in my opinion.

Yup, that's how it would look like.



GW2 Level Function

It would be best to stop attribute gain after some level, but log scale for initial progress is nice because you should gain levels in the beginning faster. Thus, log scale first and stop attribute gain after some level.

I couldn't have said it better myself...and this is also why I hate the fact that some PvE skills are tied to titles, but that's getting too far off topic.

I think the level cap should be the same, and should take the same amount of time to reach as it does in GW.

20.

Have other things like armor show prestige, not one's level. Someone's massive amount of grinding should not alter gameplay.

NO, lvl capping is STUPID, no cap!

Explain why pls.

a very, very moving response. i am completely convinced that a lvl cap is bad because of the logical response that it is stupid. such incredible rhetorical ability.

I'd say no level cap, why bother leveling? Isn't GW all about fairness? Of course we're going to have all these arguments about: I is play more time than you, so I is supposed to be strongers! But I thought games shouldn't be judged by the amount of time you played, but by your skill.

Except it takes massive amounts of grinding to get that prestige armour. GG?

no one is forced to get prestigious armour

high lvl cap is universal, and forced upon everyone

I like Celestial's graphs. Doesn't matter whether the graph has a finite value at infinity, since nobody can reach an infinite amount of levels.

Exactly, this is why you want the power curve to stop abruptly at a low level. I don't care if there are an infinite number of vanity levels, but 20-30 real levels is plenty.

Except in earlier interviews they said there would be a power cap. You would gain levels, but not get better stats. In which case, it's still not required.

Unless if the power cap is placed lets say at lvl 100 then the grind is required.
unlike 15k armor that is completely optional.

Everyone should change their vote to unsure. None of you guys know what the GW2 leveling system will look like, therefore it's *impossible* for you to make an informed decision!

Ilarious...

Thread started with this question "Do you want Guild Wars 2 to have a level cap?"

and not "Do you know if Guild Wars 2 will have a level cap?"...

High level cap please

I belive the level cap should be over 20, but under 50.

50 seems nice and round.

I agree with Chestnut. Level 50 is a good sounding level cap to me as well. Level 20 is rather low and level 100 seems too high unless they have Factions paced leveling *which I hope to god its not*. I prefer a Nightfall/Prophecies paced leveling, preferably somewhere in between. Not rushed and does take time to level up, Grind if you want but the enemies' levels are just a little higher to where yours should be with no grinding *ever notice how the henchmen in Prophecies had levels about 3 under the average monster? thats a good way to measure what level you should be at.*

Level 50, with a slightly faster pace then Prophecies, but not as fast as Nightfall or *god forbid* Factions, with a nice long game to it *maybe the length of all 3 campaigns together would be grand *

I like how its done now.

I'm not good at grinding, low attenition span.

Having a level cap, no matter if its 20 or 200 is a bad design decision. It's still a cap, it still means you will reach a point where you can't improve your character, and it's GW1 all over again... And this is the moment I quit PvE.

You can make a system thats rewarding for all playersm, no matter if they play 3 or 30 hours per week, and keep it rewarding after 100 or 10,000 hours total spent, WHILE the system being fair and accessible for new players even years after release, and not discriminating casual players.

PvE doesn't need Perfect Balance as long as it doesn't enforce grinding to the max.

The key is having the gains at higher levels getting smaller and smaller, and the levels themselves much harder and harder to get. Logarithmic flat power level curve with power differences small enough so they don't lead to discrimination, without stuff like having certain builds viable only for the highest levels.

No level cap - infinite character development please. Just Do It Right.

u improve ur chara thru other ways
ur supposed to improve ur skills and ability to play the game well
ur characters "power level" is defined by how good u r at teh game,
not how much time u spend levelling up by killing easy-to-kill monsters

apprently "role-playing" a skillful character is cooler than actually being a skillful gamer

other rpgs:
@ lvl1 -- ur "role-playing" aka "pretending" to be a weak character, no matter how good u r at the game
@ lvl 200 -- ur "role-playing" aka "pretending" to be a strong character, no matter how bad u r at the game

^this is a better design decision?

There is no such thing. If there is a difference, however small it might be, people will use it to refuse people into their groups. I also don't get why a number going up is considered character development. My character doesn't develop in any way, the number before his name just got higher.

"Levels" didn't even matter anymore after Prophecies. With Factions and Nightfall, you would be between level 18-20 by the time you started the real game and storyline anyway. Leveling up was purely in the training areas. With GW2, I'd like to see a similar system, but maybe allow us to display our EXP-based level after the cap has been reach, simply just to display how much time the person has put into their character.

I kind of liked that, for the most part, getting to a higher level and improving the numbers on my character was never that big a deal. It was always more about getting better at the game as a player. To me, it always seems odd when people want to get better and better stats in GW, because that's like saying "F*@# this Half-Life game! Why won't Gordon Freeman level up?"

Nobody says that, of course, because that's just not what the game is about, save for getting better guns later in the game's progression. I guess I just don't know why Guild Wars can't be kind of like that too (and incidentally, the mantra of "skill over time spent" is pretty much exactly that).

This guy is onto something .

Level cap depends on the game itself... if you dont want level cap then monsters will be tougher to kill. Personally I would like a high level cap... say at least 70+ or so (haha they did say its gunna be like WoW anyways). Then we would know who is truly dedicated to the game. (And make progress semi-hard, not like going from 1-20 now which is too easy). Then all the guys who play to grind can get lvl 70+ and say yeah.. i pwn!

For pvp I would like a system where everyone is the same level (obviously) cause sometimes we see a lvl 19 in RA or HA =/

Yet the "They" you refer to have no relation to Anet whatsoever.

I would like a cap on your abilities (attribute points cap for example) but not a level cap. Right now your level status bar just goes up and resets and goes up again ... but you stay level 20. I have nothing against displaying the actual character level as long as the actual power is limited, at least in (all forms of) PvP.

Truth be told (after thinking about it a little more), if the game is well-designed for replayability it's not going to matter much what the level cap is, or if there is one. The balance issue might still apply if there is no level cap, but you can at least partially mitigate that in various ways.

(As half of the posters in this thread have already noticed, the level cap isn't so much the point anyway; it's how fast you reach it.)

The main thing here is content, and stuff that brings you back to keep playing the game. Once your character is finished (as much as you're going to want to develop it, anyway), you still want something to do with it, or you might as well stop playing the game. Some people start new characters when they run into this as well, actually. But replaying content with a character who's already finished it is somewhat pointless, and doesn't tend to be much fun, even if it is a challenge.

Basically, the game has to give you something to do. Many games actually DO use levels for this "something to do", which to be honest is a cop-out; it is a cheap way of increasing the number of hours the player is going to want to play without actually putting effort into giving him/her genuinely new things to do. I'm not opposed to providing the option (hence why I don't think a level cap is fundamentally necessary except maybe for balance reasons), but it shouldn't be the ONLY answer to the problem.

So, where the level cap plays into this; all you need to do is to make sure players can reach the power level they need to be at to play all/most of the content within a reasonable, and not frustratingly long, timeframe. GW did this pretty well; where it fell short was giving you things to do after that point. ArenaNet made some attempts to improve longevity here; firstly the Challenge Missions that nobody really bothered playing; later they added Hard Mode, and then there were the dungeons in EotN. The problem is it still only takes a few months before you run out of things to do.

Oh, and then there were titles. Titles/accomplishments/whatever pretty much fall under the same category as huge level curves; they exploit the grind reflex of players to provide replayability without actually providing content. There was that rainbow phoenix at rank 10 KoaBD, but even if you actually wanted that - less likely if you aren't a character class that can use it - it's not much of a reward to give for the extra effort all of that takes.

Basically, ArenaNet fell short on answers in GW1; to some extent this is inevitable (I know well that no man can create content as fast as others can play through it), but I do think it possible to do better. I'm just hoping they don't use levels for the same purpose in GW2.

The cap should be 69 .

Anyways I won't buy GW2 if I can't play for free for at least a few weeks of testing. Anyways, you start a new character to learn from the profession, so you're always improving no matter what level you are (current). Seriously, the cap shouldn't go that high, the 69 number is a joke, and it should be around the 30's-40's, max 50, but anything higher is just not woth the time, you basically couldn't experiment the whole game with each profession/race (not that many people can in GW1, but at least you can be "good" at three or four professions).

And no matter what everyone says about their utopic-like game, multiplayer online games can't reward "casual" players because the game never ends. If everything was more balanced and all that crap, without the opportunity of grinding, then there wouldn't be level caps, and this would be some of those crap Xbox/PS games I hate because I feel I wasted maa money (Factions anyone?).

Don't complain about the few rewards for casual players, is just not possible.

I personally think the cap should be 50 as many other people have stated.... its achievable but I;m guessing not in one day. If i really play a chara now I can get then to 20 ina day easy. So Im thinking it should be higher but no cap is nuts.

Unless like Loki said that the health and power lvs stay constant after say lv 20 (just using this as an example) then the lvs would only really show how much xp your chara has and that would be ok. As long as max power/energy lv is not achievable in 1 day but does not take forever. Then I shall be happy

I reckon the level cap should be 100+. Yes its high but it keeps players motivated to finish the actual storyline while also working on their goal level. I know lots of people that have played guildwars and after they reached level 20 they lost interest in the game -_-.
Since guildwars 2 is said to have a massive story then by the time the player finishes the story they should be level 60 from just the quests/missions. Then the player can do the other Secondary Quests which after completing them all would get you to level 80 then the player can do mini games/pvp to work up to level 100. Make it easy to level up by making mini-games like the ones in eye of the north and making hidden islands were people might explore and kill monsters for xp and great rewards. In short make Guildwars level Cap high and make it fun and easy to level up. Make us do lots of things to get our levels up instead of doing the same thing over and over again (farming).

In the End i'm sure arenanet will think of something even better than this and make guildwars 2 leveling fun without too much grind.