Get rid of skill cap. : V - Skyrim

» Tue Sep 07, 2010 3:44 am

Hmmm remove a universal decimal system and make it limitless in scope.

I see trouble with this TBH, 100 is a good number it can broken down into %, tens, singles, quarters, halves, thirds.. etc.
Very easily, it defines advancement, keeps things simplier to create and use.
Allows players to track to minor degrees what effects it has, its use in game.
How much a gain you gain on leveling, where they need to focus in.
Stops the Skinner effect of the need to constantly rush through button bashing for that next rush of pleasure.
Caps are good, they also allow a leveled envioment to match better, allow you know you're a master at something.
Stop you from becoming mindlessly getting overpowered by ignoring other game features.

Honestly it's easier to just reduce cost of spells, make their effectiveness increase and limit underwhelming overpriced effects.

The other point at some point the game just won't cope with adding more and more effects to the player.
I still remember when I modded Baldurs gate 2 to give me thousands of spells, the game pretty much broke.

» Tue Sep 07, 2010 3:33 am

Why?

if i bring up racial diversity (i already brought it up but i wont push it any further) in real world this topic would get closed, but the same concept exists in TES lore . . . dont act like you dont know what i mean

» Tue Sep 07, 2010 9:26 am

toddie boy already told us that there is no cap. he said its impossible to reach anything above a certain level [unless you are really going for a record]
i think it was the podcast or the phoned in interview.

» Tue Sep 07, 2010 10:29 am

if i bring up racial diversity (i already brought it up but i wont push it any further) in real world this topic would get closed, but the same concept exists in TES lore . . . dont act like you dont know what i mean

I think that stealth races should have stealth skills start of higher, combat races combat skills higher, magic races magic skills higher. But I don't think we should cap the skill level by race. And when I said racial stereotypes, I wasn't thinking of racism or anything I was just thinking about the idea that players have to conform to their character rather than vice versa. It was a poor choice of words.

» Tue Sep 07, 2010 4:04 am

I dont know. On PC you could probably be able to simply bring down the console and do it that way. But as for removing the skill cap, I think that it would absurdly overbalance your character.

» Mon Sep 06, 2010 7:59 pm

Put the effects of higher attributes on a curve instead of linear scale. The higher it gets, the less each point benefits you. This could let you have "infinite" anything but with unrealistically high requirements (since a curved scale never reaches 0)
As the level increases, the requirement to reach the next level goes up, and the effects of that next level drop a bit.

» Tue Sep 07, 2010 12:24 am

I did a search, couldn't find this specifically, so sorry if it's been discussed.

If the main quest, and other such things will scale according to your level, and some side quests, or dungeons, or whatever, won't, then why does there need to be a cap on skills? Here's what I mean...

No matter how high your skills or level is, you will have the scaling of the important parts of the game, however....after I beat the game, what if I want to continue to up my skills, and increase my magicka to obsurd amounts to that I may create, and cast the extremely nutty explosion spells. In Oblivion, and presumably Skyrim, you have this intelligence cap, so my magicka will never go any higher than (for example) 410. Now if I enchant, my gear, and do some fortify spells before casting, I may reach like..1100 magicka... but why? Why isn't there the ability to go higher? If a player wants to go higher, and has the money, and time to create the spells that will cost 20k magicka, then why not allow them to continue increasing their skills, and/or level, to allow that to happen?

This could be solved by simply increasing your skills based on level automatically in game, so if they didn't have a level cap, you would continue to gain magicka as you increased level, and could do whatever it is you wanted to do with your game. In my opinion, that would allow players to have the game customed more to them. Like it or not, some people do want to play the main quest, side quests, and then go on a rampage and be the almighty, destroying cities and everything with huge overpowered spells.

Now this would apply to everything, marksman for the bow and arrow shooters, and strength for the big sword swingers. I simply used magicka because I was always irritated with the cap, and the limited ability to cast spells that cost too much, or create spells under limitations. Players want that customization.

People wouldn't be trying to come up with cheats, and ways to exploit the magicka system if they didn't want it. So just allow it, and it would take care of itself.

As if we don't have enough people complaining about being able to become god already...
Plus it would remove that bit of sense of completion of "I finally became the best that I can".

» Tue Sep 07, 2010 6:01 am

Then perhaps add the availability of console command on the console systems. Perhaps go into the start menu, and be able to bring up a console type command prompt and add things as you might be able to do on the PC?

» Tue Sep 07, 2010 10:32 am

I think that caps should be moved up, but only depending on races.
Say, a Bosmer should be able to get to 115, while an Imperial should only be able to reach 100.
Basically, any of the skills that races get bonuses for at the start of the game should receive a higher cap.
Dunmer get a +10 for Destruction? Okay, well they can go up to 110.
Khajiit get a +15 for Sneak? Cap is 115.

I dunno. Just throwin' out ideas....

This Races thing is a really good idea it actually means picking a race has some end-game effects rather than the there being a boost at the beginning but it having no effect what race you are later in the game. This happened in EQ2, a traditional mage Race the Erudite could end up having no Advantage over a troll until SOE brought in Racial Traits I think one was making casting speeds for erudite 20% faster or something along those lines.

» Tue Sep 07, 2010 2:53 am

Then perhaps add the availability of console command on the console systems. Perhaps go into the start menu, and be able to bring up a console type command prompt and add things as you might be able to do on the PC?

I Don't Think this would work because of trophies/achievements, unless it did it the Saints Row way and disabled achievements when you typed in a command.

» Mon Sep 06, 2010 9:10 pm

I'm pretty sure a console player would sacrifice achievements if a cheater console, due to game and quest bugs, would actually allow him to complete the game.

» Mon Sep 06, 2010 11:04 pm

The only problem with this theory is that the game is made to scale with you for just those levels. It could go higher if you can go higher but it might get extremely screwed up. For example, Look at Dogmeat or Fawkes in Fallout 3. They were supposed to gain x amount of health with every level. Which is fine if you have just the main game. But if you have Broken Steel, they end up with huge amounts of health, and with them both being exceptionally strong anyways, you can easily decimate anyone in your way because they simple will not die. That was only 10 levels that the developers didn't think about, imagine the game breaking effects of having all skills and attributes scale indefinitely. By the time your intelligence is level 150 you would probably have a high enough magicka pool and magic skills to destroy anything in the game with 1 shot, regardless if it scaled with you.

In Oblivion you could do that at level 20 with 100 Destruction and 100 Intelligence. It isn't easy to mathematically scale things like that. Also, there is the fact that you can only go up to 255 (with enchants) for a reason There is only so much data that this part of the game can hold so eventually it will reset to 0 or your game will crash, depending on how the game is coded. Also, in a realism sense a person could only get so strong before they reach the human limit. I know it is Nirn and all but still.

To summarize: "Game balance"

:)

» Tue Sep 07, 2010 6:03 am

Because they dont wana.

» Tue Sep 07, 2010 7:07 am

While playing games (any....), complaints on forums due to too easy to level up / increase skills (or attributes), too fast to reach max level. IMO, there should be no max skill or max level. While increase level / skills, each skill will be harder to train / learn. Of course each race have their own specialized skills / attributes. Give some enemies insane powers, so we players have to train skills alot to be able to get rid of these. There may be some who uses console to fix things, but I hope most of us do not cheat and spoil the game :-)

- klevs

» Mon Sep 06, 2010 11:44 pm

I prefer a level cap.

» Tue Sep 07, 2010 6:13 am

toddie boy already told us that there is no cap. he said its impossible to reach anything above a certain level [unless you are really going for a record]
i think it was the podcast or the phoned in interview.

This was never said. He said you can go above level 50 but it gets extremely slow. I did like the idea where if a Race starts with a higher skill he can max it to a higher skill. It is in no way racist, because if that is racist than having any kind of starting skill increase is equally racist.

» Tue Sep 07, 2010 7:19 am

Yes, I wanna do 100 damage with a daedric sword at level 75

» Tue Sep 07, 2010 8:45 am

I agree, to save the world you have to be pretty damn cool:) I just think that the crazy spell making alter could be better used for those people who really want to go crazy and explore the limits of the game after they complete a lot, or finish most of the things to do.

Once I'd finished most of the quests I just made a awesome Mage character who would kill instaneously anybody within 100ft radius no matter the difficulty. I enjoyed the sense of freedom the spell making altar gave you and the ability to create fun spells that turn everyone against each other etc.

» Tue Sep 07, 2010 8:00 am

I honestly think the best solution is to up the bonus amount of magicka you can have by a bit. I mean it. I NEVER used magic actively in oblivion OR morrowind simply because the magicka costs were absurd. They should increase the rate of magic restoration ( I mean the rate at which you get your mana back) or the overall cap by a bit. IT was always annoying to get a new spell you just got to the right level for but not be able to do it because you max magicka isnt high enough.

Another simple solution would be to decrease spell costs.

» Tue Sep 07, 2010 10:44 am

there is no skill cap, so....

Edit: wait, skill as in player level? or skill like enchanting? still, technically no cap for either so it doesnt matter.

» Tue Sep 07, 2010 2:21 pm

That would be extraordinarily bad. Say this Twinkie represents the normal amount of psychokinetic energy in the Skyrim area... According to this morning's sample, it would be a Twinkie—35 feet long, weighing approximately 600 pounds. I repeat, that would be very very bad.

» Tue Sep 07, 2010 7:56 am

That would be extraordinarily bad. Say this Twinkie represents the normal amount of psychokinetic energy in the Skyrim area... According to this morning's sample, it would be a Twinkie—35 feet long, weighing approximately 600 pounds. I repeat, that would be very very bad.

Ghostbusters right? lol (love the signature btw)

» Tue Sep 07, 2010 5:29 am

The only problem with this theory is that the game is made to scale with you for just those levels. It could go higher if you can go higher but it might get extremely screwed up. For example, Look at Dogmeat or Fawkes in Fallout 3. They were supposed to gain x amount of health with every level. Which is fine if you have just the main game. But if you have Broken Steel, they end up with huge amounts of health, and with them both being exceptionally strong anyways, you can easily decimate anyone in your way because they simple will not die. That was only 10 levels that the developers didn't think about, imagine the game breaking effects of having all skills and attributes scale indefinitely. By the time your intelligence is level 150 you would probably have a high enough magicka pool and magic skills to destroy anything in the game with 1 shot, regardless if it scaled with you.

this, except in a positive light. If i've been playing long enough to get to 200 or so intelligence, you should have game-breaking powers. i want to be able to take out everyone in a city with one huge fireball, that i shoot down after jumping 250 feet in the air with my game-breaking acrobatics skill.

» Tue Sep 07, 2010 12:54 pm

*snip*

Because it needs to stay in the realm of realism within the TES mythos. There is a limit to everything, same goes for magicka and skills. If there is no skill cap, then someone could keep leveling athletics and be The Flash and be able to jump from Nirn into the Black Seas of Oblivion in the sky and so on. They are limits to what your character could realistically do. A spell that costs 20k magicka is a spell of the caliber that sunk the continent of Yokuda. That's something no one person could logically do. That's what the limits are there for.

» Tue Sep 07, 2010 10:32 am

Hey. the gods gave the dohvahkiin his power. if he can sink yokuda, well the gods let him do it so itas all good.