i think no level cap is actually good, i just hope the new leveling system for NPC is good balance

It depends on the soft cap after doing all normal content (not farming old spots or generated quests).

I'd be surprised if it is over 100.

level caps svck. I'm hoping that the xp required to level up never really skyrockets at all and that xp is earned in really solid rates too so we can get to 10s in all SPECIAL categories and still have plenty of perk points to go around. Ideally we could hit like level 100 in 50 hours or less.

Nope.. No level cap is a good thing.. I've never really cared if there are level caps, just as long as I don't hit them before I'm done with the game.

There will be cheats and mods that get people to max sooner. If people want to play as omnipotent freaks, then they should be able to in single player games.

The only problem because of no level cap is the possibility of respec tokens. It is very easy to screw up your build in certain games since very few games have the skills completely balanced. With a respec token, it is possible to fix a character's build. If there is no level cap, then there is no point to respec tokens. Just play a few more levels so that you can fix your build. Of course, it might take 20 levels to fix a character's build.

Eh, I guess I'll just never understand the "if I can't level up more, what's the point?" view.

My first character in FO3 hit 20 in... maybe 12 hours? I didn't finish the main quest until around 25 hours, and I played that character for a total of 75 hours. Leveling up, while fun, isn't the end-all, be-all of gaming.

I personally don't like the concept of respec'ing a high-level character. One time when you're first leaving the vault? Sure, that's fair, you haven't really done anything yet. But once you've gone down a character path, made choices, and experienced the benefits and consequences of those choices, I don't see why rewriting your character's history should be an available option.

How about, if you're unhappy with the choices you've made, you go forward making new choices to become the character you want to be? Let your character live with his mistakes and redeem himself through his actions. Lots of RP opportunity there.

I know they said we will level faster than we did in Fallout 3, but just for a reference, I am currently 52 hours into a FO3 play through and am at level 24. I still have the Pitt, Point Lookout, Mothership Zeta, and a few others to do yet. I haven't found all the skill books or bobbleheads yet, but I know where the bobbleheads are, and should be finding the rest of the books in short order. Most skills are at 100, or close enough to it, and I only pick perks that make me more lethal.

Anyway, even if we level faster I don't expect to be much higher than about level 40 at the same 52 hours, and have plenty of content left to play. Matter of fact, if the 400 hours of content rumor is true, I would only be about 12.5% of the way through it all. Given that it takes longer to level the higher you are, I would not expect to be much over level 150 to 175 after 400 hours leaving me with 100 or more perks and SPECIAL stats to improve at that point.

This game is going to consume my life!

I'll be surprised if I ever even make it to level 100.

To be honest, there's something to be said about "finishing" your character build earlier on and still having enough game left to use all of the fun toys you now have. That's my problem with a lot of games, is that they give you the most fun stuff to use so late in the game that you barely have a chance to use it. Since Fallout 4's system is so nonlinear, though, I'm not too worried about that for this game.

How special your character is would depend on your leveling speed versus game content. If we started off the game with around 200 perk/special points, we'd all be concerned about how special our characters are, but we don't.

Let's say that we divide the game content into numbered parts and we gain around 10 levels for each part we complete.

Part 1 - Our character is unique based mostly on the starting special we chose and the first perks we picked or specials we increased
Part 2 - Our character is unique based on how we increased our starting specials and the perks we picked - further specialization has taken place allowing us to build up to our chosen play style
Parts 3 through 19 - see Part 2
Part 20 - we've gotten Amazing at several things, and very good at most others, our character uniqueness starts to suffer
This trend continues until Part 27 where we're amazing at everything and uniqueness is effectively eliminated.

However before our uniqueness starts to suffer, we've already potentially completed a huge portion of the game. Even replay value isn't negatively effected since we can complete parts 1-20 with an entirely different build than we did the first time.

I don't believe this is in any way a problem.

Those who want to soldier on for 270 levels to unlock everything can do so. Most people will have made a new character long before that to experience these perks sooner, and experience the game differently.

Getting that perk at lv200 is not going to change my experience at lv5, and everything upto lv200. So i'd still make a new character to try out a different "path".

Probably we'll see a mod come along and do that anyway, locking SPECIALs and putting in a level cap. But before then nothing is stopping people who do not want infinite levels from putting in some restraint and saying to themselves "I will NOT level up SPECIAL's, and i will NOT pick perks beyond lv".

Seriously, go play Shadowrun the Table-top. There is no limit what to your character can buy, but there is so many options that you have to be super-dedicated to a character to get everything (or at least everything you can within the games rules, which is at least 4 times what is in this game). Fallout 4, may not care if you become a MOAT eventually, but it has nothing on games like Shadowrun, White Wolf, GURPS, Unknown Armies, or BESM. The limitation here is a players desire to change character and play-style at certain points, and not some annoying upper restriction for the players who like playing one character (namely me).

I like the idea of no level cap. I doubt i will be dedicated enough to unlock everything, but i have the option if i want to.

I imagine that by the time you have managed to gain every perk/upgrade you will have finished most of the game anyway and most of the skills will be not that important.

The idea is you can be anything and do anything. Yes by the end you can do everything, but the important bits (early in the game) you only have a few perks. That is what makes the game so replayable, the early parts of the game you can only do missions/quests by the perks you have which are limited.

Well I never hit a 'cap' in MW or OB or Skyrim even though they were there. My role-play was always finished and my character retired long before capping out. Usually just left them at home with more wealth than an Empire and a spouse (if Skyrim).

Just because I can master every skill, I don't. Just because I can be leader of every faction, I don't. It just gives me a lot more re-play value leaving things for other PC's to do who would be more focused towards those goals. The only part that really svcks about it is since I retired everyone before level 50 in Skyrim I never got to see the high level dragons, which to me is just stupid cause I'd have to role-play my characters 'out of character' to get high enough level to see them. Just really stupid to force non-role-playing in a role-playing game IMO.

Anyway, hopefully I won't be missing some major quests or enemies due to actually role-playing a realistic person and not a demi-god of all knowledge and ability.

It can work as long as they do indeed have content that is challenging to that level

Same here LeBurns. My PCs focus on the skills they use most. Even when forced to pick a perk or put points somewhere, I dump them in a skill I don't use. Sometimes I might give that "new skill" a try and it may open up a new strategy for a replay using it, but I almost always default to my usual play style. This cap thing will likely never be an issue for a vast majority of players.

Level cap or not, depends on the exponential growth function. 2^n as experience required for next level would go quick in the beginning and come to a crawling halt quite early. I'm not a fan of having an arbitrary cap, but I also want exponential requirement to advance any further. So 2^64 = 18446744073709551616, meaning nobody would ever get that far even if it's fully possible. Even 2^32 = 4294967296 would be considered quite a hefty bit. Not saying the factor should be 2, but saying the limit should be time spent on it, growing exponentially, and not even possible to reach insane amounts of levels even if spending near infinite amount of time on it. Would probably mean that everyone that have spend considerable amounts of time in the game would be at the same level ±2 levels after a few years (veeeeery roughly ).

The answer to the OP was,

Of course its a great idea to have no level cap, cause people will actually want to play that long on a single character rather than make new ones.

Further more its like this, if they set another level cap of 20, 30, 40, or 50.....

There would still be a whole crowd of ppl saying that having a hard level cap was in fact bad design.

It looks like the player may be able to impose a level cap on himself, which is something I would be happy to see.

Even with xp exploits its an decent chance that the xp demands take an major jump at that considered the max level by design making leveling a lot after that require lots of grinding. Very common in MMO for the last level, WOW has it at 50, 60, 70, 80 and so on.

Likewise, all my characters have preferences and while they might change as I play(which is why I don't use "builds" when making a character) it's very rare that I end up capping all the skills, in Skyrim most of my characters tend to stay at around level 15-20 and I still get a couple hundred hours with them.

I'm gonna wait and see how the rubberband encounter system works before I make a call on this one. If the molerats at level 5 are a challenge, and then later the molerats at level 50 are only slightly less challenging because of the equipment I've picked up, then I don't see a problem.

I think the rubberbanding doesn't apply to a geological area, but to certain mobs.

Mob A = 5-10

Mob B = 20-25

Area's that are harder are simply populated with Mob B. It would be pretty weird if stepping across some invisible boundry would turn a Molerat into an unstoppable killing machine, or back into a one-shot-gone pest.

Would be pretty confusing to the player if the exact same enemy, without any visual difference or different name, can be so much tougher all of a sudden. I'm sure that would lead to some frustrating deaths.

Been my understanding from what I've read and the discussions that I've listened to that its going to centered around the player level so as you level up the things you encounter also level up comparably stat wise.

If that's actually the case then in the lower levels its going to be the equipment that's the deciding factor for most fights, and after you hit the point where there isn't anymore uber gear to gather up, but continue to level, its the statistics and perks that will make the difference. Once again though as you level and finally max out and perk out with everything you can get your hands on, you'll still level, the stuff you encounter would still level, and the fights would actually get Harder and more challenging the higher you got.

That's just been my understanding of the system from the developer comments though, I could be entirely wrong which is why I'm waiting for release to confirm it.

Not entirely.

Its true enemies do scale up (or down, depending how you look at it) with your character. They only do so within a specific range.

For example Mob A is set to scale between level 5 and level 10. So if you are lv7, that mob is also lv7. If you are lv3, that mob will be lv5 because that's the lowest it can go. On the other side if you are lv14 that mob will be lv10 as that is the highest it will go.

So to some extend enemies do scale with your level. But the upper and lower limits on it prevent the mobs from scaling all the way up with you. So at some point certain mobs will be easy. This prevents silly things of getting killed by a Radroach at lv50 while you're wearing Power Armor (something that DID happen in oblivion and was heavily criticized). As a result you do get to feel more powerful as you level up, enemies that were previously hard or impossible will eventually become easy.

The bottom range of it prevents certain enemies that were meant to be powerful and menacing to be really easy. Would be silly if you, fresh out of the vault and equiped with the Vault Tec Peashooter, went out and butchered a Deathclaw.

Later when you return, better leveld and beter equiped, to previously challenging parts and you will be able to overcome that challenge that previously forced you away.