I've been role-playing in a lot of different sorts of games, including Role-Play video games for many years now, and the concept of a level cap is something I've never truly understood, and it has aggravated me for awhile. I've frequently thought that they were added to give completionist gamers a point to stop at instead of driving them mad with the potential of never being "done". However seriously, aside from being a TES tradition, from the standpoint of Role-Play gaming, why are all skills capped at level 100? I would understand making the advancement curve from level 100 and up next to impossible, but halting all advancement seems a peculiar thing to do to me, even true masters of a skill never stop learning about their skill, and the same should be true in this game. There is no mysterious number at which skills become irrelevant, and their is no particularly good reason to stop advancement of any skill early. Particularly for magic, there is only very good reasons to continue to advance your skill beyond the supposed maximum. My question is does this mildly aggravate anyone else, or is this just me?

I've heard complaints about how magic becomes utterly useless because of the level caps, combined with leveling. Being as a lot of players are suggesting a partial leveling system for bosses and such I'm surprised this issue isn't of more concern, particularly for mages who will be handicapped at high levels facing up against characters that just shrug off their already maxed spells that consume almost all of their mana even with boosts. Is it really just me who sees the flaw in this system?

no level cap.

Totally agree, I can understand it if the cap at 100 is for general advancement in certain skills, but as I have mentioned on another thread you be able to advance beyond this if you dedicate the time. What I suggest is that you should be able to greatly advance past 100 by the use of hidden items such as books, or even teachers and this added time you put into further advancing is these skills should not be levelled with the game.
This would allow you to develop some powerful characters. I say so what if the game becomes easier for you as a result, it should be because you character is bad ass!

This has always bothered me as well, being and of the old skool PNP class of RPGer that I am. The single greatest mod for Morrowind (This is my opinion only, the greatness of your mods may vary) was GCD which put soft caps on leveling every 50 or so levels. Basically if you starting skill was 5 then you could easily get 55 but from that point forward it took twice as much work to advance in level and once you hit 105 it took three times as much work. If your starting skill was 40 then the first break was at 90 and then again at 140. This one mod is what kept me playing Morrowind. In Oblivion a hard cap was put on all skills of IIRC 255, even the GCD clones were limited in scope and potential.

I think the biggest reason for the arbitrary skill caps are as a direct result of the more action oriented playstyle of modern RPG video games. It used to be that your attack skill was measured against your opponents Block, Dodge and/or Armor skills then things like Light, Terrain, Stance and each individuals rate of movement were factored in. Having a raw skill of 25 might mean that it would be impossible to hit your opponent, whereas a raw skill of 125 might mean that you would have to make your dice roll as if you skill were only 45. Computers can generate the random "dice rolls" and do the calculations way faster then we ever could, but the newer gamers don't like the idea that they could "fail" when they hit a button on thier controller. (possibly the biggest gripe for Morrowind)

Its too bad the technology isn't good enough to make genuine animations for failures, such as an opponent dodging your strike, or your blade deflecting off their armor instead of making a solid impact et cetera. This would allow for both systems to be used, making the player feel as though they were making genuine strikes, but still their skills determine their likelihood to hit. The thing is even in Morrowind since it uses a classic RPG set, while it wasn't animated, in the role-play sense that is precisely what is happening, it just wasn't within the capabilities of technology to display that sort of action. In all honesty I don't know how many D&D players there are here, but anyone who's ever played against a monster with incredibly high agility knows how accomplished you feel when you finally roll a high enough dice role to hit the bloody creature, with proper animations it would give you the same feeling of accomplishment while not destroying the fact that most enemies aren't just going to stand in front of you and exchange blows...

I think we should just appreciate that BGS has not implemented a over all "level cap" like a lot of RPG's. What I mean by that is different characters will hit different caps based on their skills/race/specialization. I know you're talking about skill caps but I thought I would just throw that out there.

There were no skillcaps in Oblivion. It's all about skills.

^ what? yes there were...

I doubt their will be a level-cap. Todd Howard said he regretted ever putting one in Fallout and said it would likely never happen with them again in this style of game. (that was in an interview a year or so ago)

yah no level cap would be nice... and also something else besides stat gains (alone) from level ups.

I agree wholeheartedly with this topic. And, I've heard true masters at crafts (i.e: Concert Violists and Guitar Legends) are still learning and getting better. There is no end to becoming better at something, and if dedication and time is given, then your skills should go past 100.

Yes and I'm hearing a few false complaints. We all know there is no Total level cap, and I agree that is a good, thing, being critical and pointing out that there is room for improvement is not a bad thing though, and this topic is not about Total level caps, its about skill level caps...

Yeah, I want a cap I wear that has my level on it.

But in all seriousness I hope they do it like Daggerfall.

Completely agree. I like the ceiling of character progression to be so far out of sight at the beginning of the game that it might as well not exist, and knowing my characters' attributes and skills sometimes started close to, or even above half of their maximum value always took something away from the experience for me... though how character advancement and stats work in ES games makes up for it for the most part, before taking mods into account.

I'd be happiest if the level/stat caps were limited only to general game mechanics/GUI (255 comes up a lot), or to some extremely high value you'd never expect to reach or need (999?). I prefer slow advancement, and a significantly slower advancement at very high levels makes sense. I find that beyond the usual caps, whatever focus on level increases there was in my gameplay fades more into the background, and skill increases come as an occasional pleasant surprise rather than a driving reason for a character's activity. And even that makes sense, in roleplay; a high-level hero is increasingly likely to improve as a result of doing what he or she does, rather than training with the specific intent of becoming good enough.

Sadly I believe that the technology is already there, it's just being used in other useless areas like digital eyelash rendering and realistic collision for leaves and individual blades of grass. I'd be happy with Morrowind level graphics if it meant a more robust animation palette. Hell, if it meant true classic RPG gameplay and mechanics I'd settle for Doom graphics! But there are too many gamers today that want thier shiny anti-aliasing at maxed out resolution rendered through their SLIed graphics cards who will drop the game as soon as a shinier one comes along. And those type of gamers prefer games that let them use their own mad skillz with a controller rather than building a skilled character in true RPG fashion.

No level cap, no levelling at all. Attribute and skills caps though.

There should be limited (realistic) attribute progression based on player actions. Ex: carrying heavy loads, wearing heavy armor, using heavy weapons increases strength; running, swimming, and jumping increases endurance; speechcraft, reading, alchemy, spell casting increases intelligence. (casting high majika cost spells increases willpower), etc [0 to 10 for attributes]

Skill progression should be near identical to OB. Ex: Using a sword increases your skill with blades, etc. Training should be perpetually available IMO even if its more expensive and involved. Trainers ranked as they were in OB. [0 to 100+ for skills]

Luck and perks should be set during character generation (birthsign, race, player option). I absolutely hated perks in FO3. How the hell do you become luckier over time? FONV made fun of that when you buy a cetain 'implant'.

It might also be interesting to have to 'maintain' skills and attributes or see them decline over time (slowly).



NPCs in gameworld should be treated the same way otherwise the PC becomes a god. Which happens in MW, OB, and FO3.

I'm pretty sure it's in place so that people wont get their long blade skill (PLEASE let there be a long blade skill) to level 200 and get insanely overpowered

Yes to skill capping from me. I spend most of the time exploring, and in these games that does take a while. In the latest game where I'm a custom Hunter (nature survivalist or something) class, I'm at lvl 25 in about only a weeks play, with some skills up in the 90s. So when I feel specialized enough, but also with good skills all round, I'm ending up with a superman character by the time I actually start the main quest (if I do at all, haven't even joined any factions yet).

How I would do it:
* No more trainers and skillbooks etc after 75. You can only get there by practice.
* Or the other way around, only master trainers can get you from 75 to 100. For major skills in speciality branch.
* Rest is capped at various levels. Maybe for misc skills you don't even get to use high level trainers, and capped at 50?

I would love a system like dice based, where you pick i.e. 6 major skills and 12 minor skill (when you have a lot more skills to choose from). Remaining skills are hidden and simply rolled against its governing stat, i.e. your level as a percentage, where minimum and maximum values apply. Then we get to set a specialization based on many skills, but without filling up the character sheet with junk. The selected skills provide the boost to feel special in those. I'm sick and tired of becoming uber in everything, and get access to everything in the game just because I'm a high level. Even if we get to become masters of only the 6 major skills, it's still 6 times more than in real life, where you typically only become a master of a single skill during a lifetime.

Btw, this requires a lot more skills, and in the past I've suggested a couple of extra speciality branches, like Nature and Social (only Combat, Stealth, and Magic doesn't work very well).

Maybe when you're a master of your 6 major skills, you get to choose one that you can still continue to hone, to become a grandmaster in, say capped at 125 or 150, but at a much slower pace?

I'm just throwing out ideas here, but something needs to be done. I always become the superhero, when all I really want is play my character over a very very long time.

I'm okay with the skill cap, but... The whole brick wall you run into in Oblivion at lvl 50 kind of made me mad. I play on xbox so I couldn't just mod my way around this. No, in fact the way I got around it was a little more... tiresome...

you know, I think your right, an arbitrary skill level cap is pointless. spells should scale in power with your power. tier 1 spells will obviously svck at 100, but they would do loads more dmg than they did at lvl 1. and dont stop at 100, just let them go, but make it take forever to gain level. The games so far have been large enough to support this scheme, all we need is challenging content to make it viable.

I think that the inclusion of skill caps is what creates the God-like characters that people get bored with. Once you hit the skill cap for Blade you might as well switch to Blunt, then Unarmed. Then you should just make all your attacks magic. Once Heavy Armor is maxed you will have to switch to light. Eventually you will be a master of every skill in the game. However if skills have no maximum value then there is never a reason diversify unless it is part of the character concept. After a few hundred hours of play you'd end up with either a character who is pretty good at everything or one who is unmatched at just a few choice skills. The key is to make getting the next skill point progressively harder than the last.

I like building toward a God character. after I attain it and get all the armor I want. i make a new game with a different area of expertise.

I understand that concept, but once again there is a solution that was thought up long before video game RPGs even existed... You simply make the experience required to level exponential. Fact is after 100 it would become relatively impractical to continue TRYING to level up, once in a blue moon though you will gain a new level on skills you use a lot, above the 'mastery level' which is 100. There are masters of skills, crafts, and professions who are more masterful then other masters, and to the untrained eye, its difficult to discriminate because your talking about a difference that took years or decades more to develop, but that is so subtle that the majority of laymen can't discern between one master and another. That's the way it should be, I just think the theoretical limitation is immersion breaking, but I'm not implying make everything easily leveled beyond one hundred and just let players go rampant, just make it possible to continue to level indefinitely... If implemented properly, the gameplay times it would take to merely reach level 120 would be so impractical due to the exponential increase in required experience that players would quickly give up any efforts to try and 'over-level' their characters.

This is the exact point I'm stressing in role-playing and he's hit it on the head perfectly. In D&D characters were never satisfied to stop with their skills and start working on other classes and raise them all to the same high level to become some godly jack of all trades, rather they kept leveling up THIER character, and roleplaying THIER design, since there was no cap, character individuality was maintained, and the concept of TRULY roleplaying is never lost. This is something that the TES series will never have so long as they maintain these skill caps, after all once a player has maxed a skill, they will almost always want to switch to a new skill so that they can at least become moderately good at it, which eventually leads to mastery of that skill anyways. The point is all incentive to continue using master skills is lost, they become utility, not roleplaying, not fun, there's no goal, and the satisfaction quickly dies after you've been stuck with no reward using a skill the exact same way for an extended period.

Getting rid of skill caps, even if it is virtually impossible to level past 100 allows character to maintain their role in the game, andthey don't switch but become even better masters at their skill set. That is the idea behind roleplaying, and I think video games and completionist ideals have really ruined that for a lot of gamers.