Why Raise the Level Cap Again?

Some of you guys haven't played a lot of MMO's, have you? SWtor has raised the level cap only once so far and you're already complaining.

And playing the same thing over and over again is progress?

Practice makes you better so yes, I do call that progress and it gets you ready for harder content.

Been playing MMO's since UO. Doesn't mean I have to like level caps. I quit WoW for the very fact that the level cap was getting out of hand. I quit FFXI because the level cap had stayed at 75 for almost a decade then out of nowhere starts raising it to 99 making all the content over the years completely worthless. Abyssea killed that game. 5 levels didn't bother me too much in swtor but I still hate it. If it goes up to 60 I probably will leave. No point in playing a dying game that also loves to continue to kill content while adding new content at a ridiculously slow pace.

Level cap increases are not content, simple as that. Its lazy and it boggles my mind that people actually are in favor of such a lazy design.

So I guess you missed the part about us getting another "Makeb" style expansion, more daily areas, FP's and Ops? Sounds like you don't want to bother to continue to level up your chars so that to me is lazy.

Well what you really get in terms of problems with level cap inflation is twofold.

A lot of content can become obsolete, so there's no longer a return on a large body of invested development resources.

UI/ability bloat. If you have a well designed MMO interface at the initial level cap, it doesn't take many expansions with new abilities to start running into problems with having too many abilities. Peoples preferences vary, a lot of serious PvE folks try to trim their displayed abilities down to 15 or less (I've even seen UI's set up for just 6-10 abilities). PvPers tend to get more out of utility abilities and typically will have more things bound. I think for most people though somewhere in the 20-40 ability range things start to get unwieldy.

Now of course, there are things like detailed flight sims, where you control inputs might number well over 200, but even then, the ones you actually use frequently and may need to use quickly will be much fewer in number. Depending on complexity it might be 6 - 60, but if the number it toward the high end, some of those will be things where you have plenty of time ( 5 to 20 seconds, enough to look away from the situation, operate the control, and get eyes back on the display again ).

In general, I think that for talent and ability additions, the smart thing to do would be to add horizontal width to talent trees rather than extra height, and possibly make core abilities unlocked by talents a bit more expensive in terms of points. The thing is to have a choice of two really desirable options at the same level, but price them so that only one can be afforded (and you have to design so that reaching the top of the tree is at least as good as or better than only going part way up). Done well, you can open up playstyle variation, absorb extra talent points, and offer new abilities, without overloading the UI's ability to display abilities for a particular build. So you get new abilities, but there's a choice of do you want the new ability or the old ability at this level/slot. Adds interest and options without ability bloat.

If you can do a good job of dealing with content loss and ability bloat, then a level cap raise isn't really much of a problem.

There's just the trivial detail that doing so is really hard.

Well it's normally the case that a level cap increase accompanies some kind of expansion that contains new missions, new story, new things to do. In order words, content. It might not be what you want to see, but nevertheless it's content.

Makeb gave us one new OP and an extremely condensed planet that could be cleared in 3 hours. Big whoop.

And no I don't want to bother to continue to level up my characters because they are already capped. How about releasing relevant content instead? Sorry, but raising the level cap is terrible. You like leveling so much then go make another alt.

No - I think you and others in the thread are missing the real point.

Almost all of the best FP content was done before release. The ones since haven't had the same production quality, and variety in bosses. The Ops have generally gotten better with each one, and we are up to 7 now.

BW doesn't get enough funding from EA to put out a lot of endgame content.

So: increasing the level cap again makes the situation even worse than it is at 55 - there are only a handful of HM FPs to do, and only half of them are actually good as the ones we had at 50.

Same thing will happen to Ops, where at least we have 4 now at 55, and the mechanics in EC can still be a challenge to pug groups.

If the cap is raised to 50, all the initial content from release, especially the FPs, will be completely obsolete for endgame, and there will be less raid content, which is already lacking for most players.

SWTOR has had a problem since launch with not having enough endgame content in general. They are finally catching up to filling it out enough, and a level cap increase will undo that progress.

This ignores the quality issue. They simply do not get the resources to make FPs as good as when they developed the game initially. I'd much rather still be running Directive 7 or Maelstorm Prison HM, etc., than the current HM FPs, which weren't selected at 50 for HM for a reason - they aren't as good.

If I want the old content to remain relevant and "challenging" then I'll simply equip level 50 gear (implants, earpiece, relics etc). I've actually done this in the past and it's fun.

I'd be happy with having the cap increases be around two years apart (which about what the rate was in WoW and felt like a reasonable pace to me). But if an MMO with this EQ-type progression system just flat out didn't increase the level cap? I don't think I'd play it.

MMOs need to periodically release new raids, new pvp options, new side games, and yes new level caps.