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{{trope}}
[[File:9999_7354.png|link=Disgaea
In many games with [[Character Level|Character Levels]], you'll probably never reach the highest level possible. Maybe this is just because of scaling and pacing of experience, and the game simply isn't long enough for you to naturally reach the maximum level. Can [[Fridge Logic|make a player wonder]] why the developers bothered to make such a pointlessly out-of-reach level cap.
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* The original MMORPG example was ''[[Asherons Call]]'' -- the level cap was logarithmic, with the hard cap on experience being 4 ''billion'' at level 127. Given that the game was launched at the same time as ''[[Ever Quest]]'', which had a level 50 cap, this was rather jarring for the time. It took most of a ''decade'' for any character to actually reach the cap, although MMORPG inflation made it easier a few years after that. A later update changed the cap again -- to 4 billion experience points ''per skill'', putting the actual level cap near 300.
* [[Hyperdimension Neptunia]] gives you the option of this. The default level cap is 99 and you'll have opened up every purchasable item and be strong enough to pound all the foes if you hit it. DLC gives you the option of bumping it up to 999, so you can max out every stat for every character and improve your odds at the DLC dungeons.
* ''[[
* ''[[
* Most of the [[Metroidvania]] iterations of the ''[[Castlevania]]'' series end with the main character around level 50 (and the max being 99).
** In ''[[
** In ''[[Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance
** In ''[[Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia
* In ''[[Diablo (
** This is because shortly after it was released, ''Diablo II'' ended up with hundreds of Level 99 Hardcore Barbarians on Battle.net, much to the chagrin of the game designers who were certain reaching level 99 in Hardcore (where dying even once permanently ended your game) was impossible. Several nerfs to the signature Barbarian skill (Whirlwind) were applied, only for other game-breaking abilities to be uncovered in other character classes. Finally, they simply applied a patch that set all experience gains for level 80 or higher characters to be 1/10th normal, all past level 90 to be 1/100th normal, and past level 95 to be 1/1000th normal (most non-boss enemies, even on Hell difficulty, give only one experience point per kill at that level). By mathematically guaranteeing that players would need to kill 10 enemies per second, 24 hours a day, for nearly a year to go from level 98 to level 99, they finally succeeded in killing off interest in attaining the maximum level.
* In the ''[[
* In ''[[Phantasy Star Online]]'', you can plausibly play through the entire story on even the highest difficulty level at about level 80 or so, especially if you're playing online or multiplayer. The level cap is 200.
** It isn't as bad as it seems. There's no diminishing return. Rather, people rarely hit 200 because you have [[Loads and Loads of Characters|SO MANY CHARACTER SLOTS]]
* ''[[
* [[Nippon Ichi]] games like ''[[La Pucelle Tactics]]'' have ridiculous level caps where you can get to 9999 even though the maximum level needed to win the game is around a hundred. You actually do need huge levels to kill the [[Bonus Boss]], however.
** ''[[
** ''Phantom Brave'' [[Serial Escalation|escalates]] since you can level both weapon AND character, meaning you can beat the final boss (and probably the first bonus boss) if you have the optimum skill/weapon/created character loadout for such a task at around 40/40, some have gotten it as low as 30/30 (Pump those weapon HP skills!) And not only is the max level 9999, but, while the highest character re-creation level in Disgaea gives you 10 extra skill points per time, Phantom Brave can give you as many as *255* skill points each time. A character that has gone to 9999 twice at 255 points each will likely hit the 'true max.' It also supports an extra digit in the stats column. (at this point any attack resembles the scores from Gigawing) [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1P2L3W5RtE Here as an example is a 9999999 attack mage].
* In ''[[
** ''[[
** In ''[[
** In [[
*** The DLC quests give XP based on your level; if you're above the initial cap of 30, you can gain over 1,000 XP from completing one. On top of that, most (if not all) enemies you encounter are worth 50 XP per kill (the maximum any creature will give), and it'll quickly add up if you seek out groups of enemies.
*** As well, the normal course of gameplay for each DLC will usually grant at least five levels, so when combined with the main game, it's very, very common and easy to build a Level 50 character within 50-60 hours of play.
** ''[[The Elder Scrolls III Morrowind
** ''[[
* In ''[[Star Ocean Till the End of Time
** 255 is the typical level cap in the ''[[Star Ocean]]'' series. ''[[Star Ocean the Last Hope
* ''[[Paper Mario the Thousand Year Door
** ''[[Mario and Luigi Bowsers Inside Story
* In the ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'' series, you'll likely reach the end of the storyline around level 50, while the level cap is 99. There are usually a few [[Bonus Boss|Bonus Bosses]] that require you to level grind a bit, however.
** ''[[Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep
** ''[[Kingdom Heartscoded
** In ''[[
* The ''[[Tales
* In ''[[Digimon World 3]]'', the level cap is 99, but most Digimon can achieve their unnecessarily powerful top-level Digivolutions by about level 60-70. While the final boss does require massive offensive and defensive power to beat, by that point in the game you have access to items which can boost your attack power and other parameters without having to fight, so it's entirely possible to beat him at level 30.
** In ''[[Digimon World 4]]'', the cap is 999. Even playing through all three difficulty levels, you're unlikely to reach 300.
* While ''[[Guild Wars]]'' has an [[Inverted Trope|absurdly low]] [[Absurdly Low Level Cap|level cap]] of 20 (reachable in some campaigns ''in the starter area''), its sequel has a level cap of 80, although levels will allegedly take about the same time no matter how high or low.
* In ''[[
* ''[[
** ''[[Mass Effect
** ''[[
** ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[
* Since the release of the [[Epic Level Handbook]] in ''[[
** In practice, its difficult to get a character from level one all the way to twenty. In a pencil and paper rpg, real life tends to disrupt the game before that point and if you're lucky you have a group that can play ''once'' a week. Be grateful if you have a DM motivated enough to keep the game going that long. Also, modules and monsters written for this level are less common. For this reason, ''Pathfinder'' hasn't yet released rules that go beyond this level (aside from a brief few paragraphs for just in case.) And their adventures paths take characters from level one to about level sixteen.
* ''Bots'', before it got taken down, had a level cap of around 2900.
* ''[[Knights of the Old Republic (
* ''[[Clash of Heroes]]'': Depending on the campaign, you'll be around level 7 to 9 when you reach the final boss after completing all the sidequests, out of 10 possible. If you want to get experience, you'll have to find an area with random encounters and walk around until you trigger them. Random encounters rarely are higher than 7, so this takes a while. Better yet, you might have to do this for your units as well if you need to use one you haven't used much before (or simply haven't had access to yet).
* Gauntlet Dark Legacy had a level cap of 99, even though the game could be beaten by level 60 or so.
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** The several highest-level players are all level 256, so that's probably the level cap. Not that it counts for much, since you can dominate almost anything the game can throw at you with a primary stat of 845 (level 30); level 256 requires a mainstat of ''sixty-five thousand'' and takes years of powerleveling to attain.
* In ''[[Lost Souls MUD]]'', the maximum level is 675. According to developers, the limit only exists because of integer overflow problems on XP values, and if anybody were to actually reach level 675, experience would be re-implemented using floating point math, removing the cap.
* ''[[
* The ''[[
** ''[[
** ''[[
** ''[[
** ''[[
** ''[[
* For ''[[Nethack]]'', the experience level cap is 30. This sounds reasonable for a fifty-floor dungeon; but, around experience level 12, conventional methods of level-gaining - kill stuff - are no longer efficient. A more regular interval emerges for experience levels 20+ but getting from 12 to 20 looks daunting on paper. A wily player has to develop other strategies to compensate for the growing violent horde while scraping together whatever other experience levels they can for the endgame.
** NetHack's monster-scaling algorithm means that ''avoiding'' leveling past the minimum required (you have to be level 14 to unlock part of the main quest) is a viable strategy.
* ''[[
* Played straight in the story mode of the ''[[
* The earlier ''[[Rune Factory]]'' games had a maximum level of 99, far beyond what you needed to complete the game. ''[[Rune Factory 3]]'' bumps this up to ''10,000''.
* ''[[Zoids]] Legacy'' has a level cap of 99 despite the game being easily finishable ''in the low 20s''.
* Present in the ''[[Suikoden]]'' series as a whole. In fact, it may be one of the more extreme examples. You see, in the series, each new level requires 1000 EXP to reach--the catch is that the amount of EXP awarded to a character after any battle is calculated based on the character's strength/level vis-a-vis that of the defeated opponents. Fairly soon, monsters that gave a good chunk of EXP required to reach a level will give out a mere pittance, and even the hardest encounters in the game will eventually yield a mere 5 EXP per encounter (the average minimum possible EXP). When, precisely, this happens depends on the individual game in the series, but it's usually somewhere in the 60s or 70s, for a game where the level caps at 99. Only the most determined Suikoden players will see characters that have reached level 99, and probably no one has done it legitly with the large number of playable characters (since not all of the [[108]] are playable) ...
* The level cap in ''[[
* In ''[[
* In ''[[Mabinogi (
** Apparently, the "current level" cap is 200. The exploration level cap is definitely 25. But all that really matters for are those who seek to gain as much AP as possible in as little time as possible. The maximum you can get each week while still having a life outside the game doesn't even get close to the cap until your total is many thousands high and your character a veritable engine of destruction already.
* Name any Idea Factory/Compile Heart game. [[Cross Edge
* In ''[[
* In ''[[
** And in Dragon Quest IX, the level cap is 99; you'll be needing over 65535 XP ''per level'' when you get much past 50! Oh, and did I mention that XP is not shared between vocations (classes), so you could be a level 99 warrior but only a level 1 mage? And you can reset back to level 1 if you want, in order to get more skill points and a "special" item related to the vocation...
* In ''[[Heartache 101 Sour Into Sweet]]'', the player's stats can be raised up to a cap of 100. The three uses of stats are to pass storyline checkpoints (which use a simple "Is the stat higher than this value" pass-or-fail check), to give correct advice to [[Harem Genre|girls]] when asked (where points in the relevant stat increase the chance of Ferdinand's advice being correct), and to determine how many [[Relationship Values|relationship points]] are gained when spending time with girls. Storyline checkpoints never require any value higher than 50, advice will reach 100% chance of being correct somewhere between 50 and 60, and it is possible to max out relationship values for girls without any stats ever even reaching 50.
* The power level stat in [[Exalted]], Essence, has an absolute cap of 10. Most magical beings (including the majority of player characters) begin their existence with Essence of 2 and have relative caps. The most common way to increase Essence is through age and extensive meditation -- until a character is 100 years old, they may reach up to Essence 5 with each increase taking months equal to the new rating. To reach Essence 10, the character must be ''several thousands'' of years old and devote a ''year'' of nothing but meditation for the final enlightenment. Characters can go on world-saving (or destroying) adventures even at Essence 5.
* Both ''[[
* Cheaters in [[Progress Quest]] [http://progressquest.com/knoram.php?cheaters=1 indicate] a memory-allocation-based level cap of 2^31, possibly [http://progressquest.com/oobag.php?cheaters=1 amended] to 2^15; a lower one for non-cheaters might exist, but reaching level 99 [http://forum.progressquest.com/viewtopic.php?t=9472 requires] over 20 real-life years of continuous "play" (in a game launched in 2001), so it doesn't make a whole lot of difference.
* In Third Person Shoot MMO "[[
* In ''[[
* ''[[Xenoblade Chronicles]]'' has the usual level cap of 99, but the endgame level is around ''80'', higher than pretty much every other game with that cap. You'll also want to hit the cap for some [[Bonus Boss|Bonus Bosses]].
* ''[[
* ''[[Halo: Reach]]'', while having the average-ish 50 ranks, requires 20 ''million'' experience points to hit the level cap, the distance between rank 49 and 50 being 3 and a half million alone.
* Both ''[[Demons Souls
* ''[[Recettear an Item Shops Tale
* The obscure [[PS 1]] JRPG ''[[Guardians Crusade]]'' had a level cap of ''65535'', even though you'd probably be facing the end boss at around level 50. The reasons for this have been lost in the mists of time.
* Played with by the [[
* If there is a cap in ''[[
* ''[[Labyrinth of Touhou]]'' can be beaten with characters in the 100+ range. The post game [[Expansion Pack|Plus Disk]] content will probably require a level upwards of 500. The actual level cap is far higher than that.
* ''[[Eve Online]]'' has close to 400 skills, which while only have 5 levels each, can take upwards of a month or more to max each skill.
* In [[
* The level cap in ''[[Soul Blazer]]'' is 50. That sounds low, but the amount of experience required to get there is impractically high; you have to reach the cap of 99,999,999 (that's one less than one hundred million), when the strongest enemies give a mere 4,000. For comparison, level 25 requires a total of 150,000 experience -- and at that point your attack and defense are the highest they can get without accessories, and your HP bar has already reached its maximum length and changes color instead to signify additional HP.
* [[Parasite Eve (
** It's also and odd case since leveling up only increases your HP and other base stats by a few points. The majority of your stats come from tweaking your weapons and armors, which they can all be capped to 999.
* ''Sailor Moon: Another Story'' has the typical level cap of 99. Hitting it without cheats takes ages, as higher levels require progressively larger amounts of EXP. However, you only need to be around level 40-45 to survive the last few battles, and anything above 50 makes most characters almost godlike (in fact, at level 48-49 some of them start to hit the HP cap, which is 999).
* ''[[
* ''[[
* Canonically, [[
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