[BG2:EE request] Raise experience cap from 8M to 9M
Winedogger
Member Posts: 17
8 million is a ton - enough to really do anything you want with any single-class, dual-class or 2-class multi-class character. BUT, 9 million would allow my solo Fighter/Thief/Mage to reach 9th level spells.
I just soloed my F/T/M through the first game again and was remembering that it was frustrating reaching that cap in BG2 knowing that the best spells were just out of my reach.
For other characters in general, IMHO an extra million at those levels wouldn't make a significant difference so there doesn't seem much of a downside. Kinda fun for solo triple class though.
I just soloed my F/T/M through the first game again and was remembering that it was frustrating reaching that cap in BG2 knowing that the best spells were just out of my reach.
For other characters in general, IMHO an extra million at those levels wouldn't make a significant difference so there doesn't seem much of a downside. Kinda fun for solo triple class though.
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Comments
2) Just because a feature or functionality is available via mods, it doesn't mean it's not reasonable to suggest it becomes a part of the vanilla game. Not everybody wants to or is able to mod their game.
3) No need to be rude. Last thing this forum needs is people afraid to post their ideas for fear of being ridiculed by users who think they have some sort of moral high ground because they play the game this or that way.
I would also like to take this opportunity to address the criticism that calling stupid suggestions what they are is going to so scare people with reasonable suggestions that they will be afraid of posting them. Well, if they're reasonable, I promise, I won't ridicule them.
8M is already a ridiculously high cap, so might as well go to 9. Or 10, what the hell. Me, I've never managed to reach 8M with a single character, even when I spent most of SoA with less than 6 chars.
Unless you're willing to use exploits like the one with the infinite Fire Giants in Saradush (provided they don't close it), and that takes time. If you're the kind of player who's gonna keep importing the same character over and over so it can reach level 200 and be unstoppable, suit yourself. I can't see the fun in that, but whatever.
Raising this XP cap won't affect my usual games -- my usual party has at 4 to 6 people in it. But if I ever wanted to solo a F/M/T, then the higher XP cap would actually help, and it's cool to know that option would exist. Usually solo games aren't my thing -- the NPC interactions are too entertaining.
But if someone out there feels like grinding for an extra level, power to that guy.
You have a point and that's exactly why this kind of changes should be implemented only through mods. With a mod everyone can set whatever cap level he likes (lower, higher, etc.) without affecting other people games.
[talking to self] Maybe I can bring this one to the dark side after all, mwahahaha [stop talking to self] @Kilivitz
I disagree on this. I really believe that the world would be a better place if more people learned how to mod their game. I'm available to provide advice on how to mod the game to whoever is willing to learn.
You would have to implement new items to make the other changes you describe. That kind of thing a) unlike cap-raising, would be a content-change, and b) unlike cap-raising, would create balance issues. Cap-raising is different because it only affects players who actively choose to grind. The extra experience ceiling wouldn't affect any of that, because the ceiling already cannot be reached unless the player self-consciously grinds to reach it.
I agree that some kind of feature implementation to increase difficulty is needed, but that's a separate issue, and I don't think a lowered EXP ceiling would be the best way to implement it. YMMV.
Why F/M/T should be as good in combat as pure fighter, if he/she spends less time on practicing?*
Why F/M/T should be as good in thievery as pure rouge, while also focusing on magic and combat?
Why F/M/T should be as powerful as pure mage, who's spending his time on studing magic, rather dividing this time to three different areas?
There is no real reason why F/M/T should do the above.
*Technically, he can't have the grand mastery, but it is not a huge handicap.
1. I don't like making changes to one of the best games of all time "just because".
2. I don't want FMT's running around in my multiplayer games doing everything making me stoop down to a house rule just to fix it because one guy wants to play a certain way. You want to do that you create the house rule. 8+mil is easy to get in a 2-3 man game.
A slider sounds sweet as long as Core Rules forces it to 8mil.
BG1EE would be better fit for an xp cap increase. In fact it would fix a lot of class balance issues as the game currently stands.
Raising the cap... Well single class characters already get everything they could've ever wanted, with the exeption of sorcerers, everyone max out their spells, get tons of HLA abilities, basically enough for every fight for a day. And multis... I think we can agree on it that they are strong enough the way they are. They hit their THAC0 cap, have more hp (from CON bonuses). And if you are missing some spell casting slots, honestly, that's what wands and scrolls are for.
But I'm not necessarily against it either. I usually play with full party, so it wouldn't really make a difference for me, and it's not like characters with 8million xp are not powerful already. So I might be ok with a lillte raise if that would make others happy.
But removing the cap would allow a solo player to reach 48 millionish xp (right?) which would be lvl 120+. I mean the gods themselves don't have that high levels
I don't like experience point caps. I think they limit gameplay--once you hit the cap, there's no more "carrot" to make you keep playing. Naturally the story should be enough, but for a lot of players it isn't, and knowing that every quest you complete will add to your XP total and potentially yield new abilities adds a layer of excitement to the game.
Not having a cap wouldn't ruin game balance, except that if the game has too much content in it already (i.e. too many XP rewards), you'll see it more clearly. Imagine that the game has 256,000 XP to achieve. It doesn't, but this is just an example. If the cap is set to 100,000, then that means the game has 2.5x more experience points available--2.5x more content--than you can actually use to its full potential. On the other hand, if there's no cap, then the amount of experience in the game (256k or 8million) becomes something that you can acquire at your leisure without worrying about whether or not you'll hit the glass ceiling. If it turns out that you're too powerful for any of the challenges in the game because you've gained too many levels, then that means one of two things: A) there's too much XP in the game to begin with; or the game's challenges themselves aren't challenging enough.
When it comes to the IE games, I suspect that the XP cap was introduced not because of balance concerns but because the full level progressions for each class weren't yet written. At this point, however, we have every class's progression up to level 40; there's no reason not to (theoretically) allow characters to hit that. The limiting factor should be how much XP is available; and for a full party of six characters, BG1 doesn't have much to worry about players becoming too powerful. Neither does BG2 or ToB, for that matter; the "balance" issue comes in when you're playing with a party of two or one, where that XP isn't being divided by six every time. But at the same time, that's how D&D balances itself too.
As far as I'm concerned, the only "cap" that should exist in any video game is the game's engine--in this case, the tables stating the progression of levels.
The removal of XP cap is a first step to make the game more fun at it's end.
An XP cap can help to balance this out - those who want to complete all of the sidequests can do so while still gaining extra gold and items. Those who don't want to complete all the sidequests can still progress through the main plot.