Suggestion for Console Editions: Toggle in Options Menu to Remove EXP Cap

ThePoey

So these days I primarily play Baldur's Gate on Nintendo Switch, but I am no stranger to the PC versions of the game.

Modding is obviously a huge highlight of playing this game on PC, which can't be done on the console versions (without considerable effort), and one of the things I miss the most is being able to remove the EXP cap.

It got me thinking if this is something that could ever be included in the console editions via a simple toggle in the options, much like Rest Until Healed. It feels like something a lot of people would really enjoy, as the EXP cap is incredibly easy to hit, especially in the Baldur's Gate.

Is this at all feasible? Would it potentially break the game?

StummvonBordwehr

I fully second this - and the same goes for the mobile versions

jsaving

The XP cap being so easy to hit is an argument for keeping it, not eliminating it, because BG1 wasn't balanced for higher-level spells and would become significantly easier than intended without the cap in place. But considering players can already adjust the difficulty level at will, which basically makes the game as easy as they like, there's no additional harm done by providing a check-box to lift the XP cap.

Chronicler

I think people are used to there being a cap because of some programming restriction. Like "You can only level to 99 because we only put room for two digits here in the UI". As opposed to here where it's an intentional design choice.

Of course, people have been playing without the experience cap since forever. It's one of the easier things to mod. Even has a surprisingly small impact on your power, since each level requires twice as much experience as the level before, so you can only really go a bit beyond the cap before levelling isn't really worth your time with the amount of experience this campaign offers.

I think to a certain extent those playing on the consoles might have to come to terms with an experience closer to the game as designed though. The beamdog devs have already incorporated a bunch of popular mods and tweaks into the base game, so this sort of thing isn't necessarily unheard of, but I suspect the consoles with their lack of mod support will never have the same comprehensive options as the PC where the community has more power to take the initiative.

As far as it being feasible, I'd imagine any barriers to beamdog adding it would be more bureaucratic than they would be technical. Hasbro has certain terms about what they can and cannot change, and they've got people who have to determine if something like this is an effective use of their manpower, and they've already got the story mode as their catch-all solution to difficulty problems, but like mechanically I don't think your phone would explode if they added the feature or anything.

jmerry

If you can access the files at all, the level caps are just some entries in human-readable text files. That's as easy to mod as it gets. Well, except for going beyond level 40 in BG2 or level 30 in IWD; that requires you to edit a bunch more stuff to support the new levels.

But fundamentally, this is mod material. It isn't something that should be included in the base game. The hard-to-solve issue here is the difficulty of modding console/mobile versions of the game.

And agreed about how much/little impact ignoring the XP cap can have. I know and use a trick that allows characters to track XP beyond the BGEE cap (you're only reset to it when you load a save), and those characters usually end up at something like 270K XP. Which is only about one level beyond normal BGEE. It can be an impactful level - 5th level spells for clerics, grand mastery for fighters - but it's just one level.

jsaving

If you have a singleclass protagonist and are looking to modestly breach the XP cap, I agree that game balance would be only modestly affected. But it's a different story for some popular multi/dual builds like FMT, whose power is mitigated in BG1 by the inability to cast stoneskin, or dual FC/RC, who can't quite regain 7 fighter levels before the battle with Sarevok. Fighter/druid multis like Jaheira also find themselves not quite able to cast iron skins. Even a modest 20K increase in the cap would be enough for each of these limitations to be shed, exacerbating the already-large power imbalance between singleclass and multiclass characters. I'd still come down on the side of players having the option to do what they like but I don't see the impact on balance as being especially small.

ThePoey

It’s definitely not really a desire to ease the difficulty, more sort of one of those silly Baldur’s Gate player specific annoyances. Mainly, I just hate that my character stops leveling. I want that next tier of spells! I want that extra APR. etc. it’s right there!

Especially if you’re going solo, it’s just fun to see how high you can level your character in BG 1.

Lots of good insight from everyone here though! Hopefully The Devs notice and can consider this.