Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Would level 5 exist during the scope of CH ONE once out of EA?

That doesn't make level capping the solution and gear can only do so much to sway the balance of any given encounter. I agree that a lvl 4 team with all the best gear you can possibly get in that act is going fair marginally better a level 4 team that just has some decent gear. A level 6 team with some of the nice gear, but not all is going to rofl stomp a lvl 4 team no matter what gear they picked up. MOST of your ability to handle an encounter comes down to what abilities you have at your disposal and a little creativity as to how you approach it.

So let me say this in another way... IF they do level cap us per act and act 1 is lvl capped at level 4 you are going to have a few types of players

1) The veteran who has played through EA and played all the classes and knows all the side quests and has some idea where all the BEST gear is (I assume that by the time we get out of EA some of the gear you can find currently and/or are reward for doing certain quests will change/ disappear). We've hit lvl 4... we know we aren't going to get any more levels till we hit the next act... what the majority is going to do after hitting cap is only go do the quests/ explore the areas that give them that gear. No need to do the quests that don't yield useful gear... unless you are super greedy and want all the gold :P... I for one will probably skip some of the side quests that don't yield decent gear if they cap us at level four because why do a quest that yields useless gear and no XP (especially if it isn't super relevant to the over arching story)?

2) The new players who will after hitting level cap and realizing that is the case will attempt to just move on to the next act (and only go exploring for new gear because they are having no luck against Nere for example), because even though this isn't an MMO the mind set that MMOs have given lots of players is once you out level an area you move on to the next one.

3) New players who quit before they ever make it out of act one because some of the fights are just not doable at lvl 4 unless you do them a certain way (Example:

4) New players who use guides found online to help them through said difficult fights and locate all the best gear and spoiling the fun of exploring and do figuring out how to get past the encounter.

5) New players that are indeed completionists and do more exploring to try and find everything to spite the level cap.

Right now I am only talking about act 1 of course, because once we hit act 2 all players will be on fairly equal footing as far as experience and knowing where to go.

I guess what I am getting at is couple of things 1) Don't level cap and punish people who explore 2) if you ARE going to level cap capping at 4 is bad spot to do it for act 1 as no amount of gear can make up for what a level or two can do for you

Level capping is not achieving balance its a hinderance and a deterrent. Honestly if I was a new player capped at lvl 4 I would probably give up on trying to fight Nere (in fact I had given up on that fight until I ran across said spoiler). I would instead take one of the other paths and/ or just move on with out dealing with that quest (which may or may not come back to bite you in the ass in a later act).

I get that Larian probably doesn't want us out pacing the content thus making things too easy, but capping us at a level that is easily achieved before you even get half way through the first Act then ramming us in to nearly impossible fights is NOT the way to go.