Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback The EXPERIENCE CURVE

I don't think that tying level cap to difficulty would be viable. Levels come with specific increases in power and ability that they would have to figure out how to make viable. Then Larian would have to go through and adjust every combat in very minute ways, since higher level cap means enemies will have more abilities and such corresponding to the included levels as well. If they go that far, then it's genuinely more reasonable to just leave the level at maximum possible and adjust from there.

Sounds suspiciously low ... but maybe i remember it wrong, will check next time i will play.

Nah ...
They have nothing to do with Cthulhu ... maybe except the look.

This threat, as far as we can say out of EA so far ... is at best City-level ...
Maybe it will raise to State-level at best, but i dont expect anything too much abowe that.

Thats the problem ... it cant.

What you can adjust is level of your enemies, number of your enemies, equipment (spells and consumable included) of your enemies, AI of your enemies, ... stuff like that.

But you cant just change story, where the Absolute wants to take over the World ... to take over the City, just bcs you dont want end-level game.

And THAT are threat levels i was talking about.
I see its called tiers in DnD ... feel free to read here, if that interests you: https://makeaskillcheck.com/5e-tiers-of-play/

If not, the important part is this:
1st—Levels 1 to 4: Local Heroes
2nd—5 to 10: Heroes of the Realm
3rd—11 to 17: Masters of the Realm
4th—17 to 20: Masters of the World

And thats exactly it ... Larian originaly said that they want to have max level 10 ... a little later they changed that to "somewhere around 10" ...
Meaning we are in 2nd tier of threat ... Heroes of the Realm.

Meaning (as far as i understand it) that our party of heroes should be able to defend, or destroy some big city (like Baldur's Gate) ... but they are not strong enough to rule whole world, as they would be at end of next tier.

If Larian would let you level up to 20, we would reach power level, where we can challenge Gods themselves ... that is not something you can easily "change" in difficiulty settings.

If BG3 level cap is 12 it will feel like a half baked game. Based on how many maps we can see even with EA, if each map gives you one level- feels like a safe assumption, act 1 will take the player to lvl 6. We have 3 acts so there is NO way that the level cap will be that low. If you take the 6 levels per act as a baseline, you would be able to reach lvl 18-20. That seems a lot more reasonable.

Especially knowing that i hit lvl 4 before even starting the under-dark. No way that entire zone wont get you to lvl alone. Easy lvl 20

Zero percent chance. There's no way Larian is going to raise their initial estimate of level 10 to level 20. That's 5.5 times the total exp and a crazy amount of additional power.

We might get level 16, max. But more likely 12-14. Leveling up in D&D slows down at higher levels because higher levels require so much more exp. 1-6 for Act 1, 6-10 for Act 2, 10-14 for Act 3 sounds reasonable. You level up 5 times in Act 1, 4 times in Act 2, and 4 times in Act 3.

I would be *thrilled* to get level 14.

That also sounds reasonable. Lvl 16 is still a lot of content, it’s a lot better then 10 or 12. If it was lvl 16 I would be happy with it. Guess we will only know on launch, unless someone has data mined the required exp already

Me too, imo it's a suitable cap where most classes get a class feature, the characters won't challenge gods and leaves a reasonable amount of levels left for a potential expansion. And, even that is a stretch from the original level 10.

Level 16 seems way too high and personally I would get pissed being so close to the coveted level 9 spells but not able to reach 'em :P

I'll get satisfied by 12, I'll applaud 14.

Concidering how far are levels from each other ...
I dont believe we will get steady "x levels per Act" ... it would basicaly mean that every next Act would need to be even biger than previous one ...

It seems more likely to have 1-6 in Act I ... 7-10 in Act II. ... and 11-12 in Act III.

Just pitching in to agree that levelling up at the beginning of EA seems unnecessarily fast, that the speed at which we gain levels would reasonably drop off significantly as we get to higher levels (i.e. I hope we don't get more XP thrown at us to keep a constant levelling up speed throughout the game), and that even a reasonably complete playthrough shouldn't result in hitting a level cap way before the end of the game.

That said, I don't expect Larian to spend time and effort implementing levels that no-one/hardly anyone is going to get to, and I understand that Larian don't want the end game to be wildly unbalanced because some players might be maxing out XP. And I actually prefer a game that doesn't reward grinding for XP overmuch as I like to be able to make choices that roleplay my character rather than do absolutely everything to gain as much XP as I can, but I'm too weak-willed to not do that if the game is going to award me more power and abilities so if there's a level cap that I'm going to hit if I do everything then I feel that gives me more freedom to NOT do certain things that don't fit as well with my character concept (I do realise this may just be my problem!).

In short, I am comfortable with there being a level cap at around 10-12 but Larian have a tricky balancing act in spreading the XP to make sure it's not hit too soon, unlike in EA.

By the way, I wonder if our characters could or should continue to accumulate XP even after they've hit the cap. Even if they can't level up any further in the initial campaign, it would mean they didn't lose out if further levels are implemented in any subsequent expansions. In fact, I'm not sure whether even in EA the characters continue to accumulate XP behind the scenes.

Pitching in to also agree on EA leveling to be too fast.

Broading the XP problem:

You can see the players base as an XP spectrum. On the left the rushers going for a fast play and only going for the main quest. On the right the completionist. Somewhere in the middle are the average Joes larian are targeting.

Problems are two: 1. in dnd the DM should adapt content to its player base. Larian is making a preset one size fits all. This is a limitation from porting to the game format.

2. Anyone to the left of the average Joe will experience an increase difficulty forcing them to either improve their skill or add more side quest (essentially it solves itself). However everyone to the right of the average Joe would outgrow the content and game would fill too easy. A problem that not only doesn't solve itself but reinforce itself (as you would go through content even faster).

That specific group is the problem. Only solutions I forsee for those are a combination of: higher difficulty preset (moving Joe to the right) - easy to implement and must have but not so great because the player doesn't know before it first playthrough how much he is far from the average Joe. Diminishing side content XP rewards (not ideal and boring but effective). Capping max XP given per area (basically cap how far the completionist can drift from the average Joe, has the advantage of not shoving a path: player can play whichever content and decides to stay in an area or move further if he hits the XP limit).

I don't like any of the ideas, not because they are bad, but because they all feel like a leash, one tighter than another. IMO it must be done in a subtle way, my idea will be based on a fact that game is split into Acts. I suggest the XP needed to lvl up to increase as a slow progression during the act (like we have now), but to increase in huge leaps after reaching the level meant for the next Act. For example lets say your cap lvl for the area we have available now is 4 and you need 2000 XP to reach lvl 5. Now imaging having to gain 10000 XP instead. The amounts unprecedented for that area. But amounts that are an absolute norm for the next Act. It is somewhat similar to your second idea, which I think feels like a leash the least.

Upd: same of course can be done by respecting the 5e XP system and tweaking the numbers to more or less fit the source material. 2k and 10k are just for an example

Upd: that system would also let you to easily catch up by the time you reach the next Act

Acts / Areas, potato / poTAto. The baseline is you need a cap on XP gain. My only concern with act vs. areas is that you could do the content in a non linear way in BG3.

This actually is another problem: it would make sense to have some scaling of monster depending on what you have already achieved: e.g. if you go the risen road or swamp and arrive level 4 at the goblin camps we should see more monsters or same number but wearing more Armor having better spells.

As i get it. Your initial idea involved hard restrictions on further leveling, while my involved the deformation of the XP curve, so it is not only about Acts/Areas (even though I liked the potato anology). In the former case player can feel being railroaded, while in the latter it would be less noticeable, if at all, because you'd still get this XP if you want to stay in Act 1, but it'd just be a drop of water in the ocean.

Non linear way should pose a non linear challenge, IMO. If you want to rush towards Baldur's Gate as a lvl1 character, you can try, if you are skilled enough to survive the road. Killing one tough enemy in the Moonrise area would grant you 3 levels at once and ease your challenge. This is a reward for going off the beaten path, but this is also a risk to it, that you get potato (s)mashed.

This is the problem: if you don't cap the completionist he is going to overgrown content especially in a non linear environment. If you want to cap without having a hard cap you could have a diminishing return per area albeit it would shift from the 5e of XP per monster killed.

Your point is self addressing like I mentioned players going the harder/faster route are automatically handled. The issue is coming from the completionist type that would trivialise content because they simply want to explore everything.... You don't want that. Alternatively you could have monster hp/dmg/number scaling based on the player level so the completionist is still challenge (that's what a DM would do). But you will want some cap to reduce the extremes.

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You mean, within the area they've overgrown? But how would they do that? There will be no way to progress past your level in a given environment because either you'd be level restricted or have an enormous XP leap to make.

Upd: the only benefit the completionist could get is to farm all the XP from a given area to the bone and have like a 30% kickstart when entering the new area. So they could get next level just a little faster than others. That is what I meant.

Because there are many side quests (a good thing) it is not hard to do: I ll argue the goblin camp is meant for level 2-3. See how easy it is to get the three bosses with the bear at level 4? And that's simply by going through the swamp or the risen road them going center. Imagine you do both then center? Without a cap you might be level 5 already. You d probably one shot gut with a fireball. That's the problem.
Hence yes a cap is needed. 30% maybe I don't know. I d go level. e.g. if you are above level 4 you cannot get XP from the goblin camp and get 50% less from the swamp or the risen road. That type of caps

I definitely don't want a hard cap to exp gain, where I gain zero XP from additional monsters/quests. That would feel like I've been punished for fully exploring the world. If I had to choose, I'd want a soft cap where exp gain is decreased. Combined with the fact that it takes more and more exp to level up in 5e (3800 for level 4->5, 7500 for level 5->6, 9000 for level 6->7, 11000 for level 7->8) this should be sufficient to keep completionists at a reasonable level.

E.g., For every 500 exp you are above the "Act-Expected Max Level" you gain 10% less exp (multiplicative) from monsters.
- 500 exp over? 90% exp gain
- 1000 exp over? 81% exp gain
- 2000 exp over? 66% exp gain
- 4000 exp over? 43% exp gain
- 8000 exp over? 18% exp gain
etc. You never gain 0 exp from monsters/quests, and it takes going *way* over the soft cap before it really becomes noticeable. If Act 1 was "capped" at level 5, completionists in might be able to reach level 6, but effectively it'd take ~2x as much exp. And like 20x as much exp to reach level 7, if even there was that much exp available.

I don't think that exp should be capped before a zone/act's max level. If you go and do a bunch of stuff before facing Gut such that you're level 5, then that means you probably had a harder time doing that stuff and so you're rewarded for that earlier effort with an easier fight. The important thing is that we don't have runaway exp gain, where a player remains overleveled for the rest of the game.

I agree that we shouldn’t feel punished for fully exploring, but don’t want to feel overly incentivised/coerced by game balance into killing every enemy or completing every single quest where that doesn’t fit with my roleplay either, or indeed into using XP-maximising exploits.

I do like your idea for subtly and progressively reducing the rewards for XP harvesting, if that turns out to be needed to amplify the effect of what increasing amounts of XP for higher levels will already do to keep players at roughly the same level through the game. It would certainly be a lot less intrusive and dispiriting than some players hitting a hard cap way too early.

I’m still perfectly fine with there being a hard cap at some point though, as long as it’s sensibly balanced. I still don’t want Larian spending time developing and testing player levels that are only likely to be achieved if someone goes out of their way specifically to maximise XP rather than play the game as intended (uncomfortable as I am with the implication that there’s a right and wrong way to play!). And actually, though this isn’t a big thing for me, I do quite like getting to a maximum level and feeling I’ve made my character as powerful as they can be for the endgame, as long as I don’t hit that point too early and as long as it takes a reasonable level of work and side exploration to get there.

Going from 1 to 18-20 over a single campaign that will probably last 6-8 weeks Faerun time? Most adventurers don't reach level 15+ over an entire lifetime.

I think 1-11 is already stretching it. I would save 12-20 for a possible BG4.

I will always prefer solid logic in the game world over a player's need to get to max level and basically just get everything. High level characters need to remain rare and high level PCs also require very specific content. When they get powerful enough to threaten entire kingdoms and such. I don't ever want to see level 13 city guards or other nonsense like that.

Agreed. I'm not sure whether your comment about preferring logic over getting to a max level was in response to the final sentence in my post immediately above but, just in case my point wasn't clear, this was about seeing this as a (minor) benefit of a level cap, rather than arguing for Larian implementing the maximum number of levels. I'm perfectly okay with a level cap of 10, though if there *isn't* going to be a BG4, or expansions to BG3, (and I hope there are both) then level 12 might be more satisfying given what people have said about the way levels work in 5e.