Whats your opinion on the level cap becoming 80?Follow

Hello all.

As many of you know, the soon to be released SoF expansion is upgrading the level cap to 80. I for one think its a nice concept for thoes who are already level 75 and have nothing else to improve except gear. It Shows many good ideas, but also some bad ones:

For one thing, level 80 will make people even con'ed to once raiding material (PoP, etc.) and although it might be interesting to see what comes out of it, it might also be a problem. Even at level 75, some of the year's old raids still required a force, but this new increase has potential to make it simple. Not that im saying it shouldnt be simple after that many years of progression, but it could still cause some problems and skipped content.

One of the good things i think it will do is help people achieve greater things. Back at level 70 you had to be in a "High end raid guild" to even consider raiding things such as Anguish and 2.0s/some 1.5s. But since they moved it up to 75 there has been more open activity and ability to do such things without raiding 24/7, and with it becoming 80 it can open doors to things people only dreamed of being able to do but didnt have the time.

So heres the question: What do you personally think will be good and bad about the new level cap, and do you think that it will help players overall?

I trioed a named BoT boss (the ones in the towers that can drop BP molds among other things). He /conned blue to me (and I'm only level 70), but still had the "would take an army to defeat" message.

I guess this was more directed at the OP. The fact is that the reasons he gives for thinking it might be a problem (raid content /conning even) is already a fact in the game right now. There's no more reason not to do this then there was the last 4 times they did it (raised the level cap). It always trivializes the lower level content, but at the same time makes it potentially doable by smaller groups, and even solo in some cases.

IMO, that's not necessarily a bad thing. It allows folks to progress through older content quicker if they want to, but leaves the truly "top end" stuff hard. There's lots of other economic effects as well, that are IMO much more significant. Honestly though, the top and near top end of EQ isn't really the part that's "broken". It's everything below about mid 50 that is (for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with level increases).

Indeed, But the difference is that there was still some limitations, Everything from pop to anguish raid wise was given a very small margin for level cap increase other than what was already made in thoes expansions. Level 80 is going to make people even con to some of the toughest bosses in EQ wheras 75 only opened that door slightly.

True, but with all the posibilities to get double exp (lon potions, hot zones) it shouldnt take that long. I found 70-75 much easier than say 65-70, but mabey that was just me.

In honesty i can see where it could help and could be problematic, it does give a fair shot to players who dont have 24/7 to get gear and 2.0's or such. But noone will care to raid some of these things anymore, and some are pretty fun and create quality experience during leveling.

I think there would be nothing wrong with implementing level caps to certain older zones or mobs the way they did with Nagafen et al. so that a level would prevented from doing content that is trivial to them.

Aside from Nagafen & Vox, SOE has shown unwilling to put maximum level locks on any of their content in response to rising level caps. If they wouldn't do it for 65, 70 or 75, I really doubt that 80 is the magic number.

This is going to be a stunningly mudflative expansion. Top end single group gear is going 550 hp base, top end raid gear is going to be over 1000 hp base. We're looking at 50khp buffed tanks here. The gear increase, hp % wise, from TBS to SOF is going to be about the same as the increase from pop to endgame TSS! This is not going to be little changes like being able to kill jelvan with 6 people instead of 9. I would suspect some anguish mobs -- at least ture -- will be soloed in the next expansion. Guilds are in demiplane now will be able to easily leap to TSS (dev quote.)

Played off and on for 5+ years and would now be considered casual vs. raider:
(Long response so please bear with me or skip past)


I support the level cap increase. I hope they have sketched out a vision to go to level 100 (means the game is being worked on well into the future...). While on one hand I lament old content becoming trivial it's in the best interests of the game to offer new stuff for end-game players of all types.

TSS gave the 1-65 crew valid new content to gear up (or to stall and AA for a bit) so there is little reason to add under 65 (70...75?) zones. Some well-thought adjustments to old zones are okay though (i.e. make the armor drops decent for the level of the zone)but don't make the Castle Mistmoore mistake (which would have been solved by putting an NPC outside in LFAY saying "don't be fooled by Mayong, I will take you to the real Castle" and have that NPC send you to the retooled high level version. Win-win as you'd get retro high level content without erasing the old stuff (bring back original Mischief too --if any god deserves multiple planes its the jester come on now...).

I don't mind the world changing and evolving but I recognize not all were happy with the more recent revamps [if they made Najena level 80 I'd probably be annoyed too as that is my favourite zone to level in, though maybe it would push me to get 80 hmmm].

I like playing alts (tend to take them to 50s then move on). As that kind of casual player Kunark isn't trivial unless I let it be (though one isn't wrong to do the TSS route instead --depends what is fun for you and your goals in the game). If I chose to not work on an Epic 1.0 till level 75 then it should be easy compared to the original epic struggle it was. [I know people that have done the 1.0 at 75 just because]

I agree that adding many AA's would be a good idea. Throw some bones out there, for example let those with all the other tradeskill AA's open up taboo to their race/class skills (dark elf tinkerer/alchemist anyone?). Alot of AAs could be made available earlier too. Does it really matter if level 50s characters can become overpowered to what was intended 4 years ago? If it keeps the casuals/latecomers moving along why not?

I don't even mind farmers (often cited as the big evil of level cap increases). Plane of Fear (for example) needs an adjustment to make it viable for mid-range guilds that want to do 1.0s but can't get the spawns due to the farming (as long as your drop isnt MQable or sellable this isnt an issue either if one is polite to the farmers). Or alternate routes to certain quest drops need to be implemented (summoned Fay comes to mind, so help necros etc. out).

Most of the PoF issues would be gone if they put a notrade illusion skelly item in the new expansion. If i was a sarcastic developer I would make it the reward of a lame running between npc hailing to get to know the new zone city quest.

So yes, I like the level cap increase and hope they attend to the under 70s issues that are easily fixable with intent and effort.

With this kind or reasoning you could say the level cap should have stayed at 50 because there are some players who are struggling to get to 50...or 60...or 70...or any level.

Why does having a level cap increase adversely impact the game for those who are not yet level 75?

There are already 25k tanks, and the HP on gear is literally doubling with this expansion. A demiplane geared tank can break 20khp buffed. The highest warrior on the EQP leaderboards currently has a tid bit under 24k unbuffed; that translates to very close to 30k already.

I'm looking forward to it.

An earlier poster said something about CoA augs being easily one grouped? They always have been extremley easy, a group with Praetorian gear could easily take them all out. I prefer the DPoB ones, except the having to beat encounters to get to them.

My natural reaction is to despise the change, I will reserve truly judging it until I see it in action though.

I won't likely be playing in the new expansion. I've not yet started in on TBS myself. Gripes, it sounds like I'll be working on sigs for OoW.

...and the question for the post was about the level cap and not the expansion. I won't have a toon that's 75 before it happens, but I fail to see how it impacts me.

I also fail to see how anyone can expect a game to continue on without there being new and harder content as well as continued character progression.

Do you think EQ would still exist if the level cap had remained at 50?

I enjoyed karma-killing that shadowrelm post way more than I should have.