What is it with all these level caps?

[Clueless Scrub]

Every time I come here, whenever I see a fan game I might be interested in trying, half the time it espouses level caps. For the record, I don't mean limiting levels to 100 at end/postgame, but much lower limits all over. The official games historically used soft caps so traded Pokemon ignore your commands if their level is too high and you don't have enough badges, extending that to your self-caught teammates in the most recent games. In practice, I've almost never seen that come up since the caps are quite high, only becoming an issue with using someone else's endgame team in my game, so it didn't feel limiting when I just used my own crew. In contrast, all these fan games I've been seeing use hard level caps that flat out don't let me level up until I've beaten the next boss, and I don't like that one bit.

Now, before some of you take offense, I'm not saying level caps are inherently bad and games shouldn't have them. I imagine the player demographic for these fan games skews older and more skilled than the target audience for the official ones, so the official level of difficulty would be kind of boring for adults. Some of you know the mechanics in and out, and appreciate limits that demand mastery of that knowledge. However, I'm no hardcore player, and I don't enjoy struggling to complete basic tasks. A hard level cap takes away my agency, disallowing a slow but steady solution to posed problems. I find the cap an arbitrary limitation, not appreciably different than requiring HMs on my team, but I don't think anyone here wants that.

That aside, I could probably be fine with a hard level cap on its own, but I've yet to see it alone. Instead it comes with new and convoluted mechanics to memorize, tournament-level enemies that may or may not cheat, and edgy, cynical plotlines that Warhammer 40k would call a bit too grim. The presence of a level cap then becomes a signal that the game it's in focuses more on being hard than being fun. Now, I'm not asking for these games all to be dumbed down to "Baby" difficulty; I just wish they didn't start on "Painful" and go up from there. Fan games don't all have to emulate Dark Souls, but it feels like those are the only games fan designers want to make. I'm confident that's not true, but it's how I feel.

In conclusion, I don't like fan games with hard, mandatory level caps because they can't be played casually like the official games. Hard games are fine, but I don't think that leaves no room for anything else. With all that said, I haven't looked at all the offerings around here, so I don't know the true extent of capped game presence. On that note, what do you people have to say about these caps? Are they more forgiving than I've been giving them credit for? Am I just a big wimp for not wanting to deal with their limitations? In any case, thanks for your time.

 

[Corveone]

I use level caps, set mode, and no bag during battle whether the game forces me or not. I welcome scripted level caps because that means I don't have to keep track of it myself to avoid overlevelling.

Is that hardcore? No. Hardcore would be something like playing with those rules while doing a nuzlocke... A babysitting game like Pokémon XY is still going to be a babysitting game even with those rules I play with. An easy rom hack like Emerald Seaglass is still easy even if you play with level caps as well.

The point of level caps in official games and vanilla difficulty rom hacks is just to prevent the difficulty from becoming an asbolute joke. It doesn't make the games hard on its own.
The point of level caps in high difficulty rom hacks is to prevent brute-forcing challenging battles you can't overcome with your brain by simply getting 10-20 levels above the next boss.

But levels are just one factor, difficulty in Pokémon games involve a lot more than that. I personally love a fair and balanced difficulty (and level caps help me achieve that), but I'm not a fan of things like first gym leader having six Pokémon with competitive held items and strats while I'm stuck with Oran Berries and garbage early-game moves. I want to be challenged, not Kaizo-bullied.

And let's not forget that in some rom hacks you gain EVs but the AI doesn't. So in the late game you can still have an overpowered stat advantage even if you are level capped, or even if you are underlevelled.

 

[catchneko]

Every time I come here, whenever I see a fan game I might be interested in trying, half the time it espouses level caps. For the record, I don't mean limiting levels to 100 at end/postgame, but much lower limits all over. The official games historically used soft caps so traded Pokemon ignore your commands if their level is too high and you don't have enough badges, extending that to your self-caught teammates in the most recent games. In practice, I've almost never seen that come up since the caps are quite high, only becoming an issue with using someone else's endgame team in my game, so it didn't feel limiting when I just used my own crew. In contrast, all these fan games I've been seeing use hard level caps that flat out don't let me level up until I've beaten the next boss, and I don't like that one bit.

Now, before some of you take offense, I'm not saying level caps are inherently bad and games shouldn't have them. I imagine the player demographic for these fan games skews older and more skilled than the target audience for the official ones, so the official level of difficulty would be kind of boring for adults. Some of you know the mechanics in and out, and appreciate limits that demand mastery of that knowledge. However, I'm no hardcore player, and I don't enjoy struggling to complete basic tasks. A hard level cap takes away my agency, disallowing a slow but steady solution to posed problems. I find the cap an arbitrary limitation, not appreciably different than requiring HMs on my team, but I don't think anyone here wants that.

That aside, I could probably be fine with a hard level cap on its own, but I've yet to see it alone. Instead it comes with new and convoluted mechanics to memorize, tournament-level enemies that may or may not cheat, and edgy, cynical plotlines that Warhammer 40k would call a bit too grim. The presence of a level cap then becomes a signal that the game it's in focuses more on being hard than being fun. Now, I'm not asking for these games all to be dumbed down to "Baby" difficulty; I just wish they didn't start on "Painful" and go up from there. Fan games don't all have to emulate Dark Souls, but it feels like those are the only games fan designers want to make. I'm confident that's not true, but it's how I feel.

In conclusion, I don't like fan games with hard, mandatory level caps because they can't be played casually like the official games. Hard games are fine, but I don't think that leaves no room for anything else. With all that said, I haven't looked at all the offerings around here, so I don't know the true extent of capped game presence. On that note, what do you people have to say about these caps? Are they more forgiving than I've been giving them credit for? Am I just a big wimp for not wanting to deal with their limitations? In any case, thanks for your time.

Personally as someone who makes fangames, I design every important fight around the idea that the player's team will be of the same or lower level. The restraints I put on opposing Pokémon and the counters I plan around are all decided based on "what can the player have access to at this point, what are they likely to bring, and what does each mon have by X level?"
Therefore, the game is balanced around the player using level caps, which are optional in my own game (Photon) because I wanted to be friendly towards certain challenge runs and follow a formula similar to the mainline games while hitting a medium-difficulty niche that not many games fall into.

So when the player can just destroy that balance by blitzing through with a team 20 levels higher and then whine about how the game is too easy, especially when hacking in Rare Candies is such a common practice that it's practically a built-in design consideration by necessity since most people won't even touch a game unless they can input a cheat or password that gives them a stack of them immediately, it's frustrating because while player agency is important, sometimes you want the game to be at least a little bit challenging and rewarding and not provide an instant bypass for any fight the player can't 6-0 sweep on their first try.

Hard level caps also encourage actual teambuilding and strategy (which IMO is part of what makes Pokémon fun for me) in a series whose formula inadvertently rewards sweeping the game with an overleveled starter and the legendary you found right before the Elite Four.

The issue you have with hard level caps seems unrelated to the level caps themselves, but rather because a lot of the games that tend to use them don't know what balancing is (I really hate when the first gym uses 6 Pokémon, it's so unnecessary and spammy much of the time). But at the same time, many romhacks and fangames are aimed specifically towards people who find the mainline games overly easy and unsatisfying, and are trying to make an experience that properly engages with the series's mechanics outside of Pokémon Showdown and the Battle Tower, so most of them are going to be on the harder side (every third game trying to copy Radical Red to cash in on its popularity doesn't help). I wish there were more medium difficulty games that were accommodating of people who are familiar and experienced with Pokémon but aren't hardcore nuzlockers or giganerds who know every line of code by heart, which is why I tend to design the stuff I make around that, since that's my preferred difficulty.

Also, personally I think hard caps are pretty forgiving and most fangames aren't as difficult (or edgy) as you're claiming they are. How many have you actually played that fit this description?

 

[Clueless Scrub]

First off, I have to plead ignorance on rom hacks and their difficulty tuning, as I focus more on fan games that aren't rom hacks, so maybe the hacks have more granular challenge settings. With that said, my problem isn't with level caps themselves, but I always see them coupled with other "make the game harder" things with no way to turn any of them off. Wanting a challenge is fine, but sometimes I want a game I can breeze right through if I've had a rough day, and the level cap games I've been seeing adamantly refuse to allow that. Higher difficulty just for the sake of it doesn't automatically make games better.

On that note, I think my problem is with the hardcore mindset of "easy is bad, and wanting ease makes you bad". For instance, I recently saw a reddit post bemoaning Pokemon Bushido for having the vast majority of enemy trainers get free moves and attacks at the start of battles, with boss enemies getting several, and the player getting none. Several responses chided the poster for chafing against "actually difficult" fights, as if being forced into grossly unfair battles against enemies that cheat is not only an acceptable thing to put into a video game, but a preferential one. Another example shows up in the wiki for Pokemon Empyrean, specifically in the articles for the "Intangible" and "Godlike" abilities several boss enemies have. They make bosses immune to all status problems and said abilities can't be negated, and any loopholes you thought of won't work. I don't know who wrote those descriptions, but they come off pretty mean if they assume players are wrong for even considering seeking an easier solution.

Anyway, I've tried out Pokemon Tectonic, which displays its level cap frequently and proudly. The game caught my interest with its gimmick of rejiggering every Pokemon line to be viable for endgame play. However, Tectonic is tough as nails with trainers that fight smart from the get-go that continue to attack you if you don't beat them correctly, wild Pokemon that don't grant experience, and a whole mess of new moves, abilities, mechanics, and type matchups that aren't that intuitive. Standard trainers were smacking me around, let alone the boss fights. I imagine plenty of other players got a kick out of the challenge, but for me the game was more punishing if not outright bullying. I thought the rejiggering meant I could use any team I wanted and make it work, but Tectonic said "no, go back and make a good team." Uncapped games would have let me do it, but not this. I've avoided games with level caps since then, but this could be a case of once bitten, twice shy.

I suppose my issue with level caps comes from my inability to get satisfaction out of difficult tasks. When I overcome a very tough boss fight, I don't feel good about my accomplishment. I feel like the game wasted my time, getting in the way of the game I want to play. I don't get any enjoyment out of being forced to handicap myself, and level caps are specifically designed to do that very thing. If I want to plow through a game like wet tissue paper, that should be my prerogative; games aren't likely to entice me by telling me what I can't do. Difficulty on its own isn't my thing, and if that's all a game has, I don't want it. All that aside, if any of you have examples of capped games that feel more like playtime than acts of penance, I'd love to see them.

 

[catchneko]

Well, fun is subjective. At the end of the day, it's all a matter of opinion, and so I won't say your tastes are wrong or that your criticisms are invalid.

I do think difficulty options should be a thing, and they're a thing in many games for a reason, but I think a well-designed game is one that makes you engage with its mechanics while still giving you room to learn them. The difficulty options should be there to accommodate various levels of skill and desire for challenge, but the easy mode shouldn't just be an out for people who don't actually want to play the game.
If you just want to experience the story and don't care for the gameplay at all, you could always just look up a YouTube playthrough, or just cheat. That's what I do when a game annoys me, lol.

The game caught my interest with its gimmick of rejiggering every Pokemon line to be viable for endgame play. However, Tectonic is tough as nails with trainers that fight smart from the get-go that continue to attack you if you don't beat them correctly, wild Pokemon that don't grant experience, and a whole mess of new moves, abilities, mechanics, and type matchups that aren't that intuitive. Standard trainers were smacking me around, let alone the boss fights. I imagine plenty of other players got a kick out of the challenge, but for me the game was more punishing if not outright bullying. I thought the rejiggering meant I could use any team I wanted and make it work, but Tectonic said "no, go back and make a good team." Uncapped games would have let me do it, but not this.

That sounds like an issue with the game's myriad of other design choices, and not with level caps themselves. Personally I hate when romhacks/fangames significantly overhaul every mon and move and ability because it clashes with my existing knowledge. If you're going to make Pikachu an Electric/Fire physical attacker just make a regional form. It made Empire unplayable for me, and that's before I knew the full extent of the game's host of questionable content that made me put it down for good.

They make bosses immune to all status problems and said abilities can't be negated, and any loopholes you thought of won't work. I don't know who wrote those descriptions, but they come off pretty mean if they assume players are wrong for even considering seeking an easier solution.

I mean, if you can just cheese a boss, what's the point of making it a boss? Photon's Aether Burst bosses are immune to status effects, Leech Seed, Destiny Bond, Endeavor, Super Fang, etc because I want the player to actually fight the bosses and not just go "oh boy, free fight, FEAR go brr :3" ad infinitum. It's less punishing seeking easier solutions and more filling the obvious holes, while jabbing at the smart-asses who are going to go "erm this fight is easy ackshually because I can just win in 2 turns with this cheese strat 🤓". I mean yeah, players could just choose not to use the cheese strats, but why should the players who want to be challenged be forced to ignore strategies that are perfectly legitimate in-game to find the intended challenge in these boss fights?

Should I make it a gameplay option to let the player walk through walls and skip straight to the Pokémon League and press a button to level their entire party to 100 just because it would piss on some people's fun to tell them they can't do that? I mean yeah, some people would want to do that, and it's not wrong of them to want to do that, but if they really want to do that, then they can just cheat, since it's outside of the way the game is intended to be played. I see cheating as a way for the player to go "I'm not going to play by the game's rules, for the sake of creating my own fun", and I do it all the time, so I'm not going to pretend that it's wrong to do. I added passwords for this reason.

If I want to plow through a game like wet tissue paper, that should be my prerogative; games aren't likely to entice me by telling me what I can't do.

In my experience, if a game is advertising level caps as a feature, it's for the people who hate actively trying not to overlevel. 😭

I'm working on a second game and the idea of forced level caps was something I considered, specifically because I was designing and balancing the game around the idea that the player can't just stomp every fight with a team 30 levels over. For what I have so far I feel like the game's difficulty is fair, the quality of life features implemented make teambuilding much less of a headache, and the extra mechanics aren't overwhelming.
I could add a password to disable the caps for people who really really hate them, but I still want to at the very least push players to try the "intended" way, and if you want to play it differently, that's on you. Especially since in this game's case, some of the restrictions are an intentional part of the gameplay.

All that aside, if any of you have examples of capped games that feel more like playtime than acts of penance, I'd love to see them.

You could try Photon and see what you think of it :^) (And also play my second game when I finish it)
The caps are optional (though I'd recommend playing with them) but the difficulty isn't too high and I'd say it's pretty fair.

 

[Clueless Scrub]

There's a lot to take in, so I'll start with a list:

• Final Fantasy 5 is renowned for its high difficulty ceiling and open-ended approach to party makeup. There are many tough boss fights, with a handful considered the hardest in the series. However, with the right combination of skills and knowledge, players can take down many if not all of these bosses without breaking a sweat, some in one or two hits. Alternatively, players can restrict themselves to specific class skills, potentially running into battles dependent on mechanics they can't use, so they've really got to think on their toes. This game can be as easy or as hard as you want, at no point admonishing players for playing the game incorrectly.
• Final Fantasy 11 has Absolute Virtue, a secret boss infamous for its difficulty. It can only be summoned after defeating a small army of other secret bosses, and it was strong enough to wipe out even the best-equipped parties in seconds. Notably, the developers had a specific strategy in mind for how they intended players to defeat it, and responded to all alternative methods players cooked up with counter-patches and ban threats. No one figured out how they were "supposed" to win the fight, and players could only defeat Absolute Virtue after severe over-leveling.
• Everquest featured Kerafyrm the Sleeper, a mighty dragon designed to be unbeatable for plot reasons. Just waking him up required slaying four other dragons in the same room, and players couldn't even touch the Sleeper without getting creamed, forced to watch him walk away to parts unknown to return at a later date. So one can imagine how surprised everyone was when they heard one server managed to stop Kerafyrm in his tracks through sheer numbers and stubbornness. But before they could finish the Sleeper off, the GMs despawned the dragon, citing this was a fight players weren't meant to win. After major backlash from the playerbase, the GMs relented and put the dragon back in. These players managed to slay the Sleeper, hence contributing for one of Everquest's greatest moments.

The point of all that is the designer has no right to define how players play their game. Sure, the designer can provide suggestions and incentives for how they want the game to be played, but the decision of how the game does get played belongs to the players, not the designer. If players could only play games how developers intended, there would be no speed-runs, sequence breaks, or house rules. If players find a trick that makes a hard part easier that the developer didn't expect, they should be commended for their ingenuity and perseverance, not punished for winning the game the "wrong" way (not counting actual cheating, of course). That would be just as restrictive as being forced to keep the Exp. Share on at all times.

Anyway, I took a look at the thread for Photon, and it's got that rhetoric I don't like of "easy game BAD". Of course the official games are getting easier; those games are for small children of which we aren't. If someone thinks the only valid way to play a game is to suffer through it, I'm led to believe that someone doesn't enjoy games, or much else for that matter. Hearing someone say they hate having to avoid over-leveling is essentially them saying "I hate how hard it is to make this game hard." That aside, I agree that the Exp.Share in X/Y should at least be optional; while I'd rather play a game that's too easy than too hard, having a choice either way is better.

In any case, I might try Photon, but I'm tempted to turn the cap off out of pure spite. The hardcore set would fume over the mere idea of someone having an easier time than them, and that would be funny.

 

[catchneko]

I think you raise some valid points. You should be allowed to play the game however you want to, and no one can force you to have fun in a way you can't.

I hope I don't seem like I'm trying to tell you that preferring easier/more casual games is bad or that you're wrong for preferring them. I also don't think player agency is a bad thing and I love games that reward creative solutions to problems.

At the same time, different games are designed differently, and they're not wrong for catering to players who want a challenge by taking away the easiest and most obvious solutions, and in fact I think that restriction sometimes makes the game more fun by encouraging even more creative strategies within them. You admonish the idea of "easy games bad", yet you seem to view difficult games similarly, treating difficulty as an inherently bad thing.

In my opinion, it's about finding a balance, and that balance could be different depending on who you're trying to appeal to.

People have fun differently, and while games can try to cater to a large audience, trying to lean too far towards casual or hardcore players ends up alienating the other. I think overly easy games are boring, and I also think overly difficult games are frustrating, and my thresholds for what define each may be different from yours. Neither of our tastes are wrong.



I feel as though you missed the point with what I talked about in Photon's thread. I don't think easy games are bad. I just wanted to create an experience for people who feel alienated by the low difficulty of mainline Pokémon (which is designed for children) as well as people who feel alienated by the high difficulty of games like Radical Red. If it doesn't seem like the kind of game that would interest you, that's okay, and I hope that you find the game that appeals to your tastes.

And if you want to play without level caps, go ahead. I just suggested you give it a try since you asked for games that use level caps that aren't overly difficult. If you don't want to, then that's a perfectly fine way of playing the game and you're not wrong for doing it.

 

[Clueless Scrub]

For the record, I don't believe games shouldn't be allowed to be hard. Players should be able to tackle any difficulty they want, aiming for the sky if they feel like it. My problem is I have a low frustration tolerance threshold, so I'm prone to losing my temper when struggling too much. I even decided to uninstall F-Zero 99 due to my outbursts after making too many mistakes. To be clear, the anger issues are a problem with me, not the games. Games should play how they want to play, regardless of whether I personally can't handle them.

In contrast, I have a much higher tolerance for boredom. I like the Pokedex-filling portion of Pokemon games, happy to run around in circles for hours searching for that one rare spawn. My young nephew also likes the main games, but between school, homework, chores, sports practice, and solid parenting, he doesn't get a lot of time to play them, so even those easy games are tough for him. Hence he relishes coming over to my house; not only can he play as much as he wants, my support and knowledge help him achieve challenges he can't do on his own. Even if I'm getting bored, between us it's a net benefit.

With those in mind, I think my bias against level caps and difficult games in general partially comes from limited exposure. Whenever I look up an article or video on suggested fan games, they always highlight games that are super hard, sometimes unfairly so. One pundit outright said Pokemon fan games need to be hard, and I chafed against that claim on the spot. I felt like there was nothing out in Fan Land a casual player like me could enjoy, but that's not a fair assumption to make. Just because I can't deal with hard games doesn't make them inherently wrong; that's like saying garden hoses are bad because I'm allergic to latex. I felt alienated seeing all the games I was interested in be all latex all the time, but I haven't done my due diligence. As for level caps themselves, I treated them more as a symptom than the disease; given how often I've seen level caps lumped in with all the other arbitrary difficulty modifiers I don't like, I was led to believe all capped games were like that. Perhaps I've been throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

As for Photon, I might just try it with the cap on. As it happens, when I play the official games, I typically don't bother grinding past upcoming bosses' level until after I beat them. If the difficulty is considered moderate even with the cap, that should make for a dandy experience. That being said, I hope I can turn the cap off if things get too rough. I may think fan games don't strictly need to be hard, but they don't need to be easy either.

 

[FL]

I hate mandatory level caps. Sometimes this is enogh to give up of a game. With the gen 5/7-9 exp curves (easy to gain exp when underlevel and vice-versa), I don't see why mandatory level caps. The exceptions are pokémon Stadium like games. Basically, strategy game instead of JRPG games, or maybe a JRPG/strategy hybrid. In Stadium-like games you need to change party some times or you can't win. And I think that the level cap existence should be clear to the player in the game thread.

Using grind to brute force the bosses is the only way of a non-so-good player to complete the game. And I think that beat the final boss a second time with a very strong party is fun, this is a nice thing of JRPGs (in general). Level caps also make things like Farfetch'd challenge sometimes inviable.

 

[Corveone]

With the gen 5/7-9 exp curves (easy to gain exp when underlevel and vice-versa), I don't see why mandatory level caps.

Because modern exp curve doesn't prevent overlevelling, it would only make it harder. And I say "would" because the modern Pokémon games counter it with mandatory exp for every Pokémon in the party, which factors into overlevelling being actually easier, not harder.

And modern exp curve also can't do anything about Candies. If someone makes a difficulty-oriented rom hack with easy access to Rare Candies as a QoL, but without level caps... well, that's basically inviting players to laugh at the challenge and simply spam rare candies until they get levels high enough to guarantee an easy win.

 

[FL]

Because modern exp curve doesn't prevent overlevelling, it would only make it harder.

Exactly. Like I said in my previous post, making overlevel/brute force possible is important in almost all turn JRPGs.

And I say "would" because the modern Pokémon games counter it with mandatory exp for every Pokémon in the party, which factors into overlevelling being actually easier, not harder.

Even with mandatory exp for every pokémon, you can make bosses harder than Whitney (from Gold/Silver/Crystal) just giving more levels and/or remove trainers between bosses.

And modern exp curve also can't do anything about Candies. If someone makes a difficulty-oriented rom hack with easy access to Rare Candies as a QoL, but without level caps... well, that's basically inviting players to laugh at the challenge and simply spam rare candies until they get levels high enough to guarantee an easy win.

Yep, you are mentioning a specific case that sounds to me more similar that Stadium than main series games. In general JRPGs you don't see many level gain items too easier.

 

[Corveone]

Yep, you are mentioning a specific case that sounds to me more similar that Stadium than main series games. In general JRPGs you don't see many level gain items too easier.

Story-driven JRPGs in general give you a fixed party (or at least partially fixed), so having benched characters to catch up isn't much of an issue, and some games like the Trails series automatically level up unused party members inbetween chapters. In Pokémon, your party are the six Pokémon you choose out of hundreds.

Pokémon games need to account for the possibility that players might change their mind or want to re-evaluate their team at some points. That's goes double for high difficulty rom hacks that totally expect players to swap Pokémon in and out, because if the player wants a specific counter against a gym leader that their current team can't defeat, and that Pokémon is 20 levels behind, then rare candies and other grind saving methods are essentially a must-have QoL. Otherwise most players won't tolerate the insane grind and will quit.

But without a level cap, those Rare Candies (or whatever alternative the game provides) that were put there for a good reason: to cut the grinding required for boxed/recently caught low level Pokémon to catch up, can be abused to overlevel Pokémon that are already at the right levels instead. And who needs a team when you can just easily give +10 levels to a Dragon Dancer and solo-sweep everything?

 

[FL]

Story-driven JRPGs in general give you a fixed party (or at least partially fixed), so having benched characters to catch up isn't much of an issue, and some games like the Trails series automatically level up unused party members inbetween chapters. In Pokémon, your party are the six Pokémon you choose out of hundreds.

Pokémon games need to account for the possibility that players might change their mind or want to re-evaluate their team at some points.

I see your point: For a JRPG with good systems, is expected that all character should have a similar level. In pokémon this won't happens. A valid point.

Even with this, I think that pokémon series is even better a general JRPG in this aspects, since some JRPGs just give you underlevel characters you temporary took/replace some of your characters. There are cases that new characters came in level 1 and I can even name several JRPGs that catch up is an issue for some character that players even encorage using cheats.

Pokémon have exp share (both old and new) and an exp formula (gen 5/7-9 exp curves) that make level up a lot easier. In fact, pokémon that are weak but became very strong in higher levels (named Abra and Magikarp) have this drawback strongly minimized with new Exp Share, but this is subject for another thread.

That's goes double for high difficulty rom hacks that totally expect players to swap Pokémon in and out, because if the player wants a specific counter against a gym leader that their current team can't defeat, and that Pokémon is 20 levels behind, then rare candies and other grind saving methods are essentially a must-have QoL. Otherwise most players won't tolerate the insane grind and will quit.

But without a level cap, those Rare Candies (or whatever alternative the game provides) that were put there for a good reason: to cut the grinding required for boxed/recently caught low level Pokémon to catch up, can be abused to overlevel Pokémon that are already at the right levels instead. And who needs a team when you can just easily give +10 levels to a Dragon Dancer and solo-sweep everything?

Again, you are mentioning a specific case that you need to constantly change your party just to beat a boss and can't relly in overlevel. This sounds to me more similar that Stadium than main series games. If in Stadium, every time that you need to change a rental, you need to level up this pokémon, the game should be annoying.

Since my first post here, I don't disagree about level caps in these cases.

By the way, I'm curious: You need to change parties and have candies for this because you can't solve the issue being overlevel or you can't being overlevel because you have the candies?

The "catch up" issue can be solved with some "catch up candy", something that make the pokémon with same level as your higher mon. I think that these games just don't want that bosses gonna be solved with overlevel.

 

[A¹¹]

people when a game is different from theirs

 

[theclaw]

Grinding is not gameplay, any more than using a Game Genie is.
Neither 'extreme end' offers engagement with the mechanics, nor a meaningful sense that the player's tactics and skills are improving.

 

[FL]

Grinding is not gameplay, any more than using a Game Genie is.
Neither 'extreme end' offers engagement with the mechanics, nor a meaningful sense that the player's tactics and skills are improving.

Well, of course is, but most of grinding in games are badly done so you only need to mindless press a single button. Good grinding are just like earning BPs at Battle Frontier: You can lose and you earn based in your performance.

But, in fact, I don't think that a good game should have lots of grinding in main game.

 

[Corveone]

By the way, I'm curious: You need to change parties and have candies for this because you can't solve the issue being overlevel or you can't being overlevel because you have the candies?

The "catch up" issue can be solved with some "catch up candy", something that make the pokémon with same level as your higher mon. I think that these games just don't want that bosses gonna be solved with overlevel.

The only thing I'd need to prevent overlevelling is a notepad file listing each boss' level cap, unless it's one of those rom hacks that force you to fight every single route trainer, making exp. management extremely annoying. I just appreciate the built-in level caps so I don't have to keep track of it myself.

What I mean is that a fast training method is needed in games with a difficulty designed not to play with a stable six Pokémon party. For example, in my Unbound playthrough (Expert difficulty) I used a total of 15 Pokémon, three of them being specifically raised for the Elite Four. If I played on Insane, the highest difficulty, I would have likely ended up using a lot more. But I'm certainly not willing (probably not many would) to play a game knowing I'll have to train 20+ Pokémon the old school way.

And that's not just for levels, a streamlined EV training method should be also included as well if the game has trainers with competitive EV spreads and expects players to take EV training seriously. But of course, when I say those things are 'needed', I mean they're needed unless the rom hack / fangame creator considers that dedicating a lot of time training each Pokémon through hard work and no shortcuts is a crucial element in the experience they envisioned.

A special item that raises a Pokémon to the same level as your highest level Pokémon would help with the training process, but would also be exploitable as you can manually overlevel a super easy to raise mon like Togekiss, then use that item to instantly put any other Pokémon you want at that same level. Same would happen if you put an Audino/Chansey free training in Pokécenters whose level scales to your highest levelled mon. I would still rather combine that with a built-in level cap.

 

[FL]

The only thing I'd need to prevent overlevelling is a notepad file listing each boss' level cap, unless it's one of those rom hacks that force you to fight every single route trainer, making exp. management extremely annoying. I just appreciate the built-in level caps so I don't have to keep track of it myself.

Okay, I think that the theme of this thread here are mandatory exp caps, since I believe that everybody here is ok with optional level caps.

unless it's one of those rom hacks that force you to fight every single route trainer

I don't know what you mean exactly, but no problem. I see "force you to fight every single route trainer" as almost necessary in gen 1-5 games (at least) for average players

What I mean is that a fast training method is needed in games with a difficulty designed not to play with a stable six Pokémon party. For example, in my Unbound playthrough (Expert difficulty) I used a total of 15 Pokémon, three of them being specifically raised for the Elite Four. If I played on Insane, the highest difficulty, I would have likely ended up using a lot more. But I'm certainly not willing (probably not many would) to play a game knowing I'll have to train 20+ Pokémon the old school way.

Okay, I think that we agree since my first post about these cases.

A special item that raises a Pokémon to the same level as your highest level Pokémon would help with the training process, but would also be exploitable as you can manually overlevel a super easy to raise mon like Togekiss, then use that item to instantly put any other Pokémon you want at that same level.

Using something like Togekiss you will level up 40% faster, but you need to use this pokémon a lot, so sounds a good strategy to me. The item price (so you can't easily use 20 of these between bosses) may also balance these things.

 

[Soda26]

Every time I come here, whenever I see a fan game I might be interested in trying, half the time it espouses level caps. For the record, I don't mean limiting levels to 100 at end/postgame, but much lower limits all over. The official games historically used soft caps so traded Pokemon ignore your commands if their level is too high and you don't have enough badges, extending that to your self-caught teammates in the most recent games. In practice, I've almost never seen that come up since the caps are quite high, only becoming an issue with using someone else's endgame team in my game, so it didn't feel limiting when I just used my own crew. In contrast, all these fan games I've been seeing use hard level caps that flat out don't let me level up until I've beaten the next boss, and I don't like that one bit.

Now, before some of you take offense, I'm not saying level caps are inherently bad and games shouldn't have them. I imagine the player demographic for these fan games skews older and more skilled than the target audience for the official ones, so the official level of difficulty would be kind of boring for adults. Some of you know the mechanics in and out, and appreciate limits that demand mastery of that knowledge. However, I'm no hardcore player, and I don't enjoy struggling to complete basic tasks. A hard level cap takes away my agency, disallowing a slow but steady solution to posed problems. I find the cap an arbitrary limitation, not appreciably different than requiring HMs on my team, but I don't think anyone here wants that.

That aside, I could probably be fine with a hard level cap on its own, but I've yet to see it alone. Instead it comes with new and convoluted mechanics to memorize, tournament-level enemies that may or may not cheat, and edgy, cynical plotlines that Warhammer 40k would call a bit too grim. The presence of a level cap then becomes a signal that the game it's in focuses more on being hard than being fun. Now, I'm not asking for these games all to be dumbed down to "Baby" difficulty; I just wish they didn't start on "Painful" and go up from there. Fan games don't all have to emulate Dark Souls, but it feels like those are the only games fan designers want to make. I'm confident that's not true, but it's how I feel.

In conclusion, I don't like fan games with hard, mandatory level caps because they can't be played casually like the official games. Hard games are fine, but I don't think that leaves no room for anything else. With all that said, I haven't looked at all the offerings around here, so I don't know the true extent of capped game presence. On that note, what do you people have to say about these caps? Are they more forgiving than I've been giving them credit for? Am I just a big wimp for not wanting to deal with their limitations? In any case, thanks for your time.

Yea I understand the sentiment.

In the current game I'm working on I lowered the level cap to 30. The game is shorter than your average pokemon game with only 4 major bosses. The only section of the game that is "at level cap" is the final section after the 3rd major boss fight. But prior to that I let the player over level if they want. Also the first and 3rd boss fights are totally optionally. So having a hard level cap wouldn't have made any sense.

Getting exp is half the fun of RPGs! I want the player to be exploring branching paths and being rewarded for it. Level caps are counter to my old-fashioned-rpg goals.