Borderlands 2, a First Person Role Playing Shooter has been out for quite awhile now and I was browsing a few websites and stumbled across some articles talking about raising the level cap with "consequences," says Randy Pitchford, one of Borderlands developers and the President of Gearbox Software. Interested in what those consequences may be the little fan-boy inside me started to get scared but I had to muster up the courage to find out. Myself and my other Borderlands lovers were extremely disappointed when we found out what exactly Randy was about.
As of right now, the highest level achievable is level 50, and previously Randy had stated that there would be an increase from 50-69, just like in the first Borderlands. Sadly, there have already been 3 different expansions added and the level cap has yet to be raised. Not only has this not been released yet but Randy Pitchford stated "We designed the skills really well this time, but we did, for better or
for worse, make a lot of the decisions with the knowledge that there
will be no more skill points available to put into any trees after you
reach level 50" (Level Cap Increase). Now Randy and other developers are worried that if they try to add in some sort of code that it may take up too much memory on game Consoles and computers, or even "break" them. Randy also believes that adding more skill points to the game would take certain configurations that the Xbox 360 simply could not handle.
Now the demand for the level increase is so important to us players because we want to gain more points to spend on our Skill Trees and become the strong character we desire to be. As you can see for one of the characters here, although there are 50 levels, you only get 46 skill points to spend on your skill tree in an attempt to make him or her the strongest they can be. That's where the major problem lies with this level cap, if it does get increased all the time and experience spent leveling up from 50-69 will be for nothing because you won't get any skill points to spend.
Luckily, the development for the level cap increase is still underway so maybe, just maybe the developers will figure something out and be able to implement an increase in levels along with skill points to spend on the skill trees. Fingers crossed.
Sources;
"Gearbox Prez: Increasing 'Boderlands 2' Level Cap Could Break The Game and Melt your Xbox (But We're Doing It Anyway)." multiplayerblog.mtv.com web. 13 February 2013. <http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2013/02/11/borderlands-2-level-cap-increase-will-explode-xboxs/>.
"UPDATE: Borderlands 2 developer: Raising the level cap could break our game (interview)." venturebeat.com web. 13 February 2013. <http://venturebeat.com/2013/02/07/borderlands-2-level-cap-increase/>.
I think I've admitted to you that, in the past, my most adventurous gaming was Pitfall on the Atari (oh, and a weekend of Rainbow 6 when my husband bribed me). And I do remember a bit of your discussion of skills trees in previous posts. But I was a little lost in the first paragraph here.
ReplyDeletePut this in more context for your readers. How many games have these skills trees? Just Borderlands? I know games like WOW have, in past years, increased not only races but skill levels. Why is Borderlands so different that the platforms that run the games cannot handle enhancements like this?
Is this a problem, do you think, of poor planning for future expansion, or a financial rush-to-market, or both?