What is the point of the soft level cap?

Post » Tue Aug 14, 2012 12:38 pm

Personally, I think skills level far too quickly at low levels, and then after level 50, it gets ridiculously hard to level. It was said there is a soft cap at 50. Can someone explain why this is (if there is a good reason)?
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Natalie J Webster
 
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Post » Tue Aug 14, 2012 1:13 pm

The level 50 cap is about the level you will reach by mostly focusing on 3-5 skills. 81 is just a technical cap if all skills are 100.
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Judy Lynch
 
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Post » Tue Aug 14, 2012 1:28 pm

Personally, I think skills level far too quickly at low levels, and then after level 50, it gets ridiculously hard to level. It was said there is a soft cap at 50. Can someone explain why this is (if there is a good reason)?

There is no real 'soft cap', this is just the point where you've probably levelled all your major skills (the ones you use a lot) all the way up. Let's say you're a sword and shield kind of character - your conjuration and alteration may be really low. Likewise, your two-handed skill and pickpocket might also be really low since a lot of characters simply wouldn't use those skills.

Since it's possible to get ALL skills to 100 (including the ones you don't particularly need or want), the maximum level is 81. If you only levelled a subset of skills to the limit you'd end up around 50 unless you spread yourself around, did a lot of class-swapping, or just grinded the other skills out.

Add to this the fact that levels are harder to get as you level up your skills (more skills are needed per level-up, and each skill requires increasing amounts of experience to level per level), and you could end up in a situation where it could take ages to level even a regularly used skill quickly.

The game doesn't uniformly make it harder to level after level 50 - that's just how things tend to play out.
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sarah taylor
 
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Post » Tue Aug 14, 2012 7:32 pm

There is no soft level cap. The number of skill points needed to get to the next level is (Current Level + 3) * 25. This is the same whether your current level is 10 or 60.

Enemies do stop increasing in level beyond a certain point. (They max out around 50ish).
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Dark Mogul
 
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Post » Tue Aug 14, 2012 11:12 am

There is a mod out there that will reduce your starting skills to 1 across the board, which will (1) make you really weak at the beginning, but (2) give you more level-ups before all skills are at 100 and hence more potential perks and points in health, stamina and magic.

But if you play that long on one character, I think you're a bit of a monomaniac.
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GPMG
 
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Post » Tue Aug 14, 2012 12:34 pm

There is no soft level cap. The number of skill points needed to get to the next level is (Current Level + 3) * 25. This is the same whether your current level is 10 or 60.

Enemies do stop increasing in level beyond a certain point. (They max out around 50ish).

This in itself is one of the culprits of reduced levelling speed - since enemies will eventually die incredibly quickly. Where normally you'd be able to get in quite a few spells, melee attacks, armour damage, blocks and such which would usually give quite a bit of skill experience, you're left one-shotting everything and gaining next to no experience without increasing the difficulty.


There is a mod out there that will reduce your starting skills to 1 across the board, which will (1) make you really weak at the beginning, but (2) give you more level-ups before all skills are at 100 and hence more potential perks and points in health, stamina and magic.

But if you play that long on one character, I think you're a bit of a monomaniac.

Doing that, you'd end up with a bit more health, mana or stamina and a couple of extra perks - but you'd gain those additional levels rather quickly. It's quite interesting however, but I'd imagine you'd only be able to squeeze in about 1 or 2 extra levels given that each actual level-up requires more experience, and getting from level 1 to level 2 (and so on in the early stages) wouldn't contribute a great deal to the first level-up.
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jasminε
 
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Post » Tue Aug 14, 2012 3:24 pm

Doing that, you'd end up with a bit more health, mana or stamina and a couple of extra perks - but you'd gain those additional levels rather quickly.

But after all is said and done, it would mean that you're weaker at each level. At level 1 you've got ones across the board instead of like 15 and several twenties and a twenty-five normally. With the mod active, by level three you'd have a few skills at five, some still at one, maybe a six or seven somewhere...overall it would extend your time to reaching max level some by effectively raising the max level - but to get it, you'd be weakening yourself relative to what the leveled lists threw at you at each level; unless I'm mistaken they're based on your character level, not skill levels.
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Angus Poole
 
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Post » Tue Aug 14, 2012 9:00 pm

But after all is said and done, it would mean that you're weaker at each level. At level 1 you've got ones across the board instead of like 15 and several twenties and a twenty-five normally. With the mod active, by level three you'd have a few skills at five, some still at one, maybe a six or seven somewhere...overall it would extend your time to reaching max level some by effectively raising the max level - but to get it, you'd be weakening yourself relative to what the leveled lists threw at you at each level; unless I'm mistaken they're based on your character level, not skill levels.

Levelled lists are based around character level, not skill level. Having a bunch of skills at low level means you'd get a whole lot of quick level-ups in the beginning of the game, but they wouldn't contribute much to reaching level 2.

Even if they did, you'd then be able to access perks earlier, which is where a lot of a character's strength comes from, and you'd get most of those while in the beginner dungeon with Hadvar/Ralof doing all the work while you level-up with each careful arrow, sword swipe and magic. While you'd always be somewhat behind on the levelled lists, you have to consider that you'd only be at best about 1 or 2 level behind (since it would take at least about 10-15 of those low levels to level-up before you'd hit level 2), and you'd still be able to access levelled equipment at the same levels - so a person leaving Helgen might have access to Orcish or Dwarven gear already (assuming you ended up at a higher than normal level, which you probably wouldn't - at least by much).
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Sammykins
 
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Post » Tue Aug 14, 2012 2:12 pm

The soft cap hits you hard if you specialize only on one attribute every level up. If you put all of your level ups into hit points its going to be harder to level as a mage post 50 unless you take enchanting and vice versa.
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Jason Rice
 
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Post » Tue Aug 14, 2012 3:41 pm

The problem also, is this; If you focus much on a non combat skill, you will have a much harder time handling the enemies you're facing. I would have loved for some skills to not add to the actual character level, such as lockpicking and speech.
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lucile
 
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Post » Tue Aug 14, 2012 5:54 pm

This in itself is one of the culprits of reduced levelling speed - since enemies will eventually die incredibly quickly. Where normally you'd be able to get in quite a few spells, melee attacks, armour damage, blocks and such which would usually give quite a bit of skill experience, you're left one-shotting everything and gaining next to no experience without increasing the difficulty.

This is true. But I also don't see this as a bad feature (although I don't mean to suggest that you thought otherwise). Once the enemies stop becoming stronger, there's less incentive to increase the strength of your character. Indeed, there's a disincentive, since as your character becomes much stronger relative to the enemies, the decreasing difficulty hurts the enjoyment of the game.

Of course, there are reasons to want to continue leveling up. One is just to max out your stats. But there are slightly more (dare I say it) tasteful reasons. You might want to change your character around from (say) a warrior to a mage, and you need the level ups to get the perks.

The problem also, is this; If you focus much on a non combat skill, you will have a much harder time handling the enemies you're facing. I would have loved for some skills to not add to the actual character level, such as lockpicking and speech.

Again, this doesn't strike me as an altogether bad feature. Non-combat characters should be weak in combat. Of course, the leveling does screw this up a bit, because as you try to beef up your combat skills, the enemies keep getting stronger. So you'll always be a little behind the enemy strength, at least until you've reached higher levels. But I don't regard it as a major flaw.

Having non-combat skills not count runs into difficulties, I think. For instance, having a high lockpicking gives you easier access to loot, and so more money. This allows you to buy better gear and followers, which increases your combat strength. Similarly, having a high speech allows you to buy better gear for less gold, which increases your combat strength. If lockpicking and speech don't contribute to enemy level, then you can exploit this to make your character much stronger than the enemy (simultaneously improving non-combat and combat skills will make your character very strong). If lockpicking and speech don't contribute to your level, then when do you get perks for those skills? If it's just when the skill is high enough, can you use the perks for other skills?
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Ice Fire
 
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Post » Wed Aug 15, 2012 12:32 am

This is true. But I also don't see this as a bad feature (although I don't mean to suggest that you thought otherwise). Once the enemies stop becoming stronger, there's less incentive to increase the strength of your character. Indeed, there's a disincentive, since as your character becomes much stronger relative to the enemies, the decreasing difficulty hurts the enjoyment of the game.

Of course, there are reasons to want to continue leveling up. One is just to max out your stats. But there are slightly more (dare I say it) tasteful reasons. You might want to change your character around from (say) a warrior to a mage, and you need the level ups to get the perks.

All fair points, but from experience I find myself getting into a bit of a conundrum around that time - though I'd love to change class and try mage, I'd love too so much that I'd probably want to create a brand new character to do that with. Sticking with the original character, it gets increasingly boring since the challenge has long since gone by that point even if you do switch classes you've probably got plenty of gold, potions, mage equipment and stuff that you'd really only be going through the motions as it's still too easy.

As far as the perks are concerned, there's the element of "how long can I persevere with this character" ever present. It's always preferable to start a new character since you can pretty much get all the perks you want for the class you're developing. Switch classes at level 50 and you find yourself in a situation where it's taking a whole lot of effort even to unlock the beginning perks (such as novice destruction). This means you never truly feel like you've switched classes - prompting you to just start a new character and get those beginning perks early on.

It's also way too tempting to use each new skill to further boost your overall power. Let's say a pure warrior suddenly learns a bunch of magic skills, he knows he can just whip out his sword if he gets stuck, but he'll probably start each battle with a few spells to slowly build the skill until those spells can be used by themselves. On the other hand, any pure warrior who learns enchanting or alchemy probably wants to max out (literally MAX out) every possible skill and stat, become immune to dragons and all sorts of OTT stuff.

Considering also that many of the 'interesting' (by which I mean, those you really wanted to do) quests have probably already been completed - such as the main story or faction quests - it's much more tempting to just make a new character of a different race and do the whole thing over again unless you're willing to persevere with quests from factions you don't find interesting, or the radiant quests.
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Chica Cheve
 
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