#0 - April 6, 2011, 8:49 a.m.
We were talking about Phantasy Star Online for Gamecube, which both of us had logged literally hundreds of hours on, and he asked me "Why was that game so fun? It was the same stuff over and over, how did we not get bored instantly?" I thought about it for a second and realized something - level cap.
In Phantasy Star Online, the max level was 200. This is actually quite similar to how the level cap worked in D2. The cap was high, the levelling curve was long and got very steep at the end. Even after hundreds of hours on a single character, I think the max I reached was 145 in Phantasy Star. Also, even with the hundreds of hours I spent playing Diablo 2, I don't think I ever had a level 99 character. I think 97 was my maximum reached.
Anyway, having a high and very difficult to achieve level cap is actually a GOOD thing for continued playability. In most games, when you hit max level, you're done. You character can no longer increase in strength other than gear that you might receive. What this does subconciously is actually give LESS reward for MORE play time. So when you hit max level, everything you do is less valuable. This has a huge effect on a player's subconcious. I've seen it a hundred times in other games where myself or friends of mine would play a game and because we're thorough, we hit max level way before the game is finished and a lot of times just stop playing.
I can use Fallout: New Vegas as an example here, the level cap is 30(I think) and is actually somewhat easily reached long before you get the chance to confront the final antagonist. You're basically playing the last 1/3rd of the game at max level and gain nothing as you play, which makes the time feel wasted to the player. One of my friends stopped playing for a few weeks once he hit max level and realized that he was gaining nothing from most of the things he did.
I'm concerned for D3 and the direction that it's seems to be headed. Since they've made the level cap much lower and more obtainable, without a significant amount of motivation to continue playing a character past that point, many players will stop playing the game(especially once rerolling alts is boring). It comes down to how much return we're getting for our efforts, and if we hit max level, we're losing that portion of the benefit of continuing to play that specific character.
All this being said, good, progressive endgame features can replace the subconcious feeling of needing to "level up". It's just a matter of WHAT they decide to do for endgame in D3. Frankly though, I don't see PvP and collecting items being the answer. I don't know what sparked the decision to lower the level cap in D3. I would actually be very curious to find out.