Legitimate Reasons to Raise All Skill Caps to 120+

[NukeMarine]

**The only thing I ask is no one use the excuse "I don't want to have to level to 120" as a reason for Jagex not to change the cap. You never have to do anything in this game.**

 

Now we have 5% skill outfits, challenges, 10% auras, SoF lamps, etc. Leveling is getting fast.

 

Every year the trend is for a skill to become faster and cheaper to train. This year's updates have brought about even faster ways to level skills. Runecrafting has become more an AFK skill. Special events gave members over 1 million in bonus XP on top of Gielinor games which brought about enormous xp for Agility. The Evolution of Combat will likely speed up combat training (unless balanced prior to release). Challenges are offering methods for free and bonus XP to all skills. On top of that, there's the free XP from penguins, JoaT, Troll Defense, etc. on top of the free (or purchased) spins.

 

Even before this year, 99's grace the top scores of every skill while max skill totals are the top twenty. Only XP, a majority coming from faster to train skills, seperate the players. Those that bothered to balance their leveling in all skills punished of sorts since a maxed player with 200 million xp in one skill places higher than another with 23 million xp in 18 different skills (math may be off a bit).

 

Alright, nothing new here. It's been talked about before and will again. Still, there seems to be some recent fast leveling updates come down the pipe even for guys like me that don't play that much a day. Even the casual player can reasonably obtain multiple 99s it seems. The multiple hour a day player would have no problem. With that in mind, I'm wondering what are the legitimate reasons either for or against for raising the skill cap of all skills to 120 or higher.

 

Here's some of mine for the idea.

 

- Skills are leveling faster than ever and will get faster. This spreads out that time required.

- Every 7 levels require twice as much xp, so a 120 would add about 8x as much time to max out.

- Allows for a better determination of a player's committment to the game.

- 99 capes will still remain in the game, there can even be a 120 cape.

- Level 120 caps don't have to be released all at once. For example, it could be 1 skill a month over 2 years.

- The top 20 will display those that try to balance their skill leveling over all skills.

- 2.5 billion XP minimum would be needed for a max player.

- Greater freedom for higher level content without it being "end game" content.

- More longetivity in the game life.

[Donnie]

99's take a long time. Unless xp rates were 5x faster then currently I dont see the need. After all it doesnt add new gameplay it just forces completionist type players to revisit content that they may have rushed to get out of the way previously.

[Fallstar]

I agree that eventually Jagex need to raise skill caps to 120. The number of maxed and near maxed players is getting very high now, meaning the only way to gain hiscore ranks is to repeat the same content you played for 99 over and over again.

 

First of all they need to make sure all skills have a decent amount of content between 1 and 99 though. Mining needs ores above runite for example, perhaps a concentrated mithril rock or something like that. There are several other skills that suffer from the same problems, firemaking and woodcutting for example. I also think that every skill should have something worthwhile at 99, similar to summoning with the steel titan.

 

Once there is sufficient content between levels 1 and 99, they should start working on 120s.

[Mercifull]

The number of high level and maxed account may be getting quite a lot nowadays but compared to the numbers of people that actually play its a fraction of that. Raising skills to 120 would benefit very little numbers of people and the raising of prices would be detrimental to the game play of everyone else.

[SwreeTak]

Eventually Jagex will probably have to release 120 skill caps, but I don't see them needing to do so now. XP gain is still too slow, at least according to me, to motivate all skills to be capped at 120 instead of 99.

[homer205]

To me it seems that you're underestimating the time it takes to get 104 million experience. To put it this way, all of your experience combined wouldn't add up to one 120 skill. Also, the only 120 we currently have increases its experience rate every 2 levels, most other skills don't follow this pattern.

[Mercifull]

99 is a realistic goal for a person over a period of play. If a new person started and saw the top level was 120 they'd probably just give up and move to a different game. Dungeoneering is different.

[Estoc]

We have levels up to 99 to assign content to and 200m xp for the overachievers. 120 in all skills would both demotivate all but the most determined players and bring almost nothing to the game.

[Den]

Like you said, moving the max cap to 120 would increase the time to max by 8. If it already takes over a year to max (took me 3-4), that's 8 years minimum.

Current exp rates, even with all these faster exp methods you mention, don't increase it enough for 120's to be a sensible thing. 120 Dungeoneering took me 6 month's on and off because of repetitiveness and other players annoying me.

 

If they raise the exp-rates once you hit say 100 and exponentially increase it as you progress, I'm game. But you can't expect and shouldn't create a game model where becoming the highest level takes over 9 years.

[Siobhana]

One thing that hits me is that the general "xp rates are too low" seem all to (quite understandably) be based around what is achieveable today at lvl 99. Of course, this is the benchmark that we know is true, but still, not necessarily comparable. Imho, it's kinda like comparing xp-rates at 99 with either that of lvl 78 (21 lvls lower, 120-99) or 43 (8 times the xp, x doubles per 7 lvls, 99 - (8x7) ) With raising of xp caps there would be a definite need for "better" training methods (not counting the general inflation seen over time anyway). Just some quick examples fro herby (only reason for being singled out is that it's my fave skill). At lvl 44 best "pot" is Harra tar at 72,5xp, at 78 (76) there is mage pot at 172,5xp and at 99 (92) there is extreme range at 260xp (Using the best "simple" pot to make, and ignoring super pray due to only 10xp more and a hopeless 2nd) That gives us just short of a 3,6 multiplier for the first variety (lvl 43 vs 99) and 1,5 multiplier for tha last (lvl 78-99). Still not up to the X8 "balance point" but a bit better than 1:1. If you throw in purely making ovl's (assuming one starts at 1 and keeps all reg for super, super for extr and extr for ovl) the different multipliers end at 13,8 and 5,8.

 

And I do apologize if I've done any glaring math errors. They happen to the best of us.

[Sylpheed]

The only time Jagex should even consider for a second raising other skill caps to 120 is when they all have content up to and including level 99. Even then, they shouldn't raise it for the sake of it being 120.

[homer205]

Regular potions don't get made into supers.

[Pinata]

Maxing is very time consuming as it is. But, I wouldn't mind 120 skills.

[muggiwhplar]

Again, this sort of thing would probably be a no-brainer (minus the potential implications of combat skills) if training skills was actually fun.

[loreal]

I think something like this happening is an inevitability.

 

I don't think all skills will go to 120 though. Probably just the combat skills.

 

 

Crazy idea: introduce a rebirth mechanic. Once you have everything 99/120 dg you can get yourself reborn. All your stats get reset to 1 but you'll level 1.5x faster and the requirements for all gear/weapons/overload/turmoil will be reduced by half. You now get to max again, only you'll have a huge advantage against other non-reborn people. You'd have to keep your exp to keep all the people with lots of exp in a skill happy. So you'd be level 1 attack with 200m xp in it.

[Estoc]

I think something like this happening is an inevitability.

 

I don't think all skills will go to 120 though. Probably just the combat skills.

 

 

Crazy idea: introduce a rebirth mechanic. Once you have everything 99/120 dg you can get yourself reborn. All your stats get reset to 1 but you'll level 1.5x faster and the requirements for all gear/weapons/overload/turmoil will be reduced by half. You now get to max again, only you'll have a huge advantage against other non-reborn people. You'd have to keep your exp to keep all the people with lots of exp in a skill happy. So you'd be level 1 attack with 200m xp in it.

 

"And God said 'let there be grinding and there was grinding' 'And God saw the grinding and it was good'"

[loreal]

Eh? Not sure what you mean.

 

If you're asking why people would want to get reborn, maybe you'd get some shiny aura, a title, a super completionist cape, or some particle effects that surround you whenever you walk around. The things people do to look cool in this game...

[Blyaunte]

Once there is sufficient content between levels 1 and 99, they should start working on 120s.

 

/ discussion ...

 

Seriously -- I'm not against raising the levels but let them get some content in place first, shall we?

[Will H]

Again, this sort of thing would probably be a no-brainer (minus the potential implications of combat skills) if training skills was actually fun.

 

Even if it was fun, 120 still represents an extraordinary amount of grinding. I think Dungeoneering is actually a really fun skill, but it's still a really difficult stat to achieve, even with the super-fast XP gains at the end. You still don't see that many people walking around with True Dungeoneering Skillcapes and it's not even included with the Max Cape.

 

Overall, it's just a bad direction in which to take the game.

[Fallstar]

Again, this sort of thing would probably be a no-brainer (minus the potential implications of combat skills) if training skills was actually fun.

 

Even if it was fun, 120 still represents an extraordinary amount of grinding. I think Dungeoneering is actually a really fun skill, but it's still a really difficult stat to achieve, even with the super-fast XP gains at the end. You still don't see that many people walking around with True Dungeoneering Skillcapes and it's not even included with the Max Cape.

 

Overall, it's just a bad direction in which to take the game.

 

Which direction would you prefer them to go in, once the remaining skills with sparse content at higher levels have been filled out? Gaining xp is ridiculously easy now in comparison to a few years back. Take fishing for instance. Barbarian fishing was 70k/hr ish, now paying people to clear dungeons for you whilst you C2 fish takes that to 160-170k xp/hr. Even if you can't afford to pay people to clear for you, you can get 110-120k xp/hr solo. There are several thousand players with 120 dungeoneering. If it had to be trained as Jagex originally envisioned it, yes it would have taken a while. But dg is over 300k xp/hr. Which means 120 dungeoneering now barely takes more time than 99 rc when nats/abyss were the best xp/hr.

 

If they increase xp/hr as you increase in level from 99-120, it shouldn't be too difficult to level. 99s simply aren't worth much anymore. Even the max and completionist capes aren't a particularly rare sight anymore. There needs to be more distinguishing features at higher levels in my opinion.

[muggiwhplar]

Again, this sort of thing would probably be a no-brainer (minus the potential implications of combat skills) if training skills was actually fun.

 

Even if it was fun, 120 still represents an extraordinary amount of grinding. I think Dungeoneering is actually a really fun skill, but it's still a really difficult stat to achieve, even with the super-fast XP gains at the end. You still don't see that many people walking around with True Dungeoneering Skillcapes and it's not even included with the Max Cape.

 

Overall, it's just a bad direction in which to take the game.

 

If a skill is fun, then the "grinding" is irrelevant because you're enjoying it every step of the way.

[SwreeTak]

Again, this sort of thing would probably be a no-brainer (minus the potential implications of combat skills) if training skills was actually fun.

 

Even if it was fun, 120 still represents an extraordinary amount of grinding. I think Dungeoneering is actually a really fun skill, but it's still a really difficult stat to achieve, even with the super-fast XP gains at the end. You still don't see that many people walking around with True Dungeoneering Skillcapes and it's not even included with the Max Cape.

 

Overall, it's just a bad direction in which to take the game.

 

Which direction would you prefer them to go in, once the remaining skills with sparse content at higher levels have been filled out? Gaining xp is ridiculously easy now in comparison to a few years back. Take fishing for instance. Barbarian fishing was 70k/hr ish, now paying people to clear dungeons for you whilst you C2 fish takes that to 160-170k xp/hr. Even if you can't afford to pay people to clear for you, you can get 110-120k xp/hr solo. There are several thousand players with 120 dungeoneering. If it had to be trained as Jagex originally envisioned it, yes it would have taken a while. But dg is over 300k xp/hr. Which means 120 dungeoneering now barely takes more time than 99 rc when nats/abyss were the best xp/hr.

 

If they increase xp/hr as you increase in level from 99-120, it shouldn't be too difficult to level. 99s simply aren't worth much anymore. Even the max and completionist capes aren't a particularly rare sight anymore. There needs to be more distinguishing features at higher levels in my opinion.

 

That's why we have the trimmed completionist cape. How many skillcapes and max cape and completionist capes you see in game depends much on your own levels. Certainly the number of these capes have increased. They are still very few compared to the total number of players though. I am happy with the 99 skillcaps we have now. Let Jagex fill the spaces left in the current skills system up more before we tell them to raise the skillcap to 120.

[Estoc]

99s simply aren't worth much anymore. Even the max and completionist capes aren't a particularly rare sight anymore.

 

So we make new "99s" that either are stupidly difficult to achieve or water them down so much with the goal of making them obtainable that we're in as bad a situation as we started in? In the end players will be bottlenecked at the max level. Nothing short of removing the xp limit will solve this, but making it so you have to invest hundreds of hours solely to get one of eight combat stats to 120 just so you can compete is completely ridiculous.

[decebal]

Runescape is already one the grindiest major MMO's left on the market. Increasing the cap would just deter newer players even more.

[NukeMarine]

First, I agree that if a skill cap gets raised, it should be for a skill that has content for each level past 99. Yes, later even more benefits can be added to that skill, but give a tangible benefit. It's one of the reasons I suggest they can increase caps at intervals of 1 or 2 months.

 

Second, this does not have to be about making a new target. It'd be my hope that by making skills 120 you reduce this obsessive compulsive desire to get capes in all skills. Instead, as maxing becomes less rational, then you approach skills on their own merits and benefits.

 

I don't think new players will care. They're more turned off by having to compete against players that have years already invested in the game and it's economy. A better solution for those would be servers that have their own closed off economy and accounts start off fresh (similar to doing RSC for the first time). Increasing skill caps would be for veteran players that can appreciate the benefit.