History Main / AbsurdlyHighLevelCap

** It isn't as bad as it seems. There's no diminishing return. Rather, people rarely hit 200 because you have [[LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters so many character slots]]. That and the fact that, even earning XP at the fastest possible rate, it takes close to 1000 hours to reach the Level 200 mark...

** ''VideoGame/Splatoon2'' goes even further by having the original level cap be 99, despite being able to unlock everything by Level 30. Then the 2.0.0 update allowed any players that reached to get to that level cap to essentially prestige ala ''Call of Duty'' to reach a new level cap of 99★. Expect to spend a several hundred hours to reach that cap. However, instead of clothing every five levels, every new level from 30 onward grants the player a Super Sea Snail, a useful item which can be used in lieu of cash to help augment and re-roll gear abilities.

* The VideoGame/{{Borderlands}} series: There's a trend where the main story will get you to around a certain level, but the level cap being somewhere a lot higher:

** ''Pirate Warriors'' has an initial level cap of 50. However, this cap can be broken by collecting the right Coins and Limit-Breaking your character, allowing them to progress past level 50 and up to the real level cap of 100. Doing so allows the character's stats to continue increasing and unlocks new combo finishers for them.

* VideoGame/AncientDomainsOfMystery only has character levels go up to 50, but weapon skills, on the other hand, go from 'unskilled' to 'grandmaster'. Most [=PCs=] will never reach grandmaster within the span of a single game, but those that do are unbelievably fearsome with their chosen weapon.

* The level cap in ''[[VideoGame/PuyoPuyo Puyo Puyo Tetris 2]]'' is 100. The game can be finished quite comfortably below level 20, and reaching level 100 requires beating the final Skill Battle stage in Adventure somewhere in the ballpark of 680 times.

*** ''VideoGame/Disgaea6DefianceOfDestiny'' then [[SerialEscalation outdoes itself]] by raising the level cap. By '''10000''' times. The high numbers you'd obtain by the end of the main story is now achieved by the end of the first chapter.

* ''VideoGame/Fallout4'' requires you to get around, oh, level 50, to comfortably beat the main story, but you can keep going past that. A lot past that. The game has a level cap of '''65535''', so high that the developers [[CreatorsApathy didn't even bother coding any logic for it.]] Earning another level beyond that [[UnwinnableByInsanity crashes your game]] due to a programming limitation. At level 286, you [[EmptyLevels run out of perks to even spend your levels on,]] so this oversight is somewhat justified, even if the reasoning behind the lack of a hard level cap remains a mystery.

* Clicker {{Idle Game}}s in general have a theoretically infinite level cap thanks to being built on exponentiation, and as such both the player as well as enemies have no limit. As such, the level caps are only limited by the natural limitations of the underlying data type. Most of them however have a DiminishingReturnsForBalance applied to damage vs. cost, making it more and more impractical to level up heroes/buy more production units.

*** ''VideoGame/Disgaea6DefianceOfDestiny'' then [[SerialEscalation outdoes itself]] by raising the level cap. By '''10000''' times. It helps that Level 9999 has become the ''[[PinballScoring default starting level]]''.

** ''VideoGame/Borderlands2''
** ''VideoGame/BorderlandsThePreSequel''

* ''VideoGame/AntiIdleTheGame'': The level cap is 9002. IT'S OVER 9001!!!! Also, [[DifficultySpike the distance between level 9001 and level 9002 is HUGE]]. You can probably reach level 9001 in a month, whereas level 9002 takes YEARS.

* Games can have "proper endings" to the plot achievable at lower levels, and then a BonusBoss or even full-on BonusLevelOfHell that requires far higher levels to challenge, letting most players off with an ending while giving the hardcore players the additional challenge they seek.

* Most games in the ''VideoGame/FireEmblem'' series cap levels either at 20[[note]]for units with no second-tier promotion, although remakes often allow an extra 10 levels for those units to put them closer in power with promoted units[[/note]], or 40[[note]]for units with a second-tier promotion; the one exception, ''VideoGame/FireEmblemRadiantDawn'', has a staggering 60ish story chapters when the normal length of a game in the series is around 22 to 25 chapters, and a third tier promotion which caps at 60[[/note]] and have enough map content for units being trained to hit at or near level cap by the end of the game. In ''VideoGame/FireEmblemThreeHouses,'' levels cap instead at ''99,'' which due to the TimeManagementGame formula of the game, is impossible to reach playing through the story as normal without gratuitous abuse of LevelGrinding extra Normal mode maps, which do not require the limited time resource. At the end of a normal playthrough, a party of units will be around level 40 through 45, and units will have capped most if not all of their stats long before level 99.

* ''VideoGame/PathOfExile'' has a level cap of 100 and exponentially growing EXP requirements for the highest levels, along with 5%/10% of your EXP progress to the next level being lost when dying on higher difficulties. Almost 3 years after the game's release (and with 11.5 million registered users), the "Standard" league has only 826 characters on level 100. Similar to its spiritual predecessor Diablo II, optimized character builds generally don't require reaching the level cap to be effective.

* ''VideoGame/Borderlands1'': The main story will get you to about level 30, but the level cap is 50. These extra levels were intended for your NewGamePlus. ''VideoGame/Borderlands2'' and ''VideoGame/BorderlandsThePreSequel'' continue this trend, but ''VideoGame/Borderlands3'' subverts it. If you do all the sidequests and [[GladiatorSubquest Circles of Slaughter]], you should be edging right at the level cap when you finish the game. The story DLC packs raise the level cap, and if you start the DLC at the old cap you should be at the new one by the end.

* Played with by the ''VideoGame/{{Call of Duty}}'' franchise, starting with ''Call of Duty 4: VideoGame/ModernWarfare'' (well, the console versions; PC didn't get to do that until ''World at War''). Players are able to level up (the cap is different for each game), unlocking new weapons, support equipment, and [[RPGElements Perks]] as they go. At the maximum level, the player has the option to [[SelfImposedChallenge "Prestige"]], reverting to level 1, essentially starting again. Later games use this to unlock unique cosmetic elements and extra Custom Class slots, but ''[=CoD4=]'' simply let you start climbing the ladder again, up to five times, not really gaining much of anything for your trouble.

* ''VideoGame/Fallout4'' requires you to get around, oh, level 50, to comfortably beat the main story, but you can keep going past that. A lot past that. The game has a level cap of '''65535''', so high that the developers [[CreatorsApathy didn't even bother coding any logic for it.]] Earning another level beyond that [[UnwinnableByInsanity crashes your game]] due to a programming limitation. At level 286, you run out of perks to even spend your levels on, so this oversight is somewhat justified, even if the reasoning behind the lack of a hard level cap remains a mystery.

** ''VideoGame/Splatoon2'' goes even further by having the original level cap be 99, despite being able to unlock everything by Level 30. Then the 2.0.0 update allowed any players that reached to get to that level cap to essentially prestige ala ''Call of Duty'' to reach a new level cap of 99★. Expect to spend a several hundred hours to reach that cap. However, instead of clothing every five levels, every new level from 30 onward grants the player a Super Sea Snail, which can be used in lieu of cash to help augment gear abilities... granted, by the time you wrap around to 1★, [[MoneyForNothing you don't really need to save money]].

** ''VideoGame/Splatoon2'' goes even further by having the original level cap be 99, despite being able to unlock everything by Level 30. Then the 2.0.0 update allowed any players that somehow managed to get to that level cap to essentially prestige ala ''Call of Duty'' to reach a new level cap of 99★. However, every new level from 30 onward grants the player Super Sea Snails, which can be used in lieu of cash to help augment gear abilities. And for the curious, playing in the most efficient way possible, i.e. winning ''every'' Ranked Mode match within five minutes via knockout, getting to 99★ from Level 1 would take about 582 hours of playtime (not counting time spent between matches).