In the middle of Gamescom 2015, Bethesda has posted on their official Twitter and Fallout Facebook pages that Fallout 4 will have no level cap, and that the player can keep playing after the main story ends.

With the merging of Perks and Skills under the governance of the player's SPECIAL stats, it will be interesting to see how much you can truly level up and if you can completely max out one single character. Not to mention of the reports that developers have spent upwards of 400 hours in the game and still continue to find new things.

What is your anticipation level for Fallout 4 now, given the new details today and those that have come out the past month during QuakeCon and GamesCom?

Good news. I hate level caps.

probably means all the enemies scale with you.

#2turnt4davault

That's rad. I'm at peak excitement for this thing.

Interesting, sounds like what they eventually did with Skyrim. With the legendary skill system you could level infinitely.

Mods on pc are gonna be sick. I'm stoked

Yep, epic battles are ahead...

I just hope what happened with me and New Vegas doesn't happen with 4, where I lost any interest in playing even a minute more upon finishing the main story. That happens to me with most open world games, but the ending of New Vegas was a big let down for me, totally put me off the game. I can't remember what the ending even was now, just remember not liking it.

Perfect.

I am hyped beyond belief for this.

@paulmako: Thanks, that was, uh, totally intentional.

I like level caps, it gives you clearly defined character builds to aim for, rather than just, "eh ill get everything eventually"

Don't think its a huge deal though, playing after finishing campaign I think should be a nobrainer.

Not having a level cap is appreciated. Nothing bugged me more in games when you maxed out your level and were unable to keep leveling up due to the cap. Also, it is awesome that they are doing what they did with Fallout 3 (allowing you to play after you beat the main story, although Fallout 3 needed the Broken Steel DLC to make that happen). November can't come soon enough!

There are 70 perks and 275 total levels within the Perks, not to mention that you would also have to upgrade every SPECIAL attribute to 10, so that you can get all of the Perks. With that, theoretically, it will take a whole long time to completely max out everything.

We don't know yet if you can accrue perk "points" into a pool and just not use them, or the game will just force you to spend them every time you level up.

Awesome! I need this game in my veins.

They should start by making the levels actually mean something.

@capum15 said:

@cale: New Vegas doesn't allow you to play past the main quest.

That worked "great" in Oblivion. I love when a random bandit has Daedric armor.

Yeah, I get the game design reason, but it can be a real drag. Especially if your companion AI isn't up to snuff. Or really the NPC's where random high level spawns can kill a town.

"And then the Wastelander... just... kinda... fucked off. I've been Ron Pearlman. Hashtag Hellboy III"

@ripelivejam said:

I imagine it will work like Fallout3/Skyrim, where enemy types scale in certain encounters/locations.

I can't imagine they would go back to that tedious flat difficulty curve of Oblivion.

I really liked enemy scaling in Oblivion it's not going to be as aggressive in Fallout 4, Skyrim didn't have a level cap after hitting the skill limit you couldn't get earn any new perks until the dlc.

http://www.gameinformer.com/games/fallout_4/b/playstation4/archive/2015/06/17/19-new-details-fans-need-to-know-about-fallout-4.aspx

Bethesda is tweaking the way auto-scaling works for Fallout 4 to create more challenge. "We call it rubberbanding; we'll have an area [where enemies scale from] level 5 to 10, and then this area will be level 30 and above," Howard says. "You'll run into stuff that will crush you, and you will have to run away."

Cool. I can't wait for this game.

This is definitely something I like. I'm used to playing Fallout New Vegas with no level cap and dynamic enemy leveling (mods, mods, mods).

That almost seems like the standard for open ended RPG's these days. I hate serious problems with both of the past modern Fallouts and I'm hoping that this entry will rectify most of my concerns which all kinda circled around polish.

Sounds good, but usually I just stop playing games like these once the main story is over anyway.

I like the idea of no level cap. Makes me think of my Wastelander as a Saiyan: always looking for more fights, always getting stronger.

Also, what's with these people saying they stop after completing the main questline? Don't they know that in open world games, that's the thing that you put off for 200+ hours and possibly never even finish?

@poobumbutt said:

Why would you never finish the main quest? Also, not everyone has 200+ hours to put into a game... I do a mixture of sidequests and the main story, but sometimes the side stuff feels really shallow and not worth the time commitment, which naturally pushes me back to the main story.

How is this any different than 3 or new vegas?

If there ends up being a point where you're not really unlocking anything new when you level up though, leveling up should become sort of pointless, right? Especially if enemies scale.\

Wait, is Bethesda trying to make a new type of idle game?

The numbers always go up.

It depends on the game scaling to your level. If it doesn't the lack of level cap is pretty meaningless.

Good, good, the numbers should always go up.

I like the idea of a soft level cap, one where you have gotten a common subset of perks, but that keeps combat and quests more interesting by still making the points you earn worthwhile after you reach that soft cap.

@citizenkane said:

It's still the only game I'm really looking forward to.

I wish I could give half a shit about this game but honestly I just know that Bethesda is going to fuck this up in a multitude of ways.

The developers are finding things they've never seen before in their own game? How does that work? Are they being visited by magical coding fairies in the night?

This seems like it's been announced to intentionally avoid the original problem with Fallout 3 which was:

(Fallout 3 spoilers ahead, though I don't think I need to warn people in a Fallout 4 thread)

Hey, you have to go into this really irradiated room and you will die saving the Wasteland, even though you might totally have a character with you who is impervious to harm from radiation and could also easily key in these numbers, you still have to die and do it because, you know, story arc and all that.

I'm pretty sure they patched that out (or was it the DLC that fixed it?), but I remember there being a bit of a kerfuffle at the time about it.

Good

It was the DLC "Broken Steel" that allowed you to play after the main story ends.

Good for game like this the hard ending never made sense and when your focused on single player who needs a level cap?

Because it is this way from the start.
Both 3 and New Vegas had a Level cap and an end game, start over point.

Both games got DLC to raise the Level cap (or maybe New Vegas had a higher level cap to begin with? I don't remember.) Though only to a certain point, it's still capped just higher then it had been.

3 had a hard ending for a while until DLC came out to allow you to continue roaming. And New Vegas only has a hard ending.

So... out of the box, it's a lot different. No Level cap, no hard end point. As opposed to level caps with hard end points.

@zolroyce: Ah. I didn't finish 3 until after the DLC came out. And I don't think I finished New Vegas at all, didn't care for that one.

@cale: I was just joking, man. I was making fun of myself for A) taking a long time to finish any open-world-game's main quest, most egregiously NEVER finishing Skyrim's main quest and B) spending probably 200+ hours EACH on Fallout 3 and NV. I don't think people are nuts for not doing these things. Quite the opposite. I think I'm nuts. It was meant to be self deprecation. Sorry for the inarticulate delivery.

To answer your question, I never finished Skyrim's quest because I thought it was boring, but exploring the world was not.

Lastly, if you're the same Cale who recently wrote into Match 3, I liked your question! If you aren't and did not, then ignore this likely insane-looking conclusion.