Level caps are a odd beast. I hate the modern take by a lot of action-rpgs where the cap is seemingly endless and just demands grinding.

Wasteland 3's got a pretty good system with a cap of 35. It's not too much, rewards expansive play and lets you play around with builds.

I'd say the cap should be determined by the amount of XP available in the game. Once you run out of quests to do and things to kill, that's it. As for a number, anything between 20-100 seems reasonable. But it depends on many things.

In games where enemies respawn or you can farm indefinitely, I like when you end the last difficulty/the game a bit below the level cap, supposing you never really grinded much on the way. Example: Cap 100, you end the last difficulty in the early to mid 90 range. That way, you got the most out of your character/build and you can go back and grind those few remaining levels if you want.

What I absolutely hate though are enemies that scale with you. Nothing better than gaining a few levels and actually feeling weaker due to enemy stat bloat. I like it much more when the enemies have static stats based on area/difficulty. That way, you can feel the progression of power and not play catch-up with enemy scaling.

Interesting question. Personally, I prefer the number of levels to be on the small end (10-20), and allow for some of the growth to be through equipment, so even if it's been a while since your last level, you can get a pick-up from that new belt or whatever.

I grew up on isometric CRPGs like Baldur's Gate, though, so I wonder how that colors my preferences. If I played JRPGs, would I prefer a higher (or no?) level cap?

I guess for a WARPG like a Bethesda game I prefer no level cap, because I think of those as big playgrounds anyways, and level-ups aren't as significant as in say a D&D game. A level-up in Baldur's Gate 2 or Pillars of Eternity might open up new spell levels, powerful high level abilities, etc. Most level-ups in WARPG's increase your chance to hit or whatever ... it's rarely a game-changer, so it's ok to have more of them.

What about games where enemy stats scale with story progression, or side quest progression?

(I believe Trials of Mana (which I have not played in any form) has one part where you can do a bunch of dungeons in whatever order you choose, but the enemies get stronger after each dungeon you complete.)

Personally, I prefer it if the game never openly stops your progress with any level cap but at the same time doesn't allow grinding to such an extent that it completely breaks the balance. If progress is based on xp, a completionist fighting every individual monster in the game should never reach a point at which they don't get any xp rewards anymore before the game is over, but a game catering to my tastes would have a limited number of opponents and no respawning, thereby providing only a finite amount of xp (let's call it a "soft" level cap).

So the cap would be the maximum you can achieve by doing everything there is to do in the game, not the game telling you "you are getting too strong, so I won't reward you for anything anymore". The latter happened to me in Pillars of Eternity and it killed a big part of my motivation. If a game goes that route it has to make sure every fight in the game is unique and rewarding in itself, it doesn't work if you have to repeat lots of trash mob fights, because then the level cap will make it all the more obvious what a waste of time that is.

In general, I think something between 10 and 20 levels is a good number. There should be enough to make you feel like you're making progress and getting more and more interesting options, but not so many as to make leveling so common and trivial that the players will hardly care about it anymore. Each level up should come with significant improvements to look forward to (e.g. you learn a new ability, not just extremely minor things like 1% better crit chance) and it should come at the sweet spot between "Again, already? I hardly had time to savor my last level" and "Ugh, I almost thought I would never ever level up again". I guess it also depends on how long and interesting the game is in general.

Growth in power should not just be tied to levels but also equipment, maybe to equal parts? Dunno.

In a typical Dragon Quest game, the level cap is 99, and by endgame you would realistically be around level 40 or so. (This applies to DQ3 through DQ8, which is a good portion of the series.)

Final Fantasy games typically take you to higher levels; in FF3, FF4, and FF6, level 60 or higher is typical for endgame. (FF5 is an oddball here, and the game is usually finished around level 40.)

Another thing is that, in many JRPGs, it won't ever be that long since your last level.

There's also the concept of secondary growth systems, as seen in Final Fantasy 5 and later, where there's something other than XP or Gil that you get from battles, and which allows you to learn various abilities; this is something you generally don't see in WRPGs.

On the other hand, there are a few older WRPGs (Wasteland 1, Wizardry 6-8) where you have levels, but your skills can improve with use without you having to level up, and that allows you to see improvement even if it's been a while since your last level.

As long as it does not change on every level up, it's fine. Like going through an area and the same enemies that were at the start of it are now suddenly harder because you got 3 levels and didn't find any upgrades in the meantime. Doing it once, once you enter an area/dungeon is fine but then it should remain at that level indefinitely. Not that I come back some time later and the goblins I rolled over back then are now suddenly steamrolling me down in seconds. That is the one thing that can kill the feeling of power progression for me. Either the levels should give enough of a power increase to counteract that (very hard to balance) or just make it static, like many old ARPGs did (Diablo, Titan Quest etc.).

That's one situation where our tastes differ. I like it when games don't have a limited number of opponents, and I can just fight battles and not worry about running out.

Personally, I think my ideal RPG would actually not have levels at all, but would take more of a SaGa-like approach, where you're constantly gaining stats after each fight. Or, alternatively, have level ups be sort-of in the background and not something the player needs to play close attention to. (One thing I don't like is when you have to worry about the precise timing of level-ups; that's one reason I dislike the "full heal on level up" mechanic that keeps appearing in games.)

In any case, it sounds like you wouldn't really like Disgaea's postgame, where gaining multiple levels per kill is typical if you haven't reached the level cap and are fighting enemies that are at least remotely close to you in power. (How else are you going to reach 4 digit levels in a reasonable amount of time?)

Yes, I'm aware of that. ;)

(And I fear I will never be able to relate to why you like the things you like, but to each their own.)

You are most probably right about that, I don't even like the term "postgame". I like games to have an ending, and once I reach it, my motivation to spend more time with it drops significantly.

What about "you come back later, after having solved a bunch of quests and defeating one of the major demon lords that's been terrorizing the world (after an epic boss fight, of course), and now those goblins are far more dangerous"?

That could work. Honestly, as long as the deciding mechanic for the scaling isn't the player level, I'm fine with it.

What if the deciding factor is the number of battles you've fought? (That actually happens in the Romancing SaGa series, SaGa Frontier, and maybe Unlimited SaGa (not SaGa Frontier 2).)

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One could argue that Disgaea's postgame isn't really "postgame", as the only way to continue after beating the game is New Game +, and the optional stuff can all be done before beating the game (though doing so will make you so overleveled that the final boss will not be able to hurt you and die in one hit). (This changes later in the series, I believe, where you can have an actual postgame save.)

Disgaea's postgame could be said to have an end; once you beat Baal, and beat the version who appears when you replay that map, there really isn't anything left to do. You could pass stronger enemies bills and fight a level 9999 version of that boss, but once you defeat it, you're done with the game.

That could lead into trying to avoid battles. Constantly having to worry about "Can I fight this or will that actually be detrimental in the long run?" is not a good thing in my book