89 million can be the cap.

Or yeah, it doesn't matter.

Yes, it does have that issue, and it can be frustrating at one point in Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song (PS2) where you basically *have* to avoid battles in a certain area to get a certain Fatestone in time. (Yes, in the Romancing SaGa series, battles fought don't just determine enemy strength, but they also determint the progression of time, with quests opening and closing. Also, in RS1 and RS3, to beat the game you need to fight a certain number of battles for the endgame to open up.)

It's actually one of the biggest issues I have with that game, particularly combined with two other things (one bad, one good):
* Outside of battle, enemies move in real time, turning the game into an action game when you're trying to avoid battles. (There are some map skills that can help IIRC, but you have a limited number of uses without having to find an inn to rest).
* The battles are *fun*, so it feels anti-fun for the game to punish the player for fighting too many of them.

As I said, it does matter, as levels are an atomic unit of growth. A level cap of 2 is very different from a level cap of 37, for example.

Interesting concept, and could work, but only as long as that scaling really does make sense story-wise and it really is tied to the story, as in something happened and certain enemies got a shipment of better gear, or training, or (better) reinforcements, or were magically enhanced (the cheap way to do it, I guess, and covering a plain level increase instead of something carefully done for just some traits), not the examples you gave here, with number of dungeons completed or even number of battles. So something you wouldn't exactly care for :))

What I really like is that there is no cap, but that the game itself changes. New challenges appear, not just quantitatively, but qualitatively. The game makes you feel that you are no longer in the minor leagues, but that means that you have to adapt to new risks and opportunities.

Two examples come to mind: Sword of the Samurai and Mount & Blade: Warband.

Perhaps the way it could (and IMO, should) have been done in Wizardry 8.

As is, Wizardry 8 has enemies scaling to your level, with all the issues and criticisms that entails.

How it should have been done, IMO, is as follows:
* There are 3 artifacts that you need to find in order to complete the game. After each artifact is found, the Dark Savant becomes more likely to send minions after you, and there are some events that happen after you get the 2nd artifacts.
* So, why not use those for determining enemy levels? The more artifacts you've found, the stronger the enemies are (fixed spawns excluded).
* Some areas could still have stronger or weaker enemies. The Monastery and Arnika Road would only ever have lower level enemies, while areas like the Sea Caves and the Rapax territories would have higher level enemies. Ascension Peak, once all three artifacts have been obtained, would have the most powerful enemies in the game.

(By the way, Arnika Road only ever has lower level enemies in Wizardry 8 as-is; it's just that, when you go there for the first time, those lower level enemies are rather dangerous to your lower level party. Come back later, however, and the encounters are trivial.)

If you are defining change/growth as only happening when the player levels up, then sure, I guess that there is a lower limit you'd want for the game to be enjoyable. But other than that, I don't see how it really matters much.

2 and 37 might be significantly different, but 37 and 500 aren't that significantly differnet, or 500 and 89 million aren't.

This is the approach I modded into my Morrowind and Oblivion games. You geain skills and stats based on those skills, and eventually levels, but it's all done quietly behind the scenes and the level is more just a number to represent your relative power. It grants no inherent bonuses of its own. You don't get a level up screen, just a little notification placard saying your sneak skill or lockpicking skill has increased.

It's an interesting question.

Like some others I prefer a "soft cap" in general. I find it frustrating when after two thirds of the game character levels are "maxed out" (by artificial limit) and there is less or even no reward for doing stuff. It's ok if run out of stuff to do - because that means I should move my ass to the final battle - but having to fight and sneak and persuade for another many hours without having "level up" to look forward to...
Yeah, I'm looking at you PoE2 *grmbl*

Another acceptable cap would be "you've learned everything there is to learn, mastered everything there is to master". Although that kind of takes the RPG aspect away.

As for "low" vs "high" cap - which really means will you advance rather slowly, or more quickly...
Both are fine if well implemented. Slow progression systems need to add more meaning to a level up - which main stat to raise, a number of skillpoints to distribute, perks to select. Or - if there is only one or a few things to do, they really need to make some serious impact.
While fast systems can get away with "Level up! Here is your one skillpoint". And that one skillpoint won't have much impact.

So what do I prefer? I don't like games where progression is really slow. Like only a handful of level-ups in 80 hours or so. BG1 felt really slow to me. It's ok if it slows down in the endgame - that's to be expected. But developing the character is one of carrots-on-a-stick in these games, and while in the end the character is pretty much developed, it shouldn't take too long to see some progress in the beginning. When DMing my pen&paper campaigns I'm usually pretty generous with XP in the beginning, as the characters are young, inexperienced folk thrown into the great wide world with new, well - experiences - at every corner.

Another thing to consider is base stat progression. Meaning hitpoints, base attack and defense and stuff. I find it a bit ridiculous when characters start out maybe with a meager 8 HP and have hundreds or even thousands of HP in the end. That's usually a problem with systems where everything a few levels above you is utterly invincible and everything a few levels below is not worth your attention any more.
I prefer systems where high level enemies might be punishingly hard to defeat, but with skill, cleverness and good use of resources ("Just you wait, dragon! I brought a hundred Magic Missile scrolls!") it is possible, just maybe not worth the effort at this point, while low level enemies might not be a big threat any more, but they still can harm you if you get too careless (I got torn to pieces by a pack of wild dogs - level 1 - in Witcher 3 at level 16 or so).

Yeah, i remember taking weak equipment and leveling up to level 10 or 20 and suddenly it was AWESOME from just okay.

Though looking over the mechanics of how the stats worked where every 2 levels you added your base stats to your stats. Made for very linear leveling that didn't have a limit.

Though i don't have the patience to play these games anymore. Yep, i remember beating the first game 70-80 first run through... Though it's also interesting to see the new content when you can beat guys you couldn't beat before later.

I like 20 as a cap with a smooth progression. That's where attributes and skill levels would reach their maximum in The Dark Eye (and you'd usually not even reach 20 at all). As a result you operate with reasonable values everywhere: Weapon damage is usually somewhere between 1 and 15 before applying skills and armour, health levels of characters are between, say, 21 and 60. Systems where characters end up with 80.000 or more health points are appalling to me.

The progression in Guild Wars feels fairly similar to what I know from DSA. You have a level cap of 20, but it is reached very early in the game. The health level starts at 100 and you get +20 per level (480 base health at maximum level). Attributes are capped at 20, too, but it is rare that you ever reach so much in an attribute. The progression is pretty smooth. Around the time you reach your maximum level you also have access to fairly cheap maximum power equipment.
I like the results this has:
• Your levelling and gear hunt does not end up as a fatally boring grind, as it happens quickly and naturally.
• The majority of the game can be seen as endgame content, posing different challenges (opponent builds) and target difficulty levels depending on the specific area.
• Character progression is mostly about the players' choice of skills and their team-wide combination aswell as the players' input quality. Everyone brings 8 skills in a team of 8 characters, facing foes using up to 8 skills from the same pool of skills available to players (~1350 skills + a few dozen that are exclusive to either players or NPCs). This increases the focus on strategy and tactics rather than grind.
• No number bloat. You won't see a boss with a million health points in this game, and I'm really glad about it.

Too high (or nonexistant) level caps cause number bloat and are incentives for grinding. For me, that'd be bad game design. Number bloat is what was really annoying me about DOS2, as it had severe number bloat alongside gear devaluation on every level-up with a particularly drastic jump every 4 levels. That was one of the first things I changed with mods to make the game playable and enjoyable for me. For some reason the developers tried to hide the good parts of the game behind this unnessecary barrier.

I'd like to see more games to have a progression system like Guild Wars. For some players like me it's the most enjoyable formula.

What about getting XP based only in objectives achieved. Meaning quests and sidequests, like in Queen's Wish.

The fewer levels you have the larger the jump has to be to significantly affect much.

I'd also be find instead of 20 levels max you do 200, but each level is 1/10th and you get there 10x faster, you get a more fluid gradual growth instead of from level 4, you go to say level 5, and suddenly you have 3rd level spells and you can cast 4 fireballs when the day before you only had access to 2nd level spells and could only do acid arrow.

Though i'd have to say games that don't have levels (but certainly have XP) are probably better. Herosystems comes to mind, where you get XP, and you can spend points to improve or make new powers. Though if you have a powerpool you can add substantial powers for 1-2 points (so long as you only use 1 power at a time) where you choose the growth, not Level up: +5 str, +10 hp +2 chr +2 int +2 luck, etc...

I kinda dislike being railroaded. You can accept a certain amount. But also saying 'You cannot improve anymore because you hit max level' is a poor choice. I don't know. For different games different systems are probably better.

As for grinding, not sure. I remember Zy-El, 10,000 level cap, at 3,000 you'd have enough points to max every skill. I think i never got above 700 (mostly got tired), though the character didn't change much after level 400. Came down to trying to find better equipment more than anything else.

Though the killing grounds with 127x set on, well, lots of stuff on the ground you can never totally sift through... that's for sure... Even found a combination of an item where it crashed my game (ran out of ram, back in 2008). That was fun...

But after you get to a certain point, grinding doesn't matter, if you're too strong you just do whatever or finish the story and retire the game/character.

Level cap? I don`t like level caps! The more levels, the better. :-)

I forgot to mention, Obsidian has done interesting things with alternative progression.

In Pillars of Eternity, there are special weapons and armor that have their own story, and improve as you accomplish certain tasks. Sometimes this is just “do X damage to Y enemy type” but sometimes there are riddles or other things you must do. These items are powerful enough that it is satisfying to “level” them.

Tyranny has something similar with its artifacts. There’s also the reputation system, where you get perks based on how much a faction likes (or hates) you.

Counterpoint to many of the examples here:

Guild Wars (the only MMO -- and also only DRMed PC game I've ever played) had a level cap of 20. You reached that around 1/3 of the way through the game (in each campaign). You were expected to be at level cap by then. You still got skills after (alternate skills you could swap in -- it was a system like a CCG, you have 100s of skills, but can only take 8 with you when you leave town)... but your stats were set. No grinding them up. Even gear remained set too, within a small range of trade-offs/variations you could make.

Note: You did still gain XP and, when reaching 'level up' threshold, gain a new skill point to buy a new skill, but there was no further leveling up, and skills could be acquired in numerous other ways.

This low level cap added one big thing for the developers: They knew the stats of the characters playing through an area, so they could tune it accordingly. Sadly, late game (especially in the last expansion), they started tuning everything for the "elite hardcore" players rather than... normal players, so it became unfun and overtuned, but, in these cases, there was NOTHING a normal player could do, since you were at level cap and they just designed it to be outright too hard.

So yes, I just gave a pro and con of a low, early acquired, level cap.
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But games should absolutely have level caps. None of that "infinite" crap like Diablo 3 supposedly has. Every game MUST have an ending point. Not having one is very disrespectful to the player. The best part of Grim Dawn is reaching level 100 (cap) and firing up a new character of a different build!

As for what it should be set -- you have to answer, "should a player reasonably be able to get everything"? Because if so, the cap system needs to be set to allow that. If the game is short enough that replays might be expected, maybe not and a lower cap. And a New Game+ system interacts with both of these with what you keep and what's reset.
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My preference is to make sure levels have diminishing returns in numbers so a player might grind out tons of levels all the way to 99, but it doesn't get them as much as the game's expected 1-50.