Level capping sucks. The reason is simple: level caps break a game's motivation equation.

Games that allow you to gain new levels for your character by defeating enemies or accomplishing tasks create a carefully balanced risk/reward environment that effectively trains you to seek out the situations with the most potential for beneficial character development. Those rewards could be special weapons, decorative (i.e. not functional) items, or most importantly, experience points. Experience points (and the increased character levels they eventually bring) are central to practically every role-playing game and, increasingly, other genres that throw them in as a "role-playing element." They're the most important reward to be gained in these games because they determine the strength of a character and what kind of weapons and capabilities that character can have.

In a game like Borderlands 2, leveling up doesn't just make you a bit stronger or give you a few more hit points. It's not just incremental improvement. Rather, it allows you to unlock new capabilities for your character, such as the ability to stab enemies while cloaked, flipping off foes with a single-finger salute, or sending in a giant robot that shoots lasers from its eyes to wipe out the bad guys for you. New strategies and tactics are opened up by increasing your level.

Everything in these games is subject to the experience point economy. Without character leveling, games that are based on this kind of economy would be insanely boring, because they would lack the primary motivator of character improvement. Let's face it, most people love these kinds of games because of the character leveling and all that comes with it. It's the apotheosis of the "boss battle" motivator in classic action games.

But when you've put 60 hours into Skyrim, Mass Effect, or Borderlands 2 only to reach an artificial level cap, the risk/reward economy suddenly changes for the worse. When you hit that level cap, you are effectively the Man/Ogre/Zero who "has it all." For many players, myself included, that means the motivation to keep playing dies, or at least is greatly reduced. The careful economy of experience points the game has spent so long setting up suddenly breaks down when the leveling motivation is taken away.

Many people won't mind the lack of experience points so long as they can continue to seek out better loot, better weapons, etc. But these things can cap out as well, as they're often designed into the level capping system itself. More problematically, in many games you can get very high level loot early on, either through dumb luck, a pre-order bonus, promotions such as Borderlands 2's Shift codes, or in some unsavory cases, microtransaction purchases. Continuing to play in the hopes of getting better loot when you already have plenty of legendary weapons just isn't a big motivator for me or many other gamers.

Yes, many people will continue to play games after they've reached the level cap, and many game designers have tried to come up with ways to keep a game interesting after players have maxed out the character level. Consider the huge bosses that require multiplayer fights in MMOs, the bizarre new tasks like the "build a house and adopt a kid" paths in Skyrim's Hearthfire DLC, and so on. But I would rather see designers address the fundamental problem of the motivation equation being broken.

Why not have infinite leveling? In a game like Borderlands 2 where the weapons are procedurally generated, why can't the game similarly continue to scale up the difficulty of the enemies and in-game challenges ad infinitum? This might lower the number of players who want to grind through multiple playthroughs, but players would at least be able to get through the story and earn all the game's achievements without hitting a frustrating brick wall of character progression, and they could even continue to be challenged well past the formal "end" of the game.

As it is, halfway through playing the new, more difficult True Vault Hunter Mode in Borderlands 2, I hit the level cap, which means I'm reluctant to play the latest DLC, or even to finish the mode I'm currently working through. Sure, there's still a completion achievement motivating me to slog on and finish up the mode. But consider this: Gearbox is going to raise the level cap at some point. I know it's coming and so do many other players. So we'll refrain from playing until then, waiting for a time when our efforts will be rewarded with experience points and real character progress rather than just chievos.

A well-crafted leveling system creates a feedback loop that makes many of today's games truly addictive experiences. When a level cap effectively short-circuits that loop, it makes the whole experience that much less compelling. It's certainly far from the worst problem in the world, even from this privileged, first-world gamer's perspective.

But I'll say it again: level capping sucks.