In most roleplaying games, the level cap is either level 99 or level 100, though there are some games, such as Phantasy Star Universe: Ambition of the Illuminus and Phantasy Star Portable 2, where the level cap is level 200. However, why is it like that? Using Kingdom Hearts, in Kingdom Hearts the level cap is level 100, but in Kingdom Hearts II, the level cap is level 99. If you ask me, level 100 makes more sense. Most games use level 99 as the level cap, including, but not limited to: Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King
I think, for the most part, games that have a high level cap are trying to accommodate for large difficulty spikes, i.e. super bosses. The Hyperdimension Neptunia games' level cap goes all the way up to 750 because the developers release free super boss DLC with ridiculous strength/HP. Of course some may just have the level cap like that to use as padding and as an incentive for people to keep playing to try and max out the levels. I definitely prefer levels 99 or 100 as you know the game will be pretty much balanced and nothing too outrageous.
Coma pretty much hit the nail on the head for this one. The player needs to reach a level of strength that would allow them to put up at least a decent fight against the increasingly powerful foes that are coming at them as the game progresses. So in Phantasy Star Universe/Portable 2, a level 100 cap (i assume) would not be enough to allow players to fight the tougher bosses or enemies without getting their butt kicked in half a second. On a small side-note, I will say that the KH2 level cap has always bugged me because it stops at level 99 and not 100. Considering the first game's cap was 100, it gives me the feeling that I can't become as strong because I'm locked out of level 100, even though there is no level 100 at all in KH2. Anyway, back on topic: I believe there are some games that have a stupidly high level cap simply for the sake of having one. The Disgaea series has a level cap of 9999 and I can't imagine there's enough bosses and content to keep the player going to the max level, especially considering it's a Strategy RPG where you level several characters at once. Of course I could be wrong, as I've only just started the first game in the series and my highest leveled character (the main character) is only level 12.
Level 99 is weird and whoever started that trend needs to be smacked. Really hard. Dragon's Dogma has 200 levels but once Dark Arisen came out everything felt just right with the leveling system. 1-100 would be a good place to sit at for the main story and endgame stuff found in the original game while 101-200 would be the only reasonable way to tackle the Dark Arisen content(despite stat increases per level up decreasing a lot once you hit 100). Level 99 isn't as bad as scaling enemies though. So...at least Kingdom Hearts doesn't have that.
You want to know exactly the reason why that 99 is the level cap rather than 100? It's easier to program. One less variable to constantly calculate. No, really. You know what I want? Lower level caps and more meaningful levels. Who CARES about a hundred levels? Who actually CARES about the time grinding to the cap in WoW so they can play with their friends finally? Not me. It's not fun. Who remembers what level 57 was like in any RPG you've ever bought? Anyone? No? I'll tell you for sure, I'll ALWAYS remember what level 8 of Destiny.
I remember when my friend and I played and finally finished Boulder's Gate II, the level cap was level 30.
Just wanted to bump this. I actually don't mind level-scaling. Phantasy Star Portable and Phantasy Star Portable 2 do this for the story missions, and it works out quite well. Special missions also do this or will have a range. For example, for one side story mission in Phantasy Star Portable 2 the enemy level range is level 60 - 105, meaning if you're level 105 or higher (since the level cap is 200), the enemies will stop scaling and will stay at level 105. You can see that at 0:05 here: Free missions, on the other hand, do have a fixed enemy level depending on the rank of the mission you do (C, B, A, or S), with bosses, of course, being a few levels higher than the normal enemies. Could it also depend on the game, though? As stated in my OP and in my reply above to Machina, the level cap in Phantasy Star Portable 2 is level 200.
I don't thnk that's how it works, is it? They're both the same, which is usually a variable that goes from 0 to 255 just with different caps, aren't they?
For some reason having a level 99 cap really bugs me, it never feels complete. I always assumed that the level cap was 99 in most RPGs because in most of the time you'll most likely finish the game 50-70 range, depending on the game, and the level cap was just placed at the highest possible number with only two variables. Though because of this, there are occasionally some interesting bosses in RPGs that exceed the player's level cap, making for much more difficult battles. For example, the supersbosess in Xenoblade Chronicles all exceeding level 100, maxing at 120 for the ultimate boss. Atlus also does this a lot with SMT and it's final bosses (MT 2's YWVH is level 150!), and if not that, it helps retain some of the difficult of these fights, such as Persona 4's final boss being level 90 (there are exceptions of course, most notably the handheld games). Granted, I can't think of anymore example, going to show it doesn't happen all that often.
