Quote Originally Posted by Willie the Duck View Post
And yet the worst offender spell levels are those that (supposedly) most games never get to. Is it then just because you theoretically could get there that is an incentive?
I have no idea. I personally don't care for it myself, but notice that players love leveling and get twitchy if they don't level ever so often. As I don't like the superhero genre, I would be perfectly happy with capping the levels at 10 (which is about where I've ended campaigns in the past).

I think it's mostly the regular incremental noticeable boost of power that people get addicted to. Where it ends up I don't think matters so much, but players tend to want to keep playing with the same characters, and thus the game "have" to offer higher levels to continue with the same power boost experience. Haven't really seen high level spells and capstone abilities be something players particularily looking forward to. It's more "leveling is fun" and "this character is cool, I want to keep playing it". And then suddenly you have a different genre without realizing it, and people start to lose interest...