//Copy Pasta from my CBT Forum Post

Feel free to correct my math if I did calculate anything wrong.

Today I want to cover a topic that is very important for me. Maybe some of you have already noticed while the CBT1 that the game is already close or even near the latest korean patch. Yet everything after level the current level cap of 40 is not yet unlocked, yet it is already there.

For the CBT and the release as well the targeted level cap is 40. Even if no further information were given out about the release of the level 50 cap, having everything already set and ready to go, we can assume that the increase will not be that much ahead in the future. Let’s say that they plan to release the new level cap within one – four months after Cabal 2 is officially released in NA/EU.
With this in mind I did some math about the possible gear progression of the different type of players. But we will go through these individual examples let me explain were my fear comes from.

Cabal 2 is a game that is highly gear based, I currently cannot give you exact calculation but I am working on them, so the power of a character is mostly determined by ones equipment. As you are able to do certain things in PvE once you have acquired a certain gear level, this however is completely different in terms of PvP, as your numbers are matched against the numbers of your opponent and thus can greatly vary. I am not saying that personal skill is not important in both PvE and PvP but your gear can outscale the content in PvE making Force Shielders able to tank a whole challengemode dungeon at once without a Priest and gear is able to decide a fight in PvP before the first hit as once the gap in gear between the players is to high the lower geared character will not be able to scratch his opponent no matter how hard he tries and/or how skilled he is.

Because of this system, that I really like (Gear/Items/Loot/Upgrade), striving for the perfect equipment is the ultimate goal of every player in Cabal 2. Yet getting this perfect, lets better call it almost perfect, gear does not only consume vast amount of time and dedication but wealth (Alz) as well as people need to buy cores and other upgrading related stuff as well. (Even players who go 24/7). And this is where the root of the problem is buried.

The moment the new level cap is unlocked EVERYTHING without an exception will lose it total value but the vendor price. The difference of gear from level 40 to 50 is so frikkin huge that a player who has almost perfect level 40 gear will not have the closest chance of winning against a player who wears level 50 starter gear.

After this introduction let’s jump into some numbers.
To have an easy time of comparing we will use the following five types of players.
x1 / Casual
x2 / Semi Casual = two Casuals
x3 / Semi HC = three Casuals
x4 / HC = four Casuals
x5 / Freak = five Casuals

With this we can easily check different types of players against each other even if we calculate based on a Casual. To make the math more accurate we assume that each type has the exact same skill level. (We will add skill later into our calculation)
Our Casual will play for two hours a day with each day. He will need 30 hours for reaching the level cap. After reaching level cap he will start farming EM HC and EM SG for his starter gear.

For once I will do the full math for a almost perfect drop, we will work with this number even if higher tier items maybe are harder to get:

We want a Bracelet with the following five stats:
Physical Attack, Critical Accuracy, Accuracy, HP, Physical Defense
Each Item can have 2-5 stats, as I do not know about different chances for more stats we will assume that the numbers of stats have the same chances. So our Item has a chance of25% two have five stats.

100% / 4 = 25%

There are at least 15 possible stats I can remember (I might have forgotten something), all stat combinations are possible.

Physical Attack, Magic Attack, Improved Healing
HP, MP, HP Reg, MP Reg
Physical Defense, Magic Defense
Evasion, Weapon Block, Shield Block
Attackspeed, Accuracy, Critical Accuracy

The chance to get the five right stats is 1:3,003 but only one of four drops will have five stats so the chance to get our close to perfect item is roughly 1:12,000 still there is a chance that even after 12,000 drops our item is not yet dropped but of course our almost perfect item could drop at the first loot. Going further the range of the stat itself can also vary. For now I do not have accurate numbers but let’s say the roll can be between 200-300 for the HP.
I will not do the math on this but everybody should have understand how hard it will be to get the perfect item. Yet there are ways to reroll stats on dropped items as well but those cost Alz or other currency so you need to gather them too. For calculation further let’s assume based on our current numbers you will get an 75% perfect item every 20,000 drops.

I was able to do EM HC in less than 10 minutes so we take 7 minutes per run for our Casual as well as there would be only one possible endboss so every time clearing HC the same item would drop.

20,000 x 7 minutes / 60 minutes / 24 hours = ~97 days

97 x 24 hours / 2 hours = more than 3 years

Our Casual would need more than 3 years to get an item that is only perfect by 75% just be loot / full reroll. Every character has a total of 14 items.
Main Weapon, Secondary Weapon
Head, Chest, Gloves, Pants, Shoes
2 Rings, 2 Earrings, 2 Bracelets, 1 Necklace

A frikkin 42 years!
However, this time is greatly reduced due to the fact that (at least all of the items I got so far) are bind on equip and thus you can just buy your almost perfect item from other players. And as this items are based on Supply and Demand and total Alz in circulation our casual might be able to get 75% perfect gear in 6 months. (He is very lucky and got a bunch of good drops himself / sold a lot of stuff too so had the money!)

Let’s put the 6 months on our other 4 types:

Semi Casual 3 months
Semi HC 2 months
HC 1 1/2 months
Freak ~1 month

If we now add skill level this times are possible to add +- 50% we also could add a luck factor with +- 25%. In this case our Casual would be able to get his gear in ~4 months will our freak may need ~2 months to be equipped.

We skipped a lot of stuff for this numbers e.g. different durations on the itemslot or higher difficulties of the dungeons, also challengemode is only doable once per day so feel free to set the needed time up.

Well > level cap from 40-50
The whole effort to get this equip is wasted and you have to start from zero again.
Even I who really is into grinding might cry on the day of level cap increase as my gear goes to the vendor.
On one hand delaying the level cap increase will decrease this problem because there is basicly no other way to improve and the more time you spend on level 40 the more use you have of your items but on the other hand delaying a patch that adds so much content to the game (like CM HC) cannot be delayed for too long.

Of course I understand the economic reason for it to delay a content patch and not releasing all stuff at once. All of the level 40 content would be simply skipped and never touched. As I have informed myself about the new content that waits beyond level 40 I am not able to say I want them to delay level 50 for a year I still wish for the level 50 cap right away on release!

I would prefer that ESTsoft is switching the level 40 content to level 50 instead. This would also means that on level 50 more content would be available for the players than it would be before. Of course it is a bunch of work for the developers to adapt the level 40 content to level 50 stats yet in my opinion this would be a way everybody would profit more.