Gearbox: Borderlands 2 level cap increase by March

The latest adventure for Borderlands 2's Vault Hunters involves knocking the loot-stuffing out of Pandora's deadliest creatures in the Sir Hammerlock DLC, but why stop the madness there? Gearbox has been talking about a level cap increase beyond 50 for some time, and speaking to Official PlayStation Magazine UK , Producer James Lopez said we'll see more levels sometime during the year's first quarter which ends in March.

As Lopez explained, picking the correct moment to make everyone more powerful came from poring over player stats tracked by Borderlands 2's SHiFT system. "SHiFT allows us to see a lot more about the way players are playing the game and see what they're doing. We wanted to give people enough time to get at least one level 50 and then see from there. We also didn't want to wait so long that people were no longer interested or felt like it wasn't coming."

It's unclear how we'll get the added levels—perhaps included in a future DLC pack or as a separate patch. Heck, with how wacky things get on Pandora, we wouldn't be surprised if Dr. Zed just randomly decided to shoot a strength-boosting syringe into our eyeball one day.

Lopez previously told Polygon the issue of ability balance and power-creep weighed heavily on Gearbox's decisions for adjusting character levels. "We try to find ways to balance it out and we also need to adjust the enemies so they are still challenging at the higher levels. It's one of those funny things where people assume that whenever they hit level 50 they're going to steamroll through everything."

Omri Petitte is a former PC Gamer associate editor and long-time freelance writer covering news and reviews. If you spot his name, it probably means you're reading about some kind of first-person shooter. Why yes, he would like to talk to you about Battlefield. Do you have a few days?