And if you actually do play long enough to hit that final tier? at that point the only limit is your equipment slots, so just go bonkers. The exponential increase in leveling costs after you hit 200 makes it so that lightweight havel mages that "break the game" won't actually be a thing until you hit the final tier. By the point where your soul level is high enough that you can softcap one playstyle's stats and actually put enough points into others to have a funtional sub-build, the gap between one tier and the next is so humongous that non-leveling soul usage/deathloss will be a drop in the bucket for your soul memory tier, yet there's still enough high-level tiers that whoever you find online will *actually* be around your level. You soon won't face them at all just plainly by going past their tier, just playing naturally. Twinks using the agape ring? not so many people will be actually going for that, specially this late, and the ones they do will be further diluted across the numerous early tiers. The sheer number of tiers and how large the gap gets at higher tiers ensures that you won't end up isolated. why should you? just keep playing and keep going up. This system is only a "problem" if you want to stay at a fixed tier and never go up, which. Dumbasses, dumbasses everywhere complaining about how this system makes the old meta inviable(which was definitely intentional) instead of looking at what it's good for. Never before had a single souls mechanic generaetd such a volume of crying babies.
This is, for example, to prevent a player of a certain level that is close to the end of the game from invading/doing co-op with a player of the same level that might be still in the first areas of the game. In this game, it is part of the formula that sets minimum and maximum range for interactions between players online (co-op and invasions). Soul Memory is the cumulative total of all the souls gathered on a character. Soul Memory in Dark Souls 2 is covered on this page.