2 immersion breakers, or, where Gothic is better

[Elwro]

Now, I like the game. It's very good in some respects. But there are two decisions which were clearly the 'easy choices' made by the designers. And one of them is not fixable by any patch...

First: the Witcher's GPS. You're told "visit X's house", and magically a dot appears on your map. Even if you turn off the path-to-goal display on your minimap, there is (almost always) no way to get the required information: nobody tells you stuff like "it's the second house to the left after you pass through the bridge" etc. I'm suprised at how much this breaks the mood for me. [Remember how in Daggerfall you could ask around for where people lived? And that it was a normal feature of randomly generated quests?]

Second a): levels and items. Finish a difficult quest while level 10, receive an item with level 15 required. Way to reward the player! And there's not even a hint of justification for it, even a lame one like 'you need more strength' or something.

Second b): levels and quests. I don't need to be told how difficult a quest is supposed to be. There should be various hints about the difficulty level, found in dialogue, items and locations. But just a number, seemingly being the highest level of the opposition you're going to meet? Known from the start of the quest? Come on.

It's weird: the devs obviously put immense amount of work in the game. But these things are relatively simple, yet really important...

 

[Neanderthal]

Yeah agree completely, game tries its hardest to build a quasi realistic atmosphere, where even fantastic things are accounted for and then ruins that by handwaving various shit. All you really need for accurate directions is something we've had for years as well: Milestones and signposts, give houses a number and place them on a named street or road and bang wallop simple idiot proof directions.

Think levels should be done away with entirely, at least on monsters and loot, worked in first game. Agree with you on quests as well, simple hints should suffice and environmental storytelling, if you've got half a regiment of double hard steel clad motherfuckers chewed up and shat out other end at mouth of a cave, then you can bet they weren't facing a fucking Drowner.

 

[Severian Silk]

CD Projeckt wants to sell games, not coasters.

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

The first point is completely true. In fact, there is some NPCs in some missions that indicates you the location of the next place, but always are hollow descriptions. "Go to the north" "The house with gaps in the wall". Is not something very important IMO regarding how the game is planted but... you know, elaborating more indications is something more positive.

The second point is more questionable. Honestly I prefer obtaining a higher level item than having a level scaled one. It increases my sensation of "Holy shit, looks like something it was worth it", even if i can't use it until approaching the level required.

The game have others problems too, like the damage reduction system against red skull enemies and the rushed final part of the game. But in overall, I think it is a great and a very solid Action RPG.

 

[Eyestabber]

Thing is, the game is designed around quest markers. That's why there are no precise indications. At this day and age it doesn't even cross an AAA dev's mind that someone might not want to use quest markers.

Witcher 3 is pretty amazing, great story, characters and all. But you gotta keep in mind that all it's design decisions are mainstream-oriented. Including some massive on the reactivity and C&C department compared to its predecessors.

 

[Neanderthal]

I agree it's a good game, but I don't for a minute suggest having any form of level scaling, just get rid of levels alltogether. As Elwro himself says, how the fuck is any sword or armour unuseable? It's an artificial restriction and let's face it the Witcher himself should be the deadly one, not the crap he carries. If Geralt gets a good sword early because he killed an hard monster in an out of the way place, then he deserves that reward for defeating the creature and exploring, fuck balance as it's a singleplayer game.

This is one of the ways that the game has declined from the first one in my opinion, along with the inferior inventory now catering to the lootwhores whereas before in Witcher 1 it was fucking tight and sensible.

 

[Carrion]

The GPS system was almost the same already in the previous two games (TW1 relied more on map markers than a compass, but it did have the latter option as well), but since the areas were so small it was easy to find most locations by just wandering around, whereas in TW3 this is obviously not the case. Having the NPCs give you elaborate directions would've naturally been a huge amount of work in a fully voice-acted game of this scale (especially if you wanted to have something like asking random passers-by for directions), but as an easier solution they could've just gone for plain map markers (for general locations, people's houses etc., not the exact locations of the objectives) and even ditched the compass and minimap completely, as it would've made you pay more attention to your surroundings instead of just following an arrow.

As for the second point, I think the item levels are actually the other way around except for the witcher items, meaning that the quest rewards will always be below your level and therefore usually completely useless compared to your other stuff. Anyway, I think the lever requirements could be removed by changing a few basic elements of the itemization. First, the power curve should be flattened so that sword damage, for example, doesn't jump from 100 to 400+ during the course of the game but rather stays within more reasonable boundaries, whereas there should be more difference between the unique properties of each item. Second, generic weapons and armor should have fixed stats regardless of your level, which might allow them to deal decent damage especially early in the game, but they should be lacking when it comes to the special properties, producing rather basic effects like bleeding at best. Unique swords could have a relatively high damage output, a high chance for some more interesting critical effects and a hefty number of upgrade slots, so that they wouldn't be completely overpowered if you got them early on but that regularly upgrading them with better (and hard-to-get) runes might make them remain useful for long parts of the game.

Witcher sets are currently by far the best items in the game, but I think their strengths should be more related to the synergies between the different items in the same set rather than their superior damage numbers, as while they might individually have lower chances for critical effects than some other unique items, they could make up for it with their combined effects. Also, getting the best witcher items already requires you to go through a ton of locations and tough fights, so there would be no risk of simply running into the best stuff by accident right at the start of the game. Therefore, no real need for level requirements of these items (although you could make the treasure hunt maps harder to acquire).

As it is, there are just very few unique items aside from the witcher sets that are interesting in any way, and the level scaling and requirements contribute to that because everything you get is already past its best-before date. Shiadhal's Armor is probably the best example of unique non-witcher gear that's actually useful, offering 100% protection from fire and being a pretty decent choice of armor overall, but there aren't that many other items worth mentioning. You've got a few swords that have around 10% chance for burning or freeze, but their damage output is usually so low compared to the witcher weapons that their usefulness stops after you get out of Velen and gain access to the witcher stuff. Most swords just give you 1% for this and 3% for that, and as a result you'll mostly just look at the damage numbers, which grow at a ridiculous pace as you gain more levels and better stuff.

As far as the quests are concerned, flattening the power curve, removing the damage reduction system and placing the high-level witcher contracts a bit more carefully (i.e. not having level 30+ contracts in the very first village) proably would've allowed you to get rid of the visible levels entirely.

Many of CDPR's decisions don't necessarily feel like they were made with the largest possible audience in mind, as in some ways their thinking seems to be the opposite of what you see BioWare or Bethesda doing, an attempt to visibly not cater to casuals by making it clear that some quests and enemies are too tough for them and totally not level-scaled. To me it just seems like they're not all that good in the whole "mechanics" thing, just throwing stuff around without spending too much thought on why they're actually doing it, and the end result is just a bit of a mess.

 

[Neanderthal]

^ Well fucking said.

I suppose with this new game plus they've announced that they won't abandon the current system though, just design more high end stuff for that.