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Gothic 3 - alternative balance, on or off?

Alienman

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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Codex Year of the Donut Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Played for about two hours with it on, and the idea behind it seems good since it's forcing you to make important decisions early on what you want to play as. Still, I can't decide. Will I be locked out from everything else like making armors, sneaking, alchemy etc?

Is it worth sticking with it? Does it make the game better in the end? Will I ever have any money or points over for something else besides going down the warrior path?

One more thing. Patch notes isn't really clear, does it affect anything else besides the leveling system?
 

barghwata

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personally having tried it i think it makes the progression too slow, and it took a very long amount of time to unlock even 80% of the warrior class even though i concentrated almost all of my points on warrior skills, i recommend playing the game on hard difficulty with alternative AI and without alternative balancing.
 

deama

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The problem with stuff like alternative AI and alternative balancing is that it's a band-aid. I'm sure it's obvious that Gothic 3 was unfinished, but not in the way of not squishing bugs and such, more in the lines of having a lot of stuff missing. Best example is essentially the combat, it's very broken, you ean easily exploit it (even with that alternative stuff on) with such things as just circling around a mob while he tries to hit you, opening inventory (stops all damage), or the famous spin to win maneuver with a staff/spear.

The alternative stuff options just make the game more annoying because it doesn't fix any of the fundementals, it just tweaks numbers. So my advice would be to switch all that stuff off, pick hard and just play it. The appeal of this game at it's unfinished state is the music, and world design (desert looks great), everything else is just meh or doesn't work.
 

Sinatar

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It just makes levelling slower, which in turn makes the game longer.

The game is awful, making it longer is the worst case scenario.
 

YldriE

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Gothic 3 has legitimate qualities and you can get sucked in if the spell works on you, but it's clunky in almost every aspect and it's one of these games that doesn't need to be a "challenge" or hard to be better, it's just not robust enough for such a trade-off. The balance already makes it clear when you are going where you aren't supposed to be going (i.e. you can totally cheese strong enemies with ranged weapons and kiting, but it will take forever) so it's not like playing on easy will make you break the progression or play off-sequence.
 

Metro

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There's a G3 thread floating around on this sub-forum where I go into detail of why it's a bad game. There are too many core design flaws that make it a tedious slog and an unfulfilling experience as far as exploration and character development (leveling/specialization).

G1, G2 NOTR, and Risen are the only 'older' PB games worth playing. I have yet to play ELEX but hopefully it's closer to Risen 1 then the sequels.
 

Alienman

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Guys, I have played it before a long time ago, you don't need to warn me off :) I was just curious about alternative balance since I never tried it before. I just read that not having it on makes you OP, but having it off makes the game one dimensional and so on. Thanks for the insight though.
 

Nim

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There was a pdf manual by the CP makers that detailed alternative balancing but I think it was a separate download and seems to be gone.
You will have more than enough money, I had more than a million at endgame the last time I played with AB. Same with skillpoints, early on you're struggling but longterm there really isn't that much to spend on, lots of abilities are simply not worth it, strength/dex/old knowledge cost double past 250 with AB making them dubious value.

This is how my AB HC Sword & Board char ended up
s720W1o.jpg
 

Cryomancer

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G1, G2 NOTR, and Risen are the only 'older' PB games worth playing. I have yet to play ELEX but hopefully it's closer to Risen 1 then the sequels.

The problem of Risen is that in melee combat is far worse than G3, with a lot of ballet animations, in magic, there are far less magical powers than any gothic game and in ranged combat, is an insanely decline. Bows fells more like BB guns than actual bows like G3. Gothic 3 is only bad at melee combat(spears with the same moveset as swords to name one problem), i literally downloaded an save on Risen 3 to skip the boring ballet melee mandatory part... And still prefer G3.

 

barghwata

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The problem of Risen is that in melee combat is far worse than G3
i agree, magic in risen lacked variety and was kind of boring, the swordfighting was simplified by completely removing the consumption of stamina when dodging and blocking making it too easy, ranged combat on the other hand was effectively a joke.
 

Metro

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Risen 1's melee is a thousand times better than G3. Put down the crack pipe. Maybe you're thinking of Risen 2 and 3 which, yes, have bad melee but still nowhere near as bad as G3.
 

Tigranes

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You start out playing G3 thinking it's a fundamentally Gothic game with some random janky decisions, like the designers started experiencing amnesia while making the game. And the first time the entire town breaks out into a fight is pretty entertaining. But as you play more, you start to realise, among other things, how it feels a bit like Gothic the MMO: run around far too large a ground doing far too many quests that become less and less appropriate at scale.

Then you arrive in the desert/icelands and realise there's 70% more of the world to go at half the density.
 

Danikas

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You start out playing G3 thinking it's a fundamentally Gothic game with some random janky decisions, like the designers started experiencing amnesia while making the game. And the first time the entire town breaks out into a fight is pretty entertaining. But as you play more, you start to realise, among other things, how it feels a bit like Gothic the MMO: run around far too large a ground doing far too many quests that become less and less appropriate at scale.

Then you arrive in the desert/icelands and realise there's 70% more of the world to go at half the density.
2006 was the year of decline, chiefly because of Gothic 3 and Oblivion.
 

Tigranes

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I mean, I don't know if people disagree with what I said because they think G3 is way more irredeemably bad, or because it's better than how I put it, or something else.

I do remember playing G3 on release, v1.0, with the DRM literally causing a 1+ second freeze every sixty seconds. Also my PC was a pile of shit, so the opening fight ran at 8FPS. Wondrous times, when you don't know yet how the game will compare to NOTR so you keep going.
 

Cryomancer

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Risen 1's melee is a thousand times better than G3. Put down the crack pipe. Maybe you're thinking of Risen 2 and 3 which, yes, have bad melee but still nowhere near as bad as G3.

The best game in melee is mount & blade and dark souls. No ballet dancing moves. Risen 1/2/3 has awful melee combat. When i click on "attack", i wanna attack, not watch my character dance, rotate, rotate again and do an overswing cut... Gothic 3 have an tolerable melee combat and and AMAZING archery and spell combat that PB never replicated in other game. But in therms of melee combat, G1/2 > G3



2006 was the year of decline, chiefly because of Gothic 3 and Oblivion.

Gothic 3 is more steramlined than G2/1, but is nothing comparable to Oblivion
 

YldriE

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None of Gothic 3's qualities can be attributed to its engine. Sure it's all right, it works, once fully patched you get used to it, but it's still all the OST, the wanderlust, the competing questlines, etc (at this point the only thing that could "save it" would be to remake it entirely in a superior engine like Dragon's Dogma).

In other words, anyone replaying it today should pre-emptively make peace with the fact that they are going to struggle with a clumsy, clunky game, with extremely uneven design, and cross their fingers that the game's charm and atmosphere will carry the experience all by itself.

And it very well might... but don't be one of those people who try a PS1 game and blame it for being primitive. Like it, hate it, it's part of the deal.
 

Gnidrologist

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It doesn't have much charm and atmosphere either though. As someone said it feels like single player MMO much like TES games, which was even bigger disappointment for me than shitty combat. Quests are bland and meaningless and NPCs soulless cardboard cutouts. They sucked charm out of even the old guard like Diego, Milten and Xardas. They are now bored quest givers and not much else and the main quests is completely anticlimactic unlike in the first two game, where you really felt being a part of an epic happenings. I especially liked how the world gradually changed through the chapters. The chapter progression design was good idea imo. It made quality illusion of progress and world reacting to events. In G3 you can go kill the King and still have some lowly shmuck standing nearby treat you like random hobo. Zero immersion.
 

Cryomancer

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And it very well might... but don't be one of those people who try a PS1 game and blame it for being primitive. Like it, hate it, it's part of the deal.

Only because the game is primitive, doesn't means that is bad. Seriously. Baldur's Gate, VtMB, IWD, NWN, etc are all "primitive"and far better than this games with stats tied to gear, cooldown and other BS. I rather 1000 times play Gothic 3 over Risen 1/2/3. Mainly as an archer/mage and what i hated about risen 3 is that the game forces you into an melee combat that is awful for an long time and crossbows/pistols have melee range. They are only useful because pick an pistol from your belt, fire and guard is quicker than the 1000 years ballet animation that the character needs to do before his overswinging...
 

Cyberarmy

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I do remember playing G3 on release, v1.0, with the DRM literally causing a 1+ second freeze every sixty seconds. Also my PC was a pile of shit, so the opening fight ran at 8FPS. Wondrous times, when you don't know yet how the game will compare to NOTR so you keep going.

Probably my greatest disappointment in gaming history. It still hurts me physically...
 

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