Game News Gothic 3 fan-patched to 1.5.2

[Nedrah]

Tags: Gothic III; JoWood Productions

While this <A HREF="http://forum.jowood.com/showthread.php?t=149930">patch</a> will not do much for most of you, it might be a godsent for those that experience problems with either the games copy protection or with owning the russian language version of the game. "Universe Edition" compatibility has also been added.
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<blockquote>Changes for Community Patch 1.5.2:
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* - Deactivation of the copy protection</blockquote>
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Well, that's it.
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Spotted at: <A HREF="http://rpgwatch.com">RpgWatch</A>

 

[cardtrick]

Good move by Jowood, allowing the community team to remove the copy protection for this and all future versions of their patch. It doesn't mean that much by itself, but I like how supportive Jowood has been of this game, even if it came too late. Maybe Gothic 4 isn't screwed after all.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Does this mean it is playable without the CD?

 

[denizsi]

It means it is playable without the floppy.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Is that what passes for humour in Turkey?

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

The copy protection was partly responsible for performance issues, if memory serves correctly.

amirite

 

[cuthbert]

The copy protection was partly responsible for performance issues, if memory serves correctly.

amirite

Was it the starforce thing I heard so much about or something else?

Also does this mean gothic 3 falls into the category of abandon-ware?

 

[Jasede]

No.

 

[Krokar]

Was it the starforce thing I heard so much about or something else?

It was tages. That's one of those great protections that causes more problems to those that have the original game rather then to ones with warez version. That's why almost every owner of the game used crack to disable tages, because that way game runs much faster/smoother. Well at least I did that.

 

[Nedrah]

Well, afaik that kind of copy protections checks, among other things, if certain vital game files are in their original state. While that may give the cracker some kind of incentive to hack away a bit longer before he can say "pwned" and releases a crack, more importantly it probably made doing bigger changes that concern the guts of the game a royal pain in the ass for the community patch team. They have stated that features and relatively easily fixable bugs have now been handled, to do more they need to really play with the code. Now they can.

 

[Circuitbreaker]

Any performance increase would be nice. Gothic 3 seems to have more speed problems on my rig then The Witcher.

Note that in the Netherlands you can pick up Gothic 3 for only 15 Euro's now.

 

[thesheeep]

As much as I appreciata the work, I just reinstalled Gothic 3 and deinstalled righta fter I remembered why I didn't play it... the horrible combat system. Although it would probably be too much to call this thing a "system", as this would require it to appear somehow organised...

 

[Au naturel]

Just use bows and shitty melee weapons. Makes things more interesting.

 

[thesheeep]

Its interesting enough as it is. You never know if you will hit the monster, or if it will kill you with an unblockable series of fast strikes

This whole thing seems to be more or less random and totally unpredictable. I will never understand why they didnt keep the Gothic 2 system and made some improvements...

 

[Hümmelgümpf]

I will never understand why they didnt keep the Gothic 2 system and made some improvements...

Gothic 2 system was focused on duels, not fights with multiple enemies. They tried to "fix" it, but failed miserably.

 

[thesheeep]

Yeah. That may be it.

But that was actually the good thing about Gothic 2. It's combat system just was... more realistic. It is many times easier to face one opponent in melee than multiple enemies.

But still, an easier switching between targets and some attacks that hit multiple enemies would have been all that was needed :/
Meh. I just hope the next Gothic devs will do better.

 

[Nedrah]

You will do a single click on an enemy and use special abilitys by pressing buttons in your quick bar. The system will be called "WoG". Mark my words.

 

[Ismaul]

Gothic 1's combat controls are clearly the better ones. No locking on opponents, so you can switch as you wish. You can even fight multiple enemies, but that takes more skill. As it should.

Also, I just bought the Universe edition, so I'm going to try G3 when I finish my finals. And build my new rig. Are G1's controls available on this one like they were in G2?

 

[Hümmelgümpf]

Are G1's controls available on this one like they were in G2?

Nope. There would be considerably less whining about the G3 combat system if that was the case.

 

[Nedrah]

How many of those complaining about G3s combat system also felt that he died too much in G2 / fights were unfair or very hard?

 

[thesheeep]

How many of those complaining about G3s combat system also felt that he died too much in G2 / fights were unfair or very hard?

I didn't. G2's fights were challenging, sometimes, but overall fair. Well... ignoring the fact that your char got totally overpowered and imba in late-game...

G3's combat system is simply a pain.... unintuitive, unpredictable and unfair.

 

[Ander Vinz]

I've got significant perfomance increase with this patch. I also disabled swap before it though so I don't know which operation is the reason for this.

 

[Claw]

Gothic 1's combat controls are clearly the better ones. No locking on opponents, so you can switch as you wish. You can even fight multiple enemies, but that takes more skill. As it should.

Yeah, but unfortunately Gothic 1 already suffered from the strange behaviour of their "focus" that might just decide to designate an enemy behind the opponent standing right in front of you as target, and good luck switching targets then. It was easy enough with ranged weapons, but in melee you were pretty much screwed.


Also, thesheep is just incompetent, but I suppose I like his whining better than those 'tards that claim you can easily pwn any amount of enemies because they always only attack in a row, which isn't true either.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

Also, thesheep is just incompetent, but I suppose I like his whining better than those 'tards that claim you can easily pwn any amount of enemies because they always only attack in a row, which isn't true either.

Not entirely, but I do find most enemies in groups tend to hang back a little and let one go at it more or less by himself. Still, turn your back and ignore the others, and you are fucked, because they'll remember to step in sooner or later.

 

[thesheeep]

Also, thesheep is just incompetent, but I suppose I like his whining better than those 'tards that claim you can easily pwn any amount of enemies because they always only attack in a row, which isn't true either.

Thing is, you can easily pwn any amount of enemies... if you are lucky. If not some will just start one of those attack series, or smash you down while blocking, or just evade your attacks by standing somehow beneath you, yet at the same time attacking you, etc.

This combat system has so many unforseeable and -most certainl - unintended and unfinished things that all that it resolves to in the end is luck. Of course, you can get used to it up to a certain degree, and trust me, I did that. But the only thing this gains you is a lower chance of getting weirdly pwned, by trying to evade certain situations and being annoyingly cautious.
But even with that, you will end up dying in an very frustrating and unfair way sooner or later, more or less often.

Gothic 3 may very well be the only game I played longer than one week, but then just stopped due to the fact that I realized all that frustration is simply not worth it.

Not entirely, but I do find most enemies in groups tend to hang back a little and let one go at it more or less by himself. Still, turn your back and ignore the others, and you are fucked, because they'll remember to step in sooner or later.

True, but that may be one of the few things I appreciate about the combat in G3: the behaviour of "intelligent" enemies in groups.
Get in a fight with a couple of monster, though, and they won't wait but attack you all at the same time. At leats that is what I experienced in most cases.