Crichton
Prophet
- Joined
- Jul 7, 2004
- Messages
- 1,212
Well, I'm waiting for NWN2 patch 1.23 to de-fuck the friendly fire settings before I play MoW, so in the meantime I decided to give Gothic 3 another shot with it's fancy new patch 1.71, by the fans, for the fans, because JoWood axed PB.
There are two big sets of changes, one is to combat with their new melee AI and the other is the character system with the "Alternative Balancing", but AB has wide-reaching effects on combat as well.
New Melee AI:
This is a vast improvement, with this set of changes, melee combat in G3 is 80% of what it should have been in the first place. All attacks have a longer cool-down period, preventing most stun-lock, striking a blocking opponent adds it's own little cool-down period, giving the blocker some chance to counter attack. Power attacks cut through blocks, so humanoid on humanoid combat is pretty good, about on the level of a poor man's Jade Empire. Blocking has probably swung a little too far from useless to too strong since it blocks all damage, but one shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.
Combat against animals is much more realistic with slower animal attack speeds, but still suffers somewhat from the fact that a) there's still no way to keep an animal at bay with a readied thrust and b) it's still impossible to block an animal's snout thrust, even with a shield.
I'd say that at this point, Gothic 3's combat is where the designers intended it to be, there's still a lot of room for improvement, but it'd require substantial engine changes (locational damage) and design changes (more humanoid opponents instead of vicious super-animals.
Alternative Balancing:
If you turn this on, there are a whole range of changes to the character system, their goals seem to be a) prevent a mage from being a super person simply because he has mana regeneration and b) force characters to specialize. The biggest difference is that stat boosts over 250 cost twice as much. I like this change in principle but it encourages players to try to save up stat boosting items / quests until the cap has been reached which is really painful. G2 and NotR had this same problem and it could all be fixed by coding in a 2nd variable to keep track of a character's non-quest/item adjusted stats and using that to calculate costs. Other changes include higher LP costs for most mage-related stuff, more prerequisites for many feats and adjustments to stat-boosting items.
AB also makes a big changes to the game world; 1) Characters are now procedurally re-equipped when they wake up instead of always being given the same weapon. This cuts down the degree to which many characters are money farms. 2) Armor now reduces damage by a set amount rather than a percentage, which is worrisome, but seems to be working out ok so far. 3) NPC damage is now dependent on their weapon, making poorly-armed / fist-fighting NPCs much less dangerous.
Verdict: Unless you completely hated G3, give it another shot. Even though I've played through the game before, once I finish up with my current swordfighter/archer/thief, I plan to try it again with a fighter/mage.
edit: spelling
There are two big sets of changes, one is to combat with their new melee AI and the other is the character system with the "Alternative Balancing", but AB has wide-reaching effects on combat as well.
New Melee AI:
This is a vast improvement, with this set of changes, melee combat in G3 is 80% of what it should have been in the first place. All attacks have a longer cool-down period, preventing most stun-lock, striking a blocking opponent adds it's own little cool-down period, giving the blocker some chance to counter attack. Power attacks cut through blocks, so humanoid on humanoid combat is pretty good, about on the level of a poor man's Jade Empire. Blocking has probably swung a little too far from useless to too strong since it blocks all damage, but one shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.
Combat against animals is much more realistic with slower animal attack speeds, but still suffers somewhat from the fact that a) there's still no way to keep an animal at bay with a readied thrust and b) it's still impossible to block an animal's snout thrust, even with a shield.
I'd say that at this point, Gothic 3's combat is where the designers intended it to be, there's still a lot of room for improvement, but it'd require substantial engine changes (locational damage) and design changes (more humanoid opponents instead of vicious super-animals.
Alternative Balancing:
If you turn this on, there are a whole range of changes to the character system, their goals seem to be a) prevent a mage from being a super person simply because he has mana regeneration and b) force characters to specialize. The biggest difference is that stat boosts over 250 cost twice as much. I like this change in principle but it encourages players to try to save up stat boosting items / quests until the cap has been reached which is really painful. G2 and NotR had this same problem and it could all be fixed by coding in a 2nd variable to keep track of a character's non-quest/item adjusted stats and using that to calculate costs. Other changes include higher LP costs for most mage-related stuff, more prerequisites for many feats and adjustments to stat-boosting items.
AB also makes a big changes to the game world; 1) Characters are now procedurally re-equipped when they wake up instead of always being given the same weapon. This cuts down the degree to which many characters are money farms. 2) Armor now reduces damage by a set amount rather than a percentage, which is worrisome, but seems to be working out ok so far. 3) NPC damage is now dependent on their weapon, making poorly-armed / fist-fighting NPCs much less dangerous.
Verdict: Unless you completely hated G3, give it another shot. Even though I've played through the game before, once I finish up with my current swordfighter/archer/thief, I plan to try it again with a fighter/mage.
edit: spelling
