The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

[ShivaX]

I prefer the static world. What you say isn’t wrong by any means, but the idea that I can become stronger against random drowners or whatever, but still can run into some nightmarish Thing that I can’t beat keeps me going.

It’s part of the reason I liked New Vegas so much more than Fallout 3. In New Vegas, Deathclaws lived over there. You could go that way, but there’s fucking deathclaws, man. In Fallout 3… who cares? Once you got a few healing things and some ammo for a reasonably decent gun, you could just take on anything anywhere. That sense of danger, of being someplace you shouldn’t and hoping to get something cool for your daring just doesn’t really exist. Everywhere is equally not-all-that-dangerous. Which always feels wrong to me.

Walking into the enemy fortress should be something earned. Becoming a badass should be a journey. I shouldn’t wake up one day and basically be a badass from that day on, until I become an Uber Badass (because I got perks/skills/whatevers that make me a god to equal level things - which is everything).

[TurinTur]

I prefer the static world.

Oh, me too, I said it here “I also prefer having “static” content in a more handcrafted design”

It’s more a compound problem of how static content made them to have to choose what type of player was the game directed towards AND they choosing a more casual gamer in that decision AND the difficulty system not scaling well enough to please the more hardcore gamer.

Nothing of this it’s new, Witcher 1 was too easy in the late game, Witcher 2 had a reverse difficulty curve. Witcher 3 is the same. I was just analyzing in more detail the why and how.

[ShivaX]

Oh no, I get where you’re coming from. It’s an interesting issue in a lot of ways, though I think they could’ve leaned it towards “go do shit to level up” a little bit more since you tend to VERY quickly outlevel everything, especially if you do even a few Main Story quests (which just throw soooo much XP at you it’s beyond the pale). I remember doing one quest and gaining two levels. I was like level 25 at the time. That’s just silly. 1000 XP+ for a MS quest. Then I go do some sidequest thing, here’s 10 xp. Suck it.

[Timex]

What is the normal level folks are at when completing the game?

I mean, I just got to Kaer Morhen for the first time, and I’m only level 21. But I’m enountering mobs that are around level 30… on one hand, I feel like I’m close to the end of the game, but on the other it seems like there is still a ton of leveling to do.

There’s still tons of tons of crap I haven’t explored in Skellig.

The question is, I guess, is the end coming along soon after you get to Kaer Morhen? Because it seems kind of weird, since the story quests at that point aren’t even level 20 yet.

[Juan_Raigada]

There are also mixed approaches. That is, have most content level gated (or static) but allow certain content like quests to level up to you (so it keeps being challenging/worth it XP wise) while not lowering the higher level content at all.

IIRC the Tactics Ogre remake did this so that replaying the game in a new game plus made sense.

[TurinTur]

What is the normal level folks are at when completing the game?

I mean, I just got to Kaer Morhen for the first time, and I’m only level 21. But I’m enountering mobs that are around level 30… on one hand, I feel like I’m close to the end of the game, but on the other it seems like there is still a ton of leveling to do.

There’s still tons of tons of crap I haven’t explored in Skellig.

The question is, I guess, is the end coming along soon after you get to Kaer Morhen? Because it seems kind of weird, since the story quests at that point aren’t even level 20 yet.

When you finish Kaer Morhen part you will be four levels higher. There is still more game after that.

[robc04]

My guess is what the devs were hoping is that by having so much content players can have multiple play throughs while still seeing a lot of new things, even in a heavily story-based game. The problem is that many RPG players like to uncover everything and leave no stone unturned. I typically have trouble playing story based games multiple times so I’m someone who tends to go after most quests. Right now I’m about 4 levels higher than my current story quest, so I’m focusing on that.

I also prefer content that isn’t autoleveled to you current level for the reasons others have stated. I’m not sure how to handle this. One option would be to not have all the side quests available on any given playthrough and keep track of what ones were completed across play throughs to offer up new content. Not sure if that is a good solution or not because than people who play once would probably feel cheated.

I’d be OK if the XP awarded for a quest was scaled by your current level so lower level quests would have limited XP rewards.

[Timex]

When you finish Kaer Morhen part you will be four levels higher. There is still more game after that.

How much of the main story line have I completed, just prior to the Kaer Morhen part? Percentage wise?

My guess is what the devs were hoping is that by having so much content players can have multiple play throughs while still seeing a lot of new things, even in a heavily story-based game. The problem is that many RPG players like to uncover everything and leave no stone unturned. I typically have trouble playing story based games multiple times so I’m someone who tends to go after most quests. Right now I’m about 4 levels higher than my current story quest, so I’m focusing on that.

For a long time in Velen, I was doing this… I was checking out everything and ignoring the main story mostly.

But eventually, it got kind of ridiculous. I mean, there is a seemingly infinite amount of content. Once I hit Skellig, it was just like, 'Well christ… that’s a billion little question marks…" and at the same time, I started getting more invested in the main story, so I kind of want to see what happens.

Although it’s tempered by the fact that all the conversations in the main story seem to be significantly impacted by other crap you may or may not have done.

Ultimately, what pushed me back to the main story was just that I got like 5 levels past its recommended level, so I decided to go back and start doing them.

[Juan_Raigada]

I’d be OK if the XP awarded for a quest was scaled by your current level so lower level quests would have limited XP rewards.

This is basically solved with an exponential XP growth, which is indeed the norm in RPGs. I think the issue is the content becoming unchallenging, more than anything else.

[TimJames]

Can we stop openly blabbing about a return to Kaer Morhen?

[Bateau]

This is basically solved with an exponential XP growth, which is indeed the norm in RPGs. I think the issue is the content becoming unchallenging, more than anything else.

Yes, this is a problem in longer games that allow for some wiggle room in regards to quest order (pretty much every open world rpg). I’ve had a discussion about this with a friend about a week ago and we concluded that the only proven solution that we’ve seen so far is to shift the difficulty to player’s skill instead of character’s stats, like Dark Souls does it.

[Timex]

Can we stop openly blabbing about a return to Kaer Morhen?

I figured this was pretty obvious, since it’s on the map as soon as you start the game.

[Timex]

I’m still thinking in how Alchemy is a big part of the problem with the difficulty. Because it doesn’t matter if you play in Easy, Medium or Very Hard (Death March), even in Death March you still have alchemy exactly the same, in both quantity (almost infinite potions that replenish after each combat) and in quality (great effects in superior potions, +50% extra damage in oils). So even at its hardest it isn’t really difficult, it just make you use one of the three main systems more often (I suppose in Normal is so easy you don’t even need to use potions).

I’m going to give a concrete example, there is a potion that heals you at 100% of your hit points. It has even three uses. It doesn’t matter if you play at hardest difficulty, it still heal you at 100% (ideally, maybe it should scale, heal up to 75% in Broken Bones and 50% of hp in Death March).
It’s a big change from The Witcher 1, where I remember noticing how interesting was their choice of not having a normal health potion in all the game, unlike so many RPGs, despite having a focus on potions. The only one was Swallow but it was just a slight health regen. bonus for 15 minutes, useful in a series of fights, but it wouldn’t save you in a concrete fight, it was too slow. It was clearly a conscious design. Here they just threw their hands into the air and let people heal.

This example is important because in Broken Bones and Death March you aren’t supposed to heal for “free” between fights with meditation, it’s turned off. Except… it isn’t. With this potion you can do the same, recover 100% health using it (outside or in combat, whatever), and then meditate to replenish the potion number. Now, you can only do that a limited number of times instead of infinite times as you can do meditating in Normal, but in practical terms the “limited number” is around 900 times. 3 doses for each strong alcohol, and I had like 300 strong alcohol in my backpack. So basically enough to be infinite.

Heh, there’s an even more crazy potion.

One of the decoctions, I think it’s from the Ekimara maybe? It heals you whenever you use stamina.

Now, it doesn’t heal you just by running around… but it heals you whenever you cast spells. This basically gives you an infinite life tap, since basically all of your offensive skills then heal you.

Outside of combat, since your stamina regenerates immediately? You can just spam Aard or Quen or anything, and fill up your health in a few seconds.

Oh, and this potion lasts for 24 minutes.

[Papageno]

So no 1.05 patch yet (at least per what I’m seeing in Galaxy)?

[TimJames]

Oh did I forget to post the news? A CDPR guy is now saying they might have to work through the weekend on the patch.

[HumanTon]

And before the moaning and gnashing of teeth begins … again, the XP bug is really minor and shouldn’t stop anyone from playing the game.

[Bateau]

Yes, I’m sick of the XP whiners. Go grind some mobs if you need those precious 25 xp per quest that much, jesus. Meanwhile there are real gamebreaking bugs like completely broken main quests.

It’s been nearly a week since I ran into a bug myself and I’m growing more disenchanted with the game with each passing day. Shit like this should be hotfixed asap, not waiting for enough bugs to accumulate to release a patch.

[Telefrog]

Oh did I forget to post the news? A CDPR guy is now saying they might have to work through the weekend on the patch.

Yup. They’re saying next week now.

The Witcher 3 can reveal what kind of RPG player you are - Quarter to Three

[KingNee]

Agreed. I get what they were trying to do with it - allow people to skip side content and still reach high level, but I don’t know of (m)any RPG players that see the value in that, I think most of us obsessively check if we’ve done the side quests before we move on with the main quest. If there’s one genre that attracts completionists then it’s probably RPGs.

This. I highly prefer to do side content first and then continue the main quest, unlocking more side content along the way. I’m not a die hard completionist though as I probably won’t do the horse races for instance simply because I find them boring and clunky.

[Rico_Jones]

I just found out that my problem vis-a-vis the Steam overlay not working was due to a glitch with one of the new DLCs. It dumps some DLL files into the bin\x64 directory, resulting in some streaming/video capture apps not working. Removing the extraneous DLLs solved the problem, albeit not in time for me to take any screenshots during Geralt’s initial return to Kaer Morhen. C’est la vie…