Some of My Ideas (with mock-ups!)
Haven't finished the game yet, but here are my suggestions right now. Will perhaps add more as I progress. They are listed roughly in order from what I think to be most important to least. For the HUD/GUI improvements I've made mock-ups to see what people think. Pretend this is a patch notes section and see how you feel about it.
Apologies if this should be in the Suggestions sticky thread, but I put a lot of time into this post and didn't want it to get buried. If that's wrong, by all means move this to the appropriate thread and accept my apologies.
- Completely reformat the inventory into these sections:
- Equipment (modified),
- Witcher Gear (more on this below),
- Food (new),
- Alchemical Ingredients (modified),
- Other (unchanged),
- Quest Items (unchanged) (in this order, too. Quest items should be at the end, as the most important and because you cannot get rid of them. Their job is to be looked at, that's all).
Firstly, move ALL collected documents to a separate glossary page which is separated into documents and quest documents. Like many others I adore every scrap of lore and information written in the game, and so it's very hard to throw away any of the collected documents, but also very irritating having to scroll through them all to get to my oils, potions and other things. It's also very inconvenient to have to highlight each one to see what it is. Headings perhaps like notes, maps, books, letters, contracts, etc., but the different pages for documents and quest documents is important. A small note in grey next to the header that says where the document was picked up would also be amazing, as there are tons of miscellaneous things like 'scribbled note', 'sodden note', etc. Knowing where you found a document is almost as important as the document itself. Geralt has a good memory, I however do not.
Mock-up:
http://i.imgur.com/ITvcfj5.png
The Witcher Gear tab would be for your potions, reorganised from a random sorting of bottles to a grid containing one slot for each and every one, with a question mark for undiscovered/uncrafted bottles. I recommend not saying on sceen what the undiscovered bottle/bomb is if those tiles are highlighted. There'd be a section for oils, one for potions, one for decoctions, and one for bombs. They are permanent fixtures once you've made them, so it would make sense that they're always in the same place, easy for players to learn and remember each one rather than having to scan for the right colour bottle (especially since a few share the same or very similar colours).
Mock-up:
http://i.imgur.com/F2UQeTy.png
Mock-up with notes:
http://i.imgur.com/cpBpZA2.png
(Things aren't really in the right order, potions should probably be first or second, they aren't arranged right, but you get the idea).
I think this is most important to organise the witcher gear tab, but if you create this functionality it would be excellent to extend this to the other tabs too. Sorting runes, weapons, maintenance kits, armours into their own sections would be great, as well as putting monster ingredients, plants and mutagens into separate frames as well (not separate tabs, just under their own heading under the same tabs, as in my mock-up).
- Ability to sort equipment/food/alchemical indredients/misc items by newest first, name, type, value, and weight in shop screens.
- When in mouse/keyboard mode in the inventory screen, show the item's tooltip where it usually appears for controller mode, NOT next to the cursor where it obscures the rest of the inventory and leaves that space in the bottom left unused.
- Move 'Gwent Deck' from the main menu to the pause screen along with the inventory, alchemy and such icons. It makes more sense there as a gameplay element, not an options and game management element. Also move 'Crafting' from the glossary to the main bar, next to Alchemy.
Mock-up:
http://i.imgur.com/4WJT5Bc.png
- HUD additions and changes:
- Exclusive food quickslot
- Oils HUD display (toggleable in options)
- Equipment enhancements display (toggleable in options)
- New recipe display (toggleable in options)
- Signpost pointer (toggleable in options)
- The ability to consume food items without pausing the game, opening the inventory, switching to Usable (or food tab) Items, equipping your chunk of honeycomb, exiting the menu, eating it, then heading back to do the same thing again to re-equip your much more important potions. I'd settle for being able to eat something whilst still in inventory screen, but seeing as food cycles automatically in your equipment slot (I like that) it would make more sense to have a permanent food quickslot along with the other two for potions. This is especially true on higher difficulties, as food becomes your main source of regaining health without resorting to guzzling your all-important potions for combat. Clicking the right stick (R3) would be an excellent button to use the food in your food quickslot, as I think it's unused right now.
- HUD display that shows how many remaining hits out of total for applied oils, or a percentage. Placed in a different area to normal buffs, as there can only be two at a time (one for each sword). I suggest bottom left near the equipped items. An option to disable this should be present, too.
- Enhanced Armour and Weapons buffs should be changed to reflect hits given and taken, not time-based. It makes zero sense that your sword will degrade from being sharpened while it's sitting safe in your sheath. My suggestion is that armour gets a buff total equal in value to the player's total vitality. Once you takes that much damage, it ceases to be 'enhanced'. This will allow a decent amount of combat before it needs more upkeep, and will scale with the player's level (high level armour shrugging off hits from level 4 drowners, etc.). Enhanced weapons could simply work like an oil - giving a certain amount of hits before it needs sharpening again. I recommend perhaps 50-100 hits. I believe both of these will feel more like the player is actively taking care of their gear to keep it in shape, rather than simply trying to keep those buffs active (If you google image search for Witcher 3 screenshots you can see that nobody bothers to enhance their stuff right now). A similar HUD element to my suggested oils element would work well for these, along with an option to disable it for hardcore players.
- A very subtle HUD element that informs the player when they can now craft an alchemy/crafting recipe, similar to the unspent points icon. A minor convenience, it should be optional like everything else, but with so many ingredients and recipes it's a lot to keep track of what you need and don't need, and constantly checking the alchemy/crafting pages to see if you can make something new gets rather tiresome.
- Extra marker/pointer on the minimap that shows the direction and distance to the closest signpost at all times, much like objective and player-made waypoints. Overhauling the travel system is likely an unrealistic amount of work at this point, but I believe this would be a happy compromise to cut down on opening the slightly sluggish main map just to find and mark the closest signpost, mark it, run to it, then open the map again in order to then travel to where you need to go. Again, an option to disable this for those who'd prefer it without the extra arrow/distance indicator on their minimap.
Mock-up:
http://i.imgur.com/qQbNI0c.png
Mock-up with notes:
http://i.imgur.com/7bwPVqP.png
Gameplay/Misc changes:
- An 'already read' notifier in document and book tooltips, so we can avoid buying/looting the same one twice. Essential if you like to read absolutely everything, as I do.
- Allow the player to select either None, Geralt, everything BUT Geralt, or everything INCLUDING Geralt, for Nvidia's hairworks. Geralt's hair looks fantastic without it anyway (honestly I think it looks better), and I'd prefer not to suffer the constant loss of framerate from Geralt's hair just to see the monsters look much better with hairworks on.
- Option to disable Roach's road auto-following. He's really not very good at it, and seems to get randomly spooked into completely halting. I would recommend Red Dead Redemption's method of making your horse simply run faster on roads, encouraging the player to use them rather than having Roach always attempt to force us to. I would not mind Roach using stamina all the time, even on roads, as long as I could actually have control over him. (Side note that his auto-follow is very misleading when you race and expect him to continue the same behaviour, and he doesn't).
- Ability to cook food to improve its health-regaining power, especially at campfires. I think it would add a good deal of immersion if you could cook some of the tons of meat you collect, and add to the Witcher's modus operandi of preparation. He may not get sick from raw meat, but even Geralt I think would get more out of eating some seasoned, cooked venison over chomping into a raw wolf's liver.
- Different icons for different levels of mutagens. Greater ones should not have the same icon as lesser ones, that's pretty clear and probably needs no explanation why.
- Buyback screen. If there is one I sure as hell missed it, but one of those would be appreciated, especially with the obscene difference in the sell price and buy price.
- Quicksave function for controllers, perhaps by holding start for a couple seconds.
- An option to disable fast travel altogether for hardcore players. Many mods did this for Skyrim, and having no choice but to have to traverse the world adds much for the immersion for those that want a realistic experience.
- Option to disable the zoom on witcher sense. Until recently when a mod was released, I had to completely miss out on Witcher 2 as the narrow as hell field of view gave me serious motion sickness after a few minutes of play. I can handle the occasional use of the close, over-the-shoulder interior camera, but the witcher sense along with the tunnel vision filter is too much for me. Everything you need glows like road flares anyway, the zoom is more of an aesthetic thing, and I would appreciate the power to turn it off so I can follow footprints without wanting to hurl.
- Improve Quen's visual effect, so there's more of a visual indicator of when your shield is active, especially during combat. Also an effect when Quen ends would be nice, rather than the sudden, sharp controller vibration, or nothing at all if you use keyboard and mouse. Took me hours before I realised that phantom vibration was Quen ending. Taking damage with Quen active and Quen being broken by damage are pretty much identical to me, which needs to be changed. The quiet sparky sound really doesn't help much, as often the wind and trees are louder anyway.
- Not really a recommendation but something I'd like to see - let us choose a new Roach. A black or white one would suit Geralt a lot more, even something dappled grey or whatever. Maybe even different breeds/specific horses are faster than others, as well as unique horses gained through quests later. (I apologise if this is already in the game and I've just yet to see it).
- I think Geralt's face might be bugged slightly. I've seen him get all veiny and pale when at near full health and very little toxicity. Not sure which it is related to, perhaps I missed something there, but it doesn't seem to make much sense. I've had him go from normal to looking like a junkie vampire between two parts of a cutscene.