:wat:
Oh I see the problem now. We're talking on completely crossed wires.
My argument is based on the foundation that almost none or a very small number of Geralt's skills gained through leveling contributes to player damage output stats-wise. That would mean Geralt never really increases in damage output through skills; skills only grant him new moves (pirouette, dodge, counter, 360 Aard) only with which he can defeat the tougher enemies in-game. This notion rose from the information that a majority of Geralt's skills are active skills (pirouette dodge, counter, 360 Aard) instead of buffs to damage output/health/etc. If this was the case, his damage output at the end would not have increased much from the beginning save for the weapons he found throughout the game - he would only have learnt new techniques to kill. This is why I was insistent that increasing enemy health would lead to tedium; I was working under the assumption Geralt's innate damage output did not increase, thus scaling would not have worked.
On the other hand, you work under the assumption that Geralt's damage output would have vastly increased throughout the game - just like in most other RPGs. By the time NG+ is started, enemy stats will have to be increased in order to match Geralt's end-game damage output, restoring the difficulty of NG+ to that of a normal New Game. Thus, Geralt can experience the same difficulty curve in NG+ as in NG.
Does this make sense? "This" being the fact that I have a perfectly working understanding of what NG+ is, and that neither of us were talking at brick walls. Rather, we were missing the other's wall completely.
To be fair, I can see why you work under that assumption. I suppose the foundation of my argument is flawed in that I have no concrete idea of what TW3's leveling system is like. With the information that we would mainly be unlocking active combat techniques, I jumped to the conclusion that
all our level-up unlocks would be such. As this is not yet fact, it is not surprising you believe otherwise - that there will still be a substantial number of skills that contribute to Geralt's inherent damage output. I will not challenge that belief, for I have no evidence with which to do so. Therefore, given the entire foundation of my argument is not strong, the argument itself is possibly moot.
But interestingly, due to your repeated bolding of the word
scaling, I have come upon another problem with NG+ in TW3. The rest of this post isn't directed at you, Saucer. Feel free to respond nonetheless if you feel like it.
Before I begin, let's look at what we know about the game
for sure so that the argument is not based on conjecture. No sources because I'm lazy.
FACT: Enemies in the world
do not scale to your level in a single game/playthrough.
FACT: On Normal difficulty, wolves in the tutorial can kill you if you are not careful. Also, even at your maximum level, you will
never out-level the toughest enemy.
FACT: After the prologue, a player can visit
any part of the world at
any time.
FACT: There are
at least 300 skills available to unlock (this minimum calculated based on numbers provided by Marcin Momot).
FACT: Out of the 300 skills available, less than 150 of them can be unlocked at maximum level (based on level-ups granting 1-3 skill points, and 50 being the maximum level). As such it is not
unreasonable to assume that the difficulty curve has been balanced to accommodate a maximum of about two skill trees in one playthrough. At maximum level, your two skill trees will mean you have a not-too-hard fight against the toughest monster.
Here is where we start. In any playthrough of TW3, Geralt begins at 0% in power. The monsters throughout the world range from 0% to 100% in power. By the time the end of the game is nigh, Geralt rivals the toughest monster at 100% in power. This means that, as the game progresses and more and more skills are gained, the game's overall difficulty is as follows:
View attachment 10783
Which is as it should be. The game starts out difficult because going to the wrong place and fighting the wrong monster will, like in real life, get your untrained arse kicked. At the end of the game, you can much more easily beat monsters you previously had trouble with, but still have a challenge in the biggest baddies in the game's world. The game is never too easy. Perfect.
Unfortunately, with NG+ things change. In a New Game Plus, Geralt starts out at 100% in power. By the end of the game, he will theoretically be 200% in power. This leaves the monsters severely disadvantaged, so their own power level must be raised. But wait. Raised to what extent?
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Obvious option number one: raise the enemies' power to range from 100% to 200% in level. This maintains the difficulty curve of a normal New Game. But this makes no sense. This effectively means that Geralt's greatest skill as, say, a Swordsman is only
just on par with the prowess of a lowly wolf. No matter how deadly a cut Geralt can make and how tough his hide is, at the start of NG+ he will equal the worst enemy in the game.
That's good then!, some might say. It incentivizes the player to learn new skills! You can't relearn old skills anyway. But the big problem is that in The Witcher skill trees are all balanced to be equal to one another. Swordsmanship is no better than Magic - they're just two different ways to reach the same power level. That means that the lowliest form of Magic isn't going to be better than the greatest form of Swordsmanship, meaning learning new skills (Magic) isn't going to help Geralt at the start of NG+ since all enemies have been scaled up to match his best Sword-move - his newly learnt basic Magic skill is going to have zilch effect even on a wolf. Only when Geralt has learnt a substantial amount of Magic skills will the player even begin to get an easier time, eventually maybe equaling the toughest enemy in power level. As a result, the difficulty curve is distorted:
View attachment 10784
Aside from the immersion-breaker that is slashing a wolf with your most badass sword attack only to see it lose half its health, due to the way skill trees are balanced in The Witcher (where only one or in TW3 maybe two trees is meant to be filled in one playthrough) the difficulty curve of the game is heavily distorted. In this case, NG+ scaling works against that sweet spot the developers have worked so hard to achieve with difficulty balancing in a normal New Game.
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Option number two: raise enemies' power to range from about 50% to 150%. This way, at the start of NG+ Geralt's top-level sword skills are still viable against some of the monsters he meets in the world, and he still isn't overpowered. Now, he has plenty of time to soak up those new Magic skills. But what happens when he has an entirely new tree of Magic skills? He would be about 200% in power - which is 50% more than the toughest monster in the game. Difficulty curve gets distorted even
more:
View attachment 10785
The game doesn't start out too hard. But then it gets substantially easier about halfway through as more Magic skills are accumulated and Geralt begins to out-level the toughest monster in the game. By the end, Geralt could probably take on Eredin with his eyes closed. Once again, NG+ scaling destroys the difficulty.
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Option number three: Leave the enemies' power range as it is in the base game...
:thumbdown:
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As one can see, there is literally
no solution that will maintain the difficulty curve of the base game in an NG+ playthrough due to two things: skill trees are mostly meant to work independently of one another, and the player can encounter
any monster at
any time in the game. Unless one is fine with the two distorted difficulty curves above, I cannot see why one would want NG+ in TW3. The scaling works completely against what CDPR has been trying to achieve (good balancing) since at least TW2; why would one want to undo that? I really don't know, but perhaps that's just my point of view.
lol...
