The most legendary ARPG of all time - Diablo 2 had this. Tens of other clasics had it as well. I love the feature. Not just from a balance standpoint. It also makes leveling more exciting. It's not an FPS where you find the badass rifle and you are good to go. Gears and levels should be interconnected. It is one of the most clasic RPG features, so i really cannot understand what's the problem with most people here. It was to be expected. Maybe alot of the Witcher crowd comes from acton games, i dunno, but i have a really hard time comprehending why a long time RPG fan would have a problem with this. Besides, if you wanna be accurate lore wise, the skill tree should also be removed. The book Geralt cannot speciallise in magic. Signs are just what they are, a small backup to his swordmanship, and their effectiveness depends mostly on his elixirs.
That's off-topic, but I just have to correct that: This is not true. YennEfer was never supposed to be the most powerful sorceress. She's "just" one sorceress among many other sorceresses and sorcerers. Tissaia de Vries was very likely more powerful than Yennefer, and Margarita Laux-Antille is probably as well. And maybe Francesca Findabair. And of course Philippa.
You are right, it was abit of an exageration, but Yennefer was not "just" ibe sorceress. She was regarded as one of the most powerfull. She was a member of the chapter counsil(which was consisted of the best). Triss aknowledged to be much less powerful than Yeneffer. Geralt said jokingly: You expected Yennefer to fall for a simple Witcher?. In the Lodge, when she escaped the other Sorceresses were amazed on how she did it, and one of them said: I never quetioned her abilities. Tissia was dead by that time. Franscesca and Margarita i don't know, but it is not stated anywhere that they were expeptional. However it was implied that Philippa was propably n.1. Anyway, it's been years since i've read the books, so i might have forgot something
Personally I'm not bothered by it.
Like some people said it's just to help balance things out.
I could imagine a very skilled player venturing to a high level area, snatch a high lvl sword and one shot everything on the area he was supposed to be initially. Not to mention that he wouldn't be as excited to find new gear or when getting new rewards for a long time.
I just hope for a mod in which there are only standard, bad swords and expansive, rare, craftable swords for which you have to find a master smith who needs some good amount of time and money for forging a true Witcher sword.
This is the price that's paid by having no level scaling.
I get that it does become a bit "MMO-ey" because of this with the no-level scaling, as well as the potion system seeming more like stat buffs instead of actual potions.
Anyway, I do think having this sort of lock on higher level weapons is a necessary evil - if it wasn't there there's just too much potential that you'll find some end-game equipment too early on and become OP as hell. I just hope that this sort of equipment is spread around in the relevant areas, such as quests at a certain point in the game or areas with high level enemies. Because I can imagine it being pretty annoying finding a great level 35 sword when you're level 12 or something.
Pros
You can not just get one op sword and cut through the game like a butter(as you could get op sword in TW2 in asylum)
Cons
The game does not reward you for defeating unfair foes. You would gain same reward if you would fight fair fight later.
Game is forcing you to hoard xp so you can unlock your gear.
So most ideal situation would be if lvl requirements we be just small enough to prevent butter cutting the game but at the same time it should not prevent you form using better gear. Personally I am rather against it.
I would have preferred if they had taken swords out of the equation for the biggest part.
Like: your damage increases automatically by level progression and there is only little different between the stats of Witcher swords. So you only choose the sword you like best mostly for visual reasons while you get stronger by just levelling up. That way there would have been no need for level restrictions and it would also be more in line with the lore. I mean a Witcher would never walk around without one of the best possible swords anyway. In "Seasons of Storms" Geralt did quite a lot to get his swords back since they basically mean everything to a Witcher.
I really hope that there will be a mod for that, taking sword damage mostly out of the equation (at least for "Witcher swords" which are custom made for Geralt), removing the level requirement for them but making them quite costly to craft or get and instead rising the base damage of Geralt's attacks just by usual level progression.
If you kill a monster that is way higher than you, as mentioned by a preview poster, you do get rewards in the form of XP, mutagens, materials for crafting and who knows what else. If you get a weapon with a level requirement then you'll have to wait. Since there is no level scaling this cannot be avoided in my opinion.
Every game i can remember has some kind of restriction when it comes to weapon/armor drops. These are either level or Stat (strength/Dexterity etc) restrictions.
Personally i wouldn't even consider it fun to find a level 40 sword in a chest or in a cave and then be able to kill everything without challenge. It will seriously ruin my fun. I guess other people see it differently.
The most legendary ARPG of all time - Diablo 2 had this. Tens of other clasics had it as well. I love the feature. Not just from a balance standpoint. It also makes leveling more exciting. It's not an FPS where you find the badass rifle and you are good to go. Gears and levels should be interconnected. It is one of the most clasic RPG features, so i really cannot understand what's the problem with most people here. It was to be expected. Maybe alot of the Witcher crowd comes from acton games, i dunno, but i have a really hard time comprehending why a long time RPG fan would have a problem with this. Besides, if you wanna be accurate lore wise, the skill tree should also be removed. The book Geralt cannot speciallise in magic. Signs are just what they are, a small backup to his swordmanship, and their effectiveness depends mostly on his elixirs.
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You are right, it was abit of an exageration, but Yennefer was not "just" ibe sorceress. She was regarded as one of the most powerfull. She was a member of the chapter counsil(which was consisted of the best). Triss aknowledged to be much less powerful than Yeneffer. Geralt said jokingly: You expected Yennefer to fall for a simple Witcher?. In the Lodge, when she escaped the other Sorceresses were amazed on how she did it, and one of them said: I never quetioned her abilities. Tissia was dead by that time. Franscesca and Margarita i don't know, but it is not stated anywhere that they were expeptional. However it was implied that Philippa was propably n.1. Anyway, it's been years since i've read the books, so i might have forgot something
To be honest, I am not a long-time RPG gamer. I play one or two RPGs here and there, but I'm not that much of an RPG gamer. I actually only like some of the old RPGs and The Witcher, the other ones are not that good IMO, though some of them are "okay".
I guess I was just so used to TW1/2s style of doing things, only giving you weapons if you have special materials for which you need a high level to initially get to or have to be really skilled. TW2 for example also managed to strike a balance between progressing your strength through skills AND weaponry/armor alike, so that in the end if you only had pretty powerful skills altering stats but no good weapon or you had a pretty powerful weapon but no skills that are very damage-increasing it was not that OP, because it was always the combination of both.
I understand an Open World game like TW3 might have more trouble realizing such a balance and that it might be hard to set every piece of equipment behind a difficulty wall, especially if some people will be doing a lot of side-questing while others won't-. I still hope though that not ALL gear and weapons will have a level requirement, but just some of them which you could stumble upon on a low level by accident and/or exploration. If not ALL weapons and armor sets would have level requirements that would at least make it EASIER for me to accept those who have, because it would not always be the case that I have a weapon I can not use yet, which would in turn make it less obvious that some things have a level requirement and therefore would be less in my mind while playing if you know what I mean. Immersion is very important for me.
I would have preferred if they had taken swords out of the equation for the biggest part.
Like: your damage increases automatically by level progression and there is only little different between the stats of Witcher swords. So you only choose the sword you like best mostly for visual reasons while you get stronger by just levelling up. That way there would have been no need for level restrictions and it would also be more in line with the lore. I mean a Witcher would never walk around without one of the best possible swords anyway. In "Seasons of Storms" Geralt did quite a much to get his swords back since they basically mean everything to a Witcher.
I really hope that there will be a mod for that, taking sword damage mostly out of equation (at least for "Witcher swords" which are custom made for Geralt), removing the level requirement for them but making them quite costly to craft or get and instead rising the base damage of Geralt's attacks just by usual level progression.
Yeah I hope that too. I mean, at least in The Witcher it would make more sense.
You level up, you get stronger in general. Swords have small differences and act as damage modifiers. It makes no sense for a level 50 Geralt to make the damage of a level 10 Geralt just because his sword is level requirement 10 and makes the appropriate damage for that. Even if some swords are significantly sharper or lighter or stronger than other ones in it end it is not THAT big of a difference, so I really hope that there will be an option (through patching, EE or mods) that will allow you to progressively get stronger as you level up rather than JUST getting a enormous amount stronger because you have a better sword, because although it fits very much into an RPG, it does not really fit in the Witcher, because we all know the Witcher has a very detailed world and is a very unique and special kind of RPG.
If you kill a monster that is way higher than you, as mentioned by a preview poster, you do get rewards in the form of XP, mutagens, materials for crafting and who knows what else. If you get a weapon with a level requirement then you'll have to wait. Since there is no level scaling this cannot be avoided in my opinion.
Every game i can remember has some kind of restriction when it comes to weapon/armor drops. These are either level or Stat (strength/Dexterity etc) restrictions.
Personally i wouldn't even consider it fun to find a level 40 sword in a chest or in a cave and then be able to kill everything without challenge. It will seriously ruin my fun. I guess other people see it differently.
First of all, you get as good as no XP because you mainly only get XP for quests as far as we know.
Mutagens, yeah, you might get ingredients you need for mutagens so that is nice.
IMO it CAN be avoided. I mean, after all there is only no level scaling for MONSTERS.
Meaning in general they COULD have done it the way that Geralt just progressively gains a few points of damage every time he levels up, that way his damage would always be approximately in the area fitting to his level. Swords then could have served as added bonus, such as adding 10 or 20 damage points to it, as well as things like there were in The Witcher, like increased sign intensity, etc, etc. I would have preferred that. It would be exactly the same, with the difference that your damage is not mainly based on the sword you carry but rather mainly based on your level and a little bit on the sword you carry. Of course this too would have to be balance, but I would have liked that a little bit more.
Personally i wouldn't even consider it fun to find a level 40 sword in a chest or in a cave and then be able to kill everything without challenge. It will seriously ruin my fun. I guess other people see it differently.
Yeah me neither, but with the method I explained above that wouldn't be a problem. I mean in TW2 there were new swords every once in a while, and despite them not making a lot of difference I was always happy to find new ones, because some of them looked awesome or had a nice sign intensity bonus or poison effect, or just simply because they didn't look bad and had a cool name. I even used to make a habit of collecting all the "special" swords I would get throughout the game and storing them in case I wanted to take them out one time. It was never about the power of the sword (although it WAS nice to have a sword that was a tad bit better or had a nice new bonus) but about the fact that it looked cool, had an interesting story behind it or just because it was new and seemed special.
I wonder what if CDPR remove the required level limitation in their internal testing and instead test a system with potential and leveled damage-limits.
For example a sword cannot just do certain amounts of damage but instead its damage could be based on its potential.
So, if you are level 10 and you acquire a sword for a level 30 Witcher with potential 50 damage then your damage dealt will be about 1/3 of its maximum potential.
That way you have a sword to fight with but you can only feel its full glory when you reach the required level.
Should CDPR think of that possibility or is this scaling too?
to be honest, the way DA:inquisition plays is like an MMORPG on almost every aspect, with boring quests and empty big spaces with just filler content. and leveling up your character and acquiring new gear felt very MMO-ish
I am not talking about the world and quests. I am talking about the level requirements for weapons and armor, it's normal and coming from the days of Gothic 1/2 and those were not MMO days. It's also present in Dark Souls 2 in terms of stat requirements which you can gain by level up.
It doesn't make sense that you have puny level/stats and still somehow wearing end game gear. For me it should all be progressive; keeping balance between your level and the equipment you're using.
I'd personally solve this problem with non-linearity:
The high level sword you find, has a certain benefit, like high basic damage, or lots of durability, etc. But the swords that are closer to your level, give you benefits no high level swords gives, until you reach that level.
So for example, Geralt is lvl 5, finds a lvl 30 sword, that one has a ton of basic damage, but you can't customize it with runes, or repair it (so you shouldnt use it much while under leveled, just for massive monsters with lots of HP).
While swords around Geralt's level (5), can enjoy the full benefits and unique advantages, but they will never even get close to the key attribute/feature that the lvl 30 sword has.
At a first glance, without thinking much, if you dont use alternative pros and cons that are mutually exclusive, there's not a very good solution to this. Either you lose the satisfaction of getting a rare high level sword, or you lose the satisfaction of every sword you find for 5 or 8 hours or more.. To me personally the later is the worse, but I support what I explained before rather than being cornered like this and sacrifice one of the two.
over leveled swords could also do damage on a percentage of enemy health or level for example, so they only work for extremely hard monsters and make a good reward, but they lack the versatility and consistency of a sword thats made to fit your level, which does a concrete amount of static damage.
But anyway this is just more blabbering, same strategy as before, without alternative uses, in a linear implementation, where one is simply better than the other, I think it ends up with choosing either one or the other. Though this kind of thing requires dozens of hours of planning, and i just wrote this in 2 mins
Level requirments are good. No they are GREAT actually. This is supposed to be an RPG, not an action game. Leveling up should be really, and i mean REALLY meaningfull. Not 2% higher HP or something similar. If you want to play it like an action game and you want to be really good, just go on and beat the game without leveling up at all. Plus the arguments work both ways. For example you are level 5, you beat a hard opponent and he drops an uber sword of a theoritical level 30. Then what? Without level reuirements you just equip it and you have no reason to use another sword for tens of hours - LAME. Working for being able to use it is a much better option. Makes leveling even more exciting.
Lore wise of course it does not make sense.
In the books Geralt was the greatest swordman in the world. Ciri, who only trained for a year in Kaer Morhen and was inferior to the other witchers, let alone Geralt, beat Bonhart, who was considered the best human swordman. Geralt himself killed Vilgefortz, who was by a huge shot the strongest sorcerer in the world. Vilgefortz beat Yennifer, who was supposed to be the most powerfull sorceress, maybe besides Phillipa, in a matter of seconds, and Geralt killed him.
However i am really glad they designed these games as RPGs, and not as action game with Geralt being a badass from the first second. I really love the character progression.
ciri have the ability to see and to travel future and the prediction in the book said that geralt of rivia will meet his end At the Stygga castle. ciri at the end of the book is on god mode ( sorceress very powerfull at the end she travel with a king arthur compagnion and perhaps meet Merlin and with the sword ciri train 1 year at kaer morhen but also train with leo bonhart . leo is the one you buy ciri's hirondelle a gwyhyr one of the best sword created by the gnome of Tir Tochair mountain . gnome are excellent smiths and metallurgists and their gwyhyr swords are considered the best in the world.
after about the sword level as a rpg hardcore fan i say it's a good thing to balance the game
Leo Bonhart — a human bounty hunter, assassin, previously a professional soldier. Known for his professionalism and expense to hire. He found pleasure in watching brutal scenes and inflicting pain to others. He was described as very tall but ghoulishly thin, with a prodigious grey moustache. He was said to have cold, expressionless eyes which were often likened to fish eyes.
He possessed three witcher medallions, depicting the heads of a wolf, a cat and a gryphon, and claimed to have killed their previous owners. A claim which was not necessarily in doubt, given his prowess with a sword.
Bonhart was hired by Stefan Skellen to kill Ciri and by baron Casadei to capture her alive. Bonhart killed the Rats band to which Ciri belonged and cut off their heads after their deaths. He neither killed Ciri, nor brought her to baron Casadei, therefore fulfilling neither of his contracts. He imprisoned her for some time, beating her, mistreating, drugging her with fisstech and forcing her to kill in the arena at Claremont, which belonged to his cousin Houvenaghel.
Ciri escaped Bonhart with the help of Neratin Ceka while they were in the village of Unicorn. Bonhart had gone there to meet with Skellen and Rience. Bonhart then killed Neratin Ceka, and Skellen seriously wounded Ciri with an orion as she escaped with her horse, Kelpie. Later, Ciri hid and healed at the hermitage of Vysogota of Corvo in the Pereplut swamp.
Together with Skellen and Rience, Bonhart tried to hunt her down on Vilgefortz's order. Eventually, she escaped to Tor Zireael.
At the Stygga castle, Bonhart killed Cahir, and then he himself died at the hand of Ciri
This is the price that's paid by having no level scaling.
I get that it does become a bit "MMO-ey" because of this with the no-level scaling, as well as the potion system seeming more like stat buffs instead of actual potions.
no it's not. it's a single player RPG series. if you're wondering about its leveling system, it's basically based on your character stats (strength,dexterity, mana). if, for instance, you found some crazy powerful sword somewhere guarded by some undead, you'll need a certain number of strength points to be able to weild it, and sometimes dexterity points.
it was fun experience in my opinion and somewhat immersive ^^
Wait..... - so swords have durability? Well, that's kind of cool. Props to whoever had the idea on the team. That also changes how you see swords....
And I agree on this one idea about having durability go down (A LOT) faster if you do not have the appropriate level for the sword. That is a cool thing IMO and would be very effective to prevent people from using high-level swords as low level character all the time, at least since you do NOT find a high-level sword around any corner, so you might want to keep those swords and save them for harder encounters later on.
That being said I hope we can repair swords to a degree. This would also help with the level problem where if you are a higher level you can repair the sword easily while if you are low level you can't repair a sword if its durability drops to 0%. That would make the sword still be there (as "broken sword" so to speak) an enable you to use it later but would prevent you from using it on a low-level after you have "worn it out". The fact that durability drops fast when being too low in level then adds to the system and makes it so that you can barely use high-level swords as low-level character, but you can STILL EQUIP IT, which adds to the immersion. (You can basically imagine that you first have to re-learn repairing swords properly, and with character progression you learn more about your swords materials and how to make the best use of them and repair them properly and that's why you need a certain level to use a sword "normally" and "efficiently" and be able to repair it). Would be a cool and unique system IMO. Enables you to be OP for a very short period of time, but makes the weapon useless after a short period of time / a few battles until you reach the appropriate level.
For all their pride in having created an open-world game, CDPR seem to go to great lengths to ensure you explore it in the route they have intended.
Now fair enough, this might make for a stronger narrative in terms of the main storyline, but I personally absolutely 100% HATE the fact that enemies Geralt should be able to complete destroy will kill him 10 times easier than he will kill them just because of some arbitrary "level"
And what makes this even worse is if you still managed to win that extremely unfair fight, the rewards will be useless because of the friggin' "level" you are at.
Saying level requirements are a good thing "because RPG!" is NOT a good argument, especially considering the previous Witcher games didn't conform to such outdated nonsense.
Although I am very much biased since I have NEVER liked the idea of leveling up in games. I prefer if character progression is done by gaining new abilities through the narrative by obtaining a certain item for example, but even that wouldn't make much sense for a character like Geralt.
I think the best thing for TW3 would be to severely diminish the importance of your level. Doubling your damage output when going from level 1 to max level with the best gear should be more than enough progression. This tenfold increase in power is pretty ridiculous, and restricting gear based on an arbitrary "level" is even more so.
