Big Disappointment in The Witcher 3
First the good stuff. The witcher 3 is a beautiful game. The storylines feel interesting and engaging, the characters are well designed and the voice acting is very good. The world is interesting to explore and well crafted.
Then there came my big disappointment and why I am NOT going to play through this game until I can mod out this problem.....
I was having a great time, playing the game at level 1, wandering around fighting enemies and monsters, finding cool stuff. Then I found a letter which started a level 7 side quest. I thought to myself, Cool! A level 7 side quest! Yeah I know it will be difficult, but i'll give it a try and if I can beat it, maybe I will get some really cool items which will make the effort worthwhile!
So I pick the side quest in my list (keep in mind I am still level 1), and I go to do the quest. After a long and very difficult fight I beat the monster and am able to loot the area finding the neat stuff.
I looked in my inventory for the 'new' items, and I see a fancy looking sword, some armor, and gauntlets. I hover over them to examine them and they are ... level 1 - The stats on them were barely better than what I already had. The quest rewards had been downgraded to a level 1 equivalent.
Level 1 loot from a level 7 quest?! I couldn't believe it, I thought I must be missing something somewhere, maybe I was just looking at the wrong things, so I carefully pour over my inventory and discover something horrible, something that destroys any purpose of fighting tough battles or exploring difficult areas for me, Loot Scaling...
This game has LOOT SCALING! For those of you who do not know, this is a horrible game mechanic which sneaky developers use to funnel players into exploring the game the way they want you to explore - it removes freedom of choice from the player by essentially making encounters all risk and no reward.
Loot Scaling weakens the sense of progression significantly. it also lowers the incentive to explore and promotes holding off on doing anything but powerleveling until you reach the final loot bracket for the best possible rewards.
The risk/reward of venturing into a high level area when you're just starting out, figuring out how to win and being rewarded with a really powerful piece of armor or a weapon is a big part of how I play. Scaled loot completely ruins that. Essentially, You could go fight the biggest baddest enemy in the game at level 1, and if you manage to beat him, he will only drop a crappy level 1 item for you. This is not acceptable.
So how do I intend on fixing this? All I can think of is to wait for a save-game editor to come out so I can edit my character to the max level, thereby getting the proper level items for the challenges involved. Sadly this will probably end up making the game far too easy, hopefully I can edit the difficulty to change this.
But I have to ask the devs here, Why would you do this? Why would you use this horrible loot mechanic in the game? Basically as-is I will not play the witcher 3 in this state. Very disappointed devs, a beautiful game which I can't play because you chose to use this horrible mechanic for your loot.
First the good stuff. The witcher 3 is a beautiful game. The storylines feel interesting and engaging, the characters are well designed and the voice acting is very good. The world is interesting to explore and well crafted.
Then there came my big disappointment and why I am NOT going to play through this game until I can mod out this problem.....
I was having a great time, playing the game at level 1, wandering around fighting enemies and monsters, finding cool stuff. Then I found a letter which started a level 7 side quest. I thought to myself, Cool! A level 7 side quest! Yeah I know it will be difficult, but i'll give it a try and if I can beat it, maybe I will get some really cool items which will make the effort worthwhile!
So I pick the side quest in my list (keep in mind I am still level 1), and I go to do the quest. After a long and very difficult fight I beat the monster and am able to loot the area finding the neat stuff.
I looked in my inventory for the 'new' items, and I see a fancy looking sword, some armor, and gauntlets. I hover over them to examine them and they are ... level 1 - The stats on them were barely better than what I already had. The quest rewards had been downgraded to a level 1 equivalent.
Level 1 loot from a level 7 quest?! I couldn't believe it, I thought I must be missing something somewhere, maybe I was just looking at the wrong things, so I carefully pour over my inventory and discover something horrible, something that destroys any purpose of fighting tough battles or exploring difficult areas for me, Loot Scaling...
This game has LOOT SCALING! For those of you who do not know, this is a horrible game mechanic which sneaky developers use to funnel players into exploring the game the way they want you to explore - it removes freedom of choice from the player by essentially making encounters all risk and no reward.
Loot Scaling weakens the sense of progression significantly. it also lowers the incentive to explore and promotes holding off on doing anything but powerleveling until you reach the final loot bracket for the best possible rewards.
The risk/reward of venturing into a high level area when you're just starting out, figuring out how to win and being rewarded with a really powerful piece of armor or a weapon is a big part of how I play. Scaled loot completely ruins that. Essentially, You could go fight the biggest baddest enemy in the game at level 1, and if you manage to beat him, he will only drop a crappy level 1 item for you. This is not acceptable.
So how do I intend on fixing this? All I can think of is to wait for a save-game editor to come out so I can edit my character to the max level, thereby getting the proper level items for the challenges involved. Sadly this will probably end up making the game far too easy, hopefully I can edit the difficulty to change this.
But I have to ask the devs here, Why would you do this? Why would you use this horrible loot mechanic in the game? Basically as-is I will not play the witcher 3 in this state. Very disappointed devs, a beautiful game which I can't play because you chose to use this horrible mechanic for your loot.
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