Constructive opinions based on the gameplay videos that are released in 2015 (NO DOWNGRADE TALK)

[ReptilePZ]

So, the thing that stood out to me after all the previews and gameplay videos were released, as well as taking old previews into account, is the quest structure. Almost every single quest we've been presented with so far seems to follow the same general scenario: acquire quest - do something involving Witcher Senses - do the task, making use of what you've gained thanks to the previous step. And, while the stuff you get to do within each section of that structure seems varied enough, I wonder if it'll start getting old 5+ hours in, simply due to the fact that you're always following a certain procedure.

 

[Vigilance.492]

I was about to say, "But the previews only played the tutorial section", which it would have made sense if most quests followed that structure due to being early on. However then I remembered that they also played that Skellige quest which they stated also apparently involved heavy use of the Witcher Senses.

So unless they specifically chose that Skellige quest as a non-tutorial quest to play because it still used Witcher Senses and they wanted mostly everything the journalists did to have that so they could sufficiently comment on it as a system. Otherwise you're right, and it seems like everything we've heard of so far involves the Senses, and I really do hope that they've got enough variety and there's also plenty of stuff that doesn't follow that structure, or else in a 100 hour RPG that's going to get pretty iffy, very quickly.

 

[red36]

While I appreciate that "get quest, use senses, finish quest" is repetitive, I can't think of a different quest structure. Fundamentally you need a beginning, middle and end of a quest. Possibly you can start a quest in the middle of an event, but it still has a beginning. that beginning is just in the middle of something else. Maybe i'm just being dense about this.

 

[ReptilePZ]

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that this second phase stands out a bit too much as a very specific in-between section shared between all quests (that we've seen so far,) making the whole process feel more artificial and formulaic. Hopefully, they'll mix it up a bit more and not rely on Witcher Senses so heavily.

 

[MkTama]

I can't think about a solution, too. Maybe they could use some variations like: 1) quests begins, you find that you cannot complete it, so it ends permaturely OR 2) seems like you can't complete it, but later in the game you come across the opportunity to complete it/generates a new quest 3) different and unrelated quests that somehow collide with each other so that you can really succeed in one of them.. and so on

I mean the problem is not the inevitable fact that a quast begins, develops and ends. It's giving variety to this structure. But I think that ReptilePZ also meant this

EDIT - and about Witcher senses abuse, I think they, ad developers, must have realized themselves the danger.. It's something you Always do when you introduce a new mechanic. I think they show it to us this much only because they want to advertise it

 

[red36]

Witcher senses could definitely be a big crutch for quest solutions. One example would be say Geralt was at a dinner party and needs to suss out who is an enemy (I'm thinking of the party in the 3rd act of witcher 1 possibly. I can't recall if the exact intent of that scene was to find an enemy). One solution is that the player needs to talk to all the party goers and figure out using deduction and reason who is the bad guy. the other is just flip on witcher senses and blam there he is in red. Obviously the senses there are NOT used well.

However for something like hunting a griffon's blood trail in a forest, It makes sense. In a huge open world I'm not trying to just wing it in attempting to find which direction the griffon headed. Especially if the issue is time sensitive.

 

[witcher22]

I prefer witcher 2 over 1. I enjoyed the political stuff a lot more.

 

[hjortur.erlendss]

I think it looks great No major issues from me - though I would prefer it if the Nilfgardian soldiers were a bit more... uniform? As the Nilfgardian army is supposed to be a professional, state equipped force, if I´m not mistaken... But they look fine, just a minor thing

 

[Vigilance.492]

Witcher senses could definitely be a big crutch for quest solutions. One example would be say Geralt was at a dinner party and needs to suss out who is an enemy (I'm thinking of the party in the 3rd act of witcher 1 possibly. I can't recall if the exact intent of that scene was to find an enemy). One solution is that the player needs to talk to all the party goers and figure out using deduction and reason who is the bad guy. the other is just flip on witcher senses and blam there he is in red. Obviously the senses there are NOT used well.

However for something like hunting a griffon's blood trail in a forest, It makes sense. In a huge open world I'm not trying to just wing it in attempting to find which direction the griffon headed. Especially if the issue is time sensitive.

Really all you need to do is look at many quests in both The Witcher 1 & 2, neither had the Witcher Senses and so there's was no way of making that part of a quest mechanic. Like in TW2 there was a couple of occasions where you'd use your Medallion "Z" for a quest, but it was extremely rare.

For example in TW2 when you do Troll Trouble, you're just told the Troll is down by the broken bridge. You find the guy, fight off the Nekker's and he tells you the Troll is down below, so you find a way down there. Another would be the Nekker Contract, nobody tells you where their tunnel entrances are, you just have to search for them, and make an assumption to their proximity based on how many Nekker's just sprung out of the ground and jumped at you, and when a lot just jumped at you chances are you're near a nest.
Whereas in TW3 I could easily see both those examples being delegated to the Witcher Senses. You'd just follow some "Troll Tracks" via your senses to find the troll or you'd do something similar to figure out where the Nekker nests are.

Naturally we've only heard of a handful of quests, most of them being at the start of the game where I kind of expect them to want to make you use the senses a reasonable amount. So hopefully CDPR aren't stupid and have provided enough variety and the senses aren't just thrown into every quest because design-wise it's really simple.

 

[witcher22]

The noonwrath down the well more or less makes you use signs to beat it.

 

[red36]

Both of those are good examples of how to handle FINDING the goal without giving the player a big arrow. However both of those examples are in a MUCH smaller area than witcher 3. The forest of flotsam was, as i recall, the largest area in the game. This worked for those quests because it made the forest seem labyrinthine and larger than in fact it was. Running around that forest exploring is one of the best memories i had of that game. In the case of open world though that same feeling would get worn out rather quickly.

None the less it seems like we're all on the same page in regards to the fear that the witcher senses will make the experience more robotic. I have the same fear of the minimap. In many open world games i have a suspicion that 70 or 80% of the time players are looking at the minimap and only glancing down at the actual screen the other 20%. I plan on playing without the minimap completely, and pressing m to see the map in a separate screen if i have to.

 

[Vigilance.492]

Both of those are good examples of how to handle FINDING the goal without giving the player a big arrow. However both of those examples are in a MUCH smaller area than witcher 3. The forest of flotsam was, as i recall, the largest area in the game. This worked for those quests because it made the forest seem labyrinthine and larger than in fact it was. Running around that forest exploring is one of the best memories i had of that game. In the case of open world though that same feeling would get worn out rather quickly.

Yea there's some truth to that last statement, it just all depends on the design.

That said, in the same regard you've got the quests in the previous 35 minute demo, and it didn't seem like you particularly needed to use your senses for any part of that, except for maybe finding Johnny, especially if you don't have fast travel unlocked that's literally 10 seconds away from his hut, or you are someone (like myself) planning to never use fast travel. Although simultaneously it didn't really seem like enough information was given from the quest-givers themselves for you to pin-point locations without either following your arrow marker on the map, or using the senses, so it's a little worrying in that regard.

At the end of the day it's all about striking a healthy balance, and hopefully CDPR have been smart enough to find that. However it's still an interesting point that Reptile brought up in regards to pretty much everything we heard coming out of the previews having that very similar quest structure.

 

[red36]

Yeah it's all about if the senses are used as a crutch or if they add to the game experience. That being said it's possible to make a good crutch. Witcher 2's yellow emanating medallion button was a crutch that i liked, because missing out on looting essential ingredients could end up being quite painful. The reason it's there is because, in spite of the high resolution we view these games in, it comes no where near the sensory input one would receive by actually being in that environment/world.

Speaking of fast travel, I was disconcerted at it's use in the new video in the sense that again, its a crutch that enables poorer quest design. If some guy( with a painfully typical accent) gives me a quest for halfway across the map that needs to be done before I finish the quest that I'm currently ON (because I'm on a main story quest and side quests need to be finished before story ones for fear that one cannot complete the side quest after) then the user is given strong incentive to use fast travel. For instance, I went into Skyrim planning on not fast travelling, but when you have one quest in Riften, another in Markarth, and a third in the Mage town, one really starts to worry about how to efficiently accomplish tasks in a timely fashion. Simply put, quests of smaller import should operate in a much smaller area than larger ones.

 

[Geralt_of_bsas]

These possible inconveniences with Witcher Senses would be much easily avoided if the feature would require interconnected skills from the player with other mechanics and activities.

I remember I asked a question in the forums that was later asked to Marek Ziemak in gamescom or something like that, it was about WS and if they were going to be mainly a batman like vision or they'd require some type of interpretation skills from the player, if the player would be able to fail, or fail and succeed in different degrees with different consequences in addition to just "winning" in one planned challenge-less straightforward way.
His answer was that while the feature was still in development and would see changes, the general idea is that the sense WILL require skills from the player and not just "point you" to where you need to go or what you need to do.

According to some journalists in the their previews, WS are not only used a fair bit but the system is also pretty flat, and it doesnt seem to take into account any challenge or problem solving, and it makes me wonder if what Ziemak said later changed.

If WS actually are just a batman vision or an AssCreed eagle vision then thats the real problem, such a mechanic would likely get boring and useless after 4 or 5 times, in an open world game or not.

 

[BlackWolf500.298]

These possible inconveniences with Witcher Senses would be much easily avoided if the feature would require interconnected skills from the player with other mechanics and activities.

I remember I asked a question in the forums that was later asked to Marek Ziemak in gamescom or something like that, it was about WS and if they were going to be mainly a batman like vision or they'd require some type of interpretation skills from the player, if the player would be able to fail, or fail and succeed in different degrees with different consequences in addition to just "winning" in one planned challenge-less straightforward way.
His answer was that while the feature was still in development and would see changes, the general idea is that the sense WILL require skills from the player and not just "point you" to where you need to go or what you need to do.

According to some journalists in the their previews, WS are not only used a fair bit but the system is also pretty flat, and it doesnt seem to take into account any challenge or problem solving, and it makes me wonder if what Ziemak said later changed.

If WS actually are just a batman vision or an AssCreed eagle vision then thats the real problem, such a mechanic would likely get boring and useless after 4 or 5 times, in an open world game or not.

I mostly agree. When I first heard of it I saw it as a tracking mechanic which enables the player to read tracks of different monsters or animals, analyze them and follow them. Sometimes the tracks might stop, or multiple tracks would be close too each other so you really had trouble and had to pay attention, or that is would be used in other matters that require the player to make conclusions. It was the way I saw it only a tool to convey Geralts sense for observation and hunting while still requiring the player to do the brain work.

The way the journalists describe it it sounds like it's just detective vision from Batman or Eagle Sense from AC.

 

[Vigilance.492]

Echoing the above comments. When they announced Witcher Senses it sounded like it wasn't just going to be like a Batman Vision that only tells you information you need to know, but would actually show general monster tracks that weren't related to anything. They never confirmed that, but it was just an assumption based on what was said.
Now chances are that was probably cut because a system that has to track literally every creature on-screen and keep a bank of its movements for the Senses would probably be way too stressful on the PC/Console. So from what we've heard in the previews, it sounds like the Senses is just your typical Batman-style vision where you're only shown what you need to know, and therefore there's no actual "proper" detective work on behalf of the player, when you find the glowing thing, that's it you're done, because it's always quest related.

It's a little disappointing, I was expecting a more robust system and I know that when I watched the 35 minute demo and saw the senses used, I just kind of hoped that it wasn't 100% complete, or that we were only seeing Johnny's tracks because no monsters had walked past yet. Ultimately though as previously mentioned if there's still some decent variety within quests, and the senses aren't just hammed in for every second quest, then it should be fine, but we'll have to wait and see.

 

[Geralt_of_bsas]

Even the part about enhanced hearing looked like it was too simple and hand holdy. I think when you catch a particular sound its origin appears in the screen with a marker of some sorts, thats what I remember from the MS E3 demo. Actually, watching that demo again, a crow's sound mixes with the griffin sound, but the system literally shows the crow sound in white markers, and the griffin one in red, seriously do we really need THAT amount of help? Its doing practically everything for you.

They could've just made the sound of monsters or enemies separated from the enhanced ambient sounds and tie it closely to the surround effect, or whatever its called when you can clearly tell something is coming from left or right, front or back, instead of using visual cues.

 

[Agent_Bleu]

Echoing the above comments. When they announced Witcher Senses it sounded like it wasn't just going to be like a Batman Vision that only tells you information you need to know, but would actually show general monster tracks that weren't related to anything. They never confirmed that, but it was just an assumption based on what was said.
Now chances are that was probably cut because a system that has to track literally every creature on-screen and keep a bank of its movements for the Senses would probably be way too stressful on the PC/Console. So from what we've heard in the previews, it sounds like the Senses is just your typical Batman-style vision where you're only shown what you need to know, and therefore there's no actual "proper" detective work on behalf of the player, when you find the glowing thing, that's it you're done, because it's always quest related.

It's a little disappointing, I was expecting a more robust system and I know that when I watched the 35 minute demo and saw the senses used, I just kind of hoped that it wasn't 100% complete, or that we were only seeing Johnny's tracks because no monsters had walked past yet. Ultimately though as previously mentioned if there's still some decent variety within quests, and the senses aren't just hammed in for every second quest, then it should be fine, but we'll have to wait and see.

It is not like scepticism was not voiced long in advance.

What I've said in the past is such high reward should come at an equally high price. For example, there should be risk of misinterpreting clues, sometimes with fatal consequences. Additionally, using the senses should put you at a temporary disadvantage, like depleting your stamina, imposing a cooldown between consecutive uses, or otherwise impairing your combat abilities for a short period.

Can, for example, the player find Johnny by reasoning through clues alone, without condescending help from quest markers or Witcher senses? Obviously, it's too late for anything of substance to change now. It seems we're stuck with a press-A-to-win functionality.

 

[BlackWolf500.298]

All I am concerned about (even if some so called "journalists" reported otherwise) is that the game will end up too casual and too much for the "wider audience"

 

[misho8723]

It would be cool if some quest(s) would need you to go, e.g. into the woods and search for traces of the monster, hearing how it sounds, how big the traces are, etc. but you wouldn't see the monster and you would need to go back to the quest giver/town and tell him/them what type of a monster you think it is - and the answer would have consequences - like, I don't know, some men from the village/town would go with you to fight the monster but if you would chose the wrong type of monster, the men wouldn't be prepared for the fight and they would die in the battle and then you would need to go back to the village and face the consequences from the village/town people.. something like this