Developer Spotlight #2 - Damien Monnier

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oh did i say thanks again ? oh what the heck ! showing gratitude more is never a bad thing. So thanks to everyone who were involved such as the community here with their excellent questions as well as those who performed the different translations, Mr. Monnier and Mr. Kinley.
damn i still haven't finished reading the Q&A x_x
 
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It was fun to translate...although I have to say that when I was translating I hated at some moments Damien for being that talkative. :)

Anyway very cool interview. I was happy to hear about armor type affecting your movement speed.
 
I know this works in other games but those games are a lot more hardcore than we are.

Lol, that reference to Dark Souls. Generally i don;t like the fact that there is no animations when drinking potions. Another thing that i did not like, is that Better AI on higher difficulties, and no HP/damage increase is proven to be false after all. I really hope the combat is somewhat close to Bloodborne. This is seriously the best combat for fast paced melee with no shield i have ever seen in a game.

Other than that, thanks tons everybody for this.

 
The reason for no drinking animation isn't very convincing. It seems he had a long witcher 1/2 drinking animation in mind, which would indeed be rather annoying and break the flow of the combat But a short <1sec animation wouldn't hurt. Many games have a animation for drinking potions and I never felt it harmed the fluidness.
Same goes for the lack of a eating animation or the usage of oil.
 
Many thanks to all who were involved in this process. It never ceases to amaze me the dedication that many of the forum users and CDPR devs have to this game and the forum. You guys are absolutely awesome. Thanks again!

EDIT: The amount of detail in the answers is incredible. And the explanation of design choices makes my previous concerns melt away. Even design choices I (being completely unskilled in game design beyond creating awful D&D campaigns) disagree with I understand. There is only one choice that I really wish they would have done the other way after hearing hte explanation, and that is the drink potions animations while in combat. But for me to only have one answer that leaves me disappointed in a twenty some odd page document is incredible. How did these people manage to do this?

I want Damien and all the Reds to take a month off this summer. Not all at the same time, because you know, expansions and CP 2077. But seriously, you guys have earned it. Go to the beach. I am grateful already and have not even played the game. Kudos.
 
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Awesome interview though he did dodge few questions and with few answers I couldn't possibly disagree more.

Like for example to question why was dice poker removed and will we see it introduced as perhaps part of 16 free dlcs he only gave reasons for cutting it and completely dodged answering whether will we see it as part of free dlcs.Also as awesome as gwent is why there wasn't room for dice poker for those who like pure luck based games (gambling) especially since he also confirmed that all mini games have already been revealed and there are so few of them for such a vast open world (let's hope free dlcs and expansions will fix this).Also dice poker is iconic Witcher mini game at least for me,

Then question about 70 unique monsters and how they work - he again dodged even addressing in any way total number of monsters present in the game.He might not know it but he kinda could just you know make a few steps and ask guys responsible for that plus confirmation of such huge number would be good marketing since news outlets would report about it just as some are already reporting about this QA.

And my last gripe with this overall awesome interview was about missing drinking animations for potions.Give.Me.A.Brake.Though DA:Inquisition is in many way an awful rpg with fetch quests one tiny yet important thing they got right is drinking animations for potions.It last for about 1,5-2 sec. literally.Do not tell me that Geralt can't spare literally 2 sec on drinking animations.It would add immersion plus it would add an insentive to prepare in advance because then you wouldn't have to spend those short 2 sec and even if you do it's just bloody 2 sec.Agh at least they could have added it as part of separate difficulty where you would also have to collect plants in order to refill potions.

Anyway....thanks for answers.You remind me of Bethesda in their early days during Morrowind and somewhat Oblivion.Then they starterd using word streamlining too much.You can hear it quite a few times in your interviews.Please try to find a way to please both casual and hardcore crowds and imo different difficulty levels like hardcore mode for Fallout:New Vegas are a way to go.Cheers!
 
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Now that was a long page of good text! Thanks to all people who submitted questions and thanks to Damien for taking time to answer all the questions!

And as always, I can't wait to get my hands on Witcher 3! http://www.isitmay19thyet.com/
 
I mean come on that makes no sense at all!!
If this would be the case it would indicate there ARE skills which are PERMANENTLY active and you can NOT switch out, because obviously he asked if you could reset skills at at a point and Damien said "yes, but you loose the benefits you gained from places of power". It would make no sense if you could switch "builds" all the time that you loose the stuff from places of power every time you switch, that would discourage the experimentation with "builds", but they want you to experiment with them.

So my conclusions would be that there are active and passive skills. Active ones are the "builds" which can be switched around and have different effects while passive ones are the more "permanent" (probably stat-influencing) skills.

If that is NOT the case then I have no idea how this is supposed to work...

As far as I can tell after watching Jesse Cox' video on youtube places of power give you an extra skill-point to invest, so I guess you'll lose those skillpoints when resetting your skilltrees completly, leaving you only Level-Up-Skillpoints earned to directly place back into a new skilltree. Places of Power also seem to give other bonuses (or where did that igni-bonus come from in Jesse Cox' video?). So it might just get rid of those time-limited bonuses when resetting.
 
Magnificent interview.Thank you Kinley and all the other cool people who helped making this awesome Q&A with our wonderful Senior Gameplay Designer David Monnier one of my favorite devs.
 
Thank you for this. Can't believe my question about getting drunk ended up there and was actually answered. :D

I'm sure I saw a video where the animation for potion drinking during combat was present... Now where is it..
 
great job really, had a lot of fun reading everything

Thanks to everyone involved

 
Now the full translation portuguese is on the Brazilian Witchers thread. Had some troubles with the Forum mechanics and had to wait to post the rest. I also posted some translation notes, as some english words don't have an exactly correspondence in portuguese.

Although it's Brazilian Portuguese, our brothers from Portugal probably will not have problems with it. The translation have very few slangs, manly following a more formal portuguese.

Maybe the only words:

Caras: gajos
Galera: gente
 
Great informative interview, thank you.

And you could add the ice skating easily if you brought back the Arena mode. You could choose either Ciri or Geralt in the mode and some of the levels could be Ice skating. Then you wouldn't have to fit it in with the story and people could practice it till their hearts content.
 
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