I've been playing this game for 6 years so far, and completed it 6 times. Every time I was considering registering at the official forum and posting my feelings, and every time I was like "ah, it's a single-player game, it's finished anyway, nobody from dev team would care to listen to me anyway". LOL, I was sooo wrong, taken into account release of HoS, then B&W, and now new engine! I hope I'm not too late, hehe...
Part I: v4.X changes.
Part II: things I always liked about The Witcher 3.
Part III: great idea, questionable implementation.
Part IV: fly in the ointment.
Now I'll add a few separate threads, to address at least the most important part, listed in IV.1:
Extra vendors
Additions to craft
Part I: v4.X changes.
- I.1. Well, graphics of course. Can't say I know much about it, or rather care much about it (imagine: in 90th I've been playing pure-text MUDs for 5 years, without ANY graphics!), but still... Actually, IMHO TW3 graphics was top quality even during first release, but now it impressed me again. Heck, polished plate armor which does reflect in-game light sources and thus changes its color depending on surroundings and day time? I've never seen anything like this
- I.2. Automated oils and other QoL game settings: bravo! Being a programmer myself I know that sometimes it takes really small amount of work to improve usability by a great deal, and these options are brilliant example!
- I.3. Obviously increased formula drop rate + formula sellers: FINALLY! you did what should have been done 7 years ago, lol. I mean, it really sucks when you've got 100k crowns in your pockets, you've got some basic oil and recipe for top tier oil, yet you can't create it because you didn't find middle tier formula. Or rather you have all required formulae... but you can't create a substance required. Too bad sellers' inventory is random still: I'd really like to see in the game some shady dealer selling EVERY possible formula, even if he asks some 5x increased price for each (compared to usual herbalist prices). But oh well, this is definitely a move in the correct direction!
- I.4. Likewise, finally CDPR made it so quests which are 6+ levels below Geralt's level don't become greyed (with 20x reduced exp gain). I mean, one who implemented this "greyed quest" feature in the first time should receive his personal place in the gamers' hell! Because of it, even if you were playing at highest difficulty with 20% reduced exp gain, you had to skip every third quest, because otherwise you were gaining too much exp, and several other quests (plotline included!) had chance to become "greyed". I mean, what is "too much exp" in a RPG? Are you serious? I'm really, REALLY glad you got rid of this ugly "feature".
- I.5. Small additions like a way point / crossroad sign in the center of Crow's Perch: once again an example of things which are easy to create, yet which save decent part of gamers' time; also Succubus decoction buffed from +10% AP up to +30% AP, which made it useful, finally.
- I.6. But there is also a thing which I'd put into "really BAD IDEA" box: ability tree nerf. IMHO, ability system had weird implementation as it was... I mean, how the hell should it look from roleplay PoW? "I've learned/trained some new stuff, but I have to load it from my lasting memory into working one, but the latter can't contain more than 12 (later 16) abilities at the same time"? Well... are you serious? This added megaton of micromanagement into the game (like "don't forget to replace fast style abilities with strong style ones before boss fight, and don't forget to revert it once battle is over") as it was... and now you nerf it even more? I mean, before you had to use Metabolic Control at low levels to drink 3 decoctions at the same time, but as soon as you gather at least 100 formulae, you were free to get rid of this ability (assuming 5/5 Heightened Tolerance and 3/3 Acquired Tolerance, of course). Now you made the former ability to cost just 3 ability points... and nerfed its efficiency from 100% to just 80%? Why? WHY?? Now, as long as you don't ignore Places of Power around, in most cases you have 1.5x more ability points than needed to fill available ability slots! Geez, I'd put 10 points into Heightened Tolerance if it was possible, just to save extra SLOT rather than to save some points! Please, any chance you revert it back? Or maybe increase tolerance gain from 10 per ability level to some 15? Damn it, even 12 tolerance per level would be sufficient as long as you gather 149+ formulae (i.e. toxicity breakpoint at 86% with 3/3 Heightened Tolerance)... assuming no rounding / truncation of values in toxicity calculations.
Part II: things I always liked about The Witcher 3.
- II.1. Plot, of course. It's just brilliant! Compared to plot in certain games like Fallout 3 (which rotates about pretty much useless device / idea), plot in TW3 is sane, logical and... well, believable? A rare exception in the world of CRPGs, i'd say.
- II.2. Alchemy and crafting. Can't say that it's as good as i'd make it myself, but it's really REALLY close to it! The best part (IMHO) was the idea of alloys - i.e. ability to create the most powerful materials from simple basic metals, step by step. I mean, in most games there is no such thing at all: at high levels you just gain access to "better" ore, simply smelt it into "better" ingots and use it for higher level crafts; lower level metals just become vendor trash. Idea of putting any piece of old loot into good use just makes me applaud! Too bad it mostly stays unused now (taking into account new "cheaters'" eq like Temerian / Nilfgaardian Armor sets, set of Undvik armor, etc).
- II.3. Usability of heavy armor. Truth to be told, I've never liked heavy swordplay simulators like Gothic or Dark Souls, with a lot of dodging, blocking and alike finger breaking stuff. My favorite tactic in most RPGs was "play heavy tank, face-tank all incoming damage and just heal through it", and I'm really glad I can do it in TW3 (unlike in TW2, for example). Even at highest difficulty! I mean, why should my character care about incoming hits, if he's rich enough to buy / craft his personal titanian (according to stats, lol) full plate? Har har B)
- II.4. Gwent. The best tabletop "game in the game", period. Arcomage in Might & Magic games was quite decent too, but Gwent beats it anytime!
Part III: great idea, questionable implementation.
- III.1. Roach. There were just two things I've encountered in other games which were better than Roach in the area of faster traveling: flying mounts and "Fly" spell. Though, the way Roach was implemented....... well, everybody knows, I guess. Taken into account "Equine Phantoms" quest dialogues, it seems to be incurable, and developers know it, so I won't go into any further details.
- III.2. Witcher stuff diagrams... just lying around in open. I mean, what should some witcher think about to just "hide" a diagram in random dungeon, rather than carry it with him (it's a light piece of paper after all)? Or rather, if some witcher dies while carrying a diagram, how high is chance that it doesn't just get decomposed together with his corpse (it's a piece of paper, once again)? IMHO it would be way more logical to "settle" some NPC like "old retired witcher" somewhere at the edge of the world (Benek?), making his living by selling copies of all possible diagrams... at a decent price, of course (higher than usual random diagrams at smiths). This would also partially solve the problem with economics, too (see below).
- III.3. Game difficulty. Player character's power grows parabolically - this is a problem of most games, and TW3 is not an exception. At first you get nearly one-shot here and there by a mere pack of wolves, while in the end Eredin (goddamn final boss of the main plotline!!!) hits you for mere 20 hps, if you build your character really well. And that's at highest difficulty! Is there anyone else who would agree with me that there is something... wrong with it? I'm not really sure what does game difficulty in TW3 affect, but I guess it works much like in Fallout, where you receive 2x more damage from monsters at highest difficulty, while doing 2x less dps than at normal difficulty. If so, I'd say it would be more fair to make these bonuses grow slowly, like 10% per level, reaching +100% incoming damage at level 10, and then gradually growing up to +100% more, like 5% per level (reaching 300% damage at level 30).
- III.4. Gwent bets. Every second named opponent in gwent quests says something like "bah, I'll even bet my unique card" or "I prefer high stakes only!"... omitting the next logical question: what does he bet it AGAINST? I mean, Geralt can just play against an opponent with obviously better deck (like Stjepan) over and over again, until he gets really lucky (or rather opponent gets unlucky): he has nothing to lose anyway! I mean... shouldn't PC lose at least 100 crowns every time he loses gwent game against a quest opponent?
Part IV: fly in the ointment.
- IV.1. The first and foremost: economics. The problem of 95-98% of PC games: at low levels you are poor as a church mouse, which makes you scavenge for every coin, and then you become as rich as Rockefeller, with a single exception: you have just simply nowhere to spend your money. This. Is. Not. Right. Mkay, it might be normal for some childly setting like LoTR, where nobody seems to care about seeking for work / asking for monetary rewards for his/her help... but, ehh, in Witcher setting? Alchemy consumes some 15-20k crowns, yes, but it's a delayed expense, as herbalists have limited and random sets of formulae (and also it's void in New Game+). New imbalanced sets from DLCs? They are cheap (I'd make them cost like 5x more). Crafts? Who needs to craft with above mentioned sets available. Runemaster? Yea, that's 30k of investments plus maybe some 10k spent to create runes/glyphs, to socket your stuff and apply rune words - this can be done at some level 17-25. Easily! And then? You finish the game with some 200k crowns, and that's without looting megatons of stuff "hidden" (or should I say "left for anyone to take"?) in waters around Skellige; and, if you gather it too (which is extremely boring, but still), you end up with a million. Pity there is no use for it. Why can't you add more vendors to the game? Also, there are always possibilities to add more options to crafting, to make it useful again.
- IV.2. Combat system. Random as hell. It boils down to a simple tactic: one who hits first, wins. Like a "sniper duel". I mean, if you get lucky, you hit an enemy, it staggers (being unable to defend himself or retaliate), you hit again, and again - to death. Likewise, if enemy puts 2 successful hits in (the first one to remove Quen shield), you might be in trouble, unless you are heavily armored. This especially applies to combats against spectres (which just love to "teleport" behind you, backstab and "stun lock"). And I'd really, REALLY like to see in the game such setting as "Staggering: on/off". Obviously, it should affect BOTH Geralt and his enemies. I'm quite curious to see a fair combat, where opponents exchange blows at the same time, and even if you win, you get more or less hurt in the process, so you have to heal.
- IV.3. Level cap. Just a simple question to CDPR: WHY?... You made it nearly pointless to gain high levels, "thanks" to ugly ability slot system, so why limit it even more, adding hard cap of level 100 and implementing "greyed mobs"? Geralt shouldn't become too powerful or something? It's not like a few extra hps are going to change a lot in terms of playability... And yes, I know you can change it in game setting file, but why did you have to add it in the first place?? This was question asked by dude who has reached level 280 or so in Fallout 4, yes =)
- iV.4. Game loading. I just wonder: why does it take a minute for any more or less decent location like Velen (let alone Novigrad)? During the last 6 years I did numerous hardware upgrades (CPU up to Ryzen 7, RAM from 16 Gb to 64 and then to 128 Gb, graphics card from GTX 950 through GTX 1660 and up to RTX 3070, replaced HDD with SSD). Make a wild guess: did loading time improve? No. It's still 50 seconds. The thing which hit me with the biggest surprise hammer was the fact that even SSD didn't help. Sometimes it makes me wonder if it's an artificial delay, to prevent save scumming or smth. Or to force people into listening loading screen "tales"? Well, after 10th time it becomes not really fun... What's even funnier is that loading after just starting the game is a bit faster (while in theory it should be directly the opposite: when Geralt has died at some location, and there is a save made at this location, why REload the same terrain and mobs, which exist in memory already?)
- IV.5. Why do you have to loot with a "use" button? I mean, the same button which interacts with people, lights/snuffs candles, etc? If I want to loot, then I want to LOOT ONLY, not interact with everything interactable around! Can you add a separate "loot" key?
- IV.6. Why does meditation assume replenishing of elixirs? Ok, it might be impossible to refresh your alchemy without meditation, but why can't you do the opposite - just meditate w/o brewing stuff? Add an option (checkbox) "replenish" to meditation screen (set by default).
- IV.7. Randomness of travel time. It's quite weird that sometimes traveling between adjacent crossroad signs of Novigrad takes several game hours, but then you fast travel from far southern part of Velen to Novigrad in less than two hours, arriving before business hours of smiths start. And you might want to avoid meditation because of the previous clause... Just make travel time be proportional to distance between crossroad signs, thus being more or less predictable!
Now I'll add a few separate threads, to address at least the most important part, listed in IV.1:
Extra vendors
Additions to craft
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