Hearts of Stone, base game and the focus of CDPR

[Sagitarii]

Most if not all who start HOS will have completed the main game plus side content. Allowing them to focus on the HOS quest, with the best gear all the top potions, oils no need to get frustrated in case you forgot to check a chest on the off chance there was a "treasure" item.
This is maybe one of the reasons why some think its a more focused story without distractions, WELL IT IS, but only because we've completed the distractions.
CDPR have proven yet again they have some extremely talented people and while HOS was a great little adventure in the fantastic expanse of the witcher world I certainly wouldn't want them to stop making large open worlds, because they've proven they can do it, and they'll just get better.

On a side note,I didn't like the mansion quest,

Spoiler

I don't like entering alternate/other worlds but that's just me..

I don't think it's the case at all.

Because of the scale and the amount of content in the game, it had to be spread out throughout the whole 100-150 hours of gameplay. So because of that, sometimes you felt lost or overwhelmed, not knowing what to do now, if you should do side quests and random camps, or main story.

The side activities, aside from Gwent and few other cases were not connected to the any story, or even to the world - sometimes you saved the merchant and he gave you a bonus. But that was it. Dozens of unreleated random camps, contrabands and so on.

In HoS it was different, distractions were interesting, the

Spoiler

Flaming Rose camps

were connected through a neat story, in bunch of notes and had a backstory behind it.
Same with other small little quests - Harpy, Chapel and so on. Everything was paced so well.

Doing that sort of pacing in the main game would be a lot more difficult, but it could still be done better than it is.
I mean open world is great, but I would like a more focused and condensed open world - no need to get rid of it.

Would I personally prefer more focused experiences from the studio? Yes. Are they going to do it? No, at least not for their full games; that'd be regression

That is very good point. They've advertised the scale so heavily, it would be almost impossible to go back to smaller scale. The mainstream audience wouldn't be happy. Well, they did it once with Witcher 2 (in terms of play hours), but now it won't be easy.

 

[ReptilePZ]

That is very good point. They've advertised the scale so heavily, it would be almost impossible to go back to smaller scale. The mainstream audience wouldn't be happy. Well, they did it once with Witcher 2 (in terms of play hours), but now it won't be easy.

Talking more in a business sense. Cutting the open world would also cut the majority of the audience interested. There's really just no turning back once you go open world, it would require a lot of internal restructuring, people being laid off etc. to go back in scale now. There's a limit as to how big of a studio RPGs that are smaller in scope and appeal can support without the help of publishers.

 

[gregski]

Personally I liked how they handled HoS and I would love to see more focused and less spread-out games from CDPR in the future. TW3 was definitely too big for me, I had to rush the last 1/3 just to "finally finish it". I cannot allow myself long, multi-hour gaming sessions any more, an hour or two in the evening is max. This makes playing a 150-hour game like the Witcher 3 a chore from a certain moment.

Why HoS works so well as expansion is that Geralt as a character fits such short stories perfectly, even if - or maybe because - they are disconnected from a "bigger" plot. It worked well in books and does so in games. I think HoS establishes a solid foundation for future releases of "story packs" and it should definitely be continued by CDPR. Who knows, maybe they should even consider continuing such releases for TW3?

However, I'm afraid CDPR will be pushing for even bigger games after TW3, at least I expect CP2077 to be like that. They've outdone their Skyrim, with CP2077 they will aim at GTA. This - knowing their ambition - will unfortunately lead to another series of development trouble, as they will have many more new game mechanics to develop(guns, cars etc) apart from creating even bigger game world.

 

[KingHochmeister]

Nice to see a thread like this again in the forum, thanks saggy <3


While CDPR would definitely not go back from going Open World, I hope they learnt that having too much size is a bad thing, like @Sagitarii said, W3 could have benefited from having less size to focus more on more important things like the main story and the last act and on making the monster hunts more varied in general, for example.


That said, Witcher 3 trashed a lot of open world games when it comes to its open world, hell, just the fact that they went all the way and changed some dialogue lines and quest outcomes depending on the order you do quests (even though you might do a level 20 quest then go back to do the level 13 quest) and the level of detail they went for in general was amazing, too bad they over-reached and they had to spend less time on certain things and the quality of the things that do matter (I mean the story in general) was affected.


Hearts of Stone was better focused, had great pacing, lots of variety, and like @Kinley said (welcome back bear <3), The Scenes of a Marriage quest became my most favourite quest in an RPG ever, because they had more time to enhance and focus on things because the size of the world wasn't an issue for them, and I won't even go for how good of a character Gaunter O'dimm was, oh the potential they had in the base game if they only could have focused more on the main things that do matter and not Point of Interests and smuggler caches that offered nothing (though they did try by adding small notes here and there to make small stories for those PoI areas).


And from playing HoS, I am really excited for B&W, I just hope they learnt enough for Cyberpunk 2077, I really hope this is just PR talk and nothing more.

 

[Phinnway]

The Witcher 2's levels felt too small for to me. I think Witcher 1's size was about right. But it needed to be more open and less restrictive e.g. no loading screens, no cheating on size by fast traveling, and no fences and other objects arbitrarily blocking your path.

I think an RPG with several acts roughly the size of White Orchard and densely packed with content would be ideal. It'd provide a more focused experience while still giving off the impression of "go wherever you want, do whatever you want."

 

[Aes Sídhe]

Should CDPR focus more on smaller, shorter, more focused games - sacrificing gameplay time, huge open world and content, to make the game more polished and varied? Or maybe you have a different idea what they should do?

This forums not big enough for all my ideas of what they should do .

You all know me as a fan of TW2's comparatively short but ultra-replayable design (I lost count at a dozen playthroughs). I'm also a fan of Open Worlds though, and never doubted the REDs going this direction even if the direction itself is dicey, but I have to say talk of further map size increases has reached the point of diminishing returns, it doesn't mean as much as it used to, and depth is still the dimension least cared for.

If Open World is here to stay, and a feeling of "thinly spread content" or "sacrificed complexity" remains they might consider - instead of an even spread of resources spent to create consistency throughout the games aspects - simplifying the side content quests & optional combat / action / exploration etc (not dumbing down at all, just designing it such that it takes less effort to create, suits an unpolished touch, perhaps requires more effort to understand from the player, and might even have a noticeably different "feel" to the main content - which is itself beefed up further using the freed resources).

SO the player experiences a path of non-stop narrative intensity down the main line, that they either don't want to get off and don't have to if just pure story is what they want, or when they do, what they can then choose to do is from a selection of modes of markedly less, hmm... profundity?

I'm suggesting that when all quests are roughly equally appealing the ultimately inconsequential can steal the main narratives thunder & momentum.

Good thread, important topic, serious consideration should be given.

 

[KingHochmeister]

SO the player experiences a path of non-stop narrative intensity down the main line, that they either don't want to get off and don't have to if just pure story is what they want, or when they do, what they can then choose to do is from a selection of modes of markedly less, hmm... profundity?

I would have to disagree with you there, the Witcher series is the only RPG series that I played that I actually gave a damn to play all the sidequests I could find, because most RPG developers take the easy way and just focus entirely on the main story and just half-ass most sidequests to hell.

Sure, Witcher 3 had those damn PoI places and those damn smuggler caches aplenty, but the real sidequests, even the simplest, had cutscenes dedicated to them and were really well-made for the most part, I don't want that to go away because no other RPG developer is willing to do this (unless they are Obsidian).

In my opinion, they should just decrease the size of the world in their next games than they normally would aim for, so they won't have to sacrifice their effort on the main quests to try to make the sidequests as good as they can be, so you get the best of both worlds.


But I have a feeling CDPR will just make their maps even larger than W3, so I would have to agree with you if they foolishly decide to do just that.

 

[Krull32]

@Kinley
well spoken :like:

Quality>Quantity !

RPGs lives from the story in first place...Choices and decisions . Everything else should be placed behind this.
Witcher 3 sacrificed way too much Story and other points for the Open World... And we can see the result... Story is meh and Open World is lala....You simply can't have both, without a ridiculous amount of effort. And even then it must be balanced very well.

A Game cant be long enough or big enough for me.
But when i see things like Story stretching, boring areas ( not the graphic) , 100 crap smuggler caches for stretching the playtime or another dump "?" areas, i start thinking why the hell did they make this massive open world game when they cant make it interesting enough and bring it to live? Same with enemies..only the same things over and over and over again....In my eyes it was clearly too much for them. The Open World did really harm The Witcher 3 in my eyes.

HoS made many things better and i hope they do the same with B&W.

I hope they learned from Witcher 3 when the final decisions are made for cyberpunk...They have the chance to do it better now. Bigger is not better...We can see this on so many games or Studios.....Would be a really sad if CDPR simply enqueues there ...

 

[Arcafonk]

But when i see things like Story stretching, boring areas ( not the graphic) , 100 crap smuggler caches for stretching the playtime or another dump "?" areas, i start thinking why the hell did they make this massive open world game when they cant make it interesting enough and bring it to live? Same with enemies..only the same things over and over and over again....In my eyes it was clearly too much for them. The Open World did really harm The Witcher 3 in my eyes.

I agree on 100 crap smuggler cache, it have nothing to do in a "adult game". Some of us are still collectionists (I am), but go there and come back full charged + go there and come back for dozens of hours of an adult time was failed gamedesign to me. It took me a week to complete this, because of my limited playtime. But I wanted to complete this. Why ? I don't know, just wanted too.

They should have put one valuable equipement parts + small 0 weight item (like some perls) + 0 weight crap. And remove at least half of those ? marks. At least half. Collectible are nice when they are exeptionnal, there you've got Assassin's Creed worse piece of gamedesign put in a game we like.
? on the map were nice, because they show you points of interests, until the time you see those ? and say "ok, I finished the story in this area, I have to clear this". Still, I liked those. But in open seas... Not that much.
I liked sailing to island, not got to open sea ?, clear this using automatic-less-painfull-quick-method (go next to ?, jump in water, autoaim-kill sirens, loot, come back on boat, find next ? and so on).

For me, beside of skellige's smuggler cache (in velen / novigrad, those are nice), the great gamedesign sin in this game is the experience level. They could really have done things better, but I reckon it's a very tough thing to organize in a open world rpg. FFXII acheive this with bottleneck pathes. Once you go there, you gameover vs a mob and stop your progression. In W3, you've got open world, it's very difficult to stop a player for going there or there.

But is it a problem, really ?

Hopefully in CP they won't have levels if they stick to Fuzion...

 

[RepHope]

Excellent question. I believe that the developer's words were misinterpreted though, a better word for what he wanted to say was "more ambitious". He didn't mean map size, he meant stuff like this being their first:
-Non-Witcher game
-Game with a character creator instead of a set PC like Geralt
-First game with guns, augmentations, and based on their Jobs page vehicles
-Potentially first game with multiplayer
All stuff that is outside the realm of what they've done before.

But you raise a good point all the same: Is it worth the cost to quality if you can make huge game worlds? My answer is no. Frankly if they actually make the map size bigger than W3, I'm not sure I'll buy it. I'm really not interested in huge worlds with nothing to do, that only exist so the devs can go "It's bigger than X!". I'd rather a 50 hour game filled with quality, to a 200 hour game filled with grinding, repetitive quests, and boring characters. They should put a greater focus on the import mechanic and gameplay next time around, rather than map size.

Gameplay and story especially need to be a focus, if the gameplay or story is boring, nobody's going to care how big your world is

 

[dmcaldw]

I think the best and the worst of the open world cdpr put together is the scope . Straight quest line you see very little of the work overall unless you explore but it is there if you want it . HOS managed to put everything with in reach to make it smooth and less time consuming . While the base game is excellent I hope cdpr learned a lot when implementing HOS because in that area they wore able to take the ingame world and give it more life . I think now that we have seen both sides of the fence in this game it shows that CDPR's strength was utilizing a regional aspect of the map and not stringing the player along the whole map to complete a story . Some of the best quest were regional . Now if they could compartmentalized the main questline a little more I am thinking of Skellige in this aspect between the main quest line the other stuff blended well . I don't know if I am explaining it well but maybe this comparison would work HOS feels like a spider web in the sense you have a core / center and you can take many tendrils while staying close to the center while the base would look more like a Richter Scale back and forth or up and down except for the main lines there is no real branching out like HOS . To say open world is bad is wrong just implementation of how that world is used could have been a lot better .

 

[Aes Sídhe]

The Open World did really harm The Witcher 3 in my eyes.

Perhaps, but heres an important consideration not yet raised... TW3 doesn't provide the total Open World paradigm, doesn't take full advantage of it own design. Step back and look and you might conclude that a redkit is all thats missing. All that space and nothing to do with it. It could be that an Open World really is superfluous to a narrative RPG, without the ability to do what has always been at the core of RPG'ing, to create your own stuff, and be the storyteller.

 

[Dassolan]

Like Olgierd fencing, proper sabre fighter, good combat.

 

[Sagitarii]

Perhaps, but heres an important consideration not yet raised... TW3 doesn't provide the total Open World paradigm, doesn't take full advantage of it own design. Step back and look and you might conclude that a redkit is all thats missing. All that space and nothing to do with it. It could be that an Open World really is superfluous to a narrative RPG, without the ability to do what has always been at the core of RPG'ing, to create your own stuff, and be the storyteller.

I agree about the open world part.
I remember someone in a recent interview (maybe it was Badowski) saying that during the develpment they've created a cool world, but it felt empty, so they started to add things to it later.
The result of that is not only the world STILL feeling a bit too empty, but also the side activities and random encounters having no meaning and not being tied to the world at all.

There was no story in them, even though there could be - cannibal camps, renegade soldiers and so on. That's why I loved HoS side activities and small quests - the Order camps were connected to each other and had a conclusion.

It's just another argument for the game being to vast. If you make a world 2 times bigger than before, you basically need to put 4 times more effort to make the change meaningful and enjoyable.