Is it officially stated anywhere that Grey quests aren't suppose to give EXP? Also, what IS the no-EXP bug? (NO SPOILERS PLEASE)

[Spankyjnco]

Ok, let's try a different tack here.

Why does it make no sense? Do you think that you should get rewarded for something you could sneeze on and it would fall over?

I think if pushing your limits to do much harder quests, you should then in turn have a park walk in easier quests, as it is with ALL SINGLE PLAYER RPGS (without scaling enemies). You know.. sidequests, especially in RPGS (Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, Hell take your pick here), are always easy and still give EXP when you do them at a higher level. I want to go grind 30 levels over all content, that is my choice.

HOWEVER, again, I say... I was asking if it was official anywhere.. you said yes it was official, so I am asking you to please share your source. You may THINK it is right, or official, however, until it is said by CDPR or some manual.. it is NOT official. Official requires an OFFICIAL body to state that it is the way it works. That's it... You are attempting to debate gameplay mechanics and progression... which again are your opinions and they will always differ from other people's. I wanted facts only.. Please share your opinion (which you have now.. thanks), and move on if you don't have official information or sources.

 

[zMorfz]

I had no idea grayed out meant no XP. Just learned about it 2 days ago

 

[Ravici]

I think if pushing your limits to do much harder quests, you should then in turn have a park walk in easier quests, as it is with ALL SINGLE PLAYER RPGS (without scaling enemies). You know.. sidequests, especially in RPGS (Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, Hell take your pick here), are always easy and still give EXP when you do them at a higher level. I want to go grind 30 levels over all content, that is my choice.

HOWEVER, again, I say... I was asking if it was official anywhere.. you said yes it was official, so I am asking you to please share your source. You may THINK it is right, or official, however, until it is said by CDPR or some manual.. it is NOT official. Official requires an OFFICIAL body to state that it is the way it works. That's it... You are attempting to debate gameplay mechanics and progression... which again are your opinions and they will always differ from other people's. I wanted facts only.. Please share your opinion (which you have now.. thanks), and move on if you don't have official information or sources.

I stated in my very first post. It's lore. That doesn't mean it's written down, that means it's accepted.

Let's just pretend you're going to argue the toss whatever is said to you, so believe what you want. Just don't gripe when you don't get experience in any game for taking on grey mobs/quests.

 

[Cipher-Six]

Yeah, it is definitely a MMO-inspired color-coded system. Frankly, I agree that single-player quests shouldn't be designed like MMO quests. Players should get the same amount of exp regardless of level in a single-player RPG. It doesn't make any sense to discourage a player from doing a grey quest in a single-player RPG.

 

[Solid_Altair]

The is thing: its consequence is an incentive to skip quests. I think this is a bad thing, because the quests are awesome.

I could see it as a worthy side effects to the benefit of solving the overleveling problem. But it doesn't solve overleveling. So, although I'd aplaud the inventive attempt to solve overleveling in a single player RPG, it really didn't work and had an awful side effect.

Main quests give too much XP and optional ones (specially the underleveled) give too little. The pace is all messed up. I spent a long time on level 19, then suddenly I was 21.

 

[3rd_earthling]

This feels odd to me as well... and yeah, my first rpg was Ultima 4. This may be common practice in MMO's but is not common enough in single player to be accepted 'wisdom".

Clearly, CDPR had some dilemmas regarding their progression system. There is barely any XP scaling- lvl 1-10 requires the same xp for each lvl, the required xp goes up only 50% over lvl 10 (I'm only lvl 13 so not sure how this progresses.) For some reason they decided secondary quests had to grant some xp, but also had a relatively low target lvl in mind for main quests (max lvl 70 lol). So there is very little room for restraining the player's lvl progression with so much to do. Perhaps it would have been best to limit xp gain only to story related quests.

Edit: Oh, and I did see that post by a CDPR staff member suggesting that we "remember that grey quests give no xp". So perhaps their thinking is actually quite close to that of Ravici.

 

[mecha_fish]

people are complaining that they overlevel too easily, why are we now complaining that really easy quests are not providing xp? so far, i've had no issue with a lack of xp so i personally dont mind doing a lower level quest for its own reward -- they're good stories.

lore-wise, if geralt came across a low level noonwraith in a well (notably after learning all the discovery techniques related to monster hunting, investigation should be second nature already) he'd probably have no issues with slaying it and learn nothing as a character/person. so imo, he's just learning some cool story details to tell dandelion/get paid.

for difficulties such as Death March, it makes sense to approach everything at the right level -- lots of strategy and planning, reading the game for cues and so on. on /any/ difficulty, you'd have to consider that you could be challenged by a green quest and not succeed, but you'd still have to approach that quest before it turns grey to get any reward out of it. i think it's to encourage you to be challenged (at least at your own level) rather than to ditch a quest until you're overpowered for it. the reward is to not have an 'i'll come back at level 33' attitude and expect to ace /and/ be rewarded.

as for a bug, i haven't come across any on the PC, v. 1.03, but if there is one, i expect it'd be patched soon.

 

[cyberpunkforever]

wait, grey quests don't give XP!? everything makes sense now

 

[duc748s]

I think the issue is that there is so much to do that smaller quests get "lost" and by the time you get to them they are greyed out. I am not complaining, as I love all the attention to detail these quests have - I was doing one of the Armour side-quests ... Griffin?? the one where the witcher get nabbed on the boat - all the back story from reading the notes/books was cool.

Anyways.. I spent like two days on The Bloody Baron mission (is that even a main quest? felt like one), by the time I was done I remembered to go do some smaller quests (didn't think it would be that long of a quest) most of them are grayed out now, even some monster contracts I kind of wished Monster Contracts scaled to your level or even a level or two above you... we're supposed to be monster hunters right??

 

[RayofLight]

What is more puzzling for me is that people claim the are seeing items and enemies that are above level 35 and I seem to never have found these. It's the only reason I would have issue with not getting (less) experience for grey quests. If I only see these things if I have higher levels, then I am at a loss as to when I'll ever encounter them.

 

[zeypheruk]

Still feel that grey quests is a stupid idea which do not belong in a open world game. Get rid of it if it is possible. The very idea of grey quests punishes exploration and them giving no experience is a kick in the nuts as the loot is not good from them and now we get nothing.

i plead that CDPR remove this grey quest "feature" as it goes against the very essence of a good open world SINGLE PLAYER rpg.

 

[kaltorakh]

The game already has too much xp for the level of the enemies. I mean, if you do half the stuff, you will outlevel everything. Why do you care if quest stop giving xp. And I say this while beeing a progression fanatic in all games. I love rewards, but really, I'm doing half the sidequests and I'm already 4 levels above my main quests levels. Why would you want even more xp?

 

[zeypheruk]

Well for one a lot of proper quests are not giving me experience, now i also have grey qeusts it is not fun to play for a day and be stuck at the same level for the entire duration.

 

[ElBiggus]

Ok, let's try a different tack here. Why does it make no sense? Do you think that you should get rewarded for something you could sneeze on and it would fall over?

Two reasons. First, one of internal game logic consistency: you get little or no XP for killing monsters anywhere in the game, right? So in that case the quest-completion XP is nothing to do with the monster, it's to do with "solving" the quest, and that is no harder or easier regardless of level.

Second reason: that's not how life works, and in fact if this were the "real world" you should possibly get more XP for being over-levelled. Let's say you have a leaking pipe under your sink, and the kitchen is flooding. You can hire a slightly dodgy unqualified plumber to come and fix it, or you can hire an expert plumber to come and fix it. The unqualified guy might just about be able to do it but there's no guarantee it's not going to start leaking again, whereas the expert guy will be able to do it with his eyes closed, one hand behind his back, standing on his head, and you can be confident he's done it properly. Now tell me, would you pay the unqualified guy but not the expert on the grounds that it was easy for the expert? Would you be surprised if the expert charged a little more?

Seriously, this "no XP" thing is rubbish. Defend it all you want, but a) it's not explained anywhere, b) it makes no sense, and c) removes incentive for doing quests later in the game.

 

[Ravici]

Two reasons. First, one of internal game logic consistency: you get little or no XP for killing monsters anywhere in the game, right? So in that case the quest-completion XP is nothing to do with the monster, it's to do with "solving" the quest, and that is no harder or easier regardless of level.

Second reason: that's not how life works, and in fact if this were the "real world" you should possibly get more XP for being over-levelled. Let's say you have a leaking pipe under your sink, and the kitchen is flooding. You can hire a slightly dodgy unqualified plumber to come and fix it, or you can hire an expert plumber to come and fix it. The unqualified guy might just about be able to do it but there's no guarantee it's not going to start leaking again, whereas the expert guy will be able to do it with his eyes closed, one hand behind his back, standing on his head, and you can be confident he's done it properly. Now tell me, would you pay the unqualified guy but not the expert on the grounds that it was easy for the expert? Would you be surprised if the expert charged a little more?

Seriously, this "no XP" thing is rubbish. Defend it all you want, but a) it's not explained anywhere, b) it makes no sense, and c) removes incentive for doing quests later in the game.

I don't need to defend it. It is what it is.

But there seem to be a lot of people who play the game just for the xp and not for actually enjoying the game... which is weird to me :/

 

[Solid_Altair]

people are complaining that they overlevel too easily, why are we now complaining that really easy quests are not providing xp? so far, i've had no issue with a lack of xp so i personally dont mind doing a lower level quest for its own reward -- they're good stories.

lore-wise, if geralt came across a low level noonwraith in a well (notably after learning all the discovery techniques related to monster hunting, investigation should be second nature already) he'd probably have no issues with slaying it and learn nothing as a character/person. so imo, he's just learning some cool story details to tell dandelion/get paid.

for difficulties such as Death March, it makes sense to approach everything at the right level -- lots of strategy and planning, reading the game for cues and so on. on /any/ difficulty, you'd have to consider that you could be challenged by a green quest and not succeed, but you'd still have to approach that quest before it turns grey to get any reward out of it. i think it's to encourage you to be challenged (at least at your own level) rather than to ditch a quest until you're overpowered for it. the reward is to not have an 'i'll come back at level 33' attitude and expect to ace /and/ be rewarded.

as for a bug, i haven't come across any on the PC, v. 1.03, but if there is one, i expect it'd be patched soon.

I haven't thought of it that way: an incentive for players to not wait long to do certain quests. But it doesn't work. If you do things in order, you will overlevel.

I think their main goal was closing the gap between players that do lots of optional quests and players who do few. But it worked for neither. Both overlevel and many quests are gimped.

 

[kiadaw]

SIlly decsion. I do not play quest for the XP. But I certainly do not want to be punich by not getting XP. The problem would have been solve if they made it like other games that required progressively more exp point per level. (a level 16 quest will give more exp than a level 3 quest), then that small XP you get from completing a lower level quest will not gain so much expereince that will jump you quick to next level, but still provide a small reward.

Anyway, why this is poor design decision.
1) It forced you to play quests in a certain order, instead of when you want it. Oh you are level 10, better complete all the lower loevel witcher contracts & secondary quest & skip the main quest. (when you return to main quest, you then find yourself over level for it.....)


2) Already, I am abit overlevel (still within xp gain range) for many main quests, by doing a 1/2 of side quests available. Now I have to do more side quests before they no longer give XP, meaning, I will be even more overpower when I do main quests....This design is just counter intriutive. It just force you to abandance some quests so you mainly be doing quests that are within own level. Otherwise, I have to do these quests for the stroy, but only after they turned grey so I am not over level. In any case, I do not have freedom to do quests as and when I want.

Why CDPR, why!

 

[gryzemuis]

By the way, Mr. Condescending, the first online multiplayer RPG was released in 1980, a mere five years after the first single-player RPG. Admittedly they were very simple, ....

Were you around in 1980 ?
I'd be interested to learn what was the first *online* multiplayer game in 1980.
I'd be interested to learn the first single-player RPG in 1975.

In 1980 there were no PC's yet. (IBM introduced the first Personal Computer in 1982. It cost over $10K). I doubt anyone (but professionals) had a a modem. There were home-computers, but they would not have modems. Heck, the typical homecomputer did not have a HDD (just a floppy disk with the OS). There was no Internet. I'm pretty there weren't even any bulletin-boards in 1980. In 1980, this was the level of computer-games:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunt_the_Wumpus
And not the fancy versions from the nineties, with graphics and all. No, just words on screen. Not even a maze. You had to type the numbers of the room where you wanted to shoot your arrow. "I feel a draft".

RPGs in 1975 ? You must be dreaming.
Or did you mean this ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure
That was an adventure game, not an RPG. That one was made in 1975-1976. But I wouldn't call it an RPG.

Modern day gaming started in 1993. With Doom. The first first-person 3D-game. (Even when it was faking a lot of the 3D stuff). That game inspired others to make first-person 3D games too. And that inspired the creation of special hardware for the 3D rendering (videocards). Yes, there were online games before. And even multiplayer online games. But the real start was Doom.

---------- Updated at 01:54 PM ----------

People can argue whether grey quests should give experience-points or not. But that's not the point.

Grey quests in the main quest-line do not give experience points in TW3.
Grey quests that are not part of the main quest-line *do* give experience points in TW3.

That's an inconsistency in itself. Inconsistency. So that's probably unintentional. So that's probably a bug. CDPR have already said it's a bug. And a fix will be out soon (Monday). What's left to discuss ?

 

[ElBiggus]

Were you around in 1980 ?

Yes. I'm in my 40s.

I'd be interested to learn what was the first *online* multiplayer game in 1980.

It was this.

In 1980 there were no PC's yet. (IBM introduced the first Personal Computer in 1982. It cost over $10K).

So? There were computers.

There was no Internet.

There was ARPANET, the ancestor of the internet. There were local area networks. There were direct serial connections. There was stuff like this (I was using it in 1986), and the first BBS appeared in 1978.

Modern day gaming started in 1993. With Doom. The first first-person 3D-game.

Wrong on all three counts. There was Maze War in 1973, and if you're restricting it to home computers (for whatever reason) I was playing The Eidolon (a fairly simple FPS) on my Atari in the mid 80s.

Like I said, if you're going to lecture people on the history of computer games (or computing in general) try and do some research first...

 

[Anelikital]

Personally i don't pay much attention to XP if it is a GREY quest i will still do it, because of the story, and i will probably get some loot and money as well. I believe a lot of people pay attention to XP because the game is open so they go into MMO mode, if you played a lot MMO's it just happens sometimes.
One thing i believe needs change is, some monsters usually Boss types are lower level so they are easy, the bosses at least should start scaling with your level when you first go over their level.