It was actually the same annoying system.
It's just that the game happened to be a lot smaller, so it was less tiring/annoying in the long term.
It's just that the game happened to be a lot smaller, so it was less tiring/annoying in the long term.
It been so long since I play Witcher 2. I definitely will play it again once I'm done with Witcher 3 to see what they took out, add in, and overall what change.
This really doesn't have much to do with the topic at hand.
No one here is suggesting to put just the bare minimum of items necessary to survive until completion in the game, nor to made necessary to complete all side content to get items.
The scenario suggested here isn't "hey, let's make a linear game with FOUR key items to pick up along the road".
It's more "Hey, what if rather than THOUSANDS of alchemical herbs just in White Orchard, one every square meter, we could have *barely* HUNDREDS OF THEM?"
You know, like one every hectare or so.
Why? Because in lore terms it would make sense if rare and useful herbs used to craft potions and oils weren't so common you were constantly tripping on them, and in gameplay terms you'd have all the gathering aspects without breaking the pace constantly.
And let me stress, before some silly objection in style "You don't need to loot all herbs" (which I don't, by the way) that herbs are just a fraction of the problem. You have herbs, loot from kills, loot from containers, crafting materials, equipment, etc, etc.
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It is probably too late to change herb gathering and out of village loot grabs, at least to a major extent. But fixing the issue of overly looting things in villages is easy- just have villagers react very negative and call the guards when you steal something or kill an animal for its meat/hide.
Honestly, I think the way herbs spawn and handled in TW3 is fine, I have no complaints about it. There is valid reason why CDPR gives us abundance of herbs to cater for the realistic approach. As for weapons and armors, it's good to see wide range of weapons and armors available in this game and I think they being randomly dropped by fallen enemies make the realistic approach more valid too.
The only thing that I would wish CDPR not to do is to randomly place weapons and armors in places that don't seem to fit them into like drawers, boxes,etc.. Would be more appropriate if we can find weapons and armors from their usual hangouts like the armory, weapon holders and such.
The only thing that I would wish CDPR not to do is to randomly place weapons and armors in places that don't seem to fit them into like drawers, boxes,etc.. Would be more appropriate if we can find weapons and armors from their usual hangouts like the armory, weapon holders and such.
This is EXACTLY how I feel about the loot and the exploration in the game. It's not necessarily the fact that loot is easy to find (although that IS a problem), the problem is that the more loot you have in the game, the less meaningful it becomes.
I think this problem is directly tied to the size of the world which feels really excessive and unnecessary to me and here are a few reasons why:
-The bigger the world is, the less unique each individual place becomes. Ask yourselves this: Did Velen really need to have 20-30 villages? By the time I saw the seventh village in Velen, I had "already" seen ALL of the villages in the zone. It is the EXACT problem Inquisition had, although not quite as bad. It's quite eerie to me how similar the problems of both games are.
-Gamers like to be rewarded for their time and when you have such a big world to explore, you had better find something interesting to do and find because no matter how pretty the game is this is a game and players want to have interesting gameplay. The problem with this is that the bigger the world is the more loot you MUST put in and the more loot you have in a game the less MEANINGFUL it becomes. There were very few pieces of loot that made me feel special when I got them. I just know that if I go to 3-4 more caves, I will find a similar sword but with a bit more stats. It's a bit like picking up an M4A1 in Call of Duty to replace your AK47. There is a difference in looks and stats but the difference is minimal.
Let me give you two examples of games that do exploration the right way: The first one is Gothic. People have often compared Gothic With Oblivion/Skyrim and while both games are incredibly similar, they also differ in on key aspect: The world is SMALLER in Gothic, which means that each individual area is given maximum care and when you find a piece of equipment you REALLY feel accomplished because good loot is not plentiful and is hard to find. At no point during TW3 (or DA:I for that matter) did I feel like I found a particular upgrade because of my SKILL. The dungeons and Points of Interest are incredibly easy resolve and just putting more of them on the map does not solve the problem, it makes it WORSE.
Another game that does exploration incredibly well is Doom. Now I know that this is an FPS (and an old one at that) and that it doesn't come near the sheer size of the Witcher but there are still a lot of things developers can learn from this game. The levels in Doom are pretty small in comparison which means that each item pickup needs to be carefully placed and that very good items are hard to come by. The player is rewarded for being attentive to the environment and may even find a powerful weapon in a secret, BEFORE it "officially" appears in a later level. This may create a small unbalance in the game but even if it does it is never to the point where the level becomes trivial. Maybe the enemies in that level are vulnerable to that kind of weapon or maybe it just gives you another tool to use. The fact is that small unbalances in games are FUN if placed correctly. In the Witcher, the item progression is linear. Even if the player has a slightly unfair advantage it is in the end not unfair because the player used unconventional thinking Picking up a new weapon in Doom and Gothic is an event but in the Witcher weapons are everywhere and they don't really differ that much from the rest.
In the Witcher, the item progression is linear You get a sword and when you advance a level or two you get another sword with slightly better stats. Why not make a sword for level 5 that is stronger than a level 9 sword but is a lot harder to find? This will make the player think "I am now able to be a lot more effiicient in this level bracket because I was smart and attentive" instead of "Great, now I have +11 more damage". This also makes the player become more emotionally invested in the sword.
I don't think open world games necessarily hurt games but in the end no matter how much love and care you put in a place or item the more places and items you see the less unique and interesting they become. I view open world games in the vein of TW3 and DA:I like a cake. You are presented with a huge cake with lots of carefully selected ingredients and you say "boy, look at how much cake I got, I sure got my money's worth". You start eating the very delicious cake and you can't believe how such a huge cake can also be so good but pretty soon half of it is gone and you are like "oh my, there is so much cake left, I'd better finish it". You eat more of the cake but there is still a big chunk of it left. You are stuffed and are beginning to feel kind of sick but you feel guilty for not finishing it and tell yourself "I can't put it back in the fridge because it will become stale, I'd better finish it". Somehow you finish the cake but you start to feel very sick and are pretty sure you're going to get a few more pounds.
In short, after exploring half of Velen, I started to become tired of the zone. I wanted to move on but I felt guilty for doing so because I felt like I was wasting content. Maybe there was a really cool quest or some really cool loot but I quickly realized that the loot and the quests I could find would probably not be too different from the last. I felt overwhelmed but not in a good way like a TES game does. I can't explain why I feel the need to explore everything in TES games but I'm [retty sure both DA:I and TW3 only understand the big picture of TES. There are so many little things that when combined it creates a world that makes me want to explore it just for the hell of it.
For these reasons I ask CDPR to think whether making such a big world is what players really want. I honestly think the game would have been better if Velen had been cut in half and the resources spent to make it would have been used to make a different zone (with different climate) or used to make the decisions in TW2 matter a lot more in TW3. I would gladly have given away half of Velen to see my decisions in TW2 matter more.
I think this problem is directly tied to the size of the world which feels really excessive and unnecessary to me and here are a few reasons why:
-The bigger the world is, the less unique each individual place becomes. Ask yourselves this: Did Velen really need to have 20-30 villages? By the time I saw the seventh village in Velen, I had "already" seen ALL of the villages in the zone. It is the EXACT problem Inquisition had, although not quite as bad. It's quite eerie to me how similar the problems of both games are.
-Gamers like to be rewarded for their time and when you have such a big world to explore, you had better find something interesting to do and find because no matter how pretty the game is this is a game and players want to have interesting gameplay. The problem with this is that the bigger the world is the more loot you MUST put in and the more loot you have in a game the less MEANINGFUL it becomes. There were very few pieces of loot that made me feel special when I got them. I just know that if I go to 3-4 more caves, I will find a similar sword but with a bit more stats. It's a bit like picking up an M4A1 in Call of Duty to replace your AK47. There is a difference in looks and stats but the difference is minimal.
Let me give you two examples of games that do exploration the right way: The first one is Gothic. People have often compared Gothic With Oblivion/Skyrim and while both games are incredibly similar, they also differ in on key aspect: The world is SMALLER in Gothic, which means that each individual area is given maximum care and when you find a piece of equipment you REALLY feel accomplished because good loot is not plentiful and is hard to find. At no point during TW3 (or DA:I for that matter) did I feel like I found a particular upgrade because of my SKILL. The dungeons and Points of Interest are incredibly easy resolve and just putting more of them on the map does not solve the problem, it makes it WORSE.
Another game that does exploration incredibly well is Doom. Now I know that this is an FPS (and an old one at that) and that it doesn't come near the sheer size of the Witcher but there are still a lot of things developers can learn from this game. The levels in Doom are pretty small in comparison which means that each item pickup needs to be carefully placed and that very good items are hard to come by. The player is rewarded for being attentive to the environment and may even find a powerful weapon in a secret, BEFORE it "officially" appears in a later level. This may create a small unbalance in the game but even if it does it is never to the point where the level becomes trivial. Maybe the enemies in that level are vulnerable to that kind of weapon or maybe it just gives you another tool to use. The fact is that small unbalances in games are FUN if placed correctly. In the Witcher, the item progression is linear. Even if the player has a slightly unfair advantage it is in the end not unfair because the player used unconventional thinking Picking up a new weapon in Doom and Gothic is an event but in the Witcher weapons are everywhere and they don't really differ that much from the rest.
In the Witcher, the item progression is linear You get a sword and when you advance a level or two you get another sword with slightly better stats. Why not make a sword for level 5 that is stronger than a level 9 sword but is a lot harder to find? This will make the player think "I am now able to be a lot more effiicient in this level bracket because I was smart and attentive" instead of "Great, now I have +11 more damage". This also makes the player become more emotionally invested in the sword.
I don't think open world games necessarily hurt games but in the end no matter how much love and care you put in a place or item the more places and items you see the less unique and interesting they become. I view open world games in the vein of TW3 and DA:I like a cake. You are presented with a huge cake with lots of carefully selected ingredients and you say "boy, look at how much cake I got, I sure got my money's worth". You start eating the very delicious cake and you can't believe how such a huge cake can also be so good but pretty soon half of it is gone and you are like "oh my, there is so much cake left, I'd better finish it". You eat more of the cake but there is still a big chunk of it left. You are stuffed and are beginning to feel kind of sick but you feel guilty for not finishing it and tell yourself "I can't put it back in the fridge because it will become stale, I'd better finish it". Somehow you finish the cake but you start to feel very sick and are pretty sure you're going to get a few more pounds.
In short, after exploring half of Velen, I started to become tired of the zone. I wanted to move on but I felt guilty for doing so because I felt like I was wasting content. Maybe there was a really cool quest or some really cool loot but I quickly realized that the loot and the quests I could find would probably not be too different from the last. I felt overwhelmed but not in a good way like a TES game does. I can't explain why I feel the need to explore everything in TES games but I'm [retty sure both DA:I and TW3 only understand the big picture of TES. There are so many little things that when combined it creates a world that makes me want to explore it just for the hell of it.
For these reasons I ask CDPR to think whether making such a big world is what players really want. I honestly think the game would have been better if Velen had been cut in half and the resources spent to make it would have been used to make a different zone (with different climate) or used to make the decisions in TW2 matter a lot more in TW3. I would gladly have given away half of Velen to see my decisions in TW2 matter more.
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I disagree with you on cutting down the world size and you certainly do not represent me amongst players who want the world size reduced. Having said that, it's a matter of choice for us players whether to constantly change to better weapons whenever they are found or choose to stick to lower level weapons. TW3 gives us this luxury and freedom, which I'm thankful for that.
I know that witcher series have always been it own niche genre and not a proper RPG in the traditional sense but I don't ever really feel impress when I get new weapons like other RPG. All the swords look the same to me, the only differences is better stats, am I wrong? And if there is, then it very small, small enough for me to not really ever notice. It does take away from the goal of unlocking better weapons like most RPG and feeling more badass when you get a cool looking weapon. But like I said, witcher games have always been their own niche genre of rpg.
@White_Wolf77
Idk, it just feels excessive to me and makes me feel like those resources could have been better spent elsewhere.
Idk, it just feels excessive to me and makes me feel like those resources could have been better spent elsewhere.
I was about to state my sincere agreement with your post until it became... for lack of better words ... delusional.
The way CdP handles loot and exploration (or quest design, for that matter) is far from perfect. There is no point in denying that. But - for Christ's sake !!!- compared with TES, TW3 looks like the best thing that happened to game industry in years.
There isn't A SINGLE THING that Bethesda does right when it comes to exploration and looting: mob scaling, item scaling, copy-pasted (and awfully linear) dungeons, irrational, hand-holding quests that send you to the end of the world and back to deliver a miserable letter, ecc...
Name a common mistake that designers make struggling with open world games, and you will have it in TES.
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The problem is that you can't skip stuff without the risk of missing important things. I like that gear/crafting recipes aren't spoon fed to you. If you don't explore you won't find stuff. But having to open everything gets tedious when there is so much nothing and looting isn't very intuitive itself. Try locking onto a specific item in a sea of lootables or find a chest in a weird position and spend a few minutes trying to get the right angle because you don't know if it's going to be useful or not.
Also why do so many people keep broken rakes in small chests?
Without a doubt it ruin the pace of the game for me. At first I love that there was so many lootable plants then realize it a one time thing so it would make more sense if they re-work the whole alchemy system which is so flaw.
Agree completely,
Quoting myself from the feedback thread:
http://forums.cdprojektred.com/thre...-Suggestions?p=1686158&viewfull=1#post1686158
Quoting myself from the feedback thread:
http://forums.cdprojektred.com/thre...-Suggestions?p=1686158&viewfull=1#post1686158
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I am happy with the way it is. More stuff makes the world feel more interesting, rather than a barren hollow - even lazy - world.
In order to implement this properly, you'd need to use traditional D&D mechanics where you can use any kind of weapon, but where the differences between weapons are much less. Leveling then, for fighters, centers around being able to take more punishment and being able to hit higher level enemies.
Unfortunately that would result in many enemies being plain impossible to defeat in the first place, since you have no game master carefully placing the encounters, rendering the idea of looting them moot.
It would require a complete redesign of the game, because you would become ridiculously overpowered in no time.
In order to implement this properly, you'd need to use traditional D&D mechanics where you can use any kind of weapon, but where the differences between weapons are much less. Leveling then, for fighters, centers around being able to take more punishment and being able to hit higher level enemies.
Unfortunately that would result in many enemies being plain impossible to defeat in the first place, since you have no game master carefully placing the encounters, rendering the idea of looting them moot.
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Games are a competition, in a competition people will want to be as efficient as possible. So a player will almost always choose the most efficient and fast way of becoming more powerful EVEN IF that sollution is not fun. It is why a lot of people (including me) who are against Fast Travel still use it because we know that it leads to faster progression.I think this is the reason why people are so vocal against it, they know they hate it but they know they will be tempted to use it (and will feel like their time was wasted it they don't).
It is not a bad thing at all to want to become as powerful as possible in the least amount of time BUT it is the developer's duty to make the progression as interesting as possible and in some cases even slow it down. A more extreme example is the Loot Cave TM from Destiny. Sure, it will make you powerful really fast but it is the developers duty to do what's best for the game and make sure the progression is not to fast, too slow or too trivial. Players want to become as powerful as possible but they want it to be interesting.
So people who say that I shouldn't have to explore everythin are wrong (IMO). I should be given just enough exploration in any given zone that I can finish it without becoming bored or feel guilty that I am bored because I am potentially losing content. Make the cake as big as it needs to be not big just for the sake of it or as a means to 1-UP Skyrim.
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You clearly missed MY point.
Reducing the amount of loot isn't a solution because you are gauging how much loot YOU got alone. In an open world you have to gauge the amount of loot on the MINIMALIST approach to the content. This means that if a person did the least amount of content in the game would they have enough loot to finish the game? If the answer is no they your design in an open world if flawed. Conversely this means that any approach greater than the minimalist will net more loot than you need. While a near completionest approach will net you more loot that you know what to do with.
Herbs in the game are not just loot containers they are scenery. They provide more than just loot, they are plants in the game that add to the environment. Reducing them simply removes loot from the game at the cost of removing diversity to the environment. As less plants equal a less diverse landscape. I have zero sympathy for players that can't exert impulse control. Don't need a 100 swords don't loot every sword. Discipline is never a "silly objection" even if those who lack it will label it as such.
There is more content then you need to finish the game, that is the very nature of the open world design, It is up to the player to make choices and stop QQing that their choices have consequences.
There are more quests than you need to finish the game so if you don't like a plethora of side quests unrelated to the main quest DON'T do them.
There are more herbs then you need to craft which HOW IT IS IN THE REAL WORLD. There are more plants then i could possible eat, plant, use or smell in my own city let alone an area the size of a nation. So DON'T pick them all.
There are more Gwent cards in the world then you need to become a Gwent champion. So if you don't want to collect them all DON'T.
There is more loot than you need to finance your adventures so if all that excess loot bothers you DON'T bloody loot it.
All of the above is a fundamental aspect of an open world design, it is up to the PLAYER to manage the content how they see fit, which means accepting the consequences of their choices ALL their choices not just the story choices. This is on par with people going "I slept withTriss and Yen and they dumped me! CDPR save me from the consequences of my choices!!!" and i think the correct response that CDPR has about dealing with the consequences of their choices is... Suck it up princess.
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No, I fear you missed Tuco's point (again).
He's not just talking about reducing the amount of loot displayed in the game world. He's talking about reducing the amount of loot AND at the same time the loot required for crafting (or for other purposes).
As for your aesthetic objection, it's simply irrelevant. You can fill the world with hundreds of non lootable plant types.
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