[MOD]A new overhaul, the successor of Better Combat Evolved 2

[jj284b]

please dont overcomplicate the crafting. Instead make it focused on Witcher armors. After all, we are playing as Witcher Geralt, not soldier Geralt, therefore he should be mostly interested in armors suitable for witchers, armors that wont slow him down, wont restrict movement etc.. standard armors soldiers used was made with completely different requirement - speed and weight was not that important if you fight in close formation. Soldiers armor was supposed to protect against typical weapons of the day, not against claws of monsters or various elemental effects caused by ghosts or others..

Heavy Witcher armor should be something comparable to light soldier armors.. while light Witcher armor should be just a simple leather vest, something Geralt used in Witcher 1 most of the time... full breastplate or heavy quilted brigantines would be highly unsuitable for Witcher combat style, that relies on speed... Instead, Witcher armors should be more optimized against monster attacks - if you look at Kaer Morhen/ Viper armor, you can clearly see it is made to mostly protect against attacks from above (shoulders and arms are covered by chainmail) typical for monster claw attacks. Armor designed for soldier would mostly concentrate on torso instead, but torso protection is relatively light.. Similarly on Cat armor, you can see steel reinforced boots, and gloves, which would be very useful against monsters bites but would be not that important for a soldier who would never face such dangers...

all this brings me to another idea - instead, or together with stamina effects, you could make speed of attacks also be influenced by how much weight armors has.. so if you use very heavy armor, your attacks will be much slower than if you fight lightly armored. More armor you have, less damage you take, but at the same time you should be slower and therefore easier to hit, while with light armor you should move faster, but each hit could wound you badly...

---------- Updated at 09:02 PM ----------

another thing with armors - each armor piece should have different primary protection value - for example - gloves in combat might help you against slashes (sword cuts etc) but wont be that important against piercing (arrows and bolts) which are mostly aimed at torso anyway... boots at the other side should not add anything to typical weapon protection, but instead should give some monster protection (nobody wants to fight beast barefooted)... So, while torso would give mostly standard level protection, pants, gloves and boots should all specialize against what they are most useful..

oh, and one more thing - witcher crossbow - while these weapons are relatively small for having too much impact, they should definitely deal a bit more damage to monsters, but at the same time, they should be single shot weapons only.. after every bolt fired, these weapons need to be reloaded.

 

[Chickenudoom]

@jj284b
Crafting won't be complicated, it'll just require different items which are slightly harder to obtain.
Resistances will indeed work similarly to what you suggested.
But focusing on just Witcher gear would make all other crafting items pretty useless, so they'll remain on-par with other armors. If you don't like how the other armors look because they don't look like something a Witcher would wear, I suggest downloading the re-done armors from the School of the Roach beta mod over at the nexus - they look pretty sick and definitely something Geralt would wear.

Here's an example of a crafting recipe for a chest armor:
Basic Torso x1
(Basic Torso can be crafted with Geralt Shirt x1, Hardened Leather x3, Dark Steel Ingot x3, Nails x8, and Wire x4)
Flex Steel x1
(Flex Steel can be crafted with Dark Steel Plate x2, Attack Power Rune lesser x3, Nekker Teeth x3, and Red Mutagen X1)
Magnifying Belt x1
(Magnifying belt can be crafted with Draconide Leather x2, Dark steel ingot x2, Spell Power Rune lesser x3, and Blue Mutagen x1)
Antitoxin Silk x1
(Crafted with Silk x3, Monsteous Hair x2, Venom Extract x3, and Draconide Leather x1)
That's it - more difficult than vanilla, but I wouldn't call it complicated. Also, Geralt will know all of these crafting material recipes from the start of the game. If the item you're trying to craft is Relic quality or last-tier Witcher gear, it will also require "Magic-infused Powder" x3 which is an item that cannot be crafted, only found, and it drops about as often as vanilla relics drop.


@Exentryk
I have no clue how to mod animations, and all of those additional sword abilities would require extra keybinds, which I don't want to do, because then Gamepad users would be left out. Also, a lot of those abilities just seem a little too "arcade" like, though they are good ideas, I'm not sure they'd fit well in the Witcher universe.

 

[gtcarlson]

Another thought I'd had was adjusting enemy stamina. In death march I was never really able to deplete an Human opponents stamina to get the to drop their shield or "fight less effectively" as the loading screen tips said. You could also have Geralt be able to run out of stamina for "realism" but then you would need slower regeneration and a bigger stamina pool.

On that note an interesting feature would be combat exhaustion. Something like where if you expend a certain amount of stamina (once again would require a large stamina pool) or loose a certain amount of life you are unable to run until you bandage up/rest (real-time meditation from friendly HUD would work good I think), maybe replace food with first aid kits or something. Really just a random thought, but with the witcher I think it would work because it's not a game where it's monster pack after monster pack and I don't think it would feel tedious.

 

[Chickenudoom]

Just a quick update for you guys:
The mod is almost ready to be released as an alpha version

 

[Meldric]

Super hyped for this project! So how is progress? The wait is killing me!

 

[Pat87]

Also waiting for this! Most scaling mods are outdated, ESGO is overloaded and your mod is going to have all that i want

 

[k1arke]

I'm really psyched for this! It's a great idea! I, right now, use a mod that makes all enemies my level, and also removes their level indicators, because I like that the challenge never ends. However, this just blows that out of the water.

 

[Pat87]

Which mod are you using k1arke?

 

[k1arke]

Which mod are you using k1arke?

Sorry for the late reply. These two!

http://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/442/?

http://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/609/?

It causes problems at high levels when used with BCE2, however. Non-monster enemies start dealing ridiculous amounts of damage on higher difficulties, since, for example, if I'm level 44 with these mods, so are my enemies.

I use them so that I can experience the game more along the lines of what the BCE2 creator is describing in this upcoming alpha. So I'm pretty excited, because this is exactly what I was looking for but couldn't do myself.​

​

 

[AlexTa]

Chickenudoom, loved your idea of fashion. :thumbsup: Sorry, I used the translator because not speak English. Also would like to play The Witcher 3 with your mod. Do you need a translation of your mod on Russian? And where can I download it?

 

[Thundebolt]

Any news? Estimated time of relase?

 

[Chickenudoom]

Any news? Estimated time of relase?

Each time I give an ETA, it always gets pushed back. So I'm not entirely certain. Hopefully some time during the last week of February.

 

[k1arke]

Sounds good to me! I can't really enjoy the game until Summer (college and all), but I'll help any way I can!

 

[skylineR390]

Hello Chickenudoom, I'm very glad someone decided to tackle these glaring issues -add them to the list- that so greatly hinder immersion, realism and continuity in this flawed masterpiece that we call The Witcher 3 but that might as well be called “The Witcher” and lose very little since the integer at the end is superfluous, and dare I say misleading, for all intents and purposes.

But I digress. The reason I'm posting this is to offer my help with the mod. I read that among your planned changes, an alchemy overhaul is included; I am working precisely on that, a complete revamp of the alchemy system. I hope I'm not too late.

To give you an idea of the direction I incline to, as far as alchemy is concerned, you can read the description of this mod: http://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/552/. I am to blame for all the changes starting with version 0.7 to 0.73 which are detailed in the changelog, barring the lettered releases which were changes made by the original author.

At the time I started working on the mod I was playing the game for the first time. There were no mods that satisfied my tastes so I picked the closest thing I could find and started from there. I was hasty and rash with my changes; I just wanted to immerse myself into the game and the artificial atmosphere the mod-test cycle created made the game lose a bit of its charm and it was mortifying. When I was moderately content with the results I called it quits and merrily continued my gaming until the end. After that, as I accustom with good story driven games, I said my farewells and moved on; like with a good song, I don't want to ruin it by overplaying it.

Recently, the -now determined- false news of an enhanced edition brought my attention back to the game. I was planning to appease my coding urges by updating my Skyrim mod but since the new SKSE hasn't been released, I decided to focus my attention here and take a shot at the alchemy problem; this time doing it the right way.

I have finished most of the challenging “innovations” I had in mind and I'm very happy with the results. Now all I have left to do consists of porting old functionality back from my other mod, which can be tedious since I'm implementing things in a different way this time. I also need to implement alchemy meditation but in a less intrusive manner than the Preparations Mod way, and to modify the toxicity system; the hack I had in place in Alchemy Redone will not do this time.

Anyway, with this I am extending an invitation for you to use my mod, once released, in its entirety on this ambitious project of yours. Whether you accept or not, either because you already ported the Preparations mod or because you have different ideas of how alchemy should be like, I wish you the best of luck and if I may, I'd like to pester you with a few of my ideas:




1. Economy:
In my opinion the root of the economic issues lies in the fact that Geralt has no expenses.

CDProjekt and modders alike have taken the wrong approach to fix the economy because they focus on the symptoms not the issue itself. Increasing the purchase and reducing the selling prices to ludicrous amounts is utterly unrealistic, immersion breaking and will not solve the issue in the long run.

Geralt has no need to eat or drink, sleep or rest, he is impervious to the elements and he doesn't pay taxes or rent. On top of that, he works 24/7 and constantly finds money in old crates and boxes. It doesn't matter if a loaf of bread cost 5 or 500 orens. Eventually Geralt will have money to buy the whole bakery.

Since implementing a Nilfgardian tax on witchery or force our hero to require lodgings may be a little complicated, what I propose to remedy this is to:

1. Eliminate loot from places where it doesn't belong and reduce it in general but increase it in places where it makes sense. This in itself helps with immersion and realism.

2. Make food necessary by implementing a system that ties stamina, health and toxicity regeneration -or degeneration to be exact- to energy levels. At its most basic level food is but an energy source. It allows your body to perform all of its functions. In Geralt's case, it allows his mutated body to quickly regenerate stamina, health and properly clean out his body from toxicity. This is a rich subject that has the potential to become an entire mod on its own. But I believe an initial simple implementation is possible.

If number one is done correctly it will enhance and amplify the effect of number two. For instance by making raw meat into an ingredient instead of an edible you can greatly reduce a big source of free food throughout the game. Or by reducing alcohol and alchemical bases found in containers all over the game, Geralt will be forced to spend some money at merchants and herbalists; why does every create have to have Dwarven Spirit and Alchemist Powder?


2. Skills and Equipment.

1. Skills and skill slots should not be locked or bound to the player level. Skills are already limited by the amount of skill points as it is. Besides helping immersion this change would make communing with a place of power after a long and hard fight feel like a true reward.
Speaking of which, places of power should grant a tiny but permanent bonus to sign intensity instead of the larger, temporary one.

2. Weapon and armor upgrade buffs should not be time based. They should last until deterioration hinders their effect. Why does a blade lose its sharpness after being sheathed for 45 minutes, or armor lose its reinforced padding after a bit of fresh air? It makes no sense. A system in which equipment upgrades naturally decay based on wear and tear, perhaps in the vicinity of 97%-92% item health percent, would be infinitely more satisfying.



I think this is all I have in mind for now. I hope you find value in my suggestions. Maybe some sound a bit complicated to implement but I am offering my help should you accept it. After all we want the same thing, all of us, to make this a more authentic, cohesive and enjoyable experience.

 

[Chickenudoom]

Spoiler

Hello Chickenudoom, I'm very glad someone decided to tackle these glaring issues -add them to the list- that so greatly hinder immersion, realism and continuity in this flawed masterpiece that we call The Witcher 3 but that might as well be called “The Witcher” and lose very little since the integer at the end is superfluous, and dare I say misleading, for all intents and purposes.

But I digress. The reason I'm posting this is to offer my help with the mod. I read that among your planned changes, an alchemy overhaul is included; I am working precisely on that, a complete revamp of the alchemy system. I hope I'm not too late.

To give you an idea of the direction I incline to, as far as alchemy is concerned, you can read the description of this mod: http://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/552/. I am to blame for all the changes starting with version 0.7 to 0.73 which are detailed in the changelog, barring the lettered releases which were changes made by the original author.

At the time I started working on the mod I was playing the game for the first time. There were no mods that satisfied my tastes so I picked the closest thing I could find and started from there. I was hasty and rash with my changes; I just wanted to immerse myself into the game and the artificial atmosphere the mod-test cycle created made the game lose a bit of its charm and it was mortifying. When I was moderately content with the results I called it quits and merrily continued my gaming until the end. After that, as I accustom with good story driven games, I said my farewells and moved on; like with a good song, I don't want to ruin it by overplaying it.

Recently, the -now determined- false news of an enhanced edition brought my attention back to the game. I was planning to appease my coding urges by updating my Skyrim mod but since the new SKSE hasn't been released, I decided to focus my attention here and take a shot at the alchemy problem; this time doing it the right way.

I have finished most of the challenging “innovations” I had in mind and I'm very happy with the results. Now all I have left to do consists of porting old functionality back from my other mod, which can be tedious since I'm implementing things in a different way this time. I also need to implement alchemy meditation but in a less intrusive manner than the Preparations Mod way, and to modify the toxicity system; the hack I had in place in Alchemy Redone will not do this time.

Anyway, with this I am extending an invitation for you to use my mod, once released, in its entirety on this ambitious project of yours. Whether you accept or not, either because you already ported the Preparations mod or because you have different ideas of how alchemy should be like, I wish you the best of luck and if I may, I'd like to pester you with a few of my ideas:




1. Economy:
In my opinion the root of the economic issues lies in the fact that Geralt has no expenses.

CDProjekt and modders alike have taken the wrong approach to fix the economy because they focus on the symptoms not the issue itself. Increasing the purchase and reducing the selling prices to ludicrous amounts is utterly unrealistic, immersion breaking and will not solve the issue in the long run.

Geralt has no need to eat or drink, sleep or rest, he is impervious to the elements and he doesn't pay taxes or rent. On top of that, he works 24/7 and constantly finds money in old crates and boxes. It doesn't matter if a loaf of bread cost 5 or 500 orens. Eventually Geralt will have money to buy the whole bakery.

Since implementing a Nilfgardian tax on witchery or force our hero to require lodgings may be a little complicated, what I propose to remedy this is to:

1. Eliminate loot from places where it doesn't belong and reduce it in general but increase it in places where it makes sense. This in itself helps with immersion and realism.

2. Make food necessary by implementing a system that ties stamina, health and toxicity regeneration -or degeneration to be exact- to energy levels. At its most basic level food is but an energy source. It allows your body to perform all of its functions. In Geralt's case, it allows his mutated body to quickly regenerate stamina, health and properly clean out his body from toxicity. This is a rich subject that has the potential to become an entire mod on its own. But I believe an initial simple implementation is possible.

If number one is done correctly it will enhance and amplify the effect of number two. For instance by making raw meat into an ingredient instead of an edible you can greatly reduce a big source of free food throughout the game. Or by reducing alcohol and alchemical bases found in containers all over the game, Geralt will be forced to spend some money at merchants and herbalists; why does every create have to have Dwarven Spirit and Alchemist Powder?


2. Skills and Equipment.

1. Skills and skill slots should not be locked or bound to the player level. Skills are already limited by the amount of skill points as it is. Besides helping immersion this change would make communing with a place of power after a long and hard fight feel like a true reward.
Speaking of which, places of power should grant a tiny but permanent bonus to sign intensity instead of the larger, temporary one.

2. Weapon and armor upgrade buffs should not be time based. They should last until deterioration hinders their effect. Why does a blade lose its sharpness after being sheathed for 45 minutes, or armor lose its reinforced padding after a bit of fresh air? It makes no sense. A system in which equipment upgrades naturally decay based on wear and tear, perhaps in the vicinity of 97%-92% item health percent, would be infinitely more satisfying.



I think this is all I have in mind for now. I hope you find value in my suggestions. Maybe some sound a bit complicated to implement but I am offering my help should you accept it. After all we want the same thing, all of us, to make this a more authentic, cohesive and enjoyable experience.

@skylineR390

Thanks for your offer! An Alchemy overhaul is actually next on my to-do list for the mod, but I haven't started yet, so it could really go in any direction at this point. I've gotten permission from wghost81 to use Preparations mod, which really would just be used to save time scripting, and then change things accordingly, so I'm not completely set on using it as a base code if I don't need to.

Your Alchemy Redone mod looks like it functions very similarly to how I was planning on customizing Preparations to work!
I like how you can extract ingredients from herbs (and I'm assuming that's done through the Alchemy GUI and it works just like any normal alchemy recipe?)
Currently, I have potions durations/effects and toxicity behavior working exactly how I want it to, so the focus now is strictly on alchemy crafting itself.

What I had in mind for Alchemy recipes and potions:
Potions will not have "charges" or "ammo" like they do in vanilla. Instead, they are a single, independent item which stack into the same inventory slot (like food and drinks), and once you've used them all, they disappear just look food does.
Potions therefore cannot be refilled, as they now just have a single use. To replenish your potions, you would need to gather all the ingredients needed just like you do in the vanilla game when you first create it (or whatever recipe your mod calls for). When you have enough to create the potion, the recipe will generate 5 of them.
Since potions no longer have charges, each recipe makes 5, and they can stack has high as you want, assuming you have enough ingredients to make more batches of 5.
Decoctions, however, only generate 2 stacks when your create them, and also require the same materials for each batch you create. Considering things such as Gryphon mutagens and Ekimma mutagens are extremely hard to come by, the player will be given access to new alchemy recipes which can create those mutagens. It's require 1 greater mutagen, and a couple other ingredients themed towards the specific mutagen the player wants to create.

Bombs and oils will work the same way potions do.

I hope my explanation of what I want to do with alchemy is clear enough for you again, thanks a lot for wanting to work together on this!

 

[skylineR390]

@skylineR390
Potions will not have "charges" or "ammo" like they do in vanilla. Instead, they are a single, independent item which stack into the same inventory slot (like food and drinks), and once you've used them all, they disappear just look food does.Potions therefore cannot be refilled. Bombs and oils will work the same way potions do.

That is already implemented, It was one of the new ideas I had in mind. In addition gone is the annoying x/3 /4 ,or /5 subtext underneath all singleton items; they are represented now with a normal number.

The number of items created in the alchemy menu can be configured for each potion, decoctions, bombs and oils in the mod configuration file; Not unlike Alchemy Redone's config file but a little more extensive.

I see we have pretty much the same ideas when it comes to alchemy. I think you will like my changes ...

 

[Gerchan]

Hello. Are you going to make this mod modular? For example if I want to use just "no levels" option, but don't want any changes to alchemy and potion system. I don't particularly like potions not replenishing at meditation.

 

[Chickenudoom]

Hello. Are you going to make this mod modular? For example if I want to use just "no levels" option, but don't want any changes to alchemy and potion system. I don't particularly like potions not replenishing at meditation.

The alchemy system (excluding changes to potions themselves) would be about the only thing that could be modular, as de-coupling just about every other feature would result in some pretty unbalanced gameplay.
You can't have no levels without also including the revamped skill trees, revamped item stats, and crafting recipes.
Removing any of those things from each other would not be a fun or balanced experience.
Consequently, revamped potions effects and durations also cannot be de-coupled from the revamped skills without making things wonky.
It's just a lot of "can't have A without B, and can't have B without C - therefore you cannot have C without A." You get the idea.
Maki g this overhaul modular isn't really possible, except for the alchemy system really. I'll probably include an optional file for vanilla alchemy and call it "alchemy for milk-drinkers" but the main file will have everything packaged together.

 

[Gerchan]

Of course I don't want it completely modular, just that some options would be awesome. For example, option to have skills active without adding them to skill slot. I use such mod and now I just can't imagine playing without it. I mean, 60 skills + mutagens and you can use only 12 at the same time? Why bother then creating so many skills

 

[Chickenudoom]

Of course I don't want it completely modular, just that some options would be awesome. For example, option to have skills active without adding them to skill slot. I use such mod and now I just can't imagine playing without it. I mean, 60 skills + mutagens and you can use only 12 at the same time? Why bother then creating so many skills

The way skills are designed in this overhaul, you can take advantage of more than 12
5 skills from each tree have been removed from the GUI and are in effect at all times.
An additional 5 skills from each tree are "passive", meaning their effects work without being equipped into a skill slot.
Which then leaves only 10 skills from each tree that actually require you to equip them (and trust me they are worth equipping). At that point, it is up to the player to mix/match those skills to create a build that suits their play-style.
It's still impossible to use every skill at once, but being able to use up to 40 skills at once is MUCH better than 12!