Well, a game is usually not "life simulator 2.0". A good (story-driven) game, movie or book only tells the interesting stories, not the day-by-day busywork. If you read Sapkowski's short stories almost every story is about monster hunting - but only about those hunts in which something special, extra-ordinary happened. It were usually those stories in which Geralt got into a moral conflict whether to kill a monster or not - and whether it's a dumb monster at all or not.
I really hope that CDPR stick to the 101 of stoytelling and just cut all the boring, repetitive busy-work out. I love to have Geralt as a character but I'm not interested in joining him while he eats, poops, sleeps or brushes his teeth... I think you get the picture. But then again I hate typcial "sandbox" gameplay (which is just another word for boring and generic stuff for me personally) in a game like Witcher and I hope W3 will offer as little sandbox gameplay as possible...
@Vigilance
Just like I've said: my assessment is based on experience. Bethesda and Bioware worked for years on their respective games. And both failed hard in their attempt to fill their huge worlds with interesting and meaningful content on a large scale. Both probably also have more money available for developtment and it's very likely that they also have skilled people working there. I wish CDPR to make it better than them. I'm just a born sceptic...
@Scholdarr
Skepticism is good and welcome, and I have my own doubts about the game. But, and don't take this the wrong way, I feel the healthy sort of skepticism has been pushed aside in recent weeks here by doomsaying instead.
I agree completely with your dislike of filler content, and a while ago I said I'll be happy if there isn't even one mindless fetch quest and silly gathering of X item. And I also wonder if those 100-120 hours will be spent on well crafted material or... Not. But seeing a statement abiut being able to spend weeks on the game, as confirmation that mindless filler content is here and abundant? That's a bit too cynical and jumping to conclusions, I feel.
Skepticism is good and welcome, and I have my own doubts about the game. But, and don't take this the wrong way, I feel the healthy sort of skepticism has been pushed aside in recent weeks here by doomsaying instead.
I agree completely with your dislike of filler content, and a while ago I said I'll be happy if there isn't even one mindless fetch quest and silly gathering of X item. And I also wonder if those 100-120 hours will be spent on well crafted material or... Not. But seeing a statement abiut being able to spend weeks on the game, as confirmation that mindless filler content is here and abundant? That's a bit too cynical and jumping to conclusions, I feel.
Yeah, you're maybe right. I'm a bit too cynical or better too pessimistic. I guess my bad experiences with DAI are just still "too fresh"...
As I've said: I want CDPR to succeed and I want them to be better than Bethesda and Bioware. And I think they can. It's just that games and developers have disappointed me way too much in recent years and that most of them promised a lot of stuff they didn't keep to and marketed their games in a "wrong" way. I really, really hope W3 will be everything I hope it'll be. Hope dies last anyway.
Look, I completely and 100% understand. I feel that even a developer like Rockstar has only JUST started to really perfect their formula with stuff like Red Dead Redemption & GTAV, and they've been in the open world business for almost as long as someone like Bethesda.
However there's still always that chance someone will come along and do it better, no matter how experienced, it's all about the talent and commitment. We've seen fresh developers walk into genre's or perhaps even games in general and just absolutely nail it (Rocksteady for example). I just look at CDPR's previous games, and see no reason why they would want to regress or get make a game with worse elements than their previous games, especially when this is the "big one" and the game that will probably determine their success or failure in the big AAA market for the future.
They've touted time and time again how they don't want to do "fedex quests", and they've stated that although sometimes they will do that, they'll wrap it up with story/characters so interesting you won't even notice, and based on their previous games, I believe that.
As I said, I'm not entirely ruling out the possibility of them failing, because even I'm skeptical about a lot in TW3, I guess we'll just have to wait until May & find out, but I'm hoping for the best because of their track record in specifically the quest design department, their talent and I'm assuming their commitment.
I think the problem is with "100+hrs" as a design/marketing goal and not as a natural destination. I enjoyed my time with Dragon Age: Inquisition but there is no doubt in my mind that they decided "This game has to be 100+hrs" and they got there by padding it with a ton of rote ass filler quests and F2P systems that have you waiting hours for something to happen. After I beat Origins and W2, I never even thought about how long I had played them. Their lengths were perfect for the story they set out to tell. With Inquisition 20 hours before I even beat the thing I was ready for it to be over. I think it would have been a much better product if it were a 40hr game and spent a lot more development time on difficulty balancing and companion AI that is not the worst the series has ever seen.
With the amount of chest beating CDPR has done about how long this game is, I'm worried they are falling into the same trap as Bioware.
With the amount of chest beating CDPR has done about how long this game is, I'm worried they are falling into the same trap as Bioware.
Well, a game is usually not "life simulator 2.0". A good (story-driven) game, movie or book only tells the interesting stories, not the day-by-day busywork. If you read Sapkowski's short stories almost every story is about monster hunting - but only about those hunts in which something special, extra-ordinary happened. It were usually those stories in which Geralt got into a moral conflict whether to kill a monster or not - and whether it's a dumb monster at all or not.
I really hope that CDPR stick to the 101 of stoytelling and just cut all the boring, repetitive busy-work out. I love to have Geralt as a character but I'm not interested in joining him while he eats, poops, sleeps or brushes his teeth... I think you get the picture. But then again I hate typcial "sandbox" gameplay (which is just another word for boring and generic stuff for me personally) in a game like Witcher and I hope W3 will offer as little sandbox gameplay as possible...
Cutting out the busy-work? Sure, sounds good. Who wants to deliver letters and find family heirlooms. But It's going to be a big world and their going to need to find stuff to fill it with or some people are going to get bored. Obviously, Interesting side quests that tell their own short story is what any true rpg fan wants and I'd be surprised if we didn't see a few of those from CDPR. But I'm okay with doing a few straight up monster contracts here and there.
Yeah, Sapkowski didn't often write about a straight forward contract because that would get boring. The Witcher 3 however, has one thing Sapkowski couldn't put in his books. Game play. I was willing to play arena mode in Witcher 2 for a good 20 hours or so and that was literally just wave after wave of enemies, with hardly any context whatsoever and no advancement of the story or a deeper understanding of any characters. It was just fun. And I'm cool with that.
Totally with you on the busy work though. Fuck that.
I think they should put some dirty witcher work, but VERY VERY LITTLE, just like a demostration of a witchers normal life, i think that, they should put around 3 hours of this, just to show the normal life of a witcher.
And, in fact, im REALLY fan of hiperrealism, like Day Z, i really hope that there will be a hardcore mode which i have to eat among other stuff. If they dont put this, im sure some modder will do, and rebalance food prices so its possible. Not like in tw2 where food was incredibly costly and nonsense. If they put food i want to eat. And sleeping, on a bed, or the floor, and i have to sleep or i get debuffs, and when i sleep i get buffs.
I want dis shit, so ultimating hardcore players can really get in to the witcher! im sure someone will mod it if cdprojekt doesnt add this.
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It seems like you rly liked the arena, i want arena in tw3 too, obviously this stuff is probably non-story, maybe to get a favour or some shit, if they get this shit with a really good story i only can see this, at witchers way.
Would be epic to see something like this with Geralt to Emhyr Var Emreis
And, in fact, im REALLY fan of hiperrealism, like Day Z, i really hope that there will be a hardcore mode which i have to eat among other stuff. If they dont put this, im sure some modder will do, and rebalance food prices so its possible. Not like in tw2 where food was incredibly costly and nonsense. If they put food i want to eat. And sleeping, on a bed, or the floor, and i have to sleep or i get debuffs, and when i sleep i get buffs.
I want dis shit, so ultimating hardcore players can really get in to the witcher! im sure someone will mod it if cdprojekt doesnt add this.
---------- Updated at 02:18 AM ----------
It seems like you rly liked the arena, i want arena in tw3 too, obviously this stuff is probably non-story, maybe to get a favour or some shit, if they get this shit with a really good story i only can see this, at witchers way.
Would be epic to see something like this with Geralt to Emhyr Var Emreis
Side quests are main part of the open world games and it keeps playing game longer.. BUT, I don't want to have stupid side quests just to have 100+ hours or brag with largre number of side quests, like Skyrim's simple side quests (go kill bandit, go kill Giant, go kill bandit, go kill Giant, endless loop..) Hoping side quests in Witcher won't be "go kill 100 drowners" , "collect 50 feathers" etc.. but to have little background story and possible consquences of end..
I understand. But that's what an arena mode is for. Just fighting and using the game's combat mechanics. I'm cool with that since it's completely desynched from the actual RPG itself. I don't have to mess with it all if I don't want to. You could say the same about side quests and stuff in the campaign/story mode as well but only to a certain extend. If a world is desigend to have side quests and if it's designed "to be filled with life" you usually cannot fully ignore them either because they interfere with overall balancing (very likely) or because their lack is even more irritating and unimmersive than their existence. And some open world effects like "endless running" won't go away anyway. That's busy-work you just have to do to a certain extend in a game with a huge game world, even with fast travelling.
Well, we'll have to wait and see. It's just that statements like "we have x hours of content" or "you can play the game for weeks" have probably the exact opposite effect for me than intended. They raise my fear and doubts but not my anticipation...
Well, we'll have to wait and see. It's just that statements like "we have x hours of content" or "you can play the game for weeks" have probably the exact opposite effect for me than intended. They raise my fear and doubts but not my anticipation...
I'm with you man, we just have slightly different ideas about what "busy work" means i guess.Although, I don't like general statements like that either, it just raises the question: Oh yeah, and what shit have you filled the game with to get that much content? But I don't think we're who they're targeting with statements like that. Based on my experience with more typical gamers (most of my friends, basically) they eat that shit up. Take Destiny for example. Almost every games critic on YouTube I watch complains about the content in that game being boring or "grindy" but that didn't stop all my (console peasant) friends from playing it nearly every night for the first month it came out. Without a little bit of filler those same people are going to complain about a game not having enough to do or feeling empty.
I think CDPR are ambitious, (but not greedy as some people have come to believe) they want to make better and better games and they need more and more money to do that . I think a balance can be struck between bringing in more players and keeping the hardcore fan's happy. When a game starts to become any more than like 25% filler that line has been well and truly crossed for me. When a game purposefully makes you do boring shit in order to advance purely to increase the time people play the game for, it pisses me off.
W1 and 2 had a perfect mix of quallity and filler side quests IMO. The crucial thing for me was that nothing felt like filler because I was having fun doing Witcher work and there wasn't enough of it to really stand out to me. Since W3 is open world I can forgive if the balance is skewed more towards filler than it previously was. As long as it's a fun little distraction from the story and not the other way around as in many other open world games. I'm a natural born skeptic, but I can't find any reason to believe W3 will let me down in this respect but like you said, let's wait and see.
Let's spend our time worrying about things that really matter
like Graphics :troll:
I have to say after playing Inqusition, the quality of the sidequests in Witcher 3 is also my biggest concern. They were so unbelievable bad in Dragon Age, that I have no motivation to start a second playthrough when I think about the hintelants with it's assassins creed map full of quest markers.
I really hope that CD Project Red played the game and learned how to NOT fill a big open world to make it interesting.
I want fewer quests but with interesting storylines.
The troll questline , the asylum quest , the secrets of loc muinne quest (in my opinion one of the best quests ever made), the questline with baron kimbolt and maravell. This is the quality of side content i want. We will have a lot of rather "fetchy" content with the monster hunting, which is fine, because it's a witchers work. But even that can be made interesting in several ways. For example complex monster mechanics. The necessity to follow trails, question people, search for books to find and defeat the monster. Or just unexpected incidents like people bargaining over the price or trying to cheat us with our payment after we defeated a monster.
With the open world CD Project Red has so many opportunities to give us awesome sidequests, that it would be a real shame if we get stupid stuff like "collect x", "find y", "kill z" without a interesting storyline behind it.
Let's take the investigation quests of Witcher 1 for example. Trying to reveal the person who helps the salamander in act 2. Or trying to find out what's wrong with the people in the village outside of vizima in act 1. These were great little stories(and quest mechanics) and although these were mainquests, something like this could be implented in a open world as a sidequests. I'm sure there will be a lot of small villages. Just make a similar quest like above mentioned (maybe a bit simpler and shorter,because it's definitely very time-consuming to make such a questline) in one of the villages across the Witcher 3 world.
And I hope there will be a lot of creepy stuff going on in the game.
Just imagine exploring the swamps of Velen with Geralt and accidently finding a small village. Something seems weird about the village and it's inhabitants but we can't find out what, because nobody want's to talk with us. After exploring the village we find hints, that something bad is happening there. We find human bones, corpses, meat, blood. Individual people start to talk with us, but don't want to tell us anything because they are scared. At the end we find out that since Temeria has lost control of the area because of the war with Nilfgaard, people are starving and decided the only way to survive is to lure travelers into their village, kill and eat them. If there are no travevelers, they choose a person from the village and sacrifice him/her, so the rest can surive.
We will than get the choice to decide what do do with the people in the village.
This kind of creepy stuff is what I want to see in Witcher 3 combined with a interesting questline and choices as it perfectly fits with the setting and mood of the Witcher world and with a open world they have the chance to tell us a lot of little stories about what humans are capable of if their desperation is just high enough during times of war, despair and death everywhere.
I really hope that CD Project Red played the game and learned how to NOT fill a big open world to make it interesting.
I want fewer quests but with interesting storylines.
The troll questline , the asylum quest , the secrets of loc muinne quest (in my opinion one of the best quests ever made), the questline with baron kimbolt and maravell. This is the quality of side content i want. We will have a lot of rather "fetchy" content with the monster hunting, which is fine, because it's a witchers work. But even that can be made interesting in several ways. For example complex monster mechanics. The necessity to follow trails, question people, search for books to find and defeat the monster. Or just unexpected incidents like people bargaining over the price or trying to cheat us with our payment after we defeated a monster.
With the open world CD Project Red has so many opportunities to give us awesome sidequests, that it would be a real shame if we get stupid stuff like "collect x", "find y", "kill z" without a interesting storyline behind it.
Let's take the investigation quests of Witcher 1 for example. Trying to reveal the person who helps the salamander in act 2. Or trying to find out what's wrong with the people in the village outside of vizima in act 1. These were great little stories(and quest mechanics) and although these were mainquests, something like this could be implented in a open world as a sidequests. I'm sure there will be a lot of small villages. Just make a similar quest like above mentioned (maybe a bit simpler and shorter,because it's definitely very time-consuming to make such a questline) in one of the villages across the Witcher 3 world.
And I hope there will be a lot of creepy stuff going on in the game.
Just imagine exploring the swamps of Velen with Geralt and accidently finding a small village. Something seems weird about the village and it's inhabitants but we can't find out what, because nobody want's to talk with us. After exploring the village we find hints, that something bad is happening there. We find human bones, corpses, meat, blood. Individual people start to talk with us, but don't want to tell us anything because they are scared. At the end we find out that since Temeria has lost control of the area because of the war with Nilfgaard, people are starving and decided the only way to survive is to lure travelers into their village, kill and eat them. If there are no travevelers, they choose a person from the village and sacrifice him/her, so the rest can surive.
We will than get the choice to decide what do do with the people in the village.
This kind of creepy stuff is what I want to see in Witcher 3 combined with a interesting questline and choices as it perfectly fits with the setting and mood of the Witcher world and with a open world they have the chance to tell us a lot of little stories about what humans are capable of if their desperation is just high enough during times of war, despair and death everywhere.
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I wouldn't worry about it getting to the hinterlands level of insanity. They handled side quests pretty much perfectly in The Witcher 2 IMO. Even with the jump to open world I can't imagine a scenario where there would be so much filler 'content' that it would have a negative impact on the game. The majority of side quests had some kind of interesting narrative to back them up and the ones that didn't at least had solid game play to make it fun.
That example you gave sounds to me like it would fit right at home in the world of the Witcher especially now with another war with Nilfgaard. Seeing the world go to shit around you whilst you're powerless to stop it. I'd love if some side quests just end up going either badly, or disastrous depending on what choice you make. In the books Geralt always get's caught up in problems that aren't his own and tries his best to fix them
but in the end he dies and the world isn't much of a better place than before
As i've mentioned before I don't think every quest has to be like this as long as they're fun. Monster hunting is welcome. However delivering messages and collecting random shit... not so much.
I loved Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning and the size of the world and the questing! ^_^
Sure, the first time I realised that the immense area I had gotten lost in from time to time was but a fraction of the whole game world, I kind of gasped...and then I was very impressed. The flora and fauna of the world, the diversity between different regions and their nature, enemies as well as the take on races (especially elves) really impressed me. I really mined that game, and wanted to know more of it all the way to the end. I got the Gothic vibe, because when I was in an area too difficult for me, I had to sneak, take the long way around, or die horribly when fighting a Jottun who just laughed at my pathetic weak attacks. Unless I managed to run away.
I was weak and needed the experience, ergo I had to go questing! ^_^
I guess it's about how much you immerse yourself in the world. I'm looking forward to immerse myself in the world of Witcher 3 and hopefully get the Gothic vibe there as well.
Sure, the first time I realised that the immense area I had gotten lost in from time to time was but a fraction of the whole game world, I kind of gasped...and then I was very impressed. The flora and fauna of the world, the diversity between different regions and their nature, enemies as well as the take on races (especially elves) really impressed me. I really mined that game, and wanted to know more of it all the way to the end. I got the Gothic vibe, because when I was in an area too difficult for me, I had to sneak, take the long way around, or die horribly when fighting a Jottun who just laughed at my pathetic weak attacks. Unless I managed to run away.
I was weak and needed the experience, ergo I had to go questing! ^_^
I guess it's about how much you immerse yourself in the world. I'm looking forward to immerse myself in the world of Witcher 3 and hopefully get the Gothic vibe there as well.
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After playing DAI i very much am worried about the quality & quality of side questing in the open world and balance with the main quest arc length.
I'm not even sure I follow why 'side quested to death' is a thing. Surely side quests are optional, and there is no requirement to do more of them than you choose. Anywhere between none of them and "all" (or rather as many as are not blocked by the consequences of other activities).
I pick and choose what tasks to attempt in a day in my real life, and can see no issue with using the same triage within a game. Sure, I can spread out the playing time to get more of the total pool of tasks done, but there is no need to attempt to "do everything", especially if there is recurring "guff".
The important quests are the main-plot ones, as they have to be done (at least in part) in order to progress the game - so care in scripting and designing these is vital. Nothing worse than main plot quests being dull and pointless, but the rest can be a mixed bag without reducing fun. More stuff for when you want to just grind/keep busy, and either skipping lots or picking and choosing the types attempted when your time or patience is limited. Completionism is no reason to reduce the fun for people who just want more content.
Of course more content for more content's sake isn't necessarily a positive thing, but it certainly isn't a negative if the core game is well designed, and there are interesting quests in the pool (often the slower play is necessary to provide texture, and to contrast the really good bits against, as with good horror, it only really comes to life when there are variations in pacing, tension and anticipation... if it is action/complexity/jump scares all the way then it loses something in most cases).
I pick and choose what tasks to attempt in a day in my real life, and can see no issue with using the same triage within a game. Sure, I can spread out the playing time to get more of the total pool of tasks done, but there is no need to attempt to "do everything", especially if there is recurring "guff".
The important quests are the main-plot ones, as they have to be done (at least in part) in order to progress the game - so care in scripting and designing these is vital. Nothing worse than main plot quests being dull and pointless, but the rest can be a mixed bag without reducing fun. More stuff for when you want to just grind/keep busy, and either skipping lots or picking and choosing the types attempted when your time or patience is limited. Completionism is no reason to reduce the fun for people who just want more content.
Of course more content for more content's sake isn't necessarily a positive thing, but it certainly isn't a negative if the core game is well designed, and there are interesting quests in the pool (often the slower play is necessary to provide texture, and to contrast the really good bits against, as with good horror, it only really comes to life when there are variations in pacing, tension and anticipation... if it is action/complexity/jump scares all the way then it loses something in most cases).
It seems like every time someone comes out with a popular game people worry that TW3 will have the same flaws as that game. I don't think we'll have as much filler as in DA:I, nor will the filler we get have the same low level of quality, with as much repetition or illogical game metrics (e.g., fetching someone's wedding ring gives the Inquisition "power" points). Worrying that TW3 will have these flaws makes as much sense as worrying it will have DA:I's illogical combat (e.g., battle screams, using a weapon in an unorthodox way--shield bash or pommel strike, absorbing damage on someone else's behalf, etc.,)
There are several reasons why even optional things can be deeply negative to the experience, but I'll just mention one example now: self-imposed difficulty.
Games are challenges, problems, and they are made to be solved. The fun aspect comes from that, and when you choose to not do some side quests because they are boring to you, you are little bit by little bit ruining the entire logic and "thrill" of the system, you are replacing the game world, the problems that Geralt has, with your own artificial act of ignoring what is there to be experienced, and to take advantage of.
Its one thing to meet a tough boss enemy, and another to take some random enemy thats easy to kill for you or whatever, and then say something like "oh hey, im just going to play blind this time", both can be equally hard, but one will most likely, and to most people, be much more boring, pointless, if acceptable at all.
If the quests are there, and you can take on them, but you choose not to, you are effectively blurring the line between the problem and the solution, you are playing a bit of both roles, and so the game becomes your tool or scenario, not an actual world that is living and you engage with as Geralt.
This might hurt your experience to different degrees depending players, but its certainly negative. In fact, completionism isnt imo the actual reason a lot of people have issues with abandoning content, its not some kind of OCD, its simply the most common thing a gamer can feel, the sad point where not only the challenge is gone to a certain extent but also where the challenge doesnt even matter to you much anymore, because you are so bored to do the filler content you dont even care about your goals and your enemies and the plot's conflicts.
There are other things i think are negative like I said, but this one is far enough for me. Another quick one is that simply the time used to develop all the optional usually more boring stuff could've been spent in other useful tasks, such as improving and refining the core features and so on, as an example, putting a ton of bland content just cause you already have the standard 20 hours of story telling nailed would be a terrible lack of focus and waste.
It's actually not that easy. Most of the quest design flaws in games like DAI and Skyrim are not there because the devs couldn't come up with something better or because they specifically decided to offer such content - it's there because it's a side effect of offering a huge open world. So offering a huge open world was the specific desicion and not offering bland side quests. That's just a side effect of that first decision and something that is often a result of time and money constraints which themselves result from that first decision.
So it's indeed a completely different question whether we talk about quest design and combat. Combat isn't really connected to any other game mechanic or system. You could give Witcher 3 a turn-based tactical combat system, a system based on cards or an action system like we expect - it wouldn't change much of the rest of the game and there isn't really a prerequisite for your combat decision (apart from your input hardware and the possiblities arising from it).
Quest design on the other side is deeply connected with the overall narrative, with world design and with character design. Giving the game a huge seamless open world has indeed a big influence on your quest design (while having almost no effect at all on your combat system). You can "fight" against that influence but it needs a HUGE effort and a lot of manhours and money, usually more than what would be needed to offer a really "alive" and "immsersive" open world quest design. As I've said before: both Bethesda and Bioware are no amateurs, they have skilled people and a lot of experience. Both failed hard in delivering a narrative which is even remotely on par with their open world goal. Both failed hard in offering a world design which is even remotely believable or immsersive. All that they could offer was a pretty limited narrative and a lot of filler content on top of that to let their worlds even remotely feel alive. The problem is that I really doubt that these companies did this on purpose. They did a lot of that because the complexity of RPGs and the huge effort of big open worlds don't really go together well. It's basically overambition by definition. The games which offered a believable open world so far were those which we call action adventures (think GTA, Assassins Creed, RDR). Those games don't offer the complexity of RPGs but a quite linear story progression and a quite simple combat and player progression system (and some unconnected side content). Those games in which the open world attempts usually fails are RPGs which want to offer choice and consequence, complex combat and deep character progression at the same time. Call me a pessimist but I just have doubt that some developer is so much better than every other developer that they could deliver a game with the world design and design/production scope of GTA, RDR or Assassin's Creed with the systemic and narrative depth and complexity of a traditional CRPG. That would be THE jack of all trades, indeed the ultimate RPG. I guess we all hope W3 will be that game but I have my doubt. Doubts because I know the business and its constraints and doubts because I see what devs all over the globe were able to release so far and nothing of that is even close to the ambitions of W3...