Okay so I'm just going to spill my thoughts on this shit real fast.
A veteran Witcher would know how to use any sword. Well, almost any sword. They know how to use Witcher-ly swords okay? Geralt is a veteran Witcher and one of the best. He's a master swordsman and probably could use anything he picks up.
Now here a huge spoiler: Geralt is also the main playable character in The Witcher 3. SHOCKING right? The WItcher 3 is an RPG and RPGs need to be properly balanced in order to be rewarding and fun. So if you manage to kill a high level creature and obtain a high level weapon, you'd probably decimate anything that's your level and the level of the creature rather easily. Level requirements are meant to prevent this.
The Witcher 1 and 2 did not have this problem because they were completely different games. The Witcher 1 had swords that did damage depending on your skills, not the weapon itself. The WItcher 2 was linear and divided into 4 areas. Each area had enemies that would always be around the level of the player and as the play progressed through the area, they would find more and more powerful weapons. But these weapons were only powerful in this area. As soon as you got to the next chapter, you would find tougher enemies and better weapons. The Witcher 3 is an open world game where Geralt can go where he wants, when he wants. Level requirements help balance large scale games, no matter how much it annoys you.
A veteran Witcher would know how to use any sword. Well, almost any sword. They know how to use Witcher-ly swords okay? Geralt is a veteran Witcher and one of the best. He's a master swordsman and probably could use anything he picks up.
Now here a huge spoiler: Geralt is also the main playable character in The Witcher 3. SHOCKING right? The WItcher 3 is an RPG and RPGs need to be properly balanced in order to be rewarding and fun. So if you manage to kill a high level creature and obtain a high level weapon, you'd probably decimate anything that's your level and the level of the creature rather easily. Level requirements are meant to prevent this.
The Witcher 1 and 2 did not have this problem because they were completely different games. The Witcher 1 had swords that did damage depending on your skills, not the weapon itself. The WItcher 2 was linear and divided into 4 areas. Each area had enemies that would always be around the level of the player and as the play progressed through the area, they would find more and more powerful weapons. But these weapons were only powerful in this area. As soon as you got to the next chapter, you would find tougher enemies and better weapons. The Witcher 3 is an open world game where Geralt can go where he wants, when he wants. Level requirements help balance large scale games, no matter how much it annoys you.
In my opinion, making character/item progression so significant that it enables you to one-shot enemies in an open-world game is bad design.
I find it a bit jarring how people so casually dismiss this or that as "bad design", when we know next to nothing about how complicated balancing this game is. From our position it's easy (is it?) to imagine how to balance a gigantic open world without monster scaling, where you're not limited in where to go, with around 80 different enemies, in a way that the player won't completely mess up the delicate balance required to keep it challenging, while still keeping this an RPG with leveling-up and a pre-established character who is a renown swordsman.
Did you notice? CDPR are trying to juggle many different - and worthwhile - things. Compromises are inevitable. Too many posts here strike me as wanting to eat the cake and keeping it whole. You either make it an action game without leveling-up, and thus keep Geralt as a famous swordsman (which I find a bit boring from a gaming perspective - progression is delicious), or you add leveling-up mechanics, in which case you need to stop being so ashamed of the fact that this is a game, not a book, and accept that there are some decisions necessary from a gameplay perspective. And equating level-restrictions on gear to MMOs is weird, considering this has been a staple of classic RPGs. But even without resorting to past examples, it still makes sense in games where the player is given freedom, without scaling, if maintaining the challenge is a priority. And it should be.
I don't get the posts about "no rewards", either. That's being very absolutist. A reward can come in many forms - that you are narrowing it down to using a sword for the sake of your argument and indignation doesn't mean it's the exclusive way. XP is the classic reward, and from the videos we've seen lately - the PAX and SHIELD footage - XP for killing monsters is back, and what CDPR said a few months ago about XP solely from quests is apparently no longer relevant. Then there's gold. And if we want for a moment to get all cheesy, then there are rewards that aren't related to material, but to story. A book, a dialogue, a view, a new area or people to talk with. It's not just... swords. You can still have other rewards for killing high level monsters.
People have offered alternatives to CDPR's leveling-up system, when we don't even know it in detail, and no post has actually convinced me with its suggestion anyway. Writing a few lines is easy. Designing a hundred hour game around those lines for four years isn't. I'm all up for opinions, but I also think we sometimes need to have the humility to admit that we simply don't know enough about the complexity of something, nor the whole picture, to so easily determine that it's good or bad. Before experiencing it. And at the moment TW3 seems to be extremely complex, and a big ass picture. This is a case where I happily admit that I have no clue how difficult it is to design it, and I'm just letting go and waiting to see how they implemented their gameplay decisions.
Did you notice? CDPR are trying to juggle many different - and worthwhile - things. Compromises are inevitable. Too many posts here strike me as wanting to eat the cake and keeping it whole. You either make it an action game without leveling-up, and thus keep Geralt as a famous swordsman (which I find a bit boring from a gaming perspective - progression is delicious), or you add leveling-up mechanics, in which case you need to stop being so ashamed of the fact that this is a game, not a book, and accept that there are some decisions necessary from a gameplay perspective. And equating level-restrictions on gear to MMOs is weird, considering this has been a staple of classic RPGs. But even without resorting to past examples, it still makes sense in games where the player is given freedom, without scaling, if maintaining the challenge is a priority. And it should be.
I don't get the posts about "no rewards", either. That's being very absolutist. A reward can come in many forms - that you are narrowing it down to using a sword for the sake of your argument and indignation doesn't mean it's the exclusive way. XP is the classic reward, and from the videos we've seen lately - the PAX and SHIELD footage - XP for killing monsters is back, and what CDPR said a few months ago about XP solely from quests is apparently no longer relevant. Then there's gold. And if we want for a moment to get all cheesy, then there are rewards that aren't related to material, but to story. A book, a dialogue, a view, a new area or people to talk with. It's not just... swords. You can still have other rewards for killing high level monsters.
People have offered alternatives to CDPR's leveling-up system, when we don't even know it in detail, and no post has actually convinced me with its suggestion anyway. Writing a few lines is easy. Designing a hundred hour game around those lines for four years isn't. I'm all up for opinions, but I also think we sometimes need to have the humility to admit that we simply don't know enough about the complexity of something, nor the whole picture, to so easily determine that it's good or bad. Before experiencing it. And at the moment TW3 seems to be extremely complex, and a big ass picture. This is a case where I happily admit that I have no clue how difficult it is to design it, and I'm just letting go and waiting to see how they implemented their gameplay decisions.
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Well, this is the internet, everyone's an expert.
People love to oversimplify for the sake of their argument and it's almost like they just don't want to think about the whole picture.
Maybe because it's just that hard to think about it. The more you think and think, the more you realize how much there is to it and how the seemingly great idea they are championing is turning out to be flawed in various ways.
The task that CDPR have undertaken is an enormous one and with a great deal of complexity, so I just hope people think a bit before they start throwing stuff like "bad design" so casually, it's just insulting.
Brevity isn't my strong side (no joking here, it's an important trait). What's the one sentence?You could have written the same thing in one sentence, bud...
Something along the lines of "Give the system a fair chance when the games is out before you talk bad about it and if you still want to criticize it don't forget to take the complex interconnected systems and mechanics like balancing into account."
Yes that is true.
On the other hand however, by implying certain techniques (like the ones I named in my last post) you can prevent the player from using those overpowered weapons too much without making it "in your face" artificial. Also, if you set the damage Geralt makes more on his personal strength and use his weapons as MODIFIERS of his strength (either in increasing damage by a certain percentage due to the weapon or by having the weapon/sword add + X damage on top of base damage) you do not NEED a level requirement for gear while still keeping the open world aspect and not having Geralt get OP. If Geralts strength increases a little bit more by leveling up and again just a little bit by skills he picks (not much, since the skills being stats-independent is a good thing IMO, and a little bit by using (slightly) stronger weapons you have a good combination of influencable (skills, weapons) and not-influencable (leveling) power for Geralts damage output.
Well you are right to an extend, I still think though that the more elegant solution would have been splitting it up between strength gain through skills, strength gain through level-up and strength gain through weapons. It's better to balance that way and you do not find yourself having to use artifical means such as restricting the player from equipping a sword so artificially.
Other means to restrict the player which do not seem so intrusive and immersion breaking are the ones I mentioned such as the sword having VERY little durability if you are too low in level and not being repairable or things like the weapons/swords being less effective but still equip-able if you are too low in level, it is not so intrusive and still serves it's purpose.
Of course we do not know if this is not the case, all we know is that the sword says "requirement level 29". It might just mean "requirement to use the sword in it's full power level 29". Then I would say it's okay in my book.
Maybe it is exactly that.
There are so many variables on the table, and we often get very short descriptions. And so many of those variables actually have a higher probability to go wrong rather than right, especially with things that sound wrong from the basic concept of it already. It is a walk on a tight-rope, on the edge of a blade, and there are so many ways you can fall that the possibilities are just too many if you think about it thoroughly. Maybe that is one of the main reasons for all the concerns, that there is simply a lot of information put out there that is not complete or could be misunderstood, and that we can not see the whole picture in some systems. In this regard I sometimes wish CDPR wouldn't have said anything, especially about those elements that are hard to explain without proper context.
Something along the lines of "Give the system a fair chance when the games is out before you talk bad about it and if you still want to criticize it don't forget to take the complex interconnected systems and mechanics like balancing into account."
Wouldn't have had the same impact if he would have written it that way.
Rather write a text that is longer and gives me a better picture of how your thinking process works rather than giving me a short sentence that might have all the information in there but doesn't convey all of your perspective and thought process.
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To each their own I guess. For me it's just a waste of time reading such a long post with basically little actual content. It's not like we had a highly complex philosophical discussion here. Brevity is the soul of wit.
But back to topic.
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And that's actually what I want yes. I don't think it's boring, quite the opposite. For me the core of the Witcher is about a deep and complex story, extensive choice&consequence and an immersive, realistic world. But certainly not some tagged on RPG mechanics. Imho that doesn't make the combat or the rest of the game any better.
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I have seen enough to trust CDPR on this. I have thought about it for long time now and I think this is almost the best solution to the situation.
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Because a lot of things have already been covered, let's keep this as ”Juuuhanly” short as possible.
Level requirement, a matter of preference, not optimization.
The best choice is?
There's no ”optimal” or objective best way to address a alternative to level requirements because they are solely a preference choice from the developers, that in simpler terms balances longevity and ”reward aspect” for the player. Whichever you prefer are therefore completely up to your own preference because there's so much reality you can't address when you are making a game.
Essentially all systems that focuses on "gaming" have both benefits and drawbacks and all systems that promotes ”realism” tend to flop out, because ”realism” is actually quite boring and also extremely expensive and extensive to pull of as a developer.
Why realism is bad then? Well this means:
Levels, vs realism & diminishing return
I want to clarify in response to @Scholdarr.452, who expressed that levels doesn't add anything. CD RED has stressed they want more visual/active changes with upgrades (rather than just +5% health), therefore having levels provide a long-lasting impression on the player, as you always will see changes throughout the game. This make sense for a game play experience because if you cut down on levels you also cut down on the flexibility you have as a player to customize your Geralt with different skills. With a game that can last 100 of hours it's important to give the player the incentive that further levelling is worth it and amazing once you get new skills... And if you cut this progress down to let's say 20 levels, one of two things will happen:
1. You won't see any new character progress really early on (you'll reach level 20 and still have +80 hours left to play), and therefore feel bored on your abilities/skills much easier (also it's bad game design).
2. The max levels is divided on 100 of hours of gameplay which causes a massive grind for each level.
A well balanced game should end you with a Geralt that is max level roughly around the time you as a player have completed most of the quests (without extensive grinding)... That way it will feel fresh and exiting for players as you are steadily advancing and learning new abilities/skills. Again, I'm arguing this as a benefit for gaming rather than it's founding of being realistic.
Scalable weapons vs Level requirements
The issue with having weapons essentially level up with the character means that people will find out where the best weapon available are and then get it straight away. Oblivion was one game that suffered from this (Obviously a lot more too) and even something as trivial as Witcher 1 had this where the first thing you did in Act 2 was run into the swamp to get the best Steel Sword possible (which defeated the purpose of Meteorite Swords).
This is a problem because again, it means that the player will find a lot of weapons not worth picking up and therefore destroy some elements of looting that many players enjoy. We are too programmed to find a weapon with just +1 more attack, and will use this no matter what, so if this is taken from us we will then look at looted weapons as just rubbish and not feel that excitement.
Level requirements do therefore provides following benefits:
I also want to highlight that it was covered by Scyclad Guardian that the best items will be crafted. This of course means that you need money + the capability to kill high level monsters to get them, so the likelihood of getting a too strong weapon early on is actually rather cleverly balanced by CD RED, while on the same time fitting well with the character balancing (You get the better weapons when you are the proper level).
Rewards for killing high level things
This can probably/possible be achieved by completing a higher level quest, therefore getting more experience and money. That said, I'll always viewed it as the reward of killing a extremely high level monster to be something you, yourself cherish as a reward (Same reason someone completed Witcher 2 naked on insane) not because they wanted a artificial/in game reward.
After all higher level monsters are there early on solely to give those really invested combat enthusiasts a challenge to test their skills, while on the same time make the world feel more dynamic and organic... If they were there solely to give item rewards it's more likely, players will just find a exploitation in game to squeeze out overpowered items early on and make monster hunting feel more "robotic instead of the charm of defeating a high level monster.
Level requirements might be stupid from a realistic point of view but in terms of balance, convenience with programming and the use as a extra money dump, this is arguable the best method to use (That we've seen so far in video games) when it comes to massive open world games... And I for one, particularly value balancing way higher than realism in this scenario because balancing actually effects mine (and everyone else's) gaming experience... Plus I'm a sucker for loot.
Level requirement, a matter of preference, not optimization.
The best choice is?
There's no ”optimal” or objective best way to address a alternative to level requirements because they are solely a preference choice from the developers, that in simpler terms balances longevity and ”reward aspect” for the player. Whichever you prefer are therefore completely up to your own preference because there's so much reality you can't address when you are making a game.
Essentially all systems that focuses on "gaming" have both benefits and drawbacks and all systems that promotes ”realism” tend to flop out, because ”realism” is actually quite boring and also extremely expensive and extensive to pull of as a developer.
Why realism is bad then? Well this means:
Saying Geralt is a master swordsman all ready defeats some of the purpose of character levelling, which, diminish the gaming experience (I'll address this a bit more further on).
- All weapons would be almost identical in performance which makes looting/exploration for better weapons feel nothing more than pointless and annoying (Elder scrolls game suffered a lot from this).
- Because the only thing that balances character (in term of ”proper” realism) would be character builds, this makes balancing harder as well as diminishing the actual number character builds (Some might be weapon/armour based for example).
Levels, vs realism & diminishing return
I want to clarify in response to @Scholdarr.452, who expressed that levels doesn't add anything. CD RED has stressed they want more visual/active changes with upgrades (rather than just +5% health), therefore having levels provide a long-lasting impression on the player, as you always will see changes throughout the game. This make sense for a game play experience because if you cut down on levels you also cut down on the flexibility you have as a player to customize your Geralt with different skills. With a game that can last 100 of hours it's important to give the player the incentive that further levelling is worth it and amazing once you get new skills... And if you cut this progress down to let's say 20 levels, one of two things will happen:
1. You won't see any new character progress really early on (you'll reach level 20 and still have +80 hours left to play), and therefore feel bored on your abilities/skills much easier (also it's bad game design).
2. The max levels is divided on 100 of hours of gameplay which causes a massive grind for each level.
A well balanced game should end you with a Geralt that is max level roughly around the time you as a player have completed most of the quests (without extensive grinding)... That way it will feel fresh and exiting for players as you are steadily advancing and learning new abilities/skills. Again, I'm arguing this as a benefit for gaming rather than it's founding of being realistic.
Scalable weapons vs Level requirements
The issue with having weapons essentially level up with the character means that people will find out where the best weapon available are and then get it straight away. Oblivion was one game that suffered from this (Obviously a lot more too) and even something as trivial as Witcher 1 had this where the first thing you did in Act 2 was run into the swamp to get the best Steel Sword possible (which defeated the purpose of Meteorite Swords).
This is a problem because again, it means that the player will find a lot of weapons not worth picking up and therefore destroy some elements of looting that many players enjoy. We are too programmed to find a weapon with just +1 more attack, and will use this no matter what, so if this is taken from us we will then look at looted weapons as just rubbish and not feel that excitement.
Level requirements do therefore provides following benefits:
- It prevents people from obtaining a weapon who's massively overpowered early on.
- It keeps looting alive for longer as you are constantly hunting for that one better sword.
- It functions as a ”moneydump” where the player will craft/spend money into getting better weapons (This is important to prevent the player from having stupid amounts of money).
- It's way easier to program and balance for the developer than scalable items and such.
I also want to highlight that it was covered by Scyclad Guardian that the best items will be crafted. This of course means that you need money + the capability to kill high level monsters to get them, so the likelihood of getting a too strong weapon early on is actually rather cleverly balanced by CD RED, while on the same time fitting well with the character balancing (You get the better weapons when you are the proper level).
Rewards for killing high level things
This can probably/possible be achieved by completing a higher level quest, therefore getting more experience and money. That said, I'll always viewed it as the reward of killing a extremely high level monster to be something you, yourself cherish as a reward (Same reason someone completed Witcher 2 naked on insane) not because they wanted a artificial/in game reward.
After all higher level monsters are there early on solely to give those really invested combat enthusiasts a challenge to test their skills, while on the same time make the world feel more dynamic and organic... If they were there solely to give item rewards it's more likely, players will just find a exploitation in game to squeeze out overpowered items early on and make monster hunting feel more "robotic instead of the charm of defeating a high level monster.
Level requirements might be stupid from a realistic point of view but in terms of balance, convenience with programming and the use as a extra money dump, this is arguable the best method to use (That we've seen so far in video games) when it comes to massive open world games... And I for one, particularly value balancing way higher than realism in this scenario because balancing actually effects mine (and everyone else's) gaming experience... Plus I'm a sucker for loot.
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I like this idea too to a certain extent, and many other similar ones are easy to think of. Its what I was speaking about in my post.
This is fundamentally what original survival horror did, such as Resident Evil, the weapons are not just better or worse, they are different tools, for different jobs, and come at different times and states of your adventure. You use them, yes, but you also have to maintain them, integrate them as benefits.
RE is not open world or that open of course, but if you could find a rocket launcher early, that's not a problem, why? because you'd need ammo to make it work, and its of course very scarce, so what do you do? keep the pistol and use it for normal enemies and save the rocket launcher only for tough monsters, and when you eventually get a shotgun, same thing, its a different tool, with different pros, cons, and requirements, still perfectly useful.
Durability, which leads to money requirements and exploration requirements (repairing), is the ammo of swords in TW3, so as you can see, even through the games are very different, game design techniques often speak the same language. In TW3 i assume there are possibly hundreds of swords to pick up, but its ok of course if many of them replace with pure superiority previous swords, not every single one of them needs to be unique and useful all the time, just enough, at the right moment, for a precise necessity.
This is of course a solution to problem we dont even know CDPR considers as such, maybe they dont want an over leveled sword to be useful in combat at all until you level up, and thats fine.
I still totally agree with @EliHarel 's post that we dont know even close to enough, and its easy to think solutions to independent problems, however, good solutions to what we are discussing abound in my opinion, and it makes me a little suspicious about why level requirements out of all possible things is precisely the one used for TW3.
Its like its too much of a coincidence you know?, thats what I mean, dozens of others RPGs and MMOs have level reqs for equipping weapons and oh what do you know, for TW3's incredible never done before open world and game design, the exact same solution of others fits it perfectly
I'd like to think that the devs thought about this right from the roots of their very own unique design problems, but hey, every studio includes already-designed things from other games or genre tradition now and then, and its not bad really, if it works (it probably does), then its great, buuuut there's always the "you might be able to do better" thought crawling some people's minds, like mine. We'll have to wait and see...
Yes that is one way to solve the issue of balancing. But there's a huge issue with implementing that system in The Witcher 3 and that's the way the skill system is. This system takes more inspiration from The Witcher 2 than The Witcher 1. The WItcher 3 also has this active/inactive skill system which I have never seen in a game before. I believe the way it works is that you have a set amount of passive/non-passive skills that you can assign to Geralt for a certain situation. The amount of skills you can put in there increases as you level up. I don't see a way to efficiently build in the Str/Dex/Int/Stam skill trees that were available to the player in this new system without causing issues.
Well, again, this is highly debatable and surely not a fact. I think the game would even be better with less levelling. I know that CDPR wants TW3 to be an RPG with everything that is connected to the term but that doesn't mean that a different take on the isssue couldn't be as exciting and fun or even more exciting. Really depends on taste and especially on personal, subjective priorities.
Personally, I'm also not a huge friend of durability here. In my experience stuff like that only makes the game more tedious in the long run while adding little to nothing to the core experience.
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I loved going into that cave and finding the drangonslayer sword. Thanks for reminding me of that!
glad to hear it friend. let's just hope we get to see some of that in TW3 -prays-
As amusing as it is, we shan't have any of this in The Witcher -- swords or otherwise.
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