Many people on this forum love to complain and accuse CDPR of dumbing down the game, but they don't understand that for knowing if something is being dumbed down or not, you need to know the overall game balance, because even a system with infinite potions, could absolutely destroy a "limited potions" system regarding complexity and challenge, if developed properly.
So the change that I really want to point out, especially to the RED team, is that this mechanic, in theory, puts the "challenge" and skill, in finding just the right ingredients for the first time, which will probably be extremely well hidden in an open world, and also getting the recipes, which again, is probably going to be much harder than in previous games.
Whats different? In the previous Witcher games, part of the challenge, was shared with resource management, even though finding ingredients was so easy it was a chore, TW3 seems to do away with this and rather focus everything on the exploration and discovery, methods through which you "unlock" new potions.
So the change is not dumbing down (in theory), but rather a change of balance, a shift of power, more difficulty and complexity is added in finding ingredients and recipes that unlock potions for the first time, and in return complexity and challenge get taken away from constant resource management, which to be fair, wasn't working in the previous witcher games, cause you had literally
hundreds of plants available.in your inventory, kind of funny actually,
is as if we had unlimited potions all along.
@Marcin Momot when we get ingredients to improve our potions, is this improvement permanent? like leveling up? or we need to actively search for these ingredients every time we want to have a "powerful" version of a potion available? Are bombs and traps also "unlocked" rather than crafted, meaning they are unlimited once created the first time?
I personally like the idea behind making players use potions more, but I would keep resource management as part of the fun in there, and not just the other aspects that let you use the potions, so:
My perfect potion system, would include the challenges I am sure you guys will add in finding recipes and ingredients for the first time, but also include a type of resource management challenge, for example, keep the infinite potions if you want, but make it so that ingredients use is flexible, so the more plants and stuff you want to concentrate in one potion take, the more powerful it is (and toxic), and the infinite " version" that refills is rather weak, but useful enough for regular combat encounters.
Alternatively, make potions' duration and number of uses based on the alchemical base, such as many types of alcohol, so we have to manage that resource, if not ingredients.
As another alternative side change, turn off health regeneration completely and/or include permanent wounded states that need special limited health potions to be cured, or a doctor in a city, etc.
People loved resource management from TW1, not much because of the ingredients like i said, but because of alcohol, which is not surprising is something that gets brought up frequently, it was the only needed resource that was truly kind of limited compared to plants and etc. Same reaons why people loved rubiolo, albedo and nigredo, it made some ingredients that you wanted less abundant, and more special, because they had specific extra effects.
In fact, TW1's systems, if in TW3 you always need limited ingredients each time you wanna make an improved version of a potions, is extremely similar to this new one, TW1 had almost unlimited ingredients that gave you normal potions for regular use, but limited ones that you could combine for the extra powerful effects.
But anyway point is, using potions regularly is awesome, it makes it more a part of the game, having more challenge in "discovering" or "unlocking" the potions is awesome too, it gives them a very special value, but having challenge in strategical allocation of limited resources is also awesome, as it makes potions even more valuable than before, but also exploration and money are more valuable.