The Witcher 3 Alchemy System

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The Witcher 3 Alchemy System

  • Yes

    Votes: 250 24.3%
  • No

    Votes: 270 26.2%
  • I need to see it in action to be sure

    Votes: 294 28.6%
  • I prefer the system of TW1

    Votes: 363 35.3%
  • I prefer the system of TW2

    Votes: 104 10.1%

  • Total voters
    1,029
I voted No as I don't want auto-refilling potions. What I would really like would be a combination of TW1, TW2 and the description Marcin gave us with normal potions and mutagenic potions, etc. (just without auto-refilling!).
 
Hello everybody! Long time reader of the forums, first time poster.
I have a question about all this controversial alchemy system: do we know how many bottles of each potion auto-refill when meditating? What if I want a specific number of bottles of one potion?
The most reasonable guess, given what we heard so far, would be having just one potion for each kind.
Personally I suspect a lot of people who keep talking about "magical auto-refilling" are misunderstanding the basic concept.

Basically, if I'm understanding the general idea right, the "potions" would actually become a range on interchangeable buffs filling a limited amount of slots (limited by their toxicity, I guess?) that you could switch every time you rest again.

They are also supposedly divided in mutagens (with some strong, passive and semi-permanent effects and with a high level of toxicity) and in potions, which would have lower toxicity and limited effects, in the form of an inactive timed buff that you should be able to activate at will.
 
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Jupiter_on_Mars

Guest
Basically, if I'm understanding the general idea right, the "potions" would actually become a range on interchangeable buffs filling a limited amount of slots (limited by their toxicity, I guess?) that you could switch every time you rest again.
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In what way does that address concerns expressed thus far? Sure, you can look at it as «a range of interchangeable buffs» but in no way does that change the fact you no longer have to brew them and you no longer have to collect ingredients. This apparently means that potions will be brewed for you even if, say, for whatever role playing reason, you do not want to have them brewed in the first place. It's hard for me to understand how messing with player discretion and agency could be defended.
 
In what way does that address concerns expressed thus far?
Well, I'm not sure why you are asking this specifically to me, since for the most part I DON'T CARE very much about the "concerns expressed so far", not to mention I wasn't even expressing any judgement about the new system, just trying to explain how it works from the sparse informations we have so far.

Sure, you can look at it as «a range of interchangeable buffs» but in no way does that change the fact you no longer have to brew them and you no longer have to collect ingredients.
Which is nothing I'm particularly concerned about, especially since -as I already pointed- i really didn't like how gathering reagents worked in the previous game. A trivial, menial task, for the most part.
Beside that, your premise is false, too. It's not true that you won't have to gather reagents anymore. You'll just have to gather fewer of them.
And as I already said I also hope they will take this chance to make every single reagent more rare and interesting to get, since they are supposed to be "one-timers".

This apparently means that potions will be brewed for you even if, say, for whatever role playing reason, you do not want to have them brewed in the first place. It's hard for me to understand how messing with player discretion and agency could be defended.
I have no idea of what point you are trying to make.
This probably implies that potions will be tuned to be something harder/less obvious to craft the first time, and from that point on they will be just part of your range of interchangeable buffs". It doesn't interact with player discretion and agency to any extent, since you will most likely still need a recipe and reagents, potions won't just pop into existence in your inventory for no reason.
 
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Personally I suspect a lot of people who keep talking about "magical auto-refilling" are misunderstanding the basic concept.

Basically, if I'm understanding the general idea right, the "potions" would actually become a range on interchangeable buffs filling a limited amount of slots (limited by their toxicity, I guess?) that you could switch every time you rest again.

How these thoughts are cancelling "magical auto-refilling" negative gameplay-wise effects? We always have limitation by toxicity till next meditation, so what?
 
I personally think the best potion system would be alcohol potion base from TW1 + TW2 system that you have to drink before combat.
Getting rid of alcohol feels like dumbing down the game. And drinking in combat kinda breaks immersion.
Only problem with TW2 is that , you can never know what enemy you will face, and when while wandering around, that problem could be solved by extending potion duration.
 
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How these thoughts are cancelling "magical auto-refilling" negative gameplay-wise effects? We always have limitation by toxicity till next meditation, so what?
Who said they did? They were not even supposed to, because it's just something different, it's an abstraction system.

Old system: you gather ingredients, you craft (repeatable) potions, you drink them when you need them, as many as you need them (because, let's face it, toxicity wasn't an actual issue anymore in TW2).

New system: you gather ingredients, you use them to create an unique item. This unique item is an abstract representation of some kind of potion you are now able to craft. Every time you rest you can now set that buff among the active ones.

Not to mention that the effects gameplay-wise being "negative" is mostly a matter of opinions.
 
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Who said it did? It's not even supposed to, because it's just something different, it's an abstraction system.

Old system: you gather ingredients, you craft (repeatable) potions, you drink them when you need them, as many as you need them (because, let's face it, toxicity wasn't an actual issue anymore in TW2).

New system: you gather ingredients, you use them to create an unique item. This unique item is an abstract representation of some kind of potion you are now able to craft. Every time you rest you can now set that buff among the active ones.

Yeah, that's obvious. But it's hard to call infinite potions as a "unique items". Vice versa. And now even mutagenic potions supposed to work in same way, so they are not unique at all, too
 
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MY PROPOSITION
1 keep harvesting flora ingredients for wilderness expedition but add rare flora for super potion
2 market with rich choice for everyday alchemy and common potion
3 at start we make potion manually, but when leveling, we can make common potion automatically and much stronger potion of next levels manually
4 much more instruments and helpers for alchemy from fractions with which we collaborated
 
I don't care for any auto-refill or auto-creation of any kind. If CDPR fears that players aren't using potions/alchemy enough, or that collecting ingredients are too much of a chore, why not implement a multiple usage system where geralt can get 2+ uses from a single bottle. They can make bottles up-gradable/purchasable so they can hold more or even allow us to choose how much we intake and let us decide the duration/intensity vs toxicity tradeoff ourselves. They could also tweak the gameplay (across all difficulties) so that alchemy becomes a crucial element rather than something you can dabble in. And please don't go too crazy with the hand holding like LoZ: Skyward Sword. Anyways, keep on with your good work!
 
Who said they did? They were not even supposed to, because it's just something different, it's an abstraction system.

Old system: you gather ingredients, you craft (repeatable) potions, you drink them when you need them, as many as you need them (because, let's face it, toxicity wasn't an actual issue anymore in TW2).

New system: you gather ingredients, you use them to create an unique item. This unique item is an abstract representation of some kind of potion you are now able to craft. Every time you rest you can now set that buff among the active ones.

Not to mention that the effects gameplay-wise being "negative" is mostly a matter of opinions.

I agree.
I think this new system can actually work in the game's favour.
Instead of doing dull grindworthy stuff, which basically means rince and repeat type of actions gameplay wise, finding ingredients now becomes more important and immersive.
 
I agree.
I think this new system can actually work in the game's favour.
Instead of doing dull grindworthy stuff, which basically means rince and repeat type of actions gameplay wise, finding ingredients now becomes more important and immersive.
Well, wait... Without trying the game and knowing exactly how they are going to tune this I'm not yet ready to claim "it now becomes"... but of course it *can* potentially become more interesting and rewarding, if done properly.
 

Jupiter_on_Mars

Guest
Well, I'm not sure why you are asking this specifically to me, since for the most part I DON'T CARE very much about the "concerns expressed so far", not to mention I wasn't even expressing any judgement about the new system, just trying to explain how it works from the sparse informations we have so far.

This statement of yours
Personally I suspect a lot of people who keep talking about "magical auto-refilling" are misunderstanding the basic concept.

Calling auto-refilling potions «interchangeable buffs filling a limited amount of slots » doesn't change their nature and certainly does not address the concerns of those you say are misunderstanding the concept. You are missing the point.

Beside that, your premise is false, too. It's not true that you won't have to gather reagents anymore. You'll just have to gather fewer of them.
And as I already said I also hope they will take this chance to make every single reagent more rare and interesting to get, since they are supposed to be "one-timers".

You have to gather them once, and then you can take a nap for the next 100 hours. You don't seem to have a problem with that. I do. Making ingredients harder to harvest is an entirely unrelated issue.

It doesn't interact with player discretion and agency to any extent, since you will most likely still need a recipe and reagents, potions won't just pop into existence in your inventory for no reason.

It most certainly interacts. After the initial batch, potions are brewed without the player putting in the effort or even having a say at all. Alchemy - which brewing is an inextricable part - is optional, yet this contrived mechanic makes it mandatory. If that doesn't interfere with player agency and discretion, I don't know what would.

The thread is filled with much better ideas, which mitigate the alleged problem, integrate with gameplay and even open up some interesting plot lines. Until new info is released, I rest my case.
 
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I don't care for any auto-refill or auto-creation of any kind. If CDPR fears that players aren't using potions/alchemy enough, or that collecting ingredients are too much of a chore, why not implement a multiple usage system where geralt can get 2+ uses from a single bottle. They can make bottles up-gradable/purchasable so they can hold more or even allow us to choose how much we intake and let us decide the duration/intensity vs toxicity tradeoff ourselves. They could also tweak the gameplay (across all difficulties) so that alchemy becomes a crucial element rather than something you can dabble in. And please don't go too crazy with the hand holding like LoZ: Skyward Sword. Anyways, keep on with your good work!

We proposed that already and it is a good idea I agree.

1. Have alchemy incredients (herbs, monster parts) buyable from special herbalists
2. Enable potion vials to be used 2 or 3 times
3. Enable player to buy bigger vials for more uses (4 or 5 times) (OPTIONAL)
4. All the other changes (support potions / mutagenic potions, upgrading potions, etc.) are okay
4b. Making some incredients rare (for the upgrades and mutagenic potions) will help to make this part more interesting

5. If you REALLY want to make it even easier then add a skill in the alchemy tree (optional) which gives you the ability to "auto-refill" potions for all those people who think it is a chore to collect incredients and brew potions.

SIMPLE. BOTH sides satisfied.

Or not?

PS: I hope we still have real "mutagens" and that the "mutagenic potions" don't replace them.
 
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I'll be honest, I genuinely can't see how adding "more sips from a single bottle" is supposed to solve compulsive hoarding of potions and elixirs, even just in theory.
Not that I see it as a big issue in the first place, frankly... Just saying it's not a solution.
 
I've been racking my brains to try to think WHY they'd be going for the infinite potion, and all I can think of is that it's because they don't want to populate the world with hundreds of plants/generic monsters to make sure you can farm enough to play.
I can accept that as a reason, but the suggestion that's been given just to give you more per plant/monster, or more bottles per meditation, would definitely be better solutions than just dropping it.
I don't really buy into the compulsive hoarding reason, unless there's something else they haven't told us that would make hoarding impossible. There's nothing wrong with a good hoard.
 
I'll be honest, I genuinely can't see how adding "more sips from a single bottle" is supposed to solve compulsive hoarding of potions and elixirs, even just in theory.
Not that I see it as a big issue in the first place, frankly... Just saying it's not a solution.

After hearing that every detail of the game's environments are handcrafted I'd be surprised to see changes to the degree that some of these folks are asking for. I can't imagine it'll be worth throwing away so many man hours and resources for such a minor part of a much larger alchemy system.

Someone is gonna have to go in and manually add ingredients, and it'll have to be a ton of them since we can't have magically re spawning herbs, right? All these new assets added is going to effect performance, so now someone has to deal with that across all 3 seperate platforms and varying PC targets. Now that the player is carrying a ton of extra weight, inventory needs to be redesigned. Players will want to sell excess ingredients, so the economy must be rebalanced. Can't assume players will be using potions, so boss encounters will probably have to be tweaked.

All that to reintroduce a very menial system that will still bother a lot of people. It's pretty much a no-win situation.
 
Why? What's wrong with pick up ingredients while we are exploring the world?

Nothing for me, but in the debate we had the last 54 pages a lot of people described it as a "chore" and "tedious".

So assuming we want a compromise between both sides we need that. I'm trying to find a diplomatic solution here.
Of course not ALL herbs or monster-parts will be buyable, only low-level stuff you need for normal potions in my concept.

@Tuco Benedicto => For all I know you do not care about that so why the answer?

But just for the sake of answering this: The solution they have with the auto-refill, while solving the problem with the hoarding opens up a bunch of more serious problems. Also, I don't see hording as a problem either. In fact I think almost no one sees that as a problem. The only arguments I heard which were actually FOR a auto-refill system are:

1. Maybe the balance of potions will be better so they make fights not too easy this time
2. That way people don't have to go through the "tedious" "chore" to collect incredients and brew potions.

The points I mentioned in the previous posts is just a list of things that can be applied to please both sides.
 
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