For god's sake people!! Am I really the only one who loves finishing a main quest and saying "Oh look I'm low on supplies, better go restock" and going to the market buying alcohol then riding to the area where I'll find my ingredients, appreciating the view as a ride, maybe even take a few side quests on the way, brew the potions I need then going back to the market and make the bombs I like the most (in W2 it was red haze), then go play a few mini-games and get my mind off the story a bit and just ENJOY THE FUCKING WORLD, maybe craft a new sword or upgrade my horse, then finally feeling completely relaxed, restocked and ready head to the next main quest? Seriously!! Some people here just seem to want to beat the game efficiently, how will we be able to enjoy the markets, ride around the country, handle our inventory to fit our play-style if they spoon feed you like that?? To me there is nothing better than free roaming the world with a purpose, and what purpose is better to encourage you to roam the world than making you pick ingredients from time to time, I totally agree that having that all the time would be a nuisance, which is solvable with by properly balancing merchants and ingredient abundance and also by making each potion flask have more than one dose. Enjoy the world people, immerse yourselves, that is what gaming is about anyway.
EXACTLY.
I mean why should I even ride around in that world if there are just some side quests here and there and nothing more? Might as well just fast travel to nearest position all the time.
After you corssed the world 3 times it gets boring.
NOT so however if you can actually ROLE PLAY and go ahead and say things like "well, time to prepare new potions, pick up some herbs, ride around in the landscape, find some monsters to kill an restock alchemy incredients, upgrade my sword and craft a new armor piece.....
Stuff like that.
I mean HELL, if you don't WANT to do it you do not HAVE to.
And like others said, if you want to encourage alchemy then just make the MONSTERS HARDER and maybe give the player the ability to buy or craft bigger vials so 1 potion can be used MULTIPLE TIMES.
I love some of the ideas of your system (potion upgrades / more powerful versions of potions, the whole "being allowed to take max. 2 potions in battle", the toxicity (which hopefully has negative effects if too high this time around), hell even the mutagenic potions (as long as "mutagens" are still a thing separately).
But that auto-refill thing is nonsense.
Just let me BE GERALT, and don't shorten everything in a way that I do not even have the OPTION to do alchemy regularly and collect ingredients.
Ok, this sounds to me that the upgraded potions (mutagens) do not replace the basic small potions and also do not refill,
otherwise why would he say that the small one's refill but not the mutagens (which are the ones you use most of the time).
The auto-refilled potions are only the small potions which you use instantly in combat,
but I'm still not sure about that part :huh:.
It basically means the following:
Mutagenic Potions are permanent (they confirmed that), can only be taken while meditating and only be deactivated while meditating and they have high toxicity. (They are the "new Mutagens" as I understand that, or at least like Mutagens (I hope they have mutagens separately, otherwise they would have simplified and thrown together 2 systems))
The "Support" potions are your regular stuff, Swallow, Rook, etc. They can be taken in combat and you only have to craft/brew them once and then they automatically refill.
In the end all you use alchemy for are the first time you make a potion and the 3 times you upgrade them.
Then it's useless because it auto-refills.
And that is a bad decision IMO.
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Here are some thoughts:
- A. For everyone who think alchemy and ingredient collecting is "boring" or a "chore":
- 1. You don't HAVE to do it, you never had. In TW2 one could easily survive without help of potions
- 2. If you WANT to use potions then you should also be forced to pick up the ingredients and brew them. I mean come on, where do we end if we just start shortening all systems because special elements in them are too "boring". Alchemy is a crafting system, that's how crafting works.
- 3. While not having an auto-refill system still allows lazy players to just BUY the ingredients or ignore the alchemy system an active auto-fill system that you can NOT toggle off prevents players who WANT to do alchemy to do exactly that except if you do it the first time. That's called streamlining or dumping down
- 4. If it is absolutely NEEDED, why don't you just let the developers build in an OPTION you can toggle in order to let the whole stuff be refilled for you, so both is possible?
- B. Now to the "development" reasons of establishing auto-refill:
- 1. The developers never stated that they wanted to save development resources with that. Normally CDPR is honest with us. Which we have to assume here with our first theories. The reason however why they included the system is (due to their own comments here) that they wanted to counter hoarding of potions and that they wanted to encourage the usage of the alchemy system
- 1a. Which is IMO not even a problem
- 1b. Also including such a system does not make people use alchemy more, it makes those who normally use it use it less (because they are forced to) and it effectively cuts parts of the system
- 1c. With the solution A4 (above) this could have been easily achieved without FORCING a streamlining of the system
- 2. Let's assume they really didn't tell us the "real" reasons or not "all" the reasons for this decision. Let's assume what some people say here is true and they wanted to avoid creating herbs all over the place.
- 2a. It is not so hard to create herbs all over the place. In fact all it needs are a few herb types (of the common (not-rare) herbs), pick specific areas (big areas) where they naturally grow (probably in the wilderness more and in the villages less) and then let an algorithm just randomly spread them. The rare ones then can be added to specific places by hand, herbs get a re-grow/re-spawn time and everything works out. Not a big deal in comparison with other development tasks
- 2b. ON TOP OF THAT Geralt always got his ingredients from monsters as well, which is even easier. Have specific monster parts drop as loot when killing them, give them a specific base and Geralt has even more ingredients (since this is Open World I expect monster respawns and a good deal of monster population in the wilderness).
I mean, if we can not expect that amount of work, what can we expect then?
How will TW3 look without that stuff?
Will monster have no loot anymore, will the world have (almost) no herbs you can collect?
What gives that world LIVE then, aside from monsters and humanoids?
How is that an RPG?
PRGs have loot, they have crafting systems, they have stuff to pick up and environments to interact with.
If that is not provided, what can we expect to be?
I'm not doubting CDPR here mind you, I am just continuing the line of thought from what this decision could affect.
The best solution is to have a REAL alchemy system and "simplify" it for people who WANT it that way (in the settings).