The Witcher 3 Alchemy System

[thislsmadness]

Yep, thats how I would describe it

I intended that as more of a mocking tone... but ::

 

[Vigilance.492]

I intended that as more of a mocking tone... but ::

He was taking (quoting) that part of the sentence out of context to then prove his point. It made sense.

 

[schinderhannes.999]

SpeedTree is made up of many parts, developers have a lot of freedom in how they leverage the technology. In any case, I'm not even sure how the discussion got here. Whether they are using SpeedTree to "randomly" generate the assets or not is pretty much irrelevant, eitherway there is additional work involved -- by the people individually placing them or by the folks that need to make "corrections" afterward. Your original post talked about them wasting development time to "get rid of them".

Just wanted to point out that (most likely) not everything (especially regarding the flora) is 'handcrafted' or placed by hand but that tools like SpeedTree are doing the bulk of the work here instead. Hence the presumed possibility of CDPR utilising SpeedTree (or whatever automatism) to retrospectively populate the world with herbal plant life if the necessity should arise.
And the bit about 'wasting development time to get rid of...' was just me being sarcastic (and rightfully so) in regards to the (imo unnecessary) removal of the repeated potion creation procedure in favour of auto-refilling potions.

Back to topic.

But how many herbs? How many different varieties in each region? How much variation across regions? If you emulate the TW2 system, you're going to need a minimum of nine substances, for the TW1 system you need three times that. Each one has to be made available in plants and monsters for every kind of ecosystem, from ice fields to marshland.

So how do you design it? If they make the plants easy to find, there's no challenge in it. If they restrict them to certain locations and force you to travel to top up, it's just another kind of repetitive fetch quest. And they're clearly pleased with the way they've designed the environment in a way that works - you can't just throw in a few thousand herbs and keep that level of planned design.

The more I think about it, the more I feel that there's nothing inherently wonderful about the potion system from TW1 and TW2. It was just a mechanic that worked for those games, but if it conflicts with other visions that they have, then it can be dropped.

Well, I guess it's all those factors and details to be aware of (and CDPR's seemingly deepened aversion for fetching things just for the sake of fetching things) that they (most likely) won't revert back to the alchemy systems of either The Witcher 1 or The Witcher 2 (or something in between those two). Even if it means cutting back on the immersion and complexity that were (more or less) provided by the classic systems, and ignoring the apparent importance (considering the poll, which, let's be realistic here means jack shit, unfortunately) of those old systems to the overall gaming experience for a lot of people.

Auto-refill douze points, twelve points.
Congrats!

I'm expecting 'classic alchemy' mods to pop up left and right shortly after release.

 

[dragonbird]

On the other hand, maybe when we find out what's replacing it, we may be OK with it. Because the TW1/TW2 system may have been complex, but it wasn't exactly difficult. And if we're looking at the poll, almost as many said "need to look at it to be sure" as said "no"

 

[sidspyker]

I can understand why they're doing it, it's now a gigantic open world with proper vegetation placement etc so maybe ingredients are hard to come by, I can imagine it being quite the chore to go ingredient hunting everytime just to create that 1 swallow potion you need since it's no longer a small area where you know what to find where like in TW2.

Need to see how it actually works though but not really bothered by it so far.

 

[DBag]

Perhaps this snippet from an interview with Jonas Mattson might shed some light on the auto-refill debate. They are taking flora and material placement very seriously, and this could be connected to the auto-refill feature (less stuff and more realistic environments vs ingredients spam all over the map):

This might be too much of a botany-oriented question, but, when you were looking at this vegetation, were you just looking at these paintings and photographs like you mentioned, or did you actually take a look at specific plants and say “Okay, these belong in this ecosystem,” and things like that?

Absolutely! Absolutely! We have a guy, an artist, who did the vegetation for The Witcher II, and he’s responsible for solely focusing on the vegetation in The Witcher III. He’s a guru when it comes to botany—I mean, the man’s amazing. He knows exactly what we need, how it’s planted, when and where it grows, what time of the year it grows, what eats it.

When we told him we wanted sunflowers, he’d tell us things like “Okay, then take that away, it wouldn’t grow there… these two things wouldn’t cross-breed.” He’d say, “Okay, this bush only grows in cold climates, so we’re going to put them on these coastal islands, ones with more of a Nordic influence [tall cliffs and snow].” There’s a specific kind of leaf that grows in areas with hard winds, so, we’d look for bushes…I can’t remember the name, but there’s a reddish-purple bush that grows low and by the coast.

Basically, we look at the conditions and ask [ourselves], what makes sense here?

Birches in the inland, pines on the cliffs. We also look at the materials in the area and ask, all right, what do these people have access to, what would they build their buildings out of?

source

EDIT: Could a mod please relocate this post to the alchemy thread -- posted here by mistake! Apologies.

 

[sidspyker]

Already moved, @DBag.

 

[Pajkes]

@Pajkes - calm down and keep the discussion civil, or walk away from it. Your choice.

Can you elaborate how exactly I was not civil cause I used ZERO offensive and curse words and I didn't attack or name anyone particular in my last posts in this topic.If you disagree with my opinion (and it's obvious you do) than say so and don't hide behind false accusations how I was rude cause if I were than you would have quoted part of my posts which are supposedly 'offensive'.

 

[thislsmadness]

Can you elaborate how exactly I was not civil cause I used ZERO offensive and curse words and I didn't attack or name anyone particular in my last posts in this topic.If you disagree with my opinion (and it's obvious you do) than say so and don't hide behind false accusations how I was rude cause if I were than you would have quoted part of my posts which are supposedly 'offensive'.

No one except that strawman you beat to death

 

[Zhyphix]

I can understand why they're doing it, it's now a gigantic open world with proper vegetation placement etc so maybe ingredients are hard to come by, I can imagine it being quite the chore to go ingredient hunting everytime just to create that 1 swallow potion you need since it's no longer a small area where you know what to find where like in TW2.

Need to see how it actually works though but not really bothered by it so far.

Perhaps, but if they really thought it like that, I'd see it more like an excuse. There's no reason not to make five different species of plants which would give Rebis instead of only celandine, for example, and making them give out five leaves and/or various ingredients per plant, like leaves, flowers and roots. Really, it's just a matter of how much effort you want to put in creating an alchemy system that works as intended.

Making sure there's a sufficient quantity of ingredients to make a dozen potions placed around signpost and fast travel checkpoints would also help avoiding the need to go searching for that one missing ingredient every time.

 

[piochu.403]

Making sure there's a sufficient quantity of ingredients to make a dozen potions placed around signpost and fast travel checkpoints would also help avoiding the need to go searching for that one missing ingredient every time.

Or adding bunch of herb merchants in important/convienient places (or maybe just ~1-2 in each area reeeealy close to FT point so in-need you will FT there, get stuff in less than 3 minutes and FT back.

 

[AutumnalWanderer]

I had a little doubt because the auto refil the potions, and I belive that I woted for the TW1 system, but as I thought about it, I started to understand why they trying out this solution. I can totally understand @BlackWolf500 about the role playing stuff, because I do the same thing with the first two games. It is part the ritual before a bigger battle or just regular questing. But how it would work out an open world game? It would all depends on the herbs and the monsters population. In the first two games they have to spawn them every corner, due to the size of the map, in an open world game would be much harder and take way more time if we don't count the merchants. But if the CDPR decide to go with the auto refill potion mechanic I would expect some copmensation in other mechanic which add more depth of the game but in a different place. I could live with that, not to mention that the game will be moddable.
But if I would able choose one mechanic I would choose this one, because it would be the "golden path".

That tea-bag analogy for the new system is very poor since we are talking about infinite auto-refills, presumably without any ingredients. I would actually be fine with it if it worked like real tea-bags.

Herbs and other alchemical ingredients could have repetitive usages, with a degradation property so that every time you meditate you wear the material out in order to auto-refill your stock. So when you finally use it up and the ingredients perish, there would be no more auto-refills and you would need to gather fresh ones. Of course, an option to enable/disable which consumable you want auto-refilled, and using which particular ingredients would be needed for maximum player control. And like diluted tea-bags in real life, they could take it a step further by have diminishing yields for each use, so that you would have a trade off of not having to go around and gather stuff, for weaker versions of the consumables. You can then have skills in the alchemy development tree which gives the ingredients greater durability, which would make sense as your alchemy processes become more efficient with higher expertise.

I would also like to see the return of alcohols as potion bases (as well as consumables), so that the strength of these also affect the strength of the potions. Alcohols could also work with a degradation mechanic or just have a set number of uses per bottle.

I would be perfectly fine with a system like this, especially since the whole thing would actually make logical sense. However, I don't think this is what they're doing. They seem to be shooting for a simple, infinite auto-refilling system without any hassle whatsoever. If that is the case, the gross simplification and the fact that it doesn't make sense would seriously put me off. I did like the two tier potion system mentioned in the interview. That sounds interesting.

Thanks for @Telcontar this.

 

[schinderhannes.999]

I had a little doubt because the auto refil the potions, and I belive that I woted for the TW1 system, but as I thought about it, I started to understand why they trying out this solution. I can totally understand @BlackWolf500 about the role playing stuff, because I do the same thing with the first two games. It is part the ritual before a bigger battle or just regular questing. But how it would work out an open world game? It would all depends on the herbs and the monsters population. In the first two games they have to spawn them every corner, due to the size of the map, in an open world game would be much harder and take way more time if we don't count the merchants. But if the CDPR decide to go with the auto refill potion mechanic I would expect some copmensation in other mechanic which add more depth of the game but in a different place. I could live with that, not to mention that the game will be moddable.
But if I would able choose one mechanic I would choose this one, because it would be the "golden path".

That tea-bag analogy for the new system is very poor since we are talking about infinite auto-refills, presumably without any ingredients. I would actually be fine with it if it worked like real tea-bags.

Herbs and other alchemical ingredients could have repetitive usages, with a degradation property so that every time you meditate you wear the material out in order to auto-refill your stock. So when you finally use it up and the ingredients perish, there would be no more auto-refills and you would need to gather fresh ones. Of course, an option to enable/disable which consumable you want auto-refilled, and using which particular ingredients would be needed for maximum player control. And like diluted tea-bags in real life, they could take it a step further by have diminishing yields for each use, so that you would have a trade off of not having to go around and gather stuff, for weaker versions of the consumables. You can then have skills in the alchemy development tree which gives the ingredients greater durability, which would make sense as your alchemy processes become more efficient with higher expertise.

I would also like to see the return of alcohols as potion bases (as well as consumables), so that the strength of these also affect the strength of the potions. Alcohols could also work with a degradation mechanic or just have a set number of uses per bottle.

I would be perfectly fine with a system like this, especially since the whole thing would actually make logical sense. However, I don't think this is what they're doing. They seem to be shooting for a simple, infinite auto-refilling system without any hassle whatsoever. If that is the case, the gross simplification and the fact that it doesn't make sense would seriously put me off. I did like the two tier potion system mentioned in the interview. That sounds interesting.

Thanks for @Telcontar this.

This I actually could get behind as well, but as mentioned by several others before, this solution also would need the necessary ingredients to be placed in the environment, since there wouldn't always be a merchant or herbalist around for Geralt to stock up on things again.

And the E3 gameplay footage suggests that there is (currently) no lootable flora (plants, bushes, shrubberies and whatnot) in the game from which you could gather ingredients from.
However, there's still the possibility that the bits of the environment shown in the demos just happened to not have any of the mentioned 'ingredient-generators', though one would think to stumble over those every 10 meters or so in an area like the Swamp (as was the case in The Witcher 1).

Somebody grilling the CDPR guys at one of the next big events (Gamescom, PAX, etc) about this whole potions/bombs/alchemy shebang and how the eff it's supposed to work (without completely disregarding the immersion factor) would be just swell.

 

[AutumnalWanderer]

Yeah, and i remember that CDPR is experimenting this system, which is means, they are not even close to finish. I belive that's why we don't see anything about this yet, and also do not forget that they improve thing in the past, and i think they will do as well.

 

[BlackWolf500.298]

Okay, it's pretty simple. IF potions auto-refill I don't have to use them, I'll just ignore them.
I'm not happy with it but if they auto-refill I see no need to take them, my immersion is already broken by the auto-refill anyway...

But how many herbs? How many different varieties in each region? How much variation across regions? If you emulate the TW2 system, you're going to need a minimum of nine substances, for the TW1 system you need three times that. Each one has to be made available in plants and monsters for every kind of ecosystem, from ice fields to marshland.

So how do you design it? If they make the plants easy to find, there's no challenge in it. If they restrict them to certain locations and force you to travel to top up, it's just another kind of repetitive fetch quest. And they're clearly pleased with the way they've designed the environment in a way that works - you can't just throw in a few thousand herbs and keep that level of planned design.

And you think the best solution for this is just to scrap the whole collection process? What nonsense logic is that?

It's pretty simple.
Easier potion ingredients can be obtained from herbs which are moderately easy to find, or from monsters which are easy to kill (BOTH was possible in previous games, I believe sometimes everyone forgets that we do not need ONE SPECIAL ingredient for a potion but just an ingredient that have the right properties. There were always more than 1 or 2 possible ingredients for a potion) or they can be bought.
More powerful potions (which will in turn make fighting easier) can be found more rarely as herbs or as monsterparts of rare monsters.
Potions can be taken 2 or 3 times until they are empty.
This can be extended either with an ability or with buying (or crafting) bigger (more expensive) vials later in the game.

Look, the problem of hoarding will NOT disappear, I am 100% sure there.
Also, the development resources are no problem since there are algorithms for that and they can also be applied to certain regions only to differentiate there.
Auto Refilling does not make anything harder, actually it makes everything easier.
People who were never interested in alchemy will not use it this time, they will ignore it again.
A lot of people only didn't use potions because a lot of monsters were too easy.
A lot of people played on normal where potions are not needed at all.

I am okay with EVERYTHING they said so far, except of that damn auto-refill.
If it's just an option: YES PLEASE. If it is forced on me: No, thank you.

Perhaps this snippet from an interview with Jonas Mattson might shed some light on the auto-refill debate. They are taking flora and material placement very seriously, and this could be connected to the auto-refill feature (less stuff and more realistic environments vs ingredients spam all over the map):



source

EDIT: Could a mod please relocate this post to the alchemy thread -- posted here by mistake! Apologies.

1. Gameplay > Authenticity, especially in a Fantasy game
2. Even if that is true then there would still be no problem. An algorithm can be tuned to spawn different plants in different general areas of the game world
3. If they just want to save resources they should come out and SAY SO and not pretend that hoarding is a problem. As long as they do NOT do that I will firmly believe that the reason for this change is what they TOLD us it is, the hoarding problem (which is NOT a problem in my eyes, I NEVER had a problem with hoarding, especially since I am the guy who is responsible for it when I am playing the game)
4. Even if some flowers and herbs do not grow in area X and others not in area Y, it doesn't matter. The alchemy system of TW2 had different herbs and monster parts being responsible for the same ingredient slot in a way to provide the player with enough ALTERNATIVES

IMO the system of auto-refilling is even worse than the fact that in TW2 the ingredients were way too many so you never had any shortages because in TW2 you at least still had to brew them whereas now you can just meditate and they magically refill themselves.

I had a little doubt because the auto refil the potions, and I belive that I woted for the TW1 system, but as I thought about it, I started to understand why they trying out this solution. I can totally understand @BlackWolf500 about the role playing stuff, because I do the same thing with the first two games. It is part the ritual before a bigger battle or just regular questing. But how it would work out an open world game? It would all depends on the herbs and the monsters population. In the first two games they have to spawn them every corner, due to the size of the map, in an open world game would be much harder and take way more time if we don't count the merchants. But if the CDPR decide to go with the auto refill potion mechanic I would expect some copmensation in other mechanic which add more depth of the game but in a different place. I could live with that, not to mention that the game will be moddable.
But if I would able choose one mechanic I would choose this one, because it would be the "golden path".

Look, if we have special areas for special herbs, if we have LOTS of monsters in the world (I sure hope so, the easier ones should respawn and drop loot) and if we have, last but not least as a "last resort" kind of thing and as solution for the lazy players the "merchants/herbalists" who sell low level ingredients, then I think that is enough.

Hell, all you have to do is walk in an area, kill some monsters (that drop ingredients) and find 2- 3 herb plants (maybe increase the amount of herbs to loot with each plant). Then you have it.

No problem at all.

Or you go to a merchant

That tea-bag analogy for the new system is very poor since we are talking about infinite auto-refills, presumably without any ingredients. I would actually be fine with it if it worked like real tea-bags.

Herbs and other alchemical ingredients could have repetitive usages, with a degradation property so that every time you meditate you wear the material out in order to auto-refill your stock. So when you finally use it up and the ingredients perish, there would be no more auto-refills and you would need to gather fresh ones. Of course, an option to enable/disable which consumable you want auto-refilled, and using which particular ingredients would be needed for maximum player control. And like diluted tea-bags in real life, they could take it a step further by have diminishing yields for each use, so that you would have a trade off of not having to go around and gather stuff, for weaker versions of the consumables. You can then have skills in the alchemy development tree which gives the ingredients greater durability, which would make sense as your alchemy processes become more efficient with higher expertise.

I would also like to see the return of alcohols as potion bases (as well as consumables), so that the strength of these also affect the strength of the potions. Alcohols could also work with a degradation mechanic or just have a set number of uses per bottle.

I would be perfectly fine with a system like this, especially since the whole thing would actually make logical sense. However, I don't think this is what they're doing. They seem to be shooting for a simple, infinite auto-refilling system without any hassle whatsoever. If that is the case, the gross simplification and the fact that it doesn't make sense would seriously put me off. I did like the two tier potion system mentioned in the interview. That sounds interesting.

This would be a FAR superior solution.

 

[hardom]

Well, they're TESTING it, maybe under so much pressure they changed idea

 

[asume5]

I hope we can at least use potions in the middle of combat, there have been times where i was ambushed by enemies where a potion would have come in handy.

 

[GHOSTMD]

Well, they're TESTING it, maybe under so much pressure they changed idea

I am pretty sure CDPR will listen to this feedback and changes in the system ll be made.

If we get the option for using/not using auto refill all should be fine so far. Even is we have to "farm" herbs all over the maps
wouldn' t be that bad for me.

I rly hope if we get mutagenic potions in W3, that they deliver a constant effect like in TW1... and that we also have to decide
kill or not kill to get this mutagen substance to brew our potion. This was rly nice in TW1 i passed several mutagenic potions
in order to save certain persons in the game I WANT A COME BACK OF THIS!!! definatly.

But it was said here several times ... the TW1 system overall was good and this is the truth... so why they decide to change it...
only because some of the ppl didn t used the potions? ... might be true for TW2 because the potions weren the potions
of TW1 anymore.... but i think most of the ppl used the potions in TW1 they were just to usefull even on normal difficulty.

*shrugs* Lets hope we get a simplified / complex alchemy option here so we can choose for ourself what we get in TW3.

 

[Elegast7]

Got this idea from a Skyrim mod. The problem cdpr said was that player stored their potions because they were afraid to waste it or wanted to save it for the hard battle that never came.
Now what that mod did was degrading the effectiveness of the potion over time. For example after one hour since the creation of the potion it loses 10% of it's effectiveness, after a day 50% or so, etc.
Opinions?

 

[Nihiru]

Got this idea from a Skyrim mod. The problem cdpr said was that player stored their potions because they were afraid to waste it or wanted to save it for the hard battle that never came.
Now what that mod did was degrading the effectiveness of the potion over time. For example after one hour since the creation of the potion it loses 10% of it's effectiveness, after a day 50% or so, etc.
Opinions?

But then people will just hoard the ingredients.

Honestly, I think this whole debacle is a no-win situation.

Here is my contribution to "How could we make this better?"

"Potions" may also be replaced by "Bombs" with similar reasoning.
What if *some* (and I do mean a small *some*) potions refilled with the current system? I'm talking super basic potions (Cat, Swallow, Rook, Tawny Owl as an example) with the *majority* of other potions having strong, unique and interesting effects while requiring the reagents to be gathered for their creation (possibly making several doses of them?).

Here is my reasoning from a lore perspective for having a few potions (the list itself is debatable) refill while others do not. Geralt as a Witcher is going to almost *constantly* need Swallow or Cat, or Tawny Owl or Rook. These are extremely basic potions that could be considered an every day tool in the arsenal of a Witcher. It's logical that Geralt is going to almost always be carrying around the ingredients necessary for their creation. Other potions that are more specialized wouldn't always be accounted for, and thus their reagents would need to be acquired "in the field". Geralt isn't going to carry around the stuff for making Ornithosaur Oil because he isn't always going to be fighting Ornithosaurs.