:rly?:
Why does this remind me of my father-in-law saving and reusing tea bags?
Because..
That is your father in law!
:rly?:
Why does this remind me of my father-in-law saving and reusing tea bags?
A small supply is a few hundred grams. Plenty for lots of cups, each brewed a single time.
Although many teas can be infused twice or more in a single session without becoming weak or stale.
If we're going to start tearing away at gameplay systems based on realism then there wont be any game left. I don't think CDPR is trying to explain this method using a teabag analogy or anything of that sort. It strictly falls down to what they think it a better play mechanic. Its one of the of things (very) many instances where you will need to suspend disbelief or "imagine the gaps".
Sure, we don't know the nitty gritty yet, but it's obvious, even at this stage, that with auto-refilling in place, we won't have full control, or at least the degree of control over the alchemy system we had in the previous installments. And that's a considerable downer, even if it's just a minor thing.
I don't see the point of auto-refilling when the manual preparation, at one's leisure (limited to meditation of course) does exactly the same (with the difference that you have to do it by hand, shock horror) and on top of that gives you the opportunity to change things around (you actually could swap ingredients in The Witcher 2, as long as they still contained the required alchemical component, by the way) and experiment (to a certain degree) in the process.
It'd be literally just two or three mouse clicks more.
Apparently those two or three mouse clicks (or button presses, respectively) are too fucking much these days, and even more so if this goes along with having to read a short text explaining the preparation process during the tutorial (again, shock horror). CDPRED apparently can't be arsed to write the how-to and put it in the game in the first place neither.
You didn't have to do that in The Witcher 1 & 2. Personally I only took and gathered what I needed, once I learned the ropes and knew how much ingredients this potion or that oil required approximately.
And even if you're a kleptomaniac or an obsessive compulsive hoarder, what's wrong with piling things up and carrying them around with you until you hit the weight limit? That's just another way of playing the game. Maybe not the most desirable one, from a developer's perspective, but one a sensible developer supports nonetheless. Trying to inhibit a playstyle just because it's frowned upon and enforcing the 'correct' way to play is something a developer never should do, as far as I'm concerned. That's not 'caring about the player'.
The 'having to think' or the 'strategy' part comes into play when you have to weigh out if you rather go pick another few herbs and prepare a few more potions (or potion charges) or take your chances and engage in a fight with only one or two charges in your Swallow or White Raffard's left. Also adds a another layer of additional challenge, which is never a bad thing.
Why not both? Why not the best of both worlds?
Make some herbs rarer or significantly reduce the regrowth rate WHILE having to pay attention to your stock of ingredients and when and how much to restock. The multiple charges per (re-)created potion take care of not having to gather ingredients all the time. If it's still too often, there are always other resolutions to counter that like upping the amount of charges accordingly (I'd be OK with something ridiculous like 9, for instance).
I'm sorry but 'automatism' ('the performance of actions without conscious thought or intention'), even on such a relatively small scale is still dumbing down maybe not my favourite but most likely one of my future favourite RPGs. It takes away choice which is never a good thing and frankly speaking almost borders on insulting my common sense or intelligence even. It's like someone is telling me I'm not capable of taking responsibility and doing something on my own terms, even if there's only the chance for failure. If I pay attention there'll be no failure.
Yes, it's just a video game, where you don't have to pay attention to regularly take a dump, sleep, eat your vegetables and all that. However the feature of manually taking care of your potion supply was present in the first and the second game, so why suddenly screw around with it in the third game, especially as it essentially revolves around having to click or press a button two or three times more often? Does not compute.
Let me put on the broken record with the 'Immersion' song once more:
I admit it's hard to understand, but there's a sense of accomplishment and 'having earned something' to be found if you ventured out and gathered those herbs or slew some creatures for ingredients and then being able to prepare the potion yourself while having the opportunity to consider switching out ingredients or alcohol bases for other ones beforehand. Also helps with connecting or identifying with your personal iteration of Geralt of Rivia, ultimately resulting in a more immersive experience.
Cutting this and replacing it with an automatism only to save a couple of mouse clicks or button presses?
Completely unnecessary, as far as I'm concerned.
Believe me, I'm not having a go at a gameplay system based on realism, I completely respect that concessions must be made for Gameplay.
However in both TW1 & TW2 you've got Alchemy systems that don't trade-in the lore/realism aspects and yet still have a solid system (Couple of minor problem aside, that could be easily fixed). You CAN have the best of both worlds, but this new system is completely trading in one for (possibly, we don't actually know if it'll improve anything) the other. Which is just trashing one aspect (Arguably just as important for some people) to make another better, I just don't think it's very good design, because good design would find a balanced solution (Much like how TW2 simplified TW1's alchemy but the system still satisfied both Gameplay & "Immersion" - aside from short potion lengths / potion timers ticking in cutscenes which would be surely easily fixed).
In TW3 you acquire ingredients from completing quests and exploring specific areas of the world
Well I couldn't disagree more in regards to TW2's alchemy, and I disagree in general.
TW3's way of obtaining ingredients is absolutely no different. You're still just out in the environment picking herbs that you see. The only difference would be that some rare herbs might have specific locations and require you to go out and explore/find that location, but even then you can't say that kind of mechanic didn't exist in TW2 because essentially that's what Ostmurk was (And that's probably what the idea is coming from in the first place). If you want to call TW2's herb gathering "mindless click spam in the environment", I don't see how TW3 is any different at all, besides the aforementioned rare possibility.
All that's said however, I'm still interested to see how the system actually works in-depth and in greater detail. I'm going to learn to live with it, and I'm not going to stop my "immersion hurt" from getting in the way of still delving into and unlocking any potential the new alchemy system has. If it's better for gameplay, then great and perhaps in regards to gameplay interaction this might be the best alchemy system yet, but it doesn't change how at its core I dislike the auto-refill design.
I guess really what makes it that much more frustrating for me is because the system is so close to being perfect, all I want is just the ability to actually brew my own shit, when I want & how much I want because that's a big part of what "makes" the alchemy system for me, and I guess for that I'll be waiting patiently for mods (Or just give it a shot myself).
I don't understand what the auto-refill system is trying to achieve. What's the point? Who in their right mind played through TW1&2 and thought to themselves: "boy, the alchemy system sucks. I wish the potions would materialize in my inventory out of thin air!"
Seems to me like they are overhauling a system that didn't need much fixing, and at this point, I only see the downsides.
The more I hear about this system the less it interest me.
"Once you have made the potion, it's yours"
So once you have "all" the potions, you can just stop gathering ingredients and just need to keep a large stock of alcohol.
I don't want to play Geralt as drunk as a skunk!
Or perhaps if they give him the fighting skill of the "Drunken man". (sarcasm)
Alchemy without ingredients, can you still call this Alchemy?
In addition to this, each potion will probably have 3 or more versions with upgrades required in each stage, so I dont think you'll ever be able to collect all potions, at worst they'll have one upgrade, which is still enough to keep you occupied a lot.
I very much approve of alcohol making a return to the alchemy system but I can't say that I'm very fond of the way it's been abused and from what I can tell reduced to something like a mere catalyst for an automatic procedure doing all the work for you.To clarify. Auto-refilling is still there as long as you have the base for each elixir, which is alcohol, it will refill when meditating. You will, however, require ingredients to craft an unknown potion or a better version of the one you already know. There will also be stronger elixirs based on mutagens which will be harder to craft and will require lots of ingredients (their effects will last longer though).
Nothing that an exhaustive in-game tutorial couldn't bring across, in case their main concern was to not overwhelm Average Joe with 'all the things you can do'. If Average Joe can't be arsed to read a couple of lines explaining the how and why then it's his fault when he struggles later on in the game because he forgot to brew or re-brew enough potions respectively. That's also what hints during the (re-)loading process usually are for:
'Struggling with overcoming an enemy? Be sure to prepare enough potions the next time you're meditating before engaging the enemy again.'
Simplifying or let's call it for what it is, dumbing down a system with the lowest common denominator in mind is something that's sad to see CDPRED succumbing to, even if it's just a minor thing. Not providing an alternative makes it even sadder.
And again, hoarding potions or spamming them can be easily countered through a plethora of ways, be it cooldowns, stricter toxicity limits, even more charges per potion, slower regrowth rates of ingredients, etc. The thread is choke-full of them.
The multiple charges per (re-)created potion take care of not having to gather ingredients all the time. If it's still too often, there are always other resolutions to counter that like upping the amount of charges accordingly (I'd be OK with something ridiculous like 9, for instance).
However in both TW1 & TW2 you've got Alchemy systems that don't trade-in the lore/realism aspects and yet still have a solid system (Couple of minor problem aside, that could be easily fixed). You CAN have the best of both worlds, but this new system is completely trading in one for (possibly, we don't actually know if it'll improve anything) the other. Which is just trashing one aspect (Arguably just as important for some people) to make another better, I just don't think it's very good design, because good design would find a balanced solution (Much like how TW2 simplified TW1's alchemy but the system still satisfied both Gameplay & "Immersion" - aside from short potion lengths / potion timers ticking in cutscenes which would be surely easily fixed).
How to make it more "special"? Make stronger potions require ingredients that are very rare and can only be found in special places or by killing special monsters.
For all I care you can make the "uses" of those potions high enough so you do NOT have to go out every 3 - 4 hours to search for ingredients, maybe make it so that you have to use less ingredients if you still have "uses" of the potion left and that way you can also stretch the time until you have to collect again.
Imagine you need 4x X, 2xY and 2xZ to brew a potion, and a plant might give you between 1 and 5 of each herb. Once you made the potion, and if you do not use all of it's uses, you can meditate and "refill if for 1/2 or 1/3 of the ingredients. If you have 3 - 6 uses (hell I'm even okay with 10 uses in such a big game as TW3), then you do not have to go collect herbs for HOURS.
Of course special potions and oils which help against SPECIFIC foes, or stronger potions and oils will be harder to make since the ingredients are rare and so you have a combination of the "rare ingredients"-system, a "potion-uses" system, a "refill"-system that reduced ingredients if you use the potions clever and an actual system that has you collect ingredients and make potions. Hell, for all I care make the numbers of "uses" and the number of picked up herbs per plant ridiculously high and the number of ingredients needed in potions ridiculously low, but just give me any king of ingredient gathering and potion brewing system BEYOND the "use it one time then it auto-refills upon meditation and having alcohol" (or "making placebos" as I would call it).
Considering TW3 is 100 hours there would have to be lots of potions sorts (way more than in TW1 or TW2) and a hell of a lot upgrade levels for each of them to keep me occupied even 1/4 in the game, aside from the 1 or 2 potions that require you to kill a high level monster maybe.
It depends, at first thought you would likely need twice the amount of potions in TW1 or more, but remember that "acquiring" each potion for the first time will probably take you double or triple the time that it took you in the previous games, where you walked 5 meters, and you could make a potion, and in this game you will have to go to who knows where, fight awful things which first naturally require you to be ready for them, find the places first of course, etc.
Its a pretty natural transition, in the first games chapters artificially limited what potions you could craft, in TW3 there are no chapters so places are limited instead by story events, and quests, and of course high level enemies and just exploring a lot, I dont know how they did it but to me it seems very easy to expect a similar level of density per hours of game time regarding potions.
Pressing a button to brew a potion doesn't make you a pro RPG player, it's just a manual task. What will be interesting is experimenting with combining the ingredients to create various potions, as well as finding those rare ingredients.
It would be interesting if the rare ingredient you find will be enough for creating only one special potion, but you have the recipes for 3 rare potions that use it, thus making you decide which one to create and not just be able create all of them
To me that will add depth to the system, not just having to constantly press the gather button while going for a straw through the country side.
After all the game is about choices and trade offs, making you decisions count or suffering the consequences. Deciding whether I should create 5 or 10 potions from the vast pool of ingredients that I have, does not contribute to that.
IMO there is nothing natural in that transition, it all culminates in the fact that I need double or triple the time to even gather everything to make a potion (which would annoy the hell out of me, since walking around not being able to brew ANY potion is way more annoying IMO then walking around the same amount of time being able to brew some "low-level" potions and being able to brew the high-level potions as "final reward" since the ingredients are harder to find, put since you pick up enough to make other potions along the way the journey and time are not that hard and don't feel that wasted IMO.
I mean come on. It's like trying to find collectibles. If potion ingredients are really that rare I do not know if I even bother finding all of them, since I will probably be fine with a few of them. If there would be more powerful potions which are harder to find the ingredients for ALONGSIDE of potions of which the ingredients are easier to find in a system where there is NO auto-refill but just a REDUCTION OF INGREDIENT NUMBERS if you do not use all of the "potion uses" (would even add some strategy in the usage of potions) then I would have both components I need, short-time occupation (low-level potions) and long-time motivation (powerful potions). The way it is now I will probably just collect 2 or 3 sets of ingredients for potions and then be done with it. I don't want to search 3 hours to get 1 potion together, sorry.
It is a COMPLETELY wrong distribution of time resources, considering you will be occupied for HOURS just for this simple task of getting a potion toghether just to be left without having to do ANYTHING in that regard once you found the potion. Instead of spreading those 2 - 3 hours of finding ingredients we will need no matter the system across 10 hours of gameplay where we find herbs alongside making quests and other stuff, you do concentrate those 2 - 3 hours on one place an tell the player "okay, your search for 2 - 3 hours to get a potion, THEN you go make your quest". That way the search for ingredients becomes way more apparent to the player and the player realizes WAY MORE that he is wasting his times getting potions ingredients.And you do that instead of occupying the mind of the player by feeding him the ingredients gathering bit-by-bit stretched through (and/or over) a lot of gameplay hours. I think this (latter) approach would make way more sense and distract the player more from the fact that what he is doing is a totally tedious task. Because no matter which system, he IS doing a tedious task by searching for potion ingredients, the difference is in the system you HAVE this tedious task is concentrated on a very dense area within the players playing time while in the system(s) a lot of us would prefer you would have to do the tedious task more often, but it would be spread out a lot more across the playing time.
1. If you have rare handcrafted ingredients and a set potion upgrade system there is not a lot of experimenting except maybe applying different "additional ingredients" for potion upgrades having different effects. Beyond that we will brew following a recipe anyway
2. Yea it is a manual task and takes no skill, but it adds to the immersion, the role-playing and the preparation aspect of the game, an aspect I absolutely LOVED about the Witcher despite the mediocre alchemy system of TW2.
Which would actively make 2 of those potions completely redundant.
Oh god, if you are so lazy, for all I care we do not have to click on those straws, for all I care you can just "auto-gather" those ingredients if you are really too lazy or find it too annoying to click to loot (although I ask myself then why do you play RPGs where this happens basically all the time?), or have the herbs be buy-able at vendors/herbalists (the low level herbs).
But why should I make 10 if I only need 5? Why should I re-create (or refill) a potion if I do never need it because I do not like it's effects? Why should I carry it around in the first place? Why should I have an equally difficult fight when not preparing (because all potions auto-refill anyway if I have enough alcohol in my inventory) then if I do actively prepare (in a system where there is no auto-refill, I have to make the potions I think I will need and not make those I think I will not need, hell if it is the system I talked about on the last page where you have to use less ingredients if you do NOT use all "uses" of a potion then it even adds a strategic element "Do I take all of those uses in the fight or can I save one so I do not have to gather ingredients so soon?").
And YES, it changes how I perceive and experience the game.
Hmm maybe we are imagining the system differently.
In my opinion, what CDPR are going to do, is give you the more basic and weak potions easily, some at the start of the game/tutorial, some by putting ingredients relatively easy to find in most places. So far it plays like TW1 and TW2, but then the better ones or upgrades are found while you do quests and go check for Points of Interest in the landscape.
I'm not sure I get why would you feel spending double or triple the time to find ingredients annoying, if you will actually just be playing the game during that time, you are not just running aimlessly. I'd prefer to explore interesting locations, experience the wilderness, its animals, the monsters, and do quests, rather than have to specifically interrupt every other possible gameplay activity, just for walking a lot and clicking.
I also don't think it will be like finding collectibles at all, collectibles in open world games have the common characteristic of:
1) They dont aid you in any way, or barely. So finding them or not is entirely trivial concerning gameplay.
2) Because of the reason above, they are usually put in the most annoying and hidden places of the maps, because the only possible "value" they have is that of being an obsessive player that wants to "collect" content, no matter if its fun doing it or not, and that makes those players go to all places of the game, and spend time.
These things dont apply to ingredients and recipes, potions are a key integral part of the witcher gameplay, so you can expect everything to appear in places where the player will supposedly go at some point for some reason (quest, POI, monster hunting, etc), thats the complete opposite of collectibles, where the places the player goes through are intentionally avoided so they can be hidden more effectively.
In my opinion we're going to get something like "there would be more powerful potions which are harder to find the ingredients for ALONGSIDE of potions of which the ingredients are easier to find", and here's where I think the upgrade thing kind of helps fill your short/mid/long term objectives, all potions will have a minimal of two ingredients sets, possibly two recipes as well, there's plenty of stuff to cover our needs if they organize it properly, and I haven't seen a sign showing they wont do so. You probably wont specifically search for each potion for 3 hours, the idea is that along the way there is the actual core gameplay of the witcher games, not just running around. In TW1 and TW2 we were pretty much picking up herbs for 3 hours just so that we could have enough of them, because potions didnt refill for example, and there was certainly no fun challenge in doing that, all of them were laying there in the ground.
We also shouldn't forget about the ingredients taken out of killed monsters, which now with monster hunting and many more species will likely play a bigger role in potion making.
"It is a COMPLETELY wrong distribution of time resources, considering you will be occupied for HOURS just for this simple task of getting a potion toghether" I seriously doubt this is how its going to be, it wouldn't make sense, its a worst-case scenario. They are probably going to use ingredients more like rewards for the more alluring gameplay aspects of the game, like i said, exploring, POIs, hunting animals and monsters, solving quests, reaching secret hideouts and caves with clues or things like that. You will do that because of their inherent value, and then while doing them you find new valuable ingredients or recipes. Its not like you forget about the whole game and say "alright lets stop "playing" to go gather herbs for a while", that makes no sense, its as if they would be trying to ruin the game on purpose, more importantly it doesnt give them any benefit, I doubt its like that.
I think we generally agree on what we want or think its a good idea, but I'm not seeing just why you think all of those horrible implementations are the more probable result. I understand your points on why they suck, but my point is it doesn't seem to be that's the way the game is going to be, its unreasonable when we analyze its disadvantages and advantages.
In TW3 its almost sure to me you wont even be able to do this, what POIs you see and explore, what quests, what monsters you can take on, those things are what will decide what potions you make more or less, not your will to be bored walking for 3 hours.
We need more info to discuss this well however, like you always say if I'm not mistaken, we need some kind of video or dev diary explaining things in detail, most of our posts are speculation sadly :/