The Witcher 3 Alchemy System

+

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
And why does potion G always refill though I will never use it? Why can't I decide what ingredients to gather or buy and what potions to brew instead of it refilling FOR ME all the time?

It wont. Only the potions you have "equipped" will refill, you decide which two to refill by equipping them in your potion slots.

Here are the facts stated:

- You have to collect ingredients for the first time of brewing a potion
- Potions will require more material than in previous games
- Ingredients are hard to find
- Potions will auto-refill during meditation after you brew them one time if you have the base alcohol in your inventory
- There is no option to NOT auto-refill the potions during meditation and just gather the ingredients

How does that sound to you? I tell you how it sounds to me:

- It will take long to gather the ingredients for one potion. You probably have to travel a lot and go to certain locations, maybe ask people out (something like mini-quests)
- Once I got the potion I have it forever basically. That does eliminate any interactive or tactical aspect from potions
- After I collected all potions and their upgrades I will never have to do anything, I will just have to meditate and the potions will all be available in my inventory for myself to choose from

- All they've said is that it is "harder to get a potion" relative to the first two games, that does not mean that every potion will require hours of ingredient gathering to complete.

- You will have to choose which two potions you have equipped at a given time. You will have to balance the frequency of their use against whatever passive toxicity you have from mutagens. Also, you only have 3 uses of each during an encounter so you have to be smart not to waste them. The tactical use of potions is arguably better than ever.
 
That is SO not what they said.
Their exact words were that we will only have to search for ingredients once and then the potions will auto-refill with while meditating as long as we have alcohol in our inventory. And to make it more "interesting" potion ingredients will be harder to find and encourage exploration.

They did not separate between low level and high level potions, they did NEVER say "but the low level potion ingredients are easy to find, they are right around the corner. It would also make no sense whatsoever in the system they have since if you only need and ingredient 1 time to brew a potion it would be a waste of time to have herbs around every corner. Which in turn means certain ingredients will be found in certain handcrafted location and only there, which means you have to travel a lot and need a lot of time to gather all the ingredients for one potion.

WOULD the ingredients be around everywhere then there would be NO REASON whatsoever to even have an auto-refill and there would be no reason NOT to use any of our ideas for an alchemy system, considering they planted herbs all around the areas anyway.



Yeah but here is the difference.

If potion ingredients are everywhere around you and easy to find then you do quests, hunt monsters, explore and gather the stuff alongside that. If ingredients are RARE to find and you only need them once (maybe even being available only in one region or location or in a few across the big map) then you will HAVE to run around and search for those ingredients if you WANT the potion. And if you are not willing to do that you will probably ignore the alchemy system altogether because you say "you know what, if I happen to stumble upon it, fine, but if not I just do it without potions".
IMO that discourages using potions and alchemy rather than encouraging it.



But CDPR stated the goal is to make the ingredients "hard to find". Sorry, but an ingredient I spend hours searching for just to have to search another 2 or 3 ingredients to get 1 potion that might or might not help me in the end because maybe I do not like or do not need it's effect is almost useless to me.



Okay, but in this case they are TOO EASY to find, and if they are too easy to find AND have AUTO-REFILL at the same time I will probably have collected all potions in no time and will not ever use alchemy again later in the game, unless there are a RIDICULOUS amount of different potions and upgrade levels.



I wouldn't even mind the "easy" / "low level" / "basic" potions auto-refilling if the "upgraded" potions would need ingredients EVERY time, but the way they described it MULTIPLE times is that you have auto-refill for ALL potions.

Here are the facts stated:

- You have to collect ingredients for the first time of brewing a potion
- Potions will require more material than in previous games
- Ingredients are hard to find
- Potions will auto-refill during meditation after you brew them one time if you have the base alcohol in your inventory
- There is no option to NOT auto-refill the potions during meditation and just gather the ingredients

How does that sound to you? I tell you how it sounds to me:

- It will take long to gather the ingredients for one potion. You probably have to travel a lot and go to certain locations, maybe ask people out (something like mini-quests)
- Once I got the potion I have it forever basically. That does eliminate any interactive or tactical aspect from potions
- After I collected all potions and their upgrades I will never have to do anything, I will just have to meditate and the potions will all be available in my inventory for myself to choose from



The way I see it we will either get VERY LITTLE out of killed monsters, sometimes even nothing (if the monster is available in bigger numbers in the world) or we will sell a lot of those monster parts for coin, because if I only need a certain amount of material for brewing a potion and afterwards don't need it anymore that means that once I brewed the one or two potions the monster parts are needed for looting them becomes basically useless.



Yeah but for that they would need a balance between "potions with easy to find ingredients that have to be refilled" and "powerful potions with very hard to find ingredients or unique ingredients that will be auto-refilled then".
But I don't see the fun in that. Do it once and you have it forever? I mean come on, the powerful potions are supposed to be a special reward BECAUSE they are rare, if I can make (auto-refill) as many powerful potions as I can with low level potions I will of course 90% of the time take the powerful potions. In other RPGs it at least makes sense. More powerful potions? Hard to gather ingredients, but if you brew them you get a few more uses than for the "low level" ones, but use them wisely. Easy to gather ingredients, but if you brew them you get a few less "uses" and you have to refill them more often, but you can acquire them so fast and easy that it won't even bother you (often you even have too many ingredients for them).

I mean it makes no sense. Just auto-refill all? NO reward for me. It's like learning a spell in an MMO or acquiring a skill, that way you might as well unlock specific potions in the alchemy Witcher skill tree, that is ridiculous IMO, not only in terms of the actual system, but also a huge bummer for immersion, considering TW1 and TW2 handled this COMPLETELY different.



But what else can we do if we do NOT get more information? We asked for an update multiple times, all the developers always had to say is a short general summary of the system without going into any detail, and the unwillingness of the developers to go into detail as well as the fact that most statements sounded the exact same way, pointing in the very direction I and other people here think the system will be makes my theory the best bet. Because even if I speculate a little bit here and there (though I am trying to remain close to the facts and make my conclusions based on that) the things you are saying about how you think the system will be and that it does not all have to be the way we said it is an even BIGGER speculation than what I and some others concluded from the facts.



But then the game becomes less dynamic. Why do I have to use potions C to beat monster X? Why was potion B only introduced to me later on and the ingredients are only available in another region when what I actually wanted to to is fight monster X with potion B instead of C because I think potions B benefited my current state of skills better than potions C, even if potion C might objectively be better for monster X and/or fit better into the region.

And why does potion G always refill though I will never use it? Why can't I decide what ingredients to gather or buy and what potions to brew instead of it refilling FOR ME all the time?

Why do I never do any potion brewing or ingredient gathering 70 hours in the game because I have gathered all the potions and possible upgrades?

Or to ask other questions.
On the one hand: Why do I need to go out searching a ton of time to get the potion I want?
On the other hand: Why are all the ingredients just along my way/path and I do not have to do much to get the potions other than following my questline and afterwards it does not even need me to REFILL the potions by gathering ingredients again, no it does that for me too (making the alchemy system almost non-existent)



Sorry but people asked for this months on end, it came up over and over again and all we get from the devs regarding this system is a very short summary and silence upon the request of video material or details.

(I hope you like reading, sorry :))
I know thats not what they said lol, read "In my opinion, what CDPR are going to do...", and I also know what they did said actually.

The separation from low level or high level potion making is something that i consider very probable and what makes more sense in the system to me, watch the gameplay part for example where Geralt walks in the Nilfgaard camp, there is a plant right there, in the most extremely easy way to get it., that leads me even more to believe we will have potions that are easier and faster to acquire/upgrade, and some that are more difficult. "if you only need and ingredient 1 time to brew a potion it would be a waste of time to have herbs around every corner." thats correct but just in solitude, without a context, it would be extremely easy to think of mechanics that keep easy to gather ingredients relevant. Example: requiring many more plants than before for a potions, 5 or 6 of each type, common ingredients that are found in recipes for many potions, ingredients with secondary uses just like nigredo, rubedo, in TW1, requirement of herbs for many upgraded potions, and of course the discussed possible system where we need more ingredients every time we want to drink an upgraded version, bombs and traps making can be involved as well.
Anyway point is that that if you have common plants laying around, which is how it seems to be a bit, and you have autorefill, then there has to be some other reason to have them there, or it wouldnt make sense, and as a speculator thats not an acceptable answer to me, that they are doing something that gives them no benefit with no reason and arguments. One reason could be for immersion and believability of the world, but I seriously doubt its just for that.. Also when Geralt rides with vesemir you can see many easy to gather plants in the minimap, and in the part when geralt first calls his horse in the video.

"WOULD the ingredients be around everywhere then there would be NO REASON whatsoever to even have an auto-refill", there are actually some reasons that are plausible and would make sense, for example, re filling your potions AKA having more of them available for use, is nothing but one need that could be related to picking up herbs, its the one we knew so far in the previous games. Since this time the potions autorefill, because they wanted players to use them a lot, my suspicion is that they want a shift, like for example making "not gathering herbs" to mean not having extra benefits or better potions, instead of meaning not having any potions at all, thats just one idea that makes total sense, because there potions would NOT be a necessity linked to grinding/timewasting away from actually playings quests, and so the gathering of herbs is approached as an optional benefit, rather than a limiting mandatory job you need to even have potions which is supposed to be a bigger part of the game, thats a classic game design tactic. There are other uses too for many ingredients like I said before, I think you have to try to think their relationship with making potions as something not so "written in stone", potion making has just been delegated to meditating and alcohol, ok, then what other things could they make ingredients useful for? many many.

I understand that difference you mean in the second reply, but it doesnt necessarily have to be like that, number 1) many ingredients will always mean more gathering/walking than less ingredients, its a very short time waste however so I dont have much of a problem with it, but reducing it could end up being positive to go and do other more interesting things. Number 2) "If ingredients are RARE to find and you only need them once (maybe even being available only in one region or location or in a few across the big map) then you will HAVE to run around and search for those ingredients if you WANT the potion" this is nothing but a mere possibility, just like a lot of what we are discussing sadly (cause CDPR not talking doesnt help).
Searching for a herb, if its RARE, probably will end up in having to go to a specific place, one thats more than just "land", one where a quest event happens, where a monster lives, etc, and if that happens, searching specifically for the ingredient is now irrelevant. How you find an ingredient can vary greatly, and I think thats what CDPR intend to do. change from having to go into "herb searching mode" for instead making herb finding an accidental/side-objective-like result of playing quests and other types of adventures. This decision would make herb finding more integral to the core gameplay naturally, if its implemented.
"you know what, if I happen to stumble upon it, fine, but if not I just do it without potions", thats PART of what I think its their idea, if you stumble upon it, great, you got new herbs, if not, then you just keep playing the game with the potions you have or go look for POIs or sidequests or monster hunting for more ingredients. I think they are trying to actively eliminate "specifically just walking and clicking" as a "strategy" to find ingredients, and replacing it with "just go on playing the game".

Now if this encourages potion use or not can be seen in different ways, on one hand I agree with you that integrating potion making with core gameplay can make it seem less of a "stand-alone" system in itself, so thats there. On the other hand, people dont play TW games to make potions, they play them to fight awesome monsters, discover stories, explore interesting locations and so on, and if in TW3, all of that I just said, becomes some sort of a synonymous for also having herbs and potions, it would really really encourage people to use them. Combining this with autorefill which makes sure you can always have potions to use, pretty much all "excuses" a player can have to not use potions is more or less eliminated now.
In any case, im not too worried about encouraging methods, TW3's director clearly stated he wants alchemy to matter more and be used more this time around, and if he was willing to make infinite potions an actual implemented mechanic, then its clear nothing will stop them from trying to reach that goal, one way or the other, the bad part being they dont explain to us exactly how.

"But CDPR stated the goal is to make the ingredients "hard to find"" yes thats true but from there to "collectibles", there's a very big gap in my opinion, and just like TW games, its not just made of shades of gray, its also non-linear, meaning, it can be harder or easier in different ways and aspects, and all of them combined differently too. So this little part is a lot about interpretation, If you care about mine, well, I "sense" what they meant is that the ingredients will be harder to find than in TW1/2, in those previous games ingredients were so easy to find it basically had zero difficulty, so im thinking they will be combined with questing and monster hunting like I said, exploring Points of Interests and the like, not necessarily go all the other way around to collectibles level of bs hiding.
But its all fair possibilities, and I just personally dont think we will get something completely opposite to that of the previous witcher games, they might be a bit harder to locate, have some obstacles in the way, (all of which are supposed to be fun btw), but I dont think they'll appear in totally illogical bs places that you can only find because you accidentally stumbled upon them. Attractive sights, vistas, signs will likely make them much easier to find that what you think.

"but in this case they are TOO EASY to find, and if they are too easy to find AND have AUTO-REFILL at the same time I will probably have collected all potions in no time and will not ever use alchemy again later in the game, unless there are a RIDICULOUS amount of different potions and upgrade levels."
hehe yeah i get you, but isn't this a bit of a "fatalist" example?, I mean it could totally happen, but so many things would have to be just plain wrong and make no sense for a situation like this to end up in the game. If finding a herb for example is TOO EASY or not, will be decided by where is the difficulty supposed to be, and how is that approached. In a plant thats supposed to be hard to find its location, it will likely NOT be too close to other interests and activities, cause thats the point, it might not have monsters guarding it for example, but thats ok, it wasnt about combat difficulty.
Another ingredient might be close to a place you go through while playing normal, BUT, it has a high level monster near it, or the whole quests/activities that are supposed to put you close to its location are already hard to complete in the first place. There are many possibilities and a good solution comes a lot to what type of player are you.
I sort of like to search for a bit just looking around, in a forest for example, thats ok, but I'd like much more if the main difficulty of getting an ingredient would be about monster hunting, quest solving, lore understanding, and other skills. Other players like to search really hard (like for collectibles), so I dont know, my point is that ultimately I think if finding the herbs will be too easy or too hard will depend on what you prefer to "fight against", monsters? clues? information? the environment? We dont have an answer from CDPR, but to speculate, in favor of balance and variety, I think they will include all types of challenge and make them replace each other, like in the example i gave you, hard to find but easy to get, easy to find but hard to get, etc.

I wouldn't even mind the "easy" / "low level" / "basic" potions auto-refilling if the "upgraded" potions would need ingredients EVERY time
yeah i agree, aside from my current ignorance about the system in detail, this would kind-of sound like a good thing for now.

Yeah i think those are facts i know about so far, however the last one is kind of logical, because if ingredients are hard to find and thought for autorefilling, you wouldnt have enough for playing the game without autorefill, not much to do about that option, even if it would be nice, it'd require a major redesign.

- It will take long to gather the ingredients for one potion. You probably have to travel a lot and go to certain locations, maybe ask people out (something like mini-quests)
- Once I got the potion I have it forever basically. That does eliminate any interactive or tactical aspect from potions
- After I collected all potions and their upgrades I will never have to do anything, I will just have to meditate and the potions will all be available in my inventory for myself to choose from

I agree but the interactive and tactical aspects might not be actually eliminated, but rather switched. For example, if now i can just "collect" potions and make sure i have them after that in my inventory, it means that the strategical approach has switched focus, instead of having to think first what potions i might need or not, which ones I like or think are good, just so that I can decide gathering the ingredients, removing that, means we can choose more precisely and from a greater variety according to each battle/combat-encounter, this is another classic game design tactic, you "alleviate" one side, to increase strategical thinking in the other. Instead of making the big important "potion-choose" decisions before we gather the ingredients to craft them, we make the important decisions closer to combat, thus allowing more tactical options, since we will have more potions to choose from available, and we wont have to stick with just what we crafted that particular time.
Its a very subjective thing to judge, I think if they do it properly, there is a good balance that can be reached, but they can also screw it up. I personally like to have some strategy in both "sides", the one where you think about crafting them and the one when you think about using them, both limit each other like i said before however. If they make potion upgrades something constant and active, that can allow us to choice from many potions, but be punished/rewarded depending which ones we collected ingredients to upgrade in the first place, its not a bad idea.
There are other possibilities but this is where i feel I start to REALLY have just too little info about detailed statistics and aspects of the game to tell. It can go either way, however im sure of one thing at least, a good satisfying result in terms of strategy is VERY possible with the facts they stated so far, so lets keep our fingers crossed.

The way I see it we will either get VERY LITTLE out of killed monsters, sometimes even nothing (if the monster is available in bigger numbers in the world) or we will sell a lot of those monster parts for coin, because if I only need a certain amount of material for brewing a potion and afterwards don't need it anymore that means that once I brewed the one or two potions the monster parts are needed for looting them becomes basically useless.
Yeah I dont have much else to say about this, it all depends on what they want to do with ingredients in general and with potion progression. If they have many uses for ingredients this time such as the ones i mentioned above in other paragraphs, small monsters could continue to give ingredients like in TW2 more or less, and the system would work in theory or make sense. However, what i think is that monster hunting, and having very special ingredients hidden inside these special monsters, is a general idea that does indeed fit with everything they said so far, making ingredients less eeded in big amounts, so that they become more unique and rare. I marked the word need because not needing them for making potions does not mean you wont need them for being very powerful or having a good chance in hard mode.

Yeah but for that they would need a balance between "potions with easy to find ingredients that have to be refilled" and "powerful potions with very hard to find ingredients or unique ingredients that will be auto-refilled then".
But I don't see the fun in that. Do it once and you have it forever? I mean come on, the powerful potions are supposed to be a special reward BECAUSE they are rare, if I can make (auto-refill) as many powerful potions as I can with low level potions I will of course 90% of the time take the powerful potions. In other RPGs it at least makes sense. More powerful potions? Hard to gather ingredients, but if you brew them you get a few more uses than for the "low level" ones, but use them wisely. Easy to gather ingredients, but if you brew them you get a few less "uses" and you have to refill them more often, but you can acquire them so fast and easy that it won't even bother you (often you even have too many ingredients for them).

This is a very valid concern, but the context has to be "appropriate" for it to be a real problem in the end. Because lets investigate a few possible alternative contexts for example:

If they decided to try to make potions more like tools, like non-linear choices and tools, that would be a BIG point in favor of auto refill for everything. Part of the interesting thing about the potions of TW1 and TW2 was to me, that they had negative effects, and there was toxicity to keep in mind, this made it so potions weren't just better than others, they were different, they were different tools good for different jobs, and bad for others. In TW2 if you develop alchemy a lot this awesome non-linearity is sadly destroyed, because the most powerful potions have so little negative effects there is no point in taking the lesser but "healthier" ones. But in an ideal system, it can work wonders, if in TW3 the high level potions are just a very special combination of pros and cons, those potions can still be ignored in favor of "lesser" ones that do the job and hurt you less, or some low tox potions that let you combine more of them for more rare combinations of effects, whereas taking one of the rare higher potions could totally fill your tox bar, or require lots of alcohol, or a very special alcohol, or quite simply offer such a specific benefit, that you need to be 100% certain of what monster you're going to fight, otherwise it will be a waste and a bad non-cost-effective tactical decision.
About balancing solutions we could be talking forever, but the point is clear, if a non-linear approach is in place, and its well made, most potions will be useful and valuable, albeit with different degrees of demand. (a lesser one can be very valuable because it helps you fight very recurrent types of enemies, but a higher one can be useful, because its THE one you really need to beat a special monster, for instance.)

Another possibility is that they want what I said before about increasing choice and options for each combat, and reducing it when you have to at best predict what you'll need. Making special potions autorefill, allows you to use them much more often, and so it makes them more valuable, can there be balancing problems? sure, but thats what i addressed in the paragraph above. The important thing becomes not if you want to embark on the journey of crafting it, but rather to use it precisely when you need it and when its appropriate, and to use it creatively, its a much more relevant and present tactical option.

The alcohol might be way more important than what it was before, since its now the only thing you have to get constantly, there might be different bases you can get, allowing some potions or not, they might influence the strength of the potions, if you can upgrade them, and diffferent potions might need different amounts to auto refill, its all a mystery for now but its a very present possibility, and that could easily balance a game with all potions autorefilling their ingredients, I suspect they included alcohol of course by an important reason, so we'll have to see what it ends up like.

But what else can we do if we do NOT get more information? We asked for an update multiple times, all the developers always had to say is a short general summary of the system without going into any detail, and the unwillingness of the developers to go into detail as well as the fact that most statements sounded the exact same way, pointing in the very direction I and other people here think the system will be makes my theory the best bet. Because even if I speculate a little bit here and there (though I am trying to remain close to the facts and make my conclusions based on that) the things you are saying about how you think the system will be and that it does not all have to be the way we said it is an even BIGGER speculation than what I and some others concluded from the facts

I absolutely agree here, we have to act like this because of them. One thing though, remember something, a system within a game is tightly integrated with all other systems and their mechanics, this means that if one can only speculate close to the few facts given like you do, it will inevitably end up in a "worst case scenario" because precisely, we were given too little facts.
If a system is composed of 10 things for example, and we get described only 2 of them, and we talk very closely about those 2 changes and what they mean for the game, we are discussing a flawed unrealistic system where we take for granted 2 true facts, but speculate the other 8 will remain the same as they were in the previous system, that dissonance will always end up in a frankenstein monster with terrible balance problems, many of what you mention here. No wonder autorefilling sounds terrible, if we theorize it will be paired with the other 9 parts of TW1/2's alchemy system indeed it will be terrible, but my point is that that is unrealistic and illogical imo. I think its illogical to think they would just change one part, and forget about everything else as if a game wasnt a combination of mechanics working together, as if you can add or take anything you want and keep the rest the same.

This is why I do what you said I do, and you're totally correct, I speculate A LOT, but in ways that i think make sense, because the lack of speculation is also speculation but in a different way/direction , thats what i meant above. If I dont speculate that they will build the game intelligently around things like autorefilling, I am speculating they WONT do so, and thus that they will not give a crap about the game and that they design it blindly. Considering its CDPR, thats more unlikely than the former.
If we talk about Ubisoft for example, who are know to copy and paste mechanics and stuff no matter where they come from and why they worked in other games, and they copy them without building a coherent game system, ok, in that case the speculation where they add the 2 facts we know and keep the other 8 as they are becomes more probable, it makes more sense. Although even with Ubisoft its treating them a bit too much like idiots.
This is just a difference of approaches, If we just talk about the little info we get and barely try to touch other parts of the game, we will end up with a bad result, its logical, thats why i try to stop and say "ok we know the game has X, so what would they do that makes sense in order to make X work?, lets see, are there good chances or bad ones, good implementations or bad one, what methods...". The one thing our ways have in common is that they are born out of no "acceptable" amount of facts and info, so we can be (and probably are) both wrong, not our fault though.

But then the game becomes less dynamic. Why do I have to use potions C to beat monster X? Why was potion B only introduced to me later on and the ingredients are only available in another region when what I actually wanted to to is fight monster X with potion B instead of C because I think potions B benefited my current state of skills better than potions C, even if potion C might objectively be better for monster X and/or fit better into the region.

If it becomes less dynamic depends on implementation, thats why I said the thing sounds sort of like a natural transition from TW2's limitations. In TW2 the system forbid you from doing some of those things you mention, but with chapters, specific vendors, locations you are locked in and cant return too, etc., that could now be translated into monster levels and quests you complete and so on.
There is one difference however that should please you, and that I forgot to mention, chapters and vendors and locked locations have one thing in common: they are mandatory, they cannot be controlled a lot by the player.
TW3 on the other hand, what monsters you fight and when, and how, what POIs you explore, what side quests you do and where they take you, etc, thats MUCH more easily controllable by the player. In addition to this, even if you do at a certain point find yourself disappointed with the potions you have and want to use and all that, it will more or less be because of how you simply decided to play the game, accidentally sure, but at least its not "yeah you were in another chapter, cause we said so", and because of this, you can always go back or to the sides, thats a big change the open world non-linear approach gives you, it gives you the chance to learn and adapt after, rather than having to do it way before. "Why do I have to use potions C to beat monster X", maybe you dont have too, go somewhere else and come back when you have the potion you want.

And why does potion G always refill though I will never use it? Why can't I decide what ingredients to gather or buy and what potions to brew instead of it refilling FOR ME all the time?
Does potion G refill even if you dont use it? I dont think thats expectable, you need alcohol, why would the game auto spend alcohol on something you dont want, I seriously doubt thats going to happen. i also dont think the will limit how many plants you can gather or buy, at worst you will ahve them in your inventory for nothing, or for selling them, or quest, at best? you will need them for upgrading, new potions you dont know yet what they need bombs, traps, etc etc.

Why do I never do any potion brewing or ingredient gathering 70 hours in the game because I have gathered all the potions and possible upgrades?
Come on you know thats easily solvable, and if there are 100 hours of non linear quests, size and amount dont seem to be a problem in TW3, especially with something much easier to do such as potions.

On the one hand: Why do I need to go out searching a ton of time to get the potion I want?
On the other hand: Why are all the ingredients just along my way/path and I do not have to do much to get the potions other than following my questline and afterwards it does not even need me to REFILL the potions by gathering ingredients again, no it does that for me too (making the alchemy system almost non-existent)

1) "Searching" and "ton of time" can mean very different things.
2) Thats a good one, but again, its easily solvable, you just balance the goddamn game, you dont put EVERYTHING in the path of the player or everything super hidden in bs places, or everything just in main quests, or everything just in side quests, or etc etc etc with locations, regions, land or water, daytime and weather, monsters, and so on.

Sorry but people asked for this months on end, it came up over and over again and all we get from the devs regarding this system is a very short summary and silence upon the request of video material or details.
Yes this is really bad. At least I can find some comfort in understanding that its truly a very sensible and logical thing, alchemy and balance and all that are things that get tweaked constantly and no dev wants to announce something early as final when it might not be (VATS system).
Now that I think about it, there's a chance that with all of the noise the forums made about the initial autorefilling revelations :p we might've delayed the in depth confirmation of a more final alchemy system, maybe we made them doubt and consider changes RIGHT until the end of development hehe.

In the coming months we will eventually get our answers.
 
Yes this is really bad. At least I can find some comfort in understanding that its truly a very sensible and logical thing, alchemy and balance and all that are things that get tweaked constantly and no dev wants to announce something early as final when it might not be (VATS system).
Now that I think about it, there's a chance that with all of the noise the forums made about the initial autorefilling revelations :p we might've delayed the in depth confirmation of a more final alchemy system, maybe we made them doubt and consider changes RIGHT until the end of development hehe.

In the coming months we will eventually get our answers.

Well as far as I know the whole game is "feature-locked" now meaning there will be no changes anymore, and the answer of Marcin came AFTER the feature-lock was announced.

It was a good read. I guess I just see things skeptical while you are the optimistic guy in this regard. Normally I'd trust CDP with this and make no big fuss about it, but let's just say something about the answers they gave rubbed me the wrong way and the more time passes and the more statements I read and silence I experience the more skeptical and negative I get towards this new system. Might as well be JUST the lack of details, but I can't be sure and I kind of just have a bad feeling about this particular element. I mean it won't ruin the game for me, but lets say I would be very very sad if they screwed up the Alchemy System because it's an aspect of the game which is very important to me.
 
Well as far as I know the whole game is "feature-locked" now meaning there will be no changes anymore, and the answer of Marcin came AFTER the feature-lock was announced.

It was a good read. I guess I just see things skeptical while you are the optimistic guy in this regard. Normally I'd trust CDP with this and make no big fuss about it, but let's just say something about the answers they gave rubbed me the wrong way and the more time passes and the more statements I read and silence I experience the more skeptical and negative I get towards this new system. Might as well be JUST the lack of details, but I can't be sure and I kind of just have a bad feeling about this particular element. I mean it won't ruin the game for me, but lets say I would be very very sad if they screwed up the Alchemy System because it's an aspect of the game which is very important to me.

Oh yeah thats true, the game is probably feature locked, but I think that doesn't include balancing, for which many times you need to place more or less items and in different locations, and change the stats and so on. But im not sure, i dont know exactly what things they keep changing and what not.

Thankfully both of our concerns and ideas are helpful to them. The more I read all of what you said, and what others brought up about the problems with adding autorefill and other stuff, the more I realized that if those features get simply "added" on top of TW2, the game would be so terrible, such a mess, that its extremely likely it wont be that way. CDPR would only need to think for half an hour, or do a little 1 day mod, to get to the obvious reality that autorefill would ruin TW2 or TW1.

So that leaves me with a more probable reality where they are seriously revamping alchemy and game systems in general, so they work well together, which they have to do because of the open world anyway.

The alchemy system of TW3 so far to me always sounded a bit wrong, doubtful and with artificial solutions, exceptions, and it still does, but there's a point where you start to think just how many variables and info you dont know yet that are needed to either make a great system or ruin it, that you just go crazy thinking of the possibilities, its too much.
CDPR's silence and general lack of context giving has been common in pretty much all aspects of the game, I think thats one point where I've seen most of the forums agree.

If we can allow ourselves to think positively, at least alchemy can be fixed tremendously with mods, so thats a great thing, TW1 was much better with FCR. But at the end of the day, my "prediction" is that the system wont be as terrible as many think, but neither amazing, just more or less as good/bad as TW1 and TW2.
 
Hmm... games that cut back on mechanics or input from the player are usually heavily focused on story and/or narrative. Maybe this - giving the story absolute top priority - is what CDProjekt is trying to do as well, not realizing that pushing one aspect at the considerable expense of another - and you never want to touch a running system - isn't the best way to go about it. Especially when the story part already seems so intriguing and one of selling points that you actually don't need to mess around and try your darndest to "improve" the other parts of the game to not take up precious time the player should be spending on experiencing the story instead.

The game already is destined to be one the most time and life consuming titles to ever be released - what does a total of an additional few hours of actively managing and sorting out your potion supply matter in this regard, anyway? Right, it doesn't matter.

I wonder if it'd be possible to just let both approaches co-exist side by side. The potions would auto-refill like described while the player could also override this by conciously removing the alcohol from the inventory and using it to brew potions the old way instead. Upon completing meditation any alcohol left in the inventory would still be used to auto-refill potions that are a charge or a few charges short of being fully replenished. Sort of like a safeguard, in case you forgot to "recharge" the potions yourself.
 
I wonder if it'd be possible to just let both approaches co-exist side by side. The potions would auto-refill like described while the player could also override this by conciously removing the alcohol from the inventory and using it to brew potions the old way instead. Upon completing meditation any alcohol left in the inventory would still be used to auto-refill potions that are a charge or a few charges short of being fully replenished. Sort of like a safeguard, in case you forgot to "recharge" the potions yourself.

Well that would be an acceptable system, at least if you can toggle it on/off in the settings
 
And here we have another unknown, will the alcohol deplete or will just having it suffice for the potions to replenish? I don't remember this explicitly being specified.
Will the refill use the same amount of alcohol or the amount used will depend on how much potion uses need to be replenished.

As mentioned above, maybe we could explicitly set the bottle of alcohol used for the auto refill. Maybe specify a certain quality of the base for that, while keeping a better one for creating mutagens, otherwise, how will the game decide which to use, especially if we want to save the better one for later.
 
And here we have another unknown, will the alcohol deplete or will just having it suffice for the potions to replenish? I don't remember this explicitly being specified.
Will the refill use the same amount of alcohol or the amount used will depend on how much potion uses need to be replenished.

As mentioned above, maybe we could explicitly set the bottle of alcohol used for the auto refill. Maybe specify a certain quality of the base for that, while keeping a better one for creating mutagens, otherwise, how will the game decide which to use, especially if we want to save the better one for later.

Well, the whole point of the change was to make people use potions more frequently and discourage players from "banking" them. So my guess is that the alcohol will be available in such grand supply that you'll never have to think twice about how much you are using.
 
Well, the whole point of the change was to make people use potions more frequently and discourage players from "banking" them. So my guess is that the alcohol will be available in such grand supply that you'll never have to think twice about how much you are using.

But if you have a grand supply of it, then what's the point of having it?
We should be able to manage it and decide when and which one to use, having a higher quality alcohol to prepare higher quality potions and mutagens.
 
But if you have a grand supply of it, then what's the point of having it?
We should be able to manage it and decide when and which one to use, having a higher quality alcohol to prepare higher quality potions and mutagens.

I agree, there is no real point. They only recently started talking about the Alcohol, which is why I think they tacked it on just to give some explanation to how Geralt refills a potion without new ingredients. If there were any need to micromanage its use, I have to imagine they would have given us the option.
 
How is the potion system handled in the books?

what scenarios from the books did they get inspiration for this potion mechanic?
 
The game already is destined to be one the most time and life consuming titles to ever be released - what does a total of an additional few hours of actively managing and sorting out your potion supply matter in this regard, anyway? Right, it doesn't matter.
Very true.

I wonder if it'd be possible to just let both approaches co-exist side by side. The potions would auto-refill like described while the player could also override this by conciously removing the alcohol from the inventory and using it to brew potions the old way instead. Upon completing meditation any alcohol left in the inventory would still be used to auto-refill potions that are a charge or a few charges short of being fully replenished. Sort of like a safeguard, in case you forgot to "recharge" the potions yourself.
Yep, I could see that work out just fine.
This way neither approach takes a back seat and the classic preparation procedure can still be used or be completely ignored just as well.
Everyone's a winner.
 
How is the potion system handled in the books?

what scenarios from the books did they get inspiration for this potion mechanic?

Honestly, potions are hardly ever used in the books. I dont recall anything about how/when they are brewed either. When he does use them its before combat, so TW2 is probably the most lore friendly.
 
Honestly, potions are hardly ever used in the books. I dont recall anything about how/when they are brewed either. When he does use them its before combat, so TW2 is probably the most lore friendly.

Most of the time it is just shortly mentioned. The books mention Geralt taking potions once in a while but it does not focus much on that particular aspect, most of the time it is just an unspoken/unwritten assumption that he takes potions should the fight be a hard one.
 
What do you think about new alchemy system, without drinking animation, and 1 min potions time?
For me it's very disappointing... no drinking animation, srsly? even DA Inquisition have it... And potion time... TW1 alchemy system was much more interesting, and better, even TW2 system was much better.
(sorry for my english)
 
The drinking animation would have been really nice and i don't think it requires a lot of work to be made. It seems CDPR saw it not necessary to include and not a big deal. I wonder if they can add it as a patch later if not now.
 
Everything i ve seen so far... the alchemy system they used worries me... it not that i start now to dislike the
game. I ll defend it at all costs... but i am afraid the system they uses is a "improved" TW2 system.

Which will suck.... for me TW1 had the best system and use of alchemy in the series.
I hope we have a option in TW3 to use TW1 system instead of the shown one.

Or lets hope we might get a TW1 alchemy system patch later on.
 
Honestly I loved the way Thunderbolt was handled, and if there's lots of potions based around giving you a really short burst of crazy effects like we saw there, that's awesome. The way Geralt just went batshit after consuming it, you could practically feel the potion and the intensity/power it gave to Geralt.

However the lack of a potion drinking animation is really disappointing. Frankly that would come as part of the strategy of combat, using crowd control or finding a way to quickly retreat away from a large enemy long enough to consume your potions and then heading back into the fray (As it was in TW1). Thunderbolt would have had even MORE impact behind it if you had to strategically control the Wyvern in a way where you get a spare second to down that potion, or if you'd timed the consumption perfectly as it was landing on Geralt and then moved in on the beast with the power of that potion.
 
Top Bottom