I was calm. I just like to use the BIG letters so the important words stand out.
I do 100% agree on this statement.
Sorry, but I'm just quoting from the developers here. I might be paraphrasing here and there but they said a lot of times, and yes also recently, that they made the ingredients for the potions "harder to get in general" "but therefore you only need to collect them once".
I just do not approve of the strategy of completely getting rid of herb gathering while at the same time making the first-time-gathering take longer. It basically ends up being like buffs in an MMO where you need to meet certain conditions to "unlock" the buff and afterwards can use it in every combat a set amount of times.
The immersion as well as the resource management of potions was always very important for me, which is for example one of the reasons why I did like the system in TW1 the most and was disappointed by the system in TW2, due to the fact that the potions lost their secondary ingredients, did only last 10 min and herbs were basically everywhere.
In TW2 you had a reasonably spread amount of ingredients in each major hub and you could make a big variety of potions with different active or passive effects, which all had their advantages and disadvantages, with toxicity being an additional factor in the formula, as well as the secondary ingredients which did have good benefits if you knew how to use them.
Now all we have is potions for which we need to collect ingredients one time, afterward they will just refill and have the same effect when meditating, only using alcohol to make them, not herbs.
Like I said, I would be fine with any number of compromises, like basic potions refilling and needing some (not many) ingredients for upgraded versions of them, or all potions refilling automatically IF you do not use ALL of the "uses" they have, or potions refilling but with reduced effect and if you want a "normal" effect having to collect some (again, not many) ingredients.
There are a sh*t ton of herbs all around Geralt on the map in the gameplay videos, there is an overabundance of them just being there. Even if you need more herbs for each potion to make it the first time, more than you needed in the previous games, even then it doesn't add up, it is a waste of herbs being all around you.
If there are too many herbs it either becomes painful to find the right, more rare ones, or it becomes to easy to make a potion, which means you get the potions too quickly and have them unlocked very fast and very early in the game.
For what do we need ingredients do I ask you?
For the first time brewing a potion you answer, and maybe some "special" ones for the decoctions.
Then why are there so many herbs around?
No idea.
What do we need to refill potions?
A specific alcohol.
Where do we get it?
Shops
Is buying specific types of alcohol from shops every time less annoying then picking herbs while going in the direction of you next quest?
IMO not, the latter is less annoying.
From EVERYTHING I have seen so far, and I saw almost every preview from the guys that were in Poland, it does strike me as an overall boring system that does not change ANYTHING positive and does not do anything other than streamline the alchemy system.
Maybe the system of TW1 was not completely perfect.
Maybe the system of TW2 (a system that was already streamlined in comparison to TW1) was deeply flawed.
But what they do in TW3 is not the right solution IMO and I (and others) have been saying this since they first revealed they wanted to include an auto-refill for potions.
And again, I agree that the main problem of the potions in TW2 was that only a few of the potions were really GOOD potions, only a few were viable and effective, and only a few were ever used. You never needed them, you had to meditate (and be out of combat) to take them and they had a very short duration. That was the real problem.
And what did they do?
They made the duration even shorter and they made the ingredients unnecessary after the first time (while still having tons of herbs being around). The only GOOD thing they MIGHT have done is increase the variety in potions, but we can only tell that once we got out hands on it. Other than that they did not solve the problem, they just made it bigger and streamlined the feature to an extend that it is almost non-existent and self-managing.
Self-Managing. In an RPG.
A little bit automatism is not bad, don't get me wrong. I don't want to do tedious things.
But they basically did this:
- Heavily reduced the exploration-encouraging aspect of searching for ingredients (it HAD to be reduced, I agree, but not to that EXTEND IMO)
eliminating resource management
- Reduced the time potions last (maybe not bad inherently, especially since you can take them anytime,
increases the amount of strategy you need when using the potions in combat)
-
Negated Experimentation (they did do that in TW2 already and it made the system more dull)
Here is what I like about the new alchemy:
- Can take potions in combat
- Toxicity has negative effects
- Toxicity has visual effects
- Upgraded version of potions
- Better potion variety
- More strategy due to short potion durations in relatively long fights (especially boss fights)
- Potion slots that limit amount of potions you can take DURING COMBAT
- Multiple uses for one potion
- Mutagenic potions / Decoctions
Here is what I do not like:
- Extreme reduction of ingredient gathering // auto-refill
- Overabundance of herbs in the world for no apparent reason
- Herbs are said to be "harder to find" (according to developers)
- Needing alcohol for refilling, but no ingredients
- No experimentation
- Upgraded potions ALSO refill on their own (no reason to use the basic potions anymore?)
It looks like the pros overweight the cons, in numbers.
But in terms of impact those few cons tip the balance for me and make the system less fun and interesting for me.
That would be amazing.
In fact that would be the only acceptable explanations for so many herbs being around in my book.
If they go ahead and say "you can throw away the potion after you have emptied them to avoid refilling them, and we made so many herbs all around to support this playstyle for those guys who like the ingredient gathering", then I would applaud them and be happy with it. Still some negative points, sure, and a shame about no experimentation or secondary ingredients, but that would solve the auto-refill problem, the "waste of resources that there are so many herbs around you'll never need" problem as well as the "upgraded potions make basic potions useless" problem.
Damien Monnier and @
Marcin Momot
Can we actually throw away the potions/potion vials so that we will HAVE to gather ingredients and make the potion again? That would really be good and help a lot in my case.