Witcher 3 MODS - Gift or Curse ?

[GW3NTLORD]

So to sum this ramble up:
Mods? Hell yes, but only after your first vanilla play-through and when the first main support cycle has ended.

Hell yes that's why hate mods coz they are tempting as even if we know those are for 2nd or further play through or may be for fun still we want to use in first play-through due to features it provides I know its our fault that we are falling for it but still

@Kad_Venku - I am glad that I make the thread that's some very useful info you post there Really thanks for that :thumbsup:

 

[Maverick89]

Mods are a gift, a way to expand the game, create new things. Skyrim is good because of mods, New Vegas was an amazing game and mods made it better, i hope The Witcher 3 will be the same, an amazing game with amazing mods. Can't wait for the mod tools. About problems with mods, don't use mods with your main save, use with different save, different playthrough, mods should be used after you beat the game, to see different things.

 

[Lieste]

The first play-through should always be without any kind of mod. Always. No exceptions.

Why? Because how would you know what to change if you've never experienced the original game?
Maybe something you think is bad during the first hours will turn a great feature later on, but you modded it because it was tuned down for a tutorial to make it easier to comprehend. You thought it would stay that way and changed it. Never seen the full mechanic in action though, maybe even broke something.

The next plus on staying away from mods during your first play-through is that fact that the game is in it' heavy support phase with patches and hot-fixes left right and centre, so mods either can cause bugs the poor guy at CDProjekt tries to reproduce and simply can't because you forgot to mention that you're using a mod when handing in the bug report. Or you have mods that quickly are out of date and break each new patch. Because they change something the patches change as well. So you have remnants of the mod in your save game, but the new patch changed thing, thus at worst breaks the things it's supposed to fix.
[/LIST]

So to sum this ramble up:
Mods? Hell yes, but only after your first vanilla play-through and when the first main support cycle has ended.

I'd agree that actually working on *deep* balance and similar mods only makes sense when the support cycle is running down, but not that you should slog through an entire playthrough unmodded on the basis of POE... I abandoned both W1 and W2 on first playthroughs because I didn't like the player level escalation, and the "high magic" which was contrary to the game lore.... W3 continues with the same failings and I do intend to tackle this to my satisfaction at a later date.

I returned to both W1 and W2 with FCR 1.6a and FCR 2, and found them significantly more playable and fun after these changes. I've not changed my mind about these being an improvement after playing through W3 (and while much of the latest game is excellent, there are significant issues with balance, excessive progression (both of the player character and opponents/allies, and of the equipment that has minimal logical progression ~ the game would work much better if scaled on a plateau rather than up a near vertical cliff where short-cuts are possible (level bonuses of +26 levels on top of those obtained from XP (and compared) for level balancing))...

Multiplying scaling factors for character skill/level onto scaling factors for equipment (also tied to level), onto scaling factors for 'relative level' utterly wrecks late game difficulty... all work in the same direction to make a "difficult monster" trivial. To compensate, enemies balloon in HP and damage dealt with level and become untouchable "too early", while still remaining trivial at the moment they are supposed to be fought.

There is little rhyme or reason to the monster stats, or the rewards and a long string of pointless or semi-pointless "extra-ordinary" equipment which is worse than some random gear I just looted from a dead bandit (just because *I* am at a higher level).

 

[Kad_Venku]

You're right kind of. Games can have issues which you are aware of pretty fast (about a third in,...) and which are a no-go for you.
An example - fro every Beth game I'd recommend an UI mod to every newcomer, no matter if he/she played the game first. There can be such issues.

TW3's balancing is such a problem, but that's something you might notice when you're about 2/3 in. Which is as we currently are in middle of the support cycle is a bad place to start using mods, simply because things can change daily.
If there was a proper mod for that, I'd probably still only suggest it to a newcomer who wants a challenge - got a friend who struggles at level 25 at ?Story and Sword? (second difficulty), where I found the game to easy on Deathmarch. So this is not a general issue, which brings me back to maybe doing a play-through vanilla first.

Think of it more as a general advice probably more aimed a newcomers to modding. From what you're saying (you're precisely at the problem I had with the game too) I think you know what you want from the game, so you'll very likely know what you're doing, thus of course can mod the game as you like it. But it probably took you a while to realise those problems, just guessing you probably were about 2/3 in and started modding then.

Still, I as a modder have to know what the game feels vanilla, so if problems from mods arise I actually can identify them, cause I know how the unmodded game would behave. So the first playthrough might be unbalanced and overpowered, and due to that I already have spotted some mods I'd like to use on my second playthrough - provided 1.07 is not changing the balance. But I'd rather experience things myself than solely relying on users to nail down problems, because those bug reposts can be very hard to work with.

 

[MrWoozy]

No brainer, it's a gift of course

 

[Death132]

Honestly your reasons for Mods being a curse are ridiculous. Mods are the single greatest thing you could ever hope for. I am a PC gamer purely because I find customization to be utterly necessary. Mods allow me to shape the game into what I want and give me as much control as I could hope for without being a dev myself. Mods give freedom to something that is otherwise set in stone and unchangeable.

It's odd how some people don't like the thought of using "unofficial" things as if it's somehow wrong to deviate from the path that the devs original vision supplies. If it adds to the experience then it simply doesn't matter.

And yes, mods are completely safe. I've never had one issue with any mod I've ever downloaded.

 

[GW3NTLORD]

guys 1st of all no one is forcing you to be here.
2nd Its my opinion & its not a universally applicable & no one is forcing you this thing too.
3rd thread is about to know your opinion rather then arguing others so if you really likes the mod then post your choice only & reasons if you want.
4th some members are posting just by reading thread title & without understanding what exatly its about so please if possible read it first & then post it.

Again no one is forcing you so even if you are here by mistake just leave silently Thanks

 

[zetsumeisama]

I don't mind modding honestly. It would be a cool feature to have. Personally I wouldn't mod it since it's already a perfect game in it's genre.

 

[Brogan80]

When I played Skyrim for the first time, I didn't buy it until after about 3-4 months after release. By then there was a ton of mods out.

My only full play-through of Skyrim, over 500 hours total - I had over 100 mods installed, and it was fantastic. And for every mod that changed core gameplay balance, such as better combat, xp progression, etc, I read the documentation and decided for myself if I wanted to utilize the mod creator's work.

I absolutely did not feel "helpless" or that I had to use any of those mods. And I had never played Skyrim before.

 

[GW3NTLORD]

I absolutely did not feel "helpless" or that I had to use any of those mods. And I had never played Skyrim before.

yehh because you are only interested in completing game by hook or crook & that's why you use core game play changing mods too & that's also in your 1st play through. I am sure you never question yourself that how original game is work like because you are happy with those mods.

 

[marxduck]

yehh because you are only interested in completing game by hook or crook

What exactly do you mean by that? Forgive me if I misinterpreted but that sounds like you just assumed Brogan wanted to complete the game by any means necessary - nevermind the story or gameplay for that matter, completion was the number one goal.

I don't know Brogan but at 500 hours of gameplay (about 300 hours over what the original game should have been) that doesn't sound like the actions of a person who wanted to complete the game by any means necessary. Incidentally, I was playing Skyrim with just over 200 mods and steam says I played 715 hours (but I think it might actually be more). Get this: I never completed Skyrim. You know why? Because I never wanted it to end. I was so immersed in everything about that game, escaping reality and living in a fantasy world. A lot of people who mod share a similar sentiment.

I just read this whole thread and I find your position on modding to be a little bizarre, if I'm honest.
It feels like you are mistaking modding with cheating. Quite often modding would be the opposite of cheating and in a lot of cases makes the game harder.
You also seem to be drawing a bit of an arbitrary line as to when mods are okay and when they are not. Graphics - okay; UI - okay; inventory management - okay; changes that make the game harder and more dynamic through changes to combat - not okay. Why?
All mods have something in common - they all aim to make the game more enjoyable by changing some aspect of the game. This is subjective, of course. Some people find it more enjoyable to be overpowered, others find it more enjoyable to actually have to think strategically in battle to get anywhere. One is not more legitimate than the other. This idea of yours that you are 'not on the right path' is a little odd. Are you saying that you refuse to deviate from the direction of the game no matter how tedious or unpleasant it is? That just seems masochistic and almost OCD.

If I were to use your logic I would say that you are only interested in completing the game by hook or crook. Playing the game with no mods will see you complete it far quicker and with far less thought than people who mod to increase difficulty. I am on my first play-through, though I did restart the game just after leaving white orchard for reasons relating to a mod. GOG tells me that I have played 128 hours. I haven't even left Novigrad yet. I am totally hooked on this game and really don't want it to end.
Some of the mods I have installed include better combat enhanced that makes combat extremely dynamic, much harder, and has my heart pounding in almost every encounter. I also have a mod that changes the button mapping so that I can cast signs quickly and without having to enter the radial menu every time I want to select a new sign. If it was intended by CDProjekt Red to play the game with one combat strategy and constant pausing (by accessing the radial menu) then I simply don't want to play the game they intended - I much prefer my modded version.

This all comes down to personal choice. You seemed to allude to not being able to help yourself if the mod is there to make the game easier. Well, the same goes for cheats. If you can't help yourself from using console commands to give yourself god mode or something then no one else can help you either. It isn't anyone's responsibility to ensure that you do or don't control yourself regarding your own gaming experience. Do you use fast travel but wish that you didn't? For those people I don't have much sympathy. Self-control is what well-developed adults practice. Requiring others to manage your life is what children do. Imposing your personal standards on others based on irrational beliefs is what fanatics do.

Which brings me to my next point - your belief that mods are unsafe and may break the game is irrational, unfounded and based on assumptions not experience. I'm not sure what it is that you think that mods do but as for The Witcher 3, there aren't that many mods out there and the majority of them make only very minor changes. It isn't hard to learn how to install mods and you can always start slow. I think modding will open up a whole new world for you that you never realised was there.

Your fear that the developers won't fix problems because they have been fixed in a mod is also unfounded. Do you have any evidence for this? An example where this is unequivocally the case? I have never heard of such a thing. Developers are guided by time and money. Once the game is released, they have a list of priorities that they want to address. The advent of a mod that happens to fix a problem that the developers had prioritised will not change their actions.

Finally, regarding your (and other's) idea that mods, if they are to be installed, should only be installed after one complete play-through is also completely unfounded. Why should this be the case? Most of us are perfectly capable of identifying aspects of the game that bother us fairly early on. For instance, books occupying a position in the inventory before potions is just annoying and not well thought out. Incidentally, CDProjekt Red agrees and this is one of the changes in the 1.07 patch. Did I have to play the whole game to come to this understanding? Did I have to wait for seven iterations of patches for it to be a legitimate change? Of course not. For bigger things such as combat - I agree that it is worth playing the game for a little while to see how it works. It is also worth reading what others have to say about it. As it turns out, vanilla combat is uninspired, tedious, and by all accounts too easy when Geralt reaches the lowly level of 12. Again, subjective but, contrary to what you think, unless you try a mod that aims to improve this, you might not even know just how bad it is.

Ultimately, I was enjoying the game, somewhat, without these mods. Even so, I am enjoying it far more now that I have changed a few things I didn't like with the vanilla game. I will likely be on my first play-through due to these mods, long after you are finished. I sincerely hope that you can bring yourself to investigate a few mods and try them out. Hopefully your life is all the richer for it.

 

[GW3NTLORD]

@marxduck - Man you shoul read my post no #45 on page 5 of this thread as I really don't have time to answer all of your question.


But still I will give you 1 example...

If you buy super car say bugatti veyron but if you modified it so is it some one going to recognize that car by its brand ? & are you going to get that same attention which other Bugatti veyron owners going to get ? or are you going to enjoy your modified car ride as a Bugatti veyron ride ?

If you ask me at least I am not. May be I am going to get more attention then other Bugatti veyron owners going to get but still intention behind that attention or attraction is different. Many going to say wow nice modification or may be some one not going to like it & they going to say ohh man he just ruined original design of car.

So modifying car or not is a personal decision but still those who are going to modify it not going to enjoy the originality of the car may be by its look or feel or anything.

Again I am not forcing anyone here not to use mods..Its just my opinion & that's also for 1st or serious game play walk through.

---------- Updated at 05:38 AM ----------

One more thing..I saw those GTA 5 mods where with mods you can change your character looks, make him fly or get any vehicle & lots of things are there so this things are good for fun but this mods not going to give you original game play fun.

As well once you know about this mods you surely going to try one of those as those are really tempting & its a human nature to try new things impatiently which going to ruined there game play by miles & once they going to feel bore they going to uninstalled the game without even going to play it seriously as they are already knows about the all things in the game so now game looks bore to them. [ May be some not fit into this so please don't start argument now ]

---------- Updated at 06:07 AM ----------

I sincerely hope that you can bring yourself to investigate a few mods and try them out. Hopefully your life is all the richer for it.

Nope... I paid coin to CDPR & not to madders. Ya I know mods are for free but still I think properly balanced bug free game from original game developers are my right & I am ready to wait for it

Its like contractor is paying coins to Witcher Geralt but some other person completing the contracts but still people are not going to call him Geralt :rofl: But Thanks.

 

[marxduck]

#45 isn't a post made by you but as I said, I read this entire thread. I also read page five again just for good measure. There doesn't appear to be anything that adds to your position there nor anything that responds to my post.

Your analogy with the Bugatti is just bizarre... There is no comparison between a game and a car and even if you could make an apt analogy likening a game to a car your example seems to suggest that you would drive the Bugatti for appearances...? Am I missing something? You keep talking about how others would perceive your car... Are you saying that you play games for appearances and how others respond to you playing games? Sorry mate but that is a really poor analogy - please try to make your point with something a little less awkward.

Regarding your example of GTAV: I really think you're conflating issues of cheating with the practice of modification. Nobody is doing in The Witcher 3 what you are talking about with GTAV. The overwhelming majority of the mods of TW3 are regarding graphics, immersion, and tweaking the game mechanics to be harder. Nobody is making Geralt fly or have every item in the game. For modders, this is also classified as a cheat.

Finally, regarding your last point. CDPR did not create a 'properly balanced game'. Not ever CDPR would agree with you on this as they have made numerous changes to the original. Being completely overpowered a quarter of the way into the game is not balanced. Modders have made respectable attempts at balancing the game. You are right that you are entitled to a balanced game that you paid for and that CDPR has a responsibility to do their best to provide this balance. That does not mean that you can't balance the game yourself with mods in the meantime. Your second analogy regarding Geralt and having someone else complete his contracts is also totally bizarre and makes no sense.

Your posts on page five of this thread state something to the effect of this simply being your opinion and everyone is entitled to them. Indeed they are. I am responding to your opinion with mine. I'm not sure if this is a language issue for you but using words like 'serious' and 'proper' and 'on the right path' when referring to a vanilla (unmodded) game implies that you feel that gamers like me, who spend many, many more hours immersed in the game, are playing it illegitimately. Can you understand how that might rub some people the wrong way?

You certainly are right that you're not forcing anyone to not use mods - you are in an absolute minority of people (as even your own poll reveals) of people who don't use mods and so you would find little support for this position.

I have given you the time of day and responded with a well thought out argument. Please don't tell me that you have no time to respond and then spout nonsense about Bugatti's with this undeserved superior tone. You haven't tried mods. You have made clear that you know next to nothing about them, how they work, or what they do. You are, of course, welcome to do whatever you see fit with your game but you should expect that when you post poorly reasoned and negative opinions about something that you have literally no experience with, then you are likely to attract the ire of modders that know far more than you on the matter.

You asked for our opinions and you got it, so please try not to be offended when they don't agree with yours.

 

[Mohasz]

I would not say they're a curse, but for some reason I usually don't tend to like updates that are not official. I'm waiting for REDkit, and probably won't install any mods 'manually'.

 

[GW3NTLORD]

#45 isn't a post made by you

Sorry its #47

---------- Updated at 10:36 AM ----------

Your analogy with the Bugatti is just bizarre... There is no comparison between a game and a car and even if you could make an apt analogy likening a game to a car your example seems to suggest that you would drive the Bugatti for appearances...? Am I missing something? You keep talking about how others would perceive your car... Are you saying that you play games for appearances and how others respond to you playing games? Sorry mate but that is a really poor analogy - please try to make your point with something a little less awkward.

dude if you are not understanding my point behind that example then its ok as I know my English is not super cool to explain things more clearly. In the end every one having there own choices. I am not saying I am right as well I am too not thinking mods as a curse. Actually i don't find another word against Gift so I used that so its my mistake while I create thread so I have to accept that. I think its better to make thread with name.. Witcher 3 mods - Like Or Dislike some thing like that

---------- Updated at 10:39 AM ----------

You asked for our opinions and you got it, so please try not to be offended when they don't agree with yours.

Yes I ask your opinions on mod not on my opinion but still its ok that you really work hard :rofl:

 

[Kad_Venku]

Your fear that the developers won't fix problems because they have been fixed in a mod is also unfounded. Do you have any evidence for this? An example where this is unequivocally the case? I have never heard of such a thing. Developers are guided by time and money. Once the game is released, they have a list of priorities that they want to address. The advent of a mod that happens to fix a problem that the developers had prioritised will not change their actions.

This actually happened in Skyrim. There are still occasions that one of the three main quest lines breaks at a point so you can't progress the main story arch.
Just to name two: Under certain circumstances you get stuck very early on in the Stormcloak Civil War quest line, because a randomized encounter simply replaces the chest you would find an item you'd need for that quest in, simple fix provided by modders available and don'T tell me the advancing of the Civil war quest line is too minor to fix. Don't ask me for the name of the cave, but it's located near Boethia's shrine.
There are certain circumstances when you finished the civil war quest-line and have to summon the leaders of the (actually remaining) to High Hrothgar, and the game simply fails to recognize that either the Imperial general or the Stormcloak Commander are already dead. Thus the council cannot happen, which too is a game breaker.
Or the Navmesh bug, present in all games by Beth built on the Creation engine since Fallout 3, which simply resets NPCs and makes them move in T-positions...

All of those bugs (apart from the Navmesh bug) had to be fixed by modders. So it has happened, sure, fearing mods because of the possibility that this occurs more often is somewhat irrational as well, but it is not made up from thin air either. And sure as well that the Devs have their support cycle set at release, but game-breakers for a main quest-line are always a top priority, and are usually expanded until they are no more.

Finally, regarding your (and other's) idea that mods, if they are to be installed, should only be installed after one complete play-through is also completely unfounded. Why should this be the case? Most of us are perfectly capable of identifying aspects of the game that bother us fairly early on. For instance, books occupying a position in the inventory before potions is just annoying and not well thought out. Incidentally, CDProjekt Red agrees and this is one of the changes in the 1.07 patch. Did I have to play the whole game to come to this understanding? Did I have to wait for seven iterations of patches for it to be a legitimate change? Of course not. For bigger things such as combat - I agree that it is worth playing the game for a little while to see how it works. It is also worth reading what others have to say about it. As it turns out, vanilla combat is uninspired, tedious, and by all accounts too easy when Geralt reaches the lowly level of 12. Again, subjective but, contrary to what you think, unless you try a mod that aims to improve this, you might not even know just how bad it is.

You probably do not have to play through the whole game to come to the understanding that feature A is bad, but at least consider the following:

First: TW3 is still in the support cycle, changes can (and will) happen. At least give tham the time to fix the game themselves. If they show no means to fix feature A, go and use a mod.

Second: Every fix the the REDs provide is by far better than anything we mod makers can do at the moment. We have no official support at the moment, even the unpacker we're using is a very ugly workaround with the lack of proper understanding for the bundles.

I have to disappoint your trust in the average gamer. Most sadly enough are not "capable capable of identifying aspects of the game that bother us". Have ever had a look at the Nexus bug reports in the forums? Most users are not even capable of reading a manual. This may sound harsh, but is something I had to experience since I started modding - no matter how good your work is - there is that one guy who'll break it by doing something you explicitly said you shouldn't do in the description and readme.

It's all about having a experience to compare to. What would you have done if the difficulty curve in TW3 just had a "lag" around level 12-15 you installed a mod and suddenly the difficulty increases again. with your new mod even more. Combat balance in TW3 is a bad example, I see your point that the combat is not optimally balanced, but becoming overpowered at level 12? Well that is your opinion and that probably only reflects a small user base. I usually count myself to the more masochistically aligned players who always start a game at the highest possible difficulty, no matter the genre, or if they know a damned thing about the mechanics. At times I'm gonna die a lot. And I'm by no means a pro gamer. still, I thought myself overpowered when I reached about level 20 (or actually 25 due to a main story level rush) that would have been the time another player might start modding the game right away.

I as a mod maker and developer advise against, why? I'm simply gonna quote myself.
Pay attention to the part about the patch cycle there!

The first play-through should always be without any kind of mod. Always. No exceptions.

Why? Because how would you know what to change if you've never experienced the original game?
Maybe something you think is bad during the first hours will turn a great feature later on, but you modded it because it was tuned down for a tutorial to make it easier to comprehend. You thought it would stay that way and changed it. Never seen the full mechanic in action though, maybe even broke something.

The next plus on staying away from mods during your first play-through is that fact that the game is in it' heavy support phase with patches and hot-fixes left right and centre, so mods either can cause bugs the poor guy at CDProjekt tries to reproduce and simply can't because you forgot to mention that you're using a mod when handing in the bug report. Or you have mods that quickly are out of date and break each new patch. Because they change something the patches change as well. So you have remnants of the mod in your save game, but the new patch changed thing, thus at worst breaks the things it's supposed to fix.

And I even revisited and added more details and as well tuned some "have to" down to "shoulds", still this is a guideline I as a mod maker would suggest users should follow - you don't have to and I actually don't care if you do - just trying to show you that there are reasons for my statement:

You're right kind of. Games can have issues which you are aware of pretty fast (about a third in,...) and which are a no-go for you.
An example - fro every Beth game I'd recommend an UI mod to every newcomer, no matter if he/she played the game first. There can be such issues.

TW3's balancing is such a problem, but that's something you might notice when you're about 2/3 in. Which is as we currently are in middle of the support cycle is a bad place to start using mods, simply because things can change daily.
If there was a proper mod for that, I'd probably still only suggest it to a newcomer who wants a challenge - got a friend who struggles at level 25 at ?Story and Sword? (second difficulty), where I found the game to easy on Deathmarch. So this is not a general issue, which brings me back to maybe doing a play-through vanilla first.

Think of it more as a general advice probably more aimed a newcomers to modding. From what you're saying (you're precisely at the problem I had with the game too) I think you know what you want from the game, so you'll very likely know what you're doing, thus of course can mod the game as you like it. But it probably took you a while to realise those problems, just guessing you probably were about 2/3 in and started modding then.

Still, I as a modder have to know what the game feels vanilla, so if problems from mods arise I actually can identify them, cause I know how the un-modded game would behave. So the first play-through might be unbalanced and overpowered, and due to that I already have spotted some mods I'd like to use on my second play-through - provided 1.07 is not changing the balance. But I'd rather experience things myself than solely relying on users to nail down problems, because those bug reposts can be very hard to work with.

And in addition to that modding for TW3 at the moment can be dangerous and can cause damage to you game.
Why that you ask? Simply because of the lack of proper knowledge about how the game handles the files reads it's information out of the packed .bundle files and the way the unofficial quickbms tool handles that:

From an advice I gave on another forum, which itself is only a rephrasing of the readme for the quickbms tool:

And if you modify the files, always note down how many characters the file had before you edited it.
Even note down the precise size in Bits.

The way the import/export tool works is a bit by bit encoding/decoding. this combined with the bundles being archives which have fixed places for your files:

So as an example:

• file A.xml consists of 123,456 chars,
• file B.xml consists of 234,567 chars,
• and file C.xml consists of 345,678,901 chars
• the bundle ABC.bundle consists of 8+123,456+8+234,567+8+345678901=346036924+3*8=346036948 chars, where the 8 represent the address value, the "number" the game uses to determine where the file starts and what this file does when it unpacks them during runtime.

Now the way the unpacker works is simple, it just reads everything and decodes it. char by char (actually bit by bit)

Now you changed B.xml and added 123 chars to it.
Now the repack works like this:

• 8 for address A
• 123456 for file A.xml
• 8 for address B
• 234690 for file B.xml
• 8 for address C

and now we only have 345678778 instead of 345678901 left for C.xml
Which means we're loosing 123 chars of information, and all the closing tags a xml file requires to be readable. Thus we just broke file C.xml by editing B.xml
But not only that. the address values are fixed, so the game searches for them in the same place:

• Address A is searched for at index 0
• Address B is searched for at index 123463
• and address C is searched for at index 358038
• Which means the end of our way-to-big file B.xml is cut as well and interpreted as an identifier rather than a file.

Thus we effectively broke two files:

B.xml (or actually what ever was written in the end of it) and C.xml were nothing is readable, because the beginning is shifted into a wrong position, thus the whole file is nonsense Just to clarify that.

So the one rule to work with the tool is the following:
If you change anything, make sure the file size and character count stay the same

Which honestly makes modding TW3 a pain in the behind.

And in the end there is one more point - might be more emotional than reasonable. But I think every single developer who put three or four years of his/her life into a game deserves that you as an user respect the vision they had for the game and enjoy the game they made without additional or even completely different feel to it.

And just to make that clear again:

• I am a mod maker
• I love making and using mods
• I am going to make mods for TW3 as soon as the REDKit2 has been released
• I am going to mod the game on my second play-through as I think that combat is too easy later on
• Fearing mods is not necessary as long as they are properly made

But:

• I am very well aware of the dangers modding a game, specially in a state that it's constantly receiving fixes can have, but do not have to have. And everyone modding the game in this state should be aware of that as well - should he/she experience a "bug" it's more likely the mod that the game.
• Every word I wrote is my personal advice born from experience both as a mod user and a mod maker - you don't have to follow it, but please. do not say I have no foundation for what I am saying.

 

[Lieste]

Some of the mods I have installed include better combat enhanced that makes combat extremely dynamic, much harder, and has my heart pounding in almost every encounter. I also have a mod that changes the button mapping so that I can cast signs quickly and without having to enter the radial menu every time I want to select a new sign. If it was intended by CDProjekt Red to play the game with one combat strategy and constant pausing (by accessing the radial menu) then I simply don't want to play the game they intended - I much prefer my modded version.

You do know that *vanilla* W3:WH doesn't require using the combat wheel *except* for managing the pockets and bombs/crossbow.
I am not aware of any way to change the function assigned to the middle mouse button except for using the wheel.

However for signs, this is by default possible to select and cast without leaving combat mode and real time.

3=Aard (select)
4=Yrden
5=Igni
6=Quen
7=Axii

Q to cast the selected sign when appropriate and stamina is full.

On console (or controller on PC) there is an option to scroll through the signs while holding parry (iirc ~ not my choice of control) as an alternative to the wheel.

 

[TarathielTorosir]

You don't like mods because they aren't "official"?

How can you like the Witcher games then since Sapkowski's drunken ass has talked shit about the games and called them fanfiction?

 

[ColinJ89]

Gift. Reshade/SweetFX allows me to fix a lot of the graphical issues I had with the game, more to do with a difference in taste. I use a VGX preset which has a lot of colder tones, feels less saturated especially when the models interact with lighting effects.

Other than that, the console is handy. Only other mod I've been using is adjusted weights on saddlebags, which I'll probably remove when 1.07 drops.