• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

The Witcher 3 - New preview details

V

Vincent Grayson

Member
Exentryk said:
My point with my previous post was that random loot is a terrible system for single player games. It's designed to keep the people mindlessly grinding for good items, and that works in MMOs. What's the point of it in single player games? Placing items and weapons in chests manually, the devs can carefully control and balance the game. It just seems like a cheap lazy design if devs are using it in single player games, and also has the potential of making balancing difficult and losing control.

So, don't have random loot, and balance your game with manually placed weapons and gate them properly. Don't rely on things like scaling or level lockout. That's a well designed single player RPG.
Click to expand...

Agreed. If you don't want me using the (to use D&D terms) holy avenger at level 3, then you need to design your game such that I can't get it at level 3, or that it's really tough to do. You don't just say "Fuck it, let him get it at level 3, but if he does, it'll be much shittier than if he got it at level 20". That's a fucking terrible design, IMO.
 
T

toddhunter

Member
lordfuzzybutt said:
You know how much work that will be for a game of this scale? Hundreds, thousands of chests each containing tens of items. Manually placing all those items is a huge, huge waste of time.
Click to expand...

It would be lots of work.

But if games like Skyrim and Dragon Age Inquisition have taught us nothing else, it is that having huge areas is completely pointless if there is nothing interesting to find. If we can't have both (huge areas and interesting crafted locations), I'd rather have the whole game take place in a small cardboard box that has something cool in the corner.
 
T

tuxfool

Banned
Exentryk said:
My point with my previous post was that random loot is a terrible system for single player games. It's designed to keep the people mindlessly grinding for good items, and that works in MMOs. What's the point of it in single player games? Placing items and weapons in chests manually, the devs can carefully control and balance the game. It just seems like a cheap lazy design if devs are using it in single player games, and also has the potential of making balancing difficult and losing control.

So, don't have random loot, and balance your game with manually placed weapons and gate them properly. Don't rely on things like scaling or level lockout. That's a well designed single player RPG.
Click to expand...

In many games you'll often find it is a mixture of both. Important Items will get specifically placed in locations, but more general loot is randomized. The most recent indication suggests that this game will be no different.
 
P

patapuf

Member
lordfuzzybutt said:
You know how much work that will be for a game of this scale? Hundreds, thousands of chests each containing tens of items. Manually placing all those items is a huge, huge waste of time.

And by random generated loot, it doesn't mean in a chest the loot can be as shit as a pitchfork and another an awesome fucking dragon-one-hit-killer bow.

I imagine it can be based on zones, with different difficulties there will be different parameters which generate items with corresponding stats. So that way, if you are grinding in a level 1 zone, you can never find a level 20 weapon.

Other than that, specific, strategic locations will have manually placed items to serve a purpose for that place.

All in all, random is not totally random, but with constraints and checks all over the place.
Click to expand...

Of course it's a lot of work. But the world building is infinetly better if the stuff you find is tied to the place you find it in, instead of "high level loot XYZ".

Don't get me wrong, the witcher having scaling is not a deal breaker to me, but trappings of loot focused RPG's (randomised, level scaled) make exploration immediately more boring and sterile. If i go into a dungeon in skyrim, I'll get "level apropiate gear X". Even if i killed some legendary being. It kills immersion.
 
L

lordfuzzybutt

Member
toddhunter said:
It would be lots of work.

But if games like Skyrim and Dragon Age Inquisition have taught us nothing else, it is that having huge areas is completely pointless if there is nothing interesting to find. If we can't have both (huge areas and interesting crafted locations), I'd rather have the whole game take place in a small cardboard box that has something cool in the corner.
Click to expand...

I am not saying the whole game's area will be filled with randomly generated loot.
I said, there will be specific places where the devs will like you to have this cool stuff and then they will manually put it there. So in crypt A with a fucking huge troll, the devs will reward you with a huge ass awesome sword, but crypt B with only 2 nekkers fucking each other, there will be nothing of much use there.

In Skyrim, an abandoned crypt can have fresh foods and fruit in chest, which is fucking stupid. It doesn't mean CDPR will do the same shitty job. They can implement checks and make sure that if that crypt belongs to the the "Abandoned" type, then Items in "Fresh foods" type cannot be placed there.

Using the random loot system doesn't make a dev lazy. It is how you implement such a system is what counts.

patapuf said:
Of course it's a lot of work. But the world building is infinetly better if the stuff you find is tied to the place you find it in, instead of "high level loot XYZ".

Don't get me wrong, the witcher having scaling is not a deal breaker to me, but trappings of loot focused RPG's (randomised, level scaled) make exploration immediately more boring and sterile. If i go into a dungeon in skyrim, I'll get "level apropiate gear X". Even if i killed some legendary being. It kills immersion.
Click to expand...

Level is not the only parameter they can use to make loot you know? There can be many other things. Like if they detect you kill a "Legendary" being in there, a loot with "Legendary" attributes will be generated.

But as I said repeatedly, there will be specific places where they manually put the unique loot they want you to have.
 
E

erawsd

Member
patapuf said:
Of course it's a lot of work. But the world building is infinetly better if the stuff you find is tied to the place you find it in, instead of "high level loot XYZ".

Don't get me wrong, the witcher having scaling is not a deal breaker to me, but trappings of loot focused RPG's (randomised, level scaled) make exploration immediately more boring and sterile. If i go into a dungeon in skyrim, I'll get "level apropiate gear X". Even if i killed some legendary being. It kills immersion.
Click to expand...

Thats not necessarily whats happening here though. Damien has said that unique items will not scale and there are a ton fo them in the game. So I if you kill a legendary being, chances are you won't get something that is scaled. Instead, its probably the "regular ass Sword of fire+2" that is scaled... something you forget you ever had the moment you find better.
 
T

tuxfool

Banned
toddhunter said:
Again, that isn't the fault of being powerful, that is the fault of the game being designed so that you fight the same basic enemies over and over again. There are two ways you can fix that, make encounters varied and interesting and lock loot behind appropriate challenges. Alternatively you can limit the characters so that the most basic enemies stay just challenging enough throughout the game and hope nobody cares.
Click to expand...

How do you do the first in an open world where quests can be tackled in a non linear fashion?

In the witcher 2 entire quest lines diverged with mutual exclusivity and areas were zoned so that progression was easier to manage.

In an open world game you're inevitably going to get the person who needs to do everything (all the way to the one that only wants to do the critical path), but because they do everything quests become too easy. Then they go and complain that everything is too easy. Balancing open world games is very difficult. It is hard to even nail down to what kind of player the balance should be optimized against.
 
P

patapuf

Member
erawsd said:
Thats not necessarily whats happening here though. Damien has said that unique items will not scale and there are a ton fo them in the game. So I if you kill a legendary being, chances are you won't get something that is scaled. Instead, its probably the "regular ass Sword of fire+2" that is scaled... something you forget you ever had the moment you find better.
Click to expand...

Oh i'm sure the system will be decent (or at least better than the recent AAA stuff we had), but coming fresh from pillars, scaling being there at all is still a bit disapointing.

tuxfool said:
How do you do the first in an open world where quests can be tackled in a non linear fashion?

In the witcher 2 entire quest lines diverged with mutual exclusivity and areas were zoned so that progression was easier to manage.

In an open world game you're inevitably going to get the person who needs to do everything (all the way to the one that only wants to do the critical path), but because they do everything quests become too easy. Then they go and complain that everything is too easy. Balancing open world games is very difficult. It is hard to even nail down to what kind of player the balance should be optimized against.
Click to expand...

it is difficult and ultimately it's also a matter of taste. New Vegas was great but some people were annoyed that they couldn't just go wherever because some places were too dangerous.
 
V

Vincent Grayson

Member
tuxfool said:
How do you do the first in an open world where quests can be tackled in a non linear fashion?

In the witcher 2 entire quest lines diverged with mutual exclusivity and areas were zoned so that progression was easier to manage.

In an open world game you're inevitably going to get the person who needs to do everything, but because they do everything quests become to easy. Then they go and complain that everything is too easy. Balancing open world games is very difficult. It is hard to even nail down to what kind of player the balance should be optimized.
Click to expand...

Balance should be built around the "typical" player. I assume they have some ability to look at what that is in Witcher games specifically, but I think we can generally agree that "Do literally everything" guy is *not* a typical player, and you can't balance the game for him, just like you can't balance it for "Main quest only" guy.

The recently-released Pillars of Eternity had the same "problem", where if you're a completionist doing every quest before moving on with the main story, you end up very strong and will wipe the floor with the challenging story encounters.

That's just a choice you have to make as a player. Personally, it's the one I prefer. As long as the game is balance well, people like me can do it all and steamroll things if we want, the hardcore types can raise the difficulty to max and skip all the lesser quests to just take on the story in the hardest possible way, and every one else can get something in-between.
 
T

tuxfool

Banned
Vincent Grayson said:
Balance should be built around the "typical" player. I assume they have some ability to look at what that is in Witcher games specifically, but I think we can generally agree that "Do literally everything" guy is *not* a typical player, and you can't balance the game for him, just like you can't balance it for "Main quest only" guy.
Click to expand...

Sure. However, in a game where minimal to average and average to completionist spans 20+ hours, what is a typical player? And is that player being typical at all points in the game?
 
Portugeezer

Portugeezer

Member
Tovarisc said:
Damien Monnier;
Yes maybe you are right actually - you won't even feel the system is in place and you can still get mega epic stuff that will stay static.
I felt like maybe this is something that people wanted to know to understand our thinking but maybe you are right I talk too much sometimes about our technical stuff (I like to explain to people the thinking behind a design without it breaking the illusion).
Maybe just go with the flow don't try to "game" it I would say, that's how I play it and I have a tone of fun. :)
Source

Damien Monnier;
We also have unique powerful swords and gear that will always be at a set level and set stats. I forgot to mention that - and that's why I came here to reply to your point which is totally valid - in fact as soon as I remembered that I failed to mention it (when the recording was over) I thought to myself "I must go on Reddit and clarify this no doubt somebody picked up on it!". Only some gear is there to 'fit' you but you don't notice it. Fear not it works really well :)
Source
Click to expand...

Great
 
V

Vincent Grayson

Member
tuxfool said:
Sure. However, in a game where minimal to average and average to completionist spans 20+ hours, what is a typical player? And is that player being typical at all points in the game?
Click to expand...

I don't know. I guess I would hope they can look at their past games and figure some of that out, but I don't know what level of detail they've been able to get about player habits in Witcher 2 (or frankly, other RPGs like Skyrim and DAI).

At the end of the day, we already know that most people don't finish games at all, much less do 100% of the side content, so I'm guessing you generally want to err on the side of "game is too easy when you do everything", and "just right" when you do the critical path.

Of course, you could go another route and have the game's difficulty setting/descriptions address this directly by telling players that if they tend to be the completionist type, they should play on say, the highest difficulty, but if they want to just play through the story and come out in one piece, maybe a lower difficulty is better.
 
I

ironcreed

Banned
Geralt looks like such a bad ass with his hair blowing in the wind.

03WFxw4.gif
 
K

Kezen

Banned
Lunar15 said:
This is kind of shitty if Xbox is branding PC footage.
Click to expand...

Most people won't notice a difference. Besides, let's not forget that CDPR use PC's "high" settings which is supposedly what both consoles use as well.

So no false advertising actually.
 
L

Lunar15

Member
I don't know if I'd call it false advertising, but it's still weird. It's like how all the commercials for GTAV for the console release were clearly 60 FPS, but the actual game was nowhere near it.
 
D

d9b

Banned
"The conversation also involved the extra polygons that would be used for his penis and who would animate it while running."

thats_a_penis_reverse.gif
 
Audioboxer

Audioboxer

Member
lordfuzzybutt said:
You know how much work that will be for a game of this scale? Hundreds, thousands of chests each containing tens of items. Manually placing all those items is a huge, huge waste of time.

And by random generated loot, it doesn't mean in a chest the loot can be as shit as a pitchfork and another an awesome fucking dragon-one-hit-killer bow.

I imagine it can be based on zones, with different difficulties there will be different parameters which generate items with corresponding stats. So that way, if you are grinding in a level 1 zone, you can never find a level 20 weapon.

Other than that, specific, strategic locations will have manually placed items to serve a purpose for that place.

All in all, random is not totally random, but with constraints and checks all over the place.
Click to expand...

As long as its better than Skyrims loot system which was a massive pile of shit.
 
H

HawksWinStanley

Member
The Game + Expansion for $75 on the PS Store seems like a good deal but I kind of want the stuff that comes with the physical game like the map and compendium and stuff.
 
A

aravuus

Member
Kezen said:
Most people won't notice a difference. Besides, let's not forget that CDPR use PC's "high" settings which is supposedly what both consoles use as well.

So no false advertising actually.
Click to expand...

I think the 30v60fps is a pretty big difference, but whatever

I think I'm gonna skip watching videos of the game from now on. I know I'm most likely going to love the game, so why spoil quests, enemies and locations for myself
 
Exentryk

Exentryk

Member
HawksWinStanley said:
The Game + Expansion for $75 on the PS Store seems like a good deal but I kind of want the stuff that comes with the physical game like the map and compendium and stuff.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's why I ordered the physical edition, along with the collector's edition prima guide that comes with that small Grimoire.
 
L

Loakum

Banned
Exentryk said:
Yeah, that's why I ordered the physical edition, along with the collector's edition prima guide that comes with that small Grimoire.
Click to expand...

Same here:
  • Collector's Edition of Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt (PS4)
  • Collector's Edition Witcher 3 Strategy Guide with Grimoire
  • Witcher 3 The Wild Hunt Expansion Pack
 
GavinUK86

GavinUK86

Member
Denton said:
https://translate.google.cz/transla...e_witcher_3,49062,3085201.html#top&edit-text=

the original gamestar preview is up, in german

The header cracks me up
Click to expand...

lol great header indeed

But the fact is also that my two days with Geralt the most beautiful, most exciting and most overwhelming include what I have ever experienced in my 33 years of gaming career. And none of it was choreographed or specially prepared for the event, I was able to move me really healed by gigantic game world.
Click to expand...

ignoring the dodgy translation, that sounds very promising
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Blizzard announces massive changes to Diablo 4 starting Season 4
News
2
765
clarky replied
.....why did nobody notice The Witcher 3 - PS5 port was a glitchy mess?
2
51
4K
Xtib81 replied
Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance - New Trailer + Preview Thread
Opinion Trailer 2 3
113
4K
Hudo replied
Monster Hunter: Sunbreak - All of updates are now available on Xbox and PlayStation
News
0
391
Draugoth replied
Dragon's Dogma is an RPG like no other
Opinion
22
2K
SaintALia replied
Top Bottom