Weird/sloppy/incomplete design decisions

[Y Ddraig Ddu]

Whenever you have a huge open-world game some things are bound to slip through the cracks of development; I don't think there's a single large-scale game where this isn't the case. Oblivion had telepathic guards and crabs with lockpicks jammed inside of them. Gothic 3 had a whirlwind attack (yes, just like The Witcher 3) that when coupled with the basic halberd all but completely broke the entire combat system. And on and on.

The Witcher 3 is no exception, so here's a list of design flaws I found in my 100+ hours with the game. Remember, this isn't for bugs or glitches but for design elements deliberately baked into the game that are either not completed or are badly implemented:

- The thieving mechanic. It's nonsensical. You could literally "steal" everything not nailed down in front of a high-authority questgiver and not only would they not bat an eye, they'd still be happy to entrust you with whatever harrowing or deeply personal job they might have for you. Yet if you "steal" a random broken rake within eyeshot of an arbitrary guard, GOD HAVE MERCY ON YOUR SOUL as the guard brings down the hammer of a 20-level autoscale pike on your sorry Witcher behind, where they empty your pockets of gold for the "trouble" but not the actual item(s) you even stole.

- Following above, guards scale 20 levels above you but only when they're not part of a quest. That means the same guard who was level 20 over you when you stole that broken rake, if he's part of quest where you need to fight him, he's downscaled back to your level until the end of the quest. Hooray consistency.

- Axii - Delusion is the only skill in the entire skill tree that has an effect on dialog; it requires no statistical commitment because you can pop it into your skill tree when needed, then remove it for more combat skills whenever you don't (which is most of the time).

- Area Liberations are ridiculously easy "kill 5 enemy" instances, yet they give massive XP payouts that are sometimes worth several meaty sidequests.

- Following above, because XP scales to the player (and you get the biggest payouts for main quests) and the best gear is found through scavenger hunts, the sidequests serve no purpose outside of their intrinsic value. A player who completes every single side quest in the entire game will only be 2 or 3 levels higher than someone who rushed the main story and completed the game in a fraction of the time.

- You can take a loan from the Vivaldi bank for 100 crowns. You can either pay back the loan plus interest, taking a loss of 30 crowns or....... never pay it back and never face any consequences in any way, shape or form for any reason for the rest of the game. Why the hell is it even there to begin with? Seems like something the devs meant to finish but didn't, for whatever reason.

- The level gating for many side quests seems entirely random. Why is finding a fellow's missing brother you pick up near the beginning of the game one of (if not THE) highest level quest in the game? The quest isn't any more special or unique than most other side quests, so why the hell is it so highly ranked?


That's what I've got for now. Anyone have any to add?

[Y Ddraig Ddu]

Aye, that was an odd quest.

No, I'm referring to the quest "Missing Brother" that you pick up at The Inn at the Crossroads. It's like level 33 or something. The only quest I remember as being higher was a level 36 quest where you hunt a griffin (and despite being so high level, it's possibly the most boring quest in the entire game...)

[Slayix312]

Only thing I have noticed that is immersion breaking for me is the OP guards. To the point I used a mod to fix their levels to only be 2+ ahead of mine instead of 10+.

Geralt is supposed to be a badass, but in vanilla un-modded Witcher 3 he gets pwned like a rag-doll by Guards. Why does the world even need me if 2-3 guards could probably own anything in the game?

[Slayix312]

Originally posted by BuzzardBee:

Originally posted by Slayix312:

Only thing I have noticed that is immersion breaking for me is the OP guards. To the point I used a mod to fix their levels to only be 2+ ahead of mine instead of 10+.

Geralt is supposed to be a badass, but in vanilla un-modded Witcher 3 he gets pwned like a rag-doll by Guards. Why does the world even need me if 2-3 guards could probably own anything in the game?

But the guards was actually done on purpose. The devs (and God I hate defending them!) didn't want players going out of character and killing guards right and left since it is not what witchers do -- ever. They're not supposed to be political and not supposed to take sides.

Granted, Geralt does it all the time when he senses an injustice but taking on an entire squad of soldiers is just foolish. As is stealing from them right under their noses. The idea again being these soldiers have just come into that area and occupied it, thereby confiscating all goods for the good of their army. They are not likely to take it kindly when some stranger comes in and steals from them what they've just stolen themselves. So, the devs made them ridiculously OP in order to discourage you from fighting them.

Sure I get that, but this is also an open world game. I wouldn't mind the guards putting a bounty on my head and the game ends up sending mercenaries/guards/bounter hunters non-stop to kill me. That would accomplish the same thing; without the immersion breaking factor that 1 single guard will take forever to kill because he is 10+ levels above you.

Again this just makes it feel like there is no reason for me to even be in the game. 2-3 guards can pwn anything I could regardless.

They could have very well done it for the reasons you mentioned, but it doesn't make it any less bad.

[Y Ddraig Ddu]

Yeah, I don't have a big problem with guards scaling 20 levels above you (and give you no items or XP if you kill them), what I don't like is the halfassed thieving mechanic and how guards downscale themselves when they're part of quests (which makes no sense and is hugely inconsistent).

[Slayix312]

Originally posted by BuzzardBee:

Originally posted by Slayix312:

Sure I get that, but this is also an open world game. I wouldn't mind the guards putting a bounty on my head and the game ends up sending mercenaries/guards/bounter hunters non-stop to kill me. That would accomplish the same thing; without the immersion breaking factor that 1 single guard will take forever to kill because he is 10+ levels above you.

Again this just makes it feel like there is no reason for me to even be in the game. 2-3 guards can pwn anything I could regardless.

Then it would become more like Skyrim and less like the Witcher. Then again, given Blood and Wine....

I'm thinking the devs believed the average player would get the hint that fighting the guards is NOT a good idea and wouldn't keep doing it. I just don't see why those guards are such a big issue. There's plenty for Geralt to do other than picking fights with every single person he runs across. THAT would be immersion breaking to be sure.

You're playing a witcher and that means accepting contracts for killing monsters. You do assorted other things when they present themselves such as hunting for treasure, exploring, discovering things, liberating areas, secondary quests... all the while trying to get up enough xp to tackle those main story quests. Need some cash or glory? You do a few fist fights, horse races and play Gwnet.

But fighting soldiers is foolhardy and I think that was the whole point. Even in an open world, you need to pick and choose your battles carefully.

Witcher 3 IS already a huge step towards skyrim. Just the fact it is open world says as much. I expect an open world game to let me do as I please within reason. I just don't see why they couldn't place bounties on my head and/or the various other methods they could do to punish me for killing a guard. No reason to make guards this OP.

I may be a witcher and killing monsters may be my main reason for existing, but if I can kill a Griffin that has been terrorizing towns and killing guards left and right with ease; no reason a town guard should pwn me.

Again, immersion killing.

[Y Ddraig Ddu]

Originally posted by Slayix312:

Witcher 3 IS already a huge step towards skyrim. Just the fact it is open world says as much. I expect an open world game to let me do as I please within reason. I just don't see why they couldn't place bounties on my head and/or the various other methods they could do to punish me for killing a guard. No reason to make guards this OP.

I may be a witcher and killing monsters may be my main reason for existing, but if I can kill a Griffin that has been terrorizing towns and killing guards left and right with ease; no reason a town guard should pwn me.

Again, immersion killing.

Well, the world itself doesn't really work very well under close scrutiny. The strength of The Witcher 3 is its huge volume of cutscenes and side quests, not on its interactivity within the world. Click on an NPC and he'll usually have a randomized response not specific to his character and area of the map (sometimes they sync the wrong voice lol). Outside of that single canned response, you cannot interact with any NPC in the game outside of cutscenes. Most NPC's don't have dynamic activities either; NPCs travel in circles in Novigrad, never ever going anywhere, and even the few who have work schedules never actually break out of their very simplistic work/eat/sleep cycle. It's all smoke and mirrors.

[Slayix312]

Originally posted by ydraig:

Originally posted by Slayix312:

Witcher 3 IS already a huge step towards skyrim. Just the fact it is open world says as much. I expect an open world game to let me do as I please within reason. I just don't see why they couldn't place bounties on my head and/or the various other methods they could do to punish me for killing a guard. No reason to make guards this OP.

I may be a witcher and killing monsters may be my main reason for existing, but if I can kill a Griffin that has been terrorizing towns and killing guards left and right with ease; no reason a town guard should pwn me.

Again, immersion killing.

Well, the world itself doesn't really work very well under close scrutiny. The strength of The Witcher 3 is its huge volume of cutscenes and side quests, not on its interactivity within the world. Click on an NPC and he'll usually have a randomized response not specific to his character and area of the map (sometimes they sync the wrong voice lol). Outside of that single canned response, you cannot interact with any NPC in the game outside of cutscenes. Most NPC's don't have dynamic activities either; NPCs travel in circles in Novigrad, never ever going anywhere, and even the few who have work schedules never actually break out of their very simplistic work/eat/sleep cycle. It's all smoke and mirrors.

Sure I will agree with that, but we were talking about "steps" and I think just the simple fact it is an open world a la Skyrim classifies as a "step".

We can agree to disagree on how immersion killing OP guards are though. I simply didn't like vanilla guards but it was a quick fix with a mod anyway.

[WolfEisberg]

Thieving mechanic: I never stole in any of the Witcher games, other than by accident. I know in Witche 1 and 2 you could steal everything under the sun as well and nobody would care. Honestly I always felt they should not have allowed looting of people's homes/belongings in the first place. The guards being higher level just for the purpose of the thieving mechanic was unnessary as well. I can understand people who like to loot everything can find it annoying, but for role playing purposes I never stole anything anyways, so the guards being higher level was a non issue for me. Looting in front of guards and them not caring was another complaint I saw a lot of Witcher 2, looks like CD Projekt decided to listen to those people for some strange reason.

Axii in Witcher 2 was an always on mechanic and you didn't have to invest anything into it at all. This time you have to invest level up points into it if you want to use it. Yeah, you can slot it on and off, but you are sacrificing those points that you could have put it some where else. In my first play through, I had Axii and invested points into it, with this second play through I am not investing points into it at all, so things are going different this time around compared to my first. I prefer the having to invest points into in order to use intead of Witcher 2's version of it always being on and not having to invest anything into it. In Witcher 2, there was zero downside.

Area Liberations: Personally I always thought it was a great reward for those who would go off the beaten path and explore, also gave you another spot to sell/buy some stuff closer to where you might be questing/exploring at.

XP: I remember a lot of people complaining they had to do all the quests in Witcher 2, seems like this was their answer for Witcher 3, by making side quests optional. Personally I wish they would have created an option where you can pick "Most side quests and exploring required" and "No side quests and exploring required" to appease both crowds. Currently I am using a mod that increased the XP needed in order to level up, making it so I have to do most of the quests, wihch I want to do without be overleveled.

Loans: yeah, felt it was pointless. When the game first came out, if you paid the loan back you got XP from it. And as you paid back, you were able to get more the next time. Though I have heard they got rid of gaining XP from paying back the loan, and able to get more after paying the loan back; haven't tested it myself and probably won't.

Level Gating: Would you rather they had it that side quests you find around the current main quest you are doing would be around the same level? If so, I can agree with that.

Added:

The ability to use potions/oils from the inventory during combat should not have been allowed. They should have started with 4 slots and allowed you to only use those 4 slots during combat and nothing from the inventory.

Should have made the trophies more useful and each one special. I am using a mod that makes each trophy something special and useful.

[WolfEisberg]

Originally posted by BuzzardBee:

Originally posted by ydraig:

Aye, that was an odd quest.

No, I'm referring to the quest "Missing Brother" that you pick up at The Inn at the Crossroads. It's like level 33 or something. The only quest I remember as being higher was a level 36 quest where you hunt a griffin.

Ah okay, misunderstood. Thought you meant White Orchard. Missing Brother was a contract, technically different from a quest. And yeah, it's high but then the Harrisi boss was quite a handful. It rewarded no xp, only 275-350 crowns.

Contracts tend to have high recommended levels because they do have boss fights, some of them quite tricky and tough.

The griffin one was The Creature from Oxenfut Forest (lvl 35 recommended level) again because the Morkvudd fight is a tough one. Again, it rewards no xp, only 300-331 crowns.

You do get experience from Creature From Oxenfurt Forest and Missing Brother. I can't think of any contract that I didn't get XP for that I wasn't over leveled. 300XP for each.
Here a video showing getting XP from that quest
https://youtu.be/m8pbam5xk60?t=11m8s

Missing Brother
https://youtu.be/AcJW1uJeVJc?t=5m55s

[Y Ddraig Ddu]

Originally posted by BuzzardBee:

Originally posted by ydraig:

Yeah, I don't have a big problem with guards scaling 20 levels above you (and give you no items or XP if you kill them), what I don't like is the halfassed thieving mechanic and how guards downscale themselves when they're part of quests (which makes no sense and is hugely inconsistent).

It does make sense. You're just refusing to see it. Fine. I've explained several times now. There is a reason for it. They don't want you farming them. No xp. No drops. And they're very hard fights. Translates to: STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM THESE GUYS. THEY'RE NOT WORTH FIGHTING. But of course, keep on, if you like.

Did you mean to quote me? I'm perfectly fine with their difficulty, lack of XP and drops, and fully understand why those features are in the game. What bothers me is the way they're woven into the terribly-implemented thieving mechanic and how they downscale themselves if you fight them during quests.

[Duncan]

The level distribution is random on the whole. Usually an area has logical spread - it's safer near the roads, more dangerous deeper in the forest/swamps, and overall you move on as you progress the story and get to harder locations. It wouldn't work here since the quests gates are completely random too - instead of travelling through villages and figuring their problems one by one, you have to first ride through them all, collect all quests, then, without doing any quest (because they may fail each other) you have to get to the skellige asap and collect all quests there. Then you can start doing them (in case you want to be in the level range for every quest you do).

So in the end we have a lvl32 treasure guard next to a pack of level 4 wolves and it happens extremely frequent. And one (could be more) quest that noone seemed to complete (flesh for sale) because it fails as soon as you meet Lambert on the low level vampire quest. And you need to get to skellige and explore it all before you can find that lvl10 quest.

[Duncan]

Originally posted by BuzzardBee:

Oh and the Devil's Pit area, the locked doors. Inside is a fully developed area with bunkbeds, fires, work areas, crates, ladders, you name it. It clearly was meant to be part of the game, perhaps part of one of the expansions but it was dumped and the doors remain locked forever. You can fully explore the area using Free Cam but cannot interact with anything. Another missed potential.

But then again, it's the Game of the Year and some just can't help having a blindspot where anything negative is concerned.

I believe it could be connected to Iorveth quest path. CDPR mentioned it was completed and it was quite long, but in the end they decided to take it out because it didn't really fit into the game. Apparently there was much more stuff like this cut out.

[Y Ddraig Ddu]

Originally posted by Duncan:

The level distribution is random on the whole. Usually an area has logical spread - it's safer near the roads, more dangerous deeper in the forest/swamps, and overall you move on as you progress the story and get to harder locations. It wouldn't work here since the quests gates are completely random too - instead of travelling through villages and figuring their problems one by one, you have to first ride through them all, collect all quests, then, without doing any quest (because they may fail each other) you have to get to the skellige asap and collect all quests there. Then you can start doing them (in case you want to be in the level range for every quest you do).

So in the end we have a lvl32 treasure guard next to a pack of level 4 wolves and it happens extremely frequent. And one (could be more) quest that noone seemed to complete (flesh for sale) because it fails as soon as you meet Lambert on the low level vampire quest. And you need to get to skellige and explore it all before you can find that lvl10 quest.

I think the weird enemy/quest placement was a compromise for allowing the player to wander ala in an Elder Scrolls game (so they aren't tethered to linear area progression like Gothic or Amalur) but also to not have level scaling so they can get their "hardcore RPG" brownie points. Players can immediately start running in any direction once they're loosed from White Orchard and find quests and enemies well within their level even a very long ways from the starting area. Then when the player runs across quests/enemies who are of too high a level, they can easily disengage (because enemies are tied to 3 meter tethers and cannot pursue the PC) and tackle them later.

That sounds all well and good, but unfortunately it just makes the whole world far less rewarding and a lot more artificial; why can Geralt kill a mighty Draconid with two thwacks from his sword while then getting torn to pieces by a small pack of Drowners not 20 feet away. And the randomized loot system doesn't exactly help matters either...

[Y Ddraig Ddu]

Originally posted by ⎛⎝Juri⎠⎞:

Only you would take the time to find flaws in the best game ever made. lol

Thank god for the 'lol' at the end, I almost thought you were being serious.

To me these flaws can be brushed under the rug and forgotten because the devs are only human, will eventually fix them if they get the time,

Wrong, most of these are design choices and were deliberately baked into the game, usually as an attempt to appeal to a more casual audience.

and because this is the game of the year

According to some.

with overwhelmingly positive reviews from 97% of the people who bought the game!

No, from the people who reviewed the game. It's an important distinction.