Alternate Balancing & AI - for first timer?

[Hazmy]

Hello everyone!

I've done some research, I kind of know what these options do but I would like to ask veterans opinion on the matter.

Would you recommend the Alternate Balance and AI options for a first timer? I am just finishing Gothic 1 & 2 before 3.

My main concern is : I feel Alternate Balancing does not allow you to have enough freedom in character building.

and with the AI - I've heard it causes weird behaviour to enemies like they focus the player instead of fighting other NPCs.

What would you recommend?

[ShinraV]

AB will make g3 like 1 and 2 where you can become everything at once and have to choose. Without AI the enemies are very easy imo,

[SirDmitry]

I've played my first time in G3 in 2015 and do it without AB. Get a lot of fun. Tried AB in second run and understood that first try with AB could became a disaster and I could abandon this great game forever)))

[SHUGO]

Without alternative balancing you can become every class at once. A warrior, a mage, a ranger, everything. You'll have plenty of points to spend. If you've played G1 and G2 before playing G3, you won't notice the changes it makes to the game and the leveling system, so I'd suggest to leave it on.

I hate the alternative AI, the game simply wasn't made for that and it plays bad.

For a first playthrough I'd go with AB On, Alt AI Off and hard difficulty.

[kris.aalst]

AB is a matter of personal preference for gaming in general. Do you enjoy playing a character that's a jack-of-all-trades and becomes nearly invincible during the second half of the game? Or do you prefer being forced to pick either a melee, ranged or magic build and not being able to learn all the skills in the character sheet, making the game a lot more challenging?

I would definitely recommend playing with Alternative AI. It doesn't only make NPCs fight a bit better and more coördinated (how much more depends on the difficulty level you set the game to), but it also adds a few welcome 'rule changes' to combat:
- it severely decreases the number of times animals will stunlock you (on the other hand, it also restricts your ability to stunlock, but since enemies don't stunlock you anymore, there's no need to play 'first one to stunlock wins the fight' anymore)
- you can't block forever and neither can your opponents (this makes melee fights, especially in arenas, a lot more fun)

Alternative AI can be switched on or off at any time, so you can experiment a bit with that if you like. AB requires a decision before starting a new game and can't be changed after that. For a first playthrough, I'd recommend playing without AB and on normal difficulty. But if you're gamer whose slogan is 'Near-impossible / Souls-like games ftw!', then you may want to enable AB even for a first playthrough (and set difficulty to hard, of course! ).

[Hazmy]

Thank you for the detailed feedback everyone!

I am still torn since it 2-2 for both sides haha, but It gave me lots of insight.

I have a feeling the best would be to just leave both off as that's how the developers intended the game? Maybe it will be more on the easy side but I can play hard then to make it better?

[EolSunder]

alternate balancing gives you less experience and less lps, so you can't be a jack of all trades. You'll have to focus on what you want to play.. melee (ick) archer or mage. For instance, normally if you kill a rabbit, little lizard, etc you'll get 25 exp. With alternate balancing you'll get 10 exp. If you read a book to get ancient knowledge or alchemy +5, instead you'll get +3. So, less experience = less leveling = less lps to spend on skills and stats.

Really, first time playing play with it off, so you can do what you want. If you want to replay the game at a later date, then play with it on since you know what your doing.

[_Shakyor_]

AB ON
AI OFF
Hard

[D'amarr from Darshiva]

Always forget whether "Alternative AI" is on or off by default, but I just reinstalled Gothic 3 and this time without the Community Patch 1.75.14 (CP) but with the same version in the beta channel, and Alt.AI was ON by default. Since that isn't obvious to new players, be sure to check the difficulty settings where the AI checkbox can be found. I never liked that mode and how it changes melee combat - it gives a bad first impression to new players during the tutorial where they likely get knocked out often.

[d4rck_ghost]

i found it amazing how on the new Gothic_3_EE_v1.75_Int_Update_Pack_v1.04.11 the hard mode got buffed hard into mega hard, 1 orck scout literly kils me on 2 hits, even the training match in reddock vs joe is near unbeatable, he also drops me down on 2 hits wile he takes lakem 20 to get on his knews, and dont even get me talking abouth the stamina, enemies move very fast ( unlimited stamina) wile we move like turtle and end up our stamina very fast , so i feel this game got totaly broken, if they thout it was izi before they sure made it impossible now

i feel the stamina should got buffed aswel for us , dont forget we are almost never 1x1 so the base should be 200 izi