official The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

Your math is off.

 

Yeah I made a dumb mistake there lol. 2x the amount.

[trag3dy]

1.06 hotfix on the way "after the weekend"

 

http://forums.cdprojektred.com/threads/48523-Hotfix-1-06-on-the-way-(changelog-inside

 

- Fixes the endless loading screen when fighting the Ice Giant during the quest 'Lord of Undvik' 
- Geralt's clothes will no longer be wet after leaving the menu
- The gate in the crypt now works correctly during the quest 'Scavenger Hunt: Viper School Gear'
- Fixes the lack of interaction with Roche on Oxenfurt Bridge in the quest 'Get Junior' 
- Fixes an issue that prevented players from creating more than one item via Crafting/Alchemy

 

I was working on the Lord of Undvik quest yesterday so maybe I should wait on this. Hmm. I guess that's why I save often.

 

I'm also glad they are fixing the crafting thing. It was getting tedious dropping items when trying to make duplicates.

[+Random Stranger Subscriber¹]

I was working on the Lord of Undvik quest yesterday so maybe I should wait on this. Hmm. I guess that's why I save often.

 

I'm also glad they are fixing the crafting thing. It was getting tedious dropping items when trying to make duplicates.

funny, me two, i just finished it.

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Damn it! I was hoping to get in some Witcher time tonight, but I come home to find my girlfriend and one of her friends binge watching Orange is the New Black. Noooooooooo! Maybe tomorrow... 

[trag3dy]

Damn it! I was hoping to get in some Witcher time tonight, but I come home to find my girlfriend and one of her friends binge watching Orange is the New Black. Noooooooooo! Maybe tomorrow... 

 

What a problem to have. 

[Osiris]

Finished the game, what an epic tale. 

 

Got the good ending but annoyed with two sub outcomes. 

Who would have thought telling multiple women you love them would leave you all alone in the end.

 

From this and DAI im convinced dynamic systems that scale enemies to the players level offer a more balanced approach than static enemy and quest levels.  People play so differently, without some sort of dynamic system either via the enemies and level of quests (or some other mechanics/algorithm) you end up with these situations where you out level so much of the content.  this game can pretty much entirely level you just via the main story so you either end up over levelled for the side quests and contracts or over levelled for the main story - its frustrating.

[ViperAFK]

Finished the game, what an epic tale. 

 

Got the good ending but annoyed with two sub outcomes. 

Who would have thought telling multiple women you love them would leave you all alone in the end.

 

From this and DAI im convinced dynamic systems that scale enemies to the players level offer a more balanced approach than static enemy and quest levels.  People play so differently, without some sort of dynamic system either via the enemies and level of quests (or some other mechanics/algorithm) you end up with these situations where you out level so much of the content.  this game can pretty much entirely level you just via the main story so you either end up over levelled for the side quests and contracts or over levelled for the main story - its frustrating.

Yeah this was my only complaint with the game, by mid act 2 I was already way over leveled for a ton of side quests

[HawkMan]

I prefer game worlds that don't scale, it seems more realistic that way as opposed to a gameworld where everything magically scales to you. it takes away any progression you feel. oh sure, oh a new spell, but it doesn't really matter. It's fun to feel powerful and whack through a low level quest and know that, yes you are now much ore powerful than you used to be you have grown.

 

of course, somehow Geralt also loses all his skills and abilities a few times in his lives, every time he starts a new grand adventure, happened like 3 times in his life so far

[Osiris]

I prefer game worlds that don't scale, it seems more realistic that way as opposed to a gameworld where everything magically scales to you. it takes away any progression you feel. oh sure, oh a new spell, but it doesn't really matter. It's fun to feel powerful and whack through a low level quest and know that, yes you are now much ore powerful than you used to be you have grown.

 

of course, somehow Geralt also loses all his skills and abilities a few times in his lives, every time he starts a new grand adventure, happened like 3 times in his life so far

 

Each to their own but how many times do you really go back when over levelled or more powerful anyway?  You could permeate the algorithm so that monsters guarding hidden treasure scale more so you still get that randomness that I do like in the witchers current environment. Could even apply that to random environment creatures as a whole (similar to what the game seems to do now)

 

I just think non scaling enemies lead to unbalanced gameplay, its happened both now in DAI and TW3 where you out level either the main story or side quests/witcher contracts way to easily.  Enemy scaling allows you to scale the quests so you don't out level them.  Arguably the more abilities you have as a result of progression there may be a point where it's easier regardless of scaling but it would significantly mitigate the current problem these games have faced.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

I prefer game worlds that don't scale, it seems more realistic that way as opposed to a gameworld where everything magically scales to you. it takes away any progression you feel. oh sure, oh a new spell, but it doesn't really matter. It's fun to feel powerful and whack through a low level quest and know that, yes you are now much ore powerful than you used to be you have grown.

 

of course, somehow Geralt also loses all his skills and abilities a few times in his lives, every time he starts a new grand adventure, happened like 3 times in his life so far

 

Preach! I hate scaling.

[trag3dy]

1.06 hotfix on the way "after the weekend"

 

http://forums.cdprojektred.com/threads/48523-Hotfix-1-06-on-the-way-(changelog-inside

 

- Fixes the endless loading screen when fighting the Ice Giant during the quest 'Lord of Undvik' 

- Geralt's clothes will no longer be wet after leaving the menu

- The gate in the crypt now works correctly during the quest 'Scavenger Hunt: Viper School Gear'

- Fixes the lack of interaction with Roche on Oxenfurt Bridge in the quest 'Get Junior' 

- Fixes an issue that prevented players from creating more than one item via Crafting/Alchemy

 

 

1.06 patch should now be out for both the GOG and steam versions of the game. Not sure about consoles, I think they're still on 1.04? Patch notes are still the same.

[HawkMan]

Each to their own but how many times do you really go back when over levelled or more powerful anyway?  You could permeate the algorithm so that monsters guarding hidden treasure scale more so you still get that randomness that I do like in the witchers current environment. Could even apply that to random environment creatures as a whole (similar to what the game seems to do now)

 

I just think non scaling enemies lead to unbalanced gameplay, its happened both now in DAI and TW3 where you out level either the main story or side quests/witcher contracts way to easily.  Enemy scaling allows you to scale the quests so you don't out level them.  Arguably the more abilities you have as a result of progression there may be a point where it's easier regardless of scaling but it would significantly mitigate the current problem these games have faced.

 

How is that unbalanced gameplay ? you're the effin hero. it's not a PVP MMO.

[Osiris]

How is that unbalanced gameplay ? you're the effin hero. it's not a PVP MMO.

 

What does that have to do with anything?  Any game that has quests and experience by virtue of the mechanic can be unbalanced.  It's a common criticism of DAI and now TW3 that you too easily out level either the main content (by doing contracts) or the side content by doing the main quest.  Hell even the xp in terms of how its handed out is poorly balanced, basically get a stack of xp just for showing up half the time with the main quest. 

[trag3dy]

I haven't had any issues with enemy scaling. I think I enjoy it when they don't because it goes against the idea that you're actually getting strong. TW3 pacing is really good as far as that goes.

 

You'll be doing more damage and surviving but if you aren't paying attention on death march low level enemies can still kill you pretty fast.

[+Asmodai MVC]

Each to their own but how many times do you really go back when over levelled or more powerful anyway?  You could permeate the algorithm so that monsters guarding hidden treasure scale more so you still get that randomness that I do like in the witchers current environment. Could even apply that to random environment creatures as a whole (similar to what the game seems to do now)

 

I just think non scaling enemies lead to unbalanced gameplay, its happened both now in DAI and TW3 where you out level either the main story or side quests/witcher contracts way to easily.  Enemy scaling allows you to scale the quests so you don't out level them.  Arguably the more abilities you have as a result of progression there may be a point where it's easier regardless of scaling but it would significantly mitigate the current problem these games have faced.

 

Full disclosure:  I bought Witcher III but haven't played it as my gf is running through it first so I'm not exactly sure how witcher works specifically.

 

This comment is more related to scaling in games in general though so I really don't think it matters if I've played Witcher III or not.

Elder Scrolls: Oblivion did full scaling and it was one of the biggest complaints.  It really stunk when walking around outside you came along some random badits that had some of the best gear in the games and were super high level.  It completely destroyed your sense of progress as you were never really better than anyone and immersion was broken because it didn't make sense that random bandits were rocking Daedric armor and weapons.  These are supposed to be rare things not something every thug you comes across is fully decked out in.

 

On the other hand I agree that ZERO scaling is problematic, especially in open world games, where you can get caught doing side quests and such and end up out-leveling the main story.  The fact that open world games don't necessarily know what order you will do the missions in makes scaling useful to some degree (again not full scaling everwhere as Oblivion did though.

 

Skyrim I thought struck a pretty good balance in terms of scaling.  As I understand it various missions/factions have level ranges so they scale between those ranges (you don't get super powerful bandits or super weak dragons) and the missions don't set their level when you first get them but when you actually start them.  So you could get a mission to clear a bandit cave when you are level 1 and just do other things in the world until say level 10.  It isn't until you actually enter the bandit cave that the level is set (to 10 in this case as long as 10 isn't beyond the bandit's scale range otherwise they're just set to whatever their max is).  If you get your butt kicked and leave you can come back a few levels later and the bandits are still 10 because the level was already set when you entered the mission.  This solves most, if not all, of the problems.  The missions scale to your level (with caps) and if a mission is too tough despite being of your level you can level up and come back later to finish it so you get the sense of progress.

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I finished White Orchard over the weekend, and it was just fantastic. The fight with the griffin was good, but not as tough as I heard it was. I was able to kill it on the first try. Then the way the plot moves forward was really great. (I don't want to use specifics, just in case some haven't played yet)

 

I eventually got to the next area after trying to beat the nobleman in Gwent. That guy easily has the most ridiculous cards in his deck, and it took me a good 20 or so tries to beat him. And even then, I only beat him because it was the first time he didn't have all three of his hero cards. It was super annoying and frustrating. And from what I hear, there are other players that have even more broken decks, so I'm sure I'm going to continue hating gwent.

[trag3dy]

Free dlc for this week... 

 

 

Gonna assume the Wolf School Gear looks like the starting armor.

 

I don't think they're out yet.  Haven't had a chance to look.

[+Red King Subscriber²]

^

Too bad I am past the Triss parts of the game (Dijsktra called me an ass part).

Anyone have black screen / crashes with NVIDIA 9-series?

http://forums.evga.com/The-Witcher-3-Black-Screen-quotmust-force-resetquot-m2337666-p3.aspx

http://forums.evga.com/NVIDIA-WHQL-driver-35306-ready-980-Ti-m2342264.aspx

http://www.reddit.com/r/witcher/comments/36hcpg/witcher_3_crashing_frequently/

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/833693/geforce-drivers/nvidia-driver-352-86-stops-responding-and-kernel-reloads/1/

http://forums.cdprojektred.com/threads/36810-Crashing-within-5-Minutes-of-Playing-nVidia-GTX-970/page9

It is really pissing me off. I want to punch someone.

Also 60 hours in I went to Skellige - my reaction: oh ######

[trag3dy]

^

Too bad I am past the Triss parts of the game (Dijsktra called me an ass part).

Anyone have black screen / crashes with NVIDIA 9-series?

http://forums.evga.com/The-Witcher-3-Black-Screen-quotmust-force-resetquot-m2337666-p3.aspx

http://forums.evga.com/NVIDIA-WHQL-driver-35306-ready-980-Ti-m2342264.aspx

http://www.reddit.com/r/witcher/comments/36hcpg/witcher_3_crashing_frequently/

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/833693/geforce-drivers/nvidia-driver-352-86-stops-responding-and-kernel-reloads/1/

http://forums.cdprojektred.com/threads/36810-Crashing-within-5-Minutes-of-Playing-nVidia-GTX-970/page9

It is really pissing me off. I want to punch someone.

Also 60 hours in I went to Skellige - my reaction: oh ######

 

Unfortunately there are a lot of issues with the newer drivers. Try going back to older versions.

 

I don't even have a 9x card and they gave me all kinds of issues. I had to go back to version 347.88 before things became stable again.

[HawkMan]

What does that have to do with anything?  Any game that has quests and experience by virtue of the mechanic can be unbalanced.  It's a common criticism of DAI and now TW3 that you too easily out level either the main content (by doing contracts) or the side content by doing the main quest.  Hell even the xp in terms of how its handed out is poorly balanced, basically get a stack of xp just for showing up half the time with the main quest. 

 

Single player has no such thing as balance, it only has difficulty. 

[Osiris]

Skyrim I thought struck a pretty good balance in terms of scaling.  As I understand it various missions/factions have level ranges so they scale between those ranges (you don't get super powerful bandits or super weak dragons) and the missions don't set their level when you first get them but when you actually start them.  So you could get a mission to clear a bandit cave when you are level 1 and just do other things in the world until say level 10.  It isn't until you actually enter the bandit cave that the level is set (to 10 in this case as long as 10 isn't beyond the bandit's scale range otherwise they're just set to whatever their max is).  If you get your butt kicked and leave you can come back a few levels later and the bandits are still 10 because the level was already set when you entered the mission.  This solves most, if not all, of the problems.  The missions scale to your level (with caps) and if a mission is too tough despite being of your level you can level up and come back later to finish it so you get the sense of progress.

 

Good post asmodai and thanks for contributing to the discussion.  I agree skyrim worked well and standard in contrast to how DAI and TW3 have done it.  I thought this was full scalingbut doing a bit more research you're right it uses a mix which like a lot of things, can give the best result.

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Scaling of any kind completely ruins character progression; which is, in my opinion, the most important mechanic of an RPG. Skyrim's leveling was better than Oblivion's, but it was still terrible. Besthesda games, in particular, are the worst offenders of awful character progression. And that's not even counting the perks that are quite literally broken like in Skyrim.

 

If you're unhappy with over-leveling the content in Wild Hunt, then up the difficulty so that levels matter less.

 

I never understood this argument to begin with. "I did all the side-quests and leveled as much as I could before I did the next story mission, but then it was too easy." Well no sh--. Of course it's going to be easy when you over-level, that's why you do it. Side-quests aren't mandatory and are there to serve as additional (not alternate, an important distinction) avenues for character progression.

[+Red King Subscriber²]

Scaling of any kind completely ruins character progression; which is, in my opinion, the most important mechanic of an RPG. Skyrim's leveling was better than Oblivion's, but it was still terrible. Besthesda games, in particular, are the worst offenders of awful character progression. And that's not even counting the perks that are quite literally broken like in Skyrim.

 

If you're unhappy with over-leveling the content in Wild Hunt, then up the difficulty so that levels matter less.

 

I never understood this argument to begin with. "I did all the side-quests and leveled as much as I could before I did the next story mission, but then it was too easy." Well no sh--. Of course it's going to be easy when you over-level, that's why you do it. Side-quests aren't mandatory and are there to serve as additional (not alternate, an important distinction) avenues for character progression.

Yep. It is arguing against the reward.

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I have to say, I'm starting to see the appeal of Gwent. As I was doing the next couple of story missions I came to the second or third village in Velen. I played a merchant and the blacksmith there, and it was a much more enjoyable experience compared to playing the scholar in White Orchard or the nobleman in Vizima. Their decks were no where near as good as those NPCs and I could actually take my time and learn basic strategies without getting frustrated over the constant spies, medics, and power-10 cards being thrown out on every turn.

 

Though, I did notice a "glitch". You can continually beat these NPCs, winning money each time, but the amount of crowns that show in their vendor window never changes. So can you technically play them over and over until you amass a ton of crowns? Is it like that for every Gwent-able NPC?

[+Asmodai MVC]

Scaling of any kind completely ruins character progression; which is, in my opinion, the most important mechanic of an RPG. Skyrim's leveling was better than Oblivion's, but it was still terrible. Besthesda games, in particular, are the worst offenders of awful character progression. And that's not even counting the perks that are quite literally broken like in Skyrim.

 

If you're unhappy with over-leveling the content in Wild Hunt, then up the difficulty so that levels matter less.

 

I never understood this argument to begin with. "I did all the side-quests and leveled as much as I could before I did the next story mission, but then it was too easy." Well no sh--. Of course it's going to be easy when you over-level, that's why you do it. Side-quests aren't mandatory and are there to serve as additional (not alternate, an important distinction) avenues for character progression.

 

I don't see how Skyrim's version of scaling ruins character progression.  I agree Oblivion's full on scaling of everything was horrible but they fixed it in Skyrim (not that there aren't other problems not related to scaling, Skyrim is a good game but it's not perfect).

 

In a simplified example say characters can range from level 1 to 20.

Random bandit encounters can range from 1-10.

Dragon encounters can range from 11-20.

 

Characters trying to kill dragons at level 1 are going to get crushed.  Once they level up to around 10 they can start taking on dragons.  Maybe different classes of dragons even have different lower levels so the weakest dragon may be 11-20 but the strongest type may be 15 to 20, etc.  That's allows character progression.

Likewise when a character actually starts a bandit mission and locks in the level of that mission if they get their butt kicked the level for that mission is locked so they can leave, level up, and come back and finish off the bandits that were kicking their butts before... that's character progression.  When the characters level up past level 10 they'll never fight a bandit more powerful than them because they're beyond the cap, that's progression.  That's how Skyrim works. (it's more complex than that but that's the basic idea)

 

Having ZERO scaling in an open world makes it so you don't have any real idea of what is challenging and what is a waste of time.  The developers don't know when you're going to get to that quest.  You may do it a level 1, you may do it at the level cap.  Now I agree that basic bandits shouldn't scale to the level cap and dragons shouldn't scale down to 1 but since missions can theoretically be done in any order having the scale in a range appropriate for their type makes sense so that more missions are enjoyable for the player and they don't have to play "guess which missions are worth doing."  It even helps with replayability.  In Skyrim if you run to the thieves guild and do that mission arc starting a level 1 you get significantly different opponents and rewards than you do if you wait until you hit the level cap and do the same arc.  Couple that with the fact that maps can change and which "door" they attach to and a single mission arc becomes a unique experience each time you play the game.

 

Now if I had to choose between Oblivions full scaling and no scaling I'd agree that no scaling is better.  However I think Skyrim did a pretty good job in implementing scaling so that it's better than the two extremes of zero or full.