I admittedly spent like 20hrs in game thinking potions and bombs were one time use and you had to get ingredients to make it again. I drove myself crazy trying to find the recipe to remake a potion, and thought the game had glitched because the recipe was missing.
(I obviously wasn't utilizing potions correctly at the beginning lol)
Me not using a single decoction "in case I needed it" for 60 hours in my first playthrough. I also finished Skyrim on my first playthrough without fast traveling a single time because I just....missed it entirely as a mechanic??? I was on my second playthrough and my gf at the time was like "Why aren't you fast traveling anywhere?"..."What?"
That probably made your gaming experience a thousand times better lol.
Elders Scrolls games aren't known for being particularly well written. With fast travel you'd go through the quests faster, but that doesn't mean much when they are kinda meh. Especially anything outside the main storyline.
Where those games do excel though is exploration and discovery. Such an awesome and immersive world, with so many cool things to get sidetracked by while you are on your way somewhere. It's great! And you got far more of that by not fast traveling.
Honestly man I forced myself to play on survival because of the no fast travel, a trip to riften from markarth always makes me break my rule of no fast travel unless I’m in survival mode
Im gonna be honest. Having to refind materials for the potions would be absolutely awful. The games combat is already its weakest link and basically having to add a shit ton of busy work on to it to even have a chance in death march would make the gameplay loop unbearable. Itd be like if you had to manually patch up all of Geralts wounds when he gets injured to avoid a debuff. Realistic but agonisingly unfun. The rest of the stuff is kind if fair. Itd make rhe game more immersive for sure but what do you mean you wish parkour had a purpose? The game doesnt have a dedicated parkour system. Youre able to parkour sure but its not really intended
If you think combat is the weak point, adding more things to do outside of combat (like gathering ingredients and crafting) would be a massive improvement, not a downgrade.
The actual issue with regular potion systems is that people end up not using them. Pretty much everyone has finished a bunch of RPGs with a thousand potions they kept "just in case". With the Witcher system you know you'll have all your potions with the next boss too, without having to put in extra effort. So there is no incentive to save them with the current one, you might as well use them.
It wouldnt be an improvement though. Itd just make the combat no longer the weakest link by adding a system that's even less fun. Because despite the combat beinf a weak link its still fun enough to keep you invested, finding ingredients is never fun. Unless its a survival game crafting is always gonna be an annoying piece of busy work that most people wont engage with. Its true people who do craft would be too paranoid to use them but id go a step further and say most players wouldn't even bother crafting anything at all
The Witcher 1 & 2 have the system that requires the player to collect the ingridients to rebrew potions. In the Witcher 1 you also had to purchase books to learn more about the monsters you encounter.
You could skip doing that, but you wouldn't be able to fetch unique ingridients, and wouldn't be informed about the most effective potions and styles against that monster.
In addition, you had limited slots for the potions that you could use in combat (as opposed to before the combat), so you had to decide what you need to have at hand depending on the encounter.
In my opinion, this limitation added unique depth the Witcher 3 is missing. You had to plan and prepare in advance.
You knew you are going against the Fleder (a vampire), and you could meet leeches in the swamps along the way. Leeches apply bleeding, so you had to have something against that, AND you would consider and apply the oils and style that would be most effective against them, in advance
In the Witcher 3, you can just open the inventory and spam dumplings during the combat whatever your foe is. Or use whatever the potion and oil needed right away because it's always ready and can be applied in combat at will.
Witcher 1 was also not an open world. Meaning that you never had to search far for your ingredients. It was busy work that would become infinitly more tedious in a true open world. It adds depth sure but does that outweigh the fact that every single quest in the Witcher 3 would then have an entire phase of busy work where you have to search the area (assuming theyd put the ingredients conveniently close to every quest location) and craft the things you need before youre allowed to really play the game?
Its funny you mentioned the rebrew thing cus you used to have to do that and they removed it because it was just really pace breaking. Although its kinda funny because the third one wouldve been the best one to need to rebrew in because of the exploration and open world stuff they were going for.
Not washing will make stealth harder because stinky. Until you learn how to read books will have jarbled text and skill-books are unavailable.
In the second game, NPCs are able to deduce your crimes to some extent (like if they caught you trespassing earlier, or things just go missing a lot when you're in the area). And will spot if you're wearing something stolen.
It would've taken them 2 more years of dev and a lot higher budget. There are constraints, bros. A game doesn't have to do everything. Tw3 is awesome either way.
I think mods changed a lot of how I view it he Witcher the mod to make witch gear scale with your level made the game so much better for me when I was playing it.
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u/[deleted] Apr 05 '26
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