Postby smartroad » Sun Nov 27, 2016 12:34 pm
I have been taking a bit of a break from Elite and taking the time to catchup with The Witcher 3 - "TW3" from now on lol (actually had to restart as I couldn't remember how some of it worked LOL).
I draw comparisons between then two games. I have been playing TW3 and doing the main quest but also lots of side ones. The side ones (and many of the main ones to be honest) are much like Elite's missions. Go there, get this, bring back. Go there, kill this, come back. Go there, poke around for a bit, come back. Go there, deliver this. And so on. All sound familiar in basic premise, but I have been enjoying doing them more in TW3 then in Elite recently and I have been trying to think as to why.
Firstly you get to interact more with the NPC's, they are voiced, move and there are more of them making it feel more alive. You can find (seemingly) random NPC's who will give you a quest if you want - find out who murdered my husband, find my missing cat, help me top this gang boss so I can just work and so forth.
Next I looked at why I was happy to do those missions, when they didn't really add anything to the story. Partly you got to know your character a bit more, then there is earning money (not in all mind you) but mostly it was to gain levels so I could get the good items that I can then use later in the game. I wanted to upgrade to the 'Cat' armour set, well I had to go on a treasure hunt to find the 'blueprints', during which I got to kill a few monsters and collect items (that may have been for later use to make the items I wanted), this also gave me a little XP and some cash on occasion. I also had to find people to make the items for me. This led me onto a mission to help out a master sword-smith to make the weapons. After some time (about 3 days of playing on and off for a few hours at a time) I got everything I needed to make set of items.
Like Elite, to get custom stuff made you have to collect materials for it. I found that I had already collected all the materials I needed for pretty much all the armour and weapons - bar a simple shirt which I could buy from the armourer (or have him dismantle another bit of armour to extract the shirt part, or have him make a shirt from other materials I already had). The big difference between collecting materials in TW3 and Elite is the ease of it. Once you have defeated a monster in TW3 you go to its remains and pick up its contents, press 'E' and then 'SPACE' and you have all the bits. Find a plant which is part of crafting? Pick it with two presses of 'E'. Most of the materials don't weigh anything so you can carry as much as you need - not realistic but it is a game. In Elite it is a real chore to pickup materials, effectively you have to dock with each one to grab it. I know people don't want magic tractor beams etc but why can the ship just have 'bucky' cables that shoot out and grab in what you want - preferably near instantly? With TW3 if there is a component you don't have, you can almost certainly find someone who has it to sell. Sure it may take some time, but that is part of the cost if you don't want to battle an enemy to get its eye or spleen etc. Worse with Elite is that some of the items count as actual cargo so you have to carry it about with you as (again unlike TW3 where you can store anything in your magic boxes of storage - which are also available at any box you go to - again not realistic but, well game). TW3 just gives you several options for how to get the components, find, buy, craft or dismantle.
Also Elite has a limited set of upgrades that you can do, which are all available from the select Engineer the moment you are allowed access to them (aside from different grades being locked behind the 'reputation' level - so you have to make lots of stupid level one items before you can get to level two etc - wasting the components you have taken ages to get). In TW3 you have to find the 'blueprint' of the upgrade/item before you can ask for them to be made - by almost any armourer/sword-smith, only the level of the maker limits what they can make.
Money was never that important to begin with, I was able to take on lots of enemies with only my basic stuff. Slight better stuff wasn't that much more either. I made most of the money I needed by selling the weapons/armour/treasure I found off of my opponents, along with many of the side missions. Now I have over 10K which will allow me to get all I need at the moment. Not once, after the first few hours, did I worry about the amount of money I had, it was just something I gained as I went on. The opponents are clearly marked as to let you know if you could take them on or not, giving you the chance to run away and come back later.
I suppose the upshot of this long post (sorry didn't mean to go on LOL) is that in TW3 I am ENJOYING the grind because it is masked between varied missions with characters I can see and interact with and personal targets to achieve (get to level 17 for the 'Cat' armour and weapon kit for example). The combat never feels one sided and if you aren't good enough (i.e. high enough level) you can mostly park the mission and come back once you are, there are very few time limited missions. Lets be honest, interaction with NPC's in Elite is totally flat and one sided. They talk to you but you can't respond to them and that makes them totally flat and one dimensional, not something you can get invested in. Take the mission givers in Elite when you go to the notice board. They are just an image with a fixed canned message. There is no way to interact with them, they don't ask how you are doing, is there a particular mission you would like to do etc.
Anyway, not sure if any of that makes sense but I'll sign off now before I waffle any longer!!
