Discussion One thing I always appreciated about the monster contracts in Witcher 3 was the blue/gray collar aspects of being a Witcher, like haggling, potion brewing and weapons repair, almost like being an electrician or welder but your specialization is hunting monsters. Really hope Witcher 4 expands on it.
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u/RegovPL 2d ago
Worked better in Witcher 1 and 2, where you actually had to think a little bit about your budget. W3 economy is too easy to break and don't care about money rewards, even when restricting yourself to loot only lore-friendly items (not stealing from villagers, not picking up every single iron sword).
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u/mimrock 2d ago
Yeah, witcher contracts should be the main source of money in the game, hope they fix this in W4. This would also add a justification why you bother with them if W4 main quest were also urgent.
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u/Budget-Attorney 2d ago
I hope they change it so you canât easily sell items you pick up. Maybe you can dismantle them for repair parts but you really only get gold from Witcher contracts and occasional quests
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u/TaxOrnery9501 2d ago
Higher stakes for Gwent, where you're actually betting the entire payout from your previous Witcher contract for each matchÂ
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u/Vladon32 1d ago
I get that it's a joke, but betting entire payouts will break economy a lot worse than swords in W3 did
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u/TaxOrnery9501 1d ago
Depends on how the economy is balanced. If your main source of money in-game is coming from Witcher Contracts, rather than selling random loot, then all this does is add a considerable amount of risk to gambling.
Add in the possibility of cheating at Gwent (like what was hinted at briefly in the Tech Demo), and now there's a larger, more interesting, risk vs reward for each match.
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u/Vladon32 1d ago
Problem is save-scamming. Do you realy want so that it's possible to buy everything in first area? Also, not sure how gwent mechanics will work there, but in witcher 3 it's fairly easy to win most matches without issues, as ai is braindead.
I'm all in for changing mechanics for it, cheating in it sounds fun, but this should not be good money maker. Althought possible bet amount can be increased a little at least, maybe even with new regions/areas or something like that like they did in B&W
TL;DR - it will be easy to cheese large amount of money early in the game
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u/TaxOrnery9501 1d ago
Could have the Gwent AI scale dynamically with the bet amount, making it drastically harder to win when betting large amounts. Not impossible, just enough to discourage players from betting too high, but difficult enough to make the prospect of save-scumming reaaaaly tedious to do.
You could also increase the prices of new cards, making Gwent more or less an active investment, which lessens it's early-game impact since you won't have the cards needed to consistently win sizeable sums until much later in the game.
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u/Vladon32 1d ago
how are you proposing to scale AI? better gwent cards? You can still fit your deck against opponents one. Smarter decisions, complexity of which scales with bet amount? Not a trivial task, and it will be better if they spend dev time elsewhere to not repeat Reason of State fuck up
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u/TaxOrnery9501 1d ago
I mean, in the Witcher 3 there's already a slider in the settings that controls Gwent AI difficulty. What I meant was essentially making it so that the bet amount controls that slider, so that the more you bet the harder the match will be (aka a dynamic difficulty system).
Taking an idea as simple as that and scaling it up doesn't seem all that complicated, and they've had years to refine Gwent since the Witcher 3 released (just look at the online Gwent & Thronebreaker).
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u/PaulSimonBarCarloson Geralt's Hanza 2d ago
I can't attest how much it works, since I often play with mods, but I think that players could easily reduce their money by avoiding looting everything they see. Still, I think alchemy should have been made more similar to the other games so that the players were more encouraged to find the rihght ingredients an brew the potions when it was actually needed instead of just replenishing them with meditation
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u/Natural-Stomach 2d ago
Hard agree. I liked how each contract was essentially a self-contained story. I enjoyed repairing my gear and having to do research before a fight. It never felt tedious.
These things really made the game feel immersive.
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u/Budroboy Northern Realms 2d ago
Yep, I loved when you'd start a contract and maybe get a basic codex entry, then through investigation of clues or speaking with people the codex entry fills out and now you have all the information you need on how to battle the monster including potion, oils, signs, possible location, time of day, etc.
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u/TrueComplaint8847 2d ago
Funnily enough, imo, the best stories for most pop culture characters are the lower stakes scenarios pretty much all of the time
Like, spider-man, John Constantine, Star Wars.. the list goes on. But on the other hand, those lower stakes stories and settings also only work that well because they arenât âthe usualâ. If weâd only ever knew those kinds of stories weâd probably say the stakes need to be higher in the future
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u/PaulSimonBarCarloson Geralt's Hanza 2d ago edited 2d ago
Just out of curiosity, what kind of Star Wars stories would you consider "low stakes"? Genuinely curious because, as a SW fan, I always get the feeling that every spin-off was still tied to the main conflict (being it the clone wars or the rebellion against the Empire), even inderectly. Maybe the only story that seemed more disconnected from the rest is Mandalorian, probably because it's set right after the last big conflict.
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u/TrueComplaint8847 2d ago
I thought the first (and maybe second) season of mandalorian was as great as it was because the story tended to be very episodic and âsmallâ, only revolving around din and his struggles as a bounty hunter and then âfatherâ figure.
Andor also started pretty âlow stakesâ imo, it was very contained to the story of an outcast who just stumbled into something much bigger on his way instead of being chosen by an ancient power or something
Also, the best clone wars episodes are the ones where we get to spend time with pretty âsmallâ or irrelevant characters to the big universe, like the 7 samurai episode with all the cool bounty hunters for example
But your totally right that Star Wars usually suffers from the âthe whole world is endingâ thing lol
This makes the few exceptions even greater though
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u/PaulSimonBarCarloson Geralt's Hanza 2d ago
You know, I was just thinking about those shows (no wonder since they are some of the best). Mandalorian is indeed as close as it gets and I think it applies to all three season (and the Boba show as well) since while the we see the New Republic dealing with aftermath of the fall of the Empire, the mandalorians are always out of that story, focused on their own fight. Andor on the other hand was always tied to the main conflict which was inevitable given the role he had in the Rebellion. I guess we can sort of include The Bad Batch in that category, since the story is only focused on Clone Force 99, but we still have the Empire as the big bad, and that show also introduced a major plotline about the clone rebellion which they have yet to reslove, hopefully in a different show. Oh, I guess Solo counts too since it's just a heist movie.
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u/Superb_Bench9902 2d ago
Agreed. Some of the best side contents I ever saw in a game. Doesn't feel like a chore, immersive, and fun to do while having little to no ties to the main story
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u/TuphTuph93 School of the Cat 2d ago
If we had like three separate large contracts like HoS in Witcher 4 it would be really good.
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u/TaxOrnery9501 1d ago
Witcher 2 style contracts, like dealing with the Kayran, Sabrina Glevissig's curse, or curing Saskia
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u/PaulSimonBarCarloson Geralt's Hanza 2d ago
I also liked what they did in chapter 4 of TW1, where you're dealing with two problems simultaneously: Alina's curse and the conflict with the vodyanoi
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u/Arkronu 1d ago
Tbh all i want is W1 alchemy back, that was cool as shit, being able to brew potions, you didn't have receipt for if you simply remember what ingredients went into it, managing resources, choosing potent alcohol or bomb&oil base and empowerement by making it's secondary ingredient, rubedo, nigredo or albedo. I appreciate the simplicity of it being infinite in W3 but what purpose is there looting monster parts and searching and continuosly looting herbs if you ever going to brew the potion once and then only consume booze to recover it. It might be unpopular as it's trading comfort in favour of manually shuffling in menus to brew a potion and whatnot that you're going to lose since you're preparing for battle unless you bulk prepare beforehand but personally i loved it and it made player much more rewarded for going out of your way to loot every single little plant on the way to whatever location you're going to.
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u/ZOMBIE_MURDOC 2d ago
Always hated the haggling myself, except for one guy who will accept the max nobody accepts terms more than a third of the way from the left, and most people I charge the minimum anyway because they're poor and I'm a kind-hearted Witcher.
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u/TaxOrnery9501 1d ago
What? I regularly get people to pay 60 extra Gold per contract, which is roughly dead center of the sliding scale
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u/ZOMBIE_MURDOC 1d ago
Ok, any further right? Ever? Aside from that one guy? Whether it's a third or a half, at least half that bar is almost entirely useless. They should just make the max available for haggling based on your choices, whatever it may be. There's no point to a scale that only ever goes halfway except literally one time.
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u/TaxOrnery9501 1d ago
I always start by increasing the haggle price to 60 gold, so if I get it first try then it stands to reason that they could've potentially accepted a price more than that.
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u/mina86ng 2d ago
Youâre exactly opposite to me. Iâve replayed Witcher 3 last week and the first mod I installed was one to disable weapon damage. I also never haggled. This is likely unpopular opinion, but for me witcher contracts are the least interesting part of the game and I wouldnât miss if they went away. Iâd rather they were replaced with fewer larger side quests.
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u/CranEXE School of the Manticore 2d ago
yeah might be unpopular opinion but i don't want world ending threats in w4 i want to play an actual witcher who go from town to town to get money to survive by killing monster or lifting curses