First few hours can seem slow with the early map not being the most exciting, but if you make it through the huge world opens up and things start getting much more exciting.
When I played I printed out a side quest list to try to experience as much of the game a possible and checked off ones I completed. Side quests are amazing and better than the main quest as opposed to being the usual fetch quest with a weak or no story.
Yeah, the first map area is small and kind of lifeless and I think like 3 hours long? Some don’t give a game longer than that, but the entire game took like 300 hours for me to finish so it was very small portion of a very long dense game.
Yeah, the intro is honestly awful. The game suffers from some major Kingdom Hearts 2 Syndrome. The goal is to teach you how larger Witcher contracts work, but it just slogs and there’s very little plot development for the first few hours of the game. The plot picks up once you get out of the starting area and to the Bloody Baron, so withhold judgement until you get to that point.
Also, the combat can be rough in the early game, but the difficulty quickly tapers off as you begin leveling up. By the end of the game, you’ll be mowing through enemies even on the Death March difficulty.
And in general: Dodge monsters, parry humanoids. Many of the monsters have attacks that are too large or erratic to reliably parry, but you can abuse the hell out of the I-frames from dodging. But soldiers go down much faster when you parry them.
I like playing minecraft to relax a lot of the time.
One game mod I was always interested in was a game character with a life span.
Normally, you can play a game like minecraft in hard core mode … basically one life and when you die the game is lost completely. I see many hard core mode players who can make their game last months or years and in some instances, they’ve carefully crafted everything to the point where they are more or less protected from everything. They could play it indefinitely, at least within an actual human lifetime.
One Mod I’d like to see is to have a hardcore mode … but with a built in lifespan and an aging character. Give the character a lifespan of about 80 human years … a day in minecraft is 10 minutes I think … so here is my calculation …
Roughly 82 years can be broken down to 300,000 days … so if a minecraft day cycle is ten minutes of day and ten minutes of night - we multiply 20 with 300,000 and you get 6 million minutes, which adds up to a maximum of about 11.4 years of real human years of active game playing.
So an entire hard core mode game cycle would be programmed for a maximum lifespan of 6 million minutes or 11.4 years of playing time … but there is a catch.
Of course you could die by the usual ways of accidental death. But your player is spawned as a weak child character for the first 750,000 minutes (37,500 minecraft day/night cycles) - (which corresponds to the first ten years of human life) … don’t worry, you are born into a village that protects you, or at least tries to and you have to figure out how to survive by not being able to hold tools, weapons or use basically anything other than to eat whatever you can find and shelter in place.
A teenaged period could be programmed in for the next ten year cycle but we’ll just skip to full adult for now.
So starting at 37,500 minecraft day/night cycles … you automatically become an adult and now the game can start as usual. However a clock starts working in the background. For the next 3,000,000 minutes (150,000 minecraft day / night cycles) - this corresponds to the human ages from 10 to 50 - you are more or less a healthy normal adult.
After this point, your character requires more food and food doesn’t last as long in your system. You are also 30% slower, 30% weaker and you incur 30% more damage when hit (regardless of what equipment you carry)
The next stage is started after this period ends (this corresponds to human ages 50 to 70) … now for the next 1,500,000 minutes (75,000 minecraft day / night cycles) … your character ages again … you are now 30% more slower, 30% more weaker and you incur 30% more damage with every hit (regardless of what equipment you carry) … at this point your character is moving around 60% slower and can’t do much any more.
The last segment is the last ten years of life (from age 70 to 80) … 750,000 minutes (37,500 minecraft day/night cycles) … if you survived this long, you can now barely move and everything is dangerous to you again … like the first ten years of life. At this point, no matter what you do, if you achieve everything and stay safe to the end of the clock, your player just dies and the game is over without any choice.
I don’t know if anyone would enjoy that game or not … I’m not sure if I would either … but I would probably by excited about it at the same time.
I played a MUD once that had characters age. When you got older, it affected some of your stats. You wanted your cleric to be older because that benefitted wisdom and mana, but fighter types wanted to be young for the health bonuses.
There were equipment that modified effective age, and you could remort at max level to reset it. It was kind of cool, aside from the first time I was like “why is my HP Regen so low? Ooh my cleric is like 120 years old”
Sid Myers Pirates! Has the character age which affects stats too. I can’t remember if you can die of old age but I think at some point it forces retirement.
Hey let me show you my 11ish year long hardcore world. Isn’t that cool check this out and this….
Times up. You Died. World Deleted.
11 years of your real like literally wiped away with no choice in the matter. I can’t say there’d be none that try. But I can’t imagine that sitting well with many.
Same here … but I was imagining a gamer youtuber building an entire community around the life of a minecraft character … documenting everything they’re doing … near misses, near deaths, mine adventures … but mostly watching the character grow old … and the holding a funeral of sorts for the life and death of a minecraft character that a bunch of people would have followed for 11 years.
It would be like watching your favourite TV character or actor and the following their work over a few years and then realizing that they have to die and life moves on.
It’s not the typical idea of an ever lasting game with no end … it’s more an admission that these things come and go and we all have a finite lifespan.
I love these slice of life type games that offer a variety of quests, trades, and places to explore. I know there are plenty of those as single player games but they’re infinitely more fun as MMOs where friends can hop in and join you.
Slice of Life MMOs just have this feeling where you’re living a second fantasy life. I know a lot of people get that vibe from Games Like Stardew, but it took RuneScape and FFXIV for me to understand what they what they were talking about. The community just makes it feel far more alive
Don’t let the upgrade, potion, etc system overwhelm you. My brother gave up cause it seemed too complicated for him. If you mostly ignore it and just play for a bit, it comes naturally
Like I told my brother. Just explore, do minor quests, gather ingredients and items. Once you have enough ingredients to make a potion or oil, the menu literally tells you and you can do it in one button click.
In the first region in the midst of the first small village two neighbors are arguing. They are not giving a quest, they just talk to each other and listening gives such an insight in how war can turn people against each other that have been living peacfully and been friends for years.
Do the side quests and take your time with the dialogue. Some of these stories are impactful, mostly sad and worth your time. If you are told that you should talk to people to find out more about your contract, do it. Some of these quests can be done with only talking to one person but you want to get the information from everyone and especially their side of the story.
Do not look up the outcome of decisions. Make your decisions and live with them at least at your first playthrough. Most decisions have impact and seeing the outcome unfold makes this game special and yes often there is no “good choice” - that’s war for you.
Last: Buy every Gwent card you can get your hands on and play with everyone you can. If you can’t win just come back later with better cards and obliterate them - it will feel goooood!
The DLC’s are a must.
Try out difficulty settings - there is a sweet spot for most people somewhere but what it will be for you no one can know, but it would be a shame if you play through the game not having found the difficulty that fits you best because you “always play on <insert difficulty>”.
Have fun, I wish I could play this game for the first time again.
they actually sorted that out pretty nicely with updates. the pace is quite even since they published the next-Gen rework. the problem with being under-leveled still persists though.
lemmy.world
Aktywne