Gothic 3 - Version 1.6 Patch Available

Gorath said:

Okay, then move on. Designing and implementing a combat system and then integrating it in an A-quality game is impossible for an amateur team. Gothic will get a new combat system - in Gothic 4.

Rebalancing only makes sense when everything else is working correctly. Maybe the CPT will work on it after patch 1.7. Maybe even later.

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What?

Why in the world would fixing the utterly horrible combat balance be a low priority thing? So many people have lamented it, and yet so little has been done.

It doesn't have to be an entirely new combat system at all - though that would indeed be nice. They could simply tweak a few numbers, making wildlife less dangerous and orcs less easy to kill. Simply make the ridiculous quick attack cause less damage or whatever, which could be fixed by a monkey with a 1-hour course in coding. I've coded a bit in my day, so hand me the source code and I'll find whatever variable contains the damage for each attack and tweak it. It's just not hard and should be fixed ASAP.

The biggest problem with G3's combat for me is that fighting multiple opponents is completely ridiculous as they stay patiently in line, waiting for their turn to get slaughtered. This cannot be fixed with just tweaking a few numbers - if they just came behind your back and attacked, you wouldn't have a chance to do anything using this combat system. Some drastic changes concerning movement, blocking and hitting are needed.

Quick attack is not a superior attack at all, it serves as a good opener. Most creatures (Sandcrawlers etc) will break quick attack spamming after a short while, so unless you either change approach or vary between attacks, you'll take a lot of damage that can be avoided completely. Also, the quick attack issue is exclusive to one-handed combat, which is only one of many combat forms. Lowering quick attack damage would do very little to re-balance the current combat system, you'd need to completely re-design it to get any serious effects.

Gorath is right, it will simply not be done. Making costly changes to Gothic 3 is, at this point, certainly not going to be enough to actually get a 2006 game selling again. You never get large scale changes on games that have already been past their height in terms of sales, PR and reviews.

Elwro said:

The biggest problem with G3's combat for me is that fighting multiple opponents is completely ridiculous as they stay patiently in line, waiting for their turn to get slaughtered. This cannot be fixed with just tweaking a few numbers - if they just came behind your back and attacked, you wouldn't have a chance to do anything using this combat system. Some drastic changes concerning movement, blocking and hitting are needed.

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From the 1.6 patch notes,

- Slight revision of enemy selection during fights to reduce the number of uninvolved NPCs.
- NPCs using ranged weapons or magic search for a new target when the current target gets out of sight.

At least it's progress.

I'm not saying the combat system will ever be great, or even good.

But considering I slaughtered everything and everyone using basically only the quick attack - and faced no danger apart from the wildlife spam attacks - I'd say there's something seriously imbalanced about that attack. Oh, that's not true, I killed dragons using the bow which is equally stupid.

I won every single arena match in the exact same way, namely simply spamming quick attack.

So, reducing the amount of damage it does will encourage fighting in a previously less efficient manner and then even the laughably poor combat AI will be less of a problem in terms of how easy the game is overall. Yes, you could simply meta-game and use less efficient attacks as it is, but that would be totally unimmersive if you ask me. Hopefully, by making quick attack a less efficient damage dealing move, people won't be using it to kill because it will take too long. Also, I doubt it would take all that much coding to make it not interrupt attacks (or stunlock I guess it is) or simply give it a chance to interrupt instead.

So, apart from one-handed fighting - yes - there are other ways of fighting but no matter what you do, you will be using quick attack because it always works. That's why it's so vital to do something about it. I fail to see why you all seem so convinced there's nothing that can be done, simply because it hasn't been done yet. It's about the will to do it, and being a little creative with the options they have available, since they can't change the deeper aspects of the combat system which involves animations cycles or whatever.

So, yes, tweaking numbers CAN make a significant difference, but I'm not claiming it would fix what's basically broken beyond repair. But just because you can't change the entire system at the core doesn't mean you should ignore balance entirely. The quick attack suggestion is just a result of spending a split second thinking about what could be done with a bit of tweaking. If I was in anyway involved with fixing the game, I have supreme confidence I could come up with much better solutions that wouldn't require significant coding. However, even with that, the combat system would remain broken at the base, but the game as a whole would be more challenging and less prone to exploits. I don't see the downside, and people who say it shouldn't be a priority are not thinking out of the box at all.

DArtagnan said:

So, yes, tweaking numbers CAN make a significant difference, but I'm not claiming it would fix what's basically broken beyond repair. But just because you can't change the entire system at the core doesn't mean you should ignore balance entirely. The quick attack suggestion is just a result of spending a split second thinking about what could be done with a bit of tweaking. If I was in anyway involved with fixing the game, I have supreme confidence I could come up with much better solutions that wouldn't require significant coding. However, even with that, the combat system would remain broken at the base, but the game as a whole would be more challenging and less prone to exploits.

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The CPT knows all this. They´ve answered dozens of questions about it in their forums. The question "if" is not the problem. They also know where in the sources to make the changes.

I don't see the downside, and people who say it shouldn't be a priority are not thinking out of the box at all.

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Who says it should not be a priority? Nobody said that.
Maybe you haven´t thought this through carefully enough. What exactly do you want to change, global combat variables or the details for certain monsters or NPCs? Weapons, armour, spells, perks? Availability, spawn rate, resistences? How do you find out the correct new values? Testing, testing, testing again, repeat.
(a) We are talking about up to several thousand parameters. They need to be set to certain values. Which requires precision. Each parameter can interdependent with many others. It´s a bottomless pit.
(b) This binds an enormous amount of resources. If resources are limited this automatically means other things with the same sum of resource requirements will not be done. The community bug tracker is still full...
(c) Not all in-game parameters are final yet. A now-bugfree perk can influence combat balance. Reactivated quests give XP. XP leads to a higher level. The (un)availability of certain items makes a difference, for example the fire sword very early.
(d) Analyzing balance modifications for man months is certainly not a funny job. I think it´s perfectly understandable they only want to do it once. Due to (c) there is a high risk they would need to do it multiple times if they make too many changes after the rebalancing. Ergo the correct time to do it is when everything else is final. If the CPT loses their motivation to continue, maybe because of all the whining on the German forums, it will not be done at all.

Who says it should not be a priority? Nobody said that.

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Ehm, you did.

In this quote:

Rebalancing only makes sense when everything else is working correctly. Maybe the CPT will work on it after patch 1.7. Maybe even later.

When everything else is working correctly = lowest possible priority there is = not a priority.

Maybe you haven´t thought this through carefully enough. What exactly do you want to change, global combat variables or the details for certain monsters or NPCs? Weapons, armour, spells, perks? Availability, spawn rate, resistences? How do you find out the correct new values? Testing, testing, testing again, repeat.
(a) We are talking about up to several thousand parameters. They need to be set to certain values. Which requires precision. Each parameter can interdependent with many others. It´s a bottomless pit.
(b) This binds an enormous amount of resources. If resources are limited this automatically means other things with the same sum of resource requirements will not be done. The community bug tracker is still full...
(c) Not all in-game parameters are final yet. A now-bugfree perk can influence combat balance. Reactivated quests give XP. XP leads to a higher level. The (un)availability of certain items makes a difference, for example the fire sword very early.
(d) Analyzing balance modifications for man months is certainly not a funny job. I think it´s perfectly understandable they only want to do it once. Due to (c) there is a high risk they would need to do it multiple times if they make too many changes after the rebalancing. Ergo the correct time to do it is when everything else is final. If the CPT loses their motivation to continue, maybe because of all the whining on the German forums, it will not be done at all.

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I haven't thought it through?

I gave you an exact suggestion for a solution which will involve tweaking 1 (read it) ONE value assigned to a variable.

Every single program in the world works with variables that are assigned values. Somewhere in the code, there is a base value for quick attack, I can promise you that. I'm sure it's modified by weapons, skills, etc. but I'm talking about the base value which is probably some kind of static number either in the form of a percentage multiplier or similar. That single value should be set to something lower than what it is, and that's all I'm talking about for now.

The extremity you're talking about, related to fixing countless values and thoroughly testing the results would not be the case with my idea. I'm fully aware that changing the combat system in a wholesome manner would require an enormous effort which is PRECISELY why I'm not suggesting that.

But whatever, I think I've made my point. It's possible that I'm wrong and that it's an incredibly complex source code that won't let you search for named variables and their assigned values. In that case, I'm sorry for my ignorance.

Ooh, I've got an idea! You should ask the community patch team to tell you how to change that one value (since Gorath says they can), and you should change it. Then, you'll be happy because you'll have your own numbers, Gorath will be happy because he doesn't have to argue with you, and maybe someone else with a similar idea will be happy too.

Sorry if I come off as a bit aggresive.

DArtagnan said:

Ehm, you did.

In this quote:

Rebalancing only makes sense when everything else is working correctly. Maybe the CPT will work on it after patch 1.7. Maybe even later.

When everything else is working correctly = lowest possible priority there is = not a priority.

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Semantics.

I gave you an exact suggestion for a solution which will involve tweaking 1 (read it) ONE value assigned to a variable.[...]

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Okay, if you´re only suggesting to tweak that one variable then we don´t have a problem. Why don´t you post your suggestion in the JoWooD forum and find out what they´re saying? Maybe they´re even doing it if you make it clear you don´t want them to rebalance the whole game.





I´ve seen dozens of people in various forums who suggested they could simply rebalance the game. Just change a couple of numbers and that´s it. Can´t be that much work and so on. They usually don´t have a precise idea when asked.

VPeric said:

Sorry if I come off as a bit aggresive.

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We all come over as a bit aggressive. Must be the weather.

I'll look into suggesting it on the forums then

No game is perfect, and everyone will always have issues with one thing or another in any particular game.

It's obvious that Gothic 3 is far from finished, there are many things that still annoy me, even with this latest patch. That being said, I still think that G3 is one of the best CRPG's I've played since Gothic 2, better than 90% of the RPG's released in the last 5 years.

Thaurin said:

Yeah, the Gothic 1/2 combat system/controls will not make a come-back I'm afraid. I'm on the team that's of the opion that those controls ROCKED, though. But I'll admit that it's not for the mainstream. Those guys would complain about repetitive-strain injury because they needed more than one finger.

I don't know, is this another case of the majority wins? It worked well in G1/G2, but I'm not sure if it would carry over in G3.

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I loved the early Gothic controls too, but they wouldnt work when fighting large groups off the bat. In G1 and G2 you usually mainly fought groups of 1-4 creatures (and it could be hell to target the right one if fighting multiple enemies).

The thing that bugs me most about G3s combat is of course the queuing up of melee enemies (if you swing they'll all wait nicely, so it isnt really a fast-attack problem). But now the game has been "balanced" for taking hits from one orc at a time rather than ten or twenty. Simply eliminating that featue would cause a jump in difficulty that couldnt be fixed with simple tweaking of parameters within the existing system. That's why the scope of fixing the combat system is outside that of patching...

Not to sidetrack the thread or anything, but I'm having horrible issues after installing the full patch on a clean installation of G3. Time slicing seems to have gone crazy - the game will stutter between darkness and daylight several times in a split second, characters move twice as fast, then freeze, then move again, etc; it started out as a very occassional stutter but it's gotten worse and worse to the point where the game is now completely unplayable about 40 minutes in. Sleeping in a bed has no effect on this. Has anyone else encountered this issue? Any ideas where to start fixing it? I can't seem to find the 'official' forums for the community that makes these patches, so I don't know where else to ask...

I've had one crash at Gotha when I pushed to open a basket in the dark with a cross in front of me. Apart from that nothing and that's with some unhealthy play session times.

IanT Your problem is a very well known issue with Dual Core processors. There is a separate fix patch for it which might even have shipped with the game (it's been a long time since I installed it. ) I had it when I first installed and the patch fixed it immediately. I'd say the 1.6 patch doesn't contain that fix which is why you've had a problem after a clean install!!

PS, Welcome to the forums!!

The DualCore thing is a Windows problem. The G3 disks only included the latest fix at the time of replication. Better check AMD´s or Intel´s website.

The official forum is at
JoWooD.com - Foru - Gothic - G3 - Mods - Community Patches
or similar.

@IanT,
I suddenly had the same problem exactly as described - this was with the community patch 1.5.
I have an amd dual core cpu so *re-ran* the two utilities in the 'support' folder on the installation disk -->

AMD_DualCore_Optimizer.exe
amdcpusetup.exe

After this all was back to normal, recently patched official v1.6 and all is still working o.k - though a bit slower performance wise.

Regards

Thanks guys, I appreciate it. I actually figured out it was a dual-core issue seperately when I remembered some much older games (Unreal & UT99, Deus Ex, etc) had time-related issues on my dual-core. So I tried running the game and setting the affinity to only one core with the task manager, which fixed it right up. Hopefuly the patch you guys are talking about actually resolves the issue and takes advantage of the other core, because it's frustrating to think that a 2006 game wouldn't be using half my processing power... oh well.

Thanks for the answers - and the welcome, Corwin.

Peace

Funny, I was on vacation at the time of release so this completely went under the radar. I was just searching for any news on the promised 1.6 patch and find that it was released over a month ago. Haven't read the other commentaries yet so I'll not get my hopes too worked up.