1.75 CPT released

Originally Posted by JonNik
Indeed, what the added requirements do, like I indicated above, is make such a scenario like DeepO described a lot more difficult in reasonable play time. (*)

This is quite an extreme scenario though and I personally can't imagine having fun spending that much time in the game (in one go) so I can put it away for ever (I rather replay it every 1-2 years).

But I did finish the game in reasonable play time!
I haven´t spent more than 100 hours in the game .

Also, remember there´s a second part to jack of all trades - master of none.
I´m quite sure my primary attributes (strength, dexterity, ancient knowledge) were all fairly low compared to what a more specialized build would have throughout the game.

I actually think the game lends itself really well to a kind of completionist playthrough, especially when one plays the game for the first time (and without a walkthrough) - what constitutes the main quest is nebulous for a long time and even when one reaches the point where it becomes clearer, it´s still not all that apparent where one must go, what has to be done and what isn´t mandatory to get to the ending credits.
In the other similarly open world games, if one wishes one can comfortably follow a silver line of a main quest till the end, but not so much in Gothic 3 (and I consider it to be one of the game´s biggest strengths, even though I wish the main plot points and quests were more elaborate).
Even though I´ve ultimately decided to go for a "Xardas ending", liberating Varant and Nordmar still felt like important things to do and I did some cleaning in Myrtana for balancing purposes as well (got rid of king, liberated two cities, wiped out one rebel camp, iirc).

That said, I did play the game in a way to get most out of it in one go since I was pretty sure I won´t be replaying it ever again (of which I was less certain after having finished the game and of which I´m even less certain now, partially thanks to this thread ), but due to the above mentioned structuring, doing so felt "natural" anyway.
Developing my character in a sorta jack of all trades-y way was precisely what kept the fun flowing - once bows became boring, my character was good enough to switch to sword & shield etc., though I have to admit I have found combat at times tedious in the first half of the game and have used companions liberally in it. The slowly gained flexibility certainly brought a good deal of fun to the second half.

Anyway, that was a lot of OT babbling, sorry .

I have no idea how you went 83 in 100 hours … You should enter some sort of G3 sports team (maybe I am just a slow old coot myself)

That said, I hope I did not come across like advocating against hybrid builds or completist approaches (which is what I do in my 80-90 hour runs!)… as long as you have fun with it… Just that i.e. magic in your build did not seem to be extremely useful looking at it but mostly there for the cool factor despite reaching lvl 83 and that is the effect of the A.B balancing and spreading lps too much even on lvls as high as that…

Trust me though if you decide replaying you'll probably find out that there is quite a bit left to do. Also I think your posts were quite a bit more on topic than all the tweaky ones we did up till now and thus very welcome

I don't think that it is possible to be a completionist in Gothic 3 because of its structure and factions. For example, if you align yourself totatly with the orcs then you will not be able to work with the bandits (and nordmarians) and probably miss their quests. Likewise if you align yourself with the bandits then you will not be able to proceed with the orcs and so on. That is why I think that Gothic 3 has an amazing replay value (not to mention the easter eggs scattered around the huge map).

I played it first time using cp 1.74 and it took me about 170 h to complete it at level 75 and I have missed a large number of quests.

Originally Posted by SpoonFULL
I played it first time using cp 1.74 and it took me about 170 h to complete it at level 75 and I have missed a large number of quests.

I'm impressed that you were able to put that much time into Gothic 3. I've never found the game compelling enough to play past the 80-hour mark, and it's the only Piranha Bytes game that I've yet to finish.

I must admit I've haven't really played it since v1.6 though. I'm hoping the multitude of improvements since then will be enough to keep me interested during my next attempt.

With v1.75 I think G3 is finally close to being what it was originally envisioned to be, and I'm really looking forward to finding the time for a complete playthrough. I know it will never measure up to Gothic 1&2 for me, but at least it's a little closer now.

I did not play continously but over a period of about 4 months. I tried to do all quest and enjoyed just exploring the vast world (except for getting lost many times in Nordmar).

I went all over the place before seeing Xardas - I librated all villages from orcs, killed all the hashishins (they have plenty of loot in their strongholds), and did almost all quests in Nordmar. I took my time in doing so and enjoyed the scenary and many Easter eggs scattered in the world (even the desert region is full of surprises).

The only game other game that drew me like Gothic 3 was Fallout:New Vegas.

I hope that you will enjoy G3 JDR13

One thing that seems never to have worked is the 'look behind me' button, which loses the mouse inversion setting when saved… I also wish it worked in first person. That's about the only bug I've seen with G3 1.75, plus the content and quest mods. I have heard water sounds skip, but I'm not sure if changing speaker settings has fixed that.

I think with hindsight I would have skipped any extra quest content but used any newer textures. Anyone know if the quest stuff can be uninstalled mid-game?

Originally Posted by JDR13
What about the tree log on the cutting stand in front of the hut? Can you see that as far away as everything else?

Originally Posted by JonNik
Yep, standing from the top of the hill next to Ardea. This is odd…

Hey JonNik.. now that you've got your new Geforce installed, can you boot up G3 when you have a spare moment and see if those items still draw in at the same distance?

Yep, caught it this time. It is still visible standing on the top of the hill but if you run towards it from a certain direction it pops in late for some reason… I doubt its driver related or something that you can tweak away… Just a glitch like the one I described for Risen 2.

Having roamed around quite a bit to test the ssd loading etc I believe this is a very rare occurrence…

You can ofcourse tweak the object values further as we discussed and see if it pushes it in a distance where the ground geometry hides the popin. Me I had enough fooling around for a while (what with today's G2 session )…