The Witcher 3 GOTY Edition

[ilitarist]

I think they did well with the urgency. After you first arrive you have sort of urgent series of quest leading you to Duchess, revealing the villain and giving you a home base. After that you are left to investigate. It seems that attacks do not follow a strict schedule. After the second attack the Duchess had time to send knights to find Geralt and the next strike had happened after Geralt had came back. So Geralt is told to investigate. He investigates, he travels around the land, helps people.

Really even the basic game works much better when you start as ready for DLC dude. Most of it is below your level but still.

They've also added some quests to clear all the question marks in specific regions and explaining why is there so much problems in the area which makes work less pointless openworld-ish.

 

[Paul_cz]

The urgency complaint is overblown even for the original game. It's not like Fallout 4 where your infant gets kidnapped and you are going around screaming SHAUN WHERE IS HE at everyone.

Ciri is an adult badass motherfuckeress, Geralt knows it, and the game starts with investigation being very open ended with having to search in three large areas. And since Geralt has only few vague clues, it is not that much of a stretch that he would help people on the way, knowing the search for Ciri is a long-haul effort.

 

[Falksi]

The urgency complaint is overblown even for the original game. It's not like Fallout 4 where your infant gets kidnapped and you are going around screaming SHAUN WHERE IS HE at everyone.

Ciri is an adult badass motherfuckeress, Geralt knows it, and the game starts with investigation being very open ended with having to search in three large areas. And since Geralt has only few vague clues, it is not that much of a stretch that he would help people on the way, knowing the search for Ciri is a long-haul effort.

There's investigating at your own pace, and there's taking time to rid every village, town & person you stumble across of every minor issue they have including doing things such as finding paint for trolls.

It's outright stupid to set up any game where exploration is a carrot to have any sense of urgency, and sadly TW3 did just that.

 

[Anthedon]

FCR3 - Immersion and Gameplay Tweaks released! I felt FCR2 was a must-have for TW2, even moreso than jsawyer's mod for FNV.

INTRODUCTION

Hey, I'm a senior gameplay designer and I worked on The Witcher3 and both expansion packs. This mod used to be a personal set of tweaks and fixes meant to spice up my first The Witcher 3 playthrough after releasing the game. Being in creation for more than half a year and enjoyed during >300h playthrough I thought that I might share it with witcher community. Mod doesn't aim for any deep and intrusive changes, instead it is meant to maintain original feeling of the game, sometimes going closer to original intention behind the designs. It focuses mainly on fixing immersion breakers, buffing underperforming skills and items, cosmetic changes and bugfixing. It also fixes few instances of items and abilities that made Geralt (nearly) immortal and removed all the challenge from the game.

CHANGELOG

Immersion
Bunch of features that added to ‘wow’ factor and changes for things that bothered me.
• Metamorphosis mutation effect "Witcher Senses now increase visibility in dark places without the use of potions works" works without the mutation. In combat it works automatically, while outside of combat it can be activated in focus mode. Witchers see in the dark. All of them, no potions needed. It’s in lore.
• Added reaction to stealing for commoners. There are two severities of reactions and two results for each of them depending on npc AI. Commoners will react depending on the priority of tasks they are undergoing at the moment. The effect is that some of the npcs will ignore you stealing stuff, others will call you out on it, some will just stare. There will be also rare cases when someone will be become intimidated, cover in fear or possibly run away. The effect is especially visible in Novigrad, less in Skellige and least in Toussaint, where even guards ignore player stealing.
• Increased minimal height from which fall damage starts to be applied.
• Made Ciri immune to damage while she's performing special 'teleport' charged attack. Could be considered as a bugfix.
• Allied NPCs (followers) deal full damage to enemies (used to deal minimal damage).
• Buffed sorceress and witcher followers damage. These are the most powerful characters in the setting, you should feel that now.
• Reduced level bonus of guards from player level plus random 11-13 to player level plus random 0-5. A random guard shouldn't pose a threat to legendary witcher.
• Sped up animations of flying monsters falling down after being shot from the sky.
• Added fall damage on ground contact for monsters that were shot from the sky. Damage depends on the height from which they fall.
• Allowed to bounce majority of the physical projectiles with Aard hit.
• Signs buffed by Flood of Anger skill cause enemy explosive dismemberment on kill.
• Sorceresses now dismember enemies on kill.
• Fixed majority of rare cases where Geralt jumped after hitting ground while playing death animation.
• Fixed some of the cases for sorceresses where spell visual effect remained on hand after combat. Still not sure if all instances were fixed but should be better.

Character development
Multiple changes that aim at bringing back the original intended feeling to character development and alchemy builds. Initially skills were designed as a single point investments. The excess of skillpoints player was given was meant to encourage swapping skills depending on the enemies and situations. To bring back that feeling max levels of skills were reduced giving more bang for the buck instead of small percent increases. Additionally there are few changes bringing high toxicity Euphoria build down to be on par with other builds and buffs for mutations that didn’t feel strong or unique enough.
• Decreased skills max levels (most had 5, now 3) and adjusted stats to retain the same balance. Utility skills like slowdown on aiming now have only 1 level.
• Nerfed Acquired Tolerance skill to grant 0.5 Toxicity point per level to prevent safe activation of more than 3 decoctions at the same time in end game.
• Quen doesn't remove damage over time effects on cast, instead it protects player while DoTs consume the shield. Resistances on armors should matter more now.
• Reduced healing from damage on alternate Quen from 100% of received damage to 0.1 * damage * Spell Power. This mechanic was clearly overpowered and made player nearly immortal.
• Decreased toxicity overdose damage threshold from 75 to 50. That was the initial original idea for toxicity handling encouraging player to take risk and correctly time potion use.
• Equalized out of combat and combat toxicity drop rate (used to be twice as fast).
• Crippling Strikes skill: Deals regular bleeding effect damage that cannot go below the dmg value specified in skill description. Also effect duration was increased from 5 to 10 seconds to match the duration of regular bleeding. General idea is that effect originating from skill shouldn't be weaker than bleeding from item.
• Adrenaline Rush mutation: When at maximum Vitality, Adrenaline Points drop after 4s delay. Introduced new potential skill combos and play styles instead of another percentage damage buff.
• Deadly Counter mutation: A counterattack immediately triggers a finisher with a chance based on the number of Adrenaline Points. Opponents immune to counterattacks are not affected. Used to work only on opponents below 25% health.
• Toxic Blood mutation: doubled the returned damage value (3% per toxicity point, was 1.5%) to compensate for reducing maximum achievable toxicity.

NPCs
Couple of bugfixes and removing arbitrary stat bonuses.
• Removed huge arbitrary stat buffs on enemies with skull icons. They are already higher level than player, that alone makes them more difficult.
• Allowed to parry and counterattack enemies with skull icons.
• Fixed leshen root damage being a fixed value throughout the whole game. It's taken from his melee attack damage so it scales with enemy level.
• Made bird swarm attacks ignore armor. Leshen bird attacks dealt zero damage starting from mid-game.
• Fixed sprigan's root ground attack dealing no damage.
• Restored monster essence (silver health bar) regeneration (mostly for werewolves). It was temporarily disabled at some point in implementation and never brought back.
• Fixed discrepancies between NG+ and base game xml files, like missing ability definitions, ability tags, etc. These potentially caused minor bugs in enemy stats in NG+.
• Rats are not affected by enemy upscaling option.

General items
Bunch of small changes that put more emphasis on some of the gameplay mechanics that didn’t work as originally intended due to balancing issues.
• Increased random range of item levels rolled for quest rewards. You might end up with an item you cannot use yet, but at least you'll get a guaranteed upgrade on level up.
• Increased stat debuff on damaged items. Value depends on game difficulty level with 50% debuff on highest difficulty. Repairing items matter now.
• Increased amount of gold given in quests where it made sense (Baron should be more generous, etc.). Didn't touch the mini-quests.
• Reduced the amount of healing per second from food but increased healing duration. Overall it's a slight buff for food without Gourmet perk and a significant nerf with it. Swallow and White Raffard potions are intended healing in combat, not chicken sandwiches.

Witcher sets
Changes are focused on fixing near immortality issue coming from high rending (monster) damage reduction combined with Protective Coating skill. Also there are two sets partially focusing on buffing alchemy builds. Mod moves alchemy bonuses to Manticore set making it a dedicated alchemy set and introduces new bonuses and playstyle to Wolven set. I remember reading about the idea of Wolven set built around bleeding damage on Witcher Reddit, so cheers to the Reddit community.
• Scaled down monster damage resistance on witcher armors where applicable. Upgraded witcher sets used in conjunction with Protective Coating oil used to reach 100% rending damage reduction (some damage still passed due to resistance cap). That shouldn't be the case now. For details on numbers check attached images.
• Enabled grandmaster set bonuses on all witcher sets items in New Game+.
• Moved 3 item Wolven set bonus (bombs are thrown without a delay) and merged it with 3 item Manticore set bonus (bombs are affected by critical hit chance and critical hit damage).
• Reduced Manticore set Toxicity bonus from 30 (and more on NG+) to 20, to prevent safe activation of more than 3 decoctions at the same time in end game.
• Moved 6 item Wolven set bonus (3 different oils can be applied to a sword) to Fixative alchemy skill. Should make Fixative skill a more interesting choice in character development.
• New Wolven set 3 item bonus: Each stack of Bleeding effect applied to enemies increases sword damage by 1% for each piece of the set.
• New Wolven set 6 item bonus: Each Adrenaline Point increases number of possible stacks of Bleeding effect that can be applied to single opponent. With new set bonuses Wolven set tries to fulfil the fantasy of specialized Damage over Time build working well in conjunction with buffed Crippling Strikes skill.

Item upgrades
Buffed every runeword and glyphword about which I thought “I’d never use that when I have that other, better choice”. Beside buffing, Possession runeword had its effect changed because there used to be 2 glyphwords buffing Axii in different ways and 3rd being a sum of previous two, so it just wasn’t interesting enough.
• Rejuvenation runeword: Fatal blows restore 100% stamina (was 25%).
• Dumplings runeword: changed duration bonus to 5x increase in healing speed. With this buff food brought back to the same healing speed as in vanilla game while also having significantly increased effect duration.
• Elation runeword: Fatal blows give 1 Adrenaline point (was 0.1 to 0.25).
• Prolongation runeword: Unblocked blows increases potion duration by 1s (was 0.5s)
• Ignition glyphword: Enemies set alight with Igni have a 100% chance to ignite other enemies within a 2 yard radius. (was 25% chance)
• Rotation glyphword: Igni strikes in a 360 radius (removed "but doesn't induce Burning" tradeoff). When I read 360 radius I thought “cool!”, then I read “but doesn’t induce Burning” and I thought “aww, but that tradeoff makes it useless”.
• Possession glyphword, new effect: When effect of Axii ends, opponent receives damage dependent on effect duration and Sign intensity. Spent long time balancing the damage potential. It’s a nice bonus when you don’t invest in Sign intensity and a killer when you do. It’s very effective at the cost of waiting - you could finish off enemies faster by other means. As a bonus eye candy, enemies that die to Possession effect explode.
• Retribution glyphword: 100% chance for half damage returned (was 30% chance for ⅔ damage returned). A small damage nerf in exchange for consistency and reliability. When you allow yourself to be hit to deal damage, you want it to be reliable, not bet on random chance.
• Eruption glyphword: explosion deals the same damage as rotfiend's explosion added to original damage. Used to be only 50 dmg multiplied by Sign intensity.
• Depletion glyphword: casting Aard depletes enemy’s stamina (was 50% stamina damage). The idea behind the glyphword was to allow player to overcome enemy defence even if he didn’t manage to knock him down (stamina is used for offensive and defensive actions). With just 50% stamina damage enemies could still parry after casting Aard, so it didn’t feel like it made any difference.

Bombs
Bombs deal a decent amount of damage up to the middle of main game and then they fall behind Signs and sword damage becoming useless as damage dealers in end game, both expansions and NG+. These changes aim to make bombs a perfectly viable build if player chooses to invest enough skill points in alchemy build.
• Beside increasing potion duration each active alchemy skill also increases damage of bombs by 5% per skill level.
• Added DoT value scaling with enemy max health on top of existing damage value to Devil's Puffball bomb. This is how majority of other DoTs work in the game.
• Heavy Artillery damage bonus acts as a final damage multiplier calculated after bonus from alchemy skills.
• Doubled damage values of bombs and Pyromancy skill in NG+.
• Moon Dust bombs block abilities of cursed monsters and shapeshifters. These monsters are especially vulnerable to silver.
• Northern Wind bombs block rotfiend enemy types explosive deaths.

Crossbow
Beside the cosmetic improvements the main intention is to make crossbow damage useful but not competing with swords, Signs and bombs unless you invest in crossbow related skills and use high quality bolts.
• Crossbow bolt's damage scales with player level. Damage is dependent on bolt quality.
• Slowed down crossbow bolts when shot underwater.
• Increased crossbow bolts range from 25m to 50m when not underwater.

Potions
Didn’t like the way Blizzard potion was triggered. It was useless in 1v1 monster hunts and boss fights. I wanted to remedy that.
• Blizzard potion now activates slow motion when Geralt is in danger, no need to kill an enemy anymore. To compensate, effect's strength and duration was slightly decreased. Blizzard should be more consistent and easy to use now but also not that overpowered.
• Cat potion grants 5% crit chance bonus. A little bonus that should make Cat potion a bit more useful.

https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/2788/?

Seems to have a much smaller scope than FCR2(no controls/animations/economy/enemy changes) but I'm eager to replace ghost mode with it.

Anyone tried this yet?

 

[Paul_cz]

The urgency complaint is overblown even for the original game. It's not like Fallout 4 where your infant gets kidnapped and you are going around screaming SHAUN WHERE IS HE at everyone.

Ciri is an adult badass motherfuckeress, Geralt knows it, and the game starts with investigation being very open ended with having to search in three large areas. And since Geralt has only few vague clues, it is not that much of a stretch that he would help people on the way, knowing the search for Ciri is a long-haul effort.

There's investigating at your own pace, and there's taking time to rid every village, town & person you stumble across of every minor issue they have including doing things such as finding paint for trolls.

It's outright stupid to set up any game where exploration is a carrot to have any sense of urgency, and sadly TW3 did just that.

What if that troll saw Ciri huh?

In general, I agree, but Witcher 3 still did better job with it (much better) than most. Fallout 2 is my other favourite game of all time and it has the exact same issue. On the other hand, New Vegas works well as an open world, but it has a completely different kind of story.

 

[Mark Richard]

The urgency complaint is overblown even for the original game. It's not like Fallout 4 where your infant gets kidnapped and you are going around screaming SHAUN WHERE IS HE at everyone.

Ciri is an adult badass motherfuckeress, Geralt knows it, and the game starts with investigation being very open ended with having to search in three large areas. And since Geralt has only few vague clues, it is not that much of a stretch that he would help people on the way, knowing the search for Ciri is a long-haul effort.

There's investigating at your own pace, and there's taking time to rid every village, town & person you stumble across of every minor issue they have including doing things such as finding paint for trolls.

It's outright stupid to set up any game where exploration is a carrot to have any sense of urgency, and sadly TW3 did just that.

Even if you rarely use the meditation function and focused on the main story, Geralt must spend months in-game looking for Ciri. That's too much time on the road chasing mere rumours to go without food, equipment, repairs, etc. Some of us need to work for a living to fuel our projects, we can't all be deadbeat vineyard owners sunning it up in a 49 acre estate while our butler takes care of everything.

 

[Falksi]

The urgency complaint is overblown even for the original game. It's not like Fallout 4 where your infant gets kidnapped and you are going around screaming SHAUN WHERE IS HE at everyone.

Ciri is an adult badass motherfuckeress, Geralt knows it, and the game starts with investigation being very open ended with having to search in three large areas. And since Geralt has only few vague clues, it is not that much of a stretch that he would help people on the way, knowing the search for Ciri is a long-haul effort.

There's investigating at your own pace, and there's taking time to rid every village, town & person you stumble across of every minor issue they have including doing things such as finding paint for trolls.

It's outright stupid to set up any game where exploration is a carrot to have any sense of urgency, and sadly TW3 did just that.

Even if you rarely use the meditation function and focused on the main story, Geralt must spend months in-game looking for Ciri. That's too much time on the road chasing mere rumours to go without food, equipment, repairs, etc. Some of us need to work for a living to fuel our projects, we can't all be deadbeat vineyard owners sunning it up in a 49 acre estate while our butler takes care of everything.

It rarely feels urgent though, and thus that negates feeling of threat, and thus excitement.

It's like saying "yes, but some of us are practical, don't want children or dieases and practice safe sex. So we take the proper precautions, and use a condom" - that doesn't stop it from it feeling out of place or putting a damp squib on what started as an intense and exciting beginning.

Realism at the cost of fun & excitement is pointless realism.

 

[ilitarist]

I tried FCR3 - Immersion and Gameplay Tweaks.

Only in Blood & Wine and perhaps that's why I do not notice that many changes. One of the most noticeable things was nerf to gourmet perk (food affects you for 20 minutes) which basically meant eternal regeneration: it made food significantly less important on higher levels. Also almost all skills have 3 levels, some 2 or 1. This means that pretty soon you have to put skillpoints into skills that you can't use and you experiment with builds much more.

Another thing is brawls are brutal on Death March. Can't remember if it was there previously. XP also seems to be slowed down.

But in general B&W is a more challenging experience on its own. I'd say it's a good modpack if only because it didn't do anything I've noticed and didn't like.

 

[Falksi]

I tried FCR3 - Immersion and Gameplay Tweaks.

Only in Blood & Wine and perhaps that's why I do not notice that many changes. One of the most noticeable things was nerf to gourmet perk (food affects you for 20 minutes) which basically meant eternal regeneration: it made food significantly less important on higher levels. Also almost all skills have 3 levels, some 2 or 1. This means that pretty soon you have to put skillpoints into skills that you can't use and you experiment with builds much more.

Another thing is brawls are brutal on Death March. Can't remember if it was there previously. XP also seems to be slowed down.

But in general B&W is a more challenging experience on its own. I'd say it's a good modpack if only because it didn't do anything I've noticed and didn't like.

Was playing it again last night and the combat improvement does make a massive difference for me. Most new enemeies have attack patterns which require more than just dodge-attack, and they're far more challenging too, which ramps up the significance of everything else too such as weapons, armour, potions etc..

I really hope they make any more Witcher games about questing to defeat monsters. With this type of game there should be enemies which are unbeatable unless the player obtains the correct unique potions/oils/traps/etc. & prepares/plans correctly.

 

[CrunchyHemorrhoids]

Bruxas are just about the only enemy where I felt preparation/alchemy was useful and fun. If you don't throw a moon dust bomb at them they are invisible and you can't lock onto them while they can freely attack you from all angles while invisible. Without letting them suck your black blood they are also much faster than you and will dodge or parry most of your attacks.

 

[Falksi]

Just finished Blood & Wine tonight. Thoroughly enjoyed it, far, FAR more than the main game.

It still carries a few of the traits which let the main game down, but because everything is so fresh, with constantly new elements & enemies being introduced, it gets away with those over the shorter span.

A few key things made BIG positive difference from the main game:

1) Far more challenging, intense & thought-provoking combat;
2) Far more quests & hunts which veered from the cookie-cutter structure (talk-walk-witcher senses-fight-loot-dialogue-finish);
3) The world felt crafted better, tighter, with less pointless nothingness, and the general tone being less dull too;
4) A much, much more exciting & interesting main quest;
5) A much better support cast, with Regis in particular being up there with Roach & Iorveth;
6) Main villains who we actually get to know a fair bit, unlike Eredin;
7) Way less mundane, every-day work.

Still plenty you could pick fault with, but I didn't enjoy the main game at all, whereas Heart Of Stone was fairly enjoyable, and Blood & Wine was brilliant.

 

[Sentinel]

I think Blood & Wine main quest has its moments of brilliance - such as the meeting with Anna Henrietta, Detlaff, Regis and Orianna, it was incredibly tense and was extremely well set up - but halfway through it goes full retard mode with the three main characters, Detlaff, Syanna and Anna Henrietta acting like complete retards. I can sort of understand Anna Henrietta, but the other two I just sort of facepalmed over my two playthroughs. I felt like it kinda ruined their characters at the end. It's still an overall step up from the base game where it's "hope you read the books nerd lol oh by the way even if you did we made some changes so it's more generic and not as offensive )", but I was disappointed nonetheless.

But like the main game, I got the shitty ending and I felt guilty and sad so I immediately replayed it to feel better, so CDPR obviously did something right. On that note, I also appreciate how there's no clear cut bad/good endings. Every ending has trade offs and you have to pick based on what you value more. That was very nice.

 

[Falksi]

I think Blood & Wine main quest has its moments of brilliance - such as the meeting with Anna Henrietta, Detlaff, Regis and Orianna, it was incredibly tense and was extremely well set up - but halfway through it goes full retard mode with the three main characters, Detlaff, Syanna and Anna Henrietta acting like complete retards. I can sort of understand Anna Henrietta, but the other two I just sort of facepalmed over my two playthroughs. I felt like it kinda ruined their characters at the end. It's still an overall step up from the base game where it's "hope you read the books nerd lol oh by the way even if you did we made some changes so it's more generic and not as offensive )", but I was disappointed nonetheless.

But like the main game, I got the shitty ending and I felt guilty and sad so I immediately replayed it to feel better, so CDPR obviously did something right. On that note, I also appreciate how there's no clear cut bad/good endings. Every ending has trade offs and you have to pick based on what you value more. That was very nice.

Story wise the big step up for me was the fact that eventful things happened continously throughout.

Spoiler

The constant murders, uncovering an ancient vampiric prison, a vampire party, the night of the invasion, a trip to fairytale land etc.

It felt way more interesting than the main game's repetitive "find X person to find X person to find X person" Apart from Uma and the end battles, not much really happened over a massively long journey.

The good ending for B&W is far more satisfying too. Although I agree, there were definitely a few bits in the middle which made it sag here & there.

 

[Anomander Rake]

I need a mod that unlevels gear. I don't care if I get the best reward or if it automatically gets levelled in my inventory each time I get to a new level, but I need one that won't make me feel like I'm playing skyrim or oblivion. Gear levelling is a thing I hate so much you don't understand

 

[Quillon]

Gear levelling is a thing I hate so much you don't understand

 

[RK47]

Yeah I used the no level for gear mod and it turned into a joke when I crafted a few swords at level 13. I completely ignored the grandmaster swords after that since they're actually inferior compared to a few easily crafted high tier diagrams. Armor wise, I'd still go for Cat armor all the time. The only time I felt challenged was when I turned on level upscaling and the tower rats swarmed geralt while being upscaled to level 15 and a pack of wolves dealing 20% damage every lunge.

 

[DragoFireheart]

I've completely lost interest in this game. Just got to the first major area after killing the griffin, did a few quests.

This level scaling shit bores me.

 

[Sentinel]

jump to the expansions.
main game is boring.

 

[CrunchyHemorrhoids]

Anyone tried this yet?

Yeah, the changes all seem good so far and they feel like further polishing/refinement of the existing mechanics, along with bugfixes. While the scope still seems small(wip) some changes like mutations can have a bigger impact than you'd expect. The optional loot rebalance file however is no good.

 

[Anomander Rake]

Is that mod advised for a second playthrough, or is it how it would have been from the beginning, had they more time?

 

[CrunchyHemorrhoids]

^It clearly feels like the latter, right for any playthrough.

As for your gear thing, could try https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/2120 and https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/2846.

 

[Anomander Rake]

Thanks a lot.

Does anyone know someone willing to compile a single archive with a full list of mods? Because I tried to make a compilation but there were a lot of issues Script merger couldn't fix even if it the list is advised to be used in its totality (I blame my incapacity).

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.pcgamer.com/the-witcher-...17s-biggest-games-because-its-just-that-good/

The Witcher 3 outgrossed some of 2017's biggest games because it's just that good
Without the trappings of loot boxes or 'games as a service,' the single player RPG still managed to outsell almost everything on Steam.

2017 was a hard year for some high-profile singleplayer games, and there was more than a little hand-wringing that the genre as we know it might be dying, replaced by 'games as a service.' We argued that in fact they're not dying, just changing, but it's easy to look at Steam's highest earning games of 2017 and spot the commonalities. Free to play mechanics, skins and loot boxes and crates and keys, all play a major part in 'living' games like Rainbow Six: Siege,Warframe,PUBG and Dota 2. And then there's The Witcher 3, which doesn't have any of that shit. And it's still raking in the dough.

The Witcher 3 was released on May 19, 2015, almost four years to the day after The Witcher 2 first hit PC. By the end of summer, it had sold more than six million copies across PC and consoles. That was only a little surprising, because The Witcher 3 is an incredible game—it was good enough, and big enough, to lure in players who'd never touched the series before. A year later, CD Projekt put the final touches on the Blood & Wine expansion and a Game of the Year re-release. And that, a bit more surprisingly, was enough to make The Witcher 3 the second-best selling PC game on Steam in all of 2016.

In the year after its release, it made more money in gross revenue than the new Doom, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, Stardew Valley, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and other huge games released in late 2015 and throughout 2016. That made The Witcher 3 a 'Platinum" seller. Valve jumbled the games in each tier, so it's hard to know exactly where The Witcher 3 ranked, but it was up there with Dark Souls 3 and Fallout 4 and The Division. Impressive legs, Geralt, but not truly shocking.

But here's what I just can't get over. Valve recently put together another list of Steam's top 100 games, by gross revenue which covered 2017. And The Witcher 3 is still on it. And not just in the top 100. It's still in the platinum tier! Up there with Dota 2 and Rocket League and Warframe, which sell in-game items by the virtual truckload, and PUBG, which sold more than 20 million copies in 2017.

No new expansion, no re-release. The Witcher 3 apparently doesn't need those things to keep selling. It's in that ludicrously elite tier of games now, along with the likes of Grand Theft Auto and Mario Kart, that simply keeps selling year after year. And who knows how well The Witcher 3 has sold on GOG, the platform that CD Projekt owns?

For two and a half years, The Witcher 3 has held onto a spot as one of the PC's best selling games. And that's sure as hell not easy, but I do think the reasons for its success are simple: CD Projekt made one of the best RPGs of all time, and then immediately improved upon it with weeks of patches and free DLC, followed by two meaty, fairly priced expansions. Not every great singleplayer game will find that kind of success, of course. There's no guarantee that a new triple-A game, with no loot boxes or in-game stores or season passes will capture such a large audience.

But at a time when so many of us are sick of all those things, it's encouraging to know that 'games as a service' elements aren't the only way to keep players engaged, and to keep a game relevant, for years. For The Witcher 3, it was sheer quality.

Or maybe it was just the tub.

 

[Gerrard]

Meanwhile at Ubisoft.

 

[Falksi]

It's gonna be fun watching the likes of Biowank spend the next 5 years trying to copy TW3 with every release they make, and failing miserably.

DA:I & ME:A were wonderfully laughable examples of how, due to Skyrim's success, they tried to cram an Open World into everything for no real benefit at all. Seeing DA:4 get TW3 treatment is just gunna be brilliant. If Bioware did films they'd undoubtably be the studio behind Star Crash & Bruce Li's Enter The Tiger.