The Witcher’s Multiplayer Game Has to Be Careful Not To Lose a Key Part of the Series’ Personality

Highlights

• Project Sirius should maintain The Witcher’s core identity with research into monsters and battle preparations.
• Multiplayer RPG scaling could integrate with resource management and progressive unlocks.
• Monster weakness balance may need adjustments for multiplayer, potentially considering tiered potions for level ranges.

The Witcher franchise’s upcoming Project Sirius is up against high expectations. With its unique characters and world-building, TheWitcher is one of the most successful RPG franchises of all time. Based on the famous fantasy book series by Andrzej Sapkowski, the games had to live up to the already-established lore provided by the source material.

In The Witcher 3, for instance, players are incentivized to study clues from their target and prepare before entering battle. These mechanics, however, are designed for single-player balance, which may not seamlessly adapt to Project Sirius’ potentially cooperative multiplayer focus.

Research and Battle Preparations Still Need To Be An Important Part of The Game

Previous Witcher games reward players who prepare before battle with an easier fight. It wasn’t a necessary mechanic to utilize as a player, but doing so makes the player feel more like a witcher. The same option should be provided to the potential players of Project Sirius to stay true to the franchise’s identity.

Therefore, a revamp to the mechanics would arguably be a suitable choice. The multiplayer RPG gameplay is reliant on resources and cosmetic rewards. Usually, resources that make the player’s character stronger, tend to be limited in order to provide progressive scaling.

That might ensure that players can’t rush to max out their characters while ruining the pacing of the story and enemy scaling in the process. If this particular dynamic is integrated with the research and battle preparation mechanics of The Witcher​​​​​, Project Sirius would have to maintain its identity while also providing a unique take on multiplayer RPG scaling.

Project Sirius Could Borrow From Other “Hunting” Game Mechanics

Phasmophobia is a ghost-hunting game where players enter a haunted house to survive and identify what supernatural being is haunting the location. While the latter is the primary goal of the game, just surviving the night alone is enough to finish the level.

Finishing the level is not necessarily the concern here, but the same identification mechanic could be reimagined for Project Sirius where each battle won’t explicitly tell the player who the enemy is. This would let players hunt for clues about the enemy, with correct identification earning players bonus rewards.

The other changes the revamp could include are balanced resource management for crafting, time-limited buffs from preparations, team-based strategies for cooperative gameplay, scaling challenges based on preparation levels, and progressive unlocks of advanced techniques to keep players continuously engaged and rewarded for their efforts.

Monster Weakness Balance will Change in a Multiplayer Environment

After studying the enemy’s clues, battle preparations could be the next step in potential Witcher multiplayer gameplay. Different enemies in the Witcher universe have different traits and weaknesses and players could need to decide which potions they will take into battle.

The decision has to be made with the consideration that taking too many or unnecessary potions causes toxicity overdose, which will slowly kill the character. The typical potion in the game provides percentage improvements to damage against specific monsters. However, in a multiplayer RPG game, percentage improvements might not be as effective.

In Project Sirius, if enemy scaling matches the enemy’s strength to the player’s level, percentage improvements would have unequal value for low-level players versus high-level players. Since low-level players would have lower stats, they might receive a smaller improvement when taking a potion in The Witcher compared to high-level players.

Therefore, this possible problem could be avoided by instead creating multiple tiers of each potion to accommodate a certain level range. These potions could grant flat damage bonuses against specific monsters, ensuring that the enemy’s weakness remains significant throughout The Witcher: Project Sirius, regardless of the player’s level.