The Witcher 3 discussion and nitpicking, and praise

[Danbo Jambo]

Awww man, why did they have to make weapons degradable? Stop it! Stop copying Skyrim! Devs need to realize that SKYRIM WAS WANK. A good RPG doesn't need chore elements.

The first genuinely downbeat feeling I've had for TW3. Fucks sake

Your irrational hatred against Skyrim is unsettling.

Not only it did not do that, but even if it had, it would have been far from being the first game to do it.

Lol, to be honest i don't hate it, it's a 7/10 game for me. I had fun with it, but to me it's in no way an RPG. And yeah, like I say I was just thinking of Oblivion & Fallout.

The frustration I was venting was more at the fact that so many RPGs are detirmined to try and be Skyrim now, and - as an RPG - it's wank.

Weapon degridation in general is chore-esq to me. I'd be happy with a balance, say where normal weapons degrade and magical ones don't, but constantly having to maintain stuff is very work-like and boring IMO.

 

[Nimzabaat]

I may have missed these but I have a couple nitpicks myself:
1. Plants give random plant loot. Why? Why can't they do the Bethesda/Bioware thing of knowing what a plant looks like to get that resource?
2. If you're playing on console with a big screen TV the font is too small. I've looked through the options but there doesn't seem to be a way to make it bigger. Most of the time I can't tell what i'm picking up.
3. The map is bigger than Skyrim but has much less to do. So far all i'm seeing is more travel time between points of interest. The POI are really interesting but it's still just filler terrain.
4. Hair physics... why is Geralt affected the most and why does it get all crazy when you're in a building with no wind?

I'd mention that we're still playing Geralt but that's not a nitpick and it's much sadder now that I know the original plan for the series was to create your own Witcher. That would have been awesome.

I am really liking the game (as most are) even with its flaws though. Easily the best RPG this year so far. It also makes me really excited for Cyberpunk.

 

[Silence]

Patch to address the font size issue is on the way, btw.

I don't feel like it is less than Skyrim. In Skyrim I ran to the next POI, if it was a dungeon or sth, run through it, and NEVER found any loot that was worthwile.
And there was no story to the POI, most of the time. It had no depth at all.

Witcher on the other hand: There may be not as many POI, but the "worst" kind are the monster nests. In most of the rest you at least find new formulas, often a short book/notice which tells you a story. Sometimes it even starts a miniquest, or a quest for an item set. Or it starts a complete quest/Witcher contract.
Let me tell you what happened at the last PoI (coming to think of it, it maybe wasn't even on the map, aside from a marker..) It was the ruin of the castle. I nearly rode away, but then decided to investigate it.
Blood marks, weird other marks, a dead body, which was not killed on the spot it lay, but got dragged down. There were footrpints from the person to this place.
I did go after the footprints (backwards), found a campfire with 3 other dead bodies, all pale.
Geralt concluded this had to be the work of a ghost. But without enough information I got the quest:
Go look at a notice board if someone has infos about it.

And all because I just happened to stop at a vista.

---

Now I am in Novigrad. I hate the church of the Eternal Fire. Well, did it before, because of TW1, but ... fuck them.

 

[lowhat]

Did they fix the combat from Witcher 2? I'm really interested in this game from the RPG standpoint, but not if they left that horrible tedious combat system in.

 

[Yokillernick]

I'm liking the game but after 34 hours I can safely say that horse riding is complete wank. The amount of times that my horse decided to just stop dead in its tracks in the middle of a flat road for no reason is amazing. Also while I do appreciate the hold button to follow the road function, trying to get your horse to go off road is an exercise in frustration as that thing becomes glued to the road. As such any and all activities that even remotely involve the horse riding engine have been soured for me.

Secondly, I'm not sure if this is because I spent the first 20 or so hours doing every Point of Interest quest and not giving a shit about the main story, thus doing the level 5 main story quests at level 10, but finding a good blacksmith to make myself a proper sword has become impossible, which brings me to the crafting system. I don't mind the fact that I can pick up everything and then break it down. What I do mind is not knowing if I really need 20 Drowner brains or if I can sell 15 of them and hope that the next potion needs only 5 instead of 6 brains to make. I'm pretty sure at this point my crafting supplies take up to 25% of my inventory.

Thirdly, the bugs. I haven't seen many mentions of them but I have fallen through roofs, unable to interact with quests characters and vendors for quite a bit. A quick reload or doing another quest seems to reset most of them but they have been a bit of an annoyance. Like when I was fighting a water hag and Geralt did a beautiful tumble into a waist deep pool. I was not able to climb out of the pool since combat controls only allowed Geralt to either hop at it or smash his forehead against it. So for that entire fight I was flaying at and chucking bombs at the hag while she was laughing and throwing dirt at me. Managed to get out after the fight but by god it as annoying.

Lastly, and linking with the above. I wish the game would have a dedicated flee button. The kind which when you press switches from the combat actions to the normal actions so that I can run away properly without Geralt turning back every 2 seconds to see who's chasing him.

Apart from these "nitpicks" I will say that the Witcher 3 is the first game since Dragon Age Inquisition that has managed to keep me playing a computer game for more than an hour or two at the time so it must be doing something right. As a sidenote to all these comparisons with Skyrim, while I understand how people (myself included) find the miniquests in TW3 to be much better than Skyrim's, I for one found exploration in Skyrim to be much more interesting. Against this might change when I get out of the swamp lands but for now I would not say that I prefer the Witcher over Skyrim when it comes to exploration or character interaction.

 

[aozgolo]

Did they fix the combat from Witcher 2? I'm really interested in this game from the RPG standpoint, but not if they left that horrible tedious combat system in.

Combat feels a bit closer to the Batman Arkham games, albeit a bit more clunky. You have a fast attack/strong attack, a button to cast signs, a button to use your secondary weapons (bombs or crossbow), you can parry, counterattack, dodge, and roll around as you fight. There's also a lock-on button which can get you in trouble if you're fighting multiple enemies and not locked onto the one closest to you.

It's definitely not the best combat I've seen but it's more than passable for the game, and is fun and challenging without the challenge being all in the controls. There are times where the controls get frustrating such as trying to fight on horseback or perform a counterattack successfully (timing is too sensitive here). Overall I think it works well. The signs are pretty easy to get the hang of using as are the secondary weapons, which you can either do a quick attack that just locks on and goes or do a manual aim for more precise damage. Parrying and countering are where it gets the most frustrating but the dodge works well and is usually enough to keep you alive.

 

[mad825]

Aaaand I've hit a game breaking bug that causes me to CTD every time I fast travel. No issues when I try it on a new game but my save file that has 60+ hours is now completely and utterly bricked. Fuck this game.

That's my nickpick of the day.

 

[RagingTiger]

Did anyone else feel the choices from Witcher 2 have almost no real impact on the world at large; just who is pissed at you and who isn't?

 

[Silence]

Aaaand I've hit a game breaking bug that causes me to CTD every time I fast travel. No issues when I try it on a new game but my save file that has 60+ hours is now completely and utterly bricked. Fuck this game.

That's my nickpick of the day.

Do you know what caused it? Don't want to run into it.

And why, why oh why. Did you only use one save file?


I also have a quest I can't seem to finish now (A Witcher contract in Novigrad, where I had to go into a brothel. Door was locked, I stopped looking for a way in, did other stuff, now the target doesn't even show on the map anymore.) and another was a little buggy (help for Whoresone Juniors Casino, I did it without help, got there after and it had a little buggy dialogue. But counted as failed at the end and is out of my quest log, so that's okay).


Still, I expected far more bugs.

 

[kuolonen]

The bad:
Swimming controls are awful. Wish I could track several quests at the same time.
The good:
Everything else is perfect. This game... I will remember this one to my death. After DA:I I thought I had just grown bored of western RPGs and they had nothing to offer to me anymore. But holy shit. I would have been satisfied if they'd kept with witcher 2 quality. And they topped that, like they topped witcher 1 with witcher 2.
For just one example in the battle at

Spoiler

Kaer Morhen

I kept thinking how in the hell do these fights feel so awesome compared to all the other cinematics I've been subjected to by game industry for the past 10 years? Beautiful, awesome, perfect. After my nostalgia glasses set in for this one, I'll doubt I'll ever think another game better.
In short: For me, this game is better than Skyrim was. Yeah, I've said it. Come at me.

 

[Silence]

In short: For me, this game is better than Skyrim was. Yeah, I've said it. Come at me.

Skyrim? Seriously, you could have thought of an actual good game. 8/

 

[BarryMcCociner]

So the Witcher and Witcher 2 were on sale for 6 bucks together on Steam last week. I am currently trying to figure out Witcher enhanced edition. The only thing that kind of confuses me is the quest system. It's all over the fucking place, and combat is sparse. It feels so much more like a detective RPG except instead of getting better at being a detective I get better at stabbing innocent people.

Yeah, that actually does kind of make sense. I was kind of struggling to find my way through TW1 until I started thinking of Geralt as the Sherlock Holmes of monsters. Then the entire game made sense and I started having fun.

 

[WolfThomas]

All I can say at the moment is that I'm chasing after a girl who I've never known before TW3 (who also has the elder blood even though a little boy know as Alvin has it as well) for a girl I've also never met before TW3. My comrades and past enemies seem to be non-existent and I'm not liking it.

But wasn't Alvin the baddie from the first one time displaced? Hard to find him if he is dead.

 

[danielcofour]

Did anyone else feel the choices from Witcher 2 have almost no real impact on the world at large; just who is pissed at you and who isn't?

it's even worse than that. Some choices, pretty major ones, don't even get a mention in the game. I've finished the game, so I know.

Spoiler

The entire saskia/Iorveth story is pretty much nonexistent in the game. It's as if it didn't even happen. Neither of those two show up in the game, even though you actually meet Phillipa Eilhart(and you haven't lifted the spell from the dragon). She still has a dragon at her command, but it isn't even brought up... Everything happens the same regardless of your choices. Saved Triss? The witch hunt still happens. Lifted the spell from Saskia? Upper Aedirn still gets conquered. I don't know if saving Anais on Roche's path changes anything, but I'm guessing no.

This is my one big problem with the game. The rest of it's quirks can be either patched or modded out, but this is really bugging me. It's still one of my favorite games of all time. It's mindbogglingly good, but gods, did they really had to drop the ball on world-state imports this badly?

 

[eberhart]

All I can say at the moment is that I'm chasing after a girl who I've never known before TW3 (who also has the elder blood even though a little boy know as Alvin has it as well) for a girl I've also never met before TW3. My comrades and past enemies seem to be non-existent and I'm not liking it.

Hmph, where to begin...

I'm chasing after a girl who has been mentioned before TW3 for at least a dozen times (who also has the elder blood while a little boy know as Alvin had nothing like that) for a girl previous games, mostly 2nd, have already told me was the love of my life. My comrades and past enemies will definitely re-appear, given what "Go your way" trailer has already shown.

All right, that's more like it.

Did anyone else feel the choices from Witcher 2 have almost no real impact on the world at large; just who is pissed at you and who isn't?

it's even worse than that. Some choices, pretty major ones, don't even get a mention in the game. I've finished the game, so I know.

Wasn't it always a staple of the series? That whatever you do, political machine will keep rolling and the best you can is to get your select few friends out of its way?

I remember my first playthrough w/ W2 and how nearly all of my choices have ultimately led to a complete failure of what Saskia tried to achieve. Despite my very best intentions, mind you. An ill-applied mercy here, putting a monster out of its misery there (w/o other options due to previous choices) and then Nilfgaardian invasion steamrolling Aedirn has likely annihilated headless, Saskia-less utopia with a likely help from our prick in golden armor. We had no option to prevent the invasion and thankfully so - it only supports what I wrote earlier.

Now, it's disappointing that some of "dragon choices" are seemingly irrelevant, but what about Henselt then? His fate doesn't change the overall picture, invasion still happens, war still ravages Velen, but is it "Redania stands alone" regardless of it? As for Roche, I did see his face in a trailer, but no idea about Anais. Although with Temeria being a shattered country, she could be easily reduced to a few additional lines - zero reasons to make her anything significant *just yet*. DLC perhaps?

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

I have a problem with crashing when I try to go to Skellige. It happens 4 our of 5 times. Huge game breaker. But many people seem to have the same issue so I'm sure it will get patched soon.

 

[PrimitiveJudge]

I play this game on the Xbone and yes the gameplay and graphics are beautiful. Now that being said I have some issues that made me stop playing for a little bit.

Nitpicks:

1. Enemies. When it comes to humans or wolves or whatever those crab things are many levels higher than me, I can kill them easy, but for some stupid reason when it comes to Drowners (even lower level ones), they fucking slaughter me. Because of those bastards I cannot progress to find Johnny.

2. Side Missions. I love the side missions, but I have failed some points of them and it says they are still active but I have no idea how to continue them, like the blackmarket pass to a town in the middle of the river and i didn't save some people in a burning building so I have no idea how to look for the Barons wife. Oh yeah and it gives you missions at level 7 but meant for people level 40+. wtf.

3. Crafting. Where the fuck do you find shit for that =P. It seems you would have every items imaginable for crafting, but nope. Missing 1 item for this one piece of armor that you CAN wear, but this item is guarded by a monster 10 levels higher then you.

Praises:

Everything else is wonderful, I hate Roach, I would rather walk/run everywhere