The Witcher Officialsky Witcherovda 2 Impressiovna Threadskaia

[Vault Dweller]

Your point was that you can finish TW2 without investing talent points in anything.

Really? While telling everyone that these are my early impressions, that I'm still in chapter 2, etc?

Although VoD didn't prove you're right, you've claimed that his gameplay proves your point.

He reached level 29. I sure as fuck hoped that the challenge would kick in much earlier.

Later I said that you can do the same in VtM:B, but you defended your theory with "but it can be done differently".

I said that at very least the skills matter in non-combat gameplay. So even if you can just shoot everyone without skills, which is yet to be proven, at least it's only one aspect of the game. In Witcher it's the only aspect of the game. Do you see the difference?

So I say - in TW2 it can also be done differently, so there's no difference between it and VtM:B on this ground.

You can sneak or talk your way through most quests?

 

[Data4]

How would a male mage Hawke end if he lived in the Witcher universe

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-Pvsx-eNXw


Gotta love CDPR political correctness

Did he just

Spoiler

cut off Dethmold's nuts and stuff them in his mouth, then slit his throat?

Holy fuck, I've gotta play the Roche path!

 

[Vault Dweller]

Risen would be a good example. Yet you seemed to praise Risen while in TW2 it is a huge flaw.

First, I've never praised Risen combat. It was poorly done and, overall, less enjoyable than TW2's. I'd say it probably was more challenging and I had to invest points after I joined the old camp. While it's probably possible to beat most or maybe all monsters without character skills, it's less in your face and would require a lot more player's skill (than what I have). Second, what was done right is that the non-combat abilities required skill investment if you wanted to do them. In TW2 I can do anything without spending a single point, which is another design flaw.

 

[flushfire]

But can it be done comfortably? Without too much effort? Because in TW2 i was killing most enemies with little effort without spending half a dozen level ups. In Risen for example, i was wishing my character to be stronger almost to end of the game because lizardmen, while not really hard, were still keeping me on my nerves.

As I said, I tried getting to level 10 in TW2 without Quen nor skills. It was tedious. The courtyard fight right at the beginning was extremely frustrating. It was tedious trying to be careful all the time. And I did die a lot.

I could say the same for Risen as you did for TW2. As soon as you unlock "charge attack" for any weapon type you could comfortably pile on untrained points, since lateral blows nor parrying have anything on charged attacks.

Anyway, someone somewhere can probably do it "comfortably". That's why I'm saying it's subjective.

 

[Vault Dweller]

The courtyard fight was difficult for me too at first, but because I didn't know the system yet. Using the mind control sign and bombs will make it a breeze. Quen is only good for getting you out of a tight spot. For anything else, force push or mind control.

 

[abija]

Witcher 2 gives you a lot of tools right from the start.
And the skill points allow you to take the char from good to awesome. But apparently, unlike weaksauce-> good, that's not an acceptable progression for a RPG.

Basically all they had to do to make W2 a RPG was to make you start with M1 and add M2, roll, parry, signs, posibility to use bombs, traps and poisons into the talent trees. It wouldn't have made much sense but suddenly would have been a RPG.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Witcher 2 gives you a lot of tools right from the start.
And the skill points allow you to take the char from good to awesome. But apparently, unlike weaksauce-> good, that's not an acceptable progression for a RPG.

Because at the very, very least RPG implies character skills that make the difference between failure and success. In TW2 you play a well developed character and only the player's low skill will make Geralt less efficient at kicking ass, as proven by VoD. Sadly, the only time when you do need the skills is when he is NOT playing Geralt.

I understand that Geralt is a famous swordsman and witcher, and it's a sequel, so he can't be a noob, but I guess that's what makes it an adventure game. Coincidentally, I can't think of any reason why you couldn't have played a young no-name witcher who's just learning his craft, but I guess CDP really wanted to tell this particular story.

Basically all they had to do to make W2 a RPG was to make you start with M1 and add M2, roll, parry, signs, posibility to use bombs, traps and poisons into the talent trees. It wouldn't have made much sense but suddenly would have been a RPG.

If you'd could use the character skills and abilities instead of your own, then yes, the game would have "suddenly" become an RPG.

Not every game with stats is an RPG, kids.

 

[Satori (original)]

Could someone give me a short rundown on the differences between the Roche and Iorveth path, please?

 

[flushfire]

Second, what was done right is that the non-combat abilities required skill investment if you wanted to do them. In TW2 I can do anything without spending a single point, which is another design flaw.

This I agree with.

The courtyard fight was difficult for me too at first, but because I didn't know the system yet. Using the mind control sign and bombs will make it a breeze. Quen is only good for getting you out of a tight spot. For anything else, force push or mind control.

Axii does make a world of difference. Too bad I didn't learn how to use it early. Still, after I did there were still times I died because I made mistakes. Or because of ambushes. And without Quen nor Position nor Vitality wraiths were OHKO/raping me. It just felt tedious needing to be careful all the time.

Anyway, I am satisfied with the combat being mostly player-skill dependent, but not entirely. Same way I felt about Risen's combat. I just find it hard to believe Geralt's skills didn't matter/didn't need upgrading, because they did to me.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Could someone give me a short rundown on the differences between the Roche and Iorveth path, please?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Witche ... Kings#Plot

 

[Satori (original)]

Thanks. To those of you that have completed both quest lines, which did you prefer?

 

[Arlborn]

"There is no "lol, you've failed" or "dead end" route."

There's conversation death... for example when Geralt has bowmen aimed at him.

Yeah, I remember than scene, and kudos to the devs for it, that was a fun moment (even if you could just reload the autosave from before the conversation starts). Still, what I have in mind -- and sorry if I'm not articulate enough, I'm not really good at articulating things -- is having a set of wrong routes in which the choices you make are wrong (= not clever enough) and lead you, steadily and slowly, into a dead end / destruction of the world / bad ending / whatever, making you play the game in a smarter way next time / develop your character build better / think harder about what you're doing.

I'd freaking love that, seriously, it would blow me away.

But sadly I don't think it is possible these days outside indie developers, people would rage way too hard.


Ps: I really like TWitcher2 C&Cs and I think they are really well done. There is always room for improvements of course. Just saying.

 

[Drakron]

Play older adventures games, especially Sierra games for that.

That is also why they dont do it these days, going the wrong path might sound AWESOME and such but ultimately it just screwing the player over for not picking up the "correct" choice, I dont disagree about "dead ends" but those should be fairy obvious and not spring up 5 hours later with NO chance for the player to get back on the right track.

 

[Multiple Sarcasm]

I dont disagree about "dead ends" but those should be fairy obvious and not spring up 5 hours later with NO chance for the player to get back on the right track.

Please, tell me you simply misspoke and do not, in fact, condone making paths obvious and retard-friendly.
What they should be is "deducible", "making sense" and not "arbitrary due to writer's morals, delusions of mentoring or whimsical need to fellate/fuck the player over for no other reason".
What's the point in wasting time/resources on making an obviously unfavourable path with a dead end? Noone is going to take it, anyway. I'd rather fffuuuu- and the end of it, knowing that I could've figured it out, than facepalm at the neon sign "LEFT=BAD, RIGHT=GOOD".

Which also brings up the matter of "bad ending" being a dying breed. Most times, we have two magnificent options:
A) Win.
or
B) Win after losing the health bar and reloading.
What's the point in reading a book if you know that no matter how dire the circumstances or the choices the character makes, there can only be one way it ends? It doesn't make much difference which "faction" you side with out of dozens, either, if there's just one ending for each one of them: you are still irrelevant to the writer's story.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

As for playing without spending skillpoints, I actually doubted that it was possible. I'm even more surprised that it was so easy. The only times I had problems were fights that were problems previously too, like bossfights, so it had little to do with skillpoints but with the design of the fights. For instance I died 5x against the Harpiye queen, I then realized that I can never melee them successfully because the area was too small for dodging, so the next time I just threw firebombs at them until they were dead. A lot of seemingly difficult fights against humanoids can be a cakewalk, just throw red fog bombs (work like a chaos spell) and mob them up.

But during the ghost batlle all this ends. Seems they changed the draug fight a bit (Patch 1.2), even with fully spent skillpoints it was literally impossible to defeat him, or come even near. This fight has never been a problem previously. Aard does jack shit. Yrden - he ignores it. Igni - nothing. Bombs - no effect. Melee? Have fun daring to come into the reach of his sword. I had to go back to an earlier save and stock up on throwing daggers. This and the final dragon fight are big contenders for the most retarded bossfight design award.

 

[Data4]

I don't get how the end dragon fight is so bad. I probably got down to about 90% health. All I did was spam strong attack and roll a few times. I did upgrade my armor and swords every chance I got, but it still felt ridiculously easy.

Unless that itself is the criticism.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

I don't get how the end dragon fight is so bad. I probably got down to about 90% health. All I did was spam strong attack and roll a few times. I did upgrade my armor and swords every chance I got, but it still felt ridiculously easy.

Unless that itself is the criticism.

On hard you rolled a bit and hammered RMB? And that worked? Well, we must have different versions of the game then.

 

[Havoc]

Because at the very, very least RPG implies character skills that make the difference between failure and success. In TW2 you play a well developed character and only the player's low skill will make Geralt less efficient at kicking ass, as proven by VoD. Sadly, the only time when you do need the skills is when he is NOT playing Geralt.

I understand that Geralt is a famous swordsman and witcher, and it's a sequel, so he can't be a noob, but I guess that's what makes it an adventure game. Coincidentally, I can't think of any reason why you couldn't have played a young no-name witcher who's just learning his craft, but I guess CDP really wanted to tell this particular story.

And just like the video I showed, you don't need character skills to play Deus Ex. It's your own skill that makes JC Denton a fucknugget! Crates people!

That's what makes Deus Ex a adventure game.

 

[Mrowak]

I don't get how the end dragon fight is so bad. I probably got down to about 90% health. All I did was spam strong attack and roll a few times. I did upgrade my armor and swords every chance I got, but it still felt ridiculously easy.

Unless that itself is the criticism.

On hard you rolled a bit and hammered RMB? And that worked? Well, we must have different versions of the game then.

That fight is VERY build dependent.

On my first playthrough I played swordsman/mage - the mobs were piss poor easy but the fucking dragon kept steamrolling over me. The successful fight took about 20 mins after at least a dozen tries.

In my second game I created swordsman/alchemist. The mobs were much more difficult (largely because of the piss poor Quen) but that one bossfight proved just all too easy. The whole fight took maybe 1.30min, and the fight on the top of the tower maybe 15sec - the dragon took so heavy beating earlier her hp bar was below 1/3. The boosts you get from mixing various pots are just crazy. In that fight my Geralt dealt 60% more damage than the standard with the best silver sword in the game - which translates to about 100hp per hit.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

On hard you rolled a bit and hammered RMB? And that worked? Well, we must have different versions of the game then.

Did you hit him in the head while going up through the tower? I had him at like 30% when the fight at the top started, couple more hits and fight was done.

Hehe cool trick, could have saved me 20min of running in circles

 

[Data4]

On hard you rolled a bit and hammered RMB? And that worked? Well, we must have different versions of the game then.

Did you hit him in the head while going up through the tower? I had him at like 30% when the fight at the top started, couple more hits and fight was done.

Hehe cool trick, could have saved me 20min of running in circles

A good potion combo and that, and yes, hardmode on the dragon was easymode. It took about 2 minutes, but all through the fight I was like "I'm about to die", but every time I glanced at my health bar, I was all WTF? I thought the game was bugging out or that I must have switched it on easy at some point, like I did for the Kayren.

 

[made]

It would be pretty awesome if we spent the next 40 pages discussing what constitutes an RPG.

IMO, any RPG that is easy enough that it can be finished without leveling up/spending points is an adventure. Example: Ultima 6.

Thoughts?

 

[Grunker]

It's a terrible discussion that ultimately does not matter. Say VD or Havoc concedes to the other. What about their feelings for The Witcher 2 really changes? Not much, I'd wager... No matter who's right, I think every codexer will agree that stats mattering more in The Witcher 2 would be a good thing.

Let's move on, it's getting terribly Join Date: 2011 in here (no newfag pun, just indicating one should think you two were tired of having this fucking discussion).

 

[RK47]

I just wish the game would actually feature a better tutorial. The floaty text and on-screen prompts barely registered before disappearing.

Also, I could tolerate some challenge, but Kayran is unforgivable.

I can accept dying 2-3 times because I didn't dodge fast enough, but suffering 5 more meaningless deaths just because I was attempting to trap the wrong tentacle is just a lousy game cheat. There's no in-game feedback or mention that Geralt should switch to another tentacle. I dodged the attacks over and over hoping that Yrden would snare the 3rd central tentacle, a relief that never came after 12th death.

Then I decided maybe I wasn't in the state of mind for retries and should watch someone do it in youtube. Well, well. Cut the 2 on the left, then roll to the third on the right.

I loaded up the game, and did exactly that. Success on first try.

That, to me, was bullshit difficulty. Let's hope it's the last of its kind.

 

[Grunker]

I just wish the game would actually feature a better tutorial. The floaty text and on-screen prompts barely registered before disappearing.

RTFM?