The Witcher 3 : Wild Hunt ! [XO, PS4, NX, PS5, XBSX|S, PC]

[Cjail]

Again - Batman is special in this regard, but AC combat is horrible - everyone is waiting for their turn, so a little bit of timing will give you easy victory, even over the strongest of enemies. i remember I didn't have motivation for upgrading my gear or skills beacuse I could beat anyone to pulp without that

I agree.
In Assassin's Creed the AI lacks aggressivity and also IMO the instant kill counters are overpowered considered that they are so easy to perform (counters in AC are low risk high reward,the opposite of TW3) and that is why lost interest in the series.
Traversal has always been well executed IMO, story in AC is, well, forgettable.

Where to start... It's obvious that you haven't played long because most of the things you mentioned improve vastly as you upgrade your level. And two attacks along with crossbow, bombs, signs, dodging, blocking, parrying gives you plenty of fun. It is no Batman, but in my book it's much better than AC.

I have saved 10 points to try out every skill and when I upgrade the Crossbow slodown every time I aimed at the enemy's head, even 3 meters away, the bolts disappeared (this doesnt' happen in Shadow of Mordor or Dragon's Dogma) and apparently hit the chest instead because the soft-lock deviated them; I even used sed axi to ensure that the enemy was standing still so that I could not miss yet and still bots are deviated to the chest...also headshot are not lethal so why bother waste point on skill that is handicapped.

I find using magic (signs), crossbow and bombs very intuitive and well implemented.

You have to go through a menu to select the signs which is not fluid and breaks the flow of the combat.
On PC of course you have keys to spare so it's less of an issue (I would assign signs form F1 to F5on PC) but on consoles it's really unintuitive.
Quickfire buttons for Signs would be much better and I can tell from empirical experience.

 

[Cjail]

In my opinion, when it comes to combat, AC is the worst of the bunch (and when I say bunch, I mean the majority of triple A titles with combat as a major element of their gameplay). Truly awful combat mechanics that require no skill at all.
To me that game, requires no tactic whatsoever.
Batman is excellent, but not nearly as complicated as W3. To me it feels, first and foremost, an excellent fighting game.
SoM is a mix of the above.

The combat system in AC is incredibly well conceived.
You can counter, attack, dodge, parry, disarm, throw sand in the eye of the enemy, use ranged, grab enemies and throw them, you have stealth and more...you have so many options and ways to approach a fight BUT all is ruined rendered redundant by the harmless AI and the overpowered counters.
Without those 2 faults and with runwall AC would be hardocre open world Price of Persia

Free Flow is definitely closer to fighting games, in fact in a old Arkham Asylum diary/interview that I saw Rocksteady said they loved fighting games and the FreeFlow is inspired by them rather than by hack & slash.
Shadow of Mordor has the best of both worlds (AC & Batman) and if you don't grade upgrade HP many/most captains/warchiefs or monsters can one hit kill you, which makes game way more challenging.

 

[Globalisateur]

The main problems IMO is that:

- What is already assigned on the D-pad buttons is not what you use the most in many combats.
- You can't re-assign those buttons the way you want.

Also why not use the diagonal directions on the D-pads to add 4 buttons? Basically all those critics could be spared if we could assign actions / spells to any of the 8 D-pad directions (even on the virtual diagonal directions of the DS4 D-pad...).

Drawing the left or right sword with a left or right swipe on the DS4 touchpad could work very well for instance, it would save 2 buttons.

I remember assigning 8 different spells in oblivion on X360 using only the D-pad, with a bit of practice it worked very well and encouraged you to use your magic spells.

 

[Cjail]

The main problems IMO is that:

- What is already assigned on the D-pad buttons is not what you use the most in many combats.
- You can't re-assign those buttons the way you want.

Also why not use the diagonal directions on the D-pads to add 4 buttons? Basically all those critics could be spared if we could assign actions / spells to any of the 8 D-pad directions (even on the virtual diagonal directions of the DS4 D-pad...).

Drawing the left or right sword with a left or right swipe on the DS4 touchpad could work very well for instance, it would save 2 buttons.

I remember assigning 8 different spells in oblivion on X360 using only the D-pad, with a bit of practice it worked very well and encouraged you to use your magic spells.

On PS4 I re-assigned/changed most of the controls because they are not good for me. (I did the same for Bloodborne)
It helped me but it didn't solve my issue with sigs selection nor fixed the high latency.

Spoiler

I assigned Dodging to R1 not Circle.
I assigned Blocking/Counter to L1 not L2 which makes blocking/countering a bit more responsive due to the shorter pressure needed.
Crossbow/bombs are on L2.
Circle opens the quick selection menu.

For what is worth I suggested better controls on CD Project official forums but I doubt CD will listen (link:http://forums.cdprojektred.com/thre...n-console-(feedback-suggestion-for-CDProjekt)

I really, really, want to like this game but CD Projekt execution of the core mechanics/gameplay is too lacking
So many games in the past solved the very problems that now afflict TW3 and CD project could/should have easily learned from them.

 

[Billy Idol]

I upgraded my light attack 5/5 and use two of the base abilities: sun and stars (is it any good?) and the one where each light armor increases our light attack damage.

During combat, I only use Quen.

Is Yrden really that good?

 

[Daozang]

rendered redundant by the harmless AI and the overpowered counters

The AI is harmless and the counters overpowered, because nothing in that game works well...

So many games in the past solved the very problems that now afflict TW3 and CD project could/should have easily learned from them.

Honestly, I can't think of one that has everything W3 has and a perfect combat on top.
Even the king of open world games, (I'd like to say Elder Scrolls but sadly no) Grand Theft Auto, had awful to mediocre shooting mechanics at best until 4, and kind of good now at five.
I think you are comparing apples to oranges.
I don't think we can compare the driving mechanics of GTA5 with Forza for example, nor the shooting mechanics with CoD.
It wouldn't be fair.
Similarly, we cannot compare W3 to Ninja Gaiden...

In other news.
Because of my blood-lust, five people were killed instead of just one, as Geralt so eloquently put it.
To my defense, I had just upgraded Igni. And I really wanted to burn something.
But I gave it some good thought after the fact.
Now I'm off to kill a werewolf!
And hopefully, not kill everyone involved in the process.

 

[Cyan]

I upgraded my light attack 5/5 and use two of the base abilities: sun and stars (is it any good?) and the one where each light armor increases our light attack damage.

During combat, I only use Quen.

Is Yrden really that good?

Yrden is absolutely necessary for some fights, I think -the bestiary is always helpful in that regard-.

As I said before, this game is like two games in one. Gwent is very addictive, and it adds a lot to the atmosphere. Where I live young and elder people alike IRL play cards games in the tavern or bars around. And that's how it has been from old times and always will.

A little rant: I usually watch the videos and screenshots from people in my friends list activity feed, and one of them spoiled a few important parts of the game... so be careful to look closely and don't look at the quests text... Even so, sometimes the spoilers are just the images themselves...sigh

 

[Deleted member 2197]

For what is worth I suggested better controls on CD Project official forums but I doubt CD will listen (link:http://forums.cdprojektred.com/thre...n-console-(feedback-suggestion-for-CDProjekt)

You never know! Patch 1.04 was release today for the PC. Hopefully you will have it soon ...

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Patch 1.04 changelog:

• Rebinding any key is now available after switching Unlock Bindings option in Options \ Key bindings submenu.
  
  
• Corrects an issue in the dialog system that might rarely cause dialog looping in scenes.
  
  
• Fixes an issue with incorrect behavior of Wild Hunt warriors after they were under the influence of Axii sign.
  
  
• Corrects a bug causing spontaneous combustion of gas clouds.
  
  
• 1280 x 720 resolution is now properly displaying as valid resolution option.
  
  
• Fixes boat stuttering in cutscenes.
  
  
• Texture rendering quality for high / ultra presets improved.
  
  
• Further improvements in NVIDIA Hairworks performance.
  
  
• A few additional Gwent cards are now available in the Prologue area.
  
  
• Fixes an issue where users with usernames using non-latin characters were unable to import saves from Witcher 2.
  
  
• Overall stability and performance improvements.
  
  
• Fixes related to alt + tabbing and minimizing game window.
  
  
• Game icon updated.
  
  
• Enlarges the size of the loot pop-up window in the UI.
  
  
• Fixes an issue where, in certain circumstances, the comparison window could be displayed outside of game borders in the UI.
  
  
• Upgrading set items no longer destroys sockets.
  
  
• Small UI tweaks for Gwent.
  
  
• Corrects some missing translations in localized versions.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Hmmm, I think you should mention that to them in the official forums, they have been looking into bugs and listening to people there. What colour do you see the red in those situations periwinkle, olive green...for instance? I am myopic, but never experienced what you see.

It's such a common enough issue (common to computer games) I don't know why colour blind support isn't standard. Red-blue colour blindness is far less prevalent than red-green. Orange-cyan is I think the most universally applicable colour scheme, although it's perhaps not so pretty. But the obvious solution is an option that loads a different couple of colours into the shaders. I guess the hang-up is an entrenched social meme that uses green for safe and red for dangerous, and this is repeated ad infinitum regardless of it being problematic and invented by people who didn't have a broad enough consideration for the wider populace.

Still, at least we don't persist in demanding everyone be right handed and support lefties by and large, so there's hope yet.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Yrden is absolutely necessary for some fights, I think -the bestiary is always helpful in that regard

I've not upgraded Yrdan so it only gets used when fighting noncorporials but when upgraded it will slow and freeze anything that passes through and prevent projectiles from passing through as well.

Personally I'm next upgrading Quen as I feel defence is becoming more and more important.

 

[Cyan]

I've not upgraded Yrdan so it only gets used when fighting noncorporials but when upgraded it will slow and freeze anything that passes through and prevent projectiles from passing through as well.

Personally I'm next upgrading Quen as I feel defence is becoming more and more important.

That's very useful... I might reconsider my approach, I am investing everything on Alchemy, and I mean it.

Kudos to CD Projekt for the setting and atmosphere in Velen. It's amazing how they've done it. The atmosphere is SO unsettling, it makes you feel fear! "The wind is howling". Couldn't say it any better. Truly great stuff.

 

[RenegadeRocks]

Best thing to happen to gaming in a looooong time !

and , no Arkham combat is super boring ultra long times QTEs. This is miles ahead of that. I gave up on both the Arkham games because of the boring combat, square square, square , Press triangle now!', square, square, sqaure.....to oblivion !! This on the ohter hand, is so intuitive, intelligent and engrossing ! Try combining your abilities and then see the magic happen ! Lovely game !

 

[Cjail]

Out of curiosity at what difficulty are you guys playing it?
Much of the faults that I pointed out become apparent and truly game-breaking only at higher difficulies.

 

[Love_In_Rio]

Best thing to happen to gaming in a looooong time !

and , no Arkham combat is super boring ultra long times QTEs. This is miles ahead of that. I gave up on both the Arkham games because of the boring combat, square square, square , Press triangle now!', square, square, sqaure.....to oblivion !! This on the ohter hand, is so intuitive, intelligent and engrossing ! Try combining your abilities and then see the magic happen ! Lovely game !

I agree with this. Arkham combat makes me feel sleepy. And AC games one is even worse ( is less clean or coherent ), althouh a little more challenging. To be sincere, TW3 has a great combat, probably the best in an RPG ever. If we add action-RPGs to the comparative, nothing tops Bloodborne combat...( I should add I haven´t played Dragon´s Dogma. I wish there was a remaster for PS4 ).

By the way, in TW3 setting the sticks sensitivity to the minimun greatly improves the character and camera movement. I am starting to adapt to the control and the game is greatly growing on me.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Out of curiosity at what difficulty are you guys playing it?
Much of the faults that I pointed out become apparent and truly game-breaking only at higher difficulies.

Default for me. I'm in this for the story principally but don't want it to be a cake walk. I may have gone a level harder but you lose healing through meditation which means careful management of the inventory for food and drink.

I get why some people like this aspect of RPGs but for me having to obsess over inventory stock is not something I want to spend time doing and it's bad enough keeping track of what you need for crafting items. For example, last night I obtained the Feline armour set diagrams and I'll get the weapons diagrams today and I just spend 10 minutes working out the full crafting ingredient list:

Spoiler

5x Hardend Timber - crossbow, boots, chest.
6x Hardened Leather - boots, chest, gloves, trousers.
3x Cured Leather - gloves, trousers.
1x Monster Brain - trousers.
1x Monster Bone - crossbow.
1x Monster Hair - crossbow.
3x Monster Eye - boots, silver sword.
2x Monster Tooth - gloves.
1x Monster Saliva - steel sword.
1x Wax - crossbow.
3x Dark Iron Ore - crossbow, boots, gloves.
2x Dark Steel Plates - chest.
2x Silver Ingot - silver sword.
4x Iron Ingot - steel sword.
1x Leather Straps - boots, silver sword, steel sword.
4x Leather Scraps - trousers.
2x Ruby Dust - silver sword, steel sword.
1x Shirt - chest.
2x Silk - trousers.
1x Powdered Monster Tissue - chest.
2x Nails - gloves.

Annoying I just cleared out a bunch of common items (nails, timber, leather etc) so I need to buy those again or loot more. Grrr.

 

[Cyan]

Check the controls for a short cut. On PS4 you can jump straight to the map with an upward swipe on the touchpad and jump straight to the inventory by holding the touchpad down.

There may be key combos to accomplish the same thing on XBO.

I wanted to find an alternative, but no dice.

By the well, setting the sticks sensitivity to the minimun greatly improves the character and camera movement. I am starting to adapt to the control...

That's something people mentioned in the forum but I seriously might give it a try, because moving the camera and the character is one of the main gripes I have -Geralt accelerates too quickly, stops in an odd manner with a bit of inertia-, other than that the controls are perfectly fine for me.

Out of curiosity at what difficulty are you guys playing it?
Much of the faults that I pointed out become apparent and truly game-breaking only at higher difficulies.

Third difficulty level -the equivalent of hard, I guess, can't recall the name-. There is no way I can beat high level content with a low level character, got Geralt kicked pretty harshly when I wanted to be brave, and even level 9-10 monsters -or level 6, like certain monsters from a Witcher contract quest in Velen- make life tough.

 

[szymku]

Out of curiosity at what difficulty are you guys playing it?
Much of the faults that I pointed out become apparent and truly game-breaking only at higher difficulies.

Blood And Broken Bones

 

[Cjail]

I am playing at Death March and really partying, counters and crossbow are nearly useless.
Crossbow at death march is useless it deals something like 30 of damage when a level 2 dog has something like 800.

 

[Lightman]

I'm playing on Blood And Broken Bones too.
Death March is not for first play-trough I think, I mean I love challenge but want to stay sane for a bit longer in my life

EDIT:
Just found out that TW3 topped sales charts in the UK!
RPG topping charts is awesome!

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-05-26-the-witcher-3-biggest-uk-launch-of-2015-so-far

 

[Sigfried1977]

Playing on hard. The fact that I actually need to prepare and strategize is really cool. That said, I'm not gonna lie to myself about the combat being anything more than a decent shade of serviceable. Sure it can be fun and thrilling, but mechanically it it's just a little too clunky and simply lacking in the sort of impact that separates the so-so (Witcher series) from the great (all the From games and Dragons Dogma) combat systems - it's either outright dismemberment or hitting someone with a wet cat in The Witcher 3.