The Witcher (I, II, III) - CD Projekt RED games

[Mjarr]

i actually like the new UI much more than the old one... those buffs dont obscure through the middle of the screen anymore, and are smaller, less distracting. plus, if you wanna see time and name, its always shown once you press the button for circular (sign) menu..

After few days only thing that seems weird is lack of timers for potion buffs. Everything else is still either meh for me or slowly warming up since some things are definitely easier to navigate than before.

In other news I finished B&W. Pretty good and solid work but there's so much wasted potential I have trouble believing they left it in its current state. Plot runs at hyperspeed after the initial setup and while you have new location with its sidequests to migitate, once you finished majority of sidequests it just highlights the issue even further. Hearts of Stone managed it way better IMO.

I'm tempted to write minor rant in spoilers but I'll refrain from now. I'm honestly too salty since "hey this is pretty good but this could be so much ing better."

[Candy_Licker]

I just finished my second playthrough in preperation for B&W.

This time, I wanted to get the so called "bittersweet" ending, so I forced myself to do the Reason of State quest although it was against my principles. Yet, I missed the chance to take her to you know who, so I got the other good ending again. This playthough took me over a half year, but I'm pretty sure I only once had the chance to talk to Ciri about an audience, yet she refused, replying "not now".

I somehow must've missed the right moment. Bollocks.

[DaVinci]

After few days only thing that seems weird is lack of timers for potion buffs. Everything else is still either meh for me or slowly warming up since some things are definitely easier to navigate than before.

In other news I finished B&W. Pretty good and solid work but there's so much wasted potential I have trouble believing they left it in its current state. Plot runs at hyperspeed after the initial setup and while you have new location with its sidequests to migitate, once you finished majority of sidequests it just highlights the issue even further. Hearts of Stone managed it way better IMO.

I'm tempted to write minor rant in spoilers but I'll refrain from now. I'm honestly too salty since "hey this is pretty good but this could be so much ing better."

Without telling us quest "secrets" etc. (story spoiler-theme), i thought B&W shall have a lot or a bit of open world content, so one can play around a while like in ie. Skyrim? Example, the housing, does it not offer a free-play so to speak?

If not that way, then W3 with B&W might be a thing to use mods with quests, when there are possibly quality mods ... in future.



Once again, performance theme W3/fx card

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Source: http://www.pcgamer.com/the-geforce-gtx-1070-review/

[JaM]

yeah, there is entire new map with a lot of points of interests, definitely more than announced 40. Plus, some side stories are quite good, was pleasantly surprised. Also, main quest has two different branches at the end, based on your decisions. i got the good one, so didnt seen the darker part, but will probably chose it next time, even though that ending is a bit harsh.


anyway, main bossfight was tough, toughest in the series.. not even Kayran compares... (but of course, it depends how much overleveled you are at the end, and if you are, if level scaling is on)

[Mjarr]

Without telling us quest "secrets" etc. (story spoiler-theme), i thought B&W shall have a lot or a bit of open world content, so one can play around a while like in ie. Skyrim? Example, the housing, does it not offer a free-play so to speak?

If not that way, then W3 with B&W might be a thing to use mods with quests, when there are possibly quality mods ... in future.

The house is pretty much just standard money sink you can decorate in very limited fashion and pour excess money for minor utility. And yes, B&W has new region which is open for exploration (and it's certainly pretty place) but according to Steam I've clocked ~30 hours between Tuesday and Saturday and I explored couple of endings as it's easy to make a backup save at the obvious branching point, so take few hours off for realistic value where it sat when I wrote the post originally So far only thing I didn't do was the qwent sidequest since I still don't care much for it and I after I finished the plot I turned on points of interests again (IMHO keeping them on ruins any fun of exploration when the game flat out says HEY THERE'S SOMETHING IN HERE) and cleared most areas I missed. Gwent aside there's not much to do, sitting at 85k gold which I could only sink for grandmaster gear which I had no need to as everything already died when I looked funnily at them and I don't think I missed any sidequests.

But if you really want to take it slow and map out all ending variables out I can imagine it lasting well over 50h.

Oh, and when you finally get around to play the Witcher 3 I recommend disabling undiscovered points of interests and pathway to objectives. That way it's actually somewhat interesting to explore as you don't know what to expect, you can actually miss things once in a while and still do it later and lack of obvious "follow this route for the marker" on minimap also means moments like wrong turn at Alberqueue which in turn might lead to discovering something completely different.

anyway, main bossfight was tough, toughest in the series.. not even Kayran compares... (but of course, it depends how much overleveled you are at the end, and if you are, if level scaling is on)

I tried to boss with level scaling on later and I still found it quite easy. It's a boss alright but I had more grey hairs with certain couple of bosses in Hearts of Stone.

[JaM]

strange... a lot of people on CDPR forum are complaining about way to harsh difficulty of that battle, as those bats can sometimes kill you by single hit... but as always, it greatly depends on what character you built over time... mine was on level 56, and i always use hybrid build with focus on combat (2 red mutagens), alchemy (1 mutagen) and partial signs (1 slot for signs, rest for perks).. i managed to go through the fight without any reloading. anyway i found that fight to be more interesting than any of those in HoS, which were more about finding the right way how to fight that monster.. here, at least those patterns changed several times..

[DAVIDE]

They complain because they are amateur players. Full alchemic Geralt is always the answer

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[Mjarr]

strange... a lot of people on CDPR forum are complaining about way to harsh difficulty of that battle, as those bats can sometimes kill you by single hit... but as always, it greatly depends on what character you built over time... mine was on level 56, and i always use hybrid build with focus on combat (2 red mutagens), alchemy (1 mutagen) and partial signs (1 slot for signs, rest for perks).. i managed to go through the fight without any reloading. anyway i found that fight to be more interesting than any of those in HoS, which were more about finding the right way how to fight that monster.. here, at least those patterns changed several times..

The bats do instant kill you if you're less than 100% health and if you are wearing light armour but they are pretty easy to dodge. The moment he does "brb imma call for some bats" take as much distance as possible, wait he telegraphs next bit of animation, run sideways and the moment you see bats coming roll. Guaranteed dodge and proceed like business as usual, but indeed at least the patterns were somewhat randomised if still easily telegraphed in most cases. To be fair it took me few reloads to figure out how to dodge them reliably but once I figured that out the fight went clean through. Same with 2nd time w/ level scaling while mapping another ending.

I experimented several builds but I eventually settled on pretty boring boost light attack and signs- setup after ~lvl20 in the main game. Two slots full of combat skills to greater red mutagens, two slots for greater blue mutagens with some perks mixed inbetween, and more signs when I researched some of the custom mutations. I carried Ofieri gear as backup for occasional "break the game completely with signs" situations, changed mutagen to support signs as much as possible and thus cleared one of those hanse camps at lvl42 vs lvl48 camp with nothing but igni. With guaranteed burn and high stamina regen against humanoids it looped igni -> wait for stamina to regen -> they are still burning -> igni -> they are burning once again on endless loop until hp whittles to 0.

I wonder how much Iris does damage with heavy attack boosts and full charge.

[IlluminatiRex]

Finally finished Hearts of Stone and the main game (took about 173 hours according to my save file). Cleared every POI and did every single side-quest.

now onto Blood and Wine!

[DaVinci]

As you are on theme difficulty, isn't it all dependent on the chosen one? Well, comicably some players complain on forums but have chosen very hard or dark or insane ... i mean it rather can't be, that players complain when normal or easy is chosen.

I personally go with Normal, in W1 and W2 at least and plan it for W3 as well (and usually in all games vs. Very Hard or Hard in earlier years - why? It's the setting for which developers balancing the game, plus i'm old and for example not a young "professional" pc or console gamer which see partly a sport-festival in their gaming, i play just purely for the fun of it).

In Witcher, if it is then too easy in the higher chapters, one could for example downgrade yourself (the protagonist) with lighter armour or simpler weapons etc. ... just to make it a bit more challenging. Well, but especially with the Geralt-background, one shouldn't have a challenge with any minor or medium enemies, but just with certain boss fights (until one figures out the according tactic).

I'm seeing the things through the true-to-lore glasses, plus i'm looking for fitting game-changes (modding the one and other thing) or available mods which increase a realism/lore immersion.

[DAVIDE]

Only decent way to play W3 is at the hardest difficulty. Theres no reason to play normal any Witcher games considering that meditation can fully heal you. Game becomes too easy and then theres no purpose to use food and potions to restore your life

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[JaM]

Yeah, Witcher 3 is meant to be played on Dead March, and even it might look originally a bit harsh, after some time, you will realize its not that hard... bonuses are mostly to monster health and damage, but overall goal in combat you wanna achieve is to not get hit at all if possible, therefore it actually doesn't matter much, and it only increases number of hits you need to land on a monster until you successfully kill it.. It also makes alchemy a bit more important, as on normal difficulty, you can play the game and never use a potion or oil in battle...

anyway, even though i have 1220 hours of gameplay already (my second most played game on STEAM, closing on ETW with 1300 hours..), right now i'm playing NG+ for the first time... new expansion made this more compelling with mutation system, and dyes for Witcher sets, and of course new upscale system, anyway one of biggest issues with NG+ is the fact that loot scales up with you, therefore even ordinary swords dropped by some bandits have high stats and therefore have high price... this alone can break the game economy as you can become rich very fast, which combined with the fact you already have alchemy complete, there is even less to spend your money on... I think it would be best to introduce fixed level for the looted weapons, so you wouldnt be able to sell some ordinary Velen swords for 200-300 crowns, when originally at the start, they were going for 3-5 crown a piece... plus, this has nothing to do with actual NPC stats, as they dont use those weapons actually, they have completely different damage definition file, that is unrelated to the looted weapons...

[Mhaedros]

Only decent way to play W3 is at the hardest difficulty. Theres no reason to play normal any Witcher games considering that meditation can fully heal you. Game becomes too easy and then theres no purpose to use food and potions to restore your life

Why do you care if someone wants to play on medium or easy? It doesn't take away from your experience. Anyway, some people just want to experience the story, no reason judging them for not wanting to die and repeat fights so they can get to the parts they enjoy.

[DAVIDE]

Im not judging. Just giving a suggestion. Else your witcher's experience would be like playing a first person shooter using god mode. For instance, AI is only decent at death march difficulty. And game is neither that hard. If you are an experienced player you hardly are goin to die.

[Candy_Licker]

Only decent way to play W3 is at the hardest difficulty. Theres no reason to play normal any Witcher games considering that meditation can fully heal you. Game becomes too easy and then theres no purpose to use food and potions to restore your life

Death March and Broken Bones is the same in this regard.

Why do you care if someone wants to play on medium or easy? It doesn't take away from your experience. Anyway, some people just want to experience the story, no reason judging them for not wanting to die and repeat fights so they can get to the parts they enjoy.

I switched to Death March late game, since I was seriously overlevelled anyway. Makes the fights somewhat more epic this way, but also a bit tedious. Double edged sword imo. Tho I guess you can have pretty OP builds with alchemy I hear, which makes it really easy. It didn't feel too easy with a sign build, since they are pretty useless against big bosses (except Quen spam ofc) I like sign build, but it's pretty unbalanced. Igni make water hags, Leshens etc a joke.

[DAVIDE]

About meditation and healing yes. About AI theres an abyss between the two

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[Mjarr]

As you are on theme difficulty, isn't it all dependent on the chosen one? Well, comicably some players complain on forums but have chosen very hard or dark or insane ... i mean it rather can't be, that players complain when normal or easy is chosen.

You can switch difficulty at any point in the game, so starting out with higher difficulties to see how it rolls is possible or cranking it up if things look too easy is not an issue.

About meditation and healing yes. About AI theres an abyss between the two

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I wouldn't say there's huge difference in AI between B&B and DM. You can still get pretty far away with barebones simplicity on DM before any need to really adjust arises.

(Unless switching difficulty mid-game is glitched.)

[JaM]

AI is definitely same, its just on DM, monsters have faster stamina regen, higher attack power and a lot more essence... higher stamina regen is particularly interesting, as it makes them use their special attacks more often becoming much more dangerous... (that what i'm actually using in my personal mod, to make things a bit more interesting... monster with very high stamina and stamina regen, while human with less regen, so they actually will drop the guard if tired... makes it much more interesting )

btw, for anybody interested, eventually, i will submit my mod on nexus, (or even can open a separate thread here at twc? ) anyway right now, i'm mostly testing my ideas, and not committing to large changes until all patches are completed (another patch incoming was announced by Marcin Momot today)

[Candy_Licker]

So to the ones who finished it: are there any connections to the main game plot / returning characters? (please no details/spoilers)

[Mjarr]

Not really, though if you mean characters related to books having a role on the main plot - somewhat.