Please help me understand the game mechanics...

[DreamBliss]

Please help me understand the game mechanics...

I am really close to uninstalling this game from off my computer! Before I do that. I want to make sure I haven't missed something.

To begin let me tell you what I like in an RPG. Ever played Risen? You can run, jump and combat makes sense. Same thing for Morrowind and Oblivion. This is what I was looking for with Witcher. I have the Enhanced Edition, patched to 1.5 and Director's Cut. Can Witcher be played that way, with those kinds of mechanics? If so how?

I set it up to Intermediate, keyboard+mouse control, and OOS view. But I find myself point 'n clicking as if I were playing Myst, which I did not expect in an RPG. I press TAB to draw my sword, nothing happens. So I press and hold Shift, move the cursor over, and select my sword.

BTW nice job in forgetting to include a game manual book with the game, and leaving out the option to look at the manual in game, so I have to save, exit, read the manual, and load up again!

OK, sword is drawn, but no matter what I do, I just end up walking in circles, trying to keep the enemy from surrounding me, and every time I left-click I get a chopping motion. I guess my character thinks his sword is an ax. At random times (it seems) he executes a few slicing movements and deals some damage. The rest of the time I am shuffling around, holding this huge sword above my head, and getting the crap beat out of me.

Obviously I am doing something wrong here, but the combat section in the manual isn't helping me figure it out. I would appreciate it if you would help me understand this game, how it is meant to be played, whether or not it can be played in a more familiar, natural manner. Thank you!

Also, do Witcher 2 and 3 control the same clumsy way, or have things changed? If they have changed, how? Can you jump and climb? Is point 'n click gone, or if it is there, is there a non-point 'n click way to play?

Thanks again!

 

[StaGiors]

@DreamBliss


Hello.

The Witcher is nothing like TES. You can not jump and move like you do in TES.

You can pull out your sword by pressing Q. Also if you press J you open up your Journal. In the Journal are tutorial notes. You can read them to get help. TAB is used to sheathe your sword. There are also 3 fighting styles in TW1. Fast Style, Strong Style (the one you use) and Group Style. You can add more animations later in the game by advancing your character. You use different styles depending on your opponent.

The witcher 2 and 3 are not like the witcher 1. The fighting system is much different, it might be more familiar to you, but it will still take some time to learn. The Witcher 3 will improve that system and also you will be able to jump too.

Hope this helps.

Give this game a chance, it is quite old but a very beautiful game, with deep storyline and wonderful environments. The mechanics are fun too once you get used to them.

 

[tommy5761]

When in game press F1 for high isometric , F2 for low isometric (both of these will be point and click) , F3 will give you OTS where you will find the the W, A , S , D as well as all other keyboard functions . Here`s a link for a digital game manual which is in PDF format so you`ll need either Adobe Reader or Foxit Reader to view it .
https://www.dropbox.com/s/o9fsq09y8617mz5/The_Witcher_manual.zip
Also the tutorial will give you tips on the fighting combat styles , how to use potions as well as making them , meditation , etc. TIP : talk to everyone you can.

 

[DreamBliss]

OK, thank you both for your replies. I did notice the Styles option and pressed C to switch to group, but nothing happened. I do have the digital copy of the manual. I would have printed it, but its 40 pages which is really too much. So I do have a manual. The problem is I have to save, exit the game, open the manual, read it, and load the game back up every time I need to refer to something, unless I decide not to play it in fullscreen.

I agree that it is indeed a very beautiful game, and I love that an editor was included, which was why I purchased it. But I am not into 3D ISO point 'n click RPGs. Not a Diablo fan in other words, though I know a lot of people love that series. I want a world I can interact with, as if I was there in real life. There's no waiting around for some opportune moment to swing my sword in RL. Even untrained in swordplay I know to swing up and down, to each side, parry - all that sort of stuff. It takes you out of the game to have some sort of timer going on when your character can do something. And as wonderful as the Myst series is (I am a fan of that universe) you never really feel as if you are there when you have to point 'n click your way along.

I kind of figured jumping would not be in the Witcher once I sw BioWare had something to do with it. I once made a long post about why jumping and climbing mechanics need to be in a game, how they affect the world. But the BioWare staff who replied essentially said that jumping is unnecessary in a game. They are adamantly against that. So I have never touched Dragon Age and some of their other RPGs.

I may give this game another go. Look for a combat tutorial at YouTube. At least play it the way it was designed to be a played a little before making my final decision. But I am very disappointed in its gameplay mechanics so far. I really don't understand why they designed it that way.

 

[DreamBliss]

UPDATE:

OK, after watching a few videos and trying again I think I have combat figured out. C doesn't work because I haven't learned Group Style yet.

Still haven't figured out how to loot a corpse so I get better equipment. Maybe that too is disabled here at the beginning?

I will keep playing for now.

 

[dragonbird]

Yes, it comes later. Most of the corpses in the introduction don't have any loot to take.

And just to highlight, the first game was made with the Aurora engine that was turn-based but modified to give some semblance of real-time, the second (and third) are made with CDPR's own engine, which is fully real-time. So if you decide later that you like the game except for the gameplay mechanics, you'll probably enjoy the later games.

 

[StaGiors]

Also try lowering the difficulty level to easy. It is much easier but still challenging. And you get helpful notifiers.

 

[DreamBliss]

UPDATE:

Still plowing through this - in chapter 2 now.

Some things I noticed that need to be improved - maybe give me an excuse to mod? There are no sellers at night on the street in Vizima. Since you loose anything you leave lying on the ground when you load an area, like the inside of a building, that is 20-60 oren a pop you loose. Have an idea for a well armored night time only merchant that will follow you around, staying on the street near guards or something.

You can't really store anything anywhere. Sure you can use the Innkeeper, but why not make chests usable, let the player use these abandoned houses? Why can't the player light a fire and stay there? Heck why can't the player buy a key to the place, or receive it automatically once they move in? Serious lack here, RPG players have been wanting, as far back as 2002, to be able to take books off of shelves and put them back on, place things in display cases, use armor dummies and store armor on them, and have their own houses in a game.

If the folks that made Witcher had lurked around the Morrowind forums they would have learned all of this themselves. I see this a lot - game developers keep trying to "reinvent the wheel" and they never study any other games. They never go, in disguise, to competitor developer forums and see what people are asking for. It's the single most important game development resource out there and nobody uses it! Well someday game developers will learn the art of seeing what the players of other games want in a similar title they are planning and provide that in their game.

I have a few other gripes but overall, with a few exceptions, I am having fun. The hellhound was a bitch the second time through, the strange red plant is giving me a problem in the swamp, I don't like locked doors I can't open, or doors that open which characters can enter or exit from but I can't. Gold is hard to come by and I have yet to enter a peaceful, beautiful area I can just enjoy. Everything is dark, deadly and dead set on making me jump out of my skin. Oh yeah and I see about a dozen of the same character model in each area I visit. But despite everything I am still playing, at least for now, so the developers did something right.

 

[DreamBliss]

So I am in Chapter 4 now, Lakeside, Level 27. I finally get to relax in a beautiful place after all the garbage in Vizima and the kikimore lair.

I went ahead and purchased the enhanced edition of The Witcher 2. But I wonder if it will have an editor. Thankfully it does have a manual, an actual physical manual, and a map!

Now that I have played Witcher for a while I wanted to share my opinion regarding it. I am finding the lack of innocence in the game to be hard to deal with. What do I mean by that? The best way I can describe it is to compare this game to something like Final Fantasy 7. Sure, there is darkness, but there is also a magic, a sort of innocence, a sense of adventure. Witcher has a little sense of adventure, and there is certainly magic. But the focus of the game seems to be on combat, fighting, war. It is a mature RPG in every sense of the word. But it is all darkness and little, if any, light. It is all hate and little, if any love. It is magical insofar as it relates to fighting. It is adventurous insofar as you are forced along, b the storyline, from place to place. There are no little hidden corners of the world, there is no adventure or exploration with no sense of purpose. You can only explore as the story takes you from place to place. You can't just explore for no reason other than to explore. You are limited in where you can go and what you can do.

Also the crafting in the game is lackluster. You make potions, oils and bombs. In Morrowind you could take jewelry and enchant it. In Risen you could make jewelry and weapons. In both games you could make serious money selling the things you made as you got better at it. Where is the armor and sword crafting in Witcher? Where is the enchanting? Where are the sellers who will buy more than just specific items? I always have to run all over the place from one seller to the next to sell anything, and even then my profit is usually minimal.

When it comes down to it, The Witcher is just fun enough to keep playing. Like a book that is just good enough to keep reading. But The Witcher is not like the Harry Potter books. When reading one of these, you devour it. And that is a poor example because the authoress destroyed her world. All the books were devourable, but she made her word descend into darkness. The Witcher is not a game that you want to devour, like Final Fantasy 7 or Risen or Morrowind. It needs to somehow find a way to be mature, with the silly notion behind it that mature = adult = serious = not fun. Something that is mature should not equate into something that is serious. Games are meant to be played. In the case of a fantasy RPG they must be magical adventures. There should be wonder in the world, beauty, love, light. Maturity does not mean darkness and hatred. The Witcher is all about sex and violence. That's pretty much it. That is my experience with it so far.

Now that is not to say The Witcher is not a good game. There are things about it I do not like, certainly. And I do not enjoy the crafting and the world as a whole. But there is just enough adventure, exploration and story to keep me going, and to even purchase its sequel. It's not bad enough, in other words, that I can play no more. It's like something healthy that is just tasty enough to be edible, so you keep eating it. But if it tasted just a little less good, you would stop and throw it away. Despite the weird camera and point-n-click combat, despite the lack of true adventure, true magic or any sense of love, there is a solid game here that for now, I will keep playing. When I have completed it the game will be uninstalled and set aside. I will probably never return to it. Once I have gone through what I will call the "completed game phase" I will play The Witcher 2.

So that's my update. Witcher 2 has installed, so I will now look to see if it has an editor.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

About not having merchants at night. Why would they stroll the city at times when monsters come out from underground and criminals wait for passersby in the shadows? That's an RPG after all, so that's actually adding to the immersion. Also, some important merchants can be reached in their homes at night.

Leaving stuff on the ground also doesn't sound like a good idea.

Not being able to store items in random chests is a limitation, I guess intentional to reduce keeping all those items in memory. That's not so realistic as above, but I usually didn't have problems with visiting an innkeeper. You can also complain that items magically teleport between inns, which is even less realistic than above, but actually improves usability.

About Harry Potter books - that's of course subjective, but I never really liked them. Surely not to such level as to devour them. Witcher books on the other hand I like quite a lot. I recommend you to actually read the Witcher books in addition to playing the games. Events in them take place before events in the games, so they'll fill a lot of background on the lore, characters and the world.

About mature = adult = serious = not fun. There is a good review of the Witcher which explores this subject and defines "mature" in a different way.

 

[volsung]

Never really come into this section of the forums, wow.

First off, OP, stop playing a game expecting to find what you liked in ANOTHER game. Enjoy a game for its qualities, its own merits. Not for how much it resembles something you played previously. Also, those games are all very standard high-fantasy power trips. That is, they cater to the player, they let the player become famous, powerful, rich, etc. The Witcher is not at all about that, quite the opposite. Witchers are nomads, they are poor and they are mostly a thing of the past. They struggle to make enough money to eat and the world rejects them. Why should we be able to make loads of money? Also Geralt is no craftsman or blacksmith, why should he suddenly leave his witcher profession and "craft" mediocre armor for sale?

The witcher universe is different to the typical high fantasy, with happy elves and green hills and white fences. The world of the witcher is a reflection of our own, with vice, decadence, death, abuse, violence. Monsters appeared after an archetypical celestial event but the question remains whether they are also the product of magical pollution or people's embodied emotions. Racial inequality and war is also present. As is the eternal Indo-European obsession with predestination. Geralt wonders who he is, and in trying to (re) define himself he wants to know if he can also change, how his emotions affect him and those around him, etc. There is so much more to the Witcher that goes on beyond the surface, that games like Risen or Morrowind would not even touch.

So again, my advise: understand what the Witcher is about and take it for what it is. It certainly is not TES or Risen or anything else you've played before. The Witcher 2 is a more conventional action oriented RPG like what you've seen before, so you might feel more comfortable with it. Still, the world is harsh, combat is tough, and your decisions effectively affect the outcome of events (so not like the games you've played before ). Appreciate the writing and undertones of the Witcher, and the character construction, and the dilemmas. Whether there is an mobile armored shop chasing you around a dangerous path is irrelevant (and not believable btw).

Have fun!

 

[NCofRivia]

First off, OP, I don't know why you expected to find a world full of sunshine and rainbows. The Witcher is based on a series of books by Andrzej Sapkowski which are not in the high fantasy genre, they are dark fantasy, as are the Witcher games. Also, many of the things that you complained about not being able to do in the Witcher were purposely not included because they wouldn't fit the character of Geralt. Take armor and weapons crafting, for instance. In real life, these are trades which take years of dedicated study and practice to master. Geralt does not have the time to sit down and learn how to to be an armor and weapons smith. He is concerned with hunting monsters. Also, returning to my first point, the Witcher is dark because it is a reflection of the real world. It may have elves and dwarves and wizards, but it also mirrors real life, which is full of racism, rape, murder, and death.

 

[JackofTears]

Honestly, OP, this game and the setting are not for you; you want a setting about happy endings and brilliant happy magical unicorn rides (ehem - certain references to Yennefer notwithstanding) and this is simply not the world you've wandered into. As for the game, it is not a "Diablo" style game, it has more familiar with Baldur's Gate, though they did some amazing things with the engine in use at the time. You obviously came into the game with the wrong expectations and never let them go; I would recommend you try something else because I'm not sure the franchise will ever satisfy you. (though the third game is incredible, the world is still dark and there are few happy endings)