I'm starting out on hard. I like the challenge it brings as well as the feeling of accomplishment if I'm having trouble with a specific fight and finally get through it. Seeing as combat looks much more fluid and tactical I'll enjoy hard difficulty more. Little under a month until release!
I'm going my first time through on Hard to unlock Insane earlier.I'm so hyped right now. I just jumped back into The Witcher, I'm doing the neutral path this time around with the combat rebalance mod. Coming off the disappointment of DA2 I can't wait for The Witcher 2, can't wait to reunite with the old cast and kick some ass and drink down some brew with my bud Zoltan!
Insane mode is brilliantI know in TW1 I many times went straight into a battle with little preparation because I knew if I died I could just load a save and try again with different tacticsInsane mode will definitely make me prepare more and think thoroughly through everything before I do it. The risk of dying and losing everything would make you play better and would be exciting especially in those fights where you have only a slight bit of life left and you win the fight 
I'm starting on normal mode first though to take the story in and get a feel for the mechanics before moving onto higher difficulties
I'm starting on normal mode first though to take the story in and get a feel for the mechanics before moving onto higher difficultiesI'm fine if insane is REALLY possible. However, due to some gameplay mechanism such as randomness like criticals/debufss/disables from some of the baddest creatures or bosses, i don't know MAYBE the character can even die even you are the most expert in the game knowing every single ins and outs.So if there's SUCH factors in the game, penalizing players with game over due to that factor is a little harsh which is clearly NOT the fault of the player. This is my opinion though. Cheers
To me, the difficulty is all about inmersion and fun. I play RPGs mainly because story and characters. The combat must be funny, hard enough to be "beliavable" and challenging, but easy enough to be funny (reload boss or big monsters fights is fine; reload after each regular combat is not). It has to help the immersion, I must to belive that Geralt is in danger. So, I adjust difficulty in a empiric way: trying several ones.And about the insane mode, it's not for me. I know some hard RPG gamers that favours this kind of mode, even if it's not implemented (if they die during the playthrough, they begin again). They say it's more like a pen-and-paper game, really immersive and so. Not my cup of tea, again.archaven said:
Ugh I certainly hope so.With the right build you dont really go below 90% vitality at any time in the last chapter in TW 1.Fortunately judging from the spring conference TW2 hard is a whole new ball game compared to TW1 hard.Sweeper41 said:
It was mentioned somewhere that when you die on insane your save games are locked.Now what that exactly means is up for intepration,but I got the impression that you simply wont be able to load your save games on that playthrough anymore so backing up saves wouldnt be very helpful.Although imo someone who is going to cheat anyway choosing insane to begin with would seem a little....counter productiveSweeper41 said:I wonder how the game will enfore that permanent death... if it's simply by deleting savegames, you could cheat it easily by backing up the saves regularly. But I somehow doubt that they'll make it that easy for us.
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Not at all. Some players might want the challenge of insane difficulty, but not the frustration of starting over again. That is why I said I'd like to have a not-quite-so-insane insane mode. Two different things.If the savegames are locked after character death in insane difficulty, I guess one has to mod the hard difficulty to be insanely hard, then.onlyadream said:Although imo someone who is going to cheat anyway choosing insane to begin with would seem a little....counter productive
I see your point.Although to me the challenge of the insane is in the death=over concept,circumvent that and one might aswell just be playing hard,hence my impression of it being somewhat counter productive.Matter of perspective I suppose.DelightfulMcCoy said:Not at all. Some players might want the challenge of insane difficulty, but not the frustration of starting over again. That is why I said I'd like to have a not-quite-so-insane insane mode. Two different things.If the savegames are locked after character death in insane difficulty, I guess one has to mod the hard difficulty to be insanely hard, then.DelightfulMcCoy said:Although imo someone who is going to cheat anyway choosing insane to begin with would seem a little....counter productive
There's a new preview from PCGamer:http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/04/21/the-witcher-2-preview/Something to worry bout the combat now...
Maybe the journalists thought including an awesome button was mandatory? You push a button, something awesome happens! Who knew that you'd have to actually use your brain and a little bit of tactics in a game nowdays. It's almost unheard ofHomemComH said:The weak-ass "journalists" are complaining about difficulty, well done CDPR.
Witcher 2 needs more of this if they want to put a lot of "10/10 omg best game eva" quotes on the ads.freakie1one said:Maybe the journalists thought including an awesome button was mandatory? You push a button, something awesome happens! Who knew that you'd have to actually use your brain and a little bit of tactics in a game nowdays. It's almost unheard offreakie1one said:
Lol that's really funny .gif i've seen. I'm not sure about how the previewer play the game so basically if i understand correctly, Geralt will have 2 basic attacks: fast/light attacks and heavy/slow attacks. He may basically been spamming the heavy/slow attacks which takes 2 seconds for the animation swing and hence mob by those pesky creatures.I hope to believe that it may due to the fault of the player itself for not playing correctly. I think to fight against fast mass swarming creatures, we should not be using heavy blow if there's alot of creatures around but planning ahead with traps, spells, coatings to fight them.Maybe only use heavy/strong/slow attacks only vs. heavily armored/slow/single creatures around.
I'm sure that once people become more proficient at combining bombs, signs and different types of attacks together they'll figure out better ways to deal with larger groups of enemies. I think some situations just require you to be a bit more creative than others.
True I remember in TW1 a player bit of a spoiler here.freakie1one said:
found a great way using bomb to fight the Golem
Yep, a number of them have mentioned the difficulty. Weenies.freakie1one said:Maybe the journalists thought including an awesome button was mandatory? You push a button, something awesome happens! Who knew that you'd have to actually use your brain and a little bit of tactics in a game nowdays. It's almost unheard offreakie1one said:The weak-ass "journalists" are complaining about difficulty, well done CDPR.
Sorry i'm not really clear on how many difficulties we have in TW2? Is it 3 or 4?Easy/Casual - For players who just want to skimp the combat and enjoy the story.Norma/Novice - For players who have some basic of RPG elements and minor difficulty in gameHard - For veteran players who know most of the game mechanics and wanted a challengeInsane - For hardcore players who know ins and outs of the game and perma death for mistakes.Is it like the above? I hope they have 4 difficulties..Because i like to play the game on Normal on first playthrough and probably hard for a little challenge on second playthrough and so forth.