Auto sheathe

[evilhippo]

Best game ever, but...

For the love of whatever gods you have, disable auto-sheath! I have lost count how many times I have ended up fist fighting enemies or sheathed while being shot at by crossbow enemies and taken a hit a moment later. Likewise if I need to get out of the boat, let me sheath my damn sword so I can jump again and get out of the damn boat!

It is far and away the most annoying mechanic in this game by a *HUGE* margin.

Just make it go away. The game is not even nearly smart enough to know when I should be in combat mode. If I manually draw my sword, put me in combat mode and keep me in combat mode until *I* decide I need to get out of combat mode. If I need to use Witcher Sense or stop annoying guards, I will sheath it myself. How this major flaw in the game mechanics got past testing is a mystery.

 

[ThroesOfRejection]

Yes to this!=)

 

[Bansai]

THEY STILL DIDN'T DISABLE THIS?

Geezus... this is ridiculous.

 

[Rivdoric]

+1 for ability to turn on/off auto sheathe/unsheathe, it has been really frustrating a lot of time.

 

[Death132]

THEY STILL DIDN'T DISABLE THIS?

Geezus... this is ridiculous.

I'd assume it's because they are stockpiling all current fixes and requests into one massive patch to try and deal with it all at once.

If this next patch doesn't fix camera centering and auto sheathing then things will be ridiculous.

 

[narfroc]

Any word on whether an auto-sheathe/auto-unsheathe toggle will be introduced with 1.07?

 

[Christopherrolf]

Yes, please, some change for this for when on foot would be neat aswell.

 

[Tuco]

I swear this outcry against "auto-sheathe" has to be one of the most pointless misplaced waste of feedback ever seen about any game.
A lot of complaints for something that even once "fixed" would barely affect the overall gaming experience to any relevant degree.

 

[narfroc]

If auto-sheathe/auto-unsheathe doesn't affect your experience, congratulations!
Me, I like to have full control over when and which sword to draw or sheathe under what circumstances at any given time. I don't need the game decide that for me, as if I'm not capable of doing that on my own.
And auto-sheathe/auto-unsheathe is in fact problematic in a lot of situations, as all the reports of unnecessarily getting hit or dying even can attest to.

It's a simple toggle to turn it on or off we're talking about here, for christ's sake!

 

[Tuco]

If auto-sheathe/auto-unsheathe doesn't affect your experience, congratulations!

This isn't about MY experience. It's about anyone's experience.
Stop for a minute and try to think how many scenarios could have played differently in this game without auto-sheathe... One-to-three AT MOST in almost two hundred hours of game?

I mean, flavor aside what's the *actual* problem with it? The main character occasionally extracting his weapon even when you don't actually intend to fight? Big fucking deal, nothing prevents you from ignoring the extracted weapon and flee anyway.

It's not that I like it, it's that I don't care about it because it's *factually* irrelevant in terms of balance and impact on on the options available to you.

Ans "I want to decide what weapon to extract" is simply LAUGHABLE as an argument.
"Oh look, the enemy has a silver healthbar, I'll use the silver sword; this one has a red healthbar, I'll use the steel one.
Hey, I feel like a tactical mastermind already!"

Spoiler: you'll use constantly the silver sword unless they are humans or wolves.

 

[Dowlphin]

@Tuco
Your attempted invalidation through claiming to speak for others fails miserably. Why do you disgrace yourself like that? What is your emotional investment in NOT having the game improved in that aspect?

 

[Tuco]

@Dowlphin
I'm not "speaking for" anyone, just pointing a mere FACT: removing auto-sheathe from the game wouldn't change a single relevant thing about it, SO compared to how useless it s as a request it's absolutely baffling to see how vocally some people insist to make it.
As if there weren't far more pressing matters to solve, either.

And that's even ignoring how, on the other hand, it could also potentially open some parts of the game to exploits (i.e. sacking "guarded treasures" with a "loot and run" approach would become trivially easy, as if was extremely hard right now).

 

[Ryusennin]

@Tuco

Stop trolling this topic. Go waste your energy elsewhere. Auto-sheathe is broken.

 

[Tuco]

I'm not "trolling" anything.
Your problem is just that you'd want to read just people who agree it's "a serious issue to solve immediately" when it isn't.

 

[Dowlphin]

Heavily projecting there.

 

[uncoiled]

Just stopping by to point the devs to another thread over at the gog forums, in case they weren't aware:
/forum/the_witcher_3_wild_hunt/cdpr_i_would_pay_10_for_disable_autosheath_dlc/page1

I want it gone as well. I try to observe my enemies, then pick the sword I need and go into battle. Other than the annoying loading after death I like the idea of trying to be careful but a few times I might be jumped by an enemy and then I have to quickly assess what type it is, pick up the sword then dodge or parry until I know how I want to kill the enemy.

Except that is not true. At a very regular basis my sword sheathes _while I am in_ combat. Not only that, but when you do go out of combat and it sheathes and you run towards an enemy and it isn't out and you want it out what do you do? You hit the button to make sure it is out because the game never draws it right when you want it every single time either. So what happens is the game decides an enemy has retreated too far away, usually one that can run 100 miles per second who decides to turn around and run 200 miles per millisecond at you so you hit "draw sword about a fraction of a second after the game decides to draw the sword again and that causes it to sheathe the sword again and you get fuckin killed.

It's so fuckin annoying it isn't funny. If you have never encountered this then you must not be playing the same game. I'm not talking about it auto-sheathing while you're swinging it at an enemy "in combat". I'm talking about there being like 10 enemies in a cave, and you kill one of them and another one is 10 feet away walking away from you to 12 feet away and it decides "oh well, I guess the fight is over" while all 9 remaining enemies run at you at mach 10 and attack and you're button mashing every button in a panic to get your sword back out because you did not put it away in the first place and don't want it put away.

The game does this all the time and it does it for every single person who plays the game, whether it bothers them or not is up to the individual I guess but it does happen and there are thousands of documented complaints about it on both GOG and CDPR forums so this isn't something I'm imagining.

You don't even need to be doing anything. A pack of wolves could attack you and you can just stand there and swing at them when they get close. Then you kill all the ones that are right in your face and more are coming at you from only slightly further away, you can let go of the keyboard and mouse and cross your hands behind your back and depending on where they are and other factors the game will consider them to be too far away even though they're running right at you and they do move quick, it will sheathe the sword and may or may not draw it back out when they approach and attack, sometimes end up fist fighting them while trying to mash the sword draw key, other times it re-draws the sword but you get hit while it's doing that and sometimes you try to draw as it draws and it resheathes because they cancel out.

Either way regardless of whether someone else finds it a problem personally though it is a problem for thousands of other gamers and it isn't something that each gamer is doing themselves or a quirk of the way they play, nor is it a bug in their system, it is an irritating "feature" of the game. They don't have to change it to work another way however, they just need to put an option in Options->Gameplay

[x] Disable weapon auto-sheathing.

They can default that however they want and I wont care, so long as I can turn the option to be "don't autosheathe". Me and about 2 million other gamers

Add to that:

Disable auto-change sword type, when fighting monsters and humans at the same time

As I get to the bottom of the stairs, I hear noises and wraiths materialize. They're not too powerful, mid 20s or so, I can carve them up right good with minimal effort. One makes it to the stairs and I slice and dice him on the spot with some help from Yrden. Another wraith is about 3 feet away. So guess what happens next?

No seriously, just take a guess.

Yes, that's right, Geralt - IN COMBAT, with an ATTACKING WRAITH THREE FEET AWAY, and I believe a second wraith not far behind that one - decides to sheath his FUCKING SWORD. No fucking shit! I'm like WHAT THE FUCK??? I'm getting attacked by a wraith and he sheathes his sword. This is not in any way "combat is over", this is as close in combat as you can be. The wraith is literally passing through Geralt's body in attack mode in ethereal form! So I draw the sword back out, take one swing and guess what? Yep, you guessed it - Geralt re-sheathes the fucking sword. It does this once more and I just about lose it.

In all seriousness auto-sheath is the most annoying idea ever (especially with enemies that like to briefly retreat). It is funny though, I'll be slaying bandits or harpies or whatever and Geralt will frequently sheath his sword mid-fight, yet if I'm riding Roach and a group of wolves or whatever prompts Geralt to auto-draw his sword no matter how far away from the mob I get he frequently will not resheath his sword. Funnier still, places where it would make sense to auto-sheath (such as when fast traveling) do not auto-sheath.

For all the care put into the game it astounds me that such a half-baked feature didn't get scrapped or fixed sooner.

Yeah, auto-sheath isn't just annoying, it is extremely inconsistent as you suggest. Depends not only on the enemy type, but how many of them there are and how far away they are. But the distance isn't consistent in all situations, it also depends on terrain, elevation and other factors that seem rather random.

What is the relevance to auto-sheath though?

Well, technically I personally consider myself to be in battle still since the harpy is alive, but despite being directly over my head it is super high up there in a circle flight path like I said. I had to move around and climb a hill to be able to see what it was doing. It's in a broken AI loop circling forever well out of range of anything. None of my signs can reach it, and the horn that takes down sirens has no effect on it either.

But what's cute is that the game's "are we in battle or not?" AI that chooses to sheath my sword while a bandit is actually attacking me right in my face, and a wraith prior to that yesterday, has decided oh no - the fight is ON biotch and REFUSES to sheath my sword. If I manually sheath my sword then I go into fistfight a 2 mile away harpy mode.

I think the really frustrating thing about it all is that the game has the functions and keys to draw and sheathe either the steel or silver sword, but then seems to say, "But you can't be trusted to work that out yourself, so I'll do it for you. Now off you go into battle and deflect those crossbow bolts with your hands." *squelch*

Yep, I've had that happen several times. The problem as I see it is the game even having to have "modes" for things, because when you're in combat mode you can't do things like jump or climb, so you can end up getting trapped even if the obstacles that trap you are only 1 foot high or so, very unrealistic. This is ultimately because gamepad controllers only have so many buttons on them so they _ have_ to double up on one button so that it is jump when not in "combat mode" and roll when in combat mode. This limitation then just gets passed on to keyboard players also because they want all players to have the same unified gameplay experience or whatever.

I'd prefer instead:

- don't auto-draw or auto-sheath my sword
- if you're going to have move mode and combat mode separate, trigger them when the weapon is drawn/sheathed and not when AI determines an enemy is within range because no AI can properly determine that reliably.

This only annoys me on the horse. I was fighting this strong monster in the woods and riding as fast as possible to deal high damage and give it little chance to fight back.

But making the turn just a little too far away caused Geralt to put his sword away constantly. So it happened that I was riding towards the monster, with the sword still holstered...

 

[ZeroZero30]

Seeing that this was not included with 1.07 can we get at least some feedback from the devs whether they are even aware of auto-drawing/-sheathing causing trouble for quite a lot of people and are at least considering putting an on/off option in the game at some point further down the road? Please?

Thanks.

 

[zeypheruk]

I hate auto sheathe most of the times when i get screwed over is due to this damn "feature". Please let me disable it and let me select what sword i want out and when.

 

[GW3NTLORD]

Guys I think auto draw / sheathe is not that important issue right now as there are so many other major problems needs a fix asap.

 

[Dowlphin]

Guys I think auto draw / sheathe is not that important issue right now as there are so many other major problems needs a fix asap.

While I like the new alternative movement system a lot, I'd very much have preferred to get manual sheathing first.