Combat System is the worst of any game I've played

[cloolvl]

I like the combat of Witcher 3, but I do think there is a serious flaw in its design logic.

The animation of enemies' attacks are too quick, with too little window for reaction. It is my understanding that if the in-game character is good at something, that thing should be easier and not harder for the player to do. Geralt's faster reaction should make the enemies' attacks seem slower, but instead CDPR wanted to challenge the player to match the speed of a witcher's reactions (as stated in one of their design documents that I can't find at the moment). As a result I don't feel as if playing a character with superior reaction at all - quite the opposite in fact.

Still, Witcher 3 combat is quite solid. Of course it feels different to other games' combats, but that's because our main character is also different from other games' main characters.

look at it this way - monsters are way too fast for ordinary people, hence the need for specially trained witchers who can hold their own 1v1 against the monsters. that way the "normal" reaction time ingame is slow irl and your normal reaction irl is the fast witcher reflexes ingame

 

[ReDD7]

No need for clunky hard lock, if you press WSAD in the direction you want to attack for each swing you will have full control over whom Geralt fights.

Exactly

 

[IsengrimR]

Note: I play on PS4 with Patch: 1.07

Sometimes I love the combat in TW3 but other times I freekin hate it.

When Geralt is fighting multiple enemies, the game locks him to a specific target that Geralt doesn't even choose. I can't move Geralt backward at times and the game totally ruins the targeting.

As an example: Last night Geralt was fighting a bunch of enemies in "Get Junior", Geralt was fighting two guys at once but then all of the sudden the game made me fight a bunch of other enemies that I didn't want to engage in. I'm like WTF?
I wish the game would stop forcing the player to go into a direction that the player doesn't want to go, give us a system that doesn't constrain the players combat movements...

You can hard lock an enemy, and that way you can fight exactly what you want.

Locking on is near useless when you are fighting more than one enemy. Which causes targetting system to be all over the place sometimes. Want to cast a sign? How about I turn around and attack the enemy that isn't even on the screen with it! Even with camera and movement keys pushing in the direction of the target, Geralt still sometimes does a 180 to stab somebody you didn't want to.

Simple solution to that... allow for target switching with a buttom. Or a scroll wheel. I mean, for the love of jove, if Dark Souls can set it to scroll wheel ( which is actually very intuitive )a non-port game the Witcher 3 apparently is maybe could do it too.

Because this is the witcher combat style. Increase the power of the attack with rotations a pirouttes, which they can do because are faster and more reactive than humans.

I've read the books. And the combat in Witcher 1 is the closes to the books. Which is quite funny, but it's true in my little opinion. Which no doubt stands for little. I only played W1 like 8 times and read the books 7 times.

Witcher 2 has more believable combat. To a degree of course.

Witcher 3... less so. It's neither close to the books, nor believable. It looks cool. Do not get me wrong. But, Geralt not only overswings tragically, exposes himself for blows, but also attacks very slowly. Every time I hear the enemy say "Damn he is fast" makes me giggle a little bit.

The slowness makes sense from balance and gameplay perspective... to a degree. A more dynamic combat, with faster Geralt wouldn't really change too much, apart from making it more difficult. Which I would welcome.

Besides later game difficulty level increases, I do like the overall combat in the game. Although I wish there was a bit more variety. Combos of some sort would be awesome. Mixtures of fast and strong attacks, along with signs.

Well, I wouldn't go into combos, yet... because I have no idea of any good implementation of it in this state of affairs. However, guard breaks and better parrying system would do miracles for it, in my opinion.


All in all, combat in Witcher 3 is nothing to write home about. It looks cool, but requires a solid bit of suspension of disbelief to come into play. It does not offer a huge variety of moves or animations or moves you can do. It suffers from a horrible auto-lock system and no ability to switch targets manually. I also think some hitboxes are a bit quirky, but I'm not sure.

In my opinion, if one took Witcher 2's combat. Gave it much, much, much more mobility and animations and took advice from actual sword-masters on how the animations should be, so they are at least somewhat believable. Allowed to parry on the move. Added a guard break move, for enemies and Geralt. Added some moves and abilities that were activatable and would work perfectly in certain siuations ( in massive group fighting for example )... that would be a perfect corssover between action and RPG combat elements.

Frotunatelly or not, it's up to personal preference, CDPR decided to go into a route of crossing Dark Souls with Batman and some Shadow of Mordor, instead of going from Witcher 2 and just making it "OMFG" amazing.

Of course, I'm not a game designer, I'm just a gamer with an opinion.

 

[PrincessMassacre]

Locking on is near useless when you are fighting more than one enemy. Which causes targetting system to be all over the place sometimes. Want to cast a sign? How about I turn around and attack the enemy that isn't even on the screen with it! Even with camera and movement keys pushing in the direction of the target, Geralt still sometimes does a 360 to stab somebody you didn't want to.

aye, yes... ie: if you're moving downward toward the camera, but decide to stop moving for a sec... and there is a dude in front of the camera, but far away, it will still target him even though you cannot hit him... funny stuff btw 180, not 360 ;p

basically: target direction of geralt when moving, target direction of camera when not moving.

even worse with keyboard. since you can potentially press both left/right or up/down at once (not on gamepad), which also causes geralt to stop moving... and it's almost impossible to avoid this, unless you have machine-perfect timing...

 

[NameofThrones]

It does take around 2 seconds to wind up and land the strong strike in the strong attack perk tree that you can unlock later on.

 

[pithikos]

I found the combat system great ( a bit easy) as soon as I got used to it. I liked that Geralt has to actually physically avoid with dodge or roll an attack unlike most games that you just press the dodge and you are saved, here you get hit while dodging if you go the wrond way or with bad timing or if the attack has a bigger range. One thing though NEVER lock on a target if you got multiple opponents just use the left stick and the camera to aim whoever you want, only use lock on when you have 1 or 2 enemies.