There's no distinction between "story-gamers" and "powergamers". I play the game more for the story than for the action, but that doesn't mean I don't like to be challenged, and that I don't like to work on my tactics before difficult battles. If I didn't care about combat at all, I'd play adventure games, which are 100% story and 0% action (in most cases).
Sorry mate but the fact that you see no distinction between story-gamers and powergamers doesn't mean it doesn't exist. My friend, for example is in the middle of his second Witcher playthrough and he plays on easy. In fact he thinks that easy is relaxing and doesn't draw your attention from the plot and he can't understand why I play on hard. See the difference?Now, I admitted that not everybody falls under these two categories. Guess you don't.
All I'm saying that RPG's like TW should ideally be a blend of both groups of gamers. Diablo is more combat-heavy (very simplistic combat too), but it's precisely for this reason that many don't consider it a true RPG. Would TW be any fun if there weren't any combat? C'mon, Geralt is a witcher, not an errand boy!
I have finished the game on hard and just read all the post in this thread so I would like to sum up this and add something from myself.I agree that there is a need for Legendary/Nightmare level as the game is too easy.In chapter 1 and 2 the difficulty is ok but it's due to the lack of abilities the witcher has at this point,so there isnt much to change at this point.As some peaople said the problem begins with chapter 3 onwards.There are two main problems and some aditional ones :a) strength of the signs growth rate > the strength of the monsters groth rateb ) number of ingredients and potions growth rate > the strenght of the monsters growth ratec ) other factorsThere have been many interesting quotes so I will group them to be more clear to read:a )
b )
c )
I agree that as well as making Igni weaker in later stages,it would be nice to make monsters with total immunity against fire.
Good Idea.Agree.It was good idea that big monsters like kikimore warriors couldnt be stunned so I would keep up with this idea as well
I kinda agree with some parts of this post becouse I dont recall Geralt having the ability to cast Igni in a 360 degree radius.Such ability should only be posessed by mages.I think it would be better to have igni with maximal 180 degree radius.As for Quen sign I wouldn's say that making it weaker would be that good,becouse sometimes its essential to have some time to drink some potions.The best sollution i think would be that strong monsters could break throught it but not an ordinary folk.This sign does not give much advantage unless it would be possible to cast it all the time to regain all the lost Hp with only Swallow potion.As for the problem of toxity I have another I think better Idea which is written below
b )
I put this in "the ingredients problem" couse the large number of week opponents like drowners makes the game even easier.I say we should get more powerful monsters but also to keep the week ones, but in a way they would give us no ingredients ( same as humans).This way there will be no situation where someone has more than 100 drowner brains ,100 drowner tongues and has enought Aether till the end of the game.This is the problem that during the game one can aquire a great amount of ingredients and potions in the end.Becouse of that one can use a combination of Full Moon potion,White Raffard's Decocts then White Honey,again Raffard's decoct and so on...this way Gerats Hp is many times greater than the basic.The only limitation is the number of these potions so even If we give some monsters even 3-5 times more Hp and make them somewhat stronger there will be no difference in difficulity.Its a good thing that there is a limitation of a number of ingredients/potions in each slot but it still wont give much if someone will make only Raffard Decocts and White Honey in available slots so there should be either a limit of the number of potions of each kind or to make that the White Honey potion would decrease the toxity level gradually ,not immeadietly.At the same time it should highly speed up the ending of other potion effects.I also agree that lowering gerat statistisc in not a way to make a game more playable
Good idea
Ok,why not
Yes,this would certainly limit the number of potions you can have,make the high quality alcohols you get more valuable but on the other hand there would be litte place for othere items becouse of the alcohols.....anyway interesting idea
c )
I say that in later chapters 200% damage is a minimum depending on the type of monster ( maybe exept Koshchey ).As for Hp 100% more is nothing looking hom much damage Geralt does,a few times more at least,some should be more difficult to hit.As for the group style I agree.A good idea for this is below
Agree
Well I agree that it should be put mainly in the fast styles
I agree that everyone you play should have limited funds but the item costs are fineAnd finally I want to add one thing that wasnt mentioned.It is opponents artificial inteligence as it comes to attacking you.When one puts an yrden sign everyone ignors it and attacks you even when hit several times with it.Even a simple beast should know that it hurts and should go around it.The thing as it is makes some battles which would be otherwise harder, quite easy.And thats all.Its quite a big post but I hope you like this "all in one pill"
Hi everyone. I just finished my first play through The Witcher and I loved it. I have only one complaint. We only have three difficulty modes: Easy, Very Easy, and Coma Patient. So, for my second play through, I want to make the game a little harder. I decided that I would never upgrade my swords or armor and focus on Axii and Yrden. Has anyone else tried something like this? Have any suggestions to make the game more challenging/fun?
I must agree with the thread title and original post of this thread.The Witcher is way too easy, even on Hard. As it is now, the "Hard" setting is actually equivalent to an "Easy" setting for a player who understands all the mechanics of the game.For The Witcher to actually be hard, it would require a major re-balancing that makes it much more hard.This would be a great thing to include with the EE.
first, Adding more dificulties or just making mods to make it harder would be nice... I think a lot of the posters on this thread is forgetting the amin fact in saying "this game is way too easy even on HArd difficulty". That fact is that power gamers in general are the minority, and most people tend to be between the two extremes like me where I jsut don't have the time to spend playing a game that makes me practice or exp hunt. Stop saying it is too easy and do something about it . Release a mod that gives 3 new difficulties, the files are there remap easy to mean Extra hard and medium even harder and hard to be insane. Come on Chop chop ]:->
. Release a mod that gives 3 new difficulties, the files are there remap easy to mean Extra hard and medium even harder and hard to be insane. Come on Chop chop ]:->Wowthanks for the suggestion. I'm on my third hard difficulty playing and it begins to be boring.....
Soo funny - there are always those few people that say "I hate people like you because you blaa blaa" or "...well if you don't like it just run around without armor and a sword to make it harder" (you get the point). The point being: The've said nothing constructive and only exist a forum-trolls to try and find a way to justify their miserable existance by attempting to counter any thought / critisism with useless, belitting comments.Your comment is very accurate and I TOTALLY agree (including on Fallout 3!)I MUST totally agree that the game after the first chapter should be increased in complexity a lot when you select hard mode. Gimping yourself just so you can make it harder is stupid. Not striving to get that "uber" armor just to make it harder is equally as stupid. A goal for any hardcore gamer is to have the best loot, best gear, best XYZ - but to never have a free ride. From chapter 2 on pretty much (which only got easier as the game went on) was the a game of trivial "second interruptions" from mobs while you were running around doing the storyline, for the sake of the storyline alone. Most of the game felt like the mobs were an afterthought past chapter 1. After maxing out Group Silver for example it was easier to run around building up a mass of mobs just to kill them all in one or two strikes. Or - one or two blasts of fire would kill the lot. blech. Literally - just training those two up to max lets you run through the game without thinking. Get that better armor and it's all over. Dang near insta re-casts or possible for "spells" wasting massive mobs. The only excitement for a moment would be the boss mob at the end of the chapters - meaning, very few of those.In Hard Mode:> Keep the witcher's increase skill styes, etc as they are (LOVE the new skills / styles / effects you get)> Increase the monsters hit points and damage dealt, increase the noticable effect of DOTs, such as bleeding and poison. i.e Add visible cues that some effect is in place (i.e pools of blood forming on the ground, on Geralt) clueing you in that you should drink a potion to help counter the effect. This, combined with increased battle time for each encounter, with the possibility that the MOBs could score critials, etc. during that time - should make at least each mob encounter much more interesting and a more tactical encounter.Irrespective, LOVE the game. Sooooo glad they are adding new character models (HURRAY!) Now, if they would only RADICALLY TONE DOWN the dialog / game-flow that feels as if a hormon-filled, sex-craved, learning-to-swear 13yo boy wrote and directed it. The non-stop whore-filled dialog terribly stomps on the storyline / flow and is the one thing that I personally HATE about the game. Rip out the ridiculous "sex" cards and associated dialogs / flows - or at least make it configurable (on/off) and now we're getting somewhere near a game that you'd be more than willing to show the wife, play in front of the kids, or unashamedly tout on the market place for game of the year. i.e. COME ON, how do you think it looks should you attempt to show this to the media as game of the year should you actually show a random dialog with goes like this: Geralt: Yes, I can save your family, I will find your children and help restore your honor in town - of course, for a fee. Women 1: Oh that you! Even though the neighbors are fucking morons, I will be happy living here. By the way, do you like my Ass?Geralt: MhmmWomen 1: Let's have sex! Quick!Geralt: Of Course!... I mean, for a fee...If you've played the game enough, you will easily see the REAL similarities in the above text to the actual game flow / text. Now imagine your loving wife walking by, looking over to see you playing, thinking you are hacking your way through monsters - only to see some "game card" pop up and realized it's not giant spiders your "hacking your way" through. Now imagine it's late, you think the kids are asleep, you are playing and you turn in your quest item to Mr. Dwarf and look up and see your kid has just gotten up to get water or something - and out loud you here your PC yell out "I hate those fucking elves" - or some other such dialog. Get for real...
First off I'd like to second FSleeper. Why the porn stuff? It's embarrassing to play this in front of others, particulary women and children. I don't want a game where I have to hide away to play. I'm sure people that want porn can find it easily enough elsewhere. Secondly, why don't the game designers make a proper difficulty solution. It's so easy. Make it an slider adjustable by the player which increase the monster's defense, dodge, speed, hitpoints, hit-probabillity and damage by 10% per notch in this slider. Make this slider unlimited so that there never will be a player that can't get it difficult enough. Each monster already have base values of these types so adding a multiplier is not much work. Imagine a monster that is spawned that has 100 HP. With a difficulty setting of 150% the monster will be spawned with 150 HP. Do the same for all other monster stats mentioned. Voila. Also I particulary liked one of the old games, I think it was Dark Queen of Krynn where you even got more experience for having a higher difficulty. You would try to have as high difficulty as possible to get as much exp as possible. Superb!Anyway, it's not difficult to program. The monster spawning code looks at the base HP for the monster, for instance 100 HP, then multiplies by the difficulty modier of for instance 150% and arrive at 150 HP. Then does the same for it's other stats. How hard is that? As to handicaps. It seems many people don't understand why the player's can't just handicap themselves. Let me give you an example. If you were a first rate 100 meter runner that won every race in your small village, would you rather enter the region or state championship for some real challenge or would you be equally satisfied by adding some lead weight that makes it very hard to win and thereby stay in your village? Or to be even more explicit you could even add so many weights that you would have trouble winning against 1 year old kids barely able to walk. Do anyone truly think that is as fun as entering the state championship....? Gaming is the same way. You want to do the best you can. Playing chess against a drooling comatose person just isn't the same as playing against Kasparov even if you handicap yourself.In addition, if you have a difficulty slider, you can in addition compete against your friends and even yourself. If you managed the game at 500% you can try at 750% nest time. If your friend can play at 200% higher difficulty than you, you can ask what tactics he's using and see if you can better yourself. It can also give you an incentive to try out different tactics to find more efficient ways to play. It also enhanced replayability. Btw, the difficulty slider should never be possible to adjust down unless you sacrifice experience. If you can modify it up and down as you please you destroy the intensity and immersion of the game. It's so easy to do but you nearly always feel cheated. People that always and easily do resist the urge to do this are blessed but they should try to accept that not everyone are as they are. From reading this forum there are many that don't accept that there are people that are different than them. 99% of modern games also has an inbuilt problem with their save and heal system. When you can save and heal everywhere you get a game where you lose 90% of the excitement the game could have had. An example of the old style is Bard's Tale I from the late 80ies or early 90ies(btw this game is 300% better in the amiga version). You could only save at the tavern. When you went out for the day you had to make sure you didn't stray too far or you would have trouble making your way home. When you have a couple of dead party members, only 10% health left on your live ones, little or no mana but a wagonload of treasures and exp, you had a real exciting trip back home. Along the trip you fought loads of monsters which individually wasn't necessarily(or usually) life threathening but you had to try to minimize your received damage, maximize your delivered damage and minimize your resource use(potions, mana and artifacts). You also had to (try to) run away if you met a really nasty party. If all members of your party died you lost all your money and loot but your bodies was collected and resurrected by the guild. Basically you had to play as well as you could without the tedious load/save and replay. With today's style of healing between every battle, you have the situation where each battle has to be deadly or the whole game just get tedious, yet when each battle is deadly, there is no differenciation which is in itself boring. Another problem of today's games are the horrible super-non-linear structure. Particulary Oblivion was horrible that way. You could go everywhere, fight nearly every monster and they had nearly always the same difficulty level. When you had gained 20 levels, each of those monsters was exactly the same as they too had gained 20 levels. I was bored out of my skull with that game! Everywhere you go, there you are fighting the exact same thing(the one exception I found which was a nasty Lich). However, the game designers should realize that a linear game structure should not be limited by inexplicably closed areas(which people rightfully detest), for instance like they had in NWN2 but by monsters being too tough for the player to survive(or alternatively the area itself being too lethal, poison, fire etc). Non inexplicably locked areas should still exist(that means areas which has a good reason to be inaccessible). Let the player try to go wherever he want and then watch him chose for himself not to go where he realize he won't survive. For instance, give him one monster to fight that he can barely survive, then show him a half a dozen of them in a group or perhaps the monster's mama. He'll understand that this is not a good place to be without having to die. Gothic I and II was great in monster power diversity. Gothic III far far less so. Every orc was a bad joke even at lvl 1 and the whole game idea was centered around those orcs... Oblivion was even worse. The Witcher which is linear (divided into chapters) should have avoided this easily yet it fails to do so. I wonder why. Ah well, too long a mail...
I've come across a few modifications made by modders which escalate the difficulty in combat. It had to be something about the game being easier for some than others.Well, I didn't have a wickedly easy time or massively hard time on Medium mode. So, I played a bit with hard mode.I can say that I loaded more often with hard mode than I did with easy mode. Centipedes, wolf pack leaders, and kikimore warriors are definitely a problem. If you haven't chosen your loadouts closely, then things you need them for are a major challenge to win.For example, if you haven't maxxed out your group silver, and you are surrounded by kikimore workers, expect to die from poison without delay. If you can prevent them from surrounding you, do it.Yes, you lose the flamey-sword icon when it's time to attack. But I liked it better that way! Without the flamesword distraction, I was able to note the enemy's attack styles, which differ greatly from enemy to enemy depending on weapon. I had to listen for the audible cue (a little "whicket" noise like a rapier flicking back and forth quickly) to know when to click again to get the next attack sequence. Without the next attack sequence, I was in real jeaopardy of not winning. In fact, I have become a new fan of fast-attack style since it prevents enemies from retaliating.It's a different game style. The consequences in battle are far more intense, from poison to being "finished" when you're stunned or knocked down. Knockdown is a MAJOR pain now, almost a guaranteed reload. The sum of it? How do you still have fun and play using hard mode?a) have lots of potionsb) don't kill everything you see, sneak around!c) let your NPC buddies go at them, and igni/ard/whatever them from behind. DON'T be afraid to run and come back. Witchers are not tanks! They are SPEED warriors, who know tactics of battles. If they need to distract a kikimore warrior, run somewhere safe and igni it to death, then you should do that. Humility, success. It's hard, play smart.
I finished the game on medium and then hard, only difference was I used slightly more potions on hard and had to pay more attention when attacking in hard mode. Game on hard mode is reasonably challenging on chapter 1 (try killing the Hellhound WITHOUT using aard and spectre oil and with Abigail as backup), most difficult at chapter 2 (2 wyverns at once = run away until they get bored then isolate one straggler) and reasonably difficult at chapter 3 (Golden oriole potions are drunk more than swallow potions). No matter which difficulty you play by the time you survive to chapter 4 the rest of the game is a breeze so long as you don't get careless.
Sounds good. I went through on normal my first time through, but my next run will definitely be on hard.
Before I start criticising, I'd like to remind everyone that I think this is a formidable game.
I also didn't need to load game for dice and always beat Foltest.
. I will buy the enhanced edition. It will be like releasing a new game. Serious/ major improvements are not unrealistic in this case.
I completely agree. Buffing hit points and damage is a very weak and boring way to improve balance, although even that would be better than what is. Latter act 2 onward.redScare said:
I think running into groups of monsters should be more on the suicidal path (agree-more damage) and that group is greatly overpowered. It seems to me that the more enemies you face at once, you are awarded more efficiency and that the range of your swing is unrealistic. Often I sweep through multiple ranks of enemies.
I wanted to make similar comments and find out that I was long beaten to it. Still, I'll open a new topic on swordfighting.I think combat with humanoids should be more on the dodge side and that hits should be near fatal. Combos should work in spite of dodging, each swing having its chance of landing a blow. Critical effects should be a more serious focus and depend more on the sword than on the signs. That would also balance the signs somewhat. Fighting monsters should yet be about dealing damage rather than beating their dodge -> the two sides would prove some interesting diversity.Your suggestion on group style is exactly what I had in mind and you beat me to it long ago.Again, you beat me to it - signs should be a means to improve your swordfighting, maybe in the case of a sorcerous developemt allowing easy kills with little sword mastery. I think Igni should only provide superficial damage (maybe 20 percent current life lost at high levels with no resistance) along with incineration as its main goal and fear/ pain as bonuses.
I think Geralt should get less talents per level and should have more options. Yrden, Axii and Quen are not much used and don't seem to count on the options, leaving the rest to be mostly filled by the end.
I never used bombs and playing igni on the second run made using potions other than tawny owl an unnecessary luxury.
Very tue. I unkowingly made the game difficult by not developing signs on my first run. That's unbalanced. The game is supposed to make most investments worthwile and balanced as long as they are imaginative
I also didn't need to load game for dice and always beat Foltest.
I have high hopes
. I will buy the enhanced edition. It will be like releasing a new game. Serious/ major improvements are not unrealistic in this case. Here is a way I thought of to play the game in a challanging fashion: focus on strong and fast styles, don't use group style and don't go beyond bronze with signs. ;D You can't really say that you are nerfing yourself because you are playing a fighter character. The use of Aard is still good in the beginning, at bronze level.I intend to do this playing the worst choices and dialogue. However, I read somewhere that a new patch is coming, long before the enhanced edition, and I'm waiting for it. Could anyone confirm this?