I'll chime in and say that I'll take a learning curve/cliff over a condescending and/or jarringly out-of-place tutorial level any day. It's one of the major reasons I am loving this game.
Some games put the water-wings on you and let you wade a bit, others throw you in the deep end and pantomime the breaststroke. If someone needs three castings of Yrden before figuring out what it does (completely missing the manual, the popup, and the journal entry that appear on the first casting of every sign), I don't think that's a problem with the game itself.
Press button for awesome? Completely transparent game mechanics handed to you on startup? To hell with that. Kick my ass when I do something stupid. Allow me to experiment and discover. Make me use the manual for more than the product key.
Jegus christ the Letho fight is such a buggy bunch of absolute bullshit. Hit me when I have Qen up without being staggered four times in a row? Go right ahead! Actually hit and damage me through a fully charged Qen? Be my guest!
A boring, frustrating, unoriginal, unfun mess of a goddamn boss battle.
Just dodge his attacks, wait for his Quen to drop, and then attack him from behind when he's vulnerable. Don't over-attack - you can only do 2-3 hits before he'll block you and counter, so be really patient with your attacks. Use Yrden for free hits when his shield is down. Or do BlackDove's thing where he rofls all over the boss, but you don't even have to be that stylish. Letho is incredibly predictable.
I'll chime in and say that I'll take a learning curve/cliff over a condescending and/or jarringly out-of-place tutorial level any day. It's one of the major reasons I am loving this game.
Some games put the water-wings on you and let you wade a bit, others throw you in the deep end and pantomime the breaststroke. If someone needs three castings of Yrden before figuring out what it does (completely missing the manual, the popup, and the journal entry that appear on the first casting of every sign), I don't think that's a problem with the game itself.
Press button for awesome? Completely transparent game mechanics handed to you on startup? To hell with that. Kick my ass when I do something stupid. Allow me to experiment and discover. Make me use the manual for more than the product key.
Now that I've seen the manual, though, it's not very good. It's about on par with manuals for games with handholdy tutorials. Group finishers not working on monsters, for example, should really be mentioned. It does have solid numbers on the skills, but a lot of them are, uh, wrong (which is kind of to be expected nowadays with rebalancing patches).
EDIT: Also, for a game that came out of a series of books, the manual has a surprising amount of no backstory whatsoever.
I haven't even skilled into the dagger ability. I'm perfectly fine without them.
Maybe next playthrough!
I think daggers give you a mutagen slot. Sweet sweet mutagens.
Honestly, I installed a mod that adds mutagen slots to everything. It just seemed silly not having a use for 90% of the mutagens you get, especially since you can't even replace them if you get better ones.
Heh, yeah. The manual's numbers are a bit... exaggerated, but I've been playing on hard since the start and even I don't think I'd like those version of the abilities. The manual's Tough Guy 2/2 having a damage reduction of +40% for example.
Group finishers not working on monsters? You mean how it will allow you to instakill only one?
DogEight on
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KlykaDO you have anySPARE BATTERIES?Registered Userregular
If you're being swarmed by enemies, hitting multiple enemies is going to save your ass because it'll interrupt their attacks.
The only time it's bad is when you're fighting humans and some of them are heavily armored. But humans are slow, and you shouldn't be swarmed by humans if you're putting any effort into avoiding it.
maaaan when i booted up witcher 2 for the first time i got really damn excited when enemies were actually causing a large amount of damage.
i think i died 3 times at the ballista, then mebbe 4 times at the dragon fire bit (until i discovered that i should use good ol' foltest as a shield and move with the group), and then perhaps another 4 times on the courtyard fight. more than half of my reloads weren't even because i died, but because i took more damage than i wanted to. i'm not a guy to muddle through things - if a game wants me to master something, i'll play that section over and over until i'm comfortable understanding it. so during that courtyard fight, if i took more than 50% damage, i'd reload, because i hadn't quite got it yet.
the game forcing you to stop and master a few systems is something that i greatly respect; super meat boy also had levels you simply could not pass until you learned this or that trick.
curly haired boy on
Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
I'll chime in and say that I'll take a learning curve/cliff over a condescending and/or jarringly out-of-place tutorial level any day. It's one of the major reasons I am loving this game.
Some games put the water-wings on you and let you wade a bit, others throw you in the deep end and pantomime the breaststroke. If someone needs three castings of Yrden before figuring out what it does (completely missing the manual, the popup, and the journal entry that appear on the first casting of every sign), I don't think that's a problem with the game itself.
Press button for awesome? Completely transparent game mechanics handed to you on startup? To hell with that. Kick my ass when I do something stupid. Allow me to experiment and discover. Make me use the manual for more than the product key.
Are people having trouble with the combat missing these? I remember during the siege there were nice little popups telling me how to do everything I needed to do right about when I needed it. I never felt like there wasn't a tutorial; I got informational popups for how to do stuff right before the game expected me to do it.
Heh, yeah. The manual's numbers are a bit... exaggerated, but I've been playing on hard since the start and even I don't think I'd like those version of the abilities. The manual's Tough Guy 2/2 having a damage reduction of +40% for example.
Group finishers not working on monsters? You mean how it will allow you to instakill only one?
Jegus christ the Letho fight is such a buggy bunch of absolute bullshit. Hit me when I have Qen up without being staggered four times in a row? Go right ahead! Actually hit and damage me through a fully charged Qen? Be my guest!
A boring, frustrating, unoriginal, unfun mess of a goddamn boss battle.
Way to be a sarcastic goose BlackDove. I realise it was not a very difficult fight once you knew the trick, but it was very frustrating to try the fight as a Witcher focusing on signs only to find that he almost completely ignores all of them. In many way it is like the Act 2 boss fight in Dragon Age 2. Slow, predictable and boring.
Jegus christ the Letho fight is such a buggy bunch of absolute bullshit. Hit me when I have Qen up without being staggered four times in a row? Go right ahead! Actually hit and damage me through a fully charged Qen? Be my guest!
A boring, frustrating, unoriginal, unfun mess of a goddamn boss battle.
I had 20 throwing daggers and spammed them at him. He has no defense against this for whatever reason.
Then I reloaded and did it the right way. I thought it was fun. The 200% dodge distance talent is a must, it makes repositioning to the back so much easier and faster.
Oh and drink a resistance to status effects potion. Those status effects hurt.
Jephery on
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"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
I'll chime in and say that I'll take a learning curve/cliff over a condescending and/or jarringly out-of-place tutorial level any day. It's one of the major reasons I am loving this game.
Some games put the water-wings on you and let you wade a bit, others throw you in the deep end and pantomime the breaststroke. If someone needs three castings of Yrden before figuring out what it does (completely missing the manual, the popup, and the journal entry that appear on the first casting of every sign), I don't think that's a problem with the game itself.
Press button for awesome? Completely transparent game mechanics handed to you on startup? To hell with that. Kick my ass when I do something stupid. Allow me to experiment and discover. Make me use the manual for more than the product key.
Are people having trouble with the combat missing these? I remember during the siege there were nice little popups telling me how to do everything I needed to do right about when I needed it. I never felt like there wasn't a tutorial; I got informational popups for how to do stuff right before the game expected me to do it.
The popups disappear way too fast, and also pop up in the middle of you fighting. So you're more focusing on not dying when a tiny box with hard to read text pops up on the right side of the screen.
I would have preferred a Witcher 1 style "EVERYTHING'S PAUSED, read this" and a way to turn that off for replays.
The popup text is listed in your journal if you need to review it.
Jephery on
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"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
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mojojoeoA block off the park, living the dream.Registered Userregular
edited May 2011
Ati hot fix is out, the word is its very very good!
mojojoeo on
Chief Wiggum: "Ladies, please. All our founding fathers, astronauts, and World Series heroes have been either drunk or on cocaine."
Jegus christ the Letho fight is such a buggy bunch of absolute bullshit. Hit me when I have Qen up without being staggered four times in a row? Go right ahead! Actually hit and damage me through a fully charged Qen? Be my guest!
A boring, frustrating, unoriginal, unfun mess of a goddamn boss battle.
Way to be a sarcastic goose BlackDove. I realise it was not a very difficult fight once you knew the trick, but it was very frustrating to try the fight as a Witcher focusing on signs only to find that he almost completely ignores all of them. In many way it is like the Act 2 boss fight in Dragon Age 2. Slow, predictable and boring.
What trick?
That's like the 4th way I found to kill him, and the reason I recorded that one over and over was simply because it's the fastest and dumbest, which anyone could emulate. Aard - fast slash - hard slash - hard slash - aard - fast slash - hard slash - hard slash - he uses Quen? Wait for your vigor to recharge, Quen yourself, hit him until his runs out, then repeat until the animation starts.
You can use Yrden, you can use daggers, you can use bombs, you can do it without using signs at all - just slash at him in the back after rolling out of his attack, you can parry, and then riposte (you don't get the visual signal, but it works), etc.
Also, what do you mean about "It's not difficult once you knew the trick".
It's your job to figure out what the trick is. Everything's the trick. That's how we "win" stuff.
Also, who's being sarcastic? Watch my video, emulate it, have no problems (ever hopefully), enjoy your game, maybe you learn something, everyone's happy.
I need help with the harpy contract. I need to destroy their nests but can't figure out how, or at least why they're not picking up my traps.
You can get only 4 on the outside. The rest you get when you enter the locked cave at the bottom of the ravine (which you'll open later). What happens is: a harpy or two attack you, you drop the "harpy trap", and then move away to get them to get over the trap. Once they do, they'll pick it up, carry it to the nest, and you'll tag 1/7. On the outside, try to make sure to drop the harpy trap next to the glowing stones (there are 4 on your path downward - first one is next to the quarry house with the dead body in it). Not on the stones, but somewhere in their vicinity.
Again, only 4 on the outside, the other 3 on the inside.
You can read all the tutorials in the tent at the beginning of the game if you want to.
No, you can't. Some are already there; most are added to the journal when the tooltip flashes on screen, usually the first time you try to use something. Or, in the case of the info about stealth and stunning guards, at the very end of the entire first stealth section (for me at least).
The amusing thing about tutorial tips being in the journal is that yes, it's a good thing to know because it's so hard to read the tips when they first pop up, BUT the very fact that they're in your journal is itself only conveyed in one of those easy-to-miss tips.
You can get only 4 on the outside. The rest you get when you enter the locked cave at the bottom of the ravine (which you'll open later). What happens is: a harpy or two attack you, you drop the "harpy trap", and then move away to get them to get over the trap. Once they do, they'll pick it up, carry it to the nest, and you'll tag 1/7. On the outside, try to make sure to drop the harpy trap next to the glowing stones (there are 4 on your path downward - first one is next to the quarry house with the dead body in it). Not on the stones, but somewhere in their vicinity.
Again, only 4 on the outside, the other 3 on the inside.
Thanks, that did the trick! Do I need to do that inside the cave, too, or will bombs work in there? Damn traps are bloody expensive and I'd need to buy or make three more.
Dashui on
Xbox Live, PSN & Origin: Vacorsis 3DS: 2638-0037-166
You can get only 4 on the outside. The rest you get when you enter the locked cave at the bottom of the ravine (which you'll open later). What happens is: a harpy or two attack you, you drop the "harpy trap", and then move away to get them to get over the trap. Once they do, they'll pick it up, carry it to the nest, and you'll tag 1/7. On the outside, try to make sure to drop the harpy trap next to the glowing stones (there are 4 on your path downward - first one is next to the quarry house with the dead body in it). Not on the stones, but somewhere in their vicinity.
Again, only 4 on the outside, the other 3 on the inside
.
Thanks, that did the trick! Do I need to do that inside the cave, too, or will bombs work in there? Damn traps are bloody expensive and I'd need to buy or make three more.
Yes, you have to use "harpy trap"s.
Just save before dropping them, see if it works. If it didn't, you probably didn't put it in the right place (there are no stones in the cave, so just drop em anywhere a harpy can get over em). But I just dropped 3 in a row for the same two harpies, quest complete, moved on.
I can't remember ever having the controls "randomly stop working" during my entire 1 1/2 playthroughs of the game.
If you're having that much trouble just bump the difficulty down. On easy you can beat pretty much anything by spamming left-click, even if you're surrounded.
Jegus christ the Letho fight is such a buggy bunch of absolute bullshit. Hit me when I have Qen up without being staggered four times in a row? Go right ahead! Actually hit and damage me through a fully charged Qen? Be my guest!
A boring, frustrating, unoriginal, unfun mess of a goddamn boss battle.
Way to be a sarcastic goose BlackDove. I realise it was not a very difficult fight once you knew the trick, but it was very frustrating to try the fight as a Witcher focusing on signs only to find that he almost completely ignores all of them. In many way it is like the Act 2 boss fight in Dragon Age 2. Slow, predictable and boring.
What trick?
That's like the 4th way I found to kill him, and the reason I recorded that one over and over was simply because it's the fastest and dumbest, which anyone could emulate. Aard - fast slash - hard slash - hard slash - aard - fast slash - hard slash - hard slash - he uses Quen? Wait for your vigor to recharge, Quen yourself, hit him until his runs out, then repeat until the animation starts.
You can use Yrden, you can use daggers, you can use bombs, you can do it without using signs at all - just slash at him in the back after rolling out of his attack, you can parry, and then riposte (you don't get the visual signal, but it works), etc.
Also, what do you mean about "It's not difficult once you knew the trick".
It's your job to figure out what the trick is. Everything's the trick. That's how we "win" stuff.
Also, who's being sarcastic? Watch my video, emulate it, have no problems (ever hopefully), enjoy your game, maybe you learn something, everyone's happy.
Sorry BlackDove, I just don't like it when people who are good at games dismiss the difficulties of those who are not. I realise you were just trying to help, I guess I misinterpreted your post and got peeved.
It was not so much a trick as adapting my fighting style and stopping using signs that took the challenge out of the fight. Having learned how to battle him effectively I still hold that the fight was pretty shit, but that is a personal opinion.
On an entirely different subject, does anyone have advice on what mutations I should use as a witcher relying heavily on signs? The concentration mutations seem fairly weak but I did not find any better options in act 1. Also, does anyone know what sign intensity does?
Vic on
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Alfred J. Kwakis it because you were insultedwhen I insulted your hair?Registered Userregular
edited May 2011
just curious, how bad is it to die 47 times in the very first fight?
I can't remember ever having the controls "randomly stop working" during my entire 1 1/2 playthroughs of the game.
If you're having that much trouble just bump the difficulty down. On easy you can beat pretty much anything by spamming left-click, even if you're surrounded.
I've had it happen when I used bombs a lot. Only movement worked. I think you have to get hit to get knocked out of it, it's like a stalled animation or something.
Its just... silly that he died that many times. If I was dying every single time, I would probably wait just outside combat range and test out every sign, test the speed of the sword swings and blocking out of them... just hit buttons until I got it. Its really not that complicated.
Dying 47 times means that he just kept pushing foward on the analog stick (or w, I guess) and hoped for the best.
I've seen the controls fail to respond, mostly when I've rolled ahead of a group of pursuers and try to use Quen or Yrden and just nothing happens despite standing still and hitting the key several times, until I have to roll forward more and try again.
From what I remember of the journal's entry, intensity increases all the effects of a sign. A sign intensity of 2 would do twice as much damage as 1, the duration will be longer, the shield stronger for Quen, etc. So it's much more useful than just adding sign damage.
just curious, how bad is it to die 47 times in the very first fight?
Don't think he said the very first fight, but I know that I died probably about twenty times in the beginning section, from start to finish, playing on easy. Usually because I got swarmed by enemies unexpectedly in small, cluttered areas. Also, QTE was just terribly done.
I don't actually believe that he died 47 times. The stuff that he complains isn't in a tutorial is in the manual. And, again, there are multiple difficulty levels, and you can change them at any time.
It's just that the complaints about the combat are so completely at odds with my own experience that I don't know how to respond. I did have the controls wonk out on me during one of the stealth sections, where I got stuck in the "crouching against the wall" animation, but never during a fight. I'm not a difficulty sadist at all. I played Ninja Gaiden on normal and thought it was pretty tough. I won't claim the TW2's combat is perfect but I do enjoy it. Beating a tough fight is a satisfying experience.
Posts
Some games put the water-wings on you and let you wade a bit, others throw you in the deep end and pantomime the breaststroke. If someone needs three castings of Yrden before figuring out what it does (completely missing the manual, the popup, and the journal entry that appear on the first casting of every sign), I don't think that's a problem with the game itself.
Press button for awesome? Completely transparent game mechanics handed to you on startup? To hell with that. Kick my ass when I do something stupid. Allow me to experiment and discover. Make me use the manual for more than the product key.
Now that I've seen the manual, though, it's not very good. It's about on par with manuals for games with handholdy tutorials. Group finishers not working on monsters, for example, should really be mentioned. It does have solid numbers on the skills, but a lot of them are, uh, wrong (which is kind of to be expected nowadays with rebalancing patches).
EDIT: Also, for a game that came out of a series of books, the manual has a surprising amount of no backstory whatsoever.
Honestly, I installed a mod that adds mutagen slots to everything. It just seemed silly not having a use for 90% of the mutagens you get, especially since you can't even replace them if you get better ones.
Group finishers not working on monsters? You mean how it will allow you to instakill only one?
You can press "ALT" once to lock on to the currently targeted enemy.
The only time it's bad is when you're fighting humans and some of them are heavily armored. But humans are slow, and you shouldn't be swarmed by humans if you're putting any effort into avoiding it.
i think i died 3 times at the ballista, then mebbe 4 times at the dragon fire bit (until i discovered that i should use good ol' foltest as a shield and move with the group), and then perhaps another 4 times on the courtyard fight. more than half of my reloads weren't even because i died, but because i took more damage than i wanted to. i'm not a guy to muddle through things - if a game wants me to master something, i'll play that section over and over until i'm comfortable understanding it. so during that courtyard fight, if i took more than 50% damage, i'd reload, because i hadn't quite got it yet.
the game forcing you to stop and master a few systems is something that i greatly respect; super meat boy also had levels you simply could not pass until you learned this or that trick.
Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
Are people having trouble with the combat missing these? I remember during the siege there were nice little popups telling me how to do everything I needed to do right about when I needed it. I never felt like there wasn't a tutorial; I got informational popups for how to do stuff right before the game expected me to do it.
Yes, that.
I had 20 throwing daggers and spammed them at him. He has no defense against this for whatever reason.
Then I reloaded and did it the right way. I thought it was fun. The 200% dodge distance talent is a must, it makes repositioning to the back so much easier and faster.
Oh and drink a resistance to status effects potion. Those status effects hurt.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
The popups disappear way too fast, and also pop up in the middle of you fighting. So you're more focusing on not dying when a tiny box with hard to read text pops up on the right side of the screen.
I would have preferred a Witcher 1 style "EVERYTHING'S PAUSED, read this" and a way to turn that off for replays.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
What trick?
That's like the 4th way I found to kill him, and the reason I recorded that one over and over was simply because it's the fastest and dumbest, which anyone could emulate. Aard - fast slash - hard slash - hard slash - aard - fast slash - hard slash - hard slash - he uses Quen? Wait for your vigor to recharge, Quen yourself, hit him until his runs out, then repeat until the animation starts.
You can use Yrden, you can use daggers, you can use bombs, you can do it without using signs at all - just slash at him in the back after rolling out of his attack, you can parry, and then riposte (you don't get the visual signal, but it works), etc.
Also, what do you mean about "It's not difficult once you knew the trick".
It's your job to figure out what the trick is. Everything's the trick. That's how we "win" stuff.
Also, who's being sarcastic? Watch my video, emulate it, have no problems (ever hopefully), enjoy your game, maybe you learn something, everyone's happy.
Again, only 4 on the outside, the other 3 on the inside.
Just goes to show you need to stop whining and learn the combat.
No, you can't. Some are already there; most are added to the journal when the tooltip flashes on screen, usually the first time you try to use something. Or, in the case of the info about stealth and stunning guards, at the very end of the entire first stealth section (for me at least).
The amusing thing about tutorial tips being in the journal is that yes, it's a good thing to know because it's so hard to read the tips when they first pop up, BUT the very fact that they're in your journal is itself only conveyed in one of those easy-to-miss tips.
once the controls are fixed so that they don't randomly stop working, I will.
Can we move on?
No.
Thanks, that did the trick! Do I need to do that inside the cave, too, or will bombs work in there? Damn traps are bloody expensive and I'd need to buy or make three more.
Thanks, that did the trick! Do I need to do that inside the cave, too, or will bombs work in there? Damn traps are bloody expensive and I'd need to buy or make three more.
Just save before dropping them, see if it works. If it didn't, you probably didn't put it in the right place (there are no stones in the cave, so just drop em anywhere a harpy can get over em). But I just dropped 3 in a row for the same two harpies, quest complete, moved on.
If you're having that much trouble just bump the difficulty down. On easy you can beat pretty much anything by spamming left-click, even if you're surrounded.
Sorry BlackDove, I just don't like it when people who are good at games dismiss the difficulties of those who are not. I realise you were just trying to help, I guess I misinterpreted your post and got peeved.
It was not so much a trick as adapting my fighting style and stopping using signs that took the challenge out of the fight. Having learned how to battle him effectively I still hold that the fight was pretty shit, but that is a personal opinion.
On an entirely different subject, does anyone have advice on what mutations I should use as a witcher relying heavily on signs? The concentration mutations seem fairly weak but I did not find any better options in act 1. Also, does anyone know what sign intensity does?
e: is there a demo?
Depends on how many tiny tutorial popups you missed, I'd assume.
Dying 47 times means that he just kept pushing foward on the analog stick (or w, I guess) and hoped for the best.
Primarily crossfire focused but it could help single gpu folks too. Get it anyway and see if it makes a difference, you could always roll back.
From what I remember of the journal's entry, intensity increases all the effects of a sign. A sign intensity of 2 would do twice as much damage as 1, the duration will be longer, the shield stronger for Quen, etc. So it's much more useful than just adding sign damage.
Don't think he said the very first fight, but I know that I died probably about twenty times in the beginning section, from start to finish, playing on easy. Usually because I got swarmed by enemies unexpectedly in small, cluttered areas. Also, QTE was just terribly done.
It's just that the complaints about the combat are so completely at odds with my own experience that I don't know how to respond. I did have the controls wonk out on me during one of the stealth sections, where I got stuck in the "crouching against the wall" animation, but never during a fight. I'm not a difficulty sadist at all. I played Ninja Gaiden on normal and thought it was pretty tough. I won't claim the TW2's combat is perfect but I do enjoy it. Beating a tough fight is a satisfying experience.