🚀 go-pugleaf

On Thu, 21 May 2015 16:25:56 -0400, Rin Stowleigh
<rstow...@nevrhadgmail.com> wrote:

>On Thu, 21 May 2015 14:00:01 -0400, DMP <D...@nodomain.com> wrote:
>
>>On 5/20/2015 6:32 AM, Werner Punz wrote:
>>> Hi I was just asking, because I have started to play the game yesterday
>>> and I like it a lot.
>>>
>>> It even plays nicely on my low end rig (NVidia 660). Even on low
>>> settings the game looks really good. (I have to play with the settings
>>> further today, according to a friend of mine with a rather similar rig,
>>> you can raise some of the settings to high without impact, the hair
>>> however needs to be turned off that is a frame rate killer on low to mid
>>> range cards)
>>>
>>> I have played for two hours yesterday and I am still in the starting
>>> village doing sidequests. From what I could notice is that even the
>>> sidequests seem to vary a lot and seem to be hand scripted.
>>>
>>> The game is really huge, btw.
>>>
>>> The only downside so far I noticed is, there are lots of NPCs you cannot
>>> talk to they just mumble 1-2 sentences, however that is to be expected I
>>> guess. And yes the in game fonts could be bigger.
>>>
>>> Werner
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>I've gotten to the first village as well. My problem is that I'm easily 
>>distracted by stuff/quests in the environment.
>>
>>I haven't decided yet on kb/mouse or controller. I think the controller 
>>is tougher on my RSI'd thumbs.
>>
>>I enjoyed the interface on the 1st Witcher better; the fonts don't 
>>bother me and FWIW patch 1.03 out earlier today seems to have helped 
>>some players a good deal. Right at the moment I'm not as enamored with 
>>the game as I thought I'd be. I don't know how to describe it, but the 
>>whole thing seems "clunky" to me. I haven't given it much of a chance tho'
>>
>>d.
>
>Yes, there's a clunkiness to it that's hard to describe.  Just feels
>unpolished, half-baked, and over sold as a AAA title.

Yeah, some gripes of mine include:

- I wish I could zoom in a bit closer to Garret as well. It doesn't
have to be first-person view but the camera is a bit further out than
I'd like. 

- The range at which you can interact with items is pretty small and
finicky too. You have to be practically on top of an item before you
can use item and even then it sometimes just doesn't work.

- There are hot-keys to take you into specific menu-screens (I for
inventory, M for Map) but nothing that takes you directly back to the
game; you have to press ESC several times to go through subsidiary
menu screens before you are back in the action. 

- Can't just press ESC to quit a conversation.

- While walking down the street NPCs are barking information at me all
the time, but I have a hard-time telling who is saying it and
following those conversations. None of this information (so far) is
vital but these longer discourses really should have been put into
proper conversation trees that can be initiated by the player rather
than just hope they stumble on them. 

- Still hate the combat. Its too much dependent on user-reflexes,
especially the parrying/riposte. And all the leaping and tumbling
looks ridiculous, like bad wire-fu.

- Don't like the "witcher senses" for much the same reason I didn't
like the Detective Mode of the Batman games: it's too useful not to
have on all the time but using it ruins the visuals (instead of a
colorful and well-rendered world you wander around in a wobbly grey
mess). And I hate having to hold down a button constantly to use it.


Probably could think up some more if I put  my mind to it, but I think
you get the idea. Yeah, all of these are fairly minor issues but they
add up and each one makes the user experience just slightly less
pleasant.  Its definitely a game that could have used much more
iteration in its game design, but I guess CD-ProjectRed doesn't have
the resources for that sort of thing; its very time-consuming.