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WoodrowSkillson
Feb 24, 2005

*Gestures at 60 years of Lions history*

hopterque posted:

Is this a fake post?

seems pretty reasonable to me, skyrim was a good and fun game, and some people will like it more.

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Gorgolflox
Apr 2, 2009

Gun Saliva
Are there maps/quests for the master crafted witcher gear? I randomly found a bunch of cat school stuff but I am missing the dang steel sword.

So I accidentally knocked Roach into the ocean and he just stood underwater like everything was cool, but when I went underwater and mounted him he just vanished, RIP Roach you were a good horse.

Serf
May 5, 2011


I really don't even make the comparison. Skyrim is a first-person RPG with a silent protagonist and even more open world than Witcher 3. That's not necessarily a good thing because the focus on monster-hunting as a primary side activity in W3 is awesome. There's a lot of care put into the hunts and prepping for a big fight and executing it well are very fun. Skyrim is more about shenanigans and making your own fun. I enjoy them both in equal measure.

I think the more apt comparison would be to Dragon Age or Mass Effect, which have a more blank-slate character than the Witcher series but don't do nearly as good a job at building that character's personality. They're also 3rd-person action games, but the Bioware games are more about pausing and positioning your team tactically, whereas the Witcher is solo action closer to Dark Souls. Both approaches are fun in their own way, gameplay-wise, but in terms of story, lore and characterization, W3 pretty easily trumps it's closest big-name competitor Dragon Age IMO.

ymgve
Jan 2, 2004


:dukedog:
Offensive Clock

Gorgolflox posted:

Are there maps/quests for the master crafted witcher gear? I randomly found a bunch of cat school stuff but I am missing the dang steel sword.

So I accidentally knocked Roach into the ocean and he just stood underwater like everything was cool, but when I went underwater and mounted him he just vanished, RIP Roach you were a good horse.

Some shops (don't remember where exactly) sell maps that will activate the quests. The quests still activate once you find an armor piece, but I think having the maps point you directly to where stuff is hidden.

Serf posted:

I really don't even make the comparison. Skyrim is a first-person RPG with a silent protagonist and even more open world than Witcher 3. That's not necessarily a good thing because the focus on monster-hunting as a primary side activity in W3 is awesome. There's a lot of care put into the hunts and prepping for a big fight and executing it well are very fun. Skyrim is more about shenanigans and making your own fun. I enjoy them both in equal measure.

I think the more apt comparison would be to Dragon Age or Mass Effect, which have a more blank-slate character than the Witcher series but don't do nearly as good a job at building that character's personality. They're also 3rd-person action games, but the Bioware games are more about pausing and positioning your team tactically, whereas the Witcher is solo action closer to Dark Souls. Both approaches are fun in their own way, gameplay-wise, but in terms of story, lore and characterization, W3 pretty easily trumps it's closest big-name competitor Dragon Age IMO.

The combat is definitely miles better in Witcher 3, but despite the different combat focus the games are comparable. Both are single player open-world fantasy RPGs with a focus on exploration. Witcher 3 is definitely the best in this class of games but they all have individual strenghts and weaknesses.

ymgve fucked around with this message at 14:10 on Aug 5, 2015

gschmidl
Sep 3, 2011

watch with knife hands

Gorgolflox posted:

So I accidentally knocked Roach into the ocean and he just stood underwater like everything was cool, but when I went underwater and mounted him he just vanished, RIP Roach you were a good horse.

I misread that as Roche.

Beeez
May 28, 2012

Gorgolflox posted:

Are there maps/quests for the master crafted witcher gear? I randomly found a bunch of cat school stuff but I am missing the dang steel sword.

So I accidentally knocked Roach into the ocean and he just stood underwater like everything was cool, but when I went underwater and mounted him he just vanished, RIP Roach you were a good horse.

This happened to me in White Orchard.

Romes128
Dec 28, 2008


Fun Shoe

Literally Esoteric posted:



When Lambert showed up I felt like "wow they sure made him come off like a huge rear end in a top hat", and then later in Kaer Morhen when they're trekking along one of the Trials paths that kids died on which Lambert blames daddy Vesemir for, my wife leans over and goes "Wow I think that guy has PTSD." I was like "yeah, I didn't think about it but you're totally right" . . . and if this were Mass Effect he would have literally walked up to me and been like "I'm angry because I have PTSD from when some people I knew died."

I was sympathetic with Lambert until he said he killed his father after he finished the trials. I understand being pissed about the kids dying and having no choice in becoming a Witcher, but going back to murder your father, no matter how much of an rear end in a top hat he was, is kind of a lovely thing to do. I would totally understand it more if he tried to kill Vesimir in his sleep or something.

I think the only really chill Witcher is Eskel. (My Geralt is a dick and murders people).

bonds0097
Oct 23, 2010

I would cry but I don't think I can spare the moisture.
Pillbug
One of my favorite pieces of storytelling in the game, that speaks not just about Geralt's world but our own, is early in White Orchard when you're tracking wild dogs with the local hunter (this is not really spoilery) and you run across the body of a dude he used to be friends with. The hunter mentions they were friends before "he had to leave the village" so Geralt's like "Oh, what's wrong with you? I can totally lift curses bro." and the hunter's like, "No, you don't understand, I'm gay." (he doesn't exactly say this, more along the lines of him and the lord's son being in love and getting caught in the stable) And Geralt just makes this helpless face (Geralt's facial emoting is fantastic in this game) and says "Oh."

It was this throwaway little scene that was so fantastic and spoke volumes. I loved how Geralt was all, "I can fix you." and then having him realize the problem wasn't with the hunter but with society and that he can't fix that. Anyway, the scene really stuck with me and I thought it was leaps and bounds above the writing in just about every other RPG I've ever played.

Ice Fist
Jun 20, 2012

^^ Please send feedback to beefstache911@hotmail.com, this is not a joke that 'stache is the real deal. Serious assessments only. ^^

ymgve posted:

- Much better in-game map function. The Skyrim 3D map made it very easy to get a "feel" of the topography of the world, in contrast with Witcher 3's zero-topography map.
- More interesting loot. Apart from the Witcher School gear, there's not really much unique and interesting equipment in the game. In contrast: Daedric artifacts.

These are the only two things I agree with. The map in the Witcher leaves alot to be desired and I've come across cliffs that I look back on the map and I'm like 'drat I really wish this was more obvious.

The loot in this game not only sucks and isn't all that varied, but you'll probably get gear that is way below your level as well.

Other than that I think most of your complaints are on the level of 'did we play the same Witcher 3?'

Palpek
Dec 27, 2008


Do you feel it, Zach?
My coffee warned me about it.


There's one small side-quest where a girl asks you to find her boyfriend who went missing in the woods that I thought nicely showed what characterises Witcher stories.

You go look for the boyfriend and it turns out it was no monster, soldiers or bandits that killed him, nothing grandiose, weird or special but just a pack of wild dogs. Another miserable death in the sea of miserable deaths that could occur in this world whether it's wartime or not.

When you finish the quest the distraught girl starts walking slowly into the woods and if you follow her - she will reach her boyfriend's body by which a single wild dog is already waiting to kill her (despite you having killed everything in the area minutes ago). Just another miserable death in the sea of miserable deaths :(
.

OAquinas
Jan 27, 2008

Biden has sat immobile on the Iron Throne of America. He is the Master of Malarkey by the will of the gods, and master of a million votes by the might of his inexhaustible calamari.

Comte de Saint-Germain posted:


Also, those games, particularly Fallout, are full of filler NPCs because even the named characters are just fillers. Many of them are barely more talkative than any random signpost in a Final Fantasy game, and I think it's even worse because so many of them have the same voice. So Amren might love his family, and that other Redguard guy thinks you've never been to the cloud district (despite being a thane), but hey both deliver their lines identically. (I don't actually remember if these guys share the same VO, but you get the idea.)

"Welcome to Corneria." "I like swords!"


Yeah, you could see where they tried to make an effort in Skyrim to flesh things out, but just went "eh, gently caress it" and went for the same broad, shallow approach they've been milking for technical reasons. Imperial City with 20 people in it rings a bell...

Fallout is its own thing. Messed up character interaction is more the order of the day, and it's less to get you immersed than to move you along to the next setpiece/exploration area.


Fourthing that the W3 map sucks balls though. Skellige is damned near un-navigable unless you stick to roads.

Waterbed Wendy
Jan 29, 2009
After playing hours of W3 and loving it, I still prefer Skyrim. I just am not as immersed in the witcher world.

I realize that this preference has some to do with mods and my own imagination. I prefer having a blank slate of a character that I can apply my own story to especially with mods that make it possible to never touch the main story line which I have gone through too many times. It reminds me of playing DnD and being able to tap into a fantasy that I have created within the loose parameters provided by the game. Yes, I generally come up with a backstory to my toons, I relate more to my character and it's fun making choices based on what that character would do. "No, sorry Brynjolf, my orc doesn't have the patience to be in your heist, all she wants is to learn expert smithing from Balmund." Plus being able to build my own home or even city to put all my shiniest poo poo in is great for my repressed hoarding tendencies. Whereas with Witcher, you are Geralt, you fight with (two!) swords, a few spells, bombs and bows. Your biddy is Yen, your buddy is Dandy and your abs are sick. An interesting and well thought-out character, but the same character no matta what. You can change the outcome of the world around you, but you cannot change who you are. That is totally fine, but a big part of not being as immersed as I was in Skyrim. Someone earlier said that maybe it was also because you can't go first person in W3 like you can in Skrim, but I played through GTA V in first person and feel the same way about it. This MIGHT also have to do with me being a woman. I stress 'might' because I can't play this as a man and compare my experiences, so I wonder if any duders out there might be thinking the same things.

A big one though is, I also like being able to kill whoever the gently caress I want (thank you again mods for making that 100% doable instead of 90%). In W3 you can't hurt anyone besides enemies and that is not fun! I mean, I mostly just wanted to aard people who made me mad, but noooooo. W3 is obviously a fantastic and beautiful game; you can just walk in any direction and probably see some really cool things. Those Skellige islands are a bit tedious, sure, but I found some unmarked goodies the other day and that was coooooool. The attention to detail is very rich; the combat is straight forward, challenging and satisfying; and it's all just so gorgeous.

I love Gwent too. I'm considering buying Tabletop Sim just to play it even more.

Everyone has a boner for the writing, but it actually doesn't really interest me very much and I find myself mashing skip so I can get to the exploration and combat faster which, for me, isn't typical. I love a good story, especially a fantasy story, but the main plot did not engage me very much. Maybe if I read the books that would change?

Beeez
May 28, 2012

bonds0097 posted:

One of my favorite pieces of storytelling in the game, that speaks not just about Geralt's world but our own, is early in White Orchard when you're tracking wild dogs with the local hunter (this is not really spoilery) and you run across the body of a dude he used to be friends with. The hunter mentions they were friends before "he had to leave the village" so Geralt's like "Oh, what's wrong with you? I can totally lift curses bro." and the hunter's like, "No, you don't understand, I'm gay." (he doesn't exactly say this, more along the lines of him and the lord's son being in love and getting caught in the stable) And Geralt just makes this helpless face (Geralt's facial emoting is fantastic in this game) and says "Oh."

It was this throwaway little scene that was so fantastic and spoke volumes. I loved how Geralt was all, "I can fix you." and then having him realize the problem wasn't with the hunter but with society and that he can't fix that. Anyway, the scene really stuck with me and I thought it was leaps and bounds above the writing in just about every other RPG I've ever played.

I also really liked how between that quest, the contract for the ghost of the well, and talking to Tomira you got a really interesting, multi-faceted picture of how all these characters' stories related to one another. If you do the Noonwraith contract first, it just seems like the Lord was a tyrannical madman, but when you talk to Tomira and the hunter, you suddenly realize he reacted so violently because the woman who became the noonwraith made a crack about his gay son who had killed himself. Which doesn't excuse what the Lord did, but does put it in a very different context.

JetsGuy
Sep 17, 2003

science + hockey
=
LASER SKATES
I never played Skyrim or Elder Scrolls, but... wow. Like ok, you REALLY love Skyrim, apparently, but here's some thoughts:

ymgve posted:

- Much better in-game map function. The Skyrim 3D map made it very easy to get a "feel" of the topography of the world, in contrast with Witcher 3's zero-topography map.

I really liked the W3 map, and I found it pretty easy to get a "feel" of the topography of the world once you understand "white" is mountain. :v: Seriously though, I liked the map, my only gripe is I wish they'd let me zoom out a little further.

quote:

- Few generic NPCs. Almost every NPC in Skyrim (Apart from guards etc) was named, and most had at least some backstory, in contrast with Witcher 3's hundreds of "Villager" NPCs.

Comte already addressed this specifically, but I really like the "villager" NPCs. I have to strongly disagree with every NPC needing a backstory, I don't need to know the life story of everyone I run into. That's not how life works, you don't know the story of everyone in a city you visit. They're also not going to shout it at you if you approach them. Again, I never played Skyrim, I don't know how it's done there, but Comte already addressed it, and as a dev, he's in a much better position to.

quote:

- More varied architecture. Sure, there was a lot of copy-pasting in both games, but the cities/towns of Skyrim often had building interiors exclusive to that region.
- Better towns/villages. In Witcher 3, there's basically Novigrad, Oxenfurt, Kaer Trolde, and several dozen interchangeable villages. Nothing in Skyrim compares to the scale of Novigrad, but all towns have more personality than the Witcher villages.

Maybe I've gone mad, but I could swear that villages in Skellige look and feel different from those in Velen. I dunno. Either way I can understand this point, but think it's reaaaally nitpicky.

quote:

- Better dungeons and caves. Almost all of the caves in Witcher are like one corridor, then a big chamber. There are like, half a dozen actual complex dungeons in the game. In contrast, in Skyrim the average cave/dungeon was pretty long, and even though they were samey due to all the prefabs, it felt like you actually was going deep underground in them.

I'm assuming you've not done a sizeable portion of sidequests or ? hunting. Because if you had, you'd have found a lot of caves that aren't "just one corridor". Hell, there's several in the story line that aren't even "just one corridor". As for the "real complex dungeons", they'd feel out of place in W3. Aside from the jailbreak quest, I see not too many places where a Zelda-like dungeon is required. This is just not that kind of game. W3 is about hunting monsters not about trying to solve a dungeon puzzle to get a key to open another room to solve another puzzle. Using the Witcher senses to open a gate or find something isn't so much a puzzle as it's detective work. I'm super glad there's not some sort of Zelda-like dungeon in this game, it would feel soooooo out of place, it's "better" this way.

quote:

- More interesting loot. Apart from the Witcher School gear, there's not really much unique and interesting equipment in the game. In contrast: Daedric artifacts.

Having literally tracked down every single ? in the game, i have to disagree. There's a TON of unique and interesting equipment in this game, it's just everyone ignores it or sells it because master crafted witcher gear is almost universally better. I kept a few pieces I found (there's this awesome "glory of the sun" or something Nilfgaard gear I especially liked) because they look super cool.

quote:

- Better flower picking. seriously why does picking a flower open a loot window just put it straight into my inventory geez cdprojekt

This made more sense when alchemy items had weight. Also when a dead guy is next to a flower it reinforces what you're actually picking up.

Romes128 posted:

I think the only really chill Witcher is Eskel. (My Geralt is a dick and murders people).

It's certainly not the cat school witcher, who is scum and if the game let me, I would have pissed on his corpse after I killed him. :colbert:

JetsGuy
Sep 17, 2003

science + hockey
=
LASER SKATES

Palpek posted:

There's one small side-quest where a girl asks you to find her boyfriend who went missing in the woods that I thought nicely showed what characterises Witcher stories.

You go look for the boyfriend and it turns out it was no monster, soldiers or bandits that killed him, nothing grandiose, weird or special but just a pack of wild dogs. Another miserable death in the sea of miserable deaths that could occur in this world whether it's wartime or not.

When you finish the quest the distraught girl starts walking slowly into the woods and if you follow her - she will reach her boyfriend's body by which a single wild dog is already waiting to kill her (despite you having killed everything in the area minutes ago). Just another miserable death in the sea of miserable deaths :(
.

I followed her back and there was nothing there. She just stood there and cried. You missed a dog bro. :(

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

JetsGuy posted:

I followed her back and there was nothing there. She just stood there and cried. You missed a dog bro. :(

Literally emergent gameplay hahaha.

AAAAA! Real Muenster
Jul 12, 2008

My QB is also named Bort

JetsGuy posted:

Uh so I went nuts and finished all the Skellige ?s. The problem though is the game map still says I have one!

I turned off all filters to try and see it better but there literally is no ? On the map despite what the legend says. Anyone else experience this?
H....how?!? I guess because you went nuts but my god man! No I dont think I will ever come close enough to try to experience having all of the questionmarks explored in Skellige.

Wiggly Wayne DDS
Sep 11, 2010



JetsGuy posted:

I followed her back and there was nothing there. She just stood there and cried. You missed a dog bro. :(
same

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.

JetsGuy posted:

I followed her back and there was nothing there. She just stood there and cried. You missed a dog bro. :(

I like his version better, we should have done that.

Palpek
Dec 27, 2008


Do you feel it, Zach?
My coffee warned me about it.


Comte de Saint-Germain posted:

I like his version better, we should have done that.
Make a note for the Enhanced Edition :v:.

WoodrowSkillson
Feb 24, 2005

*Gestures at 60 years of Lions history*

Pot Of Shoe posted:

Everyone has a boner for the writing, but it actually doesn't really interest me very much and I find myself mashing skip so I can get to the exploration and combat faster which, for me, isn't typical. I love a good story, especially a fantasy story, but the main plot did not engage me very much. Maybe if I read the books that would change?

Not everyone has to like everything. Witcher 3 has a good and well thought out story, but not everyone likes every story. I would imagine being a woman also impacts the Witcher series since Geralt is at least a part time womanizer, even if it also goes both ways in regards to women like Keira.

Kilometers Davis
Jul 9, 2007

They begin again

^My girlfriend is the definition of a strong take no poo poo woman and she absolutely loves the romancing/strumpet banging. It's handled very well and is always amusing.

Everyone keeps mentioning the eventual Enhanced Edition but isn't it a developer mentioned thing that the updates and DLC are the "EE". I'm pretty sure they decided against a rerelease in favor on continued updates and changes. I highly prefer it this way.

Kilometers Davis fucked around with this message at 16:16 on Aug 5, 2015

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.

Kilometers Davis posted:

^My girlfriend is the definition of a strong take no poo poo woman and she absolutely loves the romancing/strumpet banging. It's handled very well and is always amusing.

Everyone keeps mentioning the eventual Enhanced Edition but isn't it a developer mentioned thing that the updates and DLC are the "EE". I'm pretty sure they decided against a rerelease in favor on continued updates and changes. I highly prefer it this way.

Whenever I see someone here mention EE I consider it a dark joke/threat.

Kilometers Davis
Jul 9, 2007

They begin again

Comte de Saint-Germain posted:

Whenever I see someone here mention EE I consider it a dark joke/threat.

After 250 free dlcs and 500 massive updates you will be free to return to your families haha just kidding back to the hell pits slaves.

tyrelhill
Jul 30, 2006
Community EE with real life genitalia

JetsGuy
Sep 17, 2003

science + hockey
=
LASER SKATES

Comte de Saint-Germain posted:

I like his version better, we should have done that.

It certainly would have been the W3 style! :v:

Bort Bortles posted:

H....how?!? I guess because you went nuts but my god man! No I dont think I will ever come close enough to try to experience having all of the questionmarks explored in Skellige.

I never thought I would either. It's not nearly as bad I thought it was going to be. I did it by like doing an hour or two for like three nights. Throw a movie on Netflix (if you have a ipad or laptop) and just plan your routes. Here's my thoughts on the whole experience though:

- The ship is slow, but the biggest problem is not the speed, it's that it gets damaged at the slightest loving thing. You hit a small board and your ship takes damage. I learned quickly to stop early by those damned barrells because it SUCKS when your ship sinks and you're nowhere near land. Did you know there's a point where Geralt gets tired and you can't fast swim? Yeah, I didn't either.
- Just realize you're going to be overburdened. I started off by dropping anything worth less than 400 crowns thinking that it would help me do things better...it doesn't Weight doesn't affect your sailing point to point and looting chests.
- Speaking of which, go to the armorer in Crach's castle to unload. He always has 1800+ crowns, sell a few things, then mediate for like a day. He immediately refills and sleeping more than a day doesn't give him more gold. He also sometimes has some rare ingots you can buy too. Going to him when you want to unload just makes life easier since it's quicker fast traveling within the same region.
- Sirens/Drowners - holy gently caress do not fight them on your boat. Just immediately jump in the water and cheese them that way. Even if you have to trick Geralt off because he's in a fighting stance, get off the damned ship or you'll just be stun locked by sirens.
- Jump on every long boat you find, they're all cool and unique. I found one where the steering wheel had a man fastened to it and all the ratlines had dudes on it. Pirate ship of the damned right there

also, I reloaded the game and found the last ?. It was on the mainland and some level 8 wraith was guarding some treasure lol.

Also, I am glad I did it because there's so many small (like one or two things) sidequests I found doing it. Like I found a dude who was chained to the rocks to die... he claims he was framed for murder. I didn't believe him but I freed him anyway. If you go to the nearby town, you find a little girl crying to the townspeople his brother was a good person. Turns out she didn't like her uncle so she made up a story about him "doing bad things" to her. :stare: He of course went bezerk and killed him. You can tell her "lol you learned a lesson about lying" or tell her you freed him (she'll claim she'll never lie again).

EDIT:
I also found the "from a land far away" quest doing the ?s. I still have no loving idea what the hell was going on. Comte!!! :argh:

JetsGuy fucked around with this message at 16:31 on Aug 5, 2015

ymgve
Jan 2, 2004


:dukedog:
Offensive Clock
That's another thing I wish they will add in the EE - there are so many missable small quests that you won't notice until you stumble upon them. You already get all the question marks from notice boards, why not put in small quest markers too?

(And WTF is up with not having vendors show up on the map - grindstones and workbenches are there for some reason but not vendors?)

Palpek
Dec 27, 2008


Do you feel it, Zach?
My coffee warned me about it.


You can also find some custom stuff on the bigger islands that have no question marks. Like an altar with a whole bear sacrificed on top of it with two treasure chests on either side. But maybe it's a part of a quest that I haven't done yet, I don't know but that would be strange as it's far away from any harbor. Too bad that most of those islands are empty so you're mostly running around for nothing with the hopes of finding maybe half a dozen custom things overall.

420 Gank Mid
Dec 26, 2008

WARNING: This poster is a huge bitch!

How do people ever have trouble with sirens/drowners while on the boat? I've never found a group bigger than 3-5 monsters and they die in one shot from the crossbow while you're swimming or sailing even on Death March.

Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Dec 22, 2005

GET LOSE, YOU CAN'T COMPARE WITH MY POWERS

420 Gank Mid posted:

How do people ever have trouble with sirens/drowners while on the boat? I've never found a group bigger than 3-5 monsters and they die in one shot from the crossbow while you're swimming or sailing even on Death March.

Boating directly from point a to point b is boring enough without stopping every so often to do busy work. Imagine if, when running, geralt stopped every so often because his pants fell down, and a prompt appeared, and said push x to pull up your pants. There's only one choice, so there's no decision making, its just a waste of your(the player's) time.

The real trick is just...not getting all the ?s in Skellige. For me it was a great boon that some of them were such a pain in the rear end, because I instantly realized there was no way I was going to do them all, and thus didn't feel obligated to do any of the other, less boring but still boring ones.

420 Gank Mid
Dec 26, 2008

WARNING: This poster is a huge bitch!

Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:

Boating directly from point a to point b is boring enough without stopping every so often to do busy work. Imagine if, when running, geralt stopped every so often because his pants fell down, and a prompt appeared, and said push x to pull up your pants. There's only one choice, so there's no decision making, its just a waste of your(the player's) time.

The real trick is just...not getting all the ?s in Skellige. For me it was a great boon that some of them were such a pain in the rear end, because I instantly realized there was no way I was going to do them all, and thus didn't feel obligated to do any of the other, less boring but still boring ones.

Yeah I agree that they are not fun combat encounters. But they are not difficult roadblocks. So long as you have a controller in your hand and a pulse it really shouldn't set you back very long. You don't even have to stop the boat.

Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Dec 22, 2005

GET LOSE, YOU CAN'T COMPARE WITH MY POWERS

420 Gank Mid posted:

Yeah I agree that they are not fun combat encounters. But they are not difficult roadblocks. So long as you have a controller in your hand and a pulse it really shouldn't set you back very long. You don't even have to stop the boat.

No one is complaining about the difficulty - they're annoying and waste your time, that is the complaint.

ymgve
Jan 2, 2004


:dukedog:
Offensive Clock
It's even worse when some of them plainly refuse to attack your boat and just circle around underwater being an annoyance. And then once you're done with one group, another group suddenly spawns in. But the most annoying thing is when the game bugs out as I get up to dive at them and suddenly I'm 1000 feet in the air and I'm falling to certain death.

Palpek
Dec 27, 2008


Do you feel it, Zach?
My coffee warned me about it.


I uncovered all the ?s on Skellige but ONLY uncovered. If it was a smuggler's cache I just didn't stop exactly because I didn't want to have to deal with the tedium of killing sirens for little to no reward. I stopped at everything that wasn't a smuggler's cache and more often than not it wasn't worth it anyways.

I already covered how I'd try to make Skellige exploration better a couple of pages ago because otherwise it's easily the weakest part of the game.

OAquinas
Jan 27, 2008

Biden has sat immobile on the Iron Throne of America. He is the Master of Malarkey by the will of the gods, and master of a million votes by the might of his inexhaustible calamari.
In an effort to try and get every superior formula I could I stopped at all the hidden treasures and guarded treasures, but still couldn't collect 'em all. I'd probably gnaw my arm off if I had to hit all the spoils of war/caches


There was a locked chest in the sunstone crypt I couldn't find a key for though.

Twobirds
Oct 17, 2000

The only talking mouse in all of Britannia.
I found that too. Apparently a bug, there's no key that actually opens it.

pik_d
Feb 24, 2006

follow the white dove





TRP Post of the Month October 2021

Twobirds posted:

I found that too. Apparently a bug, there's no key that actually opens it.

That makes me feel better, I found that chest too.

ymgve posted:

It's even worse when some of them plainly refuse to attack your boat and just circle around underwater being an annoyance. And then once you're done with one group, another group suddenly spawns in. But the most annoying thing is when the game bugs out as I get up to dive at them and suddenly I'm 1000 feet in the air and I'm falling to certain death.

I once had a Siren attack me right as I was dodge-falling out of a boat, and I immediately started going down very fast, through whatever sea floor there was. I literally fell out of the bottom of the map and just kept going forever.

420 Gank Mid
Dec 26, 2008

WARNING: This poster is a huge bitch!

Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:

No one is complaining about the difficulty - they're annoying and waste your time, that is the complaint.

quote:

- Sirens/Drowners - holy gently caress do not fight them on your boat. Just immediately jump in the water and cheese them that way. Even if you have to trick Geralt off because he's in a fighting stance, get off the damned ship or you'll just be stun locked by sirens.


This sounds like it takes wayyyy longer than just tapping them with a crossbow a few times.

Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Dec 22, 2005

GET LOSE, YOU CAN'T COMPARE WITH MY POWERS

420 Gank Mid posted:

This sounds like it takes wayyyy longer than just tapping them with a crossbow a few times.

Lets say you miss a couple times, maybe it takes 20 seconds to deal with a group. Multiply that by "sailing literally all over skellige", you probably get a decent chunk of time. Most importantly, this is an already boring task that any lengthening of is going to feel really bad, combines to make something that feels really annoying. Imagine being somewhere and not being able to go home until you complete a few hours of "busywork A". Now imagine you do the same thing, but also, you get interrupted randomly every few minutes to do 20 seconds of "busywork B" - it would feel a lot worse every time it happened, regardless of how much time it added. Annoyance is generally an emotional thing more than a rational "this has negatively affected my in-game productivity" thing.

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420 Gank Mid
Dec 26, 2008

WARNING: This poster is a huge bitch!

Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:

Lets say you miss a couple times, maybe it takes 20 seconds to deal with a group. Multiply that by "sailing literally all over skellige", you probably get a decent chunk of time. Most importantly, this is an already boring task that any lengthening of is going to feel really bad, combines to make something that feels really annoying. Imagine being somewhere and not being able to go home until you complete a few hours of "busywork A". Now imagine you do the same thing, but also, you get interrupted randomly every few minutes to do 20 seconds of "busywork B" - it would feel a lot worse every time it happened, regardless of how much time it added. Annoyance is generally an emotional thing more than a rational "this has negatively affected my in-game productivity" thing.

I am very glad I didn't bother with most of the "?" spots in Skellige if this is what it does to you.


Whenever I had to deal with water-based combat encounters it would take me 10-15 seconds and I wouldn't even slow down the boat or change course. It's tedious but I dont get where the time complaint comes in either.

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