I'm replaying The Witcher just so I can remember the details and characters for when W2 arrives (still not sure where to buy it) and mostly having a blast - having replayed the first part of Witcher at least 4 times before (due to a bug I had to) makes part of it a bit old, but once I get into the city, it will be brilliant again I'm sure.

The Witcher wasn't perfect though - replaying that makes that very obvious. Combat is obviously its weak point - as beautifully animated as it is, it's also pretty simplistic - pick a weapon, pick a fighting style, and off you go. Luckily, reports tell us this will be improved considerably - if it's anything like Risen, I'll be a happy man.

The inventory also feels constantly restrictive for a game such as this where you basically pick up loads of stuff because you, well, need it. After just an hour of playing, I already had a full inventory several times - forcing me to eat any food I looted which defeats the point of adding food in the first place (especially considering how little vitality it regenerates). With you being able to pick up all sorts of stuff needed for alchemy and weapon buffs, you're pretty low in slots as is - I hope this is worked out in The Witcher 2. Having the player run back to a vendor every 10 minutes is NOT fun.

Another weak spot in The Witcher, is some of the mechanics: you can't "wait" around so if you have night time quests and it's day time, you have to find a camp fire. Or how about there being no "take all" button once you loot someone - you can hold CTRL while looting to "take all" but then you can't see what "all" entails. The game could also use a quickbar for all the potions - with alchemy being such a big deal in the game, it seems weird that you'd only get a single quickslot to use with potions when there's loads you can brew. Or how about dialogue trees that remain "active" when you have different options inside that tree, instead of simply letting you pick all the options inside (currently, the game throws you back to the tree root, making you repeat part of the convo to get to the tree). Another one, is giving characters you can talk to generic names - "old lady" shouldn't give a generic response 10 times, and then the 11th old lady you encounter suddenly gives a quest - that makes no sense. Give her a regular name!
There's many more little "beauty" flaws like this here that Witcher 2 could easily fix. I can't wait to see what they made of it.

Besides all this, The Witcher is still great fun. Collecting plants, playing poker (with a custom texture I designed for the poker set), looting houses, exploring, etc. If there's one thing I want Witcher 2 to have more of, it's interaction - if I use a spell that blasts stuff, I want tables to topple over. I also want to see the world change - for example items in the open to pick up (in TW1, nothing you picked up actually changed the world - chests didn't open, fruit didn't disappear, etc.) ... well we'll soon find out how well they improved on the original.

You know I thought the same when playing Witcher 1 when at the ending in the ice world I used the Igni charm and well nothing melted. And Shani was really only wearing shorts and was not freezing. I guess there is a long way to go for RPGs. BTW the game engine of Piranha Bytes (Gothic, Risen) is the one that allows for most of these freedom kind of things.

Then all games are DRM free by that definition/reasoning as many use servers(although usually more than one/one company's servers.) to host patches and updates and if they all went down at once(Hard to believe but it COULD happen.) then you couldn't update either.

No, because patches are usually provided as standalone files that the community itself can mirror. If the community fails to do that, it's their own fault. It's DRM when you can blame the initial company for the failure as we would be able to when CDPs servers go down.

There is a huge difference between natural failure and induced failure.

FWIW I could care less at this point........I still think people are making more of this than need be. I think Orcish said it best in the other thread.....Gog has met us 90% on the DRM thing and other issues with TW2, so we should cut them some slack for the remaining 10% already.

No, we shouldn't because that 10% completely unravels the other 90%. The game is being sold as DRM-free when it is not on a technical level.

It's like me selling you a house, but still owning the all the doors and windows. Sure, you get the keys to open them but I can come and change the locks whenever I want. And you can't put a new door in because it is a listed building (hmm..I don't think you can restrict that in a listed building but analogies are fun and never fit perfectly :]).

And yes, you could just not buy the house from me. This is exactly what I'm doing. I don't agree to the terms, so I'm not buying TW2. However, GOG is advertising it falsely and that is what I am complaining about. It should either be DRM free or the claim that it is needs to be removed.

Meanwhile, I am eagerly waiting for feedback from CDP/GOG and hope they will rectify this so I can purchase and enjoy TW2.

If they rolled this DRM without all this DRM fuss you wouldn't complain. At all. What do you want CD-Project to do, allow pirates to have their bandwidth for breakfast?

Stop bitching and just support this, it's as DRM free as you can get without actively hurting the publisher.

Yes, we should....to complain so much about such a small issue when there's much worse things to complain about in the gaming industry seems very inane to me.

And yes you don't have to buy the game but the ones that are complaining so much don't need to do that as well. There's much more constructive methods of getting response from the developers either in terms of stuff done or answers given. To complain so much and so openly is not the most mature way to get things done...IMO it's like a kid crying in the store until he gets what he wants.

"As DRM free as you can get"? It's either DRM free or not, there are no shades of grey here.

That's not what he said. He asked people to stop complaining and support the publisher/etc or don't.

And yes, that's about as close to DRM free as you're going to get from any publisher so plz stop beating the poor horse.

Oh yes there are, there are always shades of grey, world isn't that simple. I do NOT want CD-Project actively losing money and supporting pirates if they don't have to - the aren't actually all that rich compared to other companies anyway. And, like, 80% of people downloading patches, slowing down their servers and eating up bandwidth will be pirates, thus limiting people who legitimately bought the game.

Now what kind of solution would you recommend for that? Buying more servers for limited funds as it is?

I perfectly agree. It will probably not be a big thing. Everybody can judge the quality of the offer for TW2 here by himself. I am sure, still most people will like it. So nothing wrong in pointing out that from some points of view it's 90% only. That's all. The goal is gaining wisdom not influencing the world. I really don't want to justify myself everytime I want to clarify something.
Most of the times, patches are mirrored on community or game magazine or other sharing sites. If following such a strategy it might be possible to limit the additional pirates' bandwith costs. (Anyway there will be pirates, so they can pirate patches probably too.)

I don't care if they voice their concerns ONCE...or a couple times, but by now it's just beating a dead horse and I really REALLY want it to die.......:\

Also again to me doing such over and over again is akin to a child whining versus more "mature" ways to get the same desired results.

It's not that bad. It's just two threads (in the whole world) and it's also a common observation that people repeat themselves because they want to express their opinion even if all the same things have already been said a thousand times. I am the perfect example of this. :)

I am happy because I had the opportunity to say what I think and I learned something from what others wrote and I think I have understood the whole issue now. Here in this thread it's not bashing (a lot). Not much more than usual.

Just give this thread a couple of days and it will be gone. I will make up my mind about buying TW 2 later and I learned how hard it can be to make something a 100% DRM free.

I don't really see how updating the GoG installer from time to time with the latest version or allowing registered users to download the patchs as independent "installer" as opposed of having them being auto-applied by the launcher, would hurt the publisher.