Itkovian: *shrug*
Most of the guy's "bugs" resulting from him not RTFM.
While at the same time I do enjoy the school of thought where games should ease players into all its features with a well-integrated tutorial (Assassin's Creed 2 pulled it off masterfully, Brotherhood as well, with the tutorial progression being seamlessly integrated in the story), I do despair at what it results in sometimes.
I mean, most of his issues were things I ran into, but a few seconds of actually looking at the screen made it clear to me what was going on. Quen stopping vigour regen was a surprise to me, but I realized that this was happening at once (and I correctly assumed that this was part of the design, not a bug). Same with parry using vigour. Same with me being unable to run at times (this is obviously scripted).
When players don't have their hands held all the time, they learn to roll with the punches, to analyze what is going on and figure things out. They learn, in short, to LEARN.
So while brilliant tutorials like in Assassin's Creed 2 are stunning, I sometimes wonder if it justifies the downside. We lose game complexity because eventually players simply cannot cope with complexity unless it comes spoon-fed over hours of gameplay. With games becoming ever shorter, I do not like where this leads.
Itkovian
Pretty much this. Also, reading the manual is 'work' to him. I mean, back in the day, it was expected to read the manual, it was just something you did. Part of that is because in-game tutorials weren't really being done yet, but still. A manual can be a valuable resource even if your game has a tutorial. The good manuals were fun at the same time. I played a lot of old school adventure games, so like Space Quest's manual took the form of a futuristic magazine with all sorts of funny ads, Quest For Glory had the "famous adventurers correspondence school" and the manual was your course work, and it was framed as the famous adventurers journal as he explored the part of the world the game took place in. The Witcher manual was rather dry in comparison, I'll give the guy that. While I had cut my teeth on games where reading the manual was important so didn't find it a bother, if you want people to read the manual, make it a fun read. I don't mean funny, that wouldn't be appropriate here, but there is lots of lore from the books to draw on to flesh it out in that way. Of course they have to look inside it to figure out that it's a good read, that remains a challenge, since many wont even look inside it, but....
btw. I think the prologue could be improved greatly simply by making the popup tips more prominent, and last longer. they were often gone before you got the opportunity to read them, cus you were too busy trying to kill some guy.
