I simply don't get it.

Do the developers not want people to play this game? It's like the game refuses to be enjoyed.

The Set-up

First of all: the set up process. Go to GOG, buy game, be asked to download 9 separate parts? What? Uh okay, I guess I'll have to use this GOG downloader? I wait for ages.... Yay! It finally says 2 minutes remaining. I'll just go make myself a snack and get ready for some awesome RPG fun! Oh wait, it now says it needs to combine and verify the download first. How long is this going to take? Who knows? The program clearly doesn't.

So I go off and do something else, check back on the GOG downloader and notice that it's actually completed. That's odd, I'm pretty sure I told it to begin installing immediately and yet nothing happened. Guess I'll launch the install manually? No wait, it actually did start installing, and decided to put the window-with-no-titlebar behind everything else, where I can't see it.

Oh look. It's verifying the data *again*. Right after the GOG downloader already did. Really guys? Was it that hard to add a /noverify pass-through here? I press "Skip", confirm that I actually want it to skip, and it decides to start verifying again. WTF? Skip again. And now wait an unspecified amount of time for the game to actually install. And then, after it is super-super-serious about the installation really really being done, it adds one more step: ACTIVATION! From the people who put "NO DRM!!!" on all their sales material.

Is this really so hard to grok? The purpose of a progress bar is to convey how long a process is going to take, and how much work has been completed. If you throw up a series of progress bars to a user without any context about what else is going to happen, the progress bar is useless. You may as well put a little spinner on there and say "Who the fuck knows?", because that's how much useful information you're conveying. The delivery and installation process of Witcher 2 is completely broken from this point of view.

Look at how Steam does this: Click install. Wait for download to complete. Press play.

The Launch

So after waiting about three times as long as expected, the game has finally ended up on my hard drive in a 'playable' form. Let's try it out!

Oh look it's a logo sequence for GOG.com.... and an identical one for nVidia.... and an identical one for all the tech..... and another identical one.... and another identical one. Wow. Could you show any more contempt for the gamer? You're not even pretending to make these logo sequences interesting. And I have to skip each one separately every time I start the game, forcing me to hear the same half second of audio 5 times?

Jeez. And oh, it runs like shit. Because the game decided that 1920x1200 is an excellent resolution for a laptop GPU. So now I have to go tweak all the settings. Unfortunately, I have to sit through 10 minutes of slide-show dialogue before I get to an interactive section, i.e. the part where I can actually verify if the game is playable at these settings.

The Opening

5 restarts and 25 logo skips later I've finally found some settings that work somewhat fluidly. Unfortunately, I've had to turn down the resolution, so most of the on screen text is now barely readable. Appparently someone still hasn't heard of gamma-correct font anti-aliasing. Nice job.

So I sit through a bunch of dialog that talks about events I have never heard of, and mentions people I have no idea who they are. Is this supposed to be engaging? How can you give your main character amnesia and then expect the player to know what's going on at the same time?

But fine, it's time to move on and get some fighting in. Better take a quick look at the combat system.

What do these cryptically named spells do? Oh, it only tells you when you cast it. In the middle of combat, in tiny font. What, would it've been too low brow to give your spells actual descriptive names? Was it really that important for you to paste completely meaningless names onto something the player is expected to switch between rapidly? Yeah we couldn't possibly just have a "Fireball" and "Shield" spell here. What do you think this is, WoW?

But fine, I can deal with writers jerking off to their own world building. At least the icons are sort of memorable. Let's go fight! And immediately die!

WTF?

The Combat

I should clarify, I have no problem with a swordfighting mechanic that's actually somewhat realistic and doesn't involve soldiers lining up orderly while you dispense with each henchman in sequence. It sounds great on paper.

But this is just retarded. At first, I thought the controls were just completely broken, because the character refused to block half the time. Then I realize, the spells use the same resource bar as blocking. How does this make any sense? So far, everyone's treated me with total mistrust and disdain because I'm some sort of powerful, dangerous wizard, but if I actually try to do anything more than parlor tricks, the guy apparently needs an instant breather to recover. Do you not want people to use magic at all?

So the block mechanic is out, and doesn't absorb all damage anyway, so I guess I should evade instead? Only, this Witcher—who supposedly sword-fights so effectively that you can't even 'see the blade'—gets stuck on literally everything. Objects have giant invisible bounding boxes that stick out half a meter in each direction. It makes you fight in cluttered dungeons, where the tiniest ledge is an impenetrable barrier that you must walk around. And then there's the targeting mechanic, which jumps around more than a rabbit on speed. And which insists on targeting the second row of guys, rather than the first row of people who are ACTUALLY SWINGING AT ME.

WTF is wrong with these people? Did they never play the Prince of Persias? Assassin's Creed?

'Cos it seems the combat requires exactly the sort of seamless stringing together of moves that those games revolved around, but instead of making that easy, it punishes you mercilessly by queuing up long moves and executing them even when they no longer make sense. You'd think the Witcher would know that lunging ahead into a newly formed circle of swordsmen isn't the best tactic. But it seems I have either the choice of mashing the buttons and having half the moves be completely suicidal, or taking my time and getting slashed to bits while I retarget.

I must be missing something here. It must be my fault. Some obvious mechanic that would keep me from dying all the time.

Hey look! I think I actually was able to read that tip! It said press "I" to go into the inventory. Let's try that... WHAT THE FUCK? Did I accidentally enter the Eve Online stock market instead? What's with all these recipes cluttering up the UI? Does this mean crafting is essential to the game? Who knows. I know I've picked up 5 cartloads of random stuff, but I can't tell which recipes I can actually make. So I click around some more looking for something recognizable: ah, potions! I know how those work. And I could definitely use a health boost and some immunity here.

So..... how do I use them? Click. Fail. Drag. Fail. Click click click. Fail. In frustration, I Google for instructions and find out you have to press "Meditate" to take a potion. And you can't take potions during combat. You have to anticipate.

So, the game expects me to be clairvoyant now? How am I supposed to know what's around the corner? Especially when the story consists of disjointed episodes that begin and end right in the middle of action?

I Get It Now

I think I understand now. The game is so controller snappingly frustrating that you have to play every section a dozen times anyway! And you will definitely memorize the entire game this way, because the developers apparently don't understand the purpose of "Skip".

You see, "Skip" is not a feature that exists so frothing Xbox-fanboys can get through a game without being exposed to a reading level that would make them uncomfortable. It exists because in-game storytelling loses its cinematic and emotional impact when it's repeated more than once. So when I press "Skip", that doesn't mean "Skip this one line of dialog and then force me to watch your elaborate camera pan anyway and then make me skip 10 more things". It means "Skip to the next section where I'm in control again". You need to accurately understand user intent, not just lazily force them to hammer the skip button in frustration.

And here we come to the final insult the game throws at you. It's subtle, but telling. In modern games, when you die, the game simply reloads. It recognizes that death is generally an undesirable outcome and that you will generally just want to retry.

Not so in Witcher: it actually asks you if you want to reload! And it doesn't even select the "Yes" button by default!

I guess this is the one usability insight that the developers actually got right. This game is so frustrating, that after a couple deaths, you'll simply want to quit and throw it away.

Wall of text, TLDR.

What do you live on? Social Security? Do you want everything done for you?

I don't know it seems to me like a balance of things. In one extreme there are people who are not used to being valued, for example for their money and in the other extreme there's people who think everything has to be easy.

I think you're the second.

No, I'm a software developer who would get fired if he made something as obviously flawed as this.

Go find an old Nintendo or Atari and plug your cartridges in and play. Leave PC games to those that know how to deal with computers.

I actually read the whole thing; it was mildly entertaining. A few valid points aside, I felt it was most important to point out that this is a sequel, meaning the stuff in the beginning you don't know anything about, wouldn't feel so alien if you had played the first game, or if you were otherwise familiar with the world the story takes place in. Also, the game series is based of a series of books, which means the game's writers aren't 'jerking off' making up random names for the magic signs, just because. Lastly, I'm going to attribute your installation problems to bad luck, or a fluke. The validation is, as you pointed out, optional. I bought the game, downloaded it at maximum speed (unlike when I download from Steam), and clicked install. No problem whatsoever, within minutes the game was up and running.

What does age have to do with it?

Unless you've just arrived on planet Earth, or this is the first forum you've ever been on, if you want to get a point across you don't include the Gettysburg Address.

Software developers work to specifications, not their own prejudices.

The game is working substantially as designed. Just because you do not believe it should have been designed that way gives you no grounds for claiming that the game is in any way defective.

I actually find it hilarious that a so-called "software developer" is having so many issues (from the small amount of the wall-o-text I could bear reading).

I never had most of these issues, I must be a software genius.

All I can suggest to you is to not use those "software developer kits" via mail order.

Wait... there exists people who actually use the gog downloader?

As to the rest - I guess even software developers throw little kiddy fits once in a while eh?

Actually, a software developer is most likely to have the most issues. We all think the developer should have done it differently and we could have done it better.

The reality is, of course, that we have projected our own prejudices onto somebody else's work, torn them down just to make us feel superior, and of course never, never RTFM.

If you work as a code serf in a giant megacorp, making software that everyone hates to use, then sure.

The people who actually know what they're doing know that great software comes from iterating, from taking a holistic approach (i.e. "is this actually fun?") and from doing user testing early in the process, lest you put months of work into something that turns out to be a stupid idea.

I have no doubt that they really intended to make a great game, and it's clear that a lot of work went into it. But by any objective measure of usability, this game is a disaster, and this is not the only thread that is pointing this out.

The Witcher is already notorious for being a PC gamer's game, i.e. meant to be operated by people who actually find tweaking their setup an enjoyable hobby. Most people, even computer professionals, do not share that perspective. After a long day at work, they just want to sit down and play the damn game. Not babysit it for an hour. If you think this is an unrealistic demand, then you're delusional.

Do you know how your fridge works? What components are inside it? Would you be able to fix it if it broke? No, you just put food inside it and it gets cold. But for some reason, PC gamers still believe in a world where everyone's comparing compressors, buying special canisters of gas and not minding the fact that their fridge sounds like a jet engine and makes the food taste like lubricant.

Only by your measure. I have had no problems installing, launching, or updating the game. I did absolutely no tweaking to get it working satisfactorily. I have the same GOG distribution that you do. I do not find anything about the installation or the gameplay so inefficient or counterintuitive as to post a wall of text calling the developers fools and saying I could have done it better.

And your argument about a fridge is a straw man. I do not knock down straw men.

I will add another proverb of software development. Real developers do not apologize for software that is working as designed.

I'll start off by saying that you actually DO raise some good points, but you've gone about it in such a hostile, confrontational way that it instantly turns off people reading your post, or worse, riles them up so they go on the defensive and end up ignoring what points you were trying to make.

Now, my thoughts on your points raised:

The Setup

I bought my copy from a bricks-and-mortar store, so I didn't have to sit through the (admittedly very tedious-sounding) process you did. I downloaded the latest patches from CDPR's website and manually installed them. In my opinion, automatic patching processes should only be used for patches that are less than 100 MB; they run the risk of taking far too long to download and install on most people's machines otherwise.

I also don't understand why people seem to put Steam on this pedestal and praise it as the gold standard of digital distribution either. Sure, it's a decent system, as far as DD systems go, but it's far from perfect. It has this terrible habit of not telling me when it's installing updates for my games; I try to launch my game, it says "Preparing to launch [Game]...", and then the window closes, with no other information about what just happened. Is it installing an update? Did it crash? It just leaves me in the dark to guess.

Not to mention that it's downloads can be hideously slow to start. In the time between that first "Preparing to launch" window, it can take up to 5 minutes for it to finally start downloading the update, during which time you're left there to wonder if something's gone wrong.

The Launch

Yes, the multiple logo whammy did annoy me too. Thankfully, there's a mod you can download that fixes that problem, but I agree that this shouldn't have been there in the first place.

The Opening

It sounds like you aren't aware that the Witcher games are based on a popular Polish series of fantasy novels. All of the "obscure names" for the spells you mention are taken from the books, as are many of the monsters and locations you'll see in the games. If you played a game based on the Lord of the Rings, or Star Wars, or the DC Comic-verse, you'd want the game to stay faithful to it's canon lore, wouldn't you?

Generally, jumping into the middle of a series will leave you feeling lost and confused, whether it's a game, TV or novel series. I experienced something similar in the first Witcher game too, as I've never read the novel series. You rapidly pick up and learn about the game world if you just give it some time though. Complaining about how you don't understand what's going on in the beginning of the game is a bit of a meaningless complaint.

The Combat

I will readily agree that the Combat system in TW2 is harsh. VERY harsh. I came from the first Witcher game so I was at least familiar with the general ideas and mechanics used in combat, and I still died several times before I finally got the hang of things. (Penny-Arcade even did a comic on how brutal the combat difficulty was in TW2.) The game doesn't do itself any favours with an inadequate tutorial that doesn't properly explain a lot of the mechanics of combat and how you're intended to play the game. Fortunately, CDPR took this on board and are releasing a more thorough tutorial in their upcoming 2.0 update.

The auto-targeting mechanic is also very inefficient, and I agree with you that it should be removed altogether. Just let Geralt attack whoever happens to be in front of him at the time.

The potion drinking mechanic is explained when you get to a certain point in the story, but again, because combat is so punishingly difficult, you likely didn't get to that point before discovering the potions. I, too, miss the ability to just slug down potions in the middle of combat, and the short duration of potions doesn't really support the desire of the developers for the player to make "educated guesses" about when the player should drink them (I downloaded a mod that increases potion durations to 30 mins to counter this), but I admit that the new system is more faithful to the lore from the novels.

I Get It Now

Perhaps we've been playing different games, but every other RPG I've played only skips one line of dialogue when the 'Skip' button is pressed (unless it's a cinematic cutscene). Likewise, I don't recall any other game that automatically reloads your last save when you die; the game always asks you first. These complaints just sound like nitpicking more than anything else, I'm afraid.