QTE's are a strange choice in an RPG because their failure/success has nothing to do with your character build.

Witcher 2 can get away with it because its a very action-y action RPG, and its a gorgeous game that's fun to watch.

Still, moving towards actual QTE's is not something I'm thrilled about, personally I find the whole paradigm to be very uninspired.

Still, I really enjoyed the Kayran fight in TW2. I appreciate how the QTE's were very simple and very brief. I love how quickly you can end that fight once you know what to do - instead of the thing being dragged out across multiple QTE actions.

The Witcher 2 cannot get away with it because it is bad design. They are trendy braindead junk from a best-forgotten era of horrible arcade games.

It should be a low DPI mouse.

I have a G700 at 3200 DPI that I use mostly, but I swtich to my MX Revolution which is 800 DPI for the arm wrestling, it makes it much easier.

And 35-40 FPS shouldn't matter, I don't get much more than that.

QTE's suck. They add nothing to the game. They are fucking stupid, and an exercise for lame-brained console kiddies.

How in the world did CDPR think they are a good idea? They should be the first thing to go in TW3, unless they want it to be a retarded stupid-ass 'clicky when the prompt appears' adventure game.

Seriously, wtf were they thinking?

They didn’t really bother me and actually I enjoyed them somewhat. But I would also prefer some more complex ones. I am used to six buttons+ combos from other games (i.e. gameboy titles) so three should be the minimum. Especially in the fist fights I expected to be forced to press more than two buttons in a row (at least later in the game where your opponents got harder). As for the QTEs in cutscenes, they were alright, too. I only remember one time where I failed (in the fight with the dragon) so it’s not like they made you replay a certain scene again and again.

I don't get the people who loved the combat in the first game, but hate the QTE's in this game.

The combat in the first game was QTE's, the only difference is that you just press one button instead of alternating ones.

Not saying I like QTE's, I can't stand them, but I just don't see the difference.

If we were to use your logic then pretty much every game that mainly relies on pressing a single button (e.g. every FPS ever made) uses QTEs. You might want to look up the actual definition of Quick Time Events.

You have to be kidding.

Pressing a button in an FPS is not the same as pressing a button when told to or you fail.

Did I put it that badly?

You said that TW1 used QTEs since you were required to click the mouse button repeatedly in order to attack. The same goes for FPS games. Thus (by your logic) every FPS uses QTEs.

Got it now?

They're not QTEs because:

1) You initiate the attack in complete awareness of what will follow
2) You know the order of things, it becomes muscle-memory rather than stimulus-response
3) The 'failure state' of the attack can be used tactically to cancel the chain and take another action immediately, rather than "Too bad gotta start again", ie. it's not a failure state.
4) At any point during the attack you have a range of tools at your disposal that you can switch to and use if you decide to
5) You have various changing and emerging conditions to respond to that aren't solved by 'press the button that appears on the screen'

None of those things listed are features of any QTEs, all of them exclude the combat in the original from being considered a QTE.

Yeah, that's why the combat system of W2 is a lot better (if still far from perfect). The problem with QTEs in W2 is that they're often sprung upon you in the middle of cut scenes. Or at other points you're not expecting them. That's why the brawling in W2 isn't so bad, but the rest of the QTEs generally are.

That makes no sense. Neither of those posts.

Paying attention to cut scenes and being ready to tap whatever button at whatever moment aren't one and the same thing. You're no longer paying attention to what's happening in the scene, you're watching out for the next QTE.

That said, the over-reliance on cut scenes that fragment the gameplay is a flaw in and of itself. Adding in QTEs is a flaw within a flaw. I'd rather the game remained fully playable at all times. But if there does have to be a pause in the action then it shouldn't have this semi-interactivity thrown in at random intervals.

I just wish more games could have learned from Half-Life.

Well put Navagon