One problem I have with the whole Enhanced Edition thing is that I remember it making a huge difference to me in both The Witcher 1 & 2, but I can't remember exactly how :o) I can't really remember the details. I think it's easy to find details about 'adding content' and 'music' and 'many interface enhancements', but I haven't looked further to find out more (not really worth finding out). I do remember TW1EE adding a lot more variations on character models, which helped, but other details escape me. My hope is that with TW3's success, along with the 16 DLCs, 2 addons and anything else that might crop up in between, there will indeed be a GOTY compilation, but that might also result in a final push to do a lot more.

I've read some things about Patch 1.07 being a big one, so maybe patches alone will help a lot. I hope so.

Yeah. I've had very similar experiences with men on horseback.

Weirdly, at much higher levels, the wolves that stay at level 5 will consistently run away. And keep running. They don't stop. It seems as though there are things going on with the AI, but my thinking is that it may not be working completely as intended.

How I would like it to work is another matter. Not sure. I'm not sure how a wolf would know what level I am :o) Or to put it in a less gamey way, I'm not sure how a wolf would know how powerful I am. For me, the solution would be to simply not respawn them. I do like the idea of wolves regaining their population, but it doesn't come across that way to me. It just seems like a respawn. After killing the eight or so wolves in an area, there wouldn't be eight wolves just a week later, so I would say that Geralt cleared the wolves in the area and for the length of the game, they wouldn't come back.

I *wish* games developers would change the timer. Just make sure that a character(s) doesn't repeat the line eight seconds later. I find that baffling. In a crowded area I love general chatter/murmuring of a crowd, where nothing can actually be heard. That's fine, great even. But to have a character say the same thing six time a minute is just wrong. Why do games do this.

But yes, the conversations that go on around Geralt are wonderful. I even love some of the bickering which *isn't* played for laughs. Such things can do so much for a game. But I wish sound design would get a step up in general.

The 'bandit leader quests'! I assumed there was a bandit leader school in Skyrim churning them out. Graduation taking place every day :o)

It interesting, but I've found the Quests to repeat rather a lot in many ways. But then, maybe it's not so much that (although I think it is to some extent), but maybe it's more trying to find a Quest to do. But then, the long version of all that is very long :o) The short version is: I hate the Interface. I really do. I hate it. And that's been a part of why I've stopped playing. I really hope to go back to it, but the interface is just too cumbersome for me.

I do find that the Quests are fundamentally hand-holding in general design, which I'm not a fan of. Maybe that's just me. Go to place - Follow Witcher senses trail - Kill Thing - Return. I think I'd really prefer fewer, but longer Quests.

In contrast, the flaws have proved too much for me. But yes to your "WHYYYY?" :o) which I think sums up a whole bunch of stuff. I do think the 'clock ran out', as you said. The interface [yes, I'm going to bang on about that some more - so much for the short version :o) ] just seems laid on top of the game at the last minute, but crucially for me, didn't include much of what was later added to/learned from, The Witcher 2. On top of that though... < sigh > ... I loved the Interface for The Witcher 1. I really did. It had character. I may be in a minority on this, but I thought this was just fantastic:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-T2iuwj6anMk/Tyz2pam2AlI/AAAAAAAAA6I/ihWMnDLZkNU/s1600/WitcherCharacterSheet.jpg

This is what the interface for TW3 looked like at one point:

youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=EXFocg4qQ_0#t=742

I think that gave hints of something better, compared to:

youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=6O8qgBuWDbk#t=3196

I too, really hope they keep patching it. It will probably never get to the isual levels of The Witcher 1 and maybe the vast majority don't want it to, but I hope they can get to a level where I can look at my Quests list and find a way to assess where the Quests are all at once (or sort them or tag them or add a note or... something), without having to double click each one to make it active, then go to the map, then zoom out (but not far enough to be able to see the whole map at once - I hate that) only to find it's on the other side of the map, so back to the Quest list, which has reset to the top, closing all the subsections, so I reopen the section I was looking at and double click the next Quest... Eugh, I'll stop :o)

As for my faith in CDPR... it's waned. I'll see.

An enhanced edition that makes a huge difference in a game by improving it in many ways is a problem? Not sure I understand that. :)

Yeah, patch 1.07 is likely going to be pretty huge as they've been working on it for quite some time now. I'm glad that they'll be fixing and improving the game and hope they keep doing so for a long time and really putting their best effort into it as I think they did an amazing job already but it certainly could be improved too in terms of fixing bugs. At the same time when it does come out I'm going to ultimately end up reading the changelog and most likely there will be some things in there that are interesting and I'll want to see for myself, but I already finished the game now and while I am still going back into the after-game occasionally such as to do the new DLC quests or to look around for things I may have missed (found 3 things already), I don't want to really start a brand new game from scratch immediately either. I may end up missing out on some changes in the short term until I do my next full playthrough which probably wont be for months as I am playing The Witcher 1 right now and will be for some time I suspect.

Yeah, animals/monsters respawning in games can keep the world alive rather than being a desolate wasteland, but having absolutely ANYTHING respawn right in your face on-screen and do it in a loop right after you kill it is either a bug or just very crappy respawn configuration or implementation. For immersion purposes games respawning monsters should never do it on-screen and never do it in a way that the user perceives that it is happening at all. If possible, and I personally think it's always possible - it should be completely and totally transparent to the user so they don't ever get the impression that enemies randomly teleport in. It's very clear that they made this game with the intent that it is supposed to be a very high-immersion experience. Teleported insta-respawns are as non-immersive as you can get in a game like this. Fortunately it mostly only happens with what I'd call "wandering monsters" in D&D parlance as well as the occasional floating boss such as a wyvern or cockatrice here or there that will respawn over and over when you walk 40 feet away and come back and just keep doing that. Crowds of drowners, sirens, ekhidna, wolves and certain other enemies that are clustered around loot protecting it or are just wandering around - all do this too. Some places are worse than others which implies to me that they place enemies in "packs" and have attributes attached to these packs regarding their respawn rate/delay/location and other factors but that these variables are poorly configured. I don't think the game engine considers what direction you are looking at or how far away you are when it decides to respawn something too.

I wish they'd implement respawning more like Skyrim does where things like animals or enemies do respawn but not for a full week or two in-game time. By the time they respawn you have done shitloads of crap all over the map and are nowhere near where they respawn to know it happened. Nothing in Skyrim ever respawns in your face ever, that's one thing they got right even though Skyrim itself is quite buggy.

Well I have another problem which is similar to the autosheet thing.

I have my sword out, but I cannot block... why? Because I'm not in combat! OMG WTF.

Ever tried to reach for bandit camp with archer in it? Did he ever shoot at you and you were unable to block the arrow? No? Lucky you! Happens to me all the time.

Yeah, totally agree. Definitely should increase the conversation/monologue/background dialogue repeat delay timers and also have enough varied things that everyone says more than one or two things although the game has that mostly good overall. There are some that repeat over and over and get annoying a bit though too. ;)

Hehehe. While they don't respawn on your face, nor even in a day or so it is annoying a week or two later passing by a place you cleared and having a rain of arrows come down on you just because you happen to be passing by. That's another thing that I find annoying in some of these type of games is that 99% of the time when you pass by a building or area where people are - they are automatically enemies who actively attack you. They don't even consider who you are or whether you are friend or foe either, or whether you are 200 levels higher than they are they just attack attack attack most of the time. I mean I'd like to clear out a fortress in Skyrim and set up booby traps with bombs. Then let the Foresworn come back and try to set up fort there again!

Another thing that I find annoying that happens in every single game ever made - without exception... yes that's right not even one single game ever made ever gets this right....

<suspense drumroll>

Ok, you stealthily sneak into a building/castle/fortress/whatever and absolutely NOBODY knows that you are there. A guard is on patrol and comes by and you completely stealthily take him out absolutely silently. Now nobody knows you are there nor do they suspect anyone is there. They have outer defenses and inner defenses and no reason to think or believe that anyone has infiltrated the "base" to be on the lookout for. The normalcy they are used to in this situation is hearing fellow guards on patrol or chatting, and normal background noise including footsteps and random clinking of armour or clothing etc. Ok, so you took out a guard and now you are walking around yourself and you get within a certain radius of an enemy to where he can now hear your footsteps or other noises you are making. He instantly responds to this noise by his AI going from STATE_PASSIVE_PATROL to STATE_ENEMY_DEFCON1, draws his weapon in the room he is in with a closed door, opens the door and comes out charging directly to you like he somehow had a way of hearing you in the first place, then also being able to tell your footsteps are different somehow than anyone else who walks around the place, and he JUST KNEW those were ENEMY FOOTSTEPS or ENEMY CLOTHES RUSSLING somehow, and concluded he must go into fight to the death instantly mode, as well as knowing EXACTLY where you are and making a b-line for you.

WHY????

In reality, if a guard is in a room expecting only other guards in the area and has no reason to believe otherwise, I peek in from a distance and see he is facing away from me, I should realistically be able to take out the intermediate guards and walk right up to the door non-stealthy and his mind isn't going to even think an enemy is there. He'll be thinking "Oh, Bob is coming back with the coffee" and I can open the door of the room and walk right in without being stealthy, come up behind him and knife him in the neck while he goes into shock wondering what just happened, without any clue an enemy even exists. But no... enemy AI always can see through walls, hear every noise 2 miles away and know 100% exactly what it is without even seeing it yet. That is so lame in 2015 it isn't funny. In 1990 there was an excuse, now it's 2015 - I want more realism.

Yes that is fucking annoying! Exactly what you said! The game doesn't remember the last-zoom level on the map so you go to the map then switch to another screen temporarily and come back to the map and have to rezoom and pan around again, and again, and again, as well as the quest tab thing where it forgets what ones you had expanded and which one was actively selected making you have to do it over and over and over again. Another annoyance is that it constantly reorders/reshuffles the quest list in a way I can't determine the algorithm other than "choose a random number". I double click a quest and that reshuffles the order of all quests in that category. I want to choose say "Secondary Quests" then start with the top one, flip to the map to see where it is, come back to the quest list and go to the next quest in the list then to the map, repeat through the entire quest list, but the damn thing REORDERS the list every time you come to it, so you have to mentally keep track of what ones you looked at already. ARGH

I have total faith in them personally. Just because the game has some bugs, has areas where it could be further improved or enhanced, or is implemented in a way that is suboptimal or not the most user friendly doesn't stop the game from being awesome for me. They may potentially improve many of these things over time, but even if they don't they'll still get my money for their next game as I'm quite happy with the experience I have gotten from this game so far regardless of bugs/glitches/quirks/etc. That's just my own feeling though and I know everyone doesn't necessarily feel the same way as well all have different expectations from games and from the companies that make them.

Yep, I've had that happen several times. The problem as I see it is the game even having to have "modes" for things, because when you're in combat mode you can't do things like jump or climb, so you can end up getting trapped even if the obstacles that trap you are only 1 foot high or so, very unrealistic. This is ultimately because gamepad controllers only have so many buttons on them so they _ have_ to double up on one button so that it is jump when not in "combat mode" and roll when in combat mode. This limitation then just gets passed on to keyboard players also because they want all players to have the same unified gameplay experience or whatever.

I'd prefer instead:

- don't auto-draw or auto-sheath my sword
- if you're going to have move mode and combat mode separate, trigger them when the weapon is drawn/sheathed and not when AI determines an enemy is within range because no AI can properly determine that reliably.
- Give users the option to configure things that default to doubling up on one button on a gamepad to be able to be separate keys/buttons on a keyboard or other controller that does not have those annoying limitations because I want to be able to jump and climb _while_ fighting and other PC games do allow this so it is totally possible (regardless of whether those games work well with a controller or not, just make the controller version stay the same).

On a completely different note, I'd also like them to add support for the Logitech G27 racing wheel as I want to drive Roach with a racing wheel and pedals. :)

Weird thing is, Patch 1.05 said:

"Fixes an issue where the player could not deflect arrows/bolts at longer distances."

But I'm having this problem as well. After 1.05 it seemed to be sorted out, but I don't know if it wasn't *truly* sorted out or if the problem came back with Patch 1.06

Perhaps some of the bugs that get fixed are actually fixed, but only if you start a new game from scratch. I've heard some people mention rumours of behaviour like that with some bugs they experienced although I don't have any links handy as to what they were. That would suck though big time if it is true.

Hm. I have the ability, and I even socketed it to gain a multiplier on the mutagen, but I actually never even attempted to parry an arrow.
I usually just roll around until I'm face to face with the archers and kill them. Then I take it slow and kill the rest with ease.

I've been trying to reply to your other post, but it just keeps timing out. So I'll rpely to this one and see if it works. Could be the Forum is busy, or my reply is too long :o) or the Quoting formatting is messed up, but I'll see if this posts...

Yes, that would indeed suck. Although it is the sort of game to be played more than once, having to restart is always a pain, but having to restart after what could well be over 100 hours, might lead people to just keep playing, bugs and all. Hopefully that's not the case.

My last post was fine, but this still wont post. I've tried a few things, but now I'm going to split this in two, to see if the post was too long.

Agreed. The more unique lines the better, but I'd be absolutely fine if resources were such that they had to be limited to the extent that there were periods of silence (except general murmur/chatter in crowded areas). It gets a little ridiculous when I find myself thinking that most of the NPCs seem to have some sort of anxiety disorder.

Yes, I always hope for a cautious/neutral status for NPCs. They're in their fortification and I'm one person, so maybe hear what I have to say? I might have weapons to sell... lots and lots of weapons :o)

I remember playing games from the original Rainbow Six series (you may know, but a very tactical/strategic squad based anti-terrorist games from 1998 - even had a planning part where the routes of squads could be mapped) and opening a door to flashbang the room to rescue the hostage(s) would often result in instant Mission Failure as a hostage was killed. No time to even throw a flashbang. For so long I've wanted guards to be... bored :o) Maybe not so much in a Rainbow Six type game, but at least fatigued. Or a mix of both. I always thought that the guards walking around a fort/castle would not be prepared for instant combat along the lines that you were saying. Footsteps could be anyone. I'm good with them saying "That you Bob?", but even then, would they do so in a side room? How often would the castle be breached? How often would someone be in the fort who shouldn't be there? It would be fantastic to have a guard on the wall theoretically more alert, if he was just there by himself, with very few people wandering about at 2am, *but* since it's 2am and he's by himself, I would like to him to be more bored and tired.

But I'd also like a more - and I hate to use the word - organic approach, whereby if a guard all by himself was knocked out, then he'd be unlikely to be found for a while, but if he were tipped over the side of the castle, he wouldn't be found for ages. Or tipping him over the other side into the courtyard, would raise a commotion as other guards rushed to see if he was okay and try to figure out what happened, giving the player time to get inside the inner layer.

Instead, it's possible to kill a guard and other guards not even react to the body. I'm sure some games do certain things better than others (the Hitman series does a few things in this area I think and Commandos), but I'd like to see it have much more resources put towards it.

One of my wishes - and I know this is very much in the land of wishing :o) - is for there to be a stop to the endless cycle of graphics and focus on other things. One of the primary ones being AI. I think we all know that AI isn't really Artificial Intelligence, but I still wish more work was put into NPC/animal/monster behaviour and the like. Graphics is such a huge area and gets so much attention and yet it becomes more and more difficult to populate a world with details. And yet NPCs and monsters can still do... dumb things. So very dumb.

I *love* the geese in The Witcher 3. Seriously. Kinda simple in many ways, but for me, it adds *so* much.

Okay, so it wasn't my formatting :o) It seems as though the post was too long. That should tell me something, so it's totally fine if you wanna cut a load of stuff out or leave it. I had no idea there was a character limit. Assuming that's what the problem was.

Eugh, yes. Sorting through the Quests to find the next thing to do seems to have been created to make it more time consuming, confusing and ultimately frustrating. Whilst looking through the Quests, I've looked at the same one more than once, as it's in a different place in the order (as you said). And the same Quests that I'm not going to be able to do for at least ten levels are always there, along with the ones in Skellige, when I'm in Novigrad. One problem is, I often want a dragable system for Quests, on the map. The details of which are moot as it's not going to happen due to consoles. Even well funded games seem to add the interface for all platforms at the last minute, so the possibility of having unique controls/UIs for different platforms just doesn't seem to happen.

I think I said it before, so I'll try not to labour the point :o) For me, it's been too many things that have tipped things on balance. I was rather unhappy with the lack of Key Rebinding and then the little things became an annoyance, in that the Changelog would just say 'changes to key rebinding', without giving any details and it was left to Players to try and figure out that some things still weren't changed. That and a fair number of other things :o) It's actually okay in that, I look forward to Cyber Punk 2077 (I think that's its name), but I'll wait until it's out for a bit until I decide if I'm going to get it. Which is fine in that I can decide. I'd like to be able to play on release, but... I just hate the dramas. I hate the defence of things. The silence of Developers while the Players argue it out and... I can do without it.

In an odd way, people are still okay with such things as Kickstarters, which I'm also not backing anymore, but as long as people are okay with such things, then they will still get made. And if they end up on GoG, then I can have a look and see if I want to buy. But I avoid the situations where after 3 years the Developer says that 'they said they would try and get a DRMFree version, but it wasn't an absolute promise', so the game ends up on Steam only - that's an example, nothing to do with TW3 :o)

It's a shame, as I wanted to back such things. But I tire of fighting the battles that can so often ensue. As for CDPR, I don't know, I just... too many disappointments for me. But I don't begrudge those who who think/see things differently.

I have the same problem all to often, sometimes just on random posts and sometimes just on lengthy posts. I believe the forum has a maximum post length that it enforces by ignoring your post and just leaving the submission dialog spinning in a circle forever instead of detecting this situation and issuing a warning to reduce the size of the post or something. I always try to copy and paste my text into a text file in case the crappy forum code eats the post - which happens too often. :)

Indeed. Hopefully they'll get out at least 1 or 2 big mega bugfix patches this month for people.

Yup, gotta break up long posts into multiple posts unfortunately. I try to trim out excess quoting too, or leave the quote there for the reference URL to be clickable but remove the text, saves space.

Yeah that happens in most games including The Witcher 3. The NPCs engage in dialogue, but then repeat it over and over without enough time lag in between. In some games they say the exact same thing over and over too. Even if they vary it, they're still repeating things to you over and over that they already said a million times. It can get a little annoying.

Yeah, I wish the state machines in the games had more states to consider and based the selection upon more criteria, it'd make for a much richer game experience.

Never played the original Rainbow 6 and I can't get it to install+run on Windows 7 (I own the DVD). I played Rogue Spear on XP years ago and that was pretty wicked, but those are the only two in the series I've played although I own a bunch of them. I own all the Ghost Recon and Splinter Cell games also up to 2007.

Yeah, the 'that you Bob' would make sense in some situations. There are situations where footsteps would be unexpected and then it would make sense for a guard to get antsy, and other situations where they are completely normal and shouldn't even make a guard purposefully turn his head. I mean if he incidentally turns his head or sees a reflection or something and that makes him look and he sees you then that's one thing. But everyone's footsteps largely sound the same with minor exceptions such as a woman walking with high heels or other similar where they might actually sound out of place in a military base or such depending on the situation. What's funny is that there are other situations where you can walk right up to some enemies and they're staring away at you like a robot in standby mode not doing anything at all, just staring at a wall or other uninteresting direction.

Another situation that makes me laugh is when you snipe an enemy with a suppressed rifle or similar from a distance and he goes down and his buddy that was smoking a cigarette 5 feet away doesn't notice at all, turns around and continues his patrol walking right over his buddy's dead body as if it wasn't there and there is nothing to be suspicious of. Skyrim is even worse in that regard - you snipe someone in stealth mode and someone "thinks" they heard something.. "Is someone there?" and they walk over and see the dead body and might say casually "hmm, that's odd" then look around for 5 seconds and then say "I guess my imagination is playing tricks on me". So basically "I see my dead colleague here, but because I looked around the cave for 5 seconds and didn't see any threats I will conclude that my friend isn't dead and I'm not actually tripping over his body. So unrealistic it isn't funny.

Here's what's even funnier.... how some morons out there say video games cause violence and they're training grounds for people to kill people. If that were true, they'd be easy to catch because they'd shoot real people then stand there figuring the cops will look at the dead body, do one scan of the horizon and say "must be my imagination" then go back on patrol. :)

Exactly, and some games do implement that. Games that spring to mind as giving a shit about finding a dead body and also letting you do something about it such as grabbing and dragging or carrying the body include:

- Splinter Cell series
- NOLF series
- Skyrim ( to a lesser extent of importance, but it does work)
- Far Cry

Of the above, Far Cry was quite interesting because not only did they care if they found a dead body, but they would communicate with each other and put together a squad and the whole place would come alive including soldiers at a distance, then they'd do a sweep to find you. It felt so much more like what real humans would do. I really liked that.


Hahahaha, I'm replying while reading so I said things you already did without realizing it. :) I'll read the rest first now before replying more... <grin>

Absolutely! I love better graphics too, but lately I've been thinking about various things that would be cool for games to take into account and there are zillions of ideas. They'd all burn up small amounts of CPU/RAM though and ultimately if games implemented more of that stuff and it used up more resources they'd have to make some tradeoffs which might mean not having the absolute most cutting edge graphics. All games make these type of tradeoffs of course, but I sometimes wonder - what if they made the graphics tradeoff much bigger? What if the underlying game was given 2/4/8/16 times the CPU resources and that was taken away from the graphic engine? Imagine the complex simulation mechanics and other things that could be possible!

Maybe the ground is comprised of certain soil ingredients and the plants in the game grow procedurally based on the soil content, how often it rains, etc. and then they bud and more plants grow. Bees pollinate flowers which spread, etc. Instead of just having statically placed or randomly placed stuff. They could start out with some static things but it could grow like a living world. That would be kind of cool as the world would change more dynamically while you play. Certain plants would favour certain soil conditions, weather, etc. Likewise for wild animals, where they are a life cycle, there are varying ages/sizes of them in packs, they hunt the have their "home" which might be a cave or whatever and when they die they're dead - no traditional respawn. New animals are born and the animals roam and find new territory randomly etc. Same thing with humans and families too, more of a variety of ages of characters in the games, and everyone should have a purpose. They have a job and work, and they actually buy food and consume it and it is all kept track of. The food comes from actual plants/animals in-game whether from a local farm or a merchant brings it. If the merchant gets killed the town is low on food for a while and prices go up etc. It would be some of the elements of a 4X game but without the 4x micromanagement - rather it's just a "living game world" so to speak, it's all calculations and simulation done in the game engine in the background rather than a player playing "god".

That would be rather interesting to see, and the more elements that are simulated the cooler it'd be IMHO. I'd give up some cool graphics to have a more dynamic living world personally. Also, I'd rather see the animals, plants and other aspects more procedurally done rather than scripted. Scripted sequences work for some situations, but I'd rather others be dynamic and procedural. As a case in point, the dragons in Skyrim are always a different encounter when you cross paths. There are similarities but the whole experience is a different battle each time for the most part, the AI of where they will fly, land, attack, etc. makes every fight quite different. In The Witcher 3 I found most of the harpies, sirens, ekhidna to be the same fight every time - they fly the same flight paths, do the same things in a small radius around a fixed point they're pinned to. You can find griffins, wyverns and cockatrices in the game "in the wild" where they should be doing their day to day routine whatever that is - but they're not. Instead there is a fixed point on the map and they're flying in a 10-20 foot circle around it endlessly until you get within range right underneath them pretty much, then they switch states from STATE_IDLE_HOVER_IN_CIRCLE to STATE_FLY_SCRIPTED_SEQUENCE to STATE_ATTACK_PLAYER and toggle between the last two. Once in battle with them it varies a bit more like Skyrim does, but the pre-fight just seems so scripted too often and immersion breaking.

Yup, that's exactly what was happening to me. And I *always* copy and paste my posts to a text file, just in case something goes horribly wrong :o)

I actually haven't checked recently for any word on 1.07, so I should probably do that. I'm very interested to see what CDPR will come up with, since the hugeness of 1.07 may have a degree of rumour about it, but still hopeful.

They just posted some info about the upcoming patch on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/thewitcher/photos/a.165254449330.117240.9659019330/10153120773094331/?type=1