Witcher Things you would change?

The Witcher
Yeah, but you still stay in "battle mode" when they're around, which means you can't pick up stuff. Gathering herbs, monster parts and loot is kinda important, so you'll often end up having to kill the drowners anyway, and that's just so much easier when they're not running away from you... Nice idea from CDP, but poorly realized.

What's wrong with just sheathing your sword?
 
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Not many things I would change about The Witcher, but it would have been nice if you could place items into chests. Seems rather silly that you can only remove things.
 
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Yeah, but you still stay in "battle mode" when they're around, which means you can't pick up stuff. Gathering herbs, monster parts and loot is kinda important, so you'll often end up having to kill the drowners anyway, and that's just so much easier when they're not running away from you... Nice idea from CDP, but poorly realized.

True, true. I think I may have complained about that before as well. It has been a while since I played the game. Iirc it was worse in the final cemetery area than in the swamp. They definitely needed to tune down the monster frequency there!

@ PJ: You can't just sheath your sword when there's an enemy triggering hostile situation. ...Unless I'm a moron and missed that feature?
 
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I am a notorious nitpicker, and my list of complaints against the Witcher is fairly short (I'd still give the game 4.5/5 stars) even if I sound whiny.:D

I'm not sure I get the fast travel options complaint? The maps (levels) are not that large, and you are usually confined to only one at a time. To me having some teleport gateway or whatever it is you have in mind on such a small map, in every map, would just look silly and break immersion. What exactly did you have in mind?

This is a pet peeve of mine (I used a ctrl-Y teleport cheat in Baldurs Gate II, saving hours of walking across maps), and the Witcher is by no means the worst offender in the gaming world. In general I sort of like Oblivions "fast-travel to already visited locations" principle.

One does spend a lot of time just running back and forth in the first four chaptes even though the maps arent that huge. You are right that teleports everywhere would be nonsensical, but I think see something like the kid that moves you around town in the Icewind Dale II prologue could be put into some of the locations. For instance it would be nice to be able to simply click on Alvin in Chapter four and say "let's go to the fields", "let's go to the beach" etc. Luckily C3 where you have to traverse the longest distances also offers a fasttravel service.

The principal solution I'd go for in an Aurora engine game would be to offer direct routes between all maps in a chapter where that make sense, but only make those available as you've manually cleared your way to the place once. An extra rowboat here, a guide there, etc... Or you could use the old method of Baldurs gate et al where you end up on the world map when you exit a map.

Your complaint about too many drowners to kill is definitely on target, but believe it or not you can easily fix this by purchasing a drowner repelling talisman in-game.

Sadly not a fix as implemented, for the reasons mentioned by others. Your memory of this being much less of a problem in the swamp than in the swamp cemetary (C5) is perfectly correct. In the C2-C3 swamp the monster density is low enough that you can run away from the critters most of the time even without the amulet.

The talisman would have been an elegant solution if implemented just a tiny bit better (make the drowners run a bit further away from the source of their fear) or if the engine had allowed you to exit areas or pick up ingredients with enemies around.

Btw, you can sheath the weapon, but that isnt a solution as it isnt the status of your weapon that determines whether you can leave an area or pick up things from the ground... This is a poor design decision that I think stems from the devs wanting to make it impossible to escape key fights.

As for the last point, that is just too much hand-holding and cuts down on replay factor tremendously, but that's just my opinion.

Not breaking quests in transitions is a design challenge of all event-driven games, and my first response is to implement the brute strength solution;)

I dont agree that "point of no return" warnings matter for replay value at all (the replay value of the Witcher is almost exclusively determined by the mutually exclusive, alternative quests and their outcomes, and having your NPCs state that you have to pack ALL your necessities in two or three more places wouldnt affect that at all), but I can admit that it could break immersion. The problem is that the game already warns you often enough to break immersion, but inconsistently.

You miss out on it in at least one crucial instance (the end of C1 where you might lose your potion stash and the sources of alcohol), while in another instance (the end of chapter 4) you may get such info shoved into your face by Dandelion when it isnt needed. Getting rid of warnings would work as well if some other aspects of the game were tweaked (the C1 situation would for instance be a non-issue with unlimited inventory), so I guess consistency either way would be an improvement.
 
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Difficult to add to this already quite nice list of suggestions. One thing that comes to mind though is the option to name save-games, as is possible in almost any other game today, and possibly the distinction between autosave, quicksave and normal save (quicksaves look just like normal save-games currently).

Probably I am in a minority, but I generally like to store a save-game before important plot events in case I want to try a different route later on or want to show the game to some friends in addition to the regular saves every few minutes / half hour. If your only hint is the time of day and Geralt's general location, this can be pretty cumbersome. Being able to name them would also make it easier to delete irrelevant save-game files.
 
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Agree regarding the save-games, but I find that it has been a trend for many games I like in recent years to not allow any naming of saves. Gothic 3 for instance doesnt allow it either:( It seems like such a small thing to add and has been standard for ever, so why did it go out of fashion?

I also find it pretty darn annoying that the game doesnt stick with one (or possibly a few "rolling") quick- and/or autosave slots. The savegame folder grows in size pretty quickly (for some reason I had stability issues with the EE so I used the quicksave a lot), and since the savegame list opens a lot slower with more save files (some pre-fetching crap no doubt) this can get pretty annoying. I ended up deleting all the older savegames through the windows interface.
 
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I also find it pretty darn annoying that the game doesnt stick with one (or possibly a few "rolling") quick- and/or autosave slots. .


Huh? It does, at least for the auto-saves. It only keeps 4-5 different autosaves before it starts to overwrite them.
 
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Huh? It does, at least for the auto-saves. It only keeps 4-5 different autosaves before it starts to overwrite them.

Hmm, you are right about the autosaves, on closer look there only seems to be four of them. I probably missed that as the game doesnt show that many savegames in the list simultaneously:)

My complaint for the quicksaves remain though, I have a folder that only consists of these four autosaves plus the quicksaves from the terrorist situation in C4 to the end of the game, and it has 61 files in it. One can of course limit the number of slots by saving manually through the menu, but that is an unnecessary hassle.
 
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Now that I'm in Chapter 5, I can name something else that I would definitely change.

What the hell were the devs thinking when they decided you shouldn't be able to access your storage for the whole chapter?
 
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Yep, that is idiotic and two popular mods put your storage with either Kalkstein (blocking his alchemy shop) or the dwarven dentist.

Dandelion gives you access to the storage, but I dont think (or rather dont know, is it possible to go back to the dike and find him there?) if you can get to him before resolving most of C5. He is too remote to be useful at any rate.

IMHO this is one more reason to have an infinite inventory, which both would save on the backtracking to stores and storage and make it more attractive to go full blown alchemist...
 
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Dandelion gives you access to the storage, but I dont think (or rather dont know, is it possible to go back to the dike and find him there?) if you can get to him before resolving most of C5. He is too remote to be useful at any rate.


It's actually the very end of Chapter 4 when you're with Dandelion on the Dike. Chapter 5 doesn't start until you pass through the gates of Old Vizima.


Just discovered another (imo) developer blunder last night.
After killing both of the trophy monsters in Chapter 5, the Royal Huntsman will offer you a special reward if you killed all the trophy monsters in the game. You can choose between Moonblade (silver sword), or a Mahakaman Rune Sihill (steel sword). He doesn't actually tell you the names of the swords before you choose though, he just says something like - "a powerful steel sword" etc.

Then, if you complete the "Won't hurt a bit" quest that also ends in Chapter 5, the dwarf gives you a Mahakaman Rune Sihill as a reward. So it's possible to end up with 2 of that sword.
 
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I thought it was a great game overall, but I think too much time was spent in the 'Swamp.' I got pretty tired of that map by the time I finished the game.
 
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I'm in the Epilogue right now, and I must say I'm a little disappointed. Too many RPG cliches near the end. It doesn't change my overall opinion of the game though, it's definitely in my top ten crpgs of all time.

The Witcher's strength was in its middle chapters (2, 3, and 4) imo.
 
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It's actually the very end of Chapter 4 when you're with Dandelion on the Dike. Chapter 5 doesn't start until you pass through the gates of Old Vizima.

Yep. Is it impossible to go back to the dike once in C5?

IIRC he lets you access the storage towards the end of C5, after the meeting between Radovid and Foltest, just before heading off towards the Order cloister. That is of course way too late to be of any use and should be changed.

I think you even can get a third Mahakam sword by aggravating a certain reward-giving NPC, but that is not a very big deal since I dont think it is hinted anywhere that the sword in question is unique...

But on a somewhat related note I would like to have the silver sword slot changed to behave like the iron sword. Since the various effects arent explained in any depth whatsoever one might want to use trial and error to tell which rune sword works best, but that isnt possible since you are limited to carrying one silver sword. I dont think there is anything to prevent a worse sword from kicking out a better one from the slot either.

The monster trophy slot seems to also work that way, but that isnt a problem except for in chapter 5 (I wonder what happens if you kill both trophy monsters without going back to the huntsman in between).
 
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I think you even can get a third Mahakam sword by aggravating a certain reward-giving NPC, but that is not a very big deal since I dont think it is hinted anywhere that the sword in question is unique...

But on a somewhat related note I would like to have the silver sword slot changed to behave like the iron sword. Since the various effects arent explained in any depth whatsoever one might want to use trial and error to tell which rune sword works best, but that isnt possible since you are limited to carrying one silver sword. I dont think there is anything to prevent a worse sword from kicking out a better one from the slot either.

The monster trophy slot seems to also work that way, but that isnt a problem except for in chapter 5 (I wonder what happens if you kill both trophy monsters without going back to the huntsman in between).


The problem with the Huntsman offering that sword is that, as you mention, it can be acquired elsewhere, while the other one he offers is unique. It shouldn't even be an option imo, he should just give you the other one.

The remains of trophy monsters will not disappear until you remove the trophy, so you can kill one and come back for it later if needed.
 
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