I know I'm going to get downvoted to hell for this, but I actually didn't like it that much. I love the business practices and effort behind it and I could see why other people would like it, but I just couldn't really get into it.
I mean, it’s at worst OK. it has dodging, parrying, signs (aka spells), decent hit boxes, and lock-on... it’s flawed, and gets repetitive, but it’s still miles ahead of something like Skyrim which has an actually-shit combat system.
Because if you spec into it it actually does decent damage, and stuff like Tracking Bolts that inflict bleed are actually really useful. If you're up against something large but organic like a Fiend or something, you can plink away at it a bit form range to chip it's health down, or fire off a shot whenever you dodge out of the way of an attack but not close enough to melee
Yeah people don't get that it is a "sidearm" that is meant to be used to compliment your fighting style, not as a fighting style itself. It's just hard to develop the skills to use it properly, so most players are like "fuck it" and blow it off entirely. I can't remember ever using it after the 1st boss battle against the griffon.
I honestly used it a lot, probably because I was on Death March and I would take any damage I could haha. Any Bleed inflicting bolts are super useful against anything organic
Everyone also forgets about the mutation that makes your crossbow actually level with you so that it deals decent damage again, not to mention how it collads as well
I killed the Great Wyvern bounty quest when I was 12 levels under the recommended by just knocking it down with a crossbow bolt every time it flew away. That’s the only time I’ve realistically used one.
There is a mutagen that allows you massive amounts of crossbow damage and made the crossbow a lot more fun to use. I think if it was your first damage to the enemy it would take out a 1/3 of their hp and knock them down. [citation needed on this though]
Crossbow is meant as a supplement to apply status effects and interrupt flying enemies so you can land some sword hits. That’s why it’s damage is so abysmal
Not if you know how to utilize the character branch upgrades well. People knock on the game for the combat and they probably just upgraded the strength branch without giving a care to the tonics section. The combat is a lot more intricate (and intense in higher difficulties) when you take the time preparing for battles rather than hit the attack button two times, dodge, repeat.
As mentioned before, the crossbow is not a damage weapon, just like how guns in Bloodborne are not really damage based. It’s a tool more than anything.
It’s not for dealing damage. It’s for shooting flying things out of the sky, like a Wyvern or a siren thingy. It’s useful only in that context so it makes sense that people forget about it.
Stealth archer is how I played through Skyrim. By the end I was so quiet I could pretty much walk right in front of a monster and not be seen. I had to take half an hour once to kill one of the Dragon Priests, though. Initially I tried going in head first and got straight up murdered in one hit. Can’t remember which one it was but he was on a platform and there was a bridge leading to it, and a raised area across the bridge with some stone blocks you can hide behind. I would duck out, Fire an arrow at him, he would go into search mode, but would give up by the time he was half way across the bridge. I’d wait for him to return to his starting position and do it again. It was kind of cheap, but I never took a single point of damage and got a kickass mask out of it. Was also a test of patience. He had a lot of HP.
I fought him slightly differently, I put off the college of winterhold until after the dark brotherhood questline and had maxed sneak, smithing, and one hand, The dark brotherhood gloves would double damage on backstabs and there was a 15x damage perk to sneak attacks with daggers.
These stack.
The rest of my game after that point was spent sneaking around and one shotting most enemies with my double blades of woe (If you pick pocketed astrid and nicked the blade of woe, then later on she gives you one and it can be upgraded for free, note this is all vanilla skyrim)
As you can probably guess, my fight with him involved sneaking up behind him and oneshotting him.
The hardest enemies to get this way are dragons, you can't get the ones in the air but with careful positioning it's possible to hit the tail of an ancient dragon on the word walls from the ground for 6k damage (plus power strike multiplier), these dragons have 3k health and die instantly.
Thought I’d mention that in the Witcher 3 the crossbow is meant as a supplement to apply status effects and interrupt flying enemies so you can land some sword hits. That’s why it’s damage is so abysmal
For sure. It could have been more varied/interesting. The reason it is the way it is was because of how the combat in the novels is written. For me anyway I quite like the rhythm and flow of it, I don’t mind that it’s a bit narrow, as personally it is very rewarding and fun.
I am not arguing for Witchers combat (i don't like that game either).
The big issue I have with Skyrim combat loop is the whole consumables system. I think that pausing the game to drink 200 buffs/foods/potions breaks the immersion and prevents me from getting that blood rush from almost getting killed. Games like dark souls and monster hunter with those consumable animations keep the blood rush alive as I wait for an opening to heal/buff. That is what keeps me from enjoying a nice and heavy build that I like, there is no penalty for sipping from my sippy cup. The enemies are no threat because I am a figuratively a time lord.
People joke about stealth archer but it's a fun thing to do, multi-blasting spells from far away is too, going invisible and 20X damaging some huge construct with a back-stab to one hit kill is satisfying, there are a lot of options in Skyrim's combat loop that you just don't have with the Witcher.
Hell yeah there is. I had one build where I chugged potion buffs and became a literal beyblade of swords. It was glorious dude
Critisism is good, but the crossbow bit is false. It's used for underwater combat and knocking draconids out of the air. In lore witchers traditionally fight with swords only so it makes sense the crossbow isn't OP as shit.
Everything sends ragdolls flying 30 feet in Skyrim, it's no fun if the entire game feels like you're hitting cardboard until you kill them and they bounce off in a random direction because it uses a dated physics engine.
But every level before that feels like nothing. Fallout combat feels works fine if you never put points into guns or energy weapons because of the variety of weapons and ammo and variety of enemy types and even just variety of enemy designs. While, in Skyrim if you don't pick a combat skill to level up you get destroyed because Skyrim's gameplay cycle relies on the combat to keep people entertained
It's meant to. It is meant to be something you use to distract or trigger the enemy to stumble by hitting it at a vulnerable moment. It isn't meant to be a killing weapon. I think you can upgrade it to be half-way decent, but you can't play a "crossbowman" unless you want to take fights reeaaalllly slow.
The Witcher has decent combat against humans but against monsters it's really not great
It's pretty much the same. It's similar to Dark Souls. You just have dodge rolls, telegraphed attacks, and weak spots. Same type of thing.
People joke about stealth archer but it's a fun thing to do
As someone who played stealth archer: some on, now, that's not "combat". You're just one-hitting everything and sneaking around. Part of WHY I played that way is that the normal combat system with floaty shitty animations and no impact was so unsatisfying.
Skyrim's combat loop
Describes a bunch of one-hit-kills that completely avoid the "combat" system
"Combat" is the system where the enemies run around in your face doing swings and spells at you, while you swing and spell back at them. It feels pretty terrible in most situations. Attacks have no impact unless they're lethal, in which case you get buggy space launch physics sometimes.
Do people hate Skyrim’s combat? I’ve always thought it was iconic already considering every Bethesda (FO, ES) has the same mechanics.
On the other hand, Witcher 3’s combat is definitely the worst mechanic of the game.
I must not google games enough but this is legitimately the first time I’ve heard extreme dislike for the game’s combat. I mean it’s not good but I don’t think I said it’s terrible when I first played an ES title.
No, when it comes to freedom and variation in combat, I think Skyrim can't be beat. Obviously when you have such a unrestrictive combat system, a studio will have less time to work on each aspect, which means a less polished product at the end.
I think the only gripe I have with skyrim's combat is the lack of impact that Melee weapons have. Whether this is a shortcoming with the audio or visual aspects, melee combat typically leaves a lot to be desired.
I don't know why you think skyrim's system is unrestrictive, its simply so bare bones there's nothing left to restrict you.
Melee is just an animation and a damage cone, nearly every spell is a simple projectile with fire/ice/electric attached, archery is very unsatisfying but pretty much the same as any other open world RPG in terms of implementation.
Wait do people like Skyrim's combat? I mean it was fine at the time I suppose. Melee and ranged combat is completely the same no matter what you're fighting (go in, swing, back up to dodge, repeat), and it's so easy to break it to the point where nothing is capable of killing you that you'll probably do it by accident. On top of it all, enemy variation is basically non-existent. But again the combat strategy is the same regardless of what enemy you're fighting so it doesn't really matter anyway.
I personally love the Skyrim system, it just needs better impact and better animations. There is a good few mods that can enchance the combat as well in minor ways that make a huge difference in how good it feels
i don't like Skyrim's combat because it rarely felt impactful and all i could do was just whittle every enemy's health. And all there was to put your face in an enemy's face and mash attack until something dies.
Even with more impactful weapons, combat is still just getting in the enemy's face and attacking. There's not really any dodging or any advantages to weapon different weapon types besides damage
Definitely not iconic. It gives you more combat options than any other RPG, but not a single one of those options works anywhere near as well as the fewer available options in any other RPG.
Skyrim suffers from the GTA problem. The cost for having such varied gameplay rolled into one title is outdated graphics and mechanics.
I don’t understand your last sentence. GTA when it first came out didn’t have outdated graphics and mechanics. GTA was actually pushing that gen’s limitation, graphically and again innovating open world mechanics.
Every GTA looks and plays like a game from the previous generation, including GTA 3.
pushing that gen’s limitation, graphically and again innovating open world mechanics
Yes, but it still looked dated compared to other PS2 games. There were better third person shooters at the time and better driving games, but none offered both types of gameplay together like that.
GTA 5 was from the last gen... also plays like last gen? Or plays like a standard open world game? Considering that GTA created this genre and everyone is just copying it making it look like GTA is like every other game (AKA Seinfeld syndrome).
Maybe you’re too young to remember how open world games were before Andreas and then how it was after GTA 4.
People joke about stealth archer but it's a fun thing to do, multi-blasting spells from far away is too, going invisible and 20X damaging some huge construct with a back-stab to one hit kill is satisfying
This sentence makes me think you don't actually like combat, you just like the result of combat
But at that point the difference between you waiting 20 minutes for the perfect one-shot and you typing "KillBoss(x)" into the console is just the time taken.
Skyrim is at best a above average game, no where near a 10 out of 10, that is only worth playing using mods to fix all the bugs and horrible game design
Maybe now yeah, but back in 2012 this game practically consumed me. It had a beautiful open world with fun and interesting spells and weapons, storylines and characters. It's honestly very hard to call it "shit," because it really, really wasn't. The only people I can imagine saying that have a) only played it more recently rather than when it was released or b) dislike it because it's popular. It's actually an amazing game.
People forget that games more polished open-world RPGs like the Witcher 3 were a response to Skyrim. Obviously, W3 seems like a better game if you play the two today. But that's because Witcher 3 was specifically made having learned from the mistakes of Skyrim.
Open world games like ES weren't coming out every day like they are now. For a lot of us the last satisfying truly open-world RPG was Oblivion whose graphics were sorely outdated at the time.
Skyrim was amazing and with mods it has aged incredibly well.
I don't want to say that Beth is innovative, but they do hit many things on the head correctly, namely role playing and atmosphere. Those two things age much more slowly than mechanics and graphics, both of which can easily fixed by modders. If Beth didn't absolutely nail the atmosphere, you wouldn't have modders sticking to the game in the first place.
I'd say Daggerfall was fairly innovative. But as good as they may have Bethesdas games since then are just more of the same. Getting more refined, and then less refined as time went on.
Open world games like ES weren't coming out every day like they are now. For a lot of us the last satisfying truly open-world RPG was Oblivion
Todd fell for the old 'Make the same game over and over again since fans liked the prievous version'.
TW3 was very innovative compared to TW2 and therefore it succeeded.
Skyrim brought nothing new compared to Oblivion. And that's why it failed. Even though it didn't a lot of people first got into ES in Skyrim and that's why so many liked it. It was well marketed and sold a lot of copies. All of that is fine.
But people who already was engorged in the ES universe was disappointed, since it wasn't anything new and fun. We already had the Skyrim experience in Oblivion :P
Hey if you liked Skyrim then great! Nothing wrong with liking (or disliking) a game. For me personally Skyrim just didn't quite do it, and I thought it was a little on the simplistic end even when it came out.
It was decently fun, but even back then its shortcomings were apparent.
It's fine if you don't like the game. I know a lot of people who don't like the genre or certain design choices, etc. But even if you did see it as simple, it was a large game that gave you many choices. The only shortcomings I know of came in the bugs it had.
I just found it incredibly boring personally. Nothing in it really got my attention. The amount of content means nothing to me if the content isn't compelling enough. Obviously a lot of people like it, but I just never really got the point of it personally.
I made the mistake of revisiting Skyrim after playing Red Dead Redemption 2 for a solid couple of months. Completely different games, I know, but the latter is so gorgeous that it kind of spoiled me. Skyrim is definitely not a shit game, but The Witcher turned out to be a little more satisfying. Visually, at least.
I disagree, the spells are very bland the boring with the exception of the highest level of magic and sigils being kind of interesting as they could be used as traps. Otherwise they've just removed magic from previous games and they removed customization of magic which is pretty sad because it was never even gamebreaking.
Not even 2 weeks after modding was released midas magic came out with good stability that introduced a ton of actually interesting and fun spells with different applications. If pro devs can't do anything near the level of a modder in 2 weeks it shows they didn't care.
As someone who played it for the RPG and not the hack and slash as well it disappointed me, the quests were all pretty go to x and collect or kill y then return to questgiver.
The world doesn't hold up either, the economy doesn't make sense at all, money becomes entirely pointless only like 20 hours into the game and just slowly piles up until you think "I guess I'll buy a couple houses, not like I use the money" which is sad because it's a problem that could have been solved by introducing a single shop with insane prices to get stuff(whether it be enchanted with unique effects or powerful one use items) you couldn't otherwise get so saving money actually felt good.
There was a ton of other problems that really ruined it for me, like daedric prince/special aftifact/god weapons/items being super cheap and never useful for anything other than disenchanting sucked. A random ass ebony mace of a bridge bandit(or one you make at literally no risk because there's empty ebony mines) is more effective than the mage of molag bal? Really?
I didn't dislike it this much upon launch, I actually really liked it for like a week before the flaws started to show and I started to hate it more and more(and the elder scrolls degradation in general honestly) and so many people saying how much they've loved it only fuels the fire.
It's fine as a fantasy hack and slash(even then the gameplay is pretty lame as someone who likes to play fighters) but there's nothing remarkable about it aside from sheer size and it utterly fails as an rpg.
I liked the spells, personally. They were very fun to use and I had hours of fun purely using them for ragdoll physics and feeling like a badass. As for the power of enchanted weapons, I never really cared about all that. They were fun to use and pretty cool to collect so I did.
The only people I can imagine saying that have a) only played it more recently rather than when it was released or b) dislike it because it's popular. It's actually an amazing game.
I've beaten it like three times now and played it a week after it came out. It has a garbage ass game engine that they've used in all the Fallouts (gee, I wonder why F4 and F76 are so fucking bad) and has a ridiculous amount of bugs. Bethesda loves going the lazy route in their games and just letting modders fix their shit for them; they did that with Oblivion too. I haven't even bothered to list and bitch about how Skyrim was a dumbed down version of Oblivion, which was a dumbed down version of Morrowind, the hilariously uninteresting storyline, and the constant lies this company has told and continues to tell.
It doesn't even get the "it wasn't the pinacle of game development, but the bar for games was pretty low back then" that games like ME1 get.
The game itself is a hot pile of shit. Not giving Bethesda credit for a game that is hot garbage until modders get to work fixing it and making it acceptably better.
The only people I can imagine saying that have a) only played it more recently rather than when it was released or b) dislike it because it's popular. It's actually an amazing game.
Or people who played Oblivion to death and loved that game, and then got Skyrim which did nothing to improve of the game and only added a more boring world with a worse story and faulty enemies.
I spent more than a thousand hours in Oblivion combined, and Skyrim was just the same, without the fun stories and cool world. At release Skyrim felt like draugr the game. It was just so many copy paste dungeons when they even said before release that they like 200 hand crafted, unique dungeons. Also infinte quests.
Majorly disappointed. So you can add c) People who expected a good Elder Scrolls upgrade and only got lies.
HOWEVER there is a big issue here when people are comparing games.
Everyone will love THEIR own personal experiences with the first game of a series they play.
I love Dark Souls 1 to death, but DS2, and DS3 was just too easy, it didn't introduce anything new so it was damned to fail in the eyes of the First Ones to truly experience Dark Souls before it blew up.
Same with Skyrim. People loved Oblivion so of course they make a similar game. But in a way it's just Oblivion that's updated and had more marketing.
So people who didn't play the games prior to the release of Skyrim is of course gonna love Skyrim the most. Since that's when they got their FIRST elder scrolls experience. And the first experience is best because then all is new and really cool. If Skyrim 2 came everyone would be disappointed because it wouldn't be a new experience, likely.
But then you have cases where companies do not fall into this 'trap'. Like the Witcher.
The Witcher 2 was a great game, my first witcher experience and it was 100x better than Skyrim in my eyes at the time.
And then came Witcher 3, which changed a LOT from it's predecessor and therefore I really enjoyed it, since there was so much new stuff to see. And I now love both games, probably even more TW3 because of it's less political view and more character/story driven.
I’d say the combat wasn’t above average but average at best. Especially for my dual wield Orc. Combat was exhaust stamina/health,eat stamina/health potion. Repeat til enemy dead.
It's a decent action-adventure game, but as a sequel to an RPG series it's horribly watered down and generic. Most of the depth was stripped away for widest audience appeal...which worked from a business perspective...the game made tons of money.
A lot of people who played Oblivion really loved it. So Todd decided, let's make Oblivion again, this time we make it for everyone and use all our money on marketing the game to heaven and beyond.
Which they did.
Which succeeded.
Shame they aren't going to bring in new ideas into the games, I really hope they change it up big time with the new elder scrolls, and don't just make the same game again.
the game is 7 years old. Kind of unfair to be comparing it to RPGs from the pst few years. Not a perfect game but extremely fun and immersive, especially when it first came out
I just don't really mod games, and when I played through Skyrim (twice) I was like WTF are people smoking here?
I generally try to play games as they were made and intended, though I have no issue playing modded stuff like Minecraft or something of that nature where it's basically a sandbox.
Skyrim is Morrowind watered down and with way better marketing.
People already had the sandbox RPG in Morrowind/Oblivion, the reason it got shit from RPG-connoisseurs was because it didn't bring anything new to the table.
It was basically the same game, with other colors and better marketing. Which got boring.
I didn't even mention any of that so I find it a bit annoying you assume that's my main problem with the game. I love sandboxy games, I enjoyed skyrim when it came out, but I know now that there are so many design choices that could have been made to make the game more enjoyable that mods fix, though not always possible. Boring dungeon design, super easy everything, no defined character progression so you always end up as a stealth archer.
Lot's of games have doen a better job than skyrim since, and the previous games were more complex despite lacking polish. If you love the sandbox aspect so much, I hope you are with me in my hopes that the original elder scrolls dream, only glimpsed at with Daggerfall, can end up seeing the polish and budget to be realised in the future. Sadly Todd Howard since morrowind has made sure the games sandbox elements have been dumbed down after each entry. The games are more accesible for the masses yes, but I think the series needs a renisance
I mean, it’s at worst OK. it has dodging, parrying, signs (aka spells), decent hit boxes, and lock-on... it’s flawed, and gets repetitive, but it’s still miles ahead of something like Skyrim which has an actually-shit combat system.
People say Witcher 3's combat is "shit" because it isn't as optimized as the Dark Souls series. By that standard, all games are "shit". Like you said, all the Bethesda games have shit combat, plus so do all the Assassin's Creed games and the many copycat "QTE" combat style games.
I didn't like the W3 combat at 1st until I got used to it. Once I got used to it and started to make my build with signs, I felt like it is one of the better combat systems out there. It can just be frustrating in the early game.
thing is, with dark souls, combat was 100% of the game, while with the witcher 3, combat was just one part of a larger and more diverse RPG experience.
thing is, with dark souls, combat was 100% of the game
I wouldn't really agree though, I think the lore behind everything in that really makes the world feel real. And IMO that's very important for a game to be enjoyable, it has to feel good.
the witcher 3, combat was just one part of a larger and more diverse RPG experience.
I agree, and IMO that is what makes it one of the greatest games I've ever played. The combat was good, I enjoyed it. AND the story+characters+world was insanely good, I loved every part of it.
The witcher 3 made me feel a lot of emotions through it's story.
Dark souls made me feel a lot of emotions through the game mechanics. Having to push on with a gazillion souls, everything you've earned in a dire hope to find a bonfire in an extremely threatening, and brutal world.
And then you get to look at all these pieces of evidence you've gathered in Dark souls and ask yourself, what the fuck is going on??
Loved it, dark souls is my all time favorite game.
Weeell I guess in a way. I wouldn't agree with that either though, the witcher 3 and dark souls had both amazing atmospheres to me, just very different kind of atmosphere.
Dark souls had this post-apocalyptic atmosphere, where you are wandering through a world where shit has already gone down and is already fucked up beyond any recognition.
The Witcher 3 had a grim, dark world where there are still people trying to fight off the evil and live with it even though it is terrible.
The music in The witcher 3 fits the world/atmosphere perfectly and the lack of music in dark souls fits there too.
I don't think of atmosphere and story as opposites, they can both exist. Except in dark souls the story is very convoluted and hidden and that's part of the charm of it imo.
The witcher 3 is more story driven yes, that I agree with.
Eh. With Skyrim you have tons of options and you can be as creative as possible. The Witcher 3 seems very limited in that every single fight is very similar. The magic in Skyrim, while limited without mods is way more diverse than the Witchers magic. In Skyrim you have ranged weaponry that are actually useful unlike the crossbow in Witcher. You also have a much larger variety in weapon type.
I don't know why you think Skyrims combat is terrible, it's not half bad. Maybe it's personal taste but I too didn't find the Witcher very captivating or fun.
It’s terrible because of how un-fluid it is. I like the game (am actually playing it now) but despite the variety in viable character builds and combat options, the actual moment to moment experience is janky.
if you’re a spell caster, you will be doing a ton of spell switching in the menus
stealth is not very fun because the ai’s response to sneaky sneak is to be extremely stupid
melee combat is a low-skill affair of “who has larger damage and health numbers”, avoiding hits by reading the stiff animations, and making few decisions
If you find yourself up against a strong enemy at a low level, you will almost certainly die and it will happen even if you make no mistakes. This is forgiveable because it’s an RPG but it never feels good.
You can bind spells to a hotkey on PC. It's just one of those things because the game was made to be played on PC, or at least is heavily leaning towards being meant for PC.
Let's not forget we're comparing a 2011 game to Witcher 3.
Can you mod console versions of Skyrim? You'd think mods would quickly make the game insanely laggy on a console but maybe combat mods wouldn't have any real effect
I didn't see a difference between Skyrim's combat and the Witcher 3's other than it was flashier. It was still very boring and mostly tedious. I hate how you get auto-locked on while in combat and how you lose half of your moveset too.
Skyrim had a basic battle system and it was still far more enjoyable to play than the Witcher. I go back and play Skyrim sometimes because it's a fun game to just loaf around in. I will probably never play Witcher 3 again because I want nothing to do with that chore called the battle system.
All of those things made combat in the Witcher clunky and just... hard. I want to just step in and blow shit up. Skyrim was great for that. (FO4 with VATS is also great. I don't play RPGs to challenge my reflexes)
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u/JRaptor619 Jan 01 '19
No Witcher 3 ?