http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=270HiWAWKmE

The Witcher 2 - The 2 Steps Hicup (Responsiveness)

After some 10 superbly satisfactory playthroughs with TW2, I went for some more of my other games, like 2 runs with ME2 after another one with ME1 and some 4 runs with the leaked Deus Ex:HR demo. (Awesome btw. Another must have for me.)

Now, since 1.3 is out, I resumed my TW2 playthrough, on halt early Act 2 when 1.3 was announced and well, while it's definitely one of my best-ever games, the little flaws become much more apparent and annoying. Sure, I'll get used to it again and beat it on Insane as I was used to after a few learning runs when I got the game but, being TW2 one of my best-ever, I really wished it could be polished to the point where no motherfraking critic or reviewer would point the somewhat poor combat responsiveness as a factor. (plus it is a bit annoying indeed)

Since CDPR has already acknowledged other minor flaws of the game, cosmetics or gameplay, and said they will work on them or already delivered some patch/fix for some but never said anything about the controls responsiveness in combat, AFAIK, what is CDPR word on the subject? Do they acknowledge it? Is it working as intented?

I also play F1 2010 with the KB against Legendary AI drivers and I beat6 them all! =) Well, if that game had the same delay in my KB control responsiveness, I am sure I wouldn't be able to do a flying lap in any circuit without eating dirt, grass or kissing the wall in 100% of the attempts.

I'll have many more runs with TW2 regardless. It's an epic game and really set new standards for what should be called deep and mature RPG. But it would still be nice if controls responded as if it were a game made for kids od'ed on caffeine. =)

First of all - man, you must have plenty of time to play games! :)

Regarding topic - there is a lot of confusion around controls in TW2. There is responsiveness issue, input lag issue and delay issue. And they are mixed together so noone really knows which one is a bug and which one is intended.

In one of the previous threads Andrzej Kwiatkowski from CDPR team said that the delay between Geralt's moves in combat is intended(probably as being more realistic). The problem is that people are lost and don't know what really is this intended delay, and what is KB being unresponsive.

I agree with Rage. Great game, but the little things are getting painful. And responsiveness isn't a little thing really. I've started playing again after 1.3, and some issues are still there that I would consider a priority. The worrying part is they have yet to acknowledge things like the bomb throwing bug, UI deficiencies, and the inconsistent responsiveness. Because of this, combat isn't as fun as it could be. I've formed a play style which rarely uses rolling, and instead I focus on traps, Aard and daggers, bouncing from one opponent to the next until all are dead. I don't use auto lock and just focus on one at a time. With these tactics, responsive controls are an absolute necessity. But with the lag, I feel like I'm being corralled into a play style I don't like, which involves running away, rolling like crazy, and using the pop up menu.

The reason I turned into a little brat with my posts was we have 3 patches out now, and these issues still aren't fixed, yet they are fixing other things that hardly have an effect on gameplay.

Maybe they don't want to fix it, because in their eyes it's not broken, Geralt must have time to pick his nose in the middle of combat. Realism and all that.

Now, Andrzej also said they would look into it, because there's so much feedback about that. But who knows if they can find it in themselves, to veer away from their artistic vision enough to oblige the players who are frustrated with that.

Not only combat is not as much fun as it could be, Geralt's whole movement is jerky as a result of the forced pauses, which kills the immersion and that is exactly the opposite to what the first Witcher game did for me. :( Must have control over my extended body.

@gregski:
I don't know why you say you are easily confused by the different issues. I think it's pretty clear that when Geralt stands there and refuses to do anything at all or refuses to throw bombs, when bombs are equipped, that is clearly a bug.
Enforced pauses between animations is clearly design.
And it's also not the keyboard being unresponsive, controller is the same and that is a very standardised device, ergo: design.
I don't say, someone can't have a faulty keyboard, but not so many players - whose keyboard is working fine with other games.


So... I also vote for more caffein, please!

I know it's been made as they intended. Maybe they need to swallow their pride and realize their intentions show a bit of inexperience with combat systems. Recovery time is indeed a necessity, but it has to be tuned to perfection for it to work. My reflexes and thinking work much faster than Geralt can respond, as well the monsters now are much faster. The system should be flexible enough to allow for varied response times. The perfect example is Street Fighter, where there is never an excuse when you lose. If you lose, its all on you, not because Ryu decided to throw a jab at a slightly slower rate, or because he decided to wait for 2 seconds before you can execute an ultra.

Uhm, maybe I put it the wrong way, I was saying that these different issues (input lag, intended recovery, unresponsiveness) are pretty elusive and easy to be mixed up - there was also a big discussion here at this forum about that and from what I remember noone was sure about the nature of those issues.

I knew what you meant. In other words, even when you sort out what is animation etc, there is a barely-perceptible difference in animation/frame times, based on the moves combined, which confuses the brain pan. (Was that more obscure? heh.)

RageGT, thanks for the recommendation on DeusEx. I wasn't sure what to think of it. I trust yer opinion. :-)

I am curious about which way CDPr will go with the combat issue. TW1 was amazing, but screwed up out-of-the-box. It was their freshman debut on the scene. They had a clear choice of whether to fix it or bunch it. They chose wisely, and ended up with a ground-breaking game and good customer reputation.

This time they produced something much better on release and are, justifiably, proud of their accomplishment. They have also entered the realm of big-boy game developers...and that can be bad for the ego. Part of the problem may be with the engine itself, for all I know; that would make it very difficult to "patch."

So, it will be interesting to see how the world has changed for CDPr since TW1. I would prefer improvement; but I am just happy the game got made.

Since the game provides a dynamic visual experience, players are confused about Geralts execution of movement/combat restrictions, against hyper/repeated tapping of controls giving faster reaction speeds instantly.

Like pressing quick attack 20 times in a single second will make Geralt do 20 quick slashes, which isn't the case. The game will only acknowledge the input for second quick slash with the time window it provides at the end of the first slash (which is nearer to its end). Then execute the second quick attack..then the third and so on..

Same thing, when one taps a strong attack once and then tap the quick attack 10 times and saying no response. I mean how can Geralt who is doing a mid motion heavy swing just stop in air to do 10 quick slashes.

Similar behavoir while doing a quick jab at long distance, rolling etc..

Dead horse time (me, not you).

I think they thought they knew exactly what they were doing. Having a character execute complicated combat maneuvers, in quick succession, as rapidly and seamlessly as the player can move his fingers is not very "rpgish." They were trying to wed genres. Most people can agree that one of the hallmarks of RPG is that player reflexes are less important than character stats and abilities. They were trying to meld action and RPG in a sophisticated way.

(Maybe even the varied response times, based on combos or which way the wind blows, was meticulously calculated, if poorly implemented. This is way over-thinking it, but a real human is not gonna have all muscles and synapses firing the same way every time. Body chemistry varies with circumstances. I seriously imagine this is where they were coming from; though I can't say how far they meant it to go.)

It is not so much that they didn't understand how modern action games work. It is more that they didn't appreciate how much modern gamers are trained for unrealistic combat. Sounds kind of ridiculous to debate realism in video games, but there ya go.

I think they got half way there.

Very good post haans.g. They are halfway there. If you're going to rely on reflexes, then do it all the way. This won't be popular with some folks, I understand. TW2 is an action RPG though, and they need to fine tune the action part.

That's not just it. I'm pretty good with the combos and with a few Insane runs completed. But the very same key/mouse buttons combos that work so well, sometimes just leave my Geralt standing there doing nothing. Which I learned how to deal with, by tapping movement key or rolling and trying again. But it is annoying - particularly when coming back to TW2 right after playing some stuff that have a very precise command response - and I really doubt it is intended.

Same annoyance can be verified with casting spells, throwing bombs or even opening doors and other actions. It's not a game breaking issue but if it is indeed some limitation due to the new engine, it would just be so nice if they acknowledge it instead of "pulling the Bioware" on us! (you know, the "it is innovative and some people just cannot deal with it - eat it up, princess" thing).

Weird though, responsiveness for QTE and mini games like fist fighting is just perfect.

I was hoping this could fit in with this topic.

As is explained there, recovery time between actions in the name of more 'realistic and strategical' combat, is all well and good. It will then boil down to personal preference whether you love it or hate it, really. The problem in this game is that it's sometimes unreliable and unpredictable, when these recovery frames will actually occur; couple that with the occasional bug that might be as severe as to render all controls completely unresponsive for an amount of time (or forever), and you're bound to end up frustrating a lot of people, and I agree that this needs to be resolved and fine-tuned in one way or another.

In my case, I have only on some occasions actually run across any problems with this responsiveness (be it by design or by a bug rearing its ugly head), so I don't have any complaints. I stand behind those who report problems, however, and implore CDPR to do something about this; either by fixing the bugs and unpredictability (likely, in time), or by re-designing the system altogether to eliminate a lot of these recovery frames completely (not likely).

Like Rage says, responses for mini-games are perfect; not so for combat.

It's called a feint. An decent swordsman should be able to fake attacks for both probing and misdirecting -- e.g. to provoke a high guard and to exploit with a low cut, say. Also, getting your sword stuck in a corpse due to an excessively strong swing would be very inconvenient during an actual battle where another opponent may attack you at any moment, so it's important to be able to cut off the blow and rapidly re-ready.

Incidentally, there have also been techniques which combine drawing and an attack, for rapid response. Right now it's fairly glaring in certain situations where you a cut-scene ends with your swords sheathed (even if you began with swords drawn *and* you're the one starting the fight) basically in melee range. This is bizarre if, say, you're going after Dmitri and crew. It's worse because you can't cast any combat sign unless you have a sword drawn.

No. You are not talking to button mashers - at least I'd rather NOT have to resort to mash a button several times before it reacts.

So, counter-example, just happened a few minutes ago:

I take a midnight stroll in Lobinden, behind the house of Bart Bargee. Yep, drowner area. So I walk up on the place, drowners pop up, I try to do an attack like cast a sign or throw a bomb or take a sword slash. Problem: my force pause from having taken a step isn't over yet, command doesn't get executed. No time to wait and try again, though, because drowners don't have forced pauses between their steps and attacks and are all over me, while I stand there twiddling my thumbs. Only thing I can do is retreat, roll away, drowners burrow undergroud again and if I'm unlucky, they won't come back after that. Whose idea of fun is that?