The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings ann.

Tudz said:
If you're up against 5-6 people you're doing something wrong.
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I got stuck in the prologue, around the balista there's 2 archers, about 3 normal troops, one guy with a shield, and a guy in full armour, I've tried loads of times, there's no real way to pull just 1-2, I can run up and kill an archer behind the barricades before they get to me but I still can't get past that section.

The only real time I've had issues is when you get in a position such that 3 or more enemies surround me and I can't get away without taking lots of damage.
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Yeah this happens a lot in fights, the worst part is when Geralt hurls himself about 10m forward into a bunch of enemies and then gets raped for 50% of his health, doesn't seem to be any way to stop that.

Start with the weaker enemies and work your way up, using Quen and dodge to avoid taking damage.
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But dodge doesn't evade damage, if they're already swinging then they're going to hit you regardless of if you dodge or not, block is faster but you can only block 1 direction and even then it doesn't seem to work well against multiple opponents so when fighting 5-6 it's useless, as you're blocking one, another hits you.

If this was the last 5% of the game then I'd understand it being more difficult, but right at the start of the game is moronic.
 
PrincessFrosty said:
I got stuck in the prologue, around the balista there's 2 archers, about 3 normal troops, one guy with a shield, and a guy in full armour, I've tried loads of times, there's no real way to pull just 1-2, I can run up and kill an archer behind the barricades before they get to me but I still can't get past that section.
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You can insta-kill most enemies by finding the right combo of signs and attacks. If you do it right, you will get a brief cutscene of a death animation.
 
If you stun them with Aard, you can do a finisher move on them.

Wrapping up Chapter 1, and I find myself dying much less frequently now on Hard difficulty. In fact I can even fight multiple enemies without relying on Quen, mainly because I'm comfortable with the combat system. The game certainly doesn't do a very good job of introducing the mechanics to the player, though.

edit: that ign guy is fucking stupid, he enables ubersampling then blames the game for low performance.
 
Any fix for "witcher2.exe has stopped working" when you launch the game? Tried with a single monitor, in windowed, in different resolutions.
 
What framerates are you guys getting with old Core2Duos? I have an E8400, 5850, 4 GB of RAM, WinXP. Running at 1920x1200, I get 30 fps right outside the tent in the very first playable area. I get that whether I run everything at minimum or high! The settings barely make a difference. Only ubersampling can significantly affect framerate, but I leave that off obviously.

Is this a clear case of being CPU limited? Anyone getting higher rates with a C2D?

[EDIT] This is with vsync disabled in the game and CCC.
 
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Tim James said:
What framerates are you guys getting with old Core2Duos? I have an E8400, 5850, 4 GB of RAM, WinXP. Running at 1920x1200, I get 30 fps right outside the tent in the very first playable area. I get that whether I run everything at minimum or high! The settings barely make a difference. Only ubersampling can significantly affect framerate, but I leave that off obviously.

Is this a clear case of being CPU limited? Anyone getting higher rates with a C2D?
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I got the same system as you, except running on Win7 and at 1920x1080. I get in the 30 range but sometimes it can dip down to 20s during outdoor scenes. Indoor scenes i can get in the 50s.

I run mostly high settings, no AA, no blur, no vignette, no depth of field and uber turned off. I cannot get playable framerates with AA on with highest texture settings.

I dunno about it being CPU limited. Maybe if someone w/ a quadcore can test the game on with dualcore emulation on and without to see how it affects CPU
 
Can play the game with everything maxed except for ubersmapling ://
 
PrincessFrosty said:
I got stuck in the prologue, around the balista there's 2 archers, about 3 normal troops, one guy with a shield, and a guy in full armour, I've tried loads of times, there's no real way to pull just 1-2, I can run up and kill an archer behind the barricades before they get to me but I still can't get past that section.
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I didn't necessarily mean pulling 1-2, I more meant running around to isolate a couple of them. Like, in that sequence you're talking about with the ballista, if there's 2 crossbowmen behind the shieldman, swordsman and knight, just run past the shieldman, swordsman and knight and you'll have a few seconds to attack the crossbowmen and can probably take one out, then dodge away, recast Quen if you need (you should have had it cast when you first attacked as well). Then, perhaps (for example) you might run to the other side of the ballista, inevitibly one or two guys will take a bit longer to get around the ballista to attack you, so you will be able to get a few more free hits on another dude.

Use those sorts of tactics to eliminate all the weaker enemies, and you should just be left with the shieldsman and the knight, then just keep on the move to take out the knight, and once you're left with the shield dude, use block to create an opening then get a few swings in, block, get a few more swings in, etc until he's dead. Blocking doesn't really work vs. multiple enemies, but its the best way to take out a shieldsman. Dodging isn't an "invincibility" dodge, if you're still in the strike zone when the sword blow comes, it doesn't matter if you were trying to dodge. Dodging gets you out of the strike zone faster than running, dont use it thinking it'll get you out of anything, you still need to put yourself in a position where you can actually dodge to avoid an attack.

Also, I dunno if you're already doing this. But load a Witcher 1 save to start off, that will give you better armour and swords. I initially went through the prologue without a Witcher 1 save because it wouldn't recognise any of mine, but then downloaded and loaded up someone elses file and I can tell you it makes it a lot easier. With a TW1 sword it went from like 5 or so strikes to kill a weak enemy swordsman to 3 strikes, and they dont damage you nearly as much either with some Raven armour from TW1.

Its not easy by any measure, but it aint that hard either, once you get used to using the signs, moving in and out of striking range and tricking the AI to get in each others way or in the way of terrain. It took me a few tries to get the hang of it and beat the ballista dudes, but it was satisfying once I did and now I'm more used to it I think its a decent combat system.
 
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mkygod said:
I got the same system as you, except running on Win7 and at 1920x1080. I get in the 30 range but sometimes it can dip down to 20s during outdoor scenes. Indoor scenes i can get in the 50s.

I run mostly high settings, no AA, no blur, no vignette, no depth of field and uber turned off. I cannot get playable framerates with AA on with highest texture settings.

I dunno about it being CPU limited. Maybe if someone w/ a quadcore can test the game on with dualcore emulation on and without to see how it affects CPU
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Sounds fairly similar. Now the question is: do you get much better framerates if you set everything to minimum? Maybe there's something weird about that first area in the prologue outside of the tent, but it seemed like nothing I did affected the framerate significantly except ubersampling.
 
PrincessFrosty said:
I got stuck in the prologue, around the balista there's 2 archers, about 3 normal troops, one guy with a shield, and a guy in full armour, I've tried loads of times, there's no real way to pull just 1-2, I can run up and kill an archer behind the barricades before they get to me but I still can't get past that section.



Yeah this happens a lot in fights, the worst part is when Geralt hurls himself about 10m forward into a bunch of enemies and then gets raped for 50% of his health, doesn't seem to be any way to stop that.



But dodge doesn't evade damage, if they're already swinging then they're going to hit you regardless of if you dodge or not, block is faster but you can only block 1 direction and even then it doesn't seem to work well against multiple opponents so when fighting 5-6 it's useless, as you're blocking one, another hits you.

If this was the last 5% of the game then I'd understand it being more difficult, but right at the start of the game is moronic.
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On that section run up and kill the archers behind the barricades right away. Otherwise they'll shoot you in the middle of the fight which halts you for a second and leaves you vulnerable to your other pursuers. They're very easy to kill. Usually Aard + a few heavy strikes will kill them, or use a fast followed up by a couple heavies. The fast will usually knock them off balance before they can get their guard up and the heavies will kill them.

I'm not sure what you're doing wrong tbh about some of these complaints. I'd seriously recommend dropping all the eye candy you can until you stay above 30fps min. If you're quick about dodging/rolling you won't get hit. Sometimes I do when I stick around too long, but that's because I made a mistake. If you want to give yourself a guaranteed our just use aard, strike a few times, and then roll away as they start to come to.
 
Remember to use block as well, E, whenever you make a successful block your opponent is left open to attack. True, at the beginning of the game you're only able to block one direction but used carefully it's still better than having no block.
I'm not sure how early you get bombs and traps, but check your inventory and equip them, set traps or throw bombs using the R key.
Use the sign Oren (think that's what it's called), it's a blue personal shield/defensive sign that absorbs damage, it's very powerful.
You can dance rings around groups of enemies doing running strikes at them.
Lead them into narrow passages/choke points so you can keep bashing them with heavy attacks.

EDIT: I realize I said pretty much what Tudz did... I'm playing at Hard, BTW.
 
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Tudz said:
I didn't necessarily mean pulling 1-2, I more meant running around to isolate a couple of them. Like, in that sequence you're talking about with the ballista, if there's 2 crossbowmen behind the shieldman, swordsman and knight, just run past the shieldman, swordsman and knight and you'll have a few seconds to attack the crossbowmen and can probably take one out, then dodge away, recast Quen if you need (you should have had it cast when you first attacked as well).
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I do, I start by running to the right behind the barricade and killing the first crossbowman with a couple of strong swings, at this point everyone runs over.

I try and deal with the weaker enemies first, I dodge around them and try and get some distance between me and them but they move at the same speed as me so when I move away to cast they're right on me as I cast, and the cast animation is quite long by the time they've stumbled backwards, I run up to them they're back on the defensive again.

It usually ends with me being surrounded either getting into an awkward position on the map or one of them sneaking around, and sometimes Geralt just launching himself into the middle of them all, occasionally rolling the wrong way despite mashing the keys in the opposite direction.

Use those sorts of tactics to eliminate all the weaker enemies, and you should just be left with the shieldsman and the knight, then just keep on the move to take out the knight, and once you're left with the shield dude, use block to create an opening then get a few swings in, block, get a few more swings in, etc until he's dead. Blocking doesn't really work vs. multiple enemies, but its the best way to take out a shieldsman.
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Yeah the shieldsman I know how to beat with block, you just block and then when he stumbles off your parry he's vulnerable the problem is I can't get him alone, I just get trounced by all of them at once. I just get whittled down to no health throughout the fight, Geralt basically has no defensive skills apart from block which only works forwards vs a single enemy there is simply no mechanic I can find that gives you a reasonable chance vs lots of them, there needs to be a AOE stun of some kind that allows you to break from the pack as running away from them doesn't work they just pursue you at the same speed not allowing you to get any room between you in preparation to cast magic.

Dodging isn't an "invincibility" dodge, if you're still in the strike zone when the sword blow comes, it doesn't matter if you were trying to dodge. Dodging gets you out of the strike zone faster than running, dont use it thinking it'll get you out of anything, you still need to put yourself in a position where you can actually dodge to avoid an attack.
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In my experience you cannot see someone swing at you and then dodge out of the way the controls simply aren't responsive enough for that the sword will still connect, the only way to use it is pre-emptively, basically you need to guess when they'll swing and dive away before they even start, which basically means you're diving around about 90% of the fight.

Also, I dunno if you're already doing this. But load a Witcher 1 save to start off, that will give you better armour and swords.
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I don't own The Witcher 1 or have any saves, nor do I really want to import someone else's save, the game should stand on it's own 2 feet.

Its not easy by any measure, but it aint that hard either, once you get used to using the signs, moving in and out of striking range and tricking the AI to get in each others way or in the way of terrain. It took me a few tries to get the hang of it and beat the ballista dudes, but it was satisfying once I did and now I'm more used to it I think its a decent combat system.
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Well then I must be useless I tried about 35 times yesterday and I can't do it, tried everything everyone has suggested, I just can't take on all those enemies at once, the controls are too slow and unresponsive, dodging, blocking, spells, they all take too long to initiate.

Andrew_Carr said:
I'm not sure what you're doing wrong tbh about some of these complaints. I'd seriously recommend dropping all the eye candy you can until you stay above 30fps min. If you're quick about dodging/rolling you won't get hit. Sometimes I do when I stick around too long, but that's because I made a mistake. If you want to give yourself a guaranteed our just use aard, strike a few times, and then roll away as they start to come to.
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Eye candy is all absolute, complete and total minimum, I've said this already, I've dropped to 1680x1050 and it still struggles to get up to 30fps, it's ATI's shitty negative scaling in crossfire is lagging the game all to hell and there's nothing I can do about it.

Appreciate the tips, I'm not going to bother with this any more until ATI sort their shit out and release a CAP profile to fix the frame rate, trying to fight them like this is useless, I'm not trying another 35 times it will just end up getting uninstalled.
 
tuaarita said:
Any fix for "witcher2.exe has stopped working" when you launch the game? Tried with a single monitor, in windowed, in different resolutions.
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Come ooonnn. I sent for a support ticket but god knows how long that will take. I don't even have a 2560x1600 monitor which seems to be the problem in most cases.

lsEiD.png
 
Frosty, I'm right there with you except you've put in a hell of a lot more time and effort then I've been able to but my experience with the combat in that early area is basically the same as yours: I suck. Miserably. At normal difficulty.
 
SilverSliver said:
The game is hard. It's not going to pat you on the back and give you a reach around.
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That's for damned sure. No question: This has to be one of the hardest games I've personally run across in a long time. I salute this thing for what it is, a great PC exclusive across the boards, but damn.



Fable 3 just came out. You might try that.
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Hmmm...
 
tuaarita said:
Come ooonnn. I sent for a support ticket but god knows how long that will take. I don't even have a 2560x1600 monitor which seems to be the problem in most cases.

lsEiD.png
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The people with 2560x1600 aren't getting crash/errors, the game is silently failing to load and returning to the launcher, this is a different problem.

This is what I used to find a fix for the resolution problem, it has loads of fixes for a whole number of issues which might help you - http://www.gamebrood.com/2011/05/17...her-issues-and-many-other-technical-problems/

Frosty, I'm right there with you except you've put in a hell of a lot more time and effort then I've been able to but my experience with the combat in that early area is basically the same as yours: I suck. Miserably. At normal difficulty.
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Yup, I feel your pain. And games typically start easy and get harder which is worrying because what sort of gay fights are going to come later? When the frame rate is fixed I'm going to restart the whole game and play on easy.

Games are supposed to be fun, smashing your head on a brick wall 35 times isn't fun, not even slightly.
 
PrincessFrosty said:
Yup, I feel your pain. And games typically start easy and get harder which is worrying because what sort of gay fights are going to come later? When the frame rate is fixed I'm going to restart the whole game and play on easy.

Games are supposed to be fun, smashing your head on a brick wall 35 times isn't fun, not even slightly.
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When I get into this thing today, I think I'll have to get real about some of my eye candy settings. Right now I have everything maxed out but I'm kidding myself here a little bit. ;)

I know supersampling is probably going adios right off the bat.
 
mkygod said:
I got the same system as you, except running on Win7 and at 1920x1080. I get in the 30 range but sometimes it can dip down to 20s during outdoor scenes. Indoor scenes i can get in the 50s.

I run mostly high settings, no AA, no blur, no vignette, no depth of field and uber turned off. I cannot get playable framerates with AA on with highest texture settings.

I dunno about it being CPU limited. Maybe if someone w/ a quadcore can test the game on with dualcore emulation on and without to see how it affects CPU
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I put my 2500k at 5.4ghz for shits and giggles last night, and still got 20-30fps with my gtx260 in the same scenario but on medium....so I dont think its cpu limited, unless you have a beast gpu setup.
 
Man this game is flat out amazing. GFX simply stunning and the combat is a shitload of fun. So easy to fuck up but gratifying if you do things right. I just stumbled on pairs of wraiths in a side quest that had 10x the health of anything I had run into in the forest so far. I wiped to them at lest 10 times until I worked out a good strat. I wish there were more pc exclusives so we could get more games of this quality.
 
xenios said:
Man this game is flat out amazing. GFX simply stunning and the combat is a shitload of fun. So easy to fuck up but gratifying if you do things right. I just stumbled on pairs of wraiths in a side quest that had 10x the health of anything I had run into in the forest so far. I wiped to them at lest 10 times until I worked out a good strat. I wish there were more pc exclusives so we could get more games of this quality.
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I know exactly where you were at. I did not expect those wraiths and they kicked my ass.
 
This game is hard. I must have died like 20 times already and I'm only in the prologue (on normal difficulty). I'll get used to it soon... I hope. :(
 
I'm really BLOWN away by the opening scenes of this game. The music, the voice acting, the graphics, the combat, THE GRAPHICS, the immersion. Hot diggity I've waited for this game and its delivering.

Yea I died a good 15 times from the flames lol
 
PrincessFrosty said:
*snip*
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I really do get the sense we are playing 2 different games because everything you say is the opposite of my experience. You say you can't outrun the NPCs to cast a spell, yet I have no trouble doing that, you say you can't isolate them, I have no trouble with it, you say the controls are unresponsive but to me they feel ok (not great, but good enough for me to dance around avoiding attacks no worries).



I don't own The Witcher 1 or have any saves, nor do I really want to import someone else's save, the game should stand on it's own 2 feet.
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Well, it does, I got through the initial stages ok without a TW1 save, I was just suggesting that it makes it easier if you do have a TW1 save.



Well then I must be useless I tried about 35 times yesterday and I can't do it, tried everything everyone has suggested, I just can't take on all those enemies at once, the controls are too slow and unresponsive, dodging, blocking, spells, they all take too long to initiate.
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Maybe you do have some epic input lag causing you problems. I made a FRAPS video of me dealing with the ballista crew but its huge and I have zero video editing knowledge, lol.
 
Nope can't outrun them, I turn and run away, then turn back and they're the same distance away from me than when I started, making spell use very hard because I have no way to put distance between me and them.
 
Game is awesome so far and I'm having a blast. The fighting controls can be slightly unresponsive at times, but not as bad as some here make it seem. It's just that you have more recovery time for some moves, and you cannot insta-cancel an attack animation into a roll like most games. I think some people also don't realize you need vigor to block. If you spend your vigor on casting signs then you won't be able to block and it will appear like the block key is doing nothing.

Matrices said:
I don't see the point of "uber"sampling (isn't this just supersampling)? The in-game AA is the best implemented AA I have seen in any game. Maybe it's because I had the in-game AA applied as well, but applying the supersampling option halved my frame rates. Not worth it at all.
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Uber sampling (which most likely works very similar to nVidia's super sampling) is not just for AA (though AA is one of the benefits). It also increases IQ of many other visuals, such as textures, angled textured, distant textures, transparent textures, and increases the accuracy of things like lighting/shadowing/SSAO etc. You're right though, the improvements won't be very noticeable for most people, you need to be using a high resolution and a large screen to better appreciate the effects.
 
PrincessFrosty said:
Nope can't outrun them
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My experience is closer to Tudz. I have no problem running away, or creating enough space to cast a sign. I dunno what you're doing wrong but I'm sure almost everyone whose played the game has had to run away or kite some of the tougher fights in the tutorial at least once or twice. If it was such a big problem as you are making it to be we would be hearing a LOT more complaints about it.
 
PrincessFrosty said:
Nope can't outrun them, I turn and run away, then turn back and they're the same distance away from me than when I started, making spell use very hard because I have no way to put distance between me and them.
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You aren't doing something silly like walking instead of running? I think caps lock and shift toggle walk/run. Beyond that I have no idea, Geralt should be running faster than the dudes on the ballista. There's even a YouTube video of someone doing a playthrough/walkthrough and you can see them running rings around the ballista dudes (though I think he's playing on easy given how few hits it takes him to kill stuff).
 
Anyone getting poor performance with AMD Crossfire? FRAPS states I'm getting 50fps but it feels more like 15...

I also wish they retained the group fighting style from the first Witcher.

These gripes aside I am completely enjoying this game!
 
It fucking works it works I'm not sure if it was uninstalling IZ3D drivers. ( they weren't on at any time so I didn't think it was a problem.) Or setting desktop resolution to 1280x800.
 
Game runs fine for me. I am running around like the Monty Python Knight attacking that wedding in the castle with the reluctant groom. lol

I die, only b/c I get lazy. You just have to dance and get angles. Wait for the enemy to charge too far and leave his back exposed. Use the lightning trap to slow one guy down and sometimes bottle the others up if it is a crowd in a narrow area. etc. Why Frosty is so slow is beyond me. I can outrun any human opponent easy. Made it through the prologue in about 2 hrs.

Ubersampling is dope. Still playing with settings. Playing at 1920x1440. 2500K @4.4 Galaxy 480gtx soc. Runs ok if I turn down the other settings from uber to high or medium, turn off AA, SSAO, put view to near. Looks like around 30fps average.

This game is a system killer. Certainly the new benchmark game imo. Graphics are tops in ubersampling. So is the opening scene with ahem..You will see.
 
I was really impressed with the visuals when I dropped down into the sewers and saw my first drowner. The lighting and water reflections are amazing.
 
Yeah they are. Some people are saying they do not see a big difference b/w Uber being on or off.

At my resolution, it is a noticable improvement. I prefer it to all ultra with everything else enabled. Uber looks much more natural and way less washed out.
 
Bop said:
Anyone getting poor performance with AMD Crossfire? FRAPS states I'm getting 50fps but it feels more like 15...

I also wish they retained the group fighting style from the first Witcher.

These gripes aside I am completely enjoying this game!
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Crossfire has negative scaling issues at the moment, it means that you get worse performance with 2 GPUs active than if you only had one, disable crossfire and you'll see a performance increase.

ATI are aware of the issue and are working on releasing a new CAP profile update to address it.
 
Trying to play this more now and actually getting fairly annoyed...

Rolled into my first big fight....slide show. I wish they done a better job at advertising the minimum specs for the game, because I wouldn't have spent $45 on Steam to get 15fps in combat on the lowest settings.

They claim an 8800gt and 2ghz dual core can run this game. I guess that must be at 800x600.

I'm assuming they sell this game retail? They can't really expect the average customer to buy a $400 gpu to run a game with no multiplayer.
 
I'd love to play it but I've hit a wall with the key mappings issue that has been acknowledged by CD Projekt RED. They'll be releasing a patch in the near future... I tried the first dialogue choice at the beginning of the game but I wasn't able to activate either one. I think I'll continue to play though DAO (2nd time) for the time being until this has been resolved. I'll have to test out the full glory of the graphics once I get to move forward.
 
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