I highly doubt in a combat situation anyone would stop to drink.. more like they would do so whilst on the move..

Not nearly as integral though. And, if luck will have it, we will need to block our foes as it comes to Skyrim. Or dodge, you never know. But I highly doubt a plate wearing character will like it that they can't really avoid attacks and have to rely on uneasy respite between battles.

Well, actually, the reason the potions in The Witcher are toxic is the fact that they are made of materials highly poisonous to anyone with unsuitable metabolism. Witchers (and some other magic-touched beings, like wizards) are 'mutants' whose organisms function very differently, which is what allows them to gain benefits from the potions they brew. To any normal person, these elixirs would not only be useless (incompatible metabolism unable to trigger the same effects), but in most cases lethally poisonous as well. A witcher's organism is largely resistant to these toxins (albeit not completely) which is the only thing that allows them to endure multiple imbibings without passing to the Other Side five minutes later. All that meditation is responisble for is, in Geralt's case, accelerated neutralisation of the poisoning, which otherwise would occur over time, but witchers can also exert a measure of deliberate control over their metabolism while in trance, so that's a much faster solution.

Now, I don't think there's even any point in comparing the 'potion systems' of both universes. The world of The Witcher is pretty low-magic, dystopian and heavily folklore-influenced, as opposed to the epic, overblown high fantasy of TES. In The Witcher's setting, magic is unpredictable, feared, and 90% of the time utterly beyond the reach of most common people, who are forced to rely on conventional medicine (no doubt including leeches, herbs and prayers) in situations to which the inhabitants of Nirn respond by taking a short trip to the nearby alchemist's shop or the wizard living next door instead.
Instantly working and harmless potions would be against the Lore of The Witcher, while 'Swallow' in the world of TES would be considered merely a dangerously botched attempt at alchemy. I suppose it's just like expecting the mechanics of D&D to work with the setting of WoD, or vice versa - technically possible, but completely unfitting.

(And to disperse any doubts, personally, I'm on The Witcher's side of the barricade, always having enjoyed that pseudo-realistic, strategy-demanding system much better, but apparently the TES tradition is against me, so I will refrain from pointlessly raging against it as to avoid adding even more fuel to the already enormous flame.)

I highly doubt that in a combat situation someone would drink at all. Giving the player a small penalty for fiddling around in his backpack and drinking half a liter of liquid from a glass bottle in the middle of combat is the least one can expect. If you were going for realism then the player should be more or less paralyzed (no blocking or fighting at all) for half a minute or, if he chooses to run while performing the action, have a high chance to lose the object(s) he currently has in his hands (including his weapon, shield or the potion he tries to drink).

Damn right!

heh just another example of people not wanting a sensible twist in the gameplay, Potions aren't "safe", "Foolproof" and "infallible" and pretty much the only reason why the effects aren't more Dramatic for Stims and Potions other than a limit to how much they can take at once (Potions) is because Bethesda feels it would probably rage more people than would intrigue, people want to go from 2 hp to 450 without consequence its a game after all right? personally I wouldnt mind suffering adverse effects from guzzling potions and for those effects good/bad to take time to take place, Too much of anything is never Good in life so why does this not apply to drinking Concoctions brewed in someones basemant?

Make it so that taking a potion occupies one of your hands for a period of time with a little first/third person cinematic (not an actual cinematic but just so that you can actually see your character taking the potion with the one hand whilst you still have control of the other hand).

This would work well with the 'two hands' system of combat now as while you were taking your potion you could still bash people off with a shield, or go on the offensive with a sword depending on what hand you had your potion hot-keyed to. This would make it so that it potions aren't completely useless in combat (as you can still defend/attack and don't have to wait until the fight is over) but not so easy to do that you can stack potions or repeatedly take them in combat.

potions were never that important to me I still have like 104 potions that I picked up from some conjurers and I bearly use them I mostly wait to gey my health up. I mostly use poisens like fire,electric,damage health and I also use chameleaon alot.

I think also that they should maybe do to potions what they did to arrows... Make them much more potent but make it so that that they are found more rarely or only a few could be carried. This would make it so that you would only need (as an example) one potion to fully restore your health but that there weren't so much of the them that you could take them every time you got into a sticky situation. This would mean that less potions would need to be carried (something I found a bit off-putting in Oblivion was the hundreds of potions I'd carry) and would also make it harder (or less required) that you take several of the same potion to achieve the effect you want.

This would work well with the potion taking system I mentioned a couple of posts previously...

Pretty unintelligent way to debate my points.
No wonder you don't want more challenging game play . . . you likely couldn't handle it . . . as that might actually require you to use your brain . . . and intelligence is apparently a low stat for you.

I think people criticise The Witcher because is a GOOD GAME and its jealous because of that. Kids those days...

its an awesome game.......until chapter 3 where they seemed to have run out of time. thankfully at least the rest of the game makes up for it.

i suggest that people that like the default uber easy cheat potion system oblivion had try a few changes. i guarantee that at least 8 out of 10 wont want to go back. increase the weight of potions so that you cant carry hundreds of them at once. increase their cost dramatically so that they have a noticable impact on your wallet. make the potions long term for excample 5 hp over 30 seconds for a regular potion and 10 hp over 30 seconds for the supermegasupreme potions. ive had my potions set at 2 hp over 60 seconds and 4 hp over 60 seconds.

Yeah... Its too bad that the Witcher 2 didn't.

The Witcher's Alchemy system was one of the things that really set it apart from the crowd.

Dragonborn1, I have to know... why do you hate everything that is not from Skyrim? I'm looking forward to the game too, but denying the awesomeness of a game as The Witcher 2 is stupid. Have you even played it?

You critizise that in that game you have to play as Geralt. Well, maybe you don't like it, but that is not garbage at all. Playing as a character with a pre-designed background not only in games but in books allows MUCH better storytelling, and the same goes for its linearity, though it is not entirely linear, more something between the line of linear game and sandbox games. Of course, being able to craft your own character and doing whatever you want add different things. My point is that they're completely different, each one with its advantages and disadvantages.

Actually I agree with him, every time I see one of your posts that's what I feel like saying.
I understand that you want more realism and challenge in a game, I respect you both as a gamer, and a modder.
But when people want this sort of challenge in the full game, I simply quiver at the thought. I absolutely hate dying, in any game, at anytime. This is simply for the fact that I hate replaying things. I find it more frustrating than anything else in the world. I often play single player experiences such as Halo, Call of Duty, Bioshock, and many other games on the easiest difficulty for this very reason.

While I understand that you would like more strategy and thought put into your game, I don't. I have to think enough in school and work, and gaming is a time to unwind, and enjoy an experience, not get frustrated because I can't heal with my potion because somewhere the latter was 'Breaking someones immersion or challenge'

so what your saying is that they should develop games for people who want to play on easy mode who are afraid to die. why dont you just use cheats or trainers and put god mode and infinite ammo and money on then. what is the point of playing a game where you are never going to die or lose. its not a game then its just an interactive story. there should be a reason for having difficulty levels. normal mode should be very challenging for regular players, hard mode should be for the ones who want a real challenge and for experienced players, easy mode is for people who, like you, dont want any challenge or at least not much of it. go play checkers if you dont want to die in a game. leave skyrim (which is supposed to be a game about a lone guy fighting dragons) for people who want to actually think and feel the anxiety and excitement about close fights and yes the frustration of dying from time to time. i died tons of times on hard mode in witcher 2 but i also havent had that much fun in awhile since most recent games like mass effect series, bioshock etc are just cakewalks and utterly boring.

Euhrrr... I must be very bad at it, because in Bioshock (the first one) I die again and again because I got out of ammo... I don't know, I find the game much more difficult than Oblivion or Fallout, for example.

Exactly. That's exactly what I want. You obviously want something different, I respect that.
I do, however, like challenge occasionally, but what I don't like is a realistic type of challenge. Things like not allowing me to take a potion in battle is the wrong kind of challenge for me, it just makes me frustrated and annoyed that I can't use a potion. If I die once or twice and there's not to much to replay, I'm generally okay with it, but what I hate is what I deem as an unfair death, and dying because I wasn't allowed to use a potion falls under that category.

i played mostly melee so it might just be the playstyle. once you pick the melee upgrades even on hard mod its pretty easy. i normally like guns but the gunplay mechanics in bioshock are just awful and it drove me nuts. i play alot of stalker which is on the more realistic side of accuracy and spread etc so im a bit picky in that area. i didnt get far in bioshock 2 before i go bored with it. the overly cartoony art deco setting never really did much for me. i really wish they had made a system shock 3 instead i loved the second game. :sadvaultboy:

So you only want 'unrealistic' challenges? I fear I don't understand. A challenge is a challenge, whether it's close to being realistic or not. It's relatively easy to make a game extremely hard. Even though Bethesda didn't even manage to do that, Oblivion on max difficulty is still a walk in the park (albeit a very boring one - takes forever to kill an enemy) due to the overwhelming amount of broken game mechanics. It's extremely easy to make a game very easy. But it's very hard to make a game challenging without making the game unfair. If you want the game to be easy use the difficulty settings. Problem solved. It doesn't make sense to ask for an easy game that is easy because of unbalanced game mechanics. It just punishes the players who play games for a challenge, but it doesn't offer anything that couldn't be achieved by simply setting the difficulty to 'easy'.

Then set Skyrim on the Easy setting and be done with it. I don't want this game, or any game, to have any semblance of challenge removed, to have any limitations the player can have to his capabilities set, to have the mechanics so simplified, just because someone like you doesn't want to tackle a challenge.

Why, because you disagree with me? I don't expect everyone here to agree with me, nor do I want that . . . because that would make for pretty boring discussions. But debates should still be civil. And I have just as much right to voice my opinion as anyone else here.

I'm a girl gamer, and am not a power gamer by any stretch . . . so I'm always surprised at how many gamers feel like I'm asking for the game to be way too difficult. For me, Oblivion's biggest issue was that it felt like Morrowind-Lite. And Fallout 3 was even easier. That is what I fear most about Skyrim. My point was mostly that making a TES game so that the game is very easy, and then using the Difficulty Slider (which is a joke) to make it more difficult; or relying on mods to make it the game many expected it to be in the first place is not the answer. For one thing, as I was trying to point out, the console users do not have the option to mod their game. And making a good mod can take months . . . and increase the demands that the game has on a PC, and increasing the instability.

Why should the TES games keep lowering the bar, just because too many gamers are too lazy to put in the effort to learn how to make a decent character, or to learn how to effectively play a challenging game? Goodness, you can save your game anytime . . . and the game automatically reloads from your last same when you die. Games keep improving graphically, yet they seem to be going backwards in many other areas . . . which is a real shame.

IF TES is too difficult (as in you expect to be able to play without ever dying) . . . find an easing type of game that is less frustrating. BTW: You would totally hate the newer Tomb Raider games, because you can only save your game at certain check points, which generally follow a long challenging stretch of game play, where a missed jump can be instant death. And in Mass Effect, you cannot save the game during combat.

What Im reading so far, the group in question would be at home with Fable 2 and 3

Actually I hate both of those games.

I feel I didn't necessarily express myself correctly.
Oh and I do play oblivion on easy, anyway.

I'm okay with challenge, if it's done right, what I don't like is unfair challenge.




I actually love mass effect, when I die in mass effect, I feel it's my fault, and it's something I do differently and improve on. This makes it a fair death.
I hate those tomb raider games because I feel the controls are too 'floaty' and so when I die and have to replay all that gameplay, I feel it is unfair because it doesn't feel like my fault.

I never found oblivion challenging and I never got frustrated, what I would find unfair is if I'm aware I'm low on health, but can't do anything about because I can't use a potion, making the death feel like it wasn't my fault, and thus unfair.

I hope that clarifies the difference, it's not like I want god mode with unlimited money or something, I just don't want to die from poor game mechanics.

havent played the witcher 2 but that sounds terrible for skyrim