Kayran Battle is STUPID - Yrden doesn't work!

[jaedenruiner]

Okay,
I place the Yrden. It raises its tentacles, and smashes the ground. I dodge, and the tentacle is sitting right were was on top of the electrified ground where I placed the Yrden. BUT IT DOESN'T GET TRAPPED!

Fought it now a dozen times, and have only managed to ever trap 2 tentacles before i die. Even thought the tentacle land on the Yrden sign!
I have stood there and took the hit, with the Yrden right in front of me. The Tentacle couldn't miss, but it still wasn't trapped. what's the point of a game that cheats?
It's the one thing i can't stand about games these days is that,

A) Don't change my camera to make it "look cooler" - especially in the middle of a boss fight. Now it's not about my game play, it's about can i deal the with the game's BS.
B) If the monster can hit me, than my actions can affect it. Period. Not, oh, place your Yrden at these particular places, and then it works, but anywhere else, and it's immune. That's crap.

And yea, um, the left two tencales, I can trap, but i started at the other side and never could trap a single tentacle.

[Skilpad]

Yeah, this combat is quite unclear in what is expected from you.
You can only trap tentacles with a red middle part. Not the two central tentacles. To trap a tentacle, have it try to hit you so that you can see where it can fall, then put the trap (Yrden) there and wait for the tentacle to try to hit you again.
The way I went was:
1- Start with the one on the left (the front one, not the one throwing rocks). There is some safe space in the corner where you cannot be touched by the tentacles nor the rocks. Go there if your touched to get vigor for your Yrden and cast Quen. Find where the tentacle can hit, cast Yrden then, attract, trap, cut.
2- Go to the other side right after the cinematic. Do the tentacle on the right.
3- Then, you can take care of the tentacle on the right that was throwing blocks. The area where it tries to hit you vertically can be tricks to identify: the area that was covered by the tentacle you just cut is now shared by a front tentacle and your new target. Do not go to far toward the back though, or the target tentacle will hit you horizontaly (unvoidable, and useless to trap it). Once you identified the area: trap, cut.
4- Caution, some QTE here.
5- I won't spoil the end of the fight, but in order to not have you wondering around not understanding what to do (like me): to the left. ;)

[Clementine]

Does disabling QTE on the menu work on Insane difficulty when fighting the kayran? I have already died 3 times on QTE sequence and I am over 30 hours in the back. I have only one life and I already have a high level of irritation

[jaedenruiner]

Oh, i knew what to do.
It was executing where the game didn't cheat was where my annoyance. was.
I eventually after 20 or 30 tries got past the kayran. My frustration is about, trap 1 tentacle, hack it off. trap another hack it off, the 3rd only throws rocks and my dodge is just that half second slow where the impact of the tentacle damages my toes enough to kill me. I reload, and try again, and this time when i trap the second tentacle one of the middle tentacles slams down on me while i'm trying to hack it off. It never did that before. It changed tactics the moment i got into a groove.

I personally have 2 primary rules when it comes to games:

A) The Game shouldn't cheat.
Basically, in a situation where you are suddenly doing awesome the AI engine should not suddenly produce unblockable, undodgeable, killing blows. Yet so many games will do that. Like the old "Losers" bonus in Pole Position, where the guy in last place will get an extra 5-10 miles an hour to give him the ability to catch up. When the game does that, I find it cheap. The Battle with the Kayran was very much in that style of gaming. As soon as i got the upper hand, suddenly i couldn't dodge the tentacles, or the rock debris, or the sticky mucous which graphically was no were near me, trapped me just long enough. Or to my next point...

B) Never change my camera!
Several times in the battle, i'd run up, slash the tentacle off, and then it would jump to the QTE movie of the final slashes that removed the tentacle. When it came back, my camera was not in the same position it was before the QTE started. Thus, holding back on the joystick, to run towards the screen - away from the kayran - actually ended up running right underneath it and i'd die.

If my dodges, blocks, attacks, and other such things are confined to certain rules, and as i get used to those rules, the system shouldn't be able to violate them. It's like those platforming moments in a game where you have to play it a few times because between platform 5 and 6 there will be a camera shift that changes which way the joystick moves your character, thus you need to know it is coming to be able to react. That's cheap programming.

In my opinion, unless I press the "center camera button" or move the right stick, the camera is mine to control period. if a QTE is appropriate for the cinematic elements, great, but it should return to exactly where it was prior to that moment. Especially in a large boss battle like the kayran. (As a programmer i know this is possible, they were just lazy, and in their laziness increased the difficulty of the sequence instead of making the monster smarter). Don't make my controls harder, make the enemies smarter.

I don't mind a difficult game. But the difficulty should be systemic. Affect damage dealt by me and by the monsters. Affect resource gathering amounts. Affect xp gained from each encounter. And Especially affect the AI intelligence of the NPCs, so they aren't so easily fooled by traps, stealth, or basic tactics. But don't affect the controls or interaction so that on hard you have 1 second instead of 2. that's just stupid. That's a cheap lazy way to increase difficulty. That's about how well you use your controller, not how well you play the game.

[max.strauss]

Originally posted by jaedenruiner:

... lamento lamento lamento ...

If the peasant can't swim it's up to the swim suit.

Or - as Geralt would say:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SL60Ofw1KtA