The Witcher 3 Pre-Expansion Thread

[Gord]

So, I just did the master armorer quest...

Spoiler

Experimenal Setup:
Nilfgardian general orders to test the suit of armor, by shooting it with a crossbow.
Some poor sod has to don the shoddy one, Geralt gets the good one.

Results and Discussion:
General shoots poor sod - right in the eye.
General shoots Geralt, misses.
Bolt misses suits of armor in both cases.

Conclusions:
Scientific testing clearly proofed value of mastercrafted armor and that the woman is the better smith.

 

[Sodafish]

Yeah, that and the female fistfighter in B&W are extremely disappointing m'lady moments in the game.

 

[DramaticPopcorn]

Guess this is actually a general-purpose TW3 thread and not pre-expansion only discussion.

Either way, just finished playing the DLCs.
Finished the vanilla a year ago, clocked 88 hours in it. Took me 30 more hours to finish DLCs.

On one hand, the game has LITERALLY THE ABSOLUTE WORST MOVEMENT AND COMBAT CONTROLS EVER IN AN ACTION GAME. Same goes for shitty targetting system, turning fights with multiple enemies into a complete mess (a thousand times worse for the unarmed combat). Enemies are HP bloated killing machines, doing absurd amount of damage regardless of your level, turning fights into repetetive attack-dodge-spam. Enemies can also parry during attack or attack during their stagger despite what their animation show. As an action game, TW3 fails completely, just like previous titles in the series.

But at the same time, the game has incredible visuals and atmosphere. The dialogue is top-notch, as is overall writing, area-design, character-design, world-design, lore, music. As an adventure/exploration game this is one of the best open-world games hands down.

Blood & Wine was amazing, much better than the main quest in many aspects, tight story, great characters.

ending

I got the 'tragic' ending my first playthrough, when Syanna stabs her sister, despite me bringing her to Dettlaff and saving her with the ribon, I just didn't trigger the right dialogue nodes for the best ending, which was kinda disappointing.
I think thematically, the best ending would be with Syanna trying to assassinate Anna Henrietta but failing and the duchess thus getting a valuable lesson in life

Heart of Stone was pretty disappointing and didn't actually click right with the rest of the TW3 world and aesthetics, the story didn't feel like it belonged in the universe and felt far too traditional for WRPGs, like straight out of Bioware game but with much better writing. Codex hivemind is objectively wrong.

 

[Tytus]

https://eacea.ec.europa.eu/sites/eacea-site/files/results_video_games_2016.pdf

Call for proposals:
EACEA-20-2015
Development - Video Games

CD PROJEKT SPOLKA AKCYJNA
CPF (Working Title)

Cyberpunk something?

Cyberpunk: Fappening

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Been playing and enjoying TW3 + expansions a lot. I'm on lvl 13. Had to switch to highest difficulty since I was finding combat a wee bit easy in defeating men & monsters 10 levels higher than me. Really really HATE the handholding though. It's the worst I've ever seen in an RPG, and makes even Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion seem hardcore.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Been playing and enjoying TW3 + expansions a lot. I'm on lvl 13. Had to switch to highest difficulty since I was finding combat a wee bit easy in defeating men & monsters 10 levels higher than me. Really really HATE the handholding though. It's the worst I've ever seen in an RPG, and makes even Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion seem hardcore.

turn off the minimap.

Yes, makes it more bearable. Thanks. I think this game is almost perfect in many ways, taking years & years of RPG game-playing mechanics, and refining them. Right now I'm liking how you don't level up too fast. Only on lvl 15 after several hours playing since my last post in this topic. It's as if the developers studied the best RPG mods and incorporated them into the game.

 

[Makabb]

Been playing and enjoying TW3 + expansions a lot. I'm on lvl 13. Had to switch to highest difficulty since I was finding combat a wee bit easy in defeating men & monsters 10 levels higher than me. Really really HATE the handholding though. It's the worst I've ever seen in an RPG, and makes even Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion seem hardcore.

turn off the minimap.

Yes, makes it more bearable. Thanks. I think this game is almost perfect in many ways, taking years & years of RPG game-playing mechanics, and refining them. Right now I'm liking how you don't level up too fast. Only on lvl 15 after several hours playing since my last post in this topic. It's as if the developers studied the best RPG mods and incorporated them into the game.

Thats because the game is a big mod itself

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Regarding the Ancient Woodland Spirit (or whatever it's called) contract.

Spoiler

I decided to take what I thought was the C&C that would lead to the least bloodshed among the villagers in this quest, but ended up getting practically the entire male population of the town killed. I thought it would be a nice break from just going in there and fulfilling a contract by killing a monster and collecting my gold, so after a fierce battle with damage sponged white wolves, I placed 5 wolves hearts on the altar, and the Wood Spirit accepted my offer. Went back to town and discovered the younger male population had slaughtered the village elders for allowing me to do this and not killing the monster, then they attacked me...and were promptly delivered to my sword. I left the town a great bowl of tears.

It's enjoyable when things don't go the way you had hoped in an RPG. This game is teaching me not to save scum. What's done is done.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Consider putting spoilers on that.

How would you feel, if

Spoiler

you accidentally stumbled in this thread on a post revealing that helping Cerys in Skellige will force you to the bad ending, where Ciri dies?

Sorry. Edited.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Weeboo game developers could learn a lot from The Witcher 3 on how to make 20-30 minute cut-scenes work beautifully without boring the player to tears. I'm on level 25 and just finished up that lengthy segment of mostly cut scenes and highly entertaining dialog in the night of drunken debauchery between Geralt, Lambert and that scar-faced witcher. You have the choice to make this scene as short or as long as you want it. I of course chose every option I could that would prolong it since it was so much fun and quite unique in RPGs in my experience. I did worry though that given the unusual C&C this game can throw at you sometimes that they'd all end buggering each other in a pie-eyed and pie-holed gaybang. I don't wanna see that so I clicked on the choices gingerly and with some tension and nervousness despite my giddiness. Now since I decided that Ciri is a

Spoiler

lesbian, and selected the appropriate C&C that would make her so, I must save my clicking hand for any C&C that come up for her and any all-female bathhouses, hareeems or whorehouses she may happen across.

This topic is pretty dead lately and I feel like I'm posting to myself here, but that's okay. I'm discovering this game for the first time and it's a joy.

 

[Alienman]

After 3 hours I'm already feeling the open world fatigue, especially after opening the second area.

 

[Roguey]

The Roguey technique for dealing with open world games wins again.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

The Roguey technique for dealing with open world games wins again.

Would you care to share?

Technique is : nope.

 

[Alienman]

Really been trying to get into it, but instead of enjoying the game I have started to resent it. Recently got the expansions and thought why not replay the game. But damn it feels like a slog. Started to remember so much stuff I didn't like with the game. Leveling system, static boring world. It's filled with scripted events to liven up the world but it just feels like one of those animatronic museums. Pacing is all fucked up thanks to a million side quests. It was an okay to go through once I guess, but these expansions feels like a waste of money.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I've been playing Witcher 3 for 550 hours now, still not done with B&W, did all the sidequests outside of B&W that I could find, and I still have a few left, failed like 5 quests total. That's not counting the witcher contracts and treasure hunts.

 

[Roguey]

Would you care to share?

Say no to completionism and only do sidequests with an interesting hook. Don't go to any locations unless they're a part of a quest you're on.

That's how I handled Skyrim to avoid burnout.

 

[Dreaad]

I tried playing Witcher 3. Got to Skellige and said fuck it. The game only having 5ish enemy types is just too weak too hold my intrest, especially considering the length and how limited char development is.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

I tried playing Witcher 3. Got to Skellige and said fuck it. The game only having 5ish enemy types is just too weak too hold my intrest, especially considering the length and how limited char development is.

I stopped playing right after finishing Hearts of Stone and just before Blood & Wine. I still find it somewhat compelling, especially some of those ball-busting bosses that remind me sometimes of the big bad boss baddies in Dark Souls II, and will probably continue it someday soon.

 

[Jick Magger]

Unless the treasure hunt mission has a big fat "Witcher Gear" label in front of it, don't even give it the time of day. Best case scenario, you'll get a sword that, once sold, just might earn you enough to pay for the repairs to your equipment due to the damage it sustained in the process of you completing the mission. Plus the witcher gears are just out-and-out better than basically all other equipment out there save some of the end-game swords in B&W, which will you'll get to use for maybe an hour before the campaign's done and you reset to NG+, at which point it'll be useless again.

Whenever you hear someone discussing TW3's plot, it's generally just them pulling either individual story arcs from the game (i.e. The Bloody Baron), or smaller, quirkier moments (i.e. Geralt, Eskel and Lambert's beers with the boys) as examples. While I do think these have merit, I always feel as though it's a bit of a dodge to avoid discussing the overall story of the game, which by comparison is very, very underwhelming. Story basically takes a complete nosedive the moment you actually find Ciri, start gearing up to fight the wild hunt, and it just becomes a straight action movie with no twists or subversions of the genre.

 

[Sodafish]

Unless the treasure hunt mission has a big fat "Witcher Gear" label in front of it, don't even give it the time of day. Best case scenario, you'll get a sword that, once sold, just might earn you enough to pay for the repairs to your equipment due to the damage it sustained in the process of you completing the mission. Plus the witcher gears are just out-and-out better than basically all other equipment out there save some of the end-game swords in B&W, which will you'll get to use for maybe an hour before the campaign's done and you reset to NG+, at which point it'll be useless again.

Well you get the XP tho, and money for repairs is never that much unless you're totally useless at playing the game. Plus I partly disagree over the witcher gear; to be sure the armours are better than pretty much anything else you can find, but the swords (at their different levels of development) always have various relic level items that compete well.

 

[Carrion]

There are very few pieces of equipment that really compare with the witcher gear. Shiadhal's Armor, for instance, offers immunity to fire, which makes it something you might actually want to use, but almost all of the other non-witcher armors just seem to have random properties attached to them, making them utterly forgettable and basically useless. As for the swords, I'm struggling to come up with any (pre-expansion) examples that would compete with any of the witcher stuff. Even if the damage of some of those swords might be somewhere in the ballpark of the witcher items, the special properties are usually just shit. After all, the critical effects are what makes a sword stand out (setting things on fire, poisoning them, freezing them with regularity etc.), and the witcher gear is generally superior in that regard because of the cumulative effects of different items.

However, from an economical point of view it's a good idea to go out and explore, do treasure hunts and visit points of interest, because even though the stuff you find is almost always useless, you will get a decent compensation when you haul it to the nearest vendor. Visiting all of the smuggler's caches on Skellige was a gigantic chore (I really wouldn't recommend it to anyone, because there really is nothing to see there), but it was probably worth tens of thousands of crowns overall. It's too bad that they were so lazy with the treasure hunts (or just didn't have the time to flesh them out) — the early Witcher gear ones are generally very memorable, having interesting locations and some cool monsters that might be new to you at that point, but in most cases you only get a treasure chest at the bottom of a river or something, with a diary page or an unsent letter slapped onto it to provide some sort of a story. They did improve this aspect later on with Hearts of Stone, which has a number of very enjoyable treasure hunts, but the base game is generally quite lacking in this regard.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

 

[Rivmusique]

 

[Cromwell]

It's too bad that they were so lazy with the treasure hunts

They were lazy with anything and the game is just bloated as fuck. Everybody goes on about the story which isnt that good to begin with (depending on your taste, I, for example, found ciri mostly unbearable) and forgets that this whole open world shit hurts even the good parts of the story. Its like reading a book but instead of having a 400 page mostly foccused epic story you have 3k pages full of shit and people telling you the b ook is good you just have to skip about 2.6k pages in between the 400 good ones.

It speaks volumes about how retarded the gernal game playing populace is and how absoluteklly unbearable shit their taste in thigns is that this games gets praised that much. Yes I am just massively butthurt because I am a fanboy and bought into the hype of more witcher missions spread around the world, with real detective work consisting of finding out whats going on, how to stop it, finding stuff to brew potions etc pp and what I got was witcher vision, a world full of useless junk people left laying around, and a story that cant decide if its rather urgent to find ciri and save her or if I should rather play another 20 hours of gwent against the local yokel.

 

[Gerrard]

Yeah, and then they went and made B&W exactly the same (actually worse if you take main story to filler ratio).