The Witcher 3 Pre-Expansion Thread

[Paul_cz]

Don't get the hate for Vogel's article. Really don't. It's nice to see an RPG designer actually play it and and recognize some of the things it does particularly well, that no other games do.

 

[Cadmus]

Don't get the hate for Vogel's article. Really don't. It's nice to see an RPG designer actually play it and and recognize some of the things it does particularly well, that no other games do.

What the fuck, guys, the piece is anti-Anita. Friendly fire.

It's a pretentious piece of garbage, that's why.

Also the article links to a retarded video of the retarded cocksucker Conan. I'd like to not be edgy here and just say that he's the lowest common denominator for people who want to feel smart.

 

[Gerrard]

Don't get the hate for Vogel's article.

It is a game full of grim humor, some of which was a bit much for me. (For example, I absolutely would have cut the gwent card with the joke about "raping for Redania.")

Enough for me.

Also the unicorn thing.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I bought the game on release and really liked the early portions - especially of course the Baron quest; then I got to Novigrad and everything went to shit. I quit playing for a few months and got back to it the other day, have made my way to Skellige and things are slightly better.

I wish they would just embrace the fact that the game is at its best when hunting monsters and preparing for the fights - I wish they would make a game completely focused on that, with no bullshit elements to detract from that core activity. Tough fights, having to find information about the beasts, a stronger alchemy system with rare reagents... I guess Witcher 1 was more like that.

Whenever I'm playing Witcher 3 I find myself constantly feeling sorry for how great the game looks, and what a shame it is that so many resources went into making this awesome looking world for basically nothing - the popamole Ubishit points of interest thing really kills it for me. A less densely populated map with more interesting stuff to do would be so much better.

 

[Starwars]

Definitely agree with that.

 

[Anthedon]

Can't you turn the points of interest just off?

 

[Sodafish]

Can't you turn the points of interest just off?

Yes, but the game isn't designed with that in mind. The directions/hints/info about objectives and locations are far too vague to be of any use without the quest compass markers.

 

[made]

I bought the game on release and really liked the early portions - especially of course the Baron quest; then I got to Novigrad and everything went to shit. I quit playing for a few months and got back to it the other day, have made my way to Skellige and things are slightly better.

Same here. Velen was great but afterwards the game became a drag. Thing is, I really cared about the Baron and his plight but I can't bring myself to care about Ciri's antics and the WH. Though there are still occasional moments of brilliance to be found in the game like this scene here:

"Triss is playing the older sister, Ciri meanwhile is just trying to jump into bed with you." lolol xD

 

[Carrion]

Yes, but the game isn't designed with that in mind. The directions/hints/info about objectives and locations are far too vague to be of any use without the quest compass markers.

You can turn the points of interest off while still keeping the quest markers. I did that on my first playthrough, and the game probably works the best that way, just exploring the map freely and only investigating the PoI's that you happen to stumble upon. Exploring all of the question marks is a bit tedious in Velen, manageable in Novigrad (which in my opinion is the only area that feels right as far as the content density goes) and a massive chore in Skellige.

The thing about points of interest is that they aren't really interesting at all — they're all generic locations that follow the same pattern, which usually leads to looting a chest that contains nothing but vendor trash. More or less all of the real quests are located somewhere else, as well as many of the witcher diagrams and other unique items. Chances are that you'll miss out on a ton of stuff if you just follow the markers instead of taking the occasional detour, but you don't really miss all that much if you leave most of the PoI's unexplored.

Fortunately the expansion improved upon this by making the PoI's much more unique, for example turning some of the Hidden Treasures into actual quests with really interesting locations. The transition from doing unique quests to hunting down generic, gamey treasure chests is still jarring and detracts from the experience to some extent, but at least those locations feel like they're actually worth exploring.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

"Triss is playing the older sister, Ciri meanwhile is just trying to jump into bed with you." lolol xD

Actually it is closer to - "Triss is playing Ciri's older sister, meanwhile she is just trying to jump into bed with you."

 

[made]

Actually it is closer to - "Triss is playing Ciri's older sister, meanwhile she is just trying to jump into bed with you."

No, friend. The writer misplaced the comma; the VA clearly makes a pause before "Ciri".

 

[Gerrard]

No, friend. The writer misplaced the comma; the VA clearly makes a pause before "Ciri".

Why are you playing in polish when you clearly can't understand it?

 

[made]

On the contrary, I understand Polish perfectly. I learned it by playing Witcher 2.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I just played through this part, and the English translation says Triss is trying to jump in bed with you despite trying to play the part of Ciri's older sister while Geralt and Yennefer play the part of her parents... Geralt intervenes saying that if Philippa is trying to fish a fivesome things are clearly too crowded, I thought it was pretty funny.

On another note, the game doesn't fucking end. It just doesn't end. I've been doing nothing but the main quest for hours and hours and hours and it just... won't fucking end. It's actually irritating.

edit: alright, it finally ended. 65 hours and ever since Novigrad I've been doing nothing but the main quest. It's definitely padded for far too long and became extremely repetitive towards the end - I played on the highest difficulty and HP sponge bosses were pretty tiresome. I couldn't be bothered to hunt for new equipment and finished the game with the Enhanced Griffin set that I got at level 18. The "loot" system felt tacked-on and extremely disappointing, I never got anything worthwhile.

Potions are also extremely under-represented and you don't actually need to use any. There's an abundance of recipes in the game but even at the highest difficulty you're not required to use them at all.

My final opinion is that the game could have been truly spectacular, but suffered from Ubishit open world design and didn't have enough focus on the things that make Witcher cool - hunting monsters and preparing for fights. I much preferred Witcher 2 in retrospect, and the first game is much better than either of them.

 

[Perkel]

but suffered from Ubishit open world design and didn't have enough focus on the things that make Witcher cool - hunting monsters and preparing for fights.

Ubisoft open world design ? Did we play the same game ? Maybe you mean POI markers ? I switched them off when i started game.

Witcher contracts literally are all about what you said in later part and there is like 25 of them + shitload of other that are hidden behind side quests.

 

[NullFlow]

Ubisoft open world design ? Did we play the same game ? Maybe you mean POI markers ? I switched them off when i started game.

Witcher contracts literally are all about what you said in later part and there is like 25 of them + shitload of other that are hidden behind side quests.

You can't deny that most of the content in the open world was monster nests, bandit camps and hidden treasures. Of course you would get the good sidequest or story by strolling around but a good deal of the content is skippable or doesn't carry a whole lot of value. Skellige's POIs alone were like 60% hidden treasures in the water. Ultimately it feels like another tacked on open world because CDPR had to follow the Skyrim/Ubisoft trend, complete with repetitive and mostly pointless places to visit.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

You can't deny that most of the content in the open world was monster nests, bandit camps and hidden treasures. Of course you would get the good sidequest or story by strolling around but a good deal of the content is skippable or doesn't carry a whole lot of value. Skellige's POIs alone were like 60% hidden treasures in the water. Ultimately it feels like another tacked on open world because CDPR had to follow the Skyrim/Ubisoft trend, complete with repetitive and mostly pointless places to visit.

Then why not skip that content? Unless you are a compulsive looter?

 

[Carrion]

I disagree about "most of the content" being like that, as the game world has tons of cool stuff outside the PoI's, but he's right about it being shit design, as it does make the game world seem a lot less believeable when you just keep running into treasure chests or other copypasted shit everywere. I really love the game world itself, but the PoI's do bring it down a notch, map markers or not, and they feel like they were added in the last minute, maybe because they thought the game world might be too empty (it isn't) or because they just wanted to give people something to do even at the later stages of development. Its especially jarring when all the other content in the game is hand-crafted and unique in some way, and then the supposedly "interesting" stuff consists of doing generic stuff in order to get a small amount of XP and some junk loot.

I think the PoI's could've ended up decent if they applied some sort of a "hybrid" design to them, perhaps having fewer of them but making all of them unique in some way. Something like this:

- Abandoned Sites: An NPC or two standing outside of them offering you a reward, essentially turning them into minor quests (perhaps even diplomatic/Axii solutions when dealing with humans). After clearing the sites you might gain access to additional quests or at least some flavor NPCs.
- Monster Nests: Some of them could be used in quests along the lines of the monster contracts in TW2.
- Hidden Treasures: Unique locations to explore (like in Hearts of Stone), unique rewards (or just crowns) instead of vendor trash. Alternatively you could remove the "quest" part of them completely and just make the player look for the stuff all by himself, which would at least make them seem more organic and would also make exploration more interesting.
- Guarded Treasures: Turn them into minor monster contracts, perhaps something you'd have to discover by talking to people or exploring on your own. Again, the rewards should be unique in some way.
- Bandit Camps: Why not just have camps that could be populated by anyone, either hostile or friendly? While entering some of the camps might result in bloodshed, others might give you quests, pieces of dialogue, or maybe a game or two of Gwent.
- Smuggler's Caches: They are not "points of interest" and should not be labeled as such.

And so on. It's too late to change the main game, but at least with the first expansion CDPR seemed to learn some of their lessons, even though the PoI's still feel like filler stuff that you only do in order to be able to fully focus on the "actual content". I wouldn't have minded at all if they just ditched the PoI's completely and used that time and effort to flesh out the towns and other major locations a bit more.

 

[Perkel]

You can't deny that most of the content in the open world was monster nests, bandit camps and hidden treasures. Of course you would get the good sidequest or story by strolling around but a good deal of the content is skippable or doesn't carry a whole lot of value. Skellige's POIs alone were like 60% hidden treasures in the water. Ultimately it feels like another tacked on open world because CDPR had to follow the Skyrim/Ubisoft trend, complete with repetitive and mostly pointless places to visit.

So in other world you traveled from point of interest to point of interest and you complain whole game was based about treasure chests and so on.

This is why i criticized CDPR for POI being switched on default. IF they would make it new game + feature then most of retards would follow mostly main quest and sidequests, instead they run by compulsion to see "everthing" thus hopping from poi to poi without any kind of exploration to be had.

I disagree about "most of the content" being like that, as the game world has tons of cool stuff outside the PoI's, but he's right about it being shit design, as it does make the game world seem a lot less believeable when you just keep running into treasure chests or other copypasted shit everywere. I really love the game world itself, but the PoI's do bring it down a notch, map markers or not, and they feel like they were added in the last minute, maybe because they thought the game world might be too empty (it isn't) or because they just wanted to give people something to do even at the later stages of development. Its especially jarring when all the other content in the game is hand-crafted and unique in some way, and then the supposedly "interesting" stuff consists of doing generic stuff in order to get a small amount of XP and some junk loot.

I think the PoI's could've ended up decent if they applied some sort of a "hybrid" design to them, perhaps having fewer of them but making all of them unique in some way. Something like this:

- Abandoned Sites: An NPC or two standing outside of them offering you a reward, essentially turning them into minor quests (perhaps even diplomatic/Axii solutions when dealing with humans). After clearing the sites you might gain access to additional quests or at least some flavor NPCs.
- Monster Nests: Some of them could be used in quests along the lines of the monster contracts in TW2.
- Hidden Treasures: Unique locations to explore (like in Hearts of Stone), unique rewards (or just crowns) instead of vendor trash. Alternatively you could remove the "quest" part of them completely and just make the player look for the stuff all by himself, which would at least make them seem more organic and would also make exploration more interesting.
- Guarded Treasures: Turn them into minor monster contracts, perhaps something you'd have to discover by talking to people or exploring on your own. Again, the rewards should be unique in some way.
- Bandit Camps: Why not just have camps that could be populated by anyone, either hostile or friendly? While entering some of the camps might result in bloodshed, others might give you quests, pieces of dialogue, or maybe a game or two of Gwent.
- Smuggler's Caches: They are not "points of interest" and should not be labeled as such.

And so on. It's too late to change the main game, but at least with the first expansion CDPR seemed to learn some of their lessons, even though the PoI's still feel like filler stuff that you only do in order to be able to fully focus on the "actual content". I wouldn't have minded at all if they just ditched the PoI's completely and used that time and effort to flesh out the towns and other major locations a bit more.

Again you missed what they tried to do.

Whole point of those cashes etc were to reward people for exploration. If you switch of POIs and you do actually explore you can find some random cave and there will be some loot. With POI you literally just going to POI to pick up loot.


This goes to every type of non sidequests, like abandoned villages etc.

 

[Gerrard]

Doesn't change the fact that the amount of shit in the world makes no sense in terms of its believably.
I don't even care about the gameplay aspect that much because you don't HAVE to go there, but having a bandit camp behind every tree is fucking retarded.

 

[Carrion]

Whole point of those cashes etc were to reward people for exploration.

But finding generic stuff isn't really rewarding, except for maybe the Places of Power (because they give you something with actual value). Besides, even if you have the map markers off, you'll still get a huge pop-up text when you're even near a PoI, even if you're not even looking at the right direction, which kind of ruins the sense of discovery. The actually rewarding stuff exists outside the points of interest: quests you just happen to bump into, unmarked dungeons that contain witcher gear diagrams or alchemy formulae, and so on. The exploration is just not on the same level with something like, say, Gothic or Fallout: New Vegas, where every notable location on the map is unique in some way, rather than just following some basic template that is repeated over and over again with minor changes.

TW3 does still have some fun exploration, but it's fun despite the Points of Interest rather than because of them.

 

[Perkel]

Besides, even if you have the map markers off, you'll still get a huge pop-up text when you're even near a PoI

??

 

[Carrion]

Yeah. I was crossing a bridge to Novigrad, when the game suddenly told me: "NEW MARKER: SMUGGLER'S CACHE". Then I looked down to the river below and saw a bunch of boxes floating around that I probably would have never seen otherwise. It happens even if you disable the question marks.

 

[Perkel]

Yeah. I was crossing a bridge to Novigrad, when the game suddenly told me: "NEW MARKER: SMUGGLER'S CACHE". Then I looked down to the river below and saw a bunch of boxes floating around that I probably would have never seen otherwise. It happens even if you disable the question marks.

Ah those things. Yeah they suck but at least they are mostly very close to POI so usually when you found something text goes after that. It only really annoyed me in case you described where i would move over river and suddenly it would fire off but that was rare.

 

[Doktor Best]

You can't deny that most of the content in the open world was monster nests, bandit camps and hidden treasures. Of course you would get the good sidequest or story by strolling around but a good deal of the content is skippable or doesn't carry a whole lot of value. Skellige's POIs alone were like 60% hidden treasures in the water. Ultimately it feels like another tacked on open world because CDPR had to follow the Skyrim/Ubisoft trend, complete with repetitive and mostly pointless places to visit.

Its fucking POIs, aka places where you could find stuff. The markers are for casual players, like an ingame cheat mode. Just turn the goddamn thing of, its no real content youre missing out on. Fuck i dont understand you people. You want less density, more density, the world is too big, too small, too much stuff to do etc usw...
I turned off the markers after like 2 hours and i still got about 90 hours(!) full of great content out of the game.


Edit: Yeah the popups were a bit annoying but other than that i see no problem