There’s tons of stuff to do but what you’re doing is mainly questing from A to B, not exploring. Anything heavier than the note you mentioned and it’s part of a quest.
Real exploring would be something like the scavenger hunts but without the quests. You come across that old tower with the drawbridge, you find a way in, perhaps you find notes as to what happened there and the history of the place. If you’re really attentive, you find some good loot, maybe even a link to another location you can explore. If you’re lucky you stumble upon some secret room and find the REALLY good loot. All the while there are no waypoints for glowy walls telling you exactly where to go. There’s no fanfare or achievement for finding the loot you just found.
I’m referencing Morrowind and its expansion, I haven’t played enough Skyrim to recall if they’re truly similar or not.
After White Orchard, I’m finding myself a bit rudderless in Velen. I keep doing little question mark locations and then running into a strong enemy later and dying. Then reloading and going in a different direction, and doing a couple of locations and quests, and then dying and losing my progress. And then reloading again and going in a different direction. Nothing is really sticking, and it’s feeling a bit weird. Maybe I should stop this and just go do the main quest in Velen’s area first, before I drive myself insane with the question WHY CAN’T I REMEMBER TO SAVE THE FUCKING GAME.
Moore
4206
My second play through I am skipping the entire story and traveling by horse and boat, no ft, with markers off. Gonna live off contracts and whatever quests I run into organically.
ShivaX
4207
Well, you can turn off all the map markers in TW3 if you want.
But Skyrim had almost none of that?
I recall an awesome quest in Oblivion that was completely unmarked involving treasure chests in the far north with zero quest text, but otherwise I don’t recall what you’re describing being a thing at all (and you could lump that as a scavenger quest, even though it was great).
jsnell
4209
Just ignore the question marks in Velen. From what I’ve seen they tend to not be very rewarding in any sense of the word (gameplay, story or loot). In contrast the main quest in Velen is where the game will really get its hooks into you, and there are great side quests as well. Play to the strengths of the game, not the weaknesses! Additionally there’s a problem that you can’t do all the level-appropriate quest content in Velen without getting over-leveled for the next area. The more XP you get from grinding question marks the fewer proper side quests you can do.
I was always pre-plotting my routes for travel to include a few question marks, so did a decent amount of them before moving on. Maybe 25-30? A couple of them had neat little story vignettes, but most were just “kill 4 ghouls and drop a bomb into the monster nest” or “slaughter 4 anonymous bandits and loot the big chest”. Or only marginally better, Places of Power. There was one slightly more substantial mini-dungeon with a reward that was relevant for about an hour of game-time before being superseded by better loot, and a few that I had to run away when under-leveled and never went back. Not a good hit rate for interesting content.
before I drive myself insane with the question WHY CAN’T I REMEMBER TO SAVE THE FUCKING GAME.
Yeah. The worst part is forgetting to save the game, reloading from far away, going back to where you died and forgetting to save again.
Yes, but that doesn’t change much, the only extra exploration would be “officially” finding the tower for instance. Everything after that would be the same and quest driven.
It’s a checklist in TW3. When there are no more yellow exclamation marks there are no more quests and because all the interesting places are linked to quests, you can be pretty sure that there is not much game left if any. That was not the case with Morrowind, you can never truly be certain that you uncovered all its secrets while in TW3 it’s basically a recipe.
Btw. one of the places in TW3 I think was there purely for the exploration: The trial of Dexterity
This turned out to be my biggest beef with TW3. Too much is revealed on the map before you’ve explored areas, for my tastes. I do like the notice board concept, but it’s a little too powerful. Skyrim (and perhaps Morrowind, I don’t know) mostly keeps stuff you haven’t seen yet as mystery, and it makes everything seem bigger and stranger. I’m even tempted to start over next time I pick it up, and completely ignore the map this time around.
I agree but it’s not enough to just hide locations from the player imho. There has to be an incentive for real exploration and that comes from knowing that there are all these places to discover and explore. Except there isn’t in TW3, all the good places are linked to a quest that would have sent you there eventually. You didn’t discover or explore anything that someone else, just by going through the checklist, wouldn’t have.
You’re right. Hiding locations and objectives in a fog of war or whatever is not enough. But it’s better than leaving the objectives open and visible on the map, as I’ve now, very recently, come to realize. There must be some other way to lead the player to them that doesn’t exist in any of these games.
The Witcher 3, like Fallout:NV for example, are quest-driven games despite being placed in a open world. That’s why they have so many quests and are so well written. It isn’t an exploration focused game.
Well the method that worked the best for me was Morrowind’s vague coordinates. It basically said; there’s something interesting around here somewhere. With “around here” covering a fairly large area of the map and it could be underwater or on top a mountain in that same area. Frustrating as hell at times and equally as rewarding.
I really think you would enjoy the game a lot more by turning off the ? Markers on the map. You will find the content anyway and for me they break the sense of immersion.
White orchard is really a longer tutorial. The world building starts really shining once you get to velen.
An example of how crazy good the world building/attention to detail is: in skellige, after doing some exploration, I found myself in a cave at the top of a mountain. Went in, no monster but a distillery. Looked around and left. Decided to leave through another route, down a very steep, snow covered slope leading to the shore. There is no quest down there, no REASON to go there and clearly most players will never go down there. And YET, I found a broken alembic/vat at the bottom of the slope (I.e something got broken at the distillery and the owner chucked it down the slope). That is the level of detail in this game world. I am absolutely amazed.
See, I disagree on this. I turned off the ? markers after white orchard and still pretty sure I found most of this content by just exploring and moving around.
For me the ? broke the immersion and turned this into a “completion” checklist. Which was not fun at all. Once I turned that off, explored and focused on 1 quest at a time, I enjoyed the world and the environment a lot more.
Besides, you can spot points of potential interest on the map by yourself pretty easily without the need for the hand holding the ? provide.
I’m not sure if you’re just saying that removing the question marks made the game better for you? I never said it didn’t, just that the difference to me was negligible. The checklist is still there even if you obscure it.
Agree, the “checklist” issue is still there ultimately and the whole 6-level below mechanics is a PITA but removing the ? and making an effort to focus on 1 quest at a time and explore the map in a natural/voluntary way (vs. following the ?) made it easier for me to focus on the story and world itself and enjoy the experience and the richness of the world itself.
Without going all philosophical, it allowed me to forget the game mechanics for a while and focus/enjoy the experience.
To each his own ;)
I agree but it’s not enough to just hide locations from the player imho. There has to be an incentive for real exploration and that comes from knowing that there are all these places to discover and explore. Except there isn’t in TW3, all the good places are linked to a quest that would have sent you there eventually. You didn’t discover or explore anything that someone else, just by going through the checklist, wouldn’t have.
I find it difficult to empathise with this mindset. What does it matter what someone else would or would not have done? You’re playing the game. Other than the fact that there are fewer dungeon-style layouts in TW3, proportionately, I’m not really seeing the huge difference between exploring one in Skyrim and discovering a mise-en-scene and exploring one in TW3 with a different quest activated and not using Witcher sense. I think you’re missing out on the best bits of TW3 if you do that, but if you insist on a pristine exploration experience you can have it. Hell, you could probably even mod out the “new quest” notifications.
Bateau
4222
It’s actually a part of the quest but it’s implemented in an incredibly stupid way - first you need to complete a level 30 quest to unlock this level 15 one.
