4283

Your fallacy as pointed out by Tim:

4284

Clear the map as in remove all the question marks. That’s what clearing the map is in TW3. There’s nothing else. There’s nothing interesting “non-question marked” going on. Nothing that won’t fire up a quest, c’mon, repeating myself here. There’s no fallacy.

4285

Here’s your fallacy: if you are playing the game with the question marks and map indicators turned on, you are not exploring. You are clearing map icons.

There’s a difference.

4286

  1. There actually are interesting non-question marked things going on.

  2. clearing the map in skyrim is exactly the same as clearing the map in witcher… Only less interesting because there’s way less writing that goes into all the stuff you find.

In not quite sure what you think is different about clearing the map in witcher vs clearing the map in skyrim… Is it just the fact that question marks indicate where some stuff may be?

You realize you can just turn those off, right?

4287

Again, I will reserve judgement until I finish Witcher 3 (which I am enjoying, and I turned off the question marks after leaving White Orchid and do like the feel better without them.) But I played Skyrim on the 360 for months and months and months. Long after I finished all the set piece stories. Just exploring. Then one day I went back to the home I built on the lake, gave my two adopted kids gifts from my travels, went into my storage room that I built, and hung all of my dragonbone armor and weapons up on the wall. Then I walked out onto the balcony and looked at the sunset over the lake, and with a huge sigh, retired.

A year later, as in early this year, I decided to play Skyrim again on my laptop. I am seeing a LOT of stuff I didn’t see before, and I thought I’d explored every inch. I really enjoyed exploring Skyrim again and was surprised numerous times on this tour of the world.

I hope that when I finish Witcher 3 I could replay it and discover all kinds of new things I missed the first time around. But honestly, even if I don’t, that’s fine. Witcher 3 is shaping up to be an amazing game. And again, for me, a completely different game if for no other reason that in Skyrim I created a character and that character was me while I was in the Skyrim world. In Witcher 3, my personality and who I am is already set: I’m the Witcher, the guy I’ve been following in the books. Even the first person vs. 3rd person views reinforce the different points of view. I can’t decide to be a stealthy archer and say the hell with the war going on, and go marry the herbalist I met in White Orchid and build us a house on some nice beachfront property and just go exploring. Or have her travel the world with me, the two of us deciding we’ll go adventuring together and pick a place to build our retirement house, perhaps pick some kids in the various cities to adopt and build a family. Or any other character. I am The Witcher. (yeah, I know, I can choose Tris or Yen, but you get my gist.)

THAT’S OK! I also know in Skyrim that when I do run into a hunter being attacked by wild animals or mages, and I go to save him, it may happen randomly and unpredictably, as opposed to a set piece in Witcher 3, but it will not have a cut scene with dialog and be as “full” as Witcher 3. That;s just another trade off in the two worlds: Skyrim will have a ton of randomly generated encounters, while the Witcher 3 appears to have a set number of hand made encounters and once I’ve seen them all, that’s it. My hope is, based on all I’ve been reading, is there will be so many of these I won’t feel deprived. ;)

I LIKE Witcher 3 so far (though I am JUST starting.) I have a feeling it will join Skyrim as one of my top games of all time. But, at least for the way I role play these games, I don’t expect it to feel or be like Skyrim. A poor analog, but in some ways much like I really enjoyed Far Cry 4 (MUCH more than FC3) and I also loved Just Cause 2, but in many ways they are quite different games.

My perfect world: A new Skyrim one year, a new Witcher the next, alternating every year. Foreever. ;)

Oh- and I said a number of times how much I hate melee combat and how much I suck. I still suck, but I am starting to get a better feel for it. Figuring out how to draw someone out of a mob, how to dodge, etc. I’d prefer being an archer, but I can live with this. ;)

4288

But that’s not true! The exclamation mark mini quests don’t show up on the main map, nor will you be directed to them from elsewhere AFAIK. You need to pass by very nearby to find out about them.

Nothing that won’t fire up a quest

And why exactly is this a criterion? None of this content in either game is emergent, it was all created by humans. It’s exactly equally artificial whether it’s marked as a quest or not. The complaint was about lack of exploration, but the only way to find these quests is to explore.

4289

Gonna stop now, but no there isn’t. I thought it had a few places like that but I was wrong. I completed the game, there’s nothing like that.

The closest thing is when you’re exploring interesting locations through side quests or scavenger hunts. Here and there they’ll throw in an invisible door you need to find using your witcher senses, it’s basically two steps to your right if you bother to do it.

There’s no real exploration in the game. I’ve been to all the places you have when you complete it.

4290

I don’t necessarily think I feel exactly the same as KingNee, but this is how I feel at the moment…

First, I vastly prefer The Witcher’s more hand crafted stories and quests compared to any of the stories in Skyrim, so for me it isn’t a matter of preferring Skyrim. For lack of a better term, Skyrim quests just feel generic to me. No data to back this up but I do feel like Skyrim had more locations that one could just stumble upon, that weren’t really tied to a particular quest. I’ve been playing with The Witcher’s question marks turned off, so it isn’t a matter of me having all of the locations automatically displayed on the map. Maybe since the story in Skyrim is really not the main draw, playing via exploration seems more viable.

Also, most locations one can find in The Witcher 3 are pretty small, so it’s not like you stumble upon some vast dungeon or structure to explore. This doesn’t make W3 inferior in my mind, but it does make for less ‘Oh wow’ moments for the locations that you find. W3’s wow moments are more story based. It would be cool to have some more substantial structural places to romp through in W3, but that is more icing on the cake than anything else.

Like most games (Skyrim included), W3 could be improved in how interesting locations are revealed. In some cases it makes sense to know the exact location - my farmhouse is invaded by ghosts. I wish there were more quests where you had to find things via landscape-based directions - I was walking through the woods NW of town and I remember passing the mouth of a cave… If the game needs to highlight locations on the map with yellow circles - make them bigger so it’s not so trivial to find EVERY location. It isn’t a matter of just turning of map markers - the quests need to include relevant information so people can explore and find the right place. Even though it fits the story and Geralt’s abilities, but following red glowy things doesn’t make me feel like I’m exploring.

4291

There actually is, as there are various locations on the map, where there is no question mark at all, but there is stuff to be found there.

As I said, there have been many times where I have simply explored areas by saying, “Hmm, there are some buildings over there on the map… I wonder what’s there?” And so then I go, and there is always stuff there. Bear in mind, these aren’t even official “locations”. Even after you go there, they don’t even show up on the map.

However, on some level, I think maybe you have some extremely specific notion of what constitutes exploration, and maybe the rest of folks just don’t quite understand what you are looking for.

Personally, the thing I’m having a really hard time grasping is what, mechanically, you find different from a game like skyrim.

It sounds kind of like you played with the undiscovered locations turned on, and then went to all those locations and are lamenting that you knew they were there. Which I can understand, but you could just turn them off, at which point you would only find them through exploration.

4292

Skyrim is great. But this is SO much better.

Skyrim has amazing geography and exploration is amazing. But the content among that amazing geography does not hold a candle to the content TW3 provides. And TW3 has the same great geography. And better combat. Much, much better combat. I said this three pages ago but there is nothing Skyrim does better than TW3, IMO.

4293

Skyrim has better mod support, which has resulted in a number of professional quality mods that are (IMO) as high quality as witcher 3.

With Witcher 3, at least currently, the most you can hope for is a… I kid you not… bare assed Geralt mod.

4294

After two weeks and no mod tools yet thats shocking.

Then again it won’t need amateurs to mod it into a great experience or release unofficial patches to fix things that the developers won’t bother to.

4295

Quick question: am I right in assuming it’s best to create all the alchemy recipies as soon as possible, seeing as they replenish themselves afterwards, but that I can hold of on the armor/weaponcrafting for a while, at least until after White Orchard? I hope so, because at this point, I simply don’t have a clue yet what to craft and what to leave…

And in other news, the claim that this game doesn’t have loading screens turns out to be utter bullsh*t: I see them all the time… Off course, this might have something to do with me dying all the time… ;-)

Still, getting the hang of it, at least against (stronger) solo-opponents. And I’ve only just started, so I’ll be allright!

4296

Yes, there is no reason I can think of not to craft all available potions, oils and decoctions as soon as available.

There is a great lvl1 alchemy skill (somewhat OP) which gives you bonuses based on the number of recepies you have.

For the combat, I had a tendency to rush in and button mash but that does not work well. Better to take it more slowly and take your time I found.

4297

Yes, there is no reason I can think of not to craft all available potions, oils and decoctions as soon as available.

The only reason I can think of is if there’s a particularly useful one that you don’t have all the ingredients for, that shares limited ingredients with one you can craft right now. But that’s not a huge issue, especially if you have a large inventory of things to disassemble…

4298

I’d go further and say that you should buy every alchemy recipe you come across when you visit traders. I didn’t and some later disappeared and I finished the game without finding 5 or so superior oil recipes. And that’s with exploring every POI in the game. But alchemy recipes were somewhat bugged before the patch so it might’ve been related.

4299

I’d go further and say that you should buy every alchemy recipe you come across when you visit traders. I didn’t and some later disappeared and I finished the game without finding 5 or so superior oil recipes.

Absolutely agree. It’s the first thing I do when visiting merchants. Well, after playing Gwent.

4300

Ok, will definitely start doing that then, thanks. As for the armor crafting: any suggestions? Can I ignore it for a while longer, or should I start buying recipes for that aswell?

4301

I would by every recipe I see, as money isn’t a limiting factor.

4302

You can safely skip armor/sword recipes because you’ll end up using the witcher sets anyway.