Quen is the only way I survived against the bear and a few other monsters in White Orchard, so I immediately leveled it up to full as soon as I could. Getting one free hit is huge. If I get hit, I back off and dodge until I can caste it again.
The strangest quest so far has been one where I’m in this supposed lair, the quest is marked at level 33 (33!!!), and I’m filled with tension throughout, but the cave turns out to be empty and all I find at the end is a door that leads me back to the entrance. Well played. Using the level 33 hook to scare the shit out of me, and then not having any enemies to fight.
olaf
4344
Valid point but TW3 is only 20 days old?
And…Just say no to Crossbow abilities. Crossbows are good at two things, 1 shotting underwater enemies and grounding flying foes. You don’t need ability points to do either of those things.
I was super excited about the Gwent DLC today! Until I found out that the ‘…new Gwent cards’ were not actually new cards but new skins for existing cards…yay horse armor! For free!
I’ve been running around clearing the few question marks I have left and I simply cannot agree that this game has a life outside the question marks. The best thing you can hope for is a single note / letter that is pure exposition and leads nowhere. Why would it? It’s a game where taking two steps to your right to open a chest is a “quest”. An actual named quest.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with not having real exploration, it’s a design choice, I’m just saying that TW3 doesn’t have it and I wish it did.
I started the game just above normal difficulty and left everything but graphics / UI settings untouched. The question marks are by design, that’s the default level of playing the game. They WANT every location to be known through other means than exploration. Sure, I can turn them off, I can crank up the difficulty, I can install mods at some point, but I played the game the way they wanted me to play it. Gimping myself doesn’t make it a game with real exploration.
I want to come upon a tower/dungeon with no waypoints, that has no name popup, that may have no references to it anywhere else in the game world and that gives me no XP whatsoever for rummaging about it in. Still, it has something going on. A little story told through traps. books and puzzles. Perhaps there’s a special monster locked up in there. The place might have a name, it might not, I may find a name in a book, perhaps a nickname for something that happened there. Maybe I’ll find some weird item I can find no use for.
When I ask you if you found that place as well, I will need to describe it to you for you to answer.
Timex
4346
I’m still not seeing what separates “real exploration” from playing with the location markers off.
I mean, you say that you play with them on, but then complain that they are on and tell you where things are.
If you turned them off, wouldn’t that not be “gimping yourself” but instead… Creating exactly the experience you desire?
If I’ve parsed all the double negatives correctly, I think this means you like ice cream.
I corrected that seconds earlier.
No, because the game wasn’t made with real exploration in mind. That I turn off indicators doesn’t change this.
Listen to this: What are the most interesting / complex locations in the game?
- Main quest locations
- Side quest locations
- Random question mark locations. (very small quests such as “kill that” or “open this chest”)
You will rarely, if ever, stumble upon a location from category 3 that has the intricacy of category 1 and 2.
Category 1 locations are linear through the main quest(some depending on simple choice) Category 2 locations are primarily given to you through category 1 quests.
Category 3 locations are primarily given to you through notice boards.
The meat of this operation is the main quests and the side quests that are linear in nature. Everything that took real effort to make is being spoon fed to you all through the game. Again, like a theme park. You’ll not venture out and find this stuff on your own, even if you do, the game will send you right back there to explore it “properly” through a main quest or a side quest.
The game is just not designed for real exploration.
The only real exception to category 1, 2 and 3 are the scavenger hunts, they vary heavily in complexity, from simple fetch quests to sprawling locations with a lot of great exposition. That’s why I suggested they should have made those fully explorable and non-referenced.
Bateau
4350
Regarding signs - if you’re gonna play a full sign build there are a few things you have to consider - because of your high base sign intensity you’ll pretty much always apply special effect when you cast a sign and that makes talents like the final tier of Igni obsolete. Also keep in mind that you’ll be stuck with 10 slots for ~90% of the game (main quest towards the end is where you get the bulk of XP that gets you from ~26-34).
On Death March I used all igni talents (last one was basically a filler, only realised this later, but now you get to benefit from my 20:20 hindsight :P) and all Yrden talents and the first one from axii for dialogue purposes. I also used Griffin school technique, that general skill that gives adrenaline on casting and Focus.
From gameplay standpoint, if you got igni you don’t need axii alternate. With high sign intensity you’ll always apply burning effect which will CC the mobs. This skill is kinda obscene because it’s often enough to cast ONCE and simply watch entire group burn to death while you just stand around. Alternate version is a firestream, VERY strong versus enemies weak to fire. And by strong I mean killing enemies 15 levels higher in under 30 seconds. And they can’t really do much while you’re casting because it suppresses them.
Yrden is also a a fantastic skill that helps enormously with dodging and just getting some breathing room if you get swarmed. Alternate version places down a turret which stuns whatever it hits. Very useful vs strong bosses and enemies that are immune to burning.
Aard knocks down enemies if your sign intensity is high enough. Most enemies can then be instantly killed.
Now for the kicker - with high sign intensity you don’t really need any talents in signs. Personally I’d pick the first two from igni, first two from yrden and then focus on getting the first two talents from Fast Attack combat line.
If you plan on playing a melee build then grab Axii first tier and Quen first two tiers (you need 6 points to unlock second tier). That’s all you really need.
robc04
4351
That is silly. You complain that there is no exploration and everything is handed to you. The devs give a way to add a little bit of exploration to the game but you don’t take it because the default setting is to show question marks. Did you consider that they are on by default because that would be the easiest setting for someone new to this type of game? Also, who cares if a location is part of a quest? You can still explore and find it without visiting a job board.
I thought Skyrim limited exploration more than it should by essentially letting the player have a GPS to find every location. Just point your arrow to the minimap location and walk in a straight line. So, I added some map mods that made things a little less obvious. But didn’t the devs intend for me to be able to use my GPS to easily get to a quest location? Who cares, that isn’t the game I wanted to play.
I agree that Skyrim has more opportunities for exploration, but W3 has more than you give it credit for. Both games really could do a better job and giving the player a more natural way to find some locations. Some locations should be known, but some should require more than walking towards a map marker.
KingNee
4352
Your last point is also one of my main points; that locations should unveil themselves to the player organically throughout the game. At least some of them should.
But I didn’t come to design my own experience, I came for a crafted experience like the developers intended. That’s one of the reasons I hardly ever use a mod and why I never cheat, because these things affect the developer crafted experience. I don’t care why they designed the game like they did, I am experiencing their vision. If they compromised that vision so more people could play their game or to be more compatible to consoles, that’s on them.
I go into detail above why turning off markers is placebo to me in a game not designed for exploration.
Well, I suposse if you want to limit yourself in that way, that’s your choice. I don’t get it at all though. After all: the developeres added the option to turn the markers off. So doing that would still be in line with what they want you to experience, and it would also give you more, much more organically unveiled locations. Yes, they would still be linked to some quest or story, but that in itself is a good thing, and it doesn’t take anything away from the exploration bit that comes with finding them (without just walking up to a marker).
Basically, you unnecessarily limit your own experience, and then complain about a limited experience.
Timex
4354
This just doesn’t make any sense to me at all.
They specifically give you the option to turn off the location indicators because they know some folks will want to explore on their own and find them.
So you turn them off… And then, in order to find them, you explore.
Meaning, you look on the map and say, “Hmm… I wonder what’s over there?” Or you go up high on a hill and look out over the terrain (which has basically infinite draw distance) and say, “Hmm… what’s that tower sticking up out of the trees over there?”
How is this NOT exploration? You explore the terrain… and find stuff… and there’s tons of stuff to find.
This is exactly what you do in Skyrim or Oblivion.
Kingnee, you definitely seem to enjoy yelling at the darkness rather than using the light switch.
Timex
4356
Regarding signs, one thing that I really liked about the signs was that there didn’t seem to be any one particular combination of sign usage that seemed to be the most powerful.
Every sign is legitimately useful and strong. It kind of shows itself in this thread, with folks describing significantly different strategies for sign usage. Some folks use Quen exclusively… some not at all. Some mind control enemies, others just set them all on fire.
The signs were extremely well done in this game, in my opinion. As I’ve played through things, I’ve actually swapped to different sign configurations a few times, ended up playing differently with them, and enjoying it consistently with all of the different combinations of skills.
This is not Skyrim. Skyrim is a sandbox so of course it wins when it comes to pure exploration. The protagonist is a blank slate and their stories are much less interesting. This game has a heavy narrative with less emphasis on exploration, I don’t see how you can deny this.
Skyrim / Morrowind / Oblivion wins hands down when it comes to exploration and loses story-wise.
I did try turning question marks off, I even tried turning off the minimap but I did not get the sense of exploration I got from Morrowind in particular. 80% of the question marks are not even buildings but just unremarkable overland locations with “kill this mob” or “there’s a chest, open it” - “quests”. All the interesting stuff is tied to main quests or large main quest-related sidequests.
A quote from one of the large threads on this subject from the official forum:
Its a matter of preference. I enjoyed Skyrim for its open world and sense of free exploration but I find quests in W3 much more entertaining
Timex
4358
This is not Skyrim. Skyrim is a sandbox so of course it wins when it comes to pure exploration.
You keep saying this…
This game has a heavy narrative with less emphasis on exploration, I don’t see how you can deny this.
Because it has exactly the same capacity for exploration. The process by which you do it is basically EXACTLY the same in both games.
I did try turning question marks off, I even tried turning off the minimap but I did not get the sense of exploration I got from Morrowind in particular.
What was missing?
I think that on some point I’m just not going to understand what you’re issue is, despite trying really hard. The actual experience of Witcher in regards to exploring was basically identical to my experience in Skyrim and Oblivion. I would wander around, see something on the map or in the distance, and go walk over there to see what was up.
This is as “real” as exploration gets. It’s the definition of exploration.
Bateau
4359
A lighthouse.
But jokes aside, I get where KingNee is coming from. In W3 every POI has a clear purpose, most of them have some kind of chest to loot, an area to liberate or it’s even tied to a quest. And when they’re not part of a quest there’s really not much variety. Monster den, bandit camp, hidden treasure, place of power. It’s more like Ubisoft games than Skyrim/FO3/FNV in that way.
Yes. Though in Bethesda games it’s “dungeon / castle ruins / cave / crypt / sewer”. :P
Timex
4361
Just to be clear here… What’s exactly the difference in Skyrim?
I mean, it seemed like the stuff you found in Skyrim was exactly the same type of stuff.
Bateau
4362
Skyrim and FO3 (FNV a bit less because nearly everything is quest related in that game) have more locations that tell a story through environment. A lot of these locations are unmarked, and the loot often isn’t more than a skill book or two. For example a shrine out in the open in Skyrim, with ceremonial swords and flowers placed at it and maybe a note or two that give vague insight into what happened - there’s no gameplay purpose here, nothing to loot. It feels more organic and less like someone placed a POI there to fill in an empty spot.
