4883

Finished. Oh man, the feels. I wish we got a trilogy’s worth of this engine and nuanced questing a la Mass Effect. Had a hard time getting into the first two.

As someone who loved and put in over 150 hours each into Skyrim and Dragon Age Inquisition, the Witcher 3 truly outclasses them both handily. Its characters, the writing, the setting feels “lived-in” and hand-crafted vs the weird pantomiming of Inquisition’s characters and world. I know Bioware had to build for the previous consoles as well but Witcher feels a whole generation ahead as an RPG. Inquisition to Witcher 3 feels like how Amalur compared to it.

4884

Jeff, Gwent is not a deck builder and has very little in common with actual deck builders like Ascension or Dominion. Deck builders are games where the objective of the actual gameplay is to build a deck. Gwent is a collectible card game where you have built a deck at some point but the gameplay is based around the strategy of playing that deck and hand management.

Defining a game by saying you can collect the cards is a little vague, though. Hearthstone and Magic are also collectible card games, but they’re significantly different from Gwent.

Anyway, good news is you probably still hate deck building games :)

4885

Ah, my ignorance of these type of card games is pretty high! :) All I know is I enjoy Gwent far too much, to the point of neglecting my Witcher duties at times. ;)

4886

I’m … kind of bored. Way too stuck on side quests. Probably should just stick to the main quest at this point.

Either that or make one of my slow burn games that take a couple years to finish.

4887

Put it aside for a bit… come back when it’s fresh.

4888

Ha! That never works for me. Not anymore. If I put a game aside, it’s put aside forever. I’m not surprised that his works for you though. You actually had a backlog thread, and you made it all the way through your backlog. Amazing.

Enidigm: Get back on the main quest. It keeps things moving forward at a good pace. I’m facing the same thing myself right now, with the added complication that I only get 30 minutes of play time a week, currently, because of my wife’s schedule of staying at home more often this month.

4889

It’s one of those open world games where you need to bounce back and forth. The side quests start to run together, but the main quest will overwhelm you. Find a balance.

4890

Turn the ?s off and the side quests will not oppress you!

4891

The problem with open world games like this is that i’ll spend 15 minutes gawking at sunsets, 15 minutes futzing with inventory, and 30 minuites walking through the woods, just to see what there is to see. And at the end of my session, i haven’t advanced in any way at all.

The big difference between Skyrim and Witcher 3. Witcher 3 really doesn’t reward random exploration with experience or talents, just equipment. To get levels you have to do quests. I’m already building a list of contracts and quests i can’t complete because they’re too high level for me. Whereas with Skyrim i could just about be an antisocial vampire that does nothing but live in caves, never visits town and eat random bandits and reach the top level.

4892

But then i might miss skill points!

I should say i’m not super keen on the combat here. Despite seeming complex at first most encounters involve (it seems) crowd control with spells, self-shielding, and lots of button massing and dodging.

4893

Oh, you still have ?s turned on after White Orchard? You’re on your own Enidigm. I ain’t helpin’ you no more Son.

4894

Don’t listen to him, Enidigm. Us completionists need to stick together!

4895

Having turned the question marks off, I can’t imaging playing with them on now. With them on, I was trudging from one ? to another. With them off, I wander through the woods and swamps and pause and look around and get excited when I see something, investigate, and discover it’s “something.” Even if it’s just a guarded treasure or bandit camp. I’m sure I’m missing some, but that’s fine, I’ve got more in my quest list than I know how to get to anyway.

It just removes the feeling that I’m checking things off a to-do list when I turn off the "?"s, and more like I’m exploring a very interesting world.

4896

White Orchard is to blame! Those ? marks gave me 6 (7?) skill points for free! Then i’ve only found 2 or 3 more in Velen.

-1, would not leave on again.

4897

Ditto. I had them on at the start, turned them off after a bit. When I thought I was done in White Orchard I turned them on and saw I had missed 9 and went and got them. After that I decided to turn them off for good.

For completionists it may be a good compromise to do what I did in White Orchard - play with them off and turn them back on when you think you’re done with and area. Then you can clean up what you missed if you feel the need.

4898

I was one of the persons recommending turning off “?” and I stick by that recommendation :)

The game is too generous with XP/equipment IMHO (i would love having a separate option for how much XP you receive) and missing even a large-ish % of the “?” should not impact you too badly. Plus, if you do spend some time exploring, you will end up visiting most of these places anyway.

I found keeping the “?” was really detrimental to my enjoyment as it triggered my completionist-OCD in full and made the experience way too mechanical, as opposed to the more “organic” feeling I enjoyed after turning them off.

4899

Absolutely - it lets you explore by thinking what’s down here, what’s that, can I get over there, Oooh I’m here and other wonderful things.

4900

I feel like it would have the opposite effect on me; Since there’s nothing prompting me to look there, I wouldn’t bother. That was probably the design decision they made in order to get more people to go off the beaten path.

4901

Galaxy says I’ve only played 10-11 hours or so but that can’t be true since I’ve beaten the game. Is there a real in-game savegame-based counter somewhere?

4902

I hit a brick wall in my game. I keep forgetting about it too.

  1. I load up the game. I wonder where I was in the story?
  2. Dwarf says we’re fighting, suddenly have to fist fight against 4 guys. I die almost instantly.
  3. I’m loading again for far too long.
  4. I try defending, this being my first fist fight I’m just overwhelmed pretty quick.
  5. Load game? Hell no, quit to main menu. I’m not waiting 3 minutes to get into a 20 second fight. Fuck this game.

Next Day I come home from work, and I wonder, where was I in the story? Repeat above.