So I'm playing this weird game. It seems the design philosophy went like this: We have main story, full cinematic experience with choices, twists and all that shit. But we also have open world now so we don't want our players to go from one cutscene to another, but force them to fuck around until they unlock another part of main story. These activities between story parts should be diverse enough and should encourage exploration. So far, I'm ok with this, it seems like a reasonable concept. But this is where it gets fucking bananas: Instead of handfully crafted activities, let's make fucking hundreds of them, let's celebrate the meaning of a word "filler". And the idea is that the player's not gonna do them all, rather, he's gonna fuck around with whatever he's interested in, be it colletibles, fetch quests, closing rifts or solving easy puzzles. The positive fact is that you really just have to do few of them to unlock next story bit. Thus Laidlaw and other devs shouting at completionists bitching on the internet that they should not linger in Hinterlands for too long. This is the first time I heard developer encouraging players NOT to play the content of his game. How fucking retarded is that? The effect of banal filler is this: The player is not encouraged to explore because he knows there's no meaningful action on those giant maps (which is established as a fact very quickly), that there's probably not a single fucking place worth visiting, because not matter how beautiful the areas are, it's like the game is made by a fucking generator. You're not gonna find some epic gear because that would break the fucking balance (so anything worthwhile is level restricted or useless after few more levels - fucking MMO design at its best), all you're gonna find are more fetch quests and collectibles. Of course, this is not a problem for Assassin's Creed lovers and other pathetic cunts with gambling problem, who think grinding FOR THE SAKE OF GRINDING is time well spent (I hate those people with passion). Really, it's like a fucking robot made that game, Asperger following a concept. Here is your area, place fetch quests here, collectibles here, figure out the logistics so one quest leads to different part of the area so there's no blank spot. Literally nothing is handcrafted. What would Laidlaw's defense be like? I imagine something about choice - when you hate this Ubisoft-like fucking around, just skip it and do the Main story/Companion quests instead (which is possible to be fair) - there's shitton of content!. But that's an incomprehension of the fundamental problem here; the side content and exploration are banal shit boring and you made your player aware that this is the case for the enirety of your game.
Now I'm pretty sure the devs would like to fill their game with complex quests but were simply not allowed because time/money constraints/engine changes etc. My assumption is simply based on common sense, because NO desginer could possibly enjoy making content like this. There's nothing creative about it. They did it because it's easy to implement and cut out if needed (time, money constraints).
Well, I'm not far in the game, but I don't think there's gonna be much changes...
Witcher 3 is better so far because its side content is handcrafted, Skyrim has better exploration because it's handcrafted, that much is clear now.
)) I said so far 
