The Witcher 3 Pre-Expansion Thread

[cvv]

Nope. That's a wall of shit.

Skellige characters and writing are just as interesting as the Velen/Novigrad average and the quests are just as good. It's just Family Matters and Ladies of the Wood are so fucking outstanding. Plus the scenery, architecture and landscape design is much better. Btw fantasy cliche? What?

As for the negativity, I can speak for myself - totally elated about the game the first 10 hours because of the writing and chars and the world but then the shitty skilltree and retarded itemization started to be more and more obvious. That's the reason, not Skellige. It's still GOTY tho.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Yep, the levelling up is still the worst thing about The Witcher series. I actually thought the gold / silver / bronze talents were pretty good in Witcher 1, but it has been downhill from there.

As for items, it was pretty much World of Warcraft. You are constantly changing clothes and swords. The rate of silver swords in particular is just ridiculous, I was getting a new silver sword every time I completed a witcher contract at one point.

 

[Azarkon]

Nope. That's a wall of shit.

Skellige characters and writing are just as interesting as the Velen/Novigrad average and the quests are just as good. It's just Family Matters and Ladies of the Wood are so fucking outstanding. Plus the scenery, architecture and landscape design is much better. Btw fantasy cliche? What?

As for the negativity, I can speak for myself - totally elated about the game the first 10 hours because of the writing and chars and the world but then the shitty skilltree and retarded itemization started to be more and more obvious. That's the reason, not Skellige. It's still GOTY tho.

No it isn't.

Spoiler

Main Political Arc

King Bran is dead. His main wife wants her son to inherit the throne. The jarls want democrazy. One of the jarls, Crache, Geralt's old friend, sends him on two side-quests to help his children: Cerys, a feminist prototype, and Hjalmar, a walking Viking cliche. After you finish them, you get back in the midst of a great feast where the jarls pledge their support for various candidates. Bears attack the guests, and the jarls think Crache was responsible in order to eliminate the competition. You investigate a little and lo and behold, it's the fucking main wife who basically broadcast to your face that she hates democrazy before the feast. She gets executed and whoever you went to investigate with gets the crown. The end.

How is this quality writing? Zero twists, a 'villain' you saw a mile away, crappy C&C, and walking cliches/stereotypes as characters. The only redeeming quality of the entire arc - the center piece of the whole Skellig area - is this haunted house segment with Cerys where she forces you into a split second decision that is actually pretty clever. But outside of that, the entire plot's a boring cliche.

 

[cvv]

You say patato.

 

[Azarkon]

It's not just me.

Read the last 70 pages. Nobody's gushing over Skellig except for you.

 

[Carrion]

Also, was I the only person that liked the quests in Novigrad?

I really liked the quests themselves, but

Spoiler

the story gets sidetracked pretty badly there, as you're looking for person A to find person B to find person C, which gets pretty redundant. Dandelion's in mortal danger and you know where he is, yet you're writing a script for some play because that's apparently the most sensible course of action you can take. That too is a really fun(ny) and well-made quest, but something that probably should've been a side quest with no real urgency tied to it.

I guess I mostly just wanted to get drunk, play Gwent and visit whorehouses, but how could I when my bro was about to get his head chopped off?

By the way, regarding the late-game visit to Novigrad,

Spoiler

did anyone kill Dudu by accident or "accident" when visiting "Whoreson Junior"? Just wondering if it's possible at all. Would be pretty cold.

Reading other people's posts, it looks as though the game picks up the pace after Skellig, but judging by the dearth of buzz around the end acts, I've a feeling it also wasn't up to par with Velen, which explains the increase in negativity as people start to finish the game.

I think the game has some pacing issues regarding this thing.

Spoiler

The start of the game has an extremely slow pace, and the main plot barely moves forward at all until you've completed the storylines on each area. I really liked this as it left lots of room for secondary stories that were in many ways just as important as the main story. But when the game finally picks up pace, it does it at a breakneck speed.

(At the "gather some allies" part I was actually sighing a bit, expecting the game to go through some BioWarian structure where you spend the second half of the game doing errands for people so that they'd join you in the final battle, but fortunately that wasn't the case. Since I had done that already, as almost all of the ally quests were meant for relatively low-level characters anyway, it only took one swift trek through the game world.)

Then you reach a critical point and the game starts teleporting you around from one scene to the next without you having much say in it, putting you on rails and forgetting all about exploration for several hours, something that's completely different from what the previous parts of the game had been like. It does slow down a bit before the end, but at that point there aren't many side quests left (at least ones that would suit your character level), so the focus remains very tightly in the main quest. As a result the endgame feels kind of abrupt because of the huge contrast between the early parts and the later ones, which seems ridiculous considering how many hours you've put into the game at that point. I think it might've been better if your last visit to Skellige was longer and maybe had some lengthy side plots as well, making Skellige in general an area for end-game characters rather than mid-game ones. As it is, it feels like Skellige was meant to be explored before you find Ciri, as you'll be drastically overleveled otherwise, but the amount of main story content there at that point is very small and from a story perspective it doesn't make a lot sense to keep screwing around there. I guess I just wanted to have something that was a bit more like Act IV in The Witcher 1, a calm before the storm of sorts.

The pacing is definitely much, much better than the stop-n-go action of TW2, but I think TW3 doesn't quite have as effective a build-up for its ending as TW1 did. Then again, I thought TW1 was pretty much perfect in that regard.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

I liked Skellige, but the only quests of note were the ones that featured Ciri and Yen.

Spoiler

In my playthrough, Triss did fuck all in Skellig, even Philippa Eilheart had more to do than Triss.

Would have been nice to have had a bit more to do on Skellige with some of the main characters.

 

[Azarkon]

From looking at the quest levels, I think Skellig was designed to be done after Novigrad on the first go, and that's when you 'ought' to do the main quest arc in the area along with all the side-quests and witcher contracts that aren't level 25+. It is a bit jarring because at this stage in the game, you're still searching for Ciri and by plot logic ought to touch only what's necessary for the next step in the search, but were you to do that, then you're missing out on all the Skellig content till you over level it.

But that's not the main issue I had with Skellig. I did Velen and Novigrad slow because plot logic be damned. But I had to trudge through Skellig because 70-80% of the quests were just boring, especially the main arc after Yennefer leaves. Crache and his children were not especially memorable characters, and the same goes for the other jarls except for Madman Lugos. Bran's wife was a transparent bitch trope and her son was dumb as rocks. The arch druid dude looked as though he was important, but he

Spoiler

doesn't play much of a role beyond the initial interaction with Yennefer.

Contrast that to the Novigrad crew, eg Djikstra, Triss, Zolten, Dandelion, Priscilla, and the Velen crew eg Baron, Crones, Keira, and it's night & day.

 

[Ivan]

(I think) I'm almost done with Novigrad. Thoughts so far:

Spoiler

Ladies of the Wood quest was fantastic, and I loved how it looped with the Baron's quest. 4/4

I loved the Menge quest (part of Sigi's) where you take Triss as a trading piece. The guards badmouthed her and that was the first time I felt like I was givena gunuine roleplaying option, via choosing to fuck all and kill everyone.

In spite of how grand Novigrad is, I feel like I'm usually just meandering. I'm not learning the layout, just following quest markers.

Exploring the world is soooooooo good. It's a shame that early on in Velen I was outleveled so it wasn't as fun. Being able to explore and encounter enemies that you have no chance to harm sucks, big time. I hope this gets addressed.

Combat against humans sucks. They should have used a stamina system a la Dark Souls here. It's also retarded how other enemies can interrupt your parry yet you have no way of knowing if your swing will interrupt their blocks.

What the game needs (plz for my 2nd ENHANCED ed. playthrough)

-in game pop up wheel to use potions
-dedicated key to consume FOOD and another to consume DRINK
-be able to sprint with Roach in Novigrad
-fix the fucking inventory screen. you have to move the cursor OUT of the inv box to exit. WHAT THE FUCK
-improve combat against humans. There's almost no strategy involved here.
-plz delete quest sheets from invetory once accomplished
-make quest-related items unsellable (sometimes said items are placed in the Junk tab)

 

[Dookins]

From looking at the quest levels, I think Skellig was designed to be done after Novigrad on the first go, and that's when you 'ought' to do the main quest arc in the area along with all the side-quests and witcher contracts that aren't level 25+. It is a bit jarring because at this stage in the game, you're still searching for Ciri and by plot logic ought to touch only what's necessary for the next step in the search, but were you to do that, then you're missing out on all the Skellig content till you over level it

Level recommendations are kinda wonky in general. Two mid level contracts in Novigrad can be done through dialogue and so are doable at pretty much any point, and one level 11 quest in Skellige requires you to complete a level 30 contract to unlock.

 

[TedNugent]

I did check all the herbalists I found (like 5-6 of them?), the recipes they have also seem to be random.

There's a gnome herbalist to the northeast of Oxenfurt - literally just north of the bridge who has very important recipes and also gives you a quest to go meet the ultimate master alchemist trainer in Skellige.

Between the two of those you can get the majority of alchemy recipes, but please note that you should loot ALL crates and barrels in the sewers when escorting Triss out of the city, including those on scaffolds. I got probably 3 different recipes/blade oils doing this.

 

[you know what time it is]

cvv needs a fanboy tag

 

[Tigranes]

There's just far too much fucking content. I don't know what kind of - ok, so I know, it would take an MMO grinder to do all those monster contracts. Actual sidequests alone make it a thick thick list of things to do.

 

[RK47]

There's just far too much fucking content. I don't know what kind of - ok, so I know, it would take an MMO grinder to do all those monster contracts. Actual sidequests alone make it a thick thick list of things to do.

They're mostly quantity > quality.
I don't expect too much from side content. Had a quest where you went to clear 3 bandit camps to retrieve a sword. When all was said and done, there was no twist, just a 20 Crown rewards.
Yes, twenty. I did not miss zero.
Amazing game.
Rescued a kidnapped barber. Fascinating.
Some of the setup to unique monsters are praise-worthy. Ancient Leshen for example had great variety of attacks, despite its 'easy' difficulty.
Some are just 'activate W-sense, follow red markers, fight!'
Don't want to sound too hard on the game, the main quest is ok, the quality doesn't remain consistent, but what I saw in Velen, I like. The Novigrad had missteps and wore out its welcome eventually. Skellige is just meh. Looking forward to improvement post-Skellige. The Viking from Scotland cliche is too strong and boring.

 

[Toffeli]

The game was gud. 5/5 for world building, 5/5 for story (except last couple of hours with all the space and time stuff(I know, they are part of Witcher mythos, only read 3 first books and white frost is in the first game too, doesn't mean they aren't full of derp)) . I just can't believe how potatoes could create just a so large game with so much content (I think I only did >50% of the stuff, but it still took me 2 whole weeks to finish it), than their American counterparties with much larger budgets.

 

[Lhynn]

character system and itemization 1/5, but yeah, still a great game.

 

[WhiteGuts]

That song by Dandelion's bard's gf is p. gud.

 

[Perkel]

It's not just me.

Read the last 70 pages. Nobody's gushing over Skellig except for you.

Because most of people didn't even see Skellig yet or done ton of quests there.
I for one did only mc and nothing else. I plan to do Skellig stuff on my next playtrough.

Next ruler choice though overall looks shitty but in actuall stuff you do is way better.
Also there is naturally third way you can solve it. By actually not doing anything with it.

 

[cvv]

Combat against humans sucks. They should have used a stamina system a la Dark Souls here. It's also retarded how other enemies can interrupt your parry yet you have no way of knowing if your swing will interrupt their blocks.

Human mobs do have stamina, you can see it depleting when they block your attacks. But there is a room for improvement, agreed.

cvv needs a fanboy tag

You need a Metro tag.

 

[made]

As for items, it was pretty much World of Warcraft. You are constantly changing clothes and swords. The rate of silver swords in particular is just ridiculous, I was getting a new silver sword every time I completed a witcher contract at one point.

Yeah, itemization is absurd. One time I got a silver sword from the very monster I was contracted to kill as a "thank you" for letting it go. It was Maugrim, the "unique" sword I already had 3 copies of with different lvl reqs.

 

[TedNugent]

Yeah, itemization is absurd. One time I got a silver sword from the very monster I was contracted to kill as a "thank you" for letting it go. It was Maugrim, the "unique" sword I already had 3 copies of with different lvl reqs.

Try the shitty "sword fit to kill gods" you get from the master blacksmith quest Hattori.

Has no affixes, no sockets, and it was level 17 level req IIRC. I dismantled it in favor of my level 15 sword with 3 sockets and 3 decent affixes. A sword specifically rewarded from a master swordsmith for helping him restore his craft - has randomly generated stats? FFS, this Diablo "slot machine" itemization is cancer.

 

[cvv]

Plus the loot in the POIs is always like 5 or more levels below the monsters guarding it. So you level up, rush up to kill that 14lvl basilisk guarding that juicy looking chest only to find 7lvl "relic"sword in there. Plus the items are boring as fuck, even though visually they're quite nice. Common trash blue sword: +8% igni intensity. "Awesome" relic sword: +14% igni intensity. Yay.

After TW1 and TW2 it's clear the CDPR guys have absolutely no idea how to do interesting, rewarding loot. For their next game they should stop taking clues from the dry, spergy school of Josh Sawyer and go on a fact finding trip to From Software.

 

[Perkel]

Yeah, itemization is absurd. One time I got a silver sword from the very monster I was contracted to kill as a "thank you" for letting it go. It was Maugrim, the "unique" sword I already had 3 copies of with different lvl reqs.

Try the shitty "sword fit to kill gods" you get from the master blacksmith quest Hattori.

Has no affixes, no sockets, and it was level 17 level req IIRC. I dismantled it in favor of my level 15 sword with 3 sockets and 3 decent affixes. A sword specifically rewarded from a master swordsmith for helping him restore his craft - has randomly generated stats? FFS, this Diablo "slot machine" itemization is cancer.

Welcome to shitty non flat system.

 

[Cromwell]

Plus the loot in the POIs is always like 5 or more levels below the monsters guarding it. So you level up, rush up to kill that 14lvl basilisk guarding that juicy looking chest only to find 7lvl "relic"sword in there. Plus the items are boring as fuck, even though visually they're quite nice. Common trash blue sword: +8% igni intensity. "Awesome" relic sword: +14% igni intensity. Yay.

After TW1 and TW2 it's clear the CDPR guys have absolutely no idea how to do interesting, rewarding loot. For their next game they should stop taking clues from the dry, spergy school of Josh Sawyer and go on a fact finding trip to From Software.

But what should they do when every fuck and his dogs wants a fucking explore heavy open world game with massive loot. They should have cut a great deal of crafting because it isnt needed and also cut the fucking exploring down. In turn they could have made less weapons and armor but more memorable ones and awarded you with that shit when you actually do anything, but no now you ave to ride thorugh the asss end of nowhere to get witcher cat sword version 3.01b just because its 50 level higher then the fucking dragon flame forged sword heirloom you get from crach.

Novigrad quests were a let down and burned me out pretty badly, I always waited for some interesting stuff, plot twists anything but all I got was "well she isnt here neither lol", after I got the big reveal where she actually is and what the fuck she was searching for I was very disappointed. Instead I would have loved more quests in Novigrad with Djikstra and the king of beggars, maybe do something against or for the church. (more stuff than you actually do). It also doesnt help that Ciri is a dumb fucking cunt which practically begs to be punched.

 

[TheGreatOne]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/10161-The-Witcher-3-Wild-Hunt-Review
Zero punctuation likes it better than the first one because this one isnt one of those needlesly complex Western RPGs like Oblivion. This guy is the god king of retards.
Also praises the story as he's a storyfag (who hates Torment, it's got too much words in it)