The Witcher Witcher 3 was too big and had bad pacing

[Wyatt_Derp]

Gwent. Gwent will get you through the hard times.

 

[Outmind]

I hate ho you're given extra cards in the standalone adaptation of Gwent. Sure, players with better decks and a lot of cards that pull back monsters from past rounds would have an advantage, but having so few cards to micromanage over 3 rounds really made the game more exciting . You were forced to think, make sacrifices and trade-offs. Plus, the games were shorter.

 

[Falksi]

Getting hundreds of hours of optional content in a video game you paid for... What a travesty.

Fuck that, it's the hundreds of hours of total shite which you have to trudge through to get to any remotely enjoyable section.

Shit combat, copy-paste open world with fuck all of interest, conversations which have little real concequence to the interaction, tons of main quest quests which are absolutely boring as fuck etc. etc. The main quest could be condensed into Skellige islands + the Bloody Baron and you wouldn't have chopped anything of note out. Hell chuck Carnal Sins & Fools Gold in there and that's pretty much all of the main game worth playing which I can remember. About 10-15 hours worth.

 

[Jezal_k23]

Maybe that argument would be more compelling if TW3 side content was like the Skyrim radiant quests or something, but it's all hand crafted content, and well made at that. I think the game didn't need the treasure hunts and stuff and that's the thing that looks the most like trash filler content to me, so I ignored it. You know, because it's optional.

 

[anvi]

I vote for quality over quantity too. I am fine with open world and thousands of side quests, but if they are all about go here and kill this / bring this back, then they are not worth much to me. I would much prefer a 15 hour game that is really slick than a 50 hour game that has a lot of filler.

 

[Tigranes]

You aren't involved. You do nothing. Combat is crap, "role-playing" is none-existant and the whole main game just boils down to running between cut-scenes you rarely actually influence. It's fucking incredible the lack of player interaction needed to progress. And Christ the combat is an absolute nothing affair. It feels like playing a QTE.

I mean.... yeah.

The surprising thing about TW3 is that the cutscenes are so good, they are enjoyable in and of themselves. Characters like the Baron are written and animated superbly and there's finally a decent sense of scene setting and camerawork. It's one of the rare times where OK, the super high res graphics and 3D is actually doing something here.

And then the cutscene ends and you start rolling and rolling and rolling all over the beautiful film set swinging your sword randomly, before getting on a horse and trampling past all the medieval extras so you can gallop past some very nice looking scenery on the hunt for the next cutscene.

I don't think the combat is absolutely horrible, and I think the open world contains a lot of good hand-made content. But I think it's indisputable that there's way too much filler combat, filler world, filler walking around, and that the game doesn't really offer anything in terms of meaningful systems C&C. It's what Bioware wanted to do but never came halfway to doing.

 

[Yosharian]

Getting hundreds of hours of grindy, low-quality content, that you're forced to do in order to be sufficiently levelled to continue the main quest, in a video game you paid for... What a travesty.

Banter aside, I do agree that at least some of the content is optional, even if it's definitely the case that you end up doing a lot of it in order to level up.

The problem is I don't think it's good game design to fill a game with low-quality filler content, even if that content is optional. Saying 'you don't have to play it!' is not a good defense, even if it were the case that it was truly optional (which it isn't).

A good example of a design philosophy similar to TW3's is Assassin's Creed Odyssey. Shitloads of side content that is necessary to grind through in order to reach the appropriate level to continue the main quests. Of course, in ACO's case this exists to push profitable MTX to the player, which isn't the case in TW3, but the approach is similar.

 

[Yosharian]

Maybe that argument would be more compelling if TW3 side content was like the Skyrim radiant quests or something, but it's all hand crafted content, and well made at that.

No, not all the side content is 'well-made'. They may not be radiant quests, but they are not good quests at all.

 

[Chunkyman]

TW3 is like a really well done choose-your-own-adventure book with some mediocre combat and treasure hunts thrown in. If you're looking for a "true" RPG where you play as a blank slate, then why are you even buying TW3 to begin with? Outside of criticisms over the combat (which are valid), a lot of the complaints boil down to "well they didn't make the kind of game I like".

 

[Yosharian]

Getting hundreds of hours of grindy, low-quality content, that you're forced to do in order to be sufficiently levelled to continue the main quest, in a video game you paid for... What a travesty.

Banter aside, I do agree that at least some of the content is optional, even if it's definitely the case that you end up doing a lot of it in order to level up.

The problem is I don't think it's good game design to fill a game with low-quality filler content, even if that content is optional. Saying 'you don't have to play it!' is not a good defense, even if it were the case that it was truly optional (which it isn't).

A good example of a design philosophy similar to TW3's is Assassin's Creed Odyssey. Shitloads of side content that is necessary to grind through in order to reach the appropriate level to continue the main quests. Of course, in ACO's case this exists to push profitable MTX to the player, which isn't the case in TW3, but the approach is similar.

But... it IS truly optional? You can do the entire main quest by itself ignoring everything else, it gives you enough EXP to do so. Even if you end up under-leveled a bit, it's still doable even on the hardest difficulty. Many people (including myself) actually had a problem where we became OVER leveled by the main quests and all the side quests ended up being grayed out. I'm not calling you a liar though, because it's possible we were playing with different patches, difficulty levels, or character builds.

Eh. Well, that's not how I remember it. Skellige in particular has some high level requirements.

 

[Outmind]

I vote for quality over quantity too. I am fine with open world and thousands of side quests, but if they are all about go here and kill this / bring this back, then they are not worth much to me. I would much prefer a 15 hour game that is really slick than a 50 hour game that has a lot of filler.

What’s great though is that Hearts of Stone & Blood and Wine are 10-20 hours each, have arguably better storylines and quests than the main game, and can be played standalone. I probably wouldn’t hold Witcher 3 in such high regard myself if it weren’t for those two expansions.

That might be true, but you have to actually make it to the DLCs in the first place. I played until the quest where you go to some mist isle and are advised to save before going in. The game got too boring and repetitive at that point and I just let it go.

 

[volklore]

Aren't the DLCs playable standalone ? I remember that Blood and Wine can be played standalone and generates you a high level geralt. Not sure about Hearts of Stone. None of those actually require you to play the base game to enjoy the story, especially Hearts of Stone. HoS is great because it fits what the witcher is the best at anyway i.e self contained short stories, subverting elements of classical tales with interesting moral choices and deep, relatable characters. Very reminiscent of the Bloody Baron arc (after which the base game main quest goes downhill).

 

[JDR13]

Maybe that argument would be more compelling if TW3 side content was like the Skyrim radiant quests or something, but it's all hand crafted content, and well made at that.

No, not all the side content is 'well-made'. They may not be radiant quests, but they are not good quests at all.

Eh? What game did you play? TW3 had some very memorable sidequests, at least compared to most big-budget RPGs.

 

[anvi]

Maybe that argument would be more compelling if TW3 side content was like the Skyrim radiant quests or something, but it's all hand crafted content, and well made at that.

No, not all the side content is 'well-made'. They may not be radiant quests, but they are not good quests at all.

Eh? What game did you play? TW3 had some very memorable sidequests, at least compared to most big-budget RPGs.

Aids is better than cancer.

 

[Outmind]

you have to actually make it to the DLCs in the first place.

No you can launch them from the main menu when you press new game. It generates a Geralt for you at the appropriate level placed right next to the start of the DLC, with all the main game quests disabled. You just allocate skill points and head straight on in, no main game save/playthrough required.

I might try that in a couple of months or years if the itch returns, but for now, I'm all Witchered-out.

 

[Desiderius]

Witcher 3 was already too big. Cyberpunk will be also. More is not always better. If a RPG is longer than 35 hours and remains engaging it is truly exceptional.

Those are only too big if you have some kind of autism and need to go to every single pixel, doing every single mini-quest and beat every single enemy.
If you don't, if you just do the major quests and a few others, depending on what you feel like doing, they are just fine.

There is like 1/3 of the map on Witcher 3 that isn't even fucking used except for random trash mobs. Like what is the purpose of the southeastern (iirc) part of the map?

Isn’t that where Brynjolf and that creepy assassin chick are?

Wait.

I vaguely remember diving for a coin. Is that the right game?

 

[Desiderius]

you have to actually make it to the DLCs in the first place.

No you can launch them from the main menu when you press new game. It generates a Geralt for you at the appropriate level placed right next to the start of the DLC, with all the main game quests disabled. You just allocate skill points and head straight on in, no main game save/playthrough required.

I might try that in a couple of months or years if the itch returns, but for now, I'm all Witchered-out.

I tried to get back into it awhile back to play the expansions and made it about to the Bloody Baron. I’d forgotten the Diablo-style frantic clicking.

 

[JDR13]

I tried to get back into it awhile back to play the expansions and made it about to the Bloody Baron. I’d forgotten the Diablo-style frantic clicking.

I don't recall Diablo-style clicking at any point in TW3.

 

[Eyestabber]

Show me on the doll where The Witcher 3 touched you.

This. Pretty much. The people moaning ITT that W3 brought nothing of value should just sell their gaming PCs and buy Mac electric typewriters and spend their days on normiebook. Gaming is clearly not their thing.

And enough with the "just the Bloody Baron" meme. It's shite. There is plenty of good content completely unrelated to the fucking Baron. Towerful of Mice is brilliant, Carnal Sins, A Matter of Life and Death, The Lord of Undvik, just to name a few.

With that said, I do believe the game did have too much filler and avoiding the filler isn't as easy as some state ITT. I would say too many quests follow the "Witcher filler formula" to a T:

- "Master Witcher, plz find brother/son/wife/dog"
- Go to ambush site
- Follow red shit into cave
- Kill monster
- Return with bad news, get coin

That describes an awful lot of quests in the game and plenty of good quests start in very similar fashion. I think the game could've had a much better content-to-filler ratio IF it had stuck with just the MQ, MQ+ and a few of the more interesting Witcher contracts like Oxenfurt Drunk. The filler questing feeds into another problem that the game has which is garbage itemization and character progression. Since you need to fill 40+ levels worth of XP and gold, you end up having to fill them...somehow. And that results in a sheer amount of "find me brother, mastaaa" -> "your brother is dead. I avenged him, gibe coin now" loops that are indeed uninteresting.

Notice how Blood & Wine is almost filler free, showing they DID learn something.

Oh, and last but not least: the MQ up until Kaer Mohren should've been trimmed down a bit. No way in hell that whole "finding dandelion" subplot really needed to be that long and convoluted.

 

[anvi]

Show me on the doll where The Witcher 3 touched you.

Gaming is clearly not their thing.

You seem to completely misunderstand your place in the world of gaming, and on the internet. But there is no icon for that so I just gave you a retardred.

 

[Eyestabber]

Show me on the doll where The Witcher 3 touched you.

Gaming is clearly not their thing.

You seem to completely misunderstand your place in the world of gaming, and on the internet. But there is no icon for that so I just gave you a retardred.

Talking about yourself, mate? There is a word for you, you even have a tag stating it.

I'm here in case you manage to come up with an actual argument. Go on, start googling.

 

[sputtering fart balloon]

Caravan > Gwent

 

[anvi]

Show me on the doll where The Witcher 3 touched you.

Gaming is clearly not their thing.

You seem to completely misunderstand your place in the world of gaming, and on the internet. But there is no icon for that so I just gave you a retardred.

Talking about yourself, mate? There is a word for you, you even have a tag stating it.

I'm here in case you manage to come up with an actual argument. Go on, start googling.

people moaning ITT that W3 brought nothing of value should just sell their gaming PCs and buy Mac electric typewriters and spend their days on normiebook. Gaming is clearly not their thing.

I have an argument, just not sure you would even understand anything I say. ^This is the point I take most exception to. First off, your argument is totally backwards. The exact sort of people who use Facebook are the exact sort of people who love Witcher 3. Like you. Normies, also known as mainstream gaming plebs who buy whatever is advertised all over the web and all the other kids are playing. GTA, Assassins Creed, Callodoody, Skyrim, Witcher 3, etc... Big flashy games, expensive voice overs, music score, high end graphics, but shitty gameplay designed for dudebro xbox dipshits. Slash wiv swordz, dive out da way, slash wiv swordz agin! That is the gameplay of Witcher 3, they might tweak the context of it to be saving a maiden or killing a ghost that haunts a well, but the actual gameplay is the same. Hack 'N slash crap.

The people "moaning W3 brought nothing of value" are the sort of people who value gameplay over graphics. They don't care how pretty it is, they care about gameplay, because they aren't simple minded. They come to a site like this because they are all about playing games like Blackguards, Aarklash Legacy, Grimoire, and old games like IWD, TOEE, etc. They want tactical combat with stats to think about, battles to struggle with and eventually overcome. They don't care if it has hair physics, they want gameplay. Most of these people are the sort that grew up before the internet and smartphones, the sort of people who aren't interested in 'normiebook', or Battlefield 5, or Witcher 3, or any mainstream crap that is forced upon them. They rather do and play what they enjoy not what is mainstream. They are the opposite of the 'normiebook' generation.

Also you talk about sell your gaming PC, which is also backwards. Why do YOU even own a gaming PC if you are happy playing console shit like this on it? You could be sat on a sofa playing the exact same thing on a console. To everyone else, a gaming PC is the ONLY place you can play all those games I listed above. New games for a niche audience with a brain, old games for a gaming audience before they became retarded degenerate console plebs, all of that and more is what gaming on a PC is all about. You are the one on the wrong machine, pretending to be a PC gamer while blabbing about this console game. And you are on the wrong website too, why not go post on reddit with millions of other witcher fans? The whole point of rpgcodex is to get nerdy about real games that mainstream sites don't talk about or even know exist.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

TW3 is like a really well done choose-your-own-adventure book with some mediocre combat and treasure hunts thrown in. If you're looking for a "true" RPG where you play as a blank slate, then why are you even buying TW3 to begin with? Outside of criticisms over the combat (which are valid), a lot of the complaints boil down to "well they didn't make the kind of game I like".

I am contemplating doing this. I never played any of the originals, but picked up TW1:EE and TW2 for like, $10 combined. I got to the Merchant District in...Vizima? but quit because I was bored. *click* *click* *click* in that hypnotic rhythm wasn't compelling enough. The immersion was incredible and the story had promise, but I was just too bored. I consider occasionally playing it at the lowest difficult and going only critical path for "Story mode", but my reason tells me that if I have to configure a game in such a way to minimize my involvement with it, that I shouldn't be playing it at all. As it stands, TW series is a very low backlog priority.

PS: Another thing beyond combat that I couldn't get around, was the protagonist. Geralt is a zombie with all the charm and charisma of driftwood. It had a major impact on failing to keep me compelled.

 

[JDR13]

I am contemplating doing this. I never played any of the originals, but picked up TW1:EE and TW2 for like, $10 combined. I got to the Merchant District in...Vizima? but quit because I was bored. *click* *click* *click* in that hypnotic rhythm wasn't compelling enough. The immersion was incredible and the story had promise, but I was just too bored. I consider occasionally playing it at the lowest difficult and going only critical path for "Story mode", but my reason tells me that if I have to configure a game in such a way to minimize my involvement with it, that I shouldn't be playing it at all. As it stands, TW series is a very low backlog priority.

Your loss then.

Fwiw, TW1 really needs to be played on the hardest difficulty. The default difficulty is far too easy, and I think that's why a lot of people grow bored with the combat. Not that the combat is the best thing about the game to begin with, but playing on Hard makes a significant difference. It removes that stupid icon that tells you when to attack, and potions actually matter.