White Orchard is a slog

[Zenith]

I'm trying to get into this game but it's making it difficult. A fundamental design problem is the '?' markers. They essentially tell you there's nothing of interest in between. This takes away all the sense of mystery and exploration of the world. Sure I can take it slow and enjoy the scenery but that's all I'll get. Nice scenery. It could have been so much more since the world is so well made but they ruined it. I had the same level of excitement traversing between points in Oblivion and that's not saying much.

The controls in this game are horrendous. I've tried both standard and alternate and they both suck. Geralt feels like I'm controlling a blind man with voice signals. I try to get closer to loot and then I go a little too far or I'm at a slightly wrong angle and the 'A' disappears. The menus are extremely clunky as well trying to navigate your inventory.

There were a few good quests with nice cutscenes and voice acting but trying to clear this map is becoming really tedious. I'm honesty not sure why they bothered creating such big areas and then make exploration of them meaningless.

/vent over

[Spacey]

What exactly would you do to improve that "flaw" of TW3 ?

[Jouni]

Without the ?-markers you would have to comb the whole map. This is not Skyrim where you can see locations from a mile away. The abundance of trees would make blind exploration very tedious. A bandit camp in the forest far from road would be missed by most players if it was not marked.
I have no problems with controls. Are you using mouse and keyboard or controller?

[Melfior]

There are some hidden secrets and areas that are not marked by "?".

[Spacey]

Originally posted by Jouni:

Without the ?-markers you would have to comb the whole map. This is not Skyrim where you can see locations from a mile away. The abundance of trees would make blind exploration very tedious. A bandit camp in the forest far from road would be missed by most players if it was not marked.
I have no problems with controls. Are you using mouse and keyboard or controller?

I would add the map size too. Yeah, maybe HC RPG fans would go through all that map to explore everything, but they have to think about larger population. If map was smaller, like in Skyrim, it would make sense not to add "?" markers. If not for that "?" markers it would take double the time to complete this game. Imagine if you had to ride on a boat through Skellige and dive the whole map in order to find treasures or whatever. Damn.

[Jouni]

Originally posted by Melfior:

There are some hidden secrets and areas that are not marked by "?".

Actually most of those are used in quests(witcher gear or other) and thus found by other means.

Originally posted by Knife Party / Ezio ADF:

Yeah, maybe HC RPG fans would go through all that map to explore everything, but they have to think about larger population

The problem is that sometimes you can't see the location even from close range if a few pines block your vision. For instance there are unmarked bandit camps around the game world that you often find when bandits enter into combat with you.

[Remage]

Originally posted by Knife Party / Ezio ADF:

Originally posted by Jouni:

Without the ?-markers you would have to comb the whole map. This is not Skyrim where you can see locations from a mile away. The abundance of trees would make blind exploration very tedious. A bandit camp in the forest far from road would be missed by most players if it was not marked.
I have no problems with controls. Are you using mouse and keyboard or controller?

I would add the map size too. Yeah, maybe HC RPG fans would go through all that map to explore everything, but they have to think about larger population. If map was smaller, like in Skyrim, it would make sense not to add "?" markers. If not for that "?" markers it would take double the time to complete this game. Imagine if you had to ride on a boat through Skellige and dive the whole map in order to find treasures or whatever. Damn.

Now THAT would be terrible in my opinion

[Zenith]

Originally posted by Knife Party / Ezio ADF:

What exactly would you do to improve that "flaw" of TW3 ?

Fog of war was perfect in old games like Morrowind, imo. Although it also came with a good paper map with all the cities, roads and geography so the two maps worked in harmony. Ideally I'd do it the same way.

Thinking more about this... what they could have done was had fog of war but with a button to flip between fog of war and everything revealed.

[Zenith]

Originally posted by Jouni:

I have no problems with controls. Are you using mouse and keyboard or controller?

xbox controller.

[Jouni]

Originally posted by Zenith:

xbox controller.

Can't say a word about the controls then. I haven't played anything with a controller for over 10 years.

[Zenith]

Originally posted by Jouni:

Originally posted by Zenith:

xbox controller.

Can't say a word about the controls then. I haven't played anything with a controller for over 10 years.

I assumed since it's a console game that it would have been optimized for controlller. Maybe I'll try m/k.

[spoopycheems]

If you wanted to improve your experience, I'd suggest turning off "?" icons by toggling off POI in the Hud Configuration menu, gets rid off the tedious checklist mentality when you force yourself to explore all of them. Now I know you might miss certain areas if you are a completionist and want valuable loot, but overall with it on it just adds an artificial feeling that I think the Devs didn't really intend adding to the game, I certainly been enjoying my playthrough with it off since I find areas naturally without expecting it. (However I have reached Skellige, and finding treasures in the ocean might be a pain the ass, we'll see)

But more importantly, I think the main issue is the enjoyment you're getting from the game. If it's not clicking for you early on, then I honestly don't think you'll enjoy it later on if it's not your cup of tea.

[Rider]

I thought you could just avoid getting all those ? marks on the map by avoiding grabbing those half page notices on the mission boards. Also, like someone said above, I thought you could turn off those markers somewhere.

Lastly, if you're not feeling the game right now, I can understand that. I also felt like it was a slog through White Orchard and I've always hated the controls in Witcher games. I actually stopped playing the game for several months and about 2 weeks ago came back to the game. I have to say, my initial impressions were just wrong and I am kicking myself for not seeing how amazing this game really is. My jaw hits the floor on a minute to minute basis in Velen and Skellige...the beauty and handcrafted nature of the world is unbelieveable. I can't get enough of this game now and it just keeps getting better and better. It might be one of those you need a break from and then come back to when the time is right. At least that worked for me.

[Sneep Snorp]

There is still many reasons to explore besides the ?. Sure if you rush them youll find everything in the area but actually looking around can find things either outside of a quest or just the handcrafted landscape. White Orchird even has a whole trench system that is annoying to navigate but still a very nice looking area and later locations have forests that spawn monsters in mass and other cool things to find.

[tigerpoetry]

Hi.

I agree with your point about the loot markers...they're a pain and they get worse!

I'd suggest you stick with it, though. There are 'faults' with any game and some of these are just that the game is not to the player's taste...we don't all like football.

Your main point about it being a slog with nothing in between the ? markers is sooo.ooo wrong!

White Orchard is an intro to get you up and running.

Later on you can run into all sorts between markers, some of which will kill you in one hit, if you don't have your wits about you. At other times you'll stumble across quests and loot, or just something totally unexpected...the W£ world is massive once you get past White Orchard.

Some of the other posters have agreed with the point about controls. I do too, in a sense.

I almost gave up on W3 because of it but I'm so glad I didn't.

They never become entirely automatic (or at least not for me), especially in fights, but you do get mastery of them.

I say persevere because the rewards are plentiful...but it's your decision.

[cottonmouth]

i play with controller, 0 problems