Some map icons not showing in Novigrad :: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt General Discussions

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Darren Evans has The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

May 26, 2015 @ 2:44am

Some map icons not showing in Novigrad

Has anyone noticed map icons in Novigrad have changed? All I see now are icons for shopkeepers, boats, taverns, fast travel and notice boards. All my filters are active. I do not see any other icons, especially absent are armorer, armorer table and grindstone icons, which is pretty annoying because I've visited several armorers in Novigrad when I played last a few days ago so I know for certain there are quite a few in the town.

I've seen icons for these vendors in Novigrad the last time I played a few days ago. I can also scroll arround the map and see them visible in other towns such as Oxenfurt. What the hell is going on?

Last edited by Darren Evans; May 26, 2015 @ 2:45am

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Showing 1-15 of 21 comments

BDK

May 26, 2015 @ 2:54am

Happens all over the map, not just novigrad. They seem to randomly vanish.
Game is beyond broken sadly.

Darren Evans has The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

May 26, 2015 @ 3:16am

It seems the icons do not behave consistently. Although I can see icons for armorers, tables and grindstones in many other towns that are miles away, these same icons only show up in Novigrad when you're within a certain range of them. Silly implementation.

Darren Evans has The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

May 26, 2015 @ 3:22am

Hmmm. It seems things are even weirder than I thought. Once in range of an armorer in Novigrad I got off my horse to find the entrance, which appears to be tucked away in some side street. As I'm walking around to find the entrance I noticed that the icons have vanished again.

I managed to find the entrance and I'm staring at the shop sign right now and yet there's no icon on showing either on the minimap or the main map. This has gone from silly to idiotic.

Last edited by Darren Evans; May 26, 2015 @ 3:28am

Zaphod0

May 26, 2015 @ 3:25am

Having the same problem. Noticed it last night when I first got to Novigrad.

Darren Evans has The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

May 26, 2015 @ 3:28am

Even weirder. I noticed that the armorer NPC wasn't around. It was 10:15 am so they should be available. Now I look around, the entirety of Hierarch Square looks a little devoid of NPCs. I decided to meditate for an hour in front of the shop and lo and behold, when I awake, the armorer NPC is there AND the icons are back. The Square also seems a bit more populated.

Could it be the icons are tied to whether the game engine LOD system has actually streamed in the NPCs yet? Changes in 1.04 seem to have made loading in NPCs even worse as they pop into existence in front of you regardless of the slider setting. If icon visibility is also affected by this, then we've gone from silly to idiotic and into the realms of retarded.

Last edited by Darren Evans; May 26, 2015 @ 3:36am

DLM

May 26, 2015 @ 3:31am

Originally posted by Darren Evans:
Even weirder. I noticed that the armorer NPC wasn't around. It was 10:15 am so they should be available.

I can't confirm this yet but it seems that there are days when they are not available. There is a small market just south of the pyres in Novigrad that was busy one day and empty the next one...

So either it's a bug (since the game doesn't have days like The Elder Scrolls does) or some merchants are not available every day.

Last edited by DLM; May 26, 2015 @ 3:32am

Darren Evans has The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

May 26, 2015 @ 3:49am

I've just done some more tests. The time is not the issue here as when testing the hour is between 10:15 and 11:30.

With the armorer present and able to be interacted with, I sprinted off to get some distance between me and the shop and then check the map. The armorer icon has vanished again so I sprint back, only to find that he's not there again either. The sprint away and back took less than 20 seconds. I stood around for 4 minutes and the NPC had still not appeared / loaded in. I meditate for an hour and he, and his damned icon, are back. There's clearly something crap going on with Witcher 3 asset loading since the patch.

I'm all for optimising games for people having crashing issues on less capable hardware but not at the expense of making the game look worse visually and the dynamic world work less realistically for those with more than capable hardware, as is what I fear is going on with these patches :(

Last edited by Darren Evans; May 26, 2015 @ 3:57am

PlevisVesel May 26, 2015 @ 3:49am

I noticed that if you can't actually see the armorers and blacksmiths, their icons won't show on the map.
I actually thought it was by design.

Darren Evans has The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

May 26, 2015 @ 3:54am

Originally posted by PlevisVesel:
I noticed that if you can't actually see the armorers and blacksmiths, their icons won't show on the map.
I actually thought it was by design.

This does indeed seem to be the case but only in Novigrad because while in Novigrad, I can see icons for armoror, Armoror table and grindstones in Oxenfurt and other smaller towns to the south. Also, if you can see the armoror shop and NPC, why would you need map icons? To me, these icons should simulate Geralt's growing familiarity with his surroundings and they should remain fixed on the map once locations are discovered.

If it is by design then they need to track down the designer, fire them and escort them out of the building :)

Last edited by Darren Evans; May 26, 2015 @ 3:55am

PlevisVesel May 26, 2015 @ 4:01am

Originally posted by Darren Evans:
Originally posted by PlevisVesel:
I noticed that if you can't actually see the armorers and blacksmiths, their icons won't show on the map.
I actually thought it was by design.

This does indeed seem to be the case but only in Novigrad because while in Novigrad, I can see icons for armoror, Armoror table and grindstones in Oxenfurt and other smaller towns to the south. Also, if you can see the armoror shop and NPC, why would you need map icons? To me, these icons should simulate Geralt's growing familiarity with his surroundings and they should remain fixed on the map once locations are discovered.

If it is by design then they need to track down the designer, fire them and escort them out of the building :)

Along with all the QA dept for missing out on the annoying "feature" of the looting/candles fiasco

#10

Darren Evans has The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

May 26, 2015 @ 4:08am

I don't know about the rest of you but I wish game developers would stop focusing so much on improving texture eye candy and start putting equal effort into better asset loading techniques and other game world state management.

Asset loading is more reliant on CPU than GPU even though, as seems to be the case here, poor asset management is resulting in poor visuals with missing NPCs, NPCs popping into existence in front of you and other general level of detail poor performance.

Last edited by Darren Evans; May 26, 2015 @ 4:09am

#11

Ol Clappy Cheeks has The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Jun 21, 2015 @ 10:26am

It's now June 21st and this issue still persists. How hard is this to fix honestly?

#12

DeGorro82 Jun 21, 2015 @ 10:53am

This is not a bug, but a fail design of the game, that's why some guys are making this to ease your witcher 3 play.
http://www.witcher3map.com

#13

katzenkrimis has The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Jun 21, 2015 @ 11:01am

Originally posted by DeGorro82:

This is not a bug, but a fail design of the game, that's why some guys are making this to ease your witcher 3 play.
http://www.witcher3map.com

Can you imagine if the game actually looked like that. And worked like that.

Funny were the talent lies sometimes.

#14