Side quested to death

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It's actually not that easy. Most of the quest design flaws in games like DAI and Skyrim are not there because the devs couldn't come up with something better or because they specifically decided to offer such content - it's there because it's a side effect of offering a huge open world. So offering a huge open world was the specific desicion and not offering bland side quests. That's just a side effect of that first decision and something that is often a result of time and money constraints which themselves result from that first decision.

So it's indeed a completely different question whether we talk about quest design and combat. Combat isn't really connected to any other game mechanic or system. You could give Witcher 3 a turn-based tactical combat system, a system based on cards or an action system like we expect - it wouldn't change much of the rest of the game and there isn't really a prerequisite for your combat decision (apart from your input hardware and the possiblities arising from it).

Quest design on the other side is deeply connected with the overall narrative, with world design and with character design. Giving the game a huge seamless open world has indeed a big influence on your quest design (while having almost no effect at all on your combat system). You can "fight" against that influence but it needs a HUGE effort and a lot of manhours and money, usually more than what would be needed to offer a really "alive" and "immsersive" open world quest design. As I've said before: both Bethesda and Bioware are no amateurs, they have skilled people and a lot of experience. Both failed hard in delivering a narrative which is even remotely on par with their open world goal. Both failed hard in offering a world design which is even remotely believable or immsersive. All that they could offer was a pretty limited narrative and a lot of filler content on top of that to let their worlds even remotely feel alive. The problem is that I really doubt that these companies did this on purpose. They did a lot of that because the complexity of RPGs and the huge effort of big open worlds don't really go together well. It's basically overambition by definition. The games which offered a believable open world so far were those which we call action adventures (think GTA, Assassins Creed, RDR). Those games don't offer the complexity of RPGs but a quite linear story progression and a quite simple combat and player progression system (and some unconnected side content). Those games in which the open world attempts usually fails are RPGs which want to offer choice and consequence, complex combat and deep character progression at the same time. Call me a pessimist but I just have doubt that some developer is so much better than every other developer that they could deliver a game with the world design and design/production scope of GTA, RDR or Assassin's Creed with the systemic and narrative depth and complexity of a traditional CRPG. That would be THE jack of all trades, indeed the ultimate RPG. I guess we all hope W3 will be that game but I have my doubt. Doubts because I know the business and its constraints and doubts because I see what devs all over the globe were able to release so far and nothing of that is even close to the ambitions of W3...

What I said about combat was more for the purposes of a bon mot at Bioware's expense than anything else. I share your concerns. I've said similar things on this forum before. What CDPR is trying to do is very hard, and it hasn't really been done before. The best attempt I can think of is Gothic 2 or maybe Fallout NV, but those are very different RPGs from TW1&2. Personally, I would have preferred something with the production values of TW2 but the size of TW1 or bigger. To me, the Open World promise of Do Anything (and also Be Anyone--which doesn't apply here) aren't what I look for in an RPG. They're nice if they're there, but I really look for C&C and storytelling more than anything else.

On the other hand, this is CDPR we're talking about, and this is lore a la Sapkowski and writers like Blacha and Pugacz-Muraszkiewicz. Other Open World attempts that I know of were thin on lore and emphasized Be Anyone as opposed to a personal story. CDPR may actually pull this off. The problem may just end up being not that TW3 will be a failure but that it will be impossible for CDPR to top.
 
Yeah, this is definitely an issue in DAI and I don't blame people for being worried about TW3. Lots of devs struggle with designing open world games. The same can be said about Assassin's Creed. In an effort to make the game filled with content, sometimes content that isn't fun makes it into the game. I obviously can't speak to anything that is in TW3, as I haven't seen it. But my hope is that there will never feel like there is filler content in TW3. I would rather have a smaller or shorter game with high quality content than a giant game filled with lower quality filler content.
 
TW2 had cool sides quests, TW3 will have even better if you can even tell that it's a side quest! DAI/SKYRIM was very generic and boring for me, so much so that I never finished either one of them. I don't like stupid games with bad graphics and slow, shitty, lame ass combat. Playing a new video game is kinda like going out on a blind date, if the girl is ugly, or to fake looking, stupid, slow, boring and just not fun to talk to or be around, I doubt you would ever date her again! That's about how I feel about DAI & SKYRIM, just saying haha ;) Besides..CDPR makes RPG's for Adults better in general, also DAI's female models nude or not, still look ugly and stupid, I could go on and on as to why I think both of those games suck balls! lol..
 
I have to say after playing Inqusition, the quality of the sidequests in Witcher 3 is also my biggest concern. They were so unbelievable bad in Dragon Age, that I have no motivation to start a second playthrough when I think about the hintelants with it's assassins creed map full of quest markers.

The open-world / questing problems with Inquisition felt like a knee-jerk reaction by Bioware driven purely by the negative fan feedback from DA2. I felt like they fixated far too much on the issue of heavily re-used environments and lost sight of many of the other factors that made their previous games great. They gave us a massive game with consistently beautiful and unique locales (thus addressing the woes of DA2), but ultimately filled them with a whole lot of nothing. The ratio of bare-bones quests to relevant ones was probably something like 20 to 1.

Inquisition was a huge step forward in environment and level design, but several steps back in side-quests and interact-ability with NPCs. The massive size of the world further emphasized the lack of depth the game had whereas if it were scaled down a bit I doubt it would have felt anywhere near as empty and useless.

We will have a lot of rather "fetchy" content with the monster hunting, which is fine, because it's a witchers work. But even that can be made interesting in several ways. For example complex monster mechanics. The necessity to follow trails, question people, search for books to find and defeat the monster. Or just unexpected incidents like people bargaining over the price or trying to cheat us with our payment after we defeated a monster.

A great thing about monster contracts, which was probably the closest thing to fetch-quests in Witcher 2, is that they weren't really fetch quests and can become even less like fetch quests in Witcher 3 if done correctly.

Rather than just killing a given quantity of beasts like in Witcher 1, we can be given unique methods to deal with them. We see a bit of this in Witcher 2 where we have to blow up Nekker holes with crafted bombs, seek out and destroy Endrea eggs, and place traps in Harpy nests. If they expand on this idea in Witcher 3 and give us unique ways to shut down the monsters rather than just kill 20 of them, they can give us "fetch quests" without them actually feeling like fetch quests.
 
I honestly don't get it, if you don't like side quests then don't do them and just do the main quest. What's so hard about that?
 
I honestly don't get it, if you don't like side quests then don't do them and just do the main quest. What's so hard about that?

The problem with DAI for example, is that you HAD to do them to gain enough power points to do those damn interesting main missions, you could not escape them, and you also had to to do them to gain important things like having a mount, etc ...

The way CDPR did sidequests in Witcher 1 and Witcher 2 were perfect for me, every sidequest had its own interesting story and it was connected with the main plot as well and sometimes they affected it.

If CDPR managed to do the impossible and made a world bigger than Skyrim's full with really interesting sidequests that are as good as the previous games' on their first open world game, then they are gods of game development.
 
The problem with DAI for example, is that you HAD to do them to gain enough power points to do those damn interesting main missions, you could not escape them, and you also had to to do them to gain important things like having a mount, etc ...

The way CDPR did sidequests in Witcher 1 and Witcher 2 were perfect for me, every sidequest had its own interesting story and it was connected with the main plot as well and sometimes they affected it.

If CDPR managed to do the impossible and made a world bigger than Skyrim's full with really interesting sidequests that are as good as the previous games' on their first open world game, then they are gods of game development.
I see. But most open world RPGs don't do that and probably TW3 won't do that as well. Now you say that TW2s sidequest were interesting and that i agree on. But they were not close to the scale of Skyrim. Skyrim had so many sidequests and a huge world the TW2 did not have that. It would cost to much money to make every single sidequest as good as the main story line. So as you said yes CDPRed will do the impossible if they manage to make a game bigger than Skyrim world wise with a lot of quality quests.
 
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I see. But most open world RPGs don't o that and probably TW3 won't do that as well. Now you say that TW2s sidequest were interesting and that i agree on. But they were not close to the scale of Skyrim. Skyrim had so many sidequests and a huge world the TW2 did not have that. It would cost to much money to make every single sidequest as good as the main story line. So as you said yes CDPRed will do the impossible if they manage to make a game bigger than Skyrim world wise with a lot of quality quests.


That's why I personally do not expect every side quest in the Witcher 3 to be as good as sidequests in the previous games, but from what I have seen of the 37 minute demo, even the monster hunting contract sidequests seem to be interesting.
 
That's why I personally do not expect every side quest in the Witcher 3 to be as good as sidequests in the previous games, but from what I have seen of the 37 minute demo, even the monster hunting contract sidequests seem to be interesting.

I'm thinking the same. But i do not think they will be boring i actually think they will be better than most sidequsets compered to other open world games.
 
I honestly don't get it, if you don't like side quests then don't do them and just do the main quest. What's so hard about that?
I think it's not that simple. First, side quests are usually important to keep up to speed with the difficulty thanks to the gold and XP they give you. Second (and this is the fundamental point out of the two), I don't think that if something is offered as a side activity to the player then it's free from criticism or requests. If you do something, then do it right - otherwise spend your effort elsewhere.
 
I think it's not that simple. First, side quests are usually important to keep up to speed with the difficulty thanks to the gold and XP they give you. Second (and this is the fundamental point out of the two), I don't think that if something is offered as a side activity to the player then it's free from criticism or requests. If you do something, then do it right - otherwise spend your effort elsewhere.

Yeah but how are you gonna fill up a huge world with 100 hours of gameplay with quality content? Assassins Creed is the perfect example of making a big world and then filling it with collectibles and boring stuff. I do hope CDPRed are not like other companies which i think they are not and make good and exiting side quests.
We have to remember that most if not all open world games do not have a great quality of side quests because it would cost too much money to make a game that big with very good content in every corner.
 
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Yeah but how are you gonna fill up a huge world with 100 hours of gameplay with quality content? Assassins Creed is the perfect example of making a big world and then filling it with collectibles and boring stuff. I do hope CDPRed are not like other companies which i think they are not and make good and exiting side quests.
We have to remember that most if not all open world games do not have a great quality of side quests because it would cost to much money to make a game that big with very good content in every corner.
Oh, it's beyond me to say how can they accomplish that. They'll need some serious wizardry. I was just commenting on the remark "if you don't like side quests, go do the main one" because to me it felt as if saying "side quests are optional, so no point criticizing them", or something of that nature.

On a personal note - I dislike content for content's sake, which means I dislike most Ubisoft game design. I really feel collectibles are a bane - they gave developers a cheap way 'out' and spare them the effort of coming up with something creative. So I don't want any sort of collectibles in my games. And by that logic, I want as little pointless sidequests as possible, just so that the developers could tick away at that box in their checklist.
 
Interesting or not, it is witcher's life...Killing monsters, removing curses etc... :D

I can't wait just to immerse myself in this game and be a Witcher. Killing monsters when i'm in need of money it will be so cool. But i hope every encounter is different and exiting and not a bunch of copy and paste monsters.

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So I don't want any sort of collectibles in my games. And by that logic, I want as little pointless sidequests as possible, just so that the developers could tick away at that box in their checklist.
I agree. I don't think collectibles have anything to do in the Witcher universe or games. If they put collectibles i will feel they are just doing the check list of what to put in an open world games.
 
And they were fun in W2, imho:
In the Claws of Madness
Malena
Troll trouble
Little Sisters
In Cervisia Veritas
With Flickering Heart.........
There is probably more of them, too drunk to remember now...But yes, I always enjoyed Witcher side questing :D


Precisely why I hope that Witcher 3's sidequests will be even half as good as those were in a huge open world, if they do, like I said, CDPR will be the gods of game development.
 
On a personal note - I dislike content for content's sake, which means I dislike most Ubisoft game design. I really feel collectibles are a bane - they gave developers a cheap way 'out' and spare them the effort of coming up with something creative. So I don't want any sort of collectibles in my games. And by that logic, I want as little pointless sidequests as possible, just so that the developers could tick away at that box in their checklist.

I agree. I don't think collectibles have anything to do in the Witcher universe or games. If they put collectibles i will feel they are just doing the check list of what to put in an open world games.

From what we have heard there will be collectible Gwent cards in-game. Now as a collectible, that actually makes sense considering there will be a fully featured card game inside the game. So the collectibles in W3 do actually appear to be creative and useful.
 
From what we have heard there will be collectible Gwent cards in-game. Now as a collectible, that actually makes sense considering there will be a fully featured card game inside the game. So the collectibles in W3 do actually appear to be creative and useful.

Sure, but where to find them and how to get them? For example it would make no sense at all to just find these "rare" Gwent cards somewhere in the wilderness, in a lonely chest or dropped from a monster or just laying around somewhere. But if you get them by beating NPCs in matches or for example by killing bandits and people who play the game themselves I'm ok with that. It all depends whether it strengthens or weakens immersion.
 
From what we have heard there will be collectible Gwent cards in-game. Now as a collectible, that actually makes sense considering there will be a fully featured card game inside the game. So the collectibles in W3 do actually appear to be creative and useful.

Sure, but where to find them and how to get them? For example it would make no sense at all to just find these "rare" Gwent cards somewhere in the wilderness, in a lonely chest or dropped from a monster or just laying around somewhere. But if you get them by beating NPCs in matches or for example by killing bandits and people who play the game themselves I'm ok with that. It all depends whether it strengthens or weakens immersion.

Fair enough, Borch. I'll clarify myself, then - I don't want collectibles for collectibles' sake alone.

So what Scholdarr said - it comes down to many different circumstances. What they are, how you find them, what their use is. Gold is a collectible item too, but it makes sense for it to be there and it serves a good purpose. So if Gwent proves a fun game, collecting cards for it will serve a good purpose, and it makes sense. I also liked collecting Pazaak cards in KOTOR, I had fun improving my deck. Now what's left is for their location to make sense. Climbing a mountain and being rewarded by a Gwent card located on a branch is just wrong.
 
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