It's not a 'total failure'. It simply means that the quest itself is being attempted far to early by almost everyone, mainly due to it's labelling of lvl 12. My first time of encountering it was in my 3rd playthrough. I'm lvl 23 now and done alot of Skellige and it's still to early. I tested it out when coming back to Crow's Perch for the lvl 23 Enhanced Cat Armour. Off to kill a few key Velen/Novigrad beaties thast were too much before I went to Skellige and then back again to Igni Mountian Goats for their milk.
This bug was first reported 2 months ago, and it still hasn't been fixed, wow what support from the developer. I'm guessing you all completed Gangs of Novigrad or went to Skellige first?
It has nothing to do with Gangs of Novigrad. Tried to talk to Vernon withouth completing Gangs of Novigrad and it still didnt work. Think its more likely it has something to do with going to Skellige early.
Yeah I have no idea. and I meet roche and then did alot of other side quest before continuing the main quest so i dont have a manual save close to when i first met him. the only manual save before I met him was when i was level 3. should do more manual saves i suppose. would uninstalling and reinstalling the game help? is there a way to copy my save files and then replace them into the new witcher 3 files after reinstall?
Wouldn't help, as it's your save file that is corrupted with the bug, not the game. Only way to fix it is 1) start again from level 3, 2) wait for the devs to fix their broken game (not likely, been like this since May...)