Too much open/unused space distracts from the better parts of the game

[dip0]

Too much open/unused space distracts from the better parts of the game

I feel that while overall, Open World is nice to have in terms of minimal load screens and more fluent gameplay, the large swathes of open, unused spaces in the game where you constantly pass through really make the game more boring than not.

I get that its "realism" and "realistic" that an ocean is big and a continent is large, but there is a fine balance in games between realism and fun.

What I don't find fun (especially as a completionist player) is spending hours driving Geralt by boat across the Skellige Ocean to loot random Points of Interest that have shabby/useless loot or riding Roach across vast expanses of swamp/forest/snow between locations with no monsters/quests/NPCs in between (a pack of trivial difficulty respawning Wolves every so often doesn't count).

I feel that CDPR could have shrunk the world size by maybe 20% and still gotten as much flair and realism into it and keeping the adventure/action/story going without boring the player with endless, dull travel.

In my mind, it greatly reduces replayability for a completionist when you get to "look forward to" spending hours on end just holding down Shift to travel.

Yes there are fast travel spots, but 1. you need to unlock them first and 2. a lot of places are nowhere near these spots.

I felt that even in similar Open World games, such as Skyrim, there were less "random open spaces" than in Witcher 3, and preferred the more compact environments of the previous Witcher games.

In summary: Quality (places that matter) would be more preferrable to Quantity (empty open spaces for the sake of "having a realistic, big world")

 

[MistroPain]

I think the problem here is a lot of games are now using the size of their world as an advertising tool.
Skyrim came out boasting about theirs; DA:I boasted about their variety; GTA:V pretty much showcased it non-stop; every new Assassins Creed game mentions that the up and coming city is bigger than any before; etc. etc.

If a culture like that exists in the video game development community, and if players are asking for larger worlds, then it will probably lead to pressure on developers to produce the worlds, which is problematic when they dont have resources/time to fill that world in appropriately.

You can see the results in other aspects of the games world design, which to me do break immersion, such as finding books in barrels, or the fact that every sack, bookshelf, treasure chest and barrel look EXACTLY the same on all areas of the game, etc. etc. Obviously this is frequent in LOADS of other games, but I just wish they had some kind of checklist on what kind of loot can go where.

 

[Anima38]

Agree that sometimes the game seems a little empty, with skyrim was almost the same till we got some good mods that fix the problem. It's hard to make such huge world and properly done everything right, i guess they did not have enough time to polish it, this was the first open world game that CDPR ever made so i say they did a good job after all. Maybe a fast travel system from anywhere not only from sign posts will fix the problem, i personally do not care to much about that but that's just me.

 

[dzbrown]

At one point I just shut off the "?" in Skellige to prevent gamer OCD/completionism from ruining the experience. It made all the difference! Without it on, I was just exploring just to explore. Of course this brought up its own issue, which is mentioned in another thread that it makes the game feel like 'two games' in one. On the one hand you are trying to save your daughter (and the world) and on the other you are sailing around in ships looting floating chests.

The perils of the open world...

 

[Zeroscape]

I think Skellige's open waters were the only big issue I had with the open world of Witcher 3. I ended up ignoring the water based points of interest because they were not worth the time investment. Would've been a different story if the waters were more dangerous or fun to sail on, but it really was just a big flat lake without auto-run.

The other small problem I had was that the beginning of Velen should've been exclusively lower level content. Pretty sure the first witcher contract I found was that level 33 missing brother one. I don't have a problem with finding high level content in an open world, but it could've been placed elsewhere so you had time to get a feel for this new zone. You have that quest in your journal the entire length of the story when it really didn't need to be.

As for other unused space, I think Velen could've used some active battles between Nilfgaard and Redanian forces. The music could've used a touch more militaristic flavour and that could've helped make that zone feel a little bit more alive. Though I didn't have any complaints about traveling long distances there.

Atmosphere in Skellige, however, was top-notch and I loved exploring the main islands. Could've used a tiny bit more enemy variety though.

 

[Scholdarr.452]

I felt that even in similar Open World games, such as Skyrim, there were less "random open spaces" than in Witcher 3, and preferred the more compact environments of the previous Witcher games.

Yes, but that's imho a good thing. A world should feel believable. It shouldn't be like a statistically distributed mathematical formula with a dungeon after every 10 footsteps.

And I think exploration is reward in itself if the world is fascniating and nice to look. If you don't enjoy that, just skip the exploration.

To change the game just for some completionists who don't really give much about the world itself and who are too lazy to travel by foot to the different small POIs seems to be the wrong way for me...

I think world design is truly fantastic in Witcher 3, without competetion in the genre or general in videogames with perhaps the one exception of RDR. To criticize that outstanding achievement in level design is kind of weird.

 

[inanimate_object]

Yes, but that's imho a good thing. A world should feel believable. It shouldn't be like a statistically distributed mathematical formula with a dungeon after every 10 footsteps.

And I think exploration is reward in itself if the world is fascniating and nice to look. If you don't enjoy that, just skip the exploration.

To change the game just for some completionists who don't really give much about the world itself and who are too lazy to travel by foot to the different small POIs seems to be the wrong way for me...

I think world design is truly fantastic in Witcher 3, without competetion in the genre or general in videogames with perhaps the one exception of RDR. To criticize that outstanding achievement in level design is kind of weird.

I believe the OPs criticism has less to do with the quality of the open world design and more a criticism on open world design in general. It echoes back to the Wind Waker debate.

Sometimes bigger is better. Sometimes its not. For my part, I sort of enjoyed the open world. It was very impressive and I did marvel at how vast it was. At the same time it really bugged me as I knew it was what was holding the rest of the game back.

 

[Scholdarr.452]

I don't like seamless open worlds that much neither, especially for a story-driven game like Witcher, as I've said more than once here already.

But for an open world game Witcher 3 has an outstanding open world design.

 

[MistroPain]

As for other unused space, I think Velen could've used some active battles between Nilfgaard and Redanian forces. The music could've used a touch more militaristic flavour and that could've helped make that zone feel a little bit more alive. Though I didn't have any complaints about traveling long distances there.

Definately agree. Its weird cause the redanians control areas which are almost adjacent to Nilfgaardian areas, so it seems illogical that no Skirmishes are taking place. Unless I've missed it I dont remember a ceasefire going on.
The game all around could have used with things like this going on.

Spoiler

: like when your chasing whoresons men around (visiting his three locations), it would have been great to have seen escalation in Novigrad street fights between the gangs during that short period.
The game in general needed more of a reactionary landscape. The blood barons death for example, for me so far, has led only to three events on Crows Perch, and barely effected anything else, its cool to see it happen, but not as in depth as it needs to be. I wanna go back to that place where I beat the first bunch of the Barons men and see the inn has been burnt down for letting it happen to begin with, with mobs chasing after Geralt (they can attack, Geralt cant so you have to run) for letting Velen fall into disarray.

The reacting landscape is always advertised in many open world games but never truly delivered on in what you (or I, anyway) imagine it to be. Then again maybe I am hoping for too much in a game.


... I do love this game, I swear...

 

[Scholdarr.452]

You know that there are working spoiler tags here?

Spoiler

.... [/ spoiler]

Without the space between the slash and spoiler.

 

[MistroPain]

My bad, its the same is any other forum after all. New to it and I guessed it followed different rules. Im used to the phpbb ones.

Sorry for going off topic.