how often will you have to repair equipment?
After killing one or two monsters you will need to repair your swords and armor. I'm exaggerating but it really feels that way. After only killing one mob of monsters I am encumbered and I have to repair all my weapons. All of it costs more than fighting the mob cause you get shits for killing random monsters in terms of loot and exp. I never experienced this in any other games where grinding gives a negative effect. If this is by design or to prevent players from over leveling, then it's the wrong direction. You can make the game harder by just changing the difficulty. Like if you play on HARD you will still be in level 1-2 after playing the entire day.
There are many instances where I kill a lot of shit at much higher level with lots of junk and gears. But after everything, I ended up LOSING money instead of gaining because of repairing and dismantling. Mainly because repairing costs more than selling a sword/armor.
Here's what I ended up doing most in Witcher 3:
1. Finding blacksmith for repair (every 10 min.) > also takes about 10-20 min. to find and get to the blacksmith and repair since you can't see them in map unless you're close.
2. Encumbered (almost all the time cause I pick up everything) > must find blacksmith in town to sell/dismantle. And yes, I have saddlebags.
3. Read dialogues.
4. Running away from mobs not story related. Because if you're not prepared for a random encounter you will most likely die cause of broken weapons, no food, no bombs.
In the beginning I was going around killing everything. Then only to realize that I'm still at level 1 with gears at 15+ levels above me that I can't use (diagrams). There were no satisfactions from killing anything (no exp, no loot, only cost money to repair and becoming encumbered), so I ended up just reading dialogues and going through the main story with little to no grinding whatsoever. The game is actually much easier if you just do main story, instead of wasting time exploring and fighting monsters only to have a negative effect with repairing.
All in all, I still have a blast if it not for the awesome story, dialogue, voice acting.
So right now I'm just going through the story and hope the combat is more refined later, either with patches or mods. I was hoping to explore and fight enemies non-stop and not do any stories, but the opposite happened because the combat is not refined as I have hoped. The game was suppose to make me want to kill things with style, but instead I rather avoid it for story. Not what I want. I want both.