I think that's the greater issue about fixing problems the game is having, everyone has a different experience it seems so far, so maybe it's difficult for developer either to reproduce issues and consequently fix them...
Are you frikkin serious? Skyrim's biggest city (Solitude) has only 15 homes with give or take 50 NPCs living in them. Because of that I never could get fully immersed in Skyrim. Everything felt small, claustrophobic even. Even Oxenfurt is bigger than Solitude. Novigrad is wayyyyyyyy bigger. It has 5000 houses (or more?) and countless of NPCs, each having his/her own daily routine.
Sure, you can't have conversations with every single NPC in Novigrad, but what do you expect with so many NPCs? It's not like you're having a conversation with every passing person on the street in real life. Most people in real life would just ignore you if you'd try to approach them, so NPCs doing the same thing in TW3 really doesn't bother me at all.
One thing I would like to see is the option to ask NPCs for directions. I often get lost in Novigrad and I had trouble finding a swordsmith in Novigrad for the longest time, so it would have been awesome if you could ask directions to a specific place to NPCs. NPCs could then either tell you how to get there or maybe some of the friendlier NPCs would even walk you there. That would be awesome.
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Actually, I'd disagree with that as well, its just you and 1 other guy who are claiming strange things; Skyrim more lively than Novigrad?!?! What?
Some have already mentioned... Some offerings in Novigrad are...
Haircut salons, Various Pub's/ Taverns for Gwent / Beer drinking [I love playing gwent and found plenty of Bartenders and Merchants within Novigrad to battle and win rare cards]; several different Brothels for fun-times, Street-fighting tournaments [this could be gated do to pre-requisites] and much, much more... Shady merchants
I don't believe quest offerings are gated behind level [since I've gone ahead and completed 2 SKULL-level 24-quest chains already Master-Swordsmith Hittori and some Royal Griffin quest, all the while I'm only level 14], but I do believe SOME of the random events may not occur without causing stir elsewhere in Velen which makes perfect sense.
Well, I'm talking more about the lore of a Witcher's personality, rather than RPG's in general. Geralt, and others like Vezemir, are not socialites. This isn't a JRPG. These guys generally work alone, and spend MOST of their time outside cities, unless they are there to get a drink/ solve a murder/ hunt a monster/ or get involved in a Brothel and move-on. All of which, you will and CAN do in Novigrad! plenty times over, lol.
You really want to immerse yourself further? Turn-off the HUD and hint-notifications! Lol, then disable mini-map! Some 1 reviewer on www.IGN.com did exactly this to fully-immerse himself in Witcher 3. Yeaaaa... Mini-map off, OKAY... while the idea seems great in theory, I know I'd find that frustrating; at least we gamers have a *choice*.
I think the bigger games get, there's a thin line that needs to be tread carefully; I personally would not want a game that's SO real-life, it really feels like work to enjoy and immerse myself. Without SOME markers and pinpoints, or FAST-travel in some instances, to traverse the large area of Velen or in OTHER open-world games would cause me great frustration, personally. Especially since, most players are not 8-year-olds with little-to-no responsibility =). [I myself am 30, and perhaps others are in their 20's or older.]
Novigrad certainly felt alive and full of stuff to do, but you have to get further into the story to really open it up. There will be a lot of quests for you to do, rest assured.
As for the part with the vendors, yeah, I feel more can be done with that. Just fish vendors, market vendors, anything. They don't actually have to sell anything meaningful but it would add to the immersion if they was there atleast.
And for the record, no, I don't have ANY complaints about Novigrad as it is today, but I wouldn't mind if more was added in terms of these little details such as more merchants or people betting on some game (dice poker or something), just that little extra.
As for the part with the vendors, yeah, I feel more can be done with that. Just fish vendors, market vendors, anything. They don't actually have to sell anything meaningful but it would add to the immersion if they was there atleast.
And for the record, no, I don't have ANY complaints about Novigrad as it is today, but I wouldn't mind if more was added in terms of these little details such as more merchants or people betting on some game (dice poker or something), just that little extra.
Novigrad is great. My problem though is that unlike the smaller towns, certain merchants and other areas (inns for example) aren't visable as icons on the map. You need to walk very near them to notice that they are there. Took me quite a while to remember where the swordsmith is, for example.
All these people wanting "realistic cities" like Skyrim because you can talk to everyone amaze me. How often do you go into a city in real life and start talking to everyone you see expecting for them not only to respond but to actually have something interesting to say. Realism in cities comes from the activities of the NPCs and not from their ability to talk to the player like they know him for many years. That is why Novigrad is amazing, it strikes a great balance between interactivity and NPC activity.
I miss a few things from the earlier gameplay videos. For example, where's the guy sitting on the roof at the window from the E3 demo? That window is closed now. Also, I remember an NPC fixing the roof in one screenshot and another using the sweep well in the famous village gif. I don't uderstand why they cut out a number of NPC activities.
The cities and villages look alive to me as they are, but they could easily be even better.
The cities and villages look alive to me as they are, but they could easily be even better.
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True, the NPCs in Skyrim and Oblivion has names and schedules, like going to sleep and so on, and I agree that is great.. BUT it also limits the size of cities, take Imperial City in Oblivion, the arguable biggest town in Tamriel lt it has a underwhelming amount of NPC compared to Witcher 3. Sure W3 NPCs are just 'Townsman' but that means that there can be 20+ people in one towns square instead of 10 who maybe has a few unique lines. (Yes it's an older game, but the same holds true for Skyrim.)
You could call it quality vs quantity if you want, I think the W3 approach fits better into the world and sells the atmosphere of a huge city better with a lot more, but less talkative NPCs. Not everyone wants to talk to Geralt, why would you talk to some dude who walks up to you with two swords on his back, that seems dangerous! Plus he's a witcher, and people disdain them.
No, it really, really doesn't.
I wouldn't even stress how much TW3 is better in that sense, when the real issue is that Skyrim is terrible on its own. For the most part it feels like an MMO offline where just lifeless clones who deliver dull randomly generated quests populate the region.
And the compressed geography... Don't even make me start about it.
Here, this is how Skyrim feels: http://www.warhorsestudios.cz/index.php?page=blog&entry=blog_011
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WHAT?!
It's far more living than any game i've played in 30 years... although i'm playing on ultra if that makes any differences.
It's far more living than any game i've played in 30 years... although i'm playing on ultra if that makes any differences.
I rather witcher 3 world than skyrim world. 1 Novigrad's farm is larger than all skyrim major cities combined. A farm could have 2 dozens NPCs ploughing it while skyrim farm is like a small patch of soil with 1 to no farmer at it. I appreciate you can talk to most NPCs in Skyrim, but there's only a handful of them in a city with like 2-3 speeches and their generic standing & walking, you wont speak to them again. The ending civil war is overhyped with a handful of empire vs stormcloaks... hardly a war...Novigrad is probably the most alive city in an RPG game.
but im not complaining, i welcome more content.
but im not complaining, i welcome more content.
Thanks for the funny read. It's ironic that some of those hold true for TW3 as well, although the game is still doing things much better - for the most part - than its competitors.
For example, the mountains aren't really mountains in TW3 either. Geralt can climb them in a few minutes at most.
That I'd also like to do... even though it's not something Geralt might do. At least you can occasionally give some coin to quest-related NPCs or refuse the reward.
You can - if raising your fist counts.
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Many doors are closed until you trigger related quests. The only thing that annoys me is the poor interaction with generic NPCs where they don't have nothing to say. I would love to interact with beggars where I can give coin to them. I would like to interact with NPC who insults my Geralt, especially for non-guard NPC.
Well, sure, it's still a scale reproduction, compromised for gameplay terms. It's just much more believable than anything the competition in this genre achieved.
Far better paced, for a start. Skyrim feels hilariously compressed, with the equivalent of "points of interest" being few steps apart from each other. even with some hilarious mismatch at times. TW3 has a lot of open areas that give the world some breath between hotspots.
Beside, I don't even think extension is the ultimate meter of living, believable world. Gothic 1 and 2 were a fraction of Oblvion or Skyrim as in terms of landscape, but they felt a lot more internally coherent and filled with meaningful content.
Way I see it is that CDPR made the city not centered around the player like every other RPG does.