Why is Novigrad so empty?

[MUPPETA]

In terms of settlements, Witcher 3 has quite a lot and its cities are very big. But in terms of caves, bandit camps, dungeons, etc. it's pretty empty.

What, it took me 2 days just to clear one peninsula of 12 bandit camps in novigrad after I found a one letter ,
I never believed that there be so much things to do in witcher3. Sure, some thing could be better, but I think they did a wonderful game.

 

[ann.ltd]

I like more random chattering of the people. I think the city architecture is very good and there are enough side scenes that pop;s out. (upper novigrad, the dogs, market square).
There sould only be more and more vendors where you can talk to.
- butcher
- normal clothes store (inside the city walls)
- jewelry
- fish seller etc.

 

[CannedPlayer]

Hi, Novigrad's design is fantastic, huge city with so many details and attention put into building something realistic. On the other hand, most people have nothing to say, most vendors have nothing to sell, and most doors are closed. In the end, what could have been a game inside the game is just an empty shell, a beautiful one, but an empty one. My wish would be a "Living Novigrad" DLC, a DLC really giving life to this city that deserves so much more. But will this happen? I have great doubts!

SO EMPTY? what did you expect, a New York rush hour on a medieval city? They dont have cars and flying vehicles, so there arent hundreds of people on streets. Plus it is understandable that part of the population is at home doing usual activities, and we can find them there.

And the fact that they dont say you anything.. what should they say to a stranger that asks anything random on street? People just dont go chatting all the time with strangers, specially when you dont look familiar, carry 2 swords, and the city is hunting mages, sorceresses or anything else.

There are people who say things, small things, and npcs that give you the full stories;

by far the population is ok, and im on the lowest population density (setup menu). plus you need to move, to have a flow on streets. for me its more than ok. they went more than what would be needed for a scenario and a situation like this.

 

[kmieciu]

The more quests you do in Novigrad, the more places you'll see. Belive me, it's got a shit-ton of unique interiors.

It's got more interiors than fricken GTA5. And I'm not talking about free roam, I'm talking about all the story missions.

In my opinion, there are too many NPCs in Novigrad. CDP even had to disable galloping because you would be constantly running people over. And navigating through Novigrad on foot takes so much time! They could have released Novigrad as a separate game and it would have more content than your average COD/MW.

And there are no loading screens and no slowdowns when entering each and every building. And you've got real windows you can look through and see the outside. Something that Bethesda engines were never capable of. I bet Fallout 4 will be the same...

 

[wazaa]

The first time that I went to Novigrad it took me 1 hour to reach the destination... So I don't feel it to have lack of content.

 

[birthday_massacre]

Uh yeah but whats the biggest city in Skyrim, - Markath? There are about 85 NPCs in Markath including 2 named dogs, add to that some generic guards.

And yes you can go in every door. There are 23 visitable areas. In the game's biggest city. And that's including the mines, ruins, the hall of the dead and some open air locations like the marketplace.

Now I don't know about you, but I vastly prefer W3's approach with hundreds of generic NPC's and tons of buildings (no I haven't counted them), un-enterable as they may be. To me its a much more convincing representation of a city, as when you're visiting such a place on business you won't be interacting with the majority of the residents, nor barging into their homes.

Sure it would be NICE to be able to do so, but in this case I'm satisfied with the backdrop of appropriate scale, rather than the weird double-think of Skyrim where a crowded city has the population of a backwater town.

Skyrim easily could have made that city 66% bigger and added tons of generic NPCs that don't do anything and tons of houses you cant go in but that would take you out of the game. Skyrim's way is much better. And hell in Morrowwind the first ES game they had giant cities and you could still go in every door and interact with all the NPCs.

 

[Tuco]

and you could still go in every door and interact with all the NPCs.

Singpost NPCs who didn't move one step from where they used to stand, and had "interaction" in the style of hypetext browsing. Where the overwhelming majority of NPCs gave you the same standard answers to each topic.

Frankly someone may even be fooled believing "You could actually talk to them!" but in practical terms the interaction was as deep as clicking on an anonymous NPC and getting a random banter in TW2/TW3 or in a Bioware game.
I could understand this kind of critic if it took as a model something that actually tried to offer the illusion of a living world, like Ultima, but NO, we have people praising Bethesda and its shitty, broken, dull, unbalanced, uninspired game design, because you could use the same four random topic to talk to random NPCs. Jesus Christ.

 

[PrinceParadox.372]

Novigrad is one of the best medieval cities I've ever played in. Love everything about it.

 

[aozgolo]

There's tons of people walking about everywhere, not at all times of the day but there's lots of NPCs... at least on PC if you set the NPC limit up to max.

As for doors... My first visit to Novigrad I was a little peeved at how many "locked doors" there were and almost no interiors other than shops... after completing tons of quests in Novigrad though many of these inaccessible buildings become open to explore at your leisure, the city is probably the largest I've ever seen in a game period.

 

[Ajira]

Take a walk in your city and a nearby forest. People are playing too much EA and Ubisoft games.

 

[EndlessSpace]

I don't think Novigrad is empty. If felt pretty lifely to me. Oxenfurt on the other hand.... let's say you can see that the first dlc is planed there, because there is barely any reason to go there currently.