Witcher 3 has a limited replayability because....
....because unlike Skyrim, unlocking the rest of the maps require the player to play the main quest.
Before someone trying to accuse of being a Skyrim fanboy (I haven't played it in years now), just consider these few facts, that makes the Witcher 3 more repetitious and possibly most people rather not replay it more than 2 -3 times.
This does not mean, that people playing W3 didn't get their money's worth or the Witcher 3 is not fun. I'm 100% sure, that everyone who knew what to expect from W3 probably feel satisfied and the game is head and shoulders above other games released in the past few years.
But here is my little rant.
In Witcher 3 you start:
You are put on a rather small map which has limited number quests beside the main story. It's not possible to leave this map without completing the main quest. If you don't finish the main quest (and its connecting secondary quests), you are stuck on this map forever and no progress can be done.
In Skyrim:
You escape from the execution and you don't have to follow the main quest. The whole map is yours and do whatever you feel like. You can spend 300 hours easily without ever go see the Jarl of Whiterun. If you start the main quest, you can stop any time (do you want dragons or not? Do you want to be dragonborn or not? Do you want the civil war finished or not?) None of these would limit the player to do everything else or limit their leveling, and availability of items - beside a few quest based items.
In my opinion, you can only listen to the conversations and cut-scenes only a few times before it feels boring. Everyone has the work through the main quest in order to unlock all maps and also have to reach a certain level and a certain status in the main quest to unlock every parts of each map.
Both games fail to send a feel of accomplishment to the player, because both worlds are static. Skyrim's world doesn't change, whether there are dragons wrecking the villages and killing people, or whether or not you cleared the dungeon or cave from the monsters.
In Witcher 3, you can go kill the commander of the witch-hunters. The witch hunting continues. You can kill Radovid , his troops remain everywhere. Politics doesn't change, the towns and fields continues to be full of hanged people. I - playing Geralt- continue to be spit on and called names, regardless what I do.
Ravaged villages continue to be ravaged, save the few mini-missions, where after Geralt killing the bandits or monsters, the villagers return.
There is no consequences for NOT doing a monster killing quest, in which (many of them) a monster threatens a village or a person. If the player doesn't do the mission, the monster doesn't come. For example, a griffin threatens a village, would never come and rip apart any villages and take people or livestock away, but most likely circling on the sky at a random spot, doing basically nothing.
So as you can see, I may be criticizing how developers (in general, not picking on a particular) unable to come up with a game, which makes the player feel they accomplished something. There is no "aftershock" or consequence, beside minor ones. Apparently the developers would rather focus on leveling and loot as a measurement for accomplishment.
Games relying heavily on the story has the limitation of the story itself, creating a sort of tunnel driving and correcting the player to a certain path, which only allows small deviations from the planned path of the story.
I cannot just forget about Ciri and Ciri stays alive until I get to a certain part of the story. There is no sense of urgency of anything really. Things are on a hold, until I finished fiddling with my potions or finding out what the question marks are on the maps. At the same time, I must check Novigraad first and run through a bunch of errands (that I may not want to do), otherwise Geralt cannot travel to Skellige from Velen or Orchard. I must answer certain questions from Triss, there is no way to avoid Triss altogether and there is no way to avoid Yennefer either.
You know what I'm getting?
....because unlike Skyrim, unlocking the rest of the maps require the player to play the main quest.
Before someone trying to accuse of being a Skyrim fanboy (I haven't played it in years now), just consider these few facts, that makes the Witcher 3 more repetitious and possibly most people rather not replay it more than 2 -3 times.
This does not mean, that people playing W3 didn't get their money's worth or the Witcher 3 is not fun. I'm 100% sure, that everyone who knew what to expect from W3 probably feel satisfied and the game is head and shoulders above other games released in the past few years.
But here is my little rant.
In Witcher 3 you start:
You are put on a rather small map which has limited number quests beside the main story. It's not possible to leave this map without completing the main quest. If you don't finish the main quest (and its connecting secondary quests), you are stuck on this map forever and no progress can be done.
In Skyrim:
You escape from the execution and you don't have to follow the main quest. The whole map is yours and do whatever you feel like. You can spend 300 hours easily without ever go see the Jarl of Whiterun. If you start the main quest, you can stop any time (do you want dragons or not? Do you want to be dragonborn or not? Do you want the civil war finished or not?) None of these would limit the player to do everything else or limit their leveling, and availability of items - beside a few quest based items.
In my opinion, you can only listen to the conversations and cut-scenes only a few times before it feels boring. Everyone has the work through the main quest in order to unlock all maps and also have to reach a certain level and a certain status in the main quest to unlock every parts of each map.
Both games fail to send a feel of accomplishment to the player, because both worlds are static. Skyrim's world doesn't change, whether there are dragons wrecking the villages and killing people, or whether or not you cleared the dungeon or cave from the monsters.
In Witcher 3, you can go kill the commander of the witch-hunters. The witch hunting continues. You can kill Radovid , his troops remain everywhere. Politics doesn't change, the towns and fields continues to be full of hanged people. I - playing Geralt- continue to be spit on and called names, regardless what I do.
Ravaged villages continue to be ravaged, save the few mini-missions, where after Geralt killing the bandits or monsters, the villagers return.
There is no consequences for NOT doing a monster killing quest, in which (many of them) a monster threatens a village or a person. If the player doesn't do the mission, the monster doesn't come. For example, a griffin threatens a village, would never come and rip apart any villages and take people or livestock away, but most likely circling on the sky at a random spot, doing basically nothing.
So as you can see, I may be criticizing how developers (in general, not picking on a particular) unable to come up with a game, which makes the player feel they accomplished something. There is no "aftershock" or consequence, beside minor ones. Apparently the developers would rather focus on leveling and loot as a measurement for accomplishment.
Games relying heavily on the story has the limitation of the story itself, creating a sort of tunnel driving and correcting the player to a certain path, which only allows small deviations from the planned path of the story.
I cannot just forget about Ciri and Ciri stays alive until I get to a certain part of the story. There is no sense of urgency of anything really. Things are on a hold, until I finished fiddling with my potions or finding out what the question marks are on the maps. At the same time, I must check Novigraad first and run through a bunch of errands (that I may not want to do), otherwise Geralt cannot travel to Skellige from Velen or Orchard. I must answer certain questions from Triss, there is no way to avoid Triss altogether and there is no way to avoid Yennefer either.
You know what I'm getting?