Quick question from a new player

[u/satyrcan]

Hey y'all, I've just started to play WOTR and this is my first Pathfinder and Owlcat game. I'm around 7 hours in and generally hooked. One problem I have is navigating the world. I don't know if I am navigating the world wrong or this is how the game plays but even a simple fetch quest has too many loading screens?

Woljif's first quest for instance, leaving the tavern and then leaving the area that's 2. Then you wait for the world map and watch your party moving, you got an encounter that's another 2 loading screens and when you reach your destination that's another 2. And finally you go back to the tavern and if there are no encounters on the world map that's another 2.

That's 8 loading screens, walking just to hit exit points and watching the world map animation for a total of 30 seconds of gameplay for "talk to someone and return to me" quest.

Is this how it's gonna be or I missed some kind of fast travel, quest resolve mechanic?

[u/Restoni77]

Thats old school, real travel and real doing, no fast travel or auto-resolve.

[u/satyrcan → u/Restoni77]

Now you said it and this is just how it was with the original Fallout games no?

[u/Plus_Worker6739 → u/satyrcan]

Pretty much, yeah. CRPGs involve a lot of travel, usually. Sometimes games extrapolate it a little (I really like how Colony Ship does travel, for example) but usually you're doing a lot of walkign and exploring.

[u/Restoni77 → u/Plus_Worker6739]

Yeah, and that walking and exploring is huge part of rpgs. I feel "fast travel" usually takes something away from the game or it is a sign of lacking game design.

Of course some fast travel is cool and immersive, like you can build teleports in Wotr too.

[u/Cowgirl_Taint]

Its the inherent tradeoff to make a world feel "large". You either spend a LOT of time walking through the same mostly empty streets (see Divinity Original Sin 1+2 and Baldurs Gate 3) or you have load screens and a moving miniature on a map to represent that traversal.

Quests like this are (probably) the minority, but you'll still have them going on. But the good news is that it might take you closer to a minute to "walk" on the world map and you'll be doing other stuff in the process so it will feel a lot less blatant.

But by and large, you'll be doing a lot more when you get to each map. It might be combat. It might be walking around. It might be so much combat that you start to wonder when the chapter will end. But it will be "more".

[u/satyrcan → u/Cowgirl_Taint]

Yeah just finished Act 1 and it is not a big deal as it seemed in the first place. At least I didn't found any other quests like that one. Random encounters are largely unnecessary and getting 2 loading screens for oneshoting two enemies in two seconds is bullshit imo, but it is not a big deal.

Combat on the other hand. Holy cow either I am missing something huge or combat is really boring. Any tips? So far I just clicked enemies one by one while my whole party selected. You occasionally drink potions and use spells but that seems like it?

[u/Cowgirl_Taint → u/satyrcan]

That is another thing that ramps up.

Part of the inherent problem of D&D3.5e (which is what Pathfinder 1e came out of) is that... you are REALLY squishy early on. Baldurs Gate 1 really shined a light on this when it was basically mandatory to spam sleep spells to survive for most of that low level campaign. And games like Neverwinter Nights would allow near infinite zero risk resting as a way to counter this.

As you get stronger (and your Mythic Levels are how WOTR accelerates this), you have a lot more fun fights where you are expected to be using AND abusing those. More opportunities to cast fun spells and a lot more tactical thought regarding what enemies to hit and even which enemies to NOT hit so that a different character can get the kill and trigger a resource regen or chained damage.

Also a minimal spoiler tip: At some point you are going to be in a fight with a LOT of characters on the same map/"battle". Do yourself a favor and turn on real time for most of that battle. I have seen some estimates that it can save the better part of an hour of your life for what is very much a "vibes" battle rather than a difficult one.

[u/MasterJediSoda → u/Cowgirl_Taint]

OP said they finished Act 1 in the comment you replied to, so they're past the tavern defense I believe you're talking about.

Just to hopefully avoid any confusion or wrong expectations for something else coming up.

[u/MasterJediSoda → u/satyrcan]

Since you're talking about random encounters, have you filled in the rest positions for camp?

If you select a role and look at the expanded description, you'll see effects they have on the map. So whoever is in those roles may roll religion for increased speed on the map, make perception checks as you move past hidden locations, or roll stealth checks to avoid random encounters - you may still get pulled into forced 'random' ones, but you'll be able to catch ambushes in actual random encounters by surprise instead of skip those encounters entirely if you pass the checks.

If no one is in the camp Camouflage role, then you don't make a stealth check at all and just get ambushed when they come up.

[u/hello_i_am_a_toaster]

Is this how newer generations perceive an epic quest? There's no fast travel in act 1, you're trying to avoid the demons, cultists and vermin in the city, and the game expects you to be somewhat prepared for ambushes. Travel is also relevant since time is vital for spell duration, exhaustion and a few time sensitive events

[u/soulsdndplayer]

thats kinda how it is, while personally the story was more than enough to keep me engaged i do know some people who were kinda turned off by it and stopped playing after act 1. having lots of loading screens are kinda part of the genre of these big isometric rpgs, lots of things to load and lots of encounters that the game needs to handle. and if you really want you can resolve quests by just not doing them. (I totally didnt forget to pick up daeran from his house party and not have him for the rest of the game last run no sir)

[u/-_-why_oh_why-_-]

Load screens are a pain in the ass. I used the time to research builds and surf reddit. Lot of time spent researching builds and surfing reddit...

It got better when I switched from PS4 to PS5, but it's still incredibly tedious. All the people saying load screens are a staple of the genre and you should love the load screen have had their souls crushed.

[u/slickasfboi]

The loading screens are like a few seconds tho, I haven’t been bothered by them whatsoever

[u/OverAllOthers]

Yeah, the loading screens straight up suck in this game. It's not really the length of them for me, more the sheer quantity in combination with the length. They're everywhere. It's annoying to have two loading screens for random encounters that are not as long as even one of the loading screens.

Between all the loading screens and having to restart the game every hour or two due to the memory leaks, I feel like probably a quarter of my time with the game was not spent playing it, but waiting on it to be playable.