And yet, game designers CDPR considered another option how can do that - writing on the wall: "Hey stranger, do not pass by this place, dress your rose-colored glasses and you will see that there is a magic pass, followed by a mountain of treasures"
I agree. The worst of all IMO is the sometimes essential by design quest markers. Because the voice acting was all recorded before most of the world was built, NPCs rarely ever give directions. They'll just say "in the fields" instead "in the fields to the east," or "in his house" instead of "in his house on the north side of the harbor" in a large city like Novigrad. This necessitates aimless wandering simply due to lack of information Geralt would have easily obtained from the NPCs. Skyrim also suffers from this problem and there's a mod that allows you to disable all quest markers and still get by because it adds proper directions to quest descriptions, as if the NPCs gave real directions.
My lame workaround is to set the ambiguous quest as the active quest, open the map screen (I have mini-map disabled) and zoom in really deep before I open my eyes. Then I get a compass direction for the quest marker. If the marker is somewhere off to the right, I can pretend the villager actually said "in the fields to the east", remove the quest as active, and go off in a generally eastward direction.
Maybe you don't mind that part, but it's annoyed me ever since TES: Oblivion ruined RPGs with prominent quest markers and I just had to rant.
You have found the partial solution to this problem, but most people do not even think about it. If CDPR would like this, they would have done all right, but why strain, if a large part of the audience of casual players? As far as I know, there is no good mod, which completely solves this issue, however, I now use indispensable Friendly HUD, as well as: Minimap No Direction - http://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/1467/? No GPS on 1.21 - Traditional World Map - http://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/1562/?
A lot of people still think CDPR is somehow special, but they're just another big developer/publisher at this point. But like you say, most people like these hand-holding features (which they lovingly call "quality of life" improvements), so I guess CDPR is still catering to fans in a way. Gamers these days like automated to-do lists and achievements and whatnot, but these things just remind me I'm wasting my time playing a game. I prefer games that make me use a pen and paper and don't applaud me to make me feel special.
Anyway, if not for the abundance of story, I wouldn't go near this game.
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Thanks for the mod
My lame workaround is to set the ambiguous quest as the active quest, open the map screen (I have mini-map disabled) and zoom in really deep before I open my eyes. Then I get a compass direction for the quest marker. If the marker is somewhere off to the right, I can pretend the villager actually said "in the fields to the east", remove the quest as active, and go off in a generally eastward direction.
Maybe you don't mind that part, but it's annoyed me ever since TES: Oblivion ruined RPGs with prominent quest markers and I just had to rant.
No GPS on 1.21 - Traditional World Map - http://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/1562/?
Anyway, if not for the abundance of story, I wouldn't go near this game.