No wonder Andromeda sucks. Because the game formula they copied, The Witcher 3, sucks!

So DAI even has the scanner mechanic too?

Speaking of the scanner mechanic, it completely ruins the loot system of TW3. Without it you can barely tell what is loot or not. And when you turn it on you're overwhelmed with the amount of shiny shiny to collect. What are these shiny things you're collecting? I don't know, they all looked like orange blobs to me. Collect them all then sort them through this game's nightmare UI item management and loot box that always way out of the way. Fun! No flaws here, just the beautiful smell of Geralt's butt fumes.

No, it's you failing to see my point.

I've completed 40% of the game in 22 hrs...there are really only a few essential missions and the rest is there to do them if you want to.

The main planets can get to 100% viability with just doing Vaults, Main Vault, and main planet missions...but you don't even have to get to 100% viability
The rest is SAM Node Memories, Loyalty Missions, and Main Missions and everything can be done in 50-60 hrs so, yeah, no reason to be near 70hrs unless you want that..

As for TW3, after 2 PT's I was done...and the only reason I did 2 PT's was because I completed the game before the DLC's were released and I had already bought the season pass on a discount.  I used it as opportunity to romance Yen as opposed to Triss, take a different route with Ciri but, in the end, the results didn't change much.  Geralt's response was usually a difference between grumpy and less grumpy, the missions became "ooh, which will I used now, Witcher Smell or Witcher Vision?", and the story is pretty basic but man its got grit.

Andromeda is TW3 in space. Powered by HorseshitBite 3.

One thing about bugs... TW3 was released 2 years ago... so when I started playing it, I wasn't expecting to still be encountering those sorts of bugs seen, for example, in the "hilarious" videos... but I did.  The save/clock issue simply baffles me... has me worried, in fact, about my system more than the individual game.  With ME:A, I intentionally waited to start playing it for the bugs to get ironed out.  I think it's just a smart move in this day and age where the games are getting more and more complex and have to be designed to work on more varied PC's and other platforms.  The odds of bugs being present at release are just there... regardless of how careful the companies are... and then add into it the business pressures subsidiaries of major companies are always under (in any industry I've seen)... waiting a few months for a few patches to drop just makes sense to me now.  I'd rather stem my enthusiasm for a new game for a bit than go about speculating complaints about a game for months prior to release just to avoid being "disappointed" (which is what many of the forum posters claimed they were doing.

My basic issue with TW3 though is about my inability to connect adequately with the story because of the huge, open-world structure of the game... and it is a story better designed for that sort of piece-meal telling than Bioware's stories that are about character development and character changes over time.  It's an advantage to TW3 that Geralt is Geralt... his personality and character being defined by CDPR in detail in the entry written by Dandelion that the player can read in the game... as opposed to Shepard... whose personality (either renegade or paragon or a bit of both) is defined by the player over the course of the entire Trilogy.  That sort of character development is not conducive to being jumbled up and mashed into a plot that can be told in any sequence.  Even TW3 has some sequencing issues (e.g. side quests that fail to initiate if not done in the right order (e.g. the Dirty Funds, Deserter Gold, and Temerian Valuables Treasure Hunts in White Orchard... If the player does not do Dirty Funds before doing Deserter Gold, the little note that starts the Dirty Funds quest won't trigger it (this is mentioned in their Wiki).  Another one I never got to is the Gangs of Novigrad quest, which according to the Wiki, will fail if not done in precisely the right order in conjunction with the Get Junior quest.  If one digs, there is evidence online that TW3 has its share of problems... but people are so busy praising it and begging other companies to copy it... that those issues are just not making it into the light enough so that the companies copying the format can avoid the problems that also came with it.

it does have the search function which functions exactly the same way

And in TW3, important ones are outlined in red, not orange, try again.

GeraltButtShit, there's no way anyone can make it through games as big as TW3 without running into any bugs.

Yep, I think I'm done with you for now. Carry on.

I ran into a lot of bugs when it first came out then they started patching it and it got better, plus they added features like storage, adjustments to inventory, etc (sound familiar)

Its all about timing...Dragon Age Inquisition won GOTY awards but gets shit on retroactively because its not "The Witcher 3", despite the fact it came out after DA:I and gets sucked off constantly and is held up as some industry standard that all games should adhere to despite its obvious and overlooked flaws at release.

Important as in quest related, yes the the normal ones have stuff in them, but they're clearly delineated from the ones related to quests

To me there is a big difference between putting artificial stops into even minor quests and tricking the player into chasing some random cargo or signal... and seeking out Gwent players. There is no way of knowing which MEA quest is another cheap chase game with little to no payoff. It this sort of lazy MMO shit was limited to tasks then I would be fine with it as extra content for those weird people who enjoy this sort of filler. But it feels like half of all quests are like this. And that the loyalty missions take forever to even start is a crime. It takes all enjoyment out of it for me. And then the actual mission is 30min at best.
MEA is the equivalent of working out an hour in the gym for a tiny candy bar. Sadly the loyalty missions are among the better things of the game. So if you skip them you're left with almost nothing...

W3 has A LOT of side content. That is correct. And fast travel is not ideal because you need to reach the markers first. MEA has a decent system there actually.
The thing is I found 90% of all minor side quests fairly enjoyable. At least there was a monster to kill. Or even one to befriend. There was story and atmosphere. What do the majority of MEA quests offer? Finding data pads and scanning stuff. Great... there are no engaging plot developments in chasing a signal. You drive for minutes through nothingness to a location. You scan that location. It's not what you're looking for 80% of the time. You drive some more. You scan some more. What the hell?!?
And when you take that quest you don't know if its going to be one of those cases where a simple"get this" or "fins this" turns into an ordeal.
If these side quests were over with quickly at least. But nope. It's disgusting padding.

There ARE a lot of time sink elements in W3. But they aren't the quests. It's mostly the crafting and for completionists the bandit camp clearing and other question marks. THEY are padding. But then again you know they are.
I did almost all things in W3 gladly. They were fun. Enjoyed the combat a lot (no idea why so many people say it was boring) and was looking forward to fighting the monsters guarding treasure. LOVED Gwent. I still play the physics card game with a friend once or twice a month.
What drove me nuts was the Witcher gear crafting. That took so many hours. Never had enough money and materials. Had to loot and craft and sell and buy over and over. They were a pain in the ass. Finding the schematics too. But at least they all told a story. One was quite horrific...

The animals in MEA are a joke. The fiends are dangerous but the others? They are the same everywhere too.
The architect fight had me almost rage quite because again it's designed to take forever just because. Took me 30min or so on Eos at level 15 or so because the no damage period was so ridiculously long. I thought the fight had glitched at some point... no autosave between phases.

EVERYTHING about MEA is annoying to me. If you feel like that way about W3, I can't really understand it unless you simply don't like open world. Not sure I do actually. But I can respect that.

I see absolutely nothing of W3 in MEA. I see a repeat of DAI with some improvements to the open world but major disappointment in most areas. Bioware sucks at open world. And most open world games suffer from fetch quest spam. But this has nothing to do with W3 in particular.

I'll say though that I gave up on W1 after 4 hours because in that time period all I did was run around a small area trying to get into the city. It was literally go from person A to B, back to A, to C, back to A, B... I never made it into the city. It was so annoying and boring.
But hey, joke's on me. Been putting up with this shit in MEA for 70h and counting because it's Bioware and I feel obligated to beat the game. Imo CDPR learned their lesson, Bioware didn't. Will never touch another game made by Montreal. But I guess they won't be making another one anyway. I'm not sad.

I don't believe that's the case in every chest... in White Orchard where I believe, you need some specific supplies from the cabin by the lake to complete the Devil in the Well contract (i.e. to make the specter oil instructed in the tutorial).  Somehow, I sincerely doubt that the people saying it's not that hard to complete the game without doing any looting whatsoever are actually playing it that way... without glitching or modding the game somewhere.