I just ran into something that has happened several times.

I will be on a quest and following the dotted trail the game puts up to show up where to go.

I will be riding along for awhile then all of a sudden the dotted line turns around and goes the other way so I can turn around and ride for awhile and then it does it again and the dotted line flips around and tells me I'm going the wrong way again.

It can't make up it's mind where to go.

Just flips back and forth.

All I can do is pick another quest because that one isn't going to work. Can't finish it because the trail display is all messed up.

Anyone else encountered that?

Know how to make it stop flipping?

I've encountered this many times. It usually happens because there is either more than one way to reach the destination and it gets "confused" while trying to reroute based on the path it thinks you are taking (the problem is exacerbated if you are constantly changing directions yourself trying to keep up with it), or there is no unimpeded route to the destination. An example of the latter would be a destination that can only be reached by traversing a broken bridge in Skellige, which cannot be done on horseback or without Geralt jumping the broken sections.

I usually just stick to the route it was originally highlighting (unless that proves impossible) and wait for it to correct itself, which it almost always does. Worst case scenario, I drift off my original route and find something new and cool to explore while eventually finding my way to my destination.

It's definitely one of the many bugs in the game, but personally it doesn't bother me too much.

This is a case of very bad GPS (for want of a better word) and map pathfinding. It happens all the time. Don't rely on the dotted lines.

You need one of these (Cartographer) and a stick with a carrot dangling of it:-)

The dotted line is just a suggested path to get to the destination. Pathfinding is a complex problem to solve in video games and most games get it wrong to some degree with at least some things. Physics engines such as PhysX or Havoc etc. can help improve that a fair bit but it's still tricky to do, and so most games do have some sort of glitches that show up in their AI pathfinding algos.

That doesn't prevent one from completing a quest in The Witcher 3 though. When the dotted line is working right and you find it useful go ahead and use it by all means, but sometimes it will lead you where you think you need to go but since it is 2 dimensional and the game world is 3 dimensional it can be confusing as you can end up going right on top of the destination and wondering why it didn't activate or you can't find what you're looking for and the reason is that it is 3 stories up in the building or on the roof, or in the sewer 200 feet below.

When the pathfinding trail seems to be malfunctioning simply forget it is there. Bring up the map and look at where the end destination is that you're supposed to go to and explore the best path to get there on your own. There are a few times where it is a little challenging or confusing to find a hidden entrance or some other aspect, but it's not so hard as to make the game impossible to proceed. Case in point, on Ard Skellige near where the druids live and their tree of worship you end up quested to visit specific druids and if you go stand on top of the circle where the game leads you, they're not there. They're 10 feet underneath you inside the hill and you need to find the entrance to get in there. It is not hidden and not far away but you don't know where it is and have to wander around looking for something that will take you inside the hill. It actually _becomes_ confusing _because_ of the quest marker location and pathfinding trail leading you astray. If instead you were told to go visit the druids near the magic tree or whatever, and the quest marker was on the tree itself, and then it said to explore the area to find the entrance to the druid's hut and put up one of those huge orange circles to explore within it'd only be a short time until you found it because you know the region within where it can be found. Every time I went back to that area though, even though I had been there a few times I always found it hard to find the damn entrance to the 2 underground buildings they have there. :)

The problem with the quest markers in games is that we have a natural tendency to want to walk to them in a straight line like a bug to a bug light, and only veer off our course when an obstacle is in the way, then we hit another obstacle and do this obstacle course dance while turning back towards that straight line to the end destination as much as possible rather than carefully observing our surroundings and finding the most sensible path to get there rather than the most direct route as the bird flies. I find that I stumble with that in a lot of games though. Eventually I stop looking at the map as much and look more at my surroundings, plot out potential paths in my mind to not necessarily get to the end destination as fast as possible, but to find the next location that might lead me one step closer, then survey my surroundings again and plan or replan my path. When doing that, I may use the quest marker on the map and other queues as part of the decision making process however I try to avoid using them in a manner like a bug flying into a bug light as that is usually frustrating tripping over all kinds of obstacles, mountains in the way, cliffs, and other crap.

Hope this helps.

You know, you can just open the map, check out where the destination is, put there a custom waypoint and follow it's direction on your minimap.

I don't even have the "path to quest" enabled.

There is ample help given with the mini-map and quest cues, and the (optional) custom waypoint you can place on the map.

After a while you learn what roads lead where (for the most part) as there is plenty of variety if you are observant.

Getting a bit lost is fun, because there are interesting things to do and find off the beaten track... just following the recommended routes leaves a lot uncovered.

My map has the defaults all enabled as I never reconfigured it, but I only actually look at the map when I need to, much like you would in real life, and with the exception of GPS or Google Maps or similar services, real maps don't give one a dotted line that changes depending on their location and guides them to the end destination either. :) Even GPS units end up guiding people to one-ways or streets that are closed off or no longer exist or are under construction etc. so such aides should be considered a guideline rather than a mindless bug trap. :) Another thing the map has is those little red triangles that point up or down which pop up on on-map objects occasionally and indicate whether the object is elevated higher or lower than your current elevation. I couldn't find that documented anywhere in the manual or in the game when I noticed them and found it confusing until someone explained they were elevation markers. Once I knew that, it helped me to be able to find the object or location more easily when following the map indicators/paths. I just use the dotted line as more of a "yeah, maybe go that way perhaps, that might work" with a "but maybe not too" clause and figure it out myself one way or another.

For example, it will lead you to where someone is in a building and you wander to that building like a mindless drone not knowing where the actual building entrance is. Then you might have to run around the block 3 times, jump over fences bowling humans down that are in the way, etc. to feverishly try to find the damn entrance only to find locked door after door, and have to climb 2 ladders to scale a roof to drop to a balcony and jump through a window. The path finder line simply can't indicate that much detail so it's a lost cause if someone follows it exclusively IMHO. The yellow quest marker circles, or custom green waypoint marker in conjunction with the elevation markers are the better guide, but one may still need to find a hidden entrance that is 100 meters away in the end in a non-obvious direction and then navigate a maze of caves/sewers or similar to climb a ladder into a basement or something like that too.

Perhaps they could add a new game difficulty option that uses Microsoft Paperclip to guide people to the right spot. :)

Half the time I don't use the dotted trails, I just aim for the yellow arrow and ignore the roads, then check the map. You can cut through forests easily enough, but sometimes you encounter cliffs or mountains. But it's all good though however you get there.