Considdering all the battles and work put into the quests , to have such an ending , consigned to hell in Kaer Morhen!
The Wild Hunt defeated, the HARD Eriden battle done and here stands Gerald in a deathly silent Kaer Morhen. Vesimir dead, Cirri dead, with everybody gone. Now you can complete unfinished monster missions , they say......what?
Sorry , but all enthusiasm for any more gameplay is gone with the white frost. Such an ending depresses one for a week . never mind starting a new game. What must one do for a happy ending in this game? What bad dialogue descissions did I make?

Did you manage to get some allies for the battle?
I've yet to do that piece of story, but I already managed to send someone to Kaer Morhen (Keira and Letho).
And I have just started the missions to get allies in novigrad/valen/skellige.

my ciri is empress. vesemir will always die, and my geralt is very happy with triss.

but i agree that the return to kaer morhen is like going into the void. it´s depressive to get back and see nothing.

at least they should put geralt on a sunny beach of skellige, and when you get back to kaer morhen, you could see it occupied by little monsters as it became a lonely place.

I dont think that waking up on a lonely kaer morhen was a good welcome back to those who minutes later could enjoy all the ending stuff.

I still think we need procedural tunnels with challenges and treasures to be found.

I completed all the quests, all the ? marks, all stashes on the sea, crafted all witcher armor and weapons, completed all contracts, and now I got nothing to do, and I feel like I need more challenges in this world, not to begin a new adventure from start.

I love this game, but I feel like I need to be pushed now after all things i´ve done.

The ending you get depends on a bunch of little dialogue decisions with Ciri. Taking her to the grave, telling her that you know what'll cheer her up, letting her destroy the lab, making her go alone to meet with the sorceresses, etcetera. If you do enough of them the "right" way, you get one of the good endings. For the "best" ending (subjective, but it's definitely more upbeat than the others), don't take her to see the emperor before going to the witches' sabbath, and generally choose the supportive dialogue options like the ones I mentioned.

Kind of an annoying way to determine your ending, but there you go.

I don't think Ciri dies, I think she just doesn't come back.

Edit: Also, you should really put a spoiler alert in your title/post.

I agree with this. All over the internet you see people positing the notion that Ciri dies if she does not become empress or witcher. But what evidence do we have for this? The answer is absolutely none. All we have is her flash reviewing her life when she steps into the portal -- she is the Lady of Space and Time. If she thinks of happy times she *chooses* to return to Geralt. It is, therefore, perfectly reasonable and logical to assume that if she is not happy, she *chooses* to live her life elsewhere... in some other place or time. There is zero evidence for her dying.

Makes sense I think. And is consistent with the dialogue choice/relationship stuff which is the determination of the ending. The ending slides also don't say that she dies, just that she is missing.

spoilers? FFS...

Yeah, I mentioned it to OP but he hasn't edited his post yet. Please downvote him so that others don't see the same thing right away.

With that title what did you expect?

Want an evidence? I got one. Extract the game files, and you'll see three files, one for each ending. They are called Ciri_Empress, Ciri_Witcher, and Ciri_Dead. If you are interested, I can give you the screenshot.

That's not evidence. Game file names don't reflect storyline, which can change at any time prior to release, unlike assets. They can be meaningful to developers, granted, but it is not empirical gameplay evidence. As far as the player involved in the storyline is concerned, there is no evidence.

If you say so. If the developers and possibly the writers think of Ciri as dead, I think she's dead too.

Where do the writers and developers actually say that she is dead in that scenario? Are you just assuming that because of file names? If it is written somewhere, or stated officially, I am more than willing to accept it, but I will not accept it purely based on file names.

Yes, I am assuming it.