The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

[lilrayray69]

It's too bad the nvidia HairWorks seems to cripple performance so much - it does look kind of cool, but even after the recent patch which supposedly optimized it I still get like a 10-15 FPS hit....I can turn on like everything in the postprocessing section and not even take a 15 FPS hit lol.

I have everything turned on except motion blur & blur, all settings at Ultra @ 1080p and rarely see below 50fps on this GTX 970. I still have not seen more than 1.5GB VRAM usage, I kind of wonder how they did that although I guess the texture resolutions aren't gigantic but seem good enough to me.

The only thing I don't like was mentioned here already - how you can get into people's homes and just take all their shit and they don't care. Like being in the castle place early on, you can just take everything. To me it's immersion breaking and sure you can just not take the stuff but it feels like it's all there for you to just take - why else the game developers even put it there? But still, very immersion breaking to me.

I also notice characters hair is always blowing around when they're having conversations even indoors as if there's a bunch of wind going around. I wonder how they left this in the finished game, it happens every single time? Unless it's just me...

I've not noticed graphical issues in the in-game cutscenes too much, occasionally a characters hair is all screwed up or something. Then again I don't look too closely for it.

I wish you could change the UI/HUD and FoV some. I wouldn't mind higher draw distance either. Some screenshots I've seen using editing .ini settings and things like SweetFX look good but I don't know I'll bother with that.

I see shadows going crazy sometimes, especially during daytime with trees/grass. With the wind blowing it makes so many shadows moving around at once that it sort of just looks like a big blob of shadow gyrating around - at first I thought it was a glitch but it seems to be just shadow-overload or something.

 

[Gryz]

I probably shouldn't have bought it. I still haven't got around to playing it and now have no real interest in doing so.

Then just wait. Wait till you feel like playing the game. It'll still be a good game in a few years time. And with all the graphics options set to the max, it will still look gorgeous in a few years.

I bought The Witcher 1 when it was released in November 2007. It didn't ran well. Load times were up to a minute. Very frustrating if you went into a house, realized it was the wrong house, and went out again. That took 3 minutes. I played halfway the game. And then stopped playing. Maybe because I picked up WoW again, or something.

Three years ago I played TW2. That was 2 years after release. The start was terrible. But I continued, and actually enjoyed the game a lot. I finished the game. And played the 2nd half another time, to see the other story-path. I then set a goal of finally finishing TW1. That took me 3 years. Last February I finally went back to TW1.

I still had my old TW1 savefiles from 2007/2008. I reinstalled the game from disks, installed the patch (Enhanced Edition). I installed a huge texture pack and a huge model pack. Enabled 4xSGSSAA in the nvcpl. And SSAO (although that didn't always work when I installed a new nvidia driver). But overall, the game looked awesome ! I picked up where I left (start of ActIII). Great game. I had read a few stories from the first Witcher book. And suddenly names and locations and stories made more sense. The game was superfluent, running at 60fps. Just awesome. After I finished acts 3-6, I started a new game (on hardest difficulty) and replayed acts 0-2. Still awesome. Well worth the time.

And that was a 7.5 years old game.
I am sure that The Witcher 3 will still be an enjoyable experience in 2020.

 

[Gryz]

BTW, is it just me ? When reading posts about TW3 on several forums, it seems like 70% of all players have a GTX970 ?

 

[Gryz]

The in-game cut scenes in this game look pretty rough because for some reason it seems to use different LOD rules. For example face detail roll-off is super aggressive, with background NPCs turning into eyeless ghouls much closer than they would normally. I also see a ton of super low detail textures on buildings, low detail vegetation sprites and ugly dithering effects all over these cut scenes.

I'll have to look again when I play. But I don't recall seeing that at all. Quite the opposite, the cut-scenes look a lot better than normal game-play.

I've seen settings in the ini files to enable or disable UberSampling in cut-scenes. Default is on. And that's obvious when you look at my cut-scenes.

Edit: I just found out that SweetFX lets me make screenshots by simply pressing the PrintScreen button. Duh.

 

[zinfamous]

And now for something completely different.

Impressive!

I'm not seeing the difficulty that others are in some places--specifically level of quest vs level of character. I'm having essentially no problem dealing with any quest that is 2 or 3 levels above me. In Orchard area, with the Viper Treasure hunt, those were recommended for level 7, I think, and I finished them at level 3. The wraith in that graveyard was no problem at level 3.

I'm playing at 2nd-hardest difficulty; somewhat disappointed that I can't bump it up to the hardest setting now.

In Veren, at level 6, I don't have much trouble taking on level 9 bandit camps. For random sunken treasures and such, that say level 14, I swim up with no problem and one-shot a bunch of level 10 drowners. Nearby, however, some noonwraith on a shipwreck island murdered me right fast. I couldn't take down a basilisk and wyvern in the far western corner, either. So for me, I suppose it varies with the top of mob, but I find that the recommended level for quests isn't very accurate.

another thing--why am I so dang slow to level?

 

[norseamd]

combat though...rofls. not even close.

Can you tell me more?

 

[Red Hawk]

Did you read it as "21st century first world real life"? Because I'm pretty sure that wasn't what he meant. For example, the fear of being pulled from your home to be burned alive might not be part of your life, but that was reality for thousands of humans at various points in history. That sort of thing is still a reality in some superstitious cultures, we're just sheltered from it.

So The Witcher is historically accurate in some arbitrary sense now, that just ignores all the ways it isn't as if they don't matter?

 

[zinfamous]

Can you tell me more?

Skyrim combat = push button to swing sword. If you have a shield, push another button to bash a shield. If you are a mage...eh, why be a mage in Skyrim? that is stupid. The game is quickly and easily broken by crafting iron daggers, leveling blacksmithing, and equipping a set of gear that will last you until the end of the game. You didn't even have to exploit that system to outlevel the game way too soon.

The first dragon fights were rather intense, but by level 20 or so no dragon gives you trouble; they simply become an annoyance.

Now, I do find bashing things into submission with my shield to be highly satisfying--as simple as it is I still find Skyrim one-hand/shield combat to be fun; it is just way too easy.

Witcher 3 adds a significant amount of movement and real backstab (not just passing a sneak check until the target notices you for the crit), also the various temporary combat enhancements--the decoctions in W3 are particularly neat, especially compared to the previous.

 

[HeXen]

Then just wait. Wait till you feel like playing the game. It'll still be a good game in a few years time. And with all the graphics options set to the max, it will still look gorgeous in a few years.

I bought The Witcher 1 when it was released in November 2007. It didn't ran well. Load times were up to a minute. Very frustrating if you went into a house, realized it was the wrong house, and went out again. That took 3 minutes. I played halfway the game. And then stopped playing. Maybe because I picked up WoW again, or something.

Three years ago I played TW2. That was 2 years after release. The start was terrible. But I continued, and actually enjoyed the game a lot. I finished the game. And played the 2nd half another time, to see the other story-path. I then set a goal of finally finishing TW1. That took me 3 years. Last February I finally went back to TW1.

I still had my old TW1 savefiles from 2007/2008. I reinstalled the game from disks, installed the patch (Enhanced Edition). I installed a huge texture pack and a huge model pack. Enabled 4xSGSSAA in the nvcpl. And SSAO (although that didn't always work when I installed a new nvidia driver). But overall, the game looked awesome ! I picked up where I left (start of ActIII). Great game. I had read a few stories from the first Witcher book. And suddenly names and locations and stories made more sense. The game was superfluent, running at 60fps. Just awesome. After I finished acts 3-6, I started a new game (on hardest difficulty) and replayed acts 0-2. Still awesome. Well worth the time.

And that was a 7.5 years old game.
I am sure that The Witcher 3 will still be an enjoyable experience in 2020.

I'm sure your right but often so many games fill in between after so long that I never get around to it.
Dragon Age Origins...never even opened the case to this day. I wanted to play it at first, then lost that desire so I waited but too many other games got in the way.

Not a big deal...it happens. I just can't get into gaming quite like I used to these days.

 

[Merad]

In Veren, at level 6, I don't have much trouble taking on level 9 bandit camps. For random sunken treasures and such, that say level 14, I swim up with no problem and one-shot a bunch of level 10 drowners.

I call shens. I'm level 11 and have all of the Griffin gear and I don't one-shot level 9-10 drowners even with the right oil applied. 2-3 shots, maybe.

Considering how drowners were barely an annoyance in previous games (I remember gathering them up in groups of 8-10 in TW1 and mowing them with group style) it's hilariously ironic that they're by far the most frustrating and challenging enemies to fight, for me at least, since they almost always come in groups of 6+ often with a water hag in tow.

Personally I don't find the combat that difficult (on blood & broken bones), but it is often unforgiving. Especially when fighting groups a single mistake can easily cause you to get hit 4-5 times and put you in real danger. Which is probably fairly realistic for a solo fighter like Geralt who relies on agility.

Also I've noticed that the difficultly of a fight changes drastically depending on your preparation level. For example at about level 7 I tried to do the shrieker contract, and I was getting slaughtered by him. I think I tried the fight at least 10 times but could not figure out a way to reliably avoid those sweeping talons. I finally gave up and came back one level later after I found the recipe for the correct type of oil. The fight was almost a joke then, apparently the oil disoriented him so he couldn't aim his claws as well, because he was attacking but missing me at least 75% of the time.

 

[Gryz]

I'm sure your right but often so many games fill in between after so long that I never get around to it.

People need to be selective when they buy games. I believe some people buy everything new that has half-decent reviews. And then they buy everything else during sales.
I buy a game only when I am 99.99% sure I will play and finish it.

I got the Dishonored expack waiting. And GTA V. Too bad GTA V and TW3 were released so close in time. I'm sure I will finish both of those, even if new games get released.

 

[JeffMD]

While Skyrim can offer many roles, it doesn't do them to the fidelity and depth that the Witcher can with just one.

Witcher has multiple roles too.. you can choose to strengthen his magic which gives you new forms of magic attacks, you can strengthen his alchemy and float your damage through temp buffs, or you can just strengthen your melee attacks and play as a standard warrior. I don't think you can completely unlock your talent board and have it all.

No, the merciless pessimism and cynicism of those works is no more "real" than any other work.

Your history is so horrible.. go back to school. ^^ Yes this is how things were in the dark ages (minus the supernatural beings slaughtering you random nights in your home).

As for textures, I see a fair bit of texture pop-in or stuck low resolution textures, especially during cut-scenes. It often happens to peoples faces. I'm am pushing the limits of my 2GB VRAM though.

I have not seen any texture pop in. I'm running off SSD and the only thing of any sort I have seen was once or twice I galloped to a corner where people were gathered (outside of a settlement) and for some reason it took 5-8 seconds for the people to pop in.

It's too bad the nvidia HairWorks seems to cripple performance so much - it does look kind of cool, but even after the recent patch which supposedly optimized it I still get like a 10-15 FPS hit....I can turn on like everything in the postprocessing section and not even take a 15 FPS hit lol.


I see shadows going crazy sometimes, especially during daytime with trees/grass. With the wind blowing it makes so many shadows moving around at once that it sort of just looks like a big blob of shadow gyrating around - at first I thought it was a glitch but it seems to be just shadow-overload or something.

See now..I am not running everything ultra on my 970, in part because I am making up for my AMD cpu. For me Hairworks still leaves me with good performance. Also I have never seen these shadow freakouts. I love shadows and when ever I can I make it the first thing that I max out (nothing breaks realism IMO than an object not casting a shadow).

BTW, is it just me ? When reading posts about TW3 on several forums, it seems like 70% of all players have a GTX970 ?

It was a very affordable card that offered dx12 technology and more performance than the new consoles which means that baring hardware failure, it will last you through the entire console generation. This is why I was able to hold onto my 460gtx for so long, sure 2 generations of video cards came out after it, but it still was able to manage all games with console quality or better graphics at 1080p, and that was all I needed.

I call shens. I'm level 11 and have all of the Griffin gear and I don't one-shot level 9-10 drowners even with the right oil applied. 2-3 shots, maybe.

Ditto. I would like to know which talents you have choosen and if you think youve smithed weapons that were not intended for your level? (ignoring the level restriction on the weapon). I know I've managed to take down higher level packs or bosses but it was usually unintended (You can't even see the levels of mobs until you are on top of them which is lame) but I managed usually because I use bombing run mechanics where I run in (or through on horse) and then quickly escape out of range. Toe to toe fights with packs tend ot leave me near death. Single mobs are much easier (for instance bears are kinda slow and easy to read their moves, so its quit easy to roll to their side or back and get some nice crits). I'm running on difficulty 2 as well.

 

[norseamd]

Now, I do find bashing things into submission with my shield to be highly satisfying--as simple as it is I still find Skyrim one-hand/shield combat to be fun; it is just way too easy.

So many constantly say Skyrim has no fighting mechanics at all. Despite how much I think there is a lot in Skyrim that is not that amazing I think fighting is not one of them. And when you add Requiem to balance everything out then all you need are some more weapons, equipment, magic, and more for improving the fighting.

Ever heard of the Asian Strategy game of Go?

Ever tried Go?

 

[sze5003]

I'm now level two and completed all the side quests for white orchard. The ones left are the viper treasure hunt and the demon at the well but the recommended level is 6-7 so I'm not sure what to do. I've explored a lot to the ? Areas too.

 

[norseamd]

See now..I am not running everything ultra on my 970, in part because I am making up for my AMD cpu.

The 6300 were cheap but the consoles were all 8 cores so getting the 8350 would probably have made a lot more sense and you would have had more power than any games made today ever require.

 

[JeffMD]

I'm now level two and completed all the side quests for white orchard. The ones left are the viper treasure hunt and the demon at the well but the recommended level is 6-7 so I'm not sure what to do. I've explored a lot to the ? Areas too.

The ? are also your side quest (for instance one of the tougher ones north west is "Precious Cargo", although you can possibly complete it by picking away at the drowners on horseback)

 

[zinfamous]

I call shens. I'm level 11 and have all of the Griffin gear and I don't one-shot level 9-10 drowners even with the right oil applied. 2-3 shots, maybe.

underwater drowners guarding sunken treasure. For some reason, my non-upgraded crossbow is one-shotting them. Just saying.

Drowners on land? ....not so much. But yes, they are mroe difficult here than in the previous games.

Personally I don't find the combat that difficult (on blood & broken bones), but it is often unforgiving. Especially when fighting groups a single mistake can easily cause you to get hit 4-5 times and put you in real danger. Which is probably fairly realistic for a solo fighter like Geralt who relies on agility.

Also I've noticed that the difficultly of a fight changes drastically depending on your preparation level. For example at about level 7 I tried to do the shrieker contract, and I was getting slaughtered by him. I think I tried the fight at least 10 times but could not figure out a way to reliably avoid those sweeping talons. I finally gave up and came back one level later after I found the recipe for the correct type of oil. The fight was almost a joke then, apparently the oil disoriented him so he couldn't aim his claws as well, because he was attacking but missing me at least 75% of the time.

This is what I also find true about combat here. I feel it is the prefect balance between difficult and manageable. The movement can keep you in almost any fight after a bit of practice, but it just takes one mistake for a scrub to knock you off balance and have his goons bring you down the next second.

When I say that it feels easier, to me, I'm saying that in the previous games, the fights were choreographed such that you weren't expected to fight x mob until x level with gear. It was difficult because the mechanics seemed designed to kill you if you weren't at a place where the game wanted you to be for that fight. With this, you can find a way to take on fights many levels above you. I've died a ton fighting much higher-level mobs, but once you get a handle on their mechanics it certainly becomes possible.

Oils really do trivialize some of the content

 

[JeffMD]

The 6300 were cheap but the consoles were all 8 cores so getting the 8350 would probably have made a lot more sense and you would have had more power than any games made today ever require.

I got the 6300 some time go, before we knew the specs of the new consoles. It was back when amd still had plans to out out a new more powerful FX series so I went with the cheap 6300 and waited for the new chip. Now buying a 8350 would be silly because it isn't that much more game performance and the money is better saved and spent on doing a swapout to intel. ^^

 

[norseamd]

underwater drowners guarding sunken treasure. For some reason, my non-upgraded crossbow is one-shotting them. Just saying.

Can you even fight while swimming underwater?

 

[JeffMD]

Can you even fight while swimming underwater?

I think he ment when the downers use their submerge ability? they can drop underwater in areas where there is standing water only making them harder to see and you can't swing at them.

 

[zinfamous]

I'm now level two and completed all the side quests for white orchard. The ones left are the viper treasure hunt and the demon at the well but the recommended level is 6-7 so I'm not sure what to do. I've explored a lot to the ? Areas too.

Just do the viper stuff. Ignore the recommended levels to the point where you feel comfortable taking on certain quests, despite those recommendations. The viper parts really are quite easy.

I left the starter area barely at level 4, having completed everything, and it was rather easy

 

[zinfamous]

Can you even fight while swimming underwater?

you have to crossbow them, apparently. I was trying to figure this out for some time, and eventually a tooltip popped up saying "Geralt can not maneuver underwater, so must use the crossbow to defend himself"

For some reason, a single crossbow bolt does something like 10x damage to them while underwater. If a shot doesn't kill them, they tend to back away and not chase you.

I think he ment when the downers use their submerge ability? they can drop underwater in areas where there is standing water only making them harder to see and you can't swing at them.

Not really. When swimming further out into open water, you often find them guarding chests or underwater caves entrances. These are usually higher level, and will never follow on land if you try to lead them back. I tried this many times, because I never could figure out how to fight them underwater. They just leash back as soon as you reach shore, even if their spawn point is close.

Near the western tip of the Velen map, there is a tower on a cliff with a raised drawbridge, defended by a Wyvern. Below that, a place of power on a small island at the bottom of this cliff. Just below the place of power, an underwater entrance that can lead you to some hidden treasure. There are about 6 or 7 level 10 drowners guarding that, and the cave is right by dry land. They never chase if you try to lead them out of water. Once I tried to enter that cave, underwater, the tooltip about underwater fighting first popped up. You really just need to hit each one once and they back off. You can also find 2 or 3 level 10 drowners in the lake east of the Nilfgaard camp in White Orchard map, guarding a treasure that should be marked ? on your map from the beginning.

When fighting them on land, I tend to fight them away from the water--didn't realize they will do this in the shallows, as I suppose I haven't seen it yet.

 

[Merad]

underwater drowners guarding sunken treasure. For some reason, my non-upgraded crossbow is one-shotting them. Just saying.

Ohhhh, haha. Yeah, that seems to be intentional. Underwater combat would be extremely tedious if the crossbow did its normal damage, requiring 20-odd shots to kill anything.

Haven't met any water creatures other than drowners so far, though.

Ditto. I would like to know which talents you have choosen and if you think youve smithed weapons that were not intended for your level?

Not sure if you are asking zin or myself. My skills are:

Fast attack 5/5
Arrow deflection 3/3
Exploding shield 3/3
Delusion 3/3
Acquired tolerance 3/3
Sun and Stars 1/1

With a red mutagen and green mutagen. I'm putting points into another potion skill but can't equip it til I hit 12.

 

[cmdrdredd]

*record scratch*

Ok, just what real life is this supposed to represent? Because my real life isn't full of nasty people doing nasty kinky things with me caught in the middle of it, nor do I want it to be that way. I think people get caught up in the gritty feel of stuff like The Witcher (or Game of Thrones) and confuse it for "realism". No, the merciless pessimism and cynicism of those works is no more "real" than any other work.

You don't watch the news? The world is a very bad place in reality with lots of terrible people.

The in-game cut scenes in this game look pretty rough because for some reason it seems to use different LOD rules. For example face detail roll-off is super aggressive, with background NPCs turning into eyeless ghouls much closer than they would normally. I also see a ton of super low detail textures on buildings, low detail vegetation sprites and ugly dithering effects all over these cut scenes.

Aren't you using lower settings due to currently running a GTX660 or was that someone else? I haven't seen anything like that yet but I'm on ultra everything minus vignette and chromatic aberation

 

[zinfamous]

You don't watch the news? The world is a very bad place in reality with lots of terrible people.



Aren't you using lower settings due to currently running a GTX660 or was that someone else? I haven't seen anything like that yet but I'm on ultra everything minus vignette and chromatic aberation

"As long as it's in the news, it isn't real!" The western bubble we live in is quite nice.