The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

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zinfamous

No Lifer
Jul 12, 2006
111,614
30,890
146
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.
.

Yeah, when the tooltip first popped up that I can only use crossbow, I was like "FUUUUUUUUUUU this will take forever!" ...then you shoot one and they die.
 

sze5003

Lifer
Aug 18, 2012
14,297
672
126
Surprising how easy the viper quest in white orchard and the devil by the well quest was for me only at level 2. Now I guess I'll continue the main story.
 

norseamd

Lifer
Dec 13, 2013
13,990
180
106
Yeah, when the tooltip first popped up that I can only use crossbow, I was like "FUUUUUUUUUUU this will take forever!" ...then you shoot one and they die.

The deal with Go and also Skyrim in some ways is that it is complexity through simplicity. The lack of difficulty and balancing made it so in vanilla Skyrim you could just run up to stuff and start bashing it in but with Requiem fighting requires good movement, tactical awareness, positioning, timings, and general wise decisions in order to just survive nevermind start defeating bandits and skeletons and other enemies.

Even the skeletons in the crypt in Whiterun are very hard to destroy at any low character level and it is very hard without heavy armor as just a few hits will drop you otherwise.
 

cytg111

Lifer
Mar 17, 2008
25,315
14,819
136
Some damn nice graphics in here, playing it now, yet it has that console feel over it that puts me right back in DAI (thats not a good thing). I suppose as the resolution and general fidelity goes up theres an inreasing challenge in making the motion of things look 'realish'.
Some things stand out, like 2D bushes flapping in the wind (synchronized to the wind factor according to accustics, nice touch there). It is just the MEH elements is really dragging down the excellent parts.

(everything maxed, 780gtx, yes fps hurts sometimes but I want the candy...).
 

zinfamous

No Lifer
Jul 12, 2006
111,614
30,890
146
The deal with Go and also Skyrim in some ways is that it is complexity through simplicity. The lack of difficulty and balancing made it so in vanilla Skyrim you could just run up to stuff and start bashing it in but with Requiem fighting requires good movement, tactical awareness, positioning, timings, and general wise decisions in order to just survive nevermind start defeating bandits and skeletons and other enemies.

Even the skeletons in the crypt in Whiterun are very hard to destroy at any low character level and it is very hard without heavy armor as just a few hits will drop you otherwise.

I didn't put some 550 hours into SKyrim because I didn't like it--but that kind of commitment is only possible when Bethesda depends on the community to fix all of the problems with their games, which is what you are referring to here. Requiem came out many years later and from fans addressing issues that needed to be fixed. I haven't used Requiem--I had played through the game enough times that I just don't need to keep fiddling in order to play through the same content slightly differently.

but it's not useful to compare content that really doesn't exist as part of one game, to the inherent mechanics of release content in another game.
 

JeffMD

Platinum Member
Feb 15, 2002
2,026
19
81
well as if getting out of the UI menus wasn't stupidly long, I had my first death from it. My pinky toe hit a patch of gas and killed me at half health because I jumped into my inventory at the exact moment and could not regain control of geralt fast enough to move him. These patches to fix stupid ui crap like this can't come fast enough.
 

sze5003

Lifer
Aug 18, 2012
14,297
672
126
well as if getting out of the UI menus wasn't stupidly long, I had my first death from it. My pinky toe hit a patch of gas and killed me at half health because I jumped into my inventory at the exact moment and could not regain control of geralt fast enough to move him. These patches to fix stupid ui crap like this can't come fast enough.
A lot of times I'm pressing ESC to get out the menu and it doesn't work. I have to click exit on the top right corner first. I always make sure I'm in a clear area before messing in the menus.
 

Merad

Platinum Member
May 31, 2010
2,586
19
81
The little moments in this game continue to impress me. Had a finishing move where I impaled a guy on my sword. His buddy was running up behind him, didn't stop in time, and took damage + staggering back from running into the sword tip. In a separate battle, I was flanking the main enemy group killing their archers/crossbowmen (I always kill them first because they're damned annoying) as I rolled up to one of them his buddy fired, missed me, and hit my target right in the throat, killing him. Should have turned off friendly fire. :awe:

Edit: Also, found this video showing the original Witcher proof of concept demo. How far we've come... https://youtu.be/vMmFiQp3Q_4
 
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Cerb

Elite Member
Aug 26, 2000
17,484
33
86
How on earth did you manage that?
It just started happening. I can click continue a few times, and it goes away, or actually put a disc in (a Tchaikovsky #4 CD worked), and it goes away. I had recently used my ODD for ripping some CDs, so that may be related. I'll restart sometime this weekend, and see if I can make it go from not giving that to giving it. I do not seem to be alone in having the message, but it doesn't seem to be common.

Other than the obvious GFX downgrade from days of yore, and the above message, the only other thing is I've got a bugged side quest. But, it's one of the White Orchard treasure ones, do I'll probably be OK, so long as I explore everywhere (which always try to do).

Overall, I'm really impressed, so far. But, I was hoping for high graphics settings to look a bit better, in regards to plants, of which there are many.
 

norseamd

Lifer
Dec 13, 2013
13,990
180
106
Overall, I'm really impressed, so far. But, I was hoping for high graphics settings to look a bit better, in regards to plants, of which there are many.

The 2D trees is downright unsanctimonious blasphemy of the foulest sort.
 

escrow4

Diamond Member
Feb 4, 2013
3,339
122
106
So I take it you never actually play Skyrim that much? Ever pay attention to the Civil War questline?

You mean the civil "war" consisting of 10 soldiers that dragged the FPS to 40 or less with endless speechifying and yapping that was so clichéd it was nearly a crime? :hmm:

The difficulty in III is staggered well, even on maximum easy 3 levels above you you will barely last.
 

norseamd

Lifer
Dec 13, 2013
13,990
180
106
You mean the civil "war" consisting of 10 soldiers that dragged the FPS to 40 or less with endless speechifying and yapping that was so clichéd it was nearly a crime?

Yes Bethesda left the questline a unfinished and mediocre mess but when you look at the overall situation there is no good or bad side to join with in the questline. Grey morality is something that the Witcher franchise focuses on so obviously Skyrim in not even going to be close in dealing with grey or ambiguous morality and related content.
 

zinfamous

No Lifer
Jul 12, 2006
111,614
30,890
146
Yes Bethesda left the questline a unfinished and mediocre mess but when you look at the overall situation there is no good or bad side to join with in the questline. Grey morality is something that the Witcher franchise focuses on so obviously Skyrim in not even going to be close in dealing with grey or ambiguous morality and related content.

Don't forget the faction quest lines--Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood stories are as complex and engaging as anything in the Witcher series. It's already cliche to mention that those faction quest lines are better than the main story in Skyrim, but there you go.

The CIvil War just fell flat. It had so much potential for being a big world-changing event, but it amounts to nothing in the end, regardless of your chosen side. It doesn't help that while the Jarls have their own hint of personality, there is really nothing about any one of them that, when replaced by an invading army, changes the city they control, much less those citizens' response to the dragon born.
 

JeffMD

Platinum Member
Feb 15, 2002
2,026
19
81
The 2D trees is downright sanctimonious blasphemy of the foulest sort.

As much as you think our video cards are bad ass today.. they still can't render a complete 3d forest for miles out. All games do it, and all games will continue to do it for the near future. In fact until the day our video cards have a budget that can render individual leaves, you will never see the removal of tree's being reduced to 2d panels in the distance.

And even then... unless rendering 3d suddenly allows for unlimited resources, no one is going to sacrifice GPU budget on rendering far off trees when that same performance can be used to render even more detail close up.
 

Cerb

Elite Member
Aug 26, 2000
17,484
33
86
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 still having trouble, but getting better. I wish there were more humans to go against without save-scumming, but I've gone from 2 drowners being too much, to taking on 3 without losing more than half health (no potions), at level 3. It just takes practice, to get timing of blocking, dodging, and signs right, along with selecting the right sign, without error, without looking. While it's fundamentally similar to TW2's combat, I'm liking it a lot more (and while the FOV and camera are a little small and close, am having no motion sickness, unlike many a console port, and unmodded TW2). It seems to have a lot of the tension and risk that TW1's Flash Mod offered, without the varied negatives of that beat-like system. TW2 seemed to lose that, outside of boss fights, for me.

I'm playing at 2nd-hardest difficulty; somewhat disappointed that I can't bump it up to the hardest setting now.
You can't? I'm pretty sure you can. I fully plan to, once I'm comfortable taking on enemies a few levels above me.

Oils really do trivialize some of the content
Hopefully there will be places in the game where they only help so much. TW1 and TW2 had areas where you had to decide which creatures you really wanted active oils and potions for, like crypts with physical vampires, psychic vampires, and necrophages all together.

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. ^^
My Xeon E3 barely gets warm, isn't using tons of CPU, and all slowdowns are at 95-100% GPU, usually with lots of plants to draw on the screen. They definitely have taken their time optimizing data structures and calls, instead of assuming the big bad PC CPUs would just take it in stride, so there's no bolt-on physics stutter, jerkiness at combat start, or any other such crap. Your 6300 is getting long in the tooth, but at most, a little OCing should max this game out, with it.

Can you tell me more?
It's almost like 2D fighting games, in that you have to have some tactical sense, defensive moves can be used as part of an offensive set of moves, timing means a lot, where a mere 200-300ms (close to the limits of us normal mortals, and far too quick to think about things) can be night and day. Just the same, you don't have time to reconsider your choices in the moment, but still have to be able to change what you're doing without hesitating. In a crowd, risking finishers can be dangerous, too. It's manageable, and when I screw up, I can see how I did it right at that point, but it's not very forgiving.

In Skyrim, you have all the time in the world, and very little concern for what combinations of attacks/spells to use (IE, not casting the right spell at just the right moment won't get you killed or near it, except possibly in two of the main quest boss fights). They are simply not the same kind of game, beyond the superficial similarities.

The 2D trees is downright unsanctimonious blasphemy of the foulest sort.
I agree. Hopefully an Enhanced Edition will fix those for the PC, or modders will find a way (TW2 got its share of such mods). I can't say everything else is perfect, but aside from doing that in 2015, the rest of the positives have far outweighed negatives (often with little things, like all cut scenes being skippable; no loot animations; and v-sync playing silky smooth when at <60FPS, which in many games requires config file editing, 3rd-party hacks, and much trial and error).

As much as you think our video cards are bad ass today.. they still can't render a complete 3d forest for miles out. All games do it, and all games will continue to do it for the near future. In fact until the day our video cards have a budget that can render individual leaves, you will never see the removal of tree's being reduced to 2d panels in the distance.

And even then... unless rendering 3d suddenly allows for unlimited resources, no one is going to sacrifice GPU budget on rendering far off trees when that same performance can be used to render even more detail close up.
For anything far way, that's fine. But they should have nearby LOD variants that are very high detail, so that when we set our sliders to ultra, it really looks it. Then, those far away ones should have a shader or two on them to blend in better, so their flatness is not so apparent. When right up to a bush to harvest from it, the berries or flowers shouldn't look like a bad watercolor, when the we can see the individual rings in the main character's mail.
 
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Merad

Platinum Member
May 31, 2010
2,586
19
81
The CIvil War just fell flat. It had so much potential for being a big world-changing event, but it amounts to nothing in the end, regardless of your chosen side. It doesn't help that while the Jarls have their own hint of personality, there is really nothing about any one of them that, when replaced by an invading army, changes the city they control, much less those citizens' response to the dragon born.

Bethesda has been riding basically the same world, quest and dialogue systems since Oblivion (never modded Morrowind, dunno about it). They are a good combination of powerful and accessible, as evidenced by the enormous amount of Oblivion and Skyrim mod content. One thing they are not good at, however, is dealing with branching quests. The system is can do it, but it's a lot of work. Until Beth decides to go from some core system upgrades, don't expect much improvement in the Elder Scrolls games in that regard.
 

Carfax83

Diamond Member
Nov 1, 2010
6,841
1,536
136
Important!

I know I've said it before, but applications/programs on your PC that use hardware acceleration can cause problems with the Witcher 3, by causing the driver to stop responding which the results in the game crashing.

I've had this happen to me with two programs. First was the Spartan browser, and now just a few hours ago, I found out that OpenOffice can cause issues as well because it uses some sort of hardware acceleration as well.

I played for about 8 hours yesterday with zero crashes. This morning, I installed OpenOffice 4.1.1 as I needed to view some powerpoint slides. Later, I started up the Witcher 3 and after playing for about 5 minutes, the game crashed with the same "Driver stopped responding error."

After some troubleshooting, I ended up uninstalling OpenOffice and the issue was resolved. So if you're having stability issues, make sure to check that nothing that uses hardware acceleration is running in the background.
 

Grooveriding

Diamond Member
Dec 25, 2008
9,147
1,329
126
Important!

I know I've said it before, but applications/programs on your PC that use hardware acceleration can cause problems with the Witcher 3, by causing the driver to stop responding which the results in the game crashing.

I've had this happen to me with two programs. First was the Spartan browser, and now just a few hours ago, I found out that OpenOffice can cause issues as well because it uses some sort of hardware acceleration as well.

I played for about 8 hours yesterday with zero crashes. This morning, I installed OpenOffice 4.1.1 as I needed to view some powerpoint slides. Later, I started up the Witcher 3 and after playing for about 5 minutes, the game crashed with the same "Driver stopped responding error."

After some troubleshooting, I ended up uninstalling OpenOffice and the issue was resolved. So if you're having stability issues, make sure to check that nothing that uses hardware acceleration is running in the background.

I have the same issue.

This is an nvidia driver issue, rolling back to an older driver fixes it.
 

Carfax83

Diamond Member
Nov 1, 2010
6,841
1,536
136
I think it's better to either uninstall, or simply make sure that any programs (and their services) using hardware acceleration are not running in the background.

Older drivers won't be as optimized for the game and could cause performance loss..
 

Merad

Platinum Member
May 31, 2010
2,586
19
81
I know I've said it before, but applications/programs on your PC that use hardware acceleration can cause problems with the Witcher 3, by causing the driver to stop responding which the results in the game crashing.

It really has nothing to do with background programs. I have Firefox open all the time (uses hardware acceleration) and usually I can play for at least 2-3 hours with no crash, but a couple of times I have crashes within 5 minutes.
 

Carfax83

Diamond Member
Nov 1, 2010
6,841
1,536
136
It really has nothing to do with background programs. I have Firefox open all the time (uses hardware acceleration) and usually I can play for at least 2-3 hours with no crash, but a couple of times I have crashes within 5 minutes.

Dude, this is a well known problem for some people and just because it doesn't affect you, doesn't mean it's not real

There are likely several factors involved, the most important ones being whether you're an NVidia or AMD user, and what drivers you're using and the OS as well.

I agree with Grooveriding that it's mostly a driver problem, and not a game problem. But I'm using the 352.84 drivers since I'm on Windows 10, Microsoft has mentioned some issues with hardware acceleration in their build release summary.
 

Carfax83

Diamond Member
Nov 1, 2010
6,841
1,536
136
Are you guys talking about the nvlddmkm "stopped responding" crash?

I don't know the specific error. What it says for me is that the display driver has stopped responding. I looked for it in Event Viewer but I didn't see anything..

I'm using an old pre-witcher driver, and I got that crash a lot. I decided to live with it for the time being because nvidia seem to have made a balls of the new drivers. However, I now think that having GPU-Z running might be a contributor. I often had GPU-Z running to log GPU stats, but it seems like when I don't have it running, the game doesn't crash.

Did you ever try the newest driver? GPU-Z has uses hardware polling, so that could cause some problems but from my experience it's rare.
 
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