The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

[motsm]

1 million pre-orders...not really sure what blew up in their faces. Just saying.

It's impossible to quantify what damage this controversy has, or will cause CDPR. The fact that they have started to respond with damage control shows it means something to them.

 

[Merad]

OK, back to game questions:

"You already have this item."

So, why, when I am at 0/2 in my inventory for an alchemy object--let's go with a grapeshot, for example--I can't craft another 2 grape shots, even though I have the materials to do it?

The only way to make more, is to drop my "0/2 slot" of grapeshots, then I can craft another 2 grapeshots. ....what is this horseshit?

They changed the mechanics on consumables from previous games. You need to "craft" the item once. Then whenever you meditate, any alchemy items are automatically refilled, provided that you have alcholest (a high quality alcohol) in your inventory. The only thing I've seen that's crafted and consumed normally is crossbow bolts. Also, it seems most alchemy items have improved version available, which require the base version as an ingredient.

 

[futurefields]

It's impossible to quantify what damage this controversy has, or will cause CDPR. The fact that they have started to respond with damage control shows it means something to them.

digging through articles, this is nothing new for them

there was apparently a big uproar when Witcher 2 first came out it had tons of bugs and performance issues

 

[chimaxi83]

So, anybody still playing, or just a bunch of bitching and whining?

 

[sxr7171]

Happy to hear nVidia stepped up and gifted this to Titan X purchasers. Absurd to exclude them from the bundle.

Honestly it's a bit late. They could have done it in time for us to cancel our preorders. They didn't want to reduce CDPR's revenue. What's the point of this "free" game now? They really need to offer another choice of game at least since they clearly strategically did it this way.

 

[escrow4]

Some screenshots, plus some shots of hilarious noticeboard notes:















15hrs in+, only one odd "crash" otherwise no issues. The skills are interesting, you need to slot them in otherwise you don't get to use their benefits; there is nothing passive here. The mutagen slot next to them boosts them if its the same colour, you should slot the first three the way you want to play - combat, more signs, or more potion, then stick a mutagen to boost all three - it multiplies. I have all combat there. Also recommended is boost the potion length, the default few seconds is next to useless.

 

[escrow4]

 

[tidy]

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[escrow4]

Sometimes this game comes remarkably close to my vision of what Diablo should have become. I always thought that Diablo should have been shifted over into first person (or OTS third person - still haven't made up my mind which would be better), as soon as it was technologically viable (as soon as there was an engine capable of competently rendering the hordes of hell in a high quality 3D environment). Diablo was conceived as a story driven RPG, and the Diablo world is wasted on the shitty MMO that it has devolved into.

So when I'm searching through the deserted shacks in a smokey, ruined village, listening to the wind wailing, and the calls of the crows who are pecking at rotting corpses outside, the first thing I think of is the original Diablo intro cinematic, and it makes me very depressed thinking of what might have been.

Let's not be too harsh. I am loath to make excuses for unfinished games, but TW3 isn't that bad by today's standards. Just compare it to the pile of defective shit that was Skyrim 1.0. At least TW3 is playable.

For all that NPCs are window dressing here. You can't interact with anything but quest givers and/or what CD Projekt has built in. Like GTA V's building, pretty but empty and filled only when Rockstar built it in. I doubt consoles will ever allow a free form RPG where you can wander around at will with constant random stuff happening - say you see a peasant ploughing a goat and another being hung high up on a hill then random (truly random) bandits decide to raid the main square where you getting drunk after seeing said peasant(s). A living breathing city.

All said with the limits the devs have, they have packed an astonishing amount into the main maps. Velen compromises swamps, fields, farms, wineries, huts, villages, war torn ruins plus 2 major cities - Novigrad and Oxenfurt. I saw today 70 different question marks to explore - treasure, bandits, places of power etc mixed with random events and side quests and witcher contracts and horse racing and fist fights and Gwent (collect them all!). Then the main quest. And most villages have one if not two of those side missions. And all those locations brimming with diagrams and loot - I found armour that gives 150 DR usable only in later levels (15?) plus buying armour diagrams you can craft later once you hit the level limit.

There is still Skellige too. I have not found a single fetch quest 15hrs in at all. So far everything is well crafted; the plot and dialogue is/are second to none. And random events. Don't think you'll overlevel into a god either. The XP is staggered so some areas you will die in 3min and you need to come back later. If you are Level 5 and the contract is Level 15 don't do it. If its three levels higher you'll likely barely do it (on maximum easy too). And did I mention the treasure hunts you can buy maps off merchants? Make sure you read every scrap of parchment and book too.

 

[irishScott]

Great article with official statements from CDPR about the supposed downgrade.

Very candid interview and it puts to bed the whole downgrade nonsense. They're going to be releasing future patches which will increase graphical fidelity and give us more tweaking options, so in the end, we all win I suppose.

There's a reason I didn't pre-order, even from CDPR. Show me an early adopter and I'll show you someone who got screwed over somehow.

 

[tidy]

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[Aristotelian]

I'm a bit confused by a lot of the nay-saying. I loaded the game finally yesterday evening and gave it a whirl - my wife was watching to see what all the fuss was about. She (and I) were instantly engaged, and it was impressive that she was too considering she: a) thinks videogames in general are a waste of time; and b) she has never played the witcher series.

Even with overclocked 2600k and GTX 580s in SLI (1.5gb version), I'm able to play the game at 1080p with medium-high settings, and it honestly looks great. And it looks great in spite of my settings, not because of them. I was tempted to get a Titan X last night but, EUR 1300? That's a lot of money.

I'm not saying that if I had an extremely high end pc right now that I wouldn't be disappointed that all the super high res packs and PC potential has not been harnessed. It seems that this will come over time. I get the financial argument that they are making about having to develop for consoles as well - and at the end of the day I'm glad they do. I want quality game producing studios to remain viable - a bit sad seeing so many ideas that are clear winners going the kickstart route.

I'll play this through now, and then likely again when I upgrade my PC somewhere in the skylake/cannonlake era. I think right now, more than anything else, I'm waiting for video cards that could drive as yet an unreleased pc monitor - 4k or 5k at 120hz.

 

[escrow4]

Where the hell is crookback bog? I'm supposed to find some crone there, but there is no quest marker, and I can't see anything relevant on the map. I've seen numerous bogs in this game.

Middle of the way bottom map, somewhere near "Orphans of Crookback Bog" I'd say. If you are in Velen you should ride around all or most of the map (look for building bits and pieces along the roads) and the game will place green markers on the map you can fast travel between with some time passing. Stay away from the question marks though, you don't to run into 6 Level 13 wraiths on Level 4. D:

 

[norseamd]

It feels very "MMO-y" I guess, would be my main complaint for this system. whatever.

This might be a way to put it. However if you had potions in a world with medieval level technology where glass was probably more of a rare and expensive material would you keep throwing those glass vials away?

 

[Carfax83]

This game nails the atmosphere just like the original Witcher did! :thumbsup:

 

[sze5003]

Great article with official statements from CDPR about the supposed downgrade.

Very candid interview and it puts to bed the whole downgrade nonsense. They're going to be releasing future patches which will increase graphical fidelity and give us more tweaking options, so in the end, we all win I suppose.

Hopefully that does not make the game from completely nice looking and playable right now for me, into unplayable once these patches come out. But I suppose those HD packs will be optional.

 

[Mem]

Yeah I had a freeze in the inventory. I think you need to set the frame rate to unlimited to remove that happening.

Thanks will try that and report back tonight,btw huge 21 page thread over at their forums on this issue which happens on all types of hardware,how this game bug got through QA testing is beyond me, not a hard one to find at all.


http://forums.cdprojektred.com/threads/36724-Game-Freezing-when-browsing-through-inventory

 

[Carfax83]

You know what really impresses me about the game? The optimization for PC architecture. I just left White Orchard, and although I'm supposed to be in Velen right now, I couldn't help traveling to Novigrad just to check it out. I did the entire thing on horseback mostly, and the fact that I could travel there with complete seamlessness and no hitching whatsoever at 60 FPS, despite going through multiple areas including Oxenfurt is extremely impressive..

And even in Novigrad itself, the frame rate is locked at 60 FPS. On the consoles, Novigrad is a real problem area..

The game doesn't use much VRAM, but it uses a ton of RAM. Thats an indication that the engine is well tuned for PC architecture, as most of the streaming is being done from both VRAM and RAM, rather than from storage like Assassin's Creed games..

Here's another beautiful screenshot:

Spoiler

 

[Demo24]

Once I stopped staring at textures and actually started to play the game I've become much less concerned about graphical fidelity. Sure the grass is 2d and the draw distance can do odd things, but when you stop looking for details it becomes nicely immersive! On a whole it's really quite pretty, especially on character modeling! Skyrim by example always looked like shit. Those textures were awful, even with the 'HD pack', but everyone forgave it because it just all worked in that atmosphere. I'm happy with it, I don't feel gipped in the least because at least this time the game works! 2 had some serious bugs at first.


One annoyance I did find last night though is hitting the end of the map, where if you stay in that zone too long it sends you to the map and then teleports you away. Problem is that its difficult to figure out where that would be when looking at the map. Makes the first zone feel kind of 'small'. I'm still a good 6 or so hours into this one area so its not that big of a deal, but when looking at the map it would seem I'd have another 10% I could walk around in even if there's nothing there.

First bug I've found is the herbalist sometimes doesn't spawn or become visible until right up on him.

Also thought it odd that several NPCs don't move from day to night.

Looking forward to the patch as I hope it does something about getting out of the menus with escape. Sometimes I get stuck in inventory as it just makes my grid smaller as it bounces between selections as I try to escape out. However, pushing the inventory hot key will get me out in one button, I just find hitting escape faster.

Sigh, last night was a out the last I can play till probably sometime on Sunday.

 

[Dahak]

For me its been pretty well stable for me, although I had encountered some oddness recently too

1 - had the inventory bug once, but now cannot remember where I was

2 - had some npcs popping in around the bridge area just north of the hanged man tree where you start in velen.

3 -

....I hope it does something about getting out of the menus with escape. Sometimes I get stuck in inventory as it just makes my grid smaller as it bounces between selections as I try to escape out. However, pushing the inventory hot key will get me out in one button, I just find hitting escape faster.

Sigh, last night was a out the last I can play till probably sometime on Sunday.

Had that happen too lately

I remember reading back, someone posted that they don't have the god/light rays unless the they have bloom on.
For me it seems to work fine, without bloom on.

Been running at ultra on a 770GTX, with bloom, blur, motion blur, hairworks off.
Mind you I am at a lower res as well 1280x1024

 

[MTDEW]

Heads up for those running the GOG version without Galaxy and your game doesn't get "auto-updated" for you.

Patch 1.03 was just released and is up for download on the GOG site under Witcher 3 in your GOG game library.
(no release notes yet)

 

[Mem]

Heads up for those running the GOG version without Galaxy and your game doesn't get "auto-updated" for you.

Patch 1.03 was just released and is up for download on the GOG site under Witcher 3 in your GOG game library.
(no release notes yet)

Quick Google search ,

Changelog: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Patch 1.03 changelog:

• Improves stability in gameplay and the UI.
• Improves performance especially in cutscenes and gameplay
• Fixes grass and foiliage popping that can occur after density parameters change
• Improves Nvidia Hairworks performance
• Boosted texture anisotropy sampling to 16x on Ultra preset
• Sharpen Postprocess settings extended from Off/On to Off/Normal/High
• Improves menu handling
• Improves input responsiveness when using keyboard
• Corrects an issue with stamina regeneration while sprinting
• Fixes a cursor lock issue that sometimes occcurs when scrolling the map
• Generally improves world map focus
• Corrects a bug where player was able to fire bolts at friendly NPCs
• Corrects an issue in dialog selections
• Corrects some missing translations in the UI
• Minor SFX improvements -Blood particles will now properly appear after killing enemies on the water
• Rostan Muggs is back

Btw changelog on 1.03 patch is also on GOG Galaxy launcher.

 

[Attic]

Heads up for those running the GOG version without Galaxy and your game doesn't get "auto-updated" for you.

Patch 1.03 was just released and is up for download on the GOG site under Witcher 3 in your GOG game library.
(no release notes yet)

:thumbsup:


Playing on my rig, dual core Pentium G3258@4.0 and 280x. I've got all settings at high and pretty much locked to 30fps with vsync on and frame cap at 30. This feels surprisingly responsive and fluid. I'm getting intermittent 3 second pauses during gameplay and cut scenes.

Game graphics are ok IMO, not what was sold to us when the game was being hyped which is a shame, but graphics seem to make for a solid world so far. I'm really just looking for, and purchased, so I can sink my teeth into a well realized game world and story.

 

[smackababy]

Put in quite a few hours last night (strange sleep schedule so I was up since 2:30) and I am loving it so far.

A minor annoyance: loot seems to scale with your character, so even if you manage a high level area before you're supposed to, you're not getting a level 35 sword at 10. =( I confirmed this in a new game (maxed my level to 70 and found some incredible sword on a level 2 monster chest).

 

[tidy]

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