The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

[escrow4]

I've pretty much accepted that there is going to be the occasional artifact in Witcher 3, but I got it down good enough where I can go 30 minutes or an hour without seeing one, and when I do see one, I don't see another one for awhile. It could very well be a regular graphics glitch, because some of them I'm seeing at stock clocks as well. Every now and then then there is a large black rectangle that is about the size of Geralt that will appear to his left or right side. I'm convinced 100% its the game, or the drivers causing this. FYI Witcher 3 has never crashed on me once. Been playing the game from 1.01 up to 1.08. And I've played the game in 2 hour sittings many times. If better FPS means seeing an artifact once every 30 minutes for .1 secs, and the game doesn't crash on me then that's a good trade IMO. That's my definition of stable enough.

I played in 7 hr blocks with earlier patches and there was no instability.

 

[stag3]

so i just finished the last mission in velen, should i just head to novigrad or walk around the map trying to clear out the ?'s all over the map that i can (that aren't to high a level)

 

[Chaotic0ne]

I just ran into the glitch where Vernon Roche won't talk to you and I'm near the end of the game in this playthrough. :thumbsdown:

 

[chimaxi83]

so i just finished the last mission in velen, should i just head to novigrad or walk around the map trying to clear out the ?'s all over the map that i can (that aren't to high a level)

Whatever fits your play style. I cleared all question marks in Velen before going to Novigrad, same in Novigrad before Skellige. Before you know it, you'll have played 8 hours visiting question marks and exploring, and not progressed the main story even an inch.

 

[stag3]

man i spent 12+ hours in white orchard, had no idea it was the "starter level"
then when i saw how huge velen was, i shit myself

 

[Eric1987]

I wish new game+ was out already.

 

[thehotsung8701A]

This game doesn't compare to Witcher 2. It still better than the Witcher 2 cause it open world and has more replay values.

CDPR has lost their vision on what made their previous game so special. Here are reason why Witcher 2 is far superior to Witcher 3.

Witcher 2 had better voice acting, dialogues, better cutscenes, better story, better Geralt, better Triss, better companions, better armors, better companions armors, better npc guard armors, better names, better locations, better boss fights, better monsters, better and more difficult combats, better mechanics like crouching in some missions, better quests, better Witcher sense, more variety in NPC faces, better looking women NPC, and I can go on and on but you get the point.

Witcher 3 has better spells, GWENT, mount, mediation, and length.

 

[cmdrdredd]

This game doesn't compare to Witcher 2. It still better than the Witcher 2 cause it open world and has more replay values.

CDPR has lost their vision on what made their previous game so special. Here are reason why Witcher 2 is far superior to Witcher 3.

Witcher 2 had better voice acting, dialogues, better cutscenes, better story, better Geralt, better Triss, better companions, better armors, better companions armors, better npc guard armors, better names, better locations, better boss fights, better monsters, better and more difficult combats, better mechanics like crouching in some missions, better quests, better Witcher sense, more variety in NPC faces, better looking women NPC, and I can go on and on but you get the point.

Witcher 3 has better spells, GWENT, mount, mediation, and length.

Sorry but nope.

 

[thehotsung8701A]

Sorry but nope.

Care to explain your reasoning?

 

[PlanetJosh]

Plenty of artifacts when I use the first person no clip mod if I move far enough away from the spawn in a saved game. Man that would be so great if that mod got fixed in that regard. I haven't played the game in a month so maybe the mod got an update. Of course I realize you can't do stuff like play the missions with that mod. I just like to check out this game in first person once in a while. Even though it's just basically an observation mod.

 

[escrow4]

Sorry but nope.

Its true. Average at best. Too much running around and not enough world - where is the war? Nilfgaard sits in the bottom of the map - where are the machinations and plots? Novigrad was sort of touched on with mages but not much. Vizima isn't even in the game even though it is the heart of the country. That'd be like playing a game set in the US but DC wasn't accessible at all.

 

[Revolution 11]

Sorry but nope.

Witcher 2 certainly did have better forests. That forest in Flotsam still looks better than 90% of the trees in Witcher 3.

 

[JumBie]

Witcher 2 certainly did have better forests. That forest in Flotsam still looks better than 90% of the trees in Witcher 3.

Have to agree with that.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Care to explain your reasoning?

Nearly everything you list is preference(seriously...better names?) and I can't remember any of the npcs from Witcher 2 they were that forgettable. I also did not enjoy qte fights at all. Only the foliage looked better.

 

[zinfamous]

Witcher 2 certainly did have better forests. That forest in Flotsam still looks better than 90% of the trees in Witcher 3.

That's to be expected when the environment in one game consists of, essentially, an unexplorable diorama of background textures where depth, camera angles, and lighting are perfectly controlled from every possible viewing angle of your character. You have very limited paths that you can explore, so it's easy to pile pretty environment effects, well-tuned, that aren't going to cause as many potential issues because you can't possibly interact with them in unintended ways.

So, yeah, you can say that "this looked better!" in the other game, but it doesn't hold much water because you aren't making a fair comparison when the design and mechanics differences between the two make this an apples/oranges comparison.

 

[zinfamous]

Nearly everything you list is preference(seriously...better names?) and I can't remember any of the npcs from Witcher 2 they were that forgettable. I also did not enjoy qte fights at all. Only the foliage looked better.

...I also don't understand "better names" It's the same towns, same worlds, same people....same names. Makes no sense.

And, as this really is a personal preference thing, I've always thought that the names in these games are terrible. Something that the original writer's or dev's young kids cooked up:

"Salamandra"
"Nilfgard"

Seriously?

 

[Merad]

...I also don't understand "better names" It's the same towns, same worlds, same people....same names. Makes no sense.

And, as this really is a personal preference thing, I've always thought that the names in these games are terrible. Something that the original writer's or dev's young kids cooked up:

"Salamandra"
"Nilfgard"

Seriously?

I think some of it is names that maybe don't translate well from Polish to English? A few names were actually changed from the source material.. for example Vizima is "Wyzim" in the books. Salamandra was made by CDPR AFAIK, but almost all of the other names of groups, locations, etc are from the books.

 

[smackababy]

Its true. Average at best. Too much running around and not enough world - where is the war? Nilfgaard sits in the bottom of the map - where are the machinations and plots? Novigrad was sort of touched on with mages but not much. Vizima isn't even in the game even though it is the heart of the country. That'd be like playing a game set in the US but DC wasn't accessible at all.

The war is over in country you're in. There is some remnants of battles, but the war is done or none existent in that area yet. The entire area you're allowed in is under control by one faction already.

The entire war is only background noise anywhere.

 

[escrow4]

The war is over in country you're in. There is some remnants of battles, but the war is done or none existent in that area yet. The entire area you're allowed in is under control by one faction already.

The entire war is only background noise anywhere.

How is it over with all those kings running around combined with the outcome of one of the endings? How is it over with a huge camp? That doesn't make sense. It ain't background. Its ignored.

 

[Anteaus]

Wars are never over in political environments like this. There may not be an actual battle ensuing, but political strife, social injustice, and localized violence are all constants. Whether its the King warring for power and prestige or the locals trying to expel the local non-humans from their homes, it is a war ravaged nation.

Geralt has a tendency to ignore the suffering around him because he doesn't have much of a choice. It isn't in his nature to be overly sympathetic. As a Witcher, he ignores the politics unless he gets forced in, and that includes war.

 

[zinfamous]

How is it over with all those kings running around combined with the outcome of one of the endings? How is it over with a huge camp? That doesn't make sense. It ain't background. Its ignored.

The story doesn't really take place at the front lines or in occupied territory. As you venture further south, towards the army camp, you see more and more battlefields jotted about the territory.

I think it's pretty well done in terms of setting up a realistic world, tbh.

 

[Merad]

How is it over with all those kings running around combined with the outcome of one of the endings? How is it over with a huge camp? That doesn't make sense. It ain't background. Its ignored.

The war is the backdrop for the game's story. The game's story isn't about the war. I just wish the game didn't have the quest that

Spoiler

decides the outcome of the war

, it really isn't necessary IMO. They could've achieved the same outcome without Geralt being so directly involved.

 

[Chaotic0ne]

Witcher 2 certainly did have better forests. That forest in Flotsam still looks better than 90% of the trees in Witcher 3.

The fine details like the leaves, branches, shrubs, etc look like ^&*^ in Witcher 3. In comparison, similar features in DAI look way better. They're clean, crisp and I can't play count-the-pixels. I'm waiting for graphics mods to improve this stuff. They were able to get this game running on 2GBs of Vram by making cuts in quite a few areas, and its noticeable. Just about anyone with a GPU even capable of playing Witcher 3 has 3 or more GBs of Vram. The texture resolution in general is pretty low in Witcher 3, even on Ultra. I don't think its any better than in Witcher 2.

 

[Chaotic0ne]

I hope there is some expansions soon that add a few more areas to the game. It would be cool to have a desert area, more cities to visit, and maybe other worlds to visit via portals.

And CDPR is supposed to release a tool kit for modders. I hope they do that soon. I'd imagine people will tackle some pretty ambitious mods, and CDPR will be selling copies of this game for many years to come just like Bethesda has benefited from the modding community with its TES games.

I ended up using a mod to raise the exp mobs give by 9x on my second run of the game, and this is without doing every quest or visiting every ? I ended up at level 72. In the higher level range, much past 40 weapon damage scales higher than anything else, which makes cat armor the best set for raw damage. Mob drops scale with your level, so I was finding level 70ish weapons from Wild Hunt soldiers, and at the shops as well. I just wish there was a way to make mobs scale up with my level. The best craftable weapon is a level 46 Tir Tochiar blade (steel sword), but there isn't any legitimate way to hit that level in vanilla Witcher 3. I guess its technically possible but it would take 50+ hrs of killing mobs. I was level 34 on my first run of the game, and I did the majority of the content. Doing old missions would have been pointless, because they'd give no exp at that level. The best way to level is grind packs of drowners, neckers, wolves.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I hope there is some expansions soon that add a few more areas to the game. It would be cool to have a desert area, more cities to visit, and maybe other worlds to visit via portals.

And CDPR is supposed to release a tool kit for modders. I hope they do that soon. I'd imagine people will tackle some pretty ambitious mods, and CDPR will be selling copies of this game for many years to come just like Bethesda has benefited from the modding community with its TES games.

They have plans for large DLC packs that add completely new areas and 30hours of new content. How much of that will be smuggler caches I don't know lol.