The Witcher 3 Discussion Thread!

Pshhh...I could take this scrawny whoreson any day of the week

 

Do be careful, he is a Velen, Novigrad, and Skellige bare knuckle fight champion.

Spoiler

Lets see if I'm doing this right

Spoiler

He literally beat a bear and a troll with his bare knuckles.

 

*begins "last" story quest*
*uhmm, that's a nice cinematic, this sure will be an epic battle!*
*regains control of a character*
*what's this, a message? X quest was failed?!?*
*panics because maybe something was missed*
*looks at a quest log. Nope, everything is fine with the said quest, yet it was moved to failed section for some reason...*
*WTH is wrong with you?!?*
*rage quits*

Dammit CDPR, you had ONE job... Apparently this is yet another feature the almighty 1,07 patch had introduced...
Screw this, I'm installing Skyrim (and all of those unofficial patches)!
SRSR333, buddy, you can come out of the shelter, no more spoilers from me...

 

hey folks, have a silly question here. I'm downloading The Witcher 3 right now and I want to optimize it to get the best performance. My specs is 970M, i7-4920HQ, 16GB of RAM, running on HDD though. I tried to google some but I'm not sure which source to trust. Also, I'm actually using the Nvidia driver from Sager but it's a bit outdated (since the latest seems to have some issue with nvidia inspector) but I heard the newer Nvidia driver is optimized for The Witcher so I plan to install the latest one. Good choice?

 

Not sure why no one has mentioned, but GMG is having a TW3 sale:
http://www.greenmangaming.com/s/lt/en/pc/games/action/witcher-3-wild-hunt/
€33 is not a bad deal. Add that -20% voucher and it's a steal.

 

1.08.3 is up on GOG. Wonder what it fixes (and breaks ) though, can't seem to find the changelog...

 

According to Galaxy
Patch 1.08.3 (24.08.2015)

• Introduces a retro-active fix to some of the achievements that were amended in the patch 1.08. This time for real.

 

I just checked. 20% voucher doesn't work. But still for $30 it's a bargain. Surprised it's on sale this quickly. I should have just waited. I haven't been able to play.

 

I guess it was already too good of a deal to lower it any more. But if memory serves me right, this isn't the first TW3 sale on GMG. I think they had it once for 40EUR or so. Wonder if they gonna sell expansion pass as well, wouldn't mind getting few euros off.

 

www.cdkeys.com is still running it for 30 usd IIRC I picked it up here back on release for this same price.It's a COG galaxy key though, so you will not be able to activate it on steam. They were also offering Arkaham Knight for less than 20 a week after release FWIW. I have used them numerous times now and been thoroughly pleased.

Just waiting on September 1 for the new MGS :-X . . . till then witcher 3 is still king. Anyone tried playing with Nvidia 3D active?

 

This apparently increases FPS by 1-2. But yeah. The draw distance is amazing, simply amazing.

 

New SweetFX preset?

 

I just got this game. I'm in the northeast and expect another really cold winter (ice/snow etc)so I figure this game will give me hours of gameplay while I'm shut in. Graphics look awesome. I usually play FPS games, but those can be blown threw quickly, this game seems like a lot of hours are needed to play it to the fullest. whats the average amount of time needed to play this game?

 

http://howlongtobeat.com/game.php?id=10270

Mine is currently at 214h. Still waiting for a patch to finish the game.

 

Whoa! It can probably last through spring!!!

 

Actually, killkenny was somewhat fast. If you take it slowly - enjoy the scenery and walk around a bit instead of rushing to complete quests, and maybe play only about an hour a day, it takes very long and you keep up the interest.

 

I would hardly call 214 hours "fast."

 

Fair enough - but fast for me, though. I've probably been playing that long as well, but I'm still just starting the Skellige quests after finishing Velen and Novigrad.

 

Why guess? Go to inventory and hit C. You'll know how much time you really spent.
I still have quite a few question marks in Skellige. Fishing out loot can be a real PITA sometimes, not to mention you have to travel by boat quite a lot.

 

Yeah... It's around 200 hours.

 

Probably the best game ever made. I mean there is other good games out there but in my mind this game is the crowning achievement in terms of electronic gaming at this point in the human timeline

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

 

I see you really hate Roach .

Pretty much agree. TW3 has a lot of flaws, oh man, does it have a lot of them, but I don't think I ever loved a game so much as TW3, except for FSX, IL-2, and Blitzkrieg. It actually sort of reminds me my love-hate relationship I have going with FSX.
I played it non-stop for two months and still can't get enough. Luckily I will get more come October or November.
Heck, it ruined other RPGs for me. I tried playing Skyrim, DAI, even TW2, and it's not the same after TW3 anymore... In comparison DAI feels so mediocre...

 

I actually just re-downloaded DA:I last night because I only tried it out for about 7 hours before giving up on it. It works really well with G-sync, before the game was choppy even on SLI 780TI's and now I have it playing smoothly on merely a 970m with gsync

 

my witcher 3 is playing at 3k resolution ultra in gsync at about 30 fps and its awesome.
it seems lightening quick no hesitation ever.
but i have heard there may be a dx 12 patch for it that could really improve the fps.

 

CDPR never said anything about a DX12 patch for TW3. I doubt it would improve perf much anyway since the game is already very GPU-bound under DX11.

 

CDPR has other things to do than bringing DX12 support, like fixing quest bugs.
I actually never heard that DX12 rumour. I heard that they may include some moar Triss romance (*drools*) in upcoming patches, but nothing about DX12.

It works well on my GTX970. I must say, it looks nice, albeit a bit too much shiny for my liking (must be those ridiculous armour/costume designs).
I tried 5 hour trial before buying, of which I probably played about 4 hours. At that time it seemed like a good game, so I bought it without hesitation. But after around 20 hours mediocrity started to show. The story is basically a chiche (aka usual Bioware dribble), secondary quests, forget about them - just a bunch of fetch quests. Locations although very well made, look really boring to me. I already covered ridiculous costumes/armours, but I will add that everything looks ridiculous in DAI. I mean almost Final Fantasy style weapons, that hipster mage (also, what the hell is he wearing?). Yes, I know it's a fantasy, but even DAO wasn't that carried away. Also, who thinks Roach is bad,raise you hand! Well then, try local "mounts." They seem nice when you ride slow on them, but once you hit Shift creature goes into "sprint mode." In this mode you can expect up to 5% increase in speed, 100% increase in control instability, and over 9000% increase of airflow! At least there are plenty Bugthesda style horse armour DLCs, hurrah! And almost forgot, character leveling feels cut and UI which is even worse than TW2.
On positive side graphics look good, no complains there. Another plus are characters, they seem interesting enough. Gameplay is nice, though at times repetitive, but it's probably the main reason why it kept me playing so far.
Oh, one more for the negative side - character creation. No matter what I did, my dude looked like a metrosexual. No wonder I got massive approvals from Solas. When I said "fudge it, imma gonna be a dudette" and restarted as a lady... Then I saw cutscenes, face animations to be exact... Yeah... Back to my metrosexual dude then... Oh look, now Dorian also gives me a lot of approval... Cassandra, maybe you want to give me some? What, no? OK... How about you, Leliana? Also no? Uhmmm, French lady? No? Uhmmm...Screw it! Varric, at least you give me some...
But this problem was already in DAO and ME, so I will let this one pass...
I will still probably try to finish it. I mean, I've spent €28, might as well suffer through it. Man, should have just pre-ordered TW3 EP instead, even if "pre-orders are bad, m'kay..."

 

Nah, not really. I usually fast-travel or use Roach if I want to get somewhere quickly. I gallop to the nearest waypoint and fast-travel from there.

A primary reason for me taking so long to even get to the end of Act One is because Witcher 3 is an unstable crash-fest on my laptop. Even with my GPU at stock clocks and stock voltage, it crashes a few times (usually about 3 to 4) every hour and I lose a fair amount of progress every time. I could even model a Poisson distribution out of it:

Let C be the number of Witcher 3 crashes per hour on my laptop. Hence C ~ Po(3).

Also, I really like to take my time with the game. For example, in Novigrad, I went to every house and knocked on every door just to look inside. And let me assure you that everything is hand-placed by CDPR. They've really put a lot of love into this game and I can see it in their meticulous arrangement. Skyrim's cities cannot hold a candle to TW3, even TW2. Heck, if I remember correctly even Flotsam (supposedly a tiny outpost) from TW2 was bigger than Whiterun.

CDPR should've added some things that'd make us go back to those places. I liked Flotsam - it had a very calm, rural and laid-back atmosphere to it.

 

Sounds like a driver or hardware issue. Don't know of many users with constant crashes in Witcher 3.

 

I would have to agree there, I don't think I've ever seen it crash.. my memory might be failing me though..

 

They are driver crashes - 'Nvidia Display Driver stopped responding and has recovered'.

 

http://wccftech.com/witcher-3-batma...upport-post-patch-check-witcher-3-screenshot/

 

How much have you played it? SRSR and I spent quite a lot of time, so that would explain why we experience a lot of crashes.
During my "10 hour a day" sessions I would get at least one nVidia driver crash. Sometimes I would have these very frustrating ones - load the game, go upstairs, crash. Total game time - 30 seconds. Then load again, go upstairs, crash. This repeated for me 5 or so times. But then I loaded up again and it worked like a charm. Played fine until I quit the game 3 or so hours later. I have no OC.
So far this GPU driver issue I saw only with TW3. I had some GTA V crashes, but after updating DirectX I don't remember having crashes anymore.

Quicksave is your salvation. I had plenty of crashes, but so far I haven't lost any of my progress *knocks on head wood*

*knocks on door*
Hello sir, do you have time to talk about witchers? This book "Mutated freaks and I" has all the answers you would need. But if you still would like to know more you can for a small fee join our program at Kaer Morhen. There you would have a chance to learn more about intriguing lives of witchers. Now, if you could please step aside, I see you have some goat hides and empty bottles lying around, would like to add to my collection. Also, you have some of that witcher work maybe? *Tyrome Biggums neck scratch*

 

I just crashed six times in the past two and a half hours. I never experience GPU driver crashes in anything else other than benchmarks, and even then those are more occasional than what I see in TW3. CDPR clearly didn't bother about testing the game on anything less than a GTX 980... Stupid desktop power-guzzlers.

 

Have you tried lowering your settings?

 

Yes. I tried playing the game in 800x600 and everything except textures to the lowest. Still crashed, though somewhat less often.

 

What driver do you have? Have you tried earlier or maybe even pre-TW3 ones?
I'm currently on 355,62 (I think), and they seem to crash less.

 

Well, I think I found the culprit - I set the resolution to FHD. TW3 apparently does not like going below 30 FPS too often, and for some reason, crashes, because the game can't keep up at FHD resolution. It appears the resolution setting has the highest impact on FPS, after HairWorks.

GeForce Experience strangely recommends settings much higher than what I've got, but at a much lower resolution of 1366 x 768. Game looks better, but it's really rather blurry and that's extremely obvious on a HiDPI screen. Oh well...

 

Try these tweaks
https://www.reddit.com/r/witcher/comments/36mc8o/a_guide_on_optimization_tweaking_crashfixing/

I used this guide and it helped the looks/fps immensely. Hell, forcing the CPU to handle PhyX did amazing things to my Witcher 3.

Also, Geforce Experience sucks. lol

 

Do you have it running locked at 30FPS, or do you run it with unlocked FPS?

 

With my Lenovo Y70 and it's 860m + i5 i ran it FHD with a mixture of low/medium settings though i had a mild oc on the gpu (135mhz). Another option was 1600 x something with medium/high settings and both had a fps cap of 30. 1600 ran quite good but it was blurry too so i preferred the FHD option.

 

According to pressing C on the Inventory panel, 47 hours. I haven't seen it crash yet. I have 7 hours today actually been playing it before I came here.

 

Hmmm, maybe I should lower some of that Hairworks AA .

 

I switched on Hairworks - and I prefer the default hair.

I was just scrolling through the first fifty or so pages of this thread - we were all *****ing about the downgrade. I played TW2 for comparison. The graphics look rather brighter and there has been a general reduction in mesh count (such as on pillar edges). I hope CDPR comes out with a REDKit and let us do something really epic with TW3, like improving the meshes. Please, CDPR...

 

I'm loving the game, stop over analyzing it and enjoy playing a great game.

 

Agree 100%. I'm just about to finish first area. I've done all the side quests, and gone through all question mark areas. Having a ball, need to learn alchemy

 

To each his own. But when you see gemstone garlic hanging near a merchant, or a texture cutting across an edge in wood or stone, it just gets on your nerves. I was walking around in Flotsam in TW2 and it was excellent.

Don't get me wrong - the storytelling is beyond any other game I've seen before - perhaps even Halo (the first three). Same goes for the epic soundtrack, and the lore. It is a beautiful game.

But they really killed the graphics - and it's not very optimised. Given the same resolution without HairWorks, there is barely a 10 FPS differences between lowest and ultra settings. It's also ridiculously unstable even on stock clocks and lowered resolution.

Graphics-wise, there are just two things I look for in a good 3D game: great meshes, and great textures. Occlusion, anti-aliasing, shadows, shaders, reflection maps, DoF and all the other eye candy comes in later. CDPR completely blew the mesh count throughout without taking full advantage of tessellation to reduce mesh count on lower-end systems. Edges on rocks, pillars, wood beams are simple straight lines, with the texture simply mapped across without rhyme or reason. The textures are half-screwed as well. Meaning, at areas where the player would access only infrequently (such as a mountain corner in Skellige), the texture resolution is set ridiculously low. It detracts from the otherwise very immersive game.

 

I think the art direction makes up for any of those technical quibbles. But, like you said, to each their own. I think it looks fantastic. The styling for the armor and weapons is definitely unique to CDPR here. I like the old world eastern european influence. How everything seems alive and hand crafted to the smallest detail. The art style, sounds, music, voice acting, architecture.. it's all so fantastic. And I haven't even started on the writing.

 

I agree with your statement. And I also like TW3 Easter European setting. It's not something you see very often in a video game, makes it more unique. And it's also something very close to me. I come from similar parts, and recently I visited a castle. All I could think was "man, CDPR really captured medieval Eastern European architecture right" and "I can't wait to get home to play some mo' TW3."
But I also understand SRSR333. I think him being a fan makes him want TW3 to truly be an outstanding game. Having spent a lot of time playing the game, I started to notice one of another thing which, let's say, could be better. True, they don't take a whole lot from the overall enjoyment, but when you multiple the amount of time you run into these issues, you really start to wonder why no one thought about fixing them. So I'm sort of in the same boat as SRSR333. I'm pretty vocal about the problems TW3 has (but I also praise it a lot), but it's only because I want to see TW3 be the most it can be!

 

Wow, played 4hrs str8 did one quest. This is awesome. I will say this game reminds me an awful lot of Everquest. I spent hours on that game before I had to break FREE!!

 

Yes, YES, let The Witcher 3 flow through you!