The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

[Timmo]

On 15/12/2022 at 11:05, Chadruharazzeb said:

This thread is a fine cure for insomnia. 

we need a boring PC technical shit thread that all this gets dumped into

[Benny]

20 minutes ago, Timmo said:

we need a boring PC technical shit thread that all this gets dumped into

 

Spoiler

 

 

[Eighthours]

I'll be restarting this on Series X this weekend. Quality or Performance, folks?

[Timmo]

17 minutes ago, Eighthours said:

I'll be restarting this on Series X this weekend. Quality or Performance, folks?

Is the answer to this question ever Quality?

[Eighthours]

4 minutes ago, Timmo said:

Is the answer to this question ever Quality?

 

Well, sometimes it's 'try Quality for 5 minutes and then go to Performance'. But I think a few people actually like the Quality mode in Cyberpunk (I went straight back to Peformance on that one...)!

[Mr. Gerbik]

24 minutes ago, Eighthours said:

I'll be restarting this on Series X this weekend. Quality or Performance, folks?

It's always performance, always. Don't trust people who tell you otherwise.

[metallicfrodo]

I don’t really notice the difference in play between 30 and 60 (lucky me I suppose) and played all the way through Cyberpunk in quality mode. I’m also playing this in quality mode as I think the ray tracing in Quality makes a huge difference. But as always, try them out and see what you personally like.

[Mr. Gerbik]

^ don't trust him

[df0]

After all these years and numerous mods for PC, why is the combat still this shit?

[Chadruharazzeb]

Yeah, I thought it was meant to have been refined. Seems exactly the same to me. 

[multi]

On 15/12/2022 at 09:04, Chadruharazzeb said:

Minor annoyance - holding the option button used to shortcut to the map, now it seems to bring up the inventory screen. 

 

Long press goes to the map for me (Xbox)

[Timmo]

3 hours ago, df0 said:

After all these years and numerous mods for PC, why is the combat still this shit?

 

I've gone back to NioH 2

[SaintAnselm]

6 hours ago, metallicfrodo said:

I don’t really notice the difference in play between 30 and 60 (lucky me I suppose) and played all the way through Cyberpunk in quality mode. I’m also playing this in quality mode as I think the ray tracing in Quality makes a huge difference. But as always, try them out and see what you personally like.

Same here, the ray tracing makes a huge difference and makes the world look so much more alive.

 

With regards to the combat, I don’t give a shit if it’s not great, playing this game, the combat is the last thing I really care about, I just love spending hours and hours living in Geralts shoes and the beautiful world he lives in.

[df0]

Wow this is nowhere near as good as I remember it. In a cave now without a recipe to craft the very helpful oil, fresh out of any healing items, out of resources to brew anything, low on health, checkpoint right before cutscenes that only allow skipping one line per button press, and stuck in a 3-phase boss fight. So I probably need go back like 30 minutes and do that entire cave all over trying to play "better".

 

I thought returning to Velen would be a nice change from Night City.

 

Also, I notice no difference. I'm sure I could see graphical difference in side-by-side comparisons but while playing it feels the exact same. Not impressed really.

[Gabe]

6 hours ago, df0 said:

After all these years and numerous mods for PC, why is the combat still this shit?

The combat has consistently been poor in each game, which is such a pity, as just having some simple combos you could unlock would make it much better.

[amc]

As has been said, the combat ain't winning any awards, but I'm so loving the world and story I don't care. Just did the Johnny quest (know that's early but been running around finding sign posts all over and done a ton of monster nests, question marks etc, etc) and I was really, really engrossed. Really liked the Baron's quest too, top quality so early in the adventure, excited for what's to come.

 

Fantastic world, fantastic writing. Graphics aren't bad either, hope they do a few patches, running great for me but want to turn RT on without mad sacrifices. 4090 in the new year will help, s'pose!.

[Eighthours]

Are you guys playing on Normal difficulty (or whatever the equivalent name of it is)?

[JoeK]

Just now, Eighthours said:

Are you guys playing on Normal difficulty (or whatever the equivalent name of it is)?

 

The combat has always been fairly basic if you don't up the difficulty levels right up - then it'll ensure you're using a whole load of different tactics to win. I tend to not bother with all that farty stuff because I'm Geralt, and I'm fucking amazing so I'll chuck the difficulty right down and start hacking limbs off.

 

The game's been much more about the stories it tells and the atmosphere the game has. The combat is just the day job  

[Timmo]

37 minutes ago, JoeK said:

 

The combat has always been fairly basic if you don't up the difficulty levels right up - then it'll ensure you're using a whole load of different tactics to win.

Not entirely sure about this, I played through a third of it on the top difficulty only really using the spell that protects you from all damage against one hit, over and over. Maybe that’s been balanced now. 

[JoeK]

2 minutes ago, Timmo said:

Not entirely sure about this, I played through a third of it on the top difficulty only really using the spell that protects you from all damage against one hit, over and over. Maybe that’s been balanced now. 

Oh, I didn’t mean to say it’s brilliant or anything other than functional, but I do think it allows to play around with tactics far more and alchemy and potions can be used properly.

[Vulgar Monkey]

Not that they probably work with the 4.0 patch, but just how big a difference did the major combat mods make? I think there was one that was a massive overhaul, and another that tried to emulate the less acrobatic more positional animations from e3.

[JoeK]

Shit. I think I may have reached saturation point with the number of times I've gone through this game! Just left White Orchard for what would be the seventh (!) time now and the thought of going all 'round Velen has kind of made me stop. I mean, don't get me wrong I obviously love this game enormously, but I don't think I can muster another run through at the moment!

 

I feel terribly jealous of people making their first (or second, third, fourth, fifth or sixth) run-throughs though!

 

I do maintain that White Orchard is one of the very best opening sections for any game - give you a mini Witcher world with everything in it for you to get to grips with. It's great.

 

 

 

 

[Thor]

Yeah, after the initial "oooh, nice to be back", I'm not really inclined to continue. The fact my PC can't quite do the RTX well is a factor too, mind you. 

[PikaStu]

Well I’m enjoying my first playthrough on Series X, however I’ve had two crashes to the dashboard and one occasion where it became a slideshow and I had to hard-reset the console. 

[Benny]

Thought I'd try out the new Ray tracing upgrade. Firstly: meh. It doesn't add enough to justify the performance loss unless you have a beast machine. Secondly: yes it absolutely is a bugged to fuck patch. Switching graphics modes causes hard crashes, and at one point I switched from DLSS to FSR and it wouldn't let me switch back saying DLSS isn't supported. On an Nvidia 3000 series.

 

Awful stuff.

 

Also, I wouldn't take tests in the game's early areas that have been used in benchmarks as being indicative of overall performance. I loaded a save from the second DLC and oh boy, it's way worse.

 

So that RPS video, despite being light on actual information, to its credit wasn't wrong about it being disappointing.

[Benny]

Also, if you turn RT on, but then try to turn it off it can get "stuck" on. And the game seems to exhibit just completely random low framerate for no apparent reason. Like it will be fine then in the exact same scene suddenly slow to a crawl. Not sure if that's RT related or something wrong if settings are changed like in the way that causes crashes. Anyway, upshot is: it's a really awful, broken patch. Turn that RT off and enjoy it with everything else maxed out and high resolutions instead.

[dataDave]

On 17/12/2022 at 16:16, Vulgar Monkey said:

Not that they probably work with the 4.0 patch, but just how big a difference did the major combat mods make? I think there was one that was a massive overhaul, and another that tried to emulate the less acrobatic more positional animations from e3.

I don’t know because I’ve never played it unmodded before to make any comparison.

 

I’m using the Ghost Mode overhaul. Here’s the author’s blog with mod list recommendations, featuring combat improvement mods (including the E3 one you mention): https://wghost81.wordpress.com/2020/02/03/the-witcher-3-ghost-mode-mod-list/

 

I play with all of those mods mentioned (plus all the popular graphics and lighting mods which he doesn’t touch) and I like the game play very, very much. It’s never frustrating or clumsy and I’m always in full control of Geralt’s targeting, direction, and movement - even when I’m being swamped. His list is a little outdated now, with some new patches superseding his recommendations (such as Brothers In Arms). It’s taken me a few days to get all my shit back together, so if you need a list for 1.31/1.32 I can make one.

[dataDave]

On 17/12/2022 at 16:31, JoeK said:

I do maintain that White Orchard is one of the very best opening sections for any game - give you a mini Witcher world with everything in it for you to get to grips with. It's great.

I’ve never played the game beyond White Orchard. I get to Velen and then go back to playing something else.

 

I think I must have 100%ed White Orchard about five times by now. I know it like the back of my hand.

[Rayn]

I put in about 10 hours of this over the weekend and I'm playing it as if it's my first playthrough. I completed a rather rushed playthrough of the vanilla game back in 2015 but this time I'm exploring every nook and cranny and delve into as many side missions I can find. It really is a beautiful game and while it does start to show its age, being a little stiff and the combat system leaves a lot to be desired the story, lore and atmosphere is where it's at. 

 

Another thing I've learned playing the remake over the weekend is how Ubi has pushed the open world action rpg forward with their Assassins Creed games since this game released. There's no denying they had a long and hard look at The Witcher 3 when they made AC: Odyssey as there are loads of things they've copied and while they didn't make perfect games they actually pushed the actual open world aspect forward. I'd forgotten about the map in W3 being divided into chuncks. Also, the combat in Odyssey and Valhalla is miles better, for me at least, but I do prefer the lore and atmosphere in the Witcher universe. 

[Matt Defis]

They just released a hotfix for PC to help with stability, I'll go have a look see if thgings have improved.