The Witcher 3 Graphical Downgrade?

Kor said:
One of the effects dropped from the game is apparently Ambient Occlusion, which seems insane to me since we've had that in some form since F.E.A.R back in 2004. Still at least that's something simply enough to inject into the game, Nvidia will probably have driver level HBAO inside a month.
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No I think AO is still in the game. Just heavily toned down. However Tesselation seems to be completely missing in my eyes which is wierd. Even a lot of PC versions of late X360 and PS3 games had Tesselation added in so why cut it?

What the BLEEP is this bullshit the game is unreleased for BLEEPS sake leave them be.
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The game is already finished and has been a long time and there are a ton of videos taken from review copies and so on. Except for the compression we have a lot of good quality material to take comparisons from.

That said, I just watched some gameplay videos and downgrade or no the game still looks bloody gorgeous. Except for the candy color palette it seems to have now. That needs to be SweetFXed out ASAP.
 
MaZa said:
That said, I just watched some gameplay videos and downgrade or no the game still looks bloody gorgeous. Except for the candy color palette it seems to have now. That needs to be SweetFXed out ASAP.
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I really wonder if this had to do with Microsoft. What other reason would they have for changing the color palette? Someone must have "suggested" they do that as kids like colors.
 
chockomonkey said:
I really wonder if this had to do with Microsoft. What other reason would they have for changing the color palette? Someone must have "suggested" they do that as kids like colors.
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More likely they just suddenly realised that the grey and brown palette has already been over done to death (which is true), over compensated and went to other extreme. :)
 
From those examples I'd say it's about on-par with Watch Dogs. Disappointing, but not surprising.
 
kbrickley said:
I guess the question is are they able to run something effectively using DirectX 11 and 1080P ... if they can do that then they would satisfy 70+% of the market ... very few PC users need more than 1080P (except for multimonitor gamers ... and multimonitor support in games is spotty at best, even for PC only titles)

We can whine all we want but a game that can do 1080P effectively will satisfy 100% of PS4, 100% of XBox One, and 70+% of PC Gamers ... we can laugh at those economics all we want but they make sense
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Economics does not excuse lying. Did they lie? I do not know yet - that was the point of my previous post. What I do know is that CDRP have positioned/marketed themselves as one of the lead supporters of the PC gaming industry. They market themselves as more innovative, more fair, more honest than others and claim they make their games first and foremost for PCs and then port them to consoles. This is part of their "brand" and they imply that people should publicly support them and spread the word, pre-order (stupid in any case), and buy their games at full price due to these reasons.

If they were intentionally misleading with marketing of TW3 and then on top of that gimped the PC version because consoles were secretly their lead platform (the only reason they would have to gimp the PC version), it does not matter how much of the market are "satisfied." The bottom line is that would make them liars. They did have to mislead and they did not have to falsely brand themselves as a PC-first developer. But if they did do that, people should rightly hold them accountable, speak out against it publicly, and speak out against it privately too in the most important way: with their wallets.

But I am not yet making judgement because my original question still remains.
 
I have faith in CDPR. I don't believe they would willingly downgrade their PC versions. If they were forced to do so unwillingly, I have faith they will officially or more likely unofficially release a patch to enable Witcher 3 in it's full glory for PC users. But, money corrupts...maybe 2 glorious PC titles was all they could manage before giving in.
 
This is reminding so much of what happened to Watch Dogs... I wonder if gameworks issues might be behind this...?
 
polonyc2 said:
people are over-reacting...if there is any downgrade with Witcher 3 it won't be on the scale of Watch Dogs...it'll just be different from the videos from a few months back...a game can still look gorgeous even after a 'slight' downgrade
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It's on the order or worse than Watch Dogs in terms of graphics. Watch Dogs looks pretty darn decent and has many advanced features on PC. Typical gamer hypocrisy.

This whole situation where people have to pick sides and can't just be objective is part of gamer culture. It often lacks basic maturity, which I never expect these days.
 
calm down people, they had to leave something to work for Enhanced Edition! they will fix it, and the game will be even more amazing than it is now, i'm waiting for EE, like the other 2.
 
63jax said:
calm down people, they had to leave something to work for Enhanced Edition! they will fix it, and the game will be even more amazing than it is now, i'm waiting for EE, like the other 2.
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Witcher 3 EE with all new animations, NPC models, dialogue, graphics and bonus content...coming in 2016 :D
 
polonyc2 said:
Witcher 3 EE with all new animations, NPC models, dialogue, graphics and bonus content...coming in 2016 :D
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i'm willing to wait till 2016, i have tons of games to play till then, no rush, the world isn't ending :)))
 
GearChoices said:
If I may cross-post into this Witcher 3 thread too:
I am behind here. Is there any actual evidence that this downgrade happened due to decisions that were made to make it easier to develop/port for consoles (or easier to develop/port for PCs)? Meaning, has anyone at CDPR actually said "we can't do this with the PC build because of consoles" or something that clearly indicated that.

The reason I ask is: what if someone tests the game on a machine with a stable high-end X99 motherboard, a 100% stable highly-overclocked i7-5960X, four 100% stable overclocked Titan Xs in quad-SLI, 32GB of high-speed DDR4 running in quad-channel, and a high-end SSD with both the OS and the game itself installed onto it. Nothing else besides the OS/game is running in the background. And on this machine, at the absolute maximum possible graphic settings, the game only barely runs at 1080P 60FPS (or less), and the CPU/Titans/RAM are clearly being utilized without any poor coding causing a bottleneck, and with the release-build, at those settings it ends up looking better than any other open-world game on the market at maximum settings.

Assuming that poor optimization or intentional limitations are not found/identified, would it then be reasonable to say that it was not the consoles and simply a failure to achieve, with current hardware limitations, what they originally set out to achieve? Which in that case, you cannot blame them for giving it a shot, and it is good giving it a shot.

Of course, if/when that happens, and the game is clearly not even trying to use un-utilized power from the CPU/Titans/RAM, we know what actually happened even if they say otherwise. If it turns out the PC build was in ANY way limited by console considerations, I will definitely be boycotting CDRP with my wallet. But is there actually any evidence (and not just 100% speculation) right now that consoles are the cause of this downgrade?
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If that's the case, it's very unlikely they would say so as there would likely be contractual restraints from the console makers from making such a statement. Even though the dev leaking info about Ubisoft doing intentional downgrades to appease console makers was a leak, not official. Ubisoft OFFICIALLY denied any downgrade, twice, even after the E3 config settings were discovered.

Anyway, whatever your opinion is on this, everybody please remember this quote moving forward:

http://wccftech.com/the-witcher-3-graphical-downgrade-final-version-pc/


"The final version of the game will look better than what can be seen in the latest screenshots – no matter the platform"
-CD Projekt, Winter, 2014
 
if this is true, this game went from a definite purchase to a definite alternate method.
 
Would be a shame if CDP caved in to the console company's demand to tone down it's PC version just to avoid embarrassing their consoles.

Not that I see any point in doing that, as it's already well known by now how far behind the console hardwares are. I don't see that affecting sales either as console owners certainly don't play on the console for better graphics.
 
Nookie420 said:
if this is true, this game went from a definite purchase to a definite alternate method.
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Bullshit. Whether the game changed or not is irrelevant. Buy the game or don't play it. Your not entitled to have it for free because they made a change you don't like.
 
Nookie420 said:
if this is true, this game went from a definite purchase to a definite alternate method.
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Right like you weren't going to pirate it anyway.

I love Generation Entitled. If a game's so bad why play at all?
 
Quix said:
In most countries blatantly inaccurate marketing is illegal. It's mostly a US thing to allow totally unrepresentative marketing and it's utterly repugnant.
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Wahhh! The game is not exactly like preview videos from two years ago! If I look at really old promo material and studiously ignore all of the pre-release marketing, I am being misled.

It's so stupid.
 
Obi_Kwiet said:
Wahhh! The game is not exactly like preview videos from two years ago! If I look at really old promo material and studiously ignore all of the pre-release marketing, I am being misled.

It's so stupid.
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Actually it was a year ago. It was actual gameplay footage and we were told the game would look better than this when it was live. Just getting your facts straight there.
 
Viper87227 said:
Bullshit. Whether the game changed or not is irrelevant. Buy the game or don't play it. Your not entitled to have it for free because they made a change you don't like.
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Pretty much. There are a few legitimate uses of piracy. "Protesting" a game isn't one of them.
 
Viper87227 said:
Bullshit. Whether the game changed or not is irrelevant. Buy the game or don't play it. Your not entitled to have it for free because they made a change you don't like.
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It matter to me in a sense that I will wait until it's $5 on Steam instead of $10 like I originally intended. :p
 
Hazard said:
It matter to me in a sense that I will wait until it's $5 on Steam instead of $10 like I originally intended. :p
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Waiting for the game to be a price you deem worthy is just fine. Stealing the game because you've decided you are entitled to it but aren't willing to pay for it is wrong.
 
Laureolus said:
Conversely, I have no qualms about calling developers out on their shit and "waiting" until a game is on sale for 4.99 before buying it.
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I concur.
While graphics are not my major concern, its a factor for sure. To see a these media game play trailers look so fantastic, and then the actual game does not measure up, is very disconcerting to me.
At least there have been some games as of late that lived up too their media counter parts. Imo, Alien Isolation is one that comes to mind, along with GTA V. Both run great on my older rig and look great at the same time. When i play games like that, it gives me hope for PC gaming, and makes me think of actually paying full price, but its just a thought right now. There needs to be a better track record if they want me to pay full price. Otherwise, i have so many games between steam and humble bundle that i can play to keep me busy, till some of the new games go on sale. While i doubt RS will release GTA VI on PC at the same time as console, they have made it hard for me to not pre-order it because it looks and runs so well. Good job RS! ;)
 
Laureolus said:
Conversely, I have no qualms about calling developers out on their shit and "waiting" until a game is on sale for 4.99 before buying it.
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Same here.
I was looking forward to Witcher3 and have been watching the eye popping trailers for the past couple years. But slinging a console port to the PC wouldn't surprise me a bit now a days.
 
Is an Enhanced Edition that actually looks the same or better than the trailers actually coming?
 
Just wait for the Enhanced Edition which will come out in like a year with bug fixes and "upgraded graphics". I love CDPR but this rubbed me the wrong way. I'll wait for a Steam sale.
 
Yeah, from that article, this pretty much says it all:

We just did not have the manpower, budget or the console power to produce the vision we intended before the consoles were released to create a more visually stunning game of higher fidelity like 2013 assets. The PCs themselves had more than enough power to achieve this vision, almost certainly. But working on the game across 3 platforms did not make it feasible to keep features included that could potentially break the game as we kept building around it. All the 2013 trailers were actually in-game footage (not prerendered or vertical slices) but essentially just not an entirely finished world running on a high-end PC at the time.
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Thanks, consoles!
 
If those are true, the reasons given were pure bullshit. How hard could it be to do stuff like increasing render distance on PC?

Sounds more like they are afraid of making the console version look like shit when compared to what it is truly capable of on PC.
 
Youn said:
http://whatifgaming.com/developer-i...-from-2013-list-of-all-features-taken-out-why



Well, that explains that... very sad indeed :(
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Also: this is main reason (besides cost) why i hold onto my GPU as long as i can. Most major titles are based on the current gen consoles at the time, and that cycle last for what, 8 years?. Sure i missed out on some high end visual effects along the way, but that didnt make or break the game for me. Even with DX12, will the new consoles hold PC game back? It does not look promising, unless its a PC only title.
 
NeoMatriX724 said:
Just wait for the Enhanced Edition which will come out in like a year with bug fixes and "upgraded graphics". I love CDPR but this rubbed me the wrong way. I'll wait for a Steam sale.
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I'm leaning in your direction.

Witcher 2 certainly evolved from its first weeks to its ultimate form, the Enchanced Edition that it became. I have little to no doubt the same will happen here to some degree or another.
 
Q-BZ said:
I'm leaning in your direction.

Witcher 2 certainly evolved from its first weeks to its ultimate form, the Enchanced Edition that it became. I have little to no doubt the same will happen here to some degree or another.
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the Witcher 1 EE was a complete overhaul with massive improvements...Witcher 2 EE was not as big of an improvement but definitely the best version...will Witcher 3 have an EE?...going by their track record Yes and I wouldn't be surprised to see them overhaul the graphics for PC (DX12??)...especially since the EE versions are always free downloads for current owners
 
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