• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

The Witcher 3 Graphical Downgrade?

H

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
Some people have taken to the internet to express their displeasure with what they believe is a graphical downgrade of The Witcher 3. Is this a non-issue or is it Watch Dogs all over again? Thanks to Jereme for the heads up.
 
Last edited:
Wither, is that what we're calling it now? LOL!

You know why; its the consoles. This is what it feels like being a PC gamer, and having old lady consoles holding you back:
JWTNWcK.gif
 
It's a non-issue just like it was with Watch Dogs, turned into some sort of scandal by people with nothing better to be outraged by this week.

No one bats an eyelid at pre-rendered promo nonsense by the likes of Blur which bears no relation to any actual game, how is this different? It's a failure to manage expectations (either intentionally by the marketing department, or accidentally by over-optimistic developers). But you never played the game with those original visuals so what difference has it made to your game play experience? Don't like it? Don't buy it.
 
This is a non-issue it is a game trailer of course the rendered trailer looks better than the actual game. Now if someone was actually playing the game back in 2013 maybe you can feel slighted but this is just business as usual for a developer.
 
Litfod said:
It's a non-issue just like it was with Watch Dogs, turned into some sort of scandal by people with nothing better to be outraged by this week.

No one bats an eyelid at pre-rendered promo nonsense by the likes of Blur which bears no relation to any actual game, how is this different? It's a failure to manage expectations (either intentionally by the marketing department, or accidentally by over-optimistic developers). But you never played the game with those original visuals so what difference has it made to your game play experience? Don't like it? Don't buy it.
Click to expand...

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.
 
Litfod said:
It's a non-issue just like it was with Watch Dogs, turned into some sort of scandal by people with nothing better to be outraged by this week.

No one bats an eyelid at pre-rendered promo nonsense by the likes of Blur which bears no relation to any actual game, how is this different? It's a failure to manage expectations (either intentionally by the marketing department, or accidentally by over-optimistic developers). But you never played the game with those original visuals so what difference has it made to your game play experience? Don't like it? Don't buy it.
Click to expand...

Non issue? This is a huge issue. This bullshit bait and switch needs to stop. Consoles have been destroying what could possibly be huge leaps in graphical capabilities. Every time we are shown something incredible only to be let down in the future when it looks nothing like the original footage we were given. It's like going to a steakhouse after watching a commercial for a nice juicy rare prime sirloin only to be given a well done flank steak. This practice is becoming all too common and it's pissing me off.
 
If they claim it's in-engine and it's not, that's dishonest. If it was a "cinematic" trailer, then they should know better by now because that marketing crap is going to get your nowhere.
 
Quix said:
If they claim it's in-engine and it's not, that's dishonest. If it was a "cinematic" trailer, then they should know better by now because that marketing crap is going to get your nowhere.
Click to expand...

It was ingame. There's a huge dispute about this in the Gaming section. We were given live actual played game footage in E3. The developers were hyping up all the graphical features like smoke particles, fire effects, foliage physics, lighting, atmosphere and then, only a couple of weeks from release, we get told it had to be toned down for consoles. This affects PCs too because according to them it would be too much work to make two different builds.
 
I'd like to see more on this... I do think CDPR has earned a lot more benefit of the doubt in general vs the likes of Ubisoft.

If I saw the PS3 and the 360 in the development I'd be WAY more concerned but let's see what else comes out in the next few days.
 
Quix said:
If they claim it's in-engine and it's not, that's dishonest. If it was a "cinematic" trailer, then they should know better by now because that marketing crap is going to get your nowhere.
Click to expand...
This is the problem. In a video released earlier the devs had to explain like always that the footage they showed was a target render, even though when they showed it at E3 they used the new marketing line "in engine" footage. When you use phrases like "in engine" and "in game" then the first thing people are going to assume is that this is what the final product is going to look like. Marketing fucked it up for both the developers and consumers. I had just hoped that after the whole Killzone 2 debacle that people would have learned by now to not take anything you see at trade shows literally.
 
I would argue that it is an issue, though not the crime against humanity that some on the Internet will try to make it out to be. Back when game trailers were created with pre-rendered CGI, no one actually expected the game to look like that. But now when more and more of them are created using the actual game engine and use in-game footage, the game company creates an expectation in the audience's mind about what the final product will look like. And if, just a month or two before the game's release, we start seeing videos of the actual final product that don't hold up to the initial videos in terms of visual splendor, a lot of people are going to feel like it's a bait & switch. I totally get that these developers wind up having to leave things out of their games that they wanted to do because they have to sacrifice some visual fanciness to maintain solid performance. They just need to realize that when they promote a game using features they don't ultimately deliver, they're going to piss people off, especially if they aren't open and up front about it.
 
Quix said:
If they claim it's in-engine and it's not, that's dishonest. If it was a "cinematic" trailer, then they should know better by now because that marketing crap is going to get your nowhere.
Click to expand...

The E3 2013 stuff had a lot of "supposed" in-game footage. Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBFnOM5v5QQ

Just watch that, then watch this live stream here from CDPR, where they claim that this is "Ultra Settings" on PC: http://www.twitch.tv/ign/v/5003986

Very obvious difference, even accounting for the fact that it's a live stream and there is obviously some compression.

The issue here is this: CD Project Red has largely been viewed as one of the "Good Guys" in PC Gaming. There is a very obvious downgrade from what they showed and promised at E3 2013. However, rather than being honest and upfront, they've been denying it at every turn. However, things have come to a head, and it looks like there is enough evidence showing that there is in fact a downgrade. People are still trying to deny it, saying "Wait until it's released!" But, I think they're going to be disappointed.

The problem isn't the graphics, it's the dishonesty and unmet expectations that is causing people to lash back.
 
nusse said:
Consoles and their inadequacies rear their ugly head again.
Click to expand...

Maybe, but if it lowers system requirements for PC owners, that makes the game more broadly playable for people who don't waste their time with staying keep up with upgrades or prefer to buy more sensible computer equipment. That can mean more sales and more money. Consoles acting as an upper limit on game system requirements therefore benefit the gaming industry, the developers, and the publishers by increasing the flow of money.

Besides that, graphics are like pretty far down on the list of things that are important in making a game fun. Eye candy has appeal, but the audience that needs to be visually stimulated and constantly awestruck sometimes isn't as mentally capable or as prone to deeper thinking so they need to have some sort of FPS or action-driven gore festival to keep them entertained. Admittedly, that's a big audience, but there's a rarely served audience of more thoughtful people who are looking for artistic expression, immersive stories, gigantic open worlds, and a great deal of creative freedom that don't care as much about a game's graphics and are more interested in the thought-provoking aspects of gaming.
 
TheOneKnownAsMe said:
The E3 2013 stuff had a lot of "supposed" in-game footage. Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBFnOM5v5QQ

Just watch that, then watch this live stream here from CDPR, where they claim that this is "Ultra Settings" on PC: http://www.twitch.tv/ign/v/5003986

Very obvious difference, even accounting for the fact that it's a live stream and there is obviously some compression.

The issue here is this: CD Project Red has largely been viewed as one of the "Good Guys" in PC Gaming. There is a very obvious downgrade from what they showed and promised at E3 2013. However, rather than being honest and upfront, they've been denying it at every turn. However, things have come to a head, and it looks like there is enough evidence showing that there is in fact a downgrade. People are still trying to deny it, saying "Wait until it's released!" But, I think they're going to be disappointed.

The problem isn't the graphics, it's the dishonesty and unmet expectations that is causing people to lash back.
Click to expand...
The thing is that when they were confronted with the issue they were honest about it. They admitted that some of the features they wanted had to be altered or cut to be able to run on consoles. Now if they were upfront with that information to begin with I don't think there would so much outrage still going on. With the movement of no preorders going on, you would think people would be less inclined to get absorbed into the hype. But as you said, CDPR has always been considered one of the "Good Guys," so the amount of skepticism surveyed wasn't at a healthy level in this case.
 
TheOneKnownAsMe said:
The problem isn't the graphics, it's the dishonesty and unmet expectations that is causing people to lash back.
Click to expand...
It is AMAZING how many posters (here and on Watch Dogs) miss this point (often willfully). Don't advertise ice cream with sprinkles, then sell yogurt.

I don't know the story for Witcher 3, but for Watch Dogs and Far Cry 3 at least, it's disappointing when you see real-time footage of somebody playing at E3, but then it all gets gutted for the final release. It means they already DID the work and are throwing it out so your upper limit is being held back. It's pure waste in the name of consoles.

In Ubisoft's case, it's already been said that they don't want the PC copy to look TOO much ahead of consoles, because they're worried it could affect sales.
 
NickJames said:
Non issue? This is a huge issue. This bullshit bait and switch needs to stop. Consoles have been destroying what could possibly be huge leaps in graphical capabilities. Every time we are shown something incredible only to be let down in the future when it looks nothing like the original footage we were given. It's like going to a steakhouse after watching a commercial for a nice juicy rare prime sirloin only to be given a well done flank steak. This practice is becoming all too common and it's pissing me off.
Click to expand...

I'm sorry, do you not live in reality with the rest of us? Every maker of every product promos that product in the best possible light. It's called "marketing" and unless you're 5 years old you should really know better than to salivate over something until you've sampled it yourself. This is a first world "outrage" of the highest order.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
Maybe, but if it lowers system requirements for PC owners, that makes the game more broadly playable for people who don't waste their time with staying keep up with upgrades or prefer to buy more sensible computer equipment. That can mean more sales and more money. Consoles acting as an upper limit on game system requirements therefore benefit the gaming industry, the developers, and the publishers by increasing the flow of money.

Besides that, graphics are like pretty far down on the list of things that are important in making a game fun. Eye candy has appeal, but the audience that needs to be visually stimulated and constantly awestruck sometimes isn't as mentally capable or as prone to deeper thinking so they need to have some sort of FPS or action-driven gore festival to keep them entertained. Admittedly, that's a big audience, but there's a rarely served audience of more thoughtful people who are looking for artistic expression, immersive stories, gigantic open worlds, and a great deal of creative freedom that don't care as much about a game's graphics and are more interested in the thought-provoking aspects of gaming.
Click to expand...

Umm that's what graphic settings are for? They've existed since the dawn of PC gaming because developers knew that PC users had a variety of different hardware.
 
Armenius said:
The thing is that when they were confronted with the issue they were honest about it. They admitted that some of the features they wanted had to be altered or cut to be able to run on consoles. Now if they were upfront with that information to begin with I don't think there would so much outrage still going on. With the movement of no preorders going on, you would think people would be less inclined to get absorbed into the hype. But as you said, CDPR has always been considered one of the "Good Guys," so the amount of skepticism surveyed wasn't at a healthy level in this case.
Click to expand...

They also stated that they were not going to use any "feature" on either console that might effect console parity.
They used that same BS line "we want our customers to experience the SAME great game regardless of platform." Translated: Everybody loses.

This will all blow up when certain exclusives hit the shelves that actually do look decent because certain devs were allowed to take advantage of a certain consoles abilities.
 
Dwango said:
I'm sorry, do you not live in reality with the rest of us? Every maker of every product promos that product in the best possible light. It's called "marketing" and unless you're 5 years old you should really know better than to salivate over something until you've sampled it yourself. This is a first world "outrage" of the highest order.
Click to expand...

In most countries blatantly inaccurate marketing is illegal. It's mostly a US thing to allow totally unrepresentative marketing and it's utterly repugnant.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
Maybe, but if it lowers system requirements for PC owners, that makes the game more broadly playable for people who don't waste their time with staying keep up with upgrades or prefer to buy more sensible computer equipment. That can mean more sales and more money. Consoles acting as an upper limit on game system requirements therefore benefit the gaming industry, the developers, and the publishers by increasing the flow of money.

Besides that, graphics are like pretty far down on the list of things that are important in making a game fun. Eye candy has appeal, but the audience that needs to be visually stimulated and constantly awestruck sometimes isn't as mentally capable or as prone to deeper thinking so they need to have some sort of FPS or action-driven gore festival to keep them entertained. Admittedly, that's a big audience, but there's a rarely served audience of more thoughtful people who are looking for artistic expression, immersive stories, gigantic open worlds, and a great deal of creative freedom that don't care as much about a game's graphics and are more interested in the thought-provoking aspects of gaming.
Click to expand...

Here is an idea, have graphical settings in your game so that people of varying system configurations can play and enjoy the game. Oh wait..................:rolleyes:
 
Dwango said:
I'm sorry, do you not live in reality with the rest of us? Every maker of every product promos that product in the best possible light. It's called "marketing" and unless you're 5 years old you should really know better than to salivate over something until you've sampled it yourself. This is a first world "outrage" of the highest order.
Click to expand...

Plus there are dozens of review sites that look review games and show screen shots, hundreds of people will be streaming the games on Twitch, plenty of forums where people discuss, a couple sites will come along and compare PC and console versions...

No one should get burned by year old screenshots unless they are an idiot.
 
While not the end of the world, they are pushing and selling pre-orders for the game...so in a sense they are selling a product based on their trailers. If a game were to have no pre-order option or incentive then I suppose it would be different.
 
Again, this isn't shocking. Remember, MSFT basically forces feature parity for any game released on the XB1, so that's likely why things were toned down.

Aside from that, resource budgets likely declined throughout development, which alone would have necessitated removing features. Just because a demo was up and running under VERY controlled circumstances doesn't mean those features make it into the final game. That's why you never purchase based on how a demo looks, especially one released two years before the title launches.
 
gamerk2 said:
Again, this isn't shocking. Remember, MSFT basically forces feature parity for any game released on the XB1, so that's likely why things were toned down.

Aside from that, resource budgets likely declined throughout development, which alone would have necessitated removing features. Just because a demo was up and running under VERY controlled circumstances doesn't mean those features make it into the final game. That's why you never purchase based on how a demo looks, especially one released two years before the title launches.
Click to expand...

Exactly. Just because the highend graphics were done does not mean they were ever tested in the final product. It isn't as simple as slapping on some higher textures and higher polygon count models and then exposing it all via a control knob in some menu. You have to go through and verify these settings work together throughout the game. This is not a trivial task.

They could go turn on the higher end graphics for the pc and then people would be bitching about flickering textures and other visual anomalies. Not to mention poor performance and framerates. The developer optimizes the game for the largest audience. That is the console crowd. They throw in some extra config options to spice things up for the pc crowd but they usually do not support a huge jump because of the budget/resources required to verify it.
 
Dwango said:
I'm sorry, do you not live in reality with the rest of us? Every maker of every product promos that product in the best possible light. It's called "marketing" and unless you're 5 years old you should really know better than to salivate over something until you've sampled it yourself. This is a first world "outrage" of the highest order.
Click to expand...

You do realize the game isn't even released yet right? Does my being upset with this obvious bait and switch not entail me to voice my opinion? I love the "first world" quip, as if being well off financially means you don't have a right to complain.
 
Dan_D said:
Here is an idea, have graphical settings in your game so that people of varying system configurations can play and enjoy the game. Oh wait..................:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

That's possible too, but remember that because there's only recently been a new generation of consoles released, taking full advantage of their graphical capabilities puts many less than top end PCs in a situation where they can't run the game. AC: Unity (or whatever the latest one was, I didn't play it) ran fine on a console, but even top end single GPUs on nicely outfitted machines couldn't run it very well at higher display settings. In order to broadly appeal, games not only should be scalable, but also have to target commonly available hardware in multi-year old computers that people haven't upgraded otherwise, sales hurt quite a bit. This has been an on-going problem because publishers need to reap maximum profits for the game by selling it to as many buyers as possible when it's new, before they're forced to drop the price and make less on a per-unit basis. Ensuring a large audience can play a game means balancing those system requirements beyond just the sliders and settings in-game. That means publishers have to make marketing decisions and weigh the benefits of enhancing graphics at an added cost (potentially) in development and reduced sales. There's more to it than just adjusting the dohickeys and getting prettier gogaws on your screen with your eight google-plex PC that has a hexoctojiggleRAM and a gobblebyte of shaderdingers. People are running businesses and have to reap as much profit as possible so that means that the bar is invariably set at as static of a point as possible - the current generation console. It's not gonna really change since most publishers that have made multiple successful titles sell on multiple platforms in order to remain competitive.

I realize that a PC forum's audience doesn't want to think about things like that, but publishers and developers are keeping that in mind. In particular the people holding the purse strings at those companies are very much aware of those facets of the games they sell.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
That's possible too, but remember that because there's only recently been a new generation of consoles released, taking full advantage of their graphical capabilities puts many less than top end PCs in a situation where they can't run the game. AC: Unity (or whatever the latest one was, I didn't play it) ran fine on a console, but even top end single GPUs on nicely outfitted machines couldn't run it very well at higher display settings. In order to broadly appeal, games not only should be scalable, but also have to target commonly available hardware in multi-year old computers that people haven't upgraded otherwise, sales hurt quite a bit. This has been an on-going problem because publishers need to reap maximum profits for the game by selling it to as many buyers as possible when it's new, before they're forced to drop the price and make less on a per-unit basis. Ensuring a large audience can play a game means balancing those system requirements beyond just the sliders and settings in-game. That means publishers have to make marketing decisions and weigh the benefits of enhancing graphics at an added cost (potentially) in development and reduced sales. There's more to it than just adjusting the dohickeys and getting prettier gogaws on your screen with your eight google-plex PC that has a hexoctojiggleRAM and a gobblebyte of shaderdingers. People are running businesses and have to reap as much profit as possible so that means that the bar is invariably set at as static of a point as possible - the current generation console. It's not gonna really change since most publishers that have made multiple successful titles sell on multiple platforms in order to remain competitive.

I realize that a PC forum's audience doesn't want to think about things like that, but publishers and developers are keeping that in mind. In particular the people holding the purse strings at those companies are very much aware of those facets of the games they sell.
Click to expand...

I think you're confused. Unity ran like shit down a warm sidewalk on consoles.
 
If those features were once in the build, there should be no problem bringing them back in the Witcher 3 EE. I expect nothing less.
 
I can't access the latest Steam hardware surveys (since I am at work and that is a blocked site) but aren't we gamers partially to blame for limited graphics on games to a certain extent ... With all of the consoles running at 1080P and a large number of computer users (I would estimate 50% or more), there is little incentive these days for companies to try and optimize games for 1440P, 1600P, 2560P, etc ... even multi-monitor setups are not in the majority ... If we gamers switched to 4K in large numbers (more than half) I suspect that game developers would have strong incentives to optimize games for 4K
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
That's possible too, but remember that because there's only recently been a new generation of consoles released, taking full advantage of their graphical capabilities puts many less than top end PCs in a situation where they can't run the game. AC: Unity (or whatever the latest one was, I didn't play it) ran fine on a console, but even top end single GPUs on nicely outfitted machines couldn't run it very well at higher display settings. In order to broadly appeal, games not only should be scalable, but also have to target commonly available hardware in multi-year old computers that people haven't upgraded otherwise, sales hurt quite a bit. This has been an on-going problem because publishers need to reap maximum profits for the game by selling it to as many buyers as possible when it's new, before they're forced to drop the price and make less on a per-unit basis. Ensuring a large audience can play a game means balancing those system requirements beyond just the sliders and settings in-game. That means publishers have to make marketing decisions and weigh the benefits of enhancing graphics at an added cost (potentially) in development and reduced sales. There's more to it than just adjusting the dohickeys and getting prettier gogaws on your screen with your eight google-plex PC that has a hexoctojiggleRAM and a gobblebyte of shaderdingers. People are running businesses and have to reap as much profit as possible so that means that the bar is invariably set at as static of a point as possible - the current generation console. It's not gonna really change since most publishers that have made multiple successful titles sell on multiple platforms in order to remain competitive.

I realize that a PC forum's audience doesn't want to think about things like that, but publishers and developers are keeping that in mind. In particular the people holding the purse strings at those companies are very much aware of those facets of the games they sell.
Click to expand...

The whole purpose of having scalable graphics is so that you are not targeting any hardware segment. Instead, the game will be set according to whatever the hardware is capable of. You can't claim that the game has to target a particular hardware segment, because it isn't targeting anything to begin with.

These days we have tools like GeForce Experience to help user set a game to it's optimum setting for the hardware they have, and it works well. It's easier than ever to run a game on PC today.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top