The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

[Munkus]

Agreed, it was fantastic. Both expansions were.

#Seconded

Though I did enjoy Blood & Wine the most. Just wish I had done it before completing the main quest. I got the "bad" ending where I basically ended up alone so getting the house and upgrading it in Blood & Wine felt...empty and sad.

[Eisberg]

I'm not feeling Hearts of Stone. It's annoying. I'm going to move to Blood and Wine - see if that stokes the fires again.

I felt the main quest for HoS was better than the base game main quest, specially the main antagonist.

[Lazy8s]

I felt the main quest for HoS was better than the base game main quest, specially the main antagonist.

Is that the guy with the little play on his initials? Yeah he's interesting for sure. Well, I'm not done with it yet, so hopefully it gets better, which is subjective...

Witcher 3 content that I think is "annoying" is still hands down better than any other game out there - there's just something grating and grindy about the first couple of quests in the main story.

[OverclockN']

Is that the guy with the little play on his initials? Yeah he's interesting for sure. Well, I'm not done with it yet, so hopefully it gets better, which is subjective...

Witcher 3 content that I think is "annoying" is still hands down better than any other game out there - there's just something grating and grindy about the first couple of quests in the main story.

If you dig through this massive thread, you'll find I went through the same thing. I started and stopped the game twice, coming back to it years later. I finally decided to give it a shot and stick to it after reading what everyone says about the game and played through taking about 200hrs. It gets better, and then you get addicted.

[Lazy8s]

If you dig through this massive thread, you'll find I went through the same thing. I started and stopped the game twice, coming back to it years later. I finally decided to give it a shot and stick to it after reading what everyone says about the game and played through taking about 200hrs. It gets better, and then you get addicted.

Ah we might be on different pages here...I've beaten the main game twice. Once before the dlc was released and then just recently again. I'm in Hearts of Stone now.

It just seems that the main game has an awesome balance between the story telling and the action whereas HoS seems to lean much more heavily towards the story telling. That's not a bad thing really, I just prefer more action.

[Eisberg]

Ah we might be on different pages here...I've beaten the main game twice. Once before the dlc was released and then just recently again. I'm in Hearts of Stone now.

It just seems that the main game has an awesome balance between the story telling and the action whereas HoS seems to lean much more heavily towards the story telling. That's not a bad thing really, I just prefer more action.

They did pack a lot of story line in that expansion The good news for you is that it really isn't all that long, only 5 quests for the main storyline, though multi-stage quests. You can probably get it done in under 10 hours.

[Lazy8s]

They did pack a lot of story line in that expansion The good news for you is that it really isn't all that long, only 5 quests for the main storyline, though multi-stage quests. You can probably get it done in under 10 hours.

Oh? Ok that's good to hear. I thought I read someone saying 50 hours. Of course, that might be someone who has to pick every single last item lol.

[OverclockN']

Oh? Ok that's good to hear. I thought I read someone saying 50 hours. Of course, that might be someone who has to pick every single last item lol.

Definitely not that long just whip through the story. Im one of the guys who does absolutely everything as a bit of a completionist, and it took me 30-40hrs total tops.

[Lazy8s]

Definitely not that long just whip through the story. Im one of the guys who does absolutely everything as a bit of a completionist, and it took me 30-40hrs total tops.

I tried the completionist route the first time I beat the main game. It's ....not easy

[saumilsingh]

I am not a completionist, rather a perfectionist.
I will do everything I come across organically or look for more on a whim, but for whatever I do, I want to get the 'proper' outcome that sits well with me.

As such the heavy focus on conversation trees is something I would twist into an exercise in save-scumming.

It isn't perfect, but as a rabid Doom/Dark Souls type of gamer - this hits just about every button perfectly for me.

I love Doom. But what's Doom-type about this?

There are a WHOLE lot of dialog choices. Sometimes annoyingly too many. Sometimes amazingly many. Most every quest plays out different depending on dialog choices. So, yes, there is a lot of dialog with NPCs. But, that is what drives this game differently. It is not just a cut scene and then on to the main mission. You need to ponder what might happen depending on how you interact with NPCs. Kill them, negotiate, bribe, annoy, hypnotize, ignore, seduce, … There often are many choices to choose. Some choices seem benign until much later in the game when it is thrown back into your face. If that sounds annoying, I would stay away.

Yep that's pretty much what has kept me away from this game.

That being said, I think I'll give it a go. The combat looks great.
I need something open world with good combat to sink my teeth into.


Already finished Arkham City and Arkham Origins which are imo the greatest games ever made.
Saving Arkham Knight for later because otherwise there will be nothing more left .

The new Assassin's Creed games are too expensive and the Middle Earth games don't really grab my interest.

Which leaves only The Witcher 3 to consider.

[Lazy8s]

I love Doom. But what's Doom-type about this?

Nothing lol. The point is that this game can draw in someone who normally wouldn't go for this type of game.

[saumilsingh]

Runs way better than I expected on my GTX 1060 and i5 2400. Hovers around 70-90fps if I disable v-sync.

But I get weird shudders and frame drops sometimes. I think it's when the game is streaming new assets, quite annoying.
12gb of ram should be more than enough, so I think the culprit is my mechanical hdd.

Do SSD users experience flawless 60fps at all times in this game or is it just dodgy coding?

[Eisberg]

Runs way better than I expected on my GTX 1060 and i5 2400. Hovers around 70-90fps if I disable v-sync.

But I get weird shudders and frame drops sometimes. I think it's when the game is streaming new assets, quite annoying.
12gb of ram should be more than enough, so I think the culprit is my mechanical hdd.

Do SSD users experience flawless 60fps at all times in this game or is it just dodgy coding?

I did get flawless 60+FPS all the time, didn't get shudders/frame drops. My game was on an SSD.

[twonha]

Runs way better than I expected on my GTX 1060 and i5 2400. Hovers around 70-90fps if I disable v-sync.

But I get weird shudders and frame drops sometimes. I think it's when the game is streaming new assets, quite annoying.
12gb of ram should be more than enough, so I think the culprit is my mechanical hdd.

Do SSD users experience flawless 60fps at all times in this game or is it just dodgy coding?

Do you not *have* an SSD to install the game on? Or even worse, do you not have an SSD, period?

[saumilsingh]

Nope, no SSD period.

I buy stuff as I need it and got by with mechanical HDDs just fine all these years.
No hitching/stuttering whatsoever in any of the games I played.

Time to get one now I guess...

[Apocalypsee]

Nope, no SSD period.

I buy stuff as I need it and got by with mechanical HDDs just fine all these years.
No hitching/stuttering whatsoever in any of the games I played.

Time to get one now I guess...


What feels ridiculous is I am damn sure it's not the 3D world streaming that's causing the shudders but rather the insane amount of 2D assets the game has to stream in and out (all those distinct ingredient and crafting material icons) .

All those hitching and stuttering is not because of using mechanical drive, its your i5 2400. This game EATS quad core CPU like no tomorrow, previously I have i5 4670k at 4.2GHz it still stutter. Upgrading to Ryzen 1600 fixed the issue. Even on mechanical drive this game runs fine, honestly I don't feel much different going from mechanical to SSD, at least for this game. Just lower some settings, you can find guide saying which impacts performance than the other.

[theshadowcult]

An ssd over a mechanical drive is like the difference between a black and white monitor and 64bit colours...

yeah ok, thats a bit off an exaggeration, but get ssds, never buy any mechanical drives again, even for storage. One caveat though. Unlike mechanical drives, size is the most important aspect. So while yes you want a goode quality drive live always, you also want the largest drive size you can get too. the more space an ssd has, the more stable and longer life it has.

[SD-[Inc]]

There is also something strange about the assets in the early game levels. I've noticed that a lot of this choppiness tends to disappear quickly as you play further in the game.

[globalist]

the more space an ssd has, the more stable and longer life it has.

WUT?

[theshadowcult]

WUT?

what? it's true. SSD's are made up of many small physical chips, and the way they work is that every time new info is written to the drive, it's written to the oldest unwritten chip first. Larger drives dont have the same number of chips but bigger, they have more chips of the same size. Meaning, that literally, the larger the size of the ssd, the more chips, and the less times each chip is written to.

[saumilsingh]

All those hitching and stuttering is not because of using mechanical drive, its your i5 2400. This game EATS quad core CPU like no tomorrow, previously I have i5 4670k at 4.2GHz it still stutter. Upgrading to Ryzen 1600 fixed the issue.

I don't know man, the stutters aren't like usual 'out of pc powa' frame drops. They are more like the game is loading something in the background.
They completely go away after moving the mouse around a bit.

An ssd over a mechanical drive is like the difference between a black and white monitor and 64bit colours...

yeah ok, thats a bit off an exaggeration, but get ssds, never buy any mechanical drives again, even for storage.

Color display versus b&w is a bit much.
It's more in the line of surfing the web with adblock versus without it . Loading quicksaves after dying becomes less annoying, but the core gaming experience isn't affected at all.

I agree though, next storage device will be an SSD.
The HDD I use currently was bought 5 years ago, SSDs weren't exactly on a good price per storage ratio then.

There is also something strange about the assets in the early game levels. I've noticed that a lot of this choppiness tends to disappear quickly as you play further in the game.

You might be on to something here.
This weird stuttering issue only seems to affect that first tutorial village.

I visited other open world areas with better geometry like the Nilfgard commander's base and the Bloody Baron's castle and it was silky smooth.

Let's see how it is in Novigrad...

[Danny Nissan]

For the record, my friend is playing TW3 on a system; Game installed on SSD, RTX 2080 Ti, i5 3570K and 16GB DDR2133MHz RAM. Novigrad does stutter quite a bit for him (it did with a 980 Ti too). Maybe 4 threads aren't enough..

I do know that Witcher 3 could also suffer from another kind of stuttering - rubberbanding/frameskipping. Is this something you experience? Or are your stutters more of a "hard stop" than a "rubberband"-like effect?

For the rubberbanding stutter you can reduce it by setting max frames to render ahead to "2", or even reduce it further to "1" (WARNING a setting of 1 can lower overall performance considerably).

[Athena]

So the new Nvidia drivers really smoothed out the game play on my 2080 with this game. I had just got the game a couple weeks ago and really hated how choppy it was till the new driver that came out on the 9th. Then smooth playing goodness from then on with everything on max at 1440p

[saumilsingh]

Let's see how it is in Novigrad...

So, zero performance issues in the sprawling and bustling city of Novigrad.
Rock steady 60fps.


While as soon as those 6 huts in White Orchard pop up on the horizon, I get heavy stuttering.

[saumilsingh]

Near flawless game except for the fact that you can't use the torch on horseback.
Good thing someone made a mod for doing exactly that.


Also I think I broke all difficulty with 1 point in Gourmet and Frenzy.
Constantly regenerating health coupled with slow-mo when enemy is about to counter-attack makes you invincible.

[Dungeoncrawler]

JUST finished both dlc. brother that is what dlc should look and play like!

[theshadowcult]

JUST finished both dlc. brother that is what dlc should look and play like!

Right? Back to the goode old days of actual expansion packs. Loved them!

[Crawdaddy79]

Right? Back to the goode old days of actual expansion packs. Loved them!

Not sure what you mean. I was always disappointed with expansion packs. That disappointment caused me to make the rule to never buy DLC for a game.

They told me I needed to break that rule for The Witcher 3, so I did... and they were right.

[theshadowcult]

Not sure what you mean. I was always disappointed with expansion packs. That disappointment caused me to make the rule to never buy DLC for a game.

They told me I needed to break that rule for The Witcher 3, so I did... and they were right.

Im talking about old expansion packs. That came in separate boxes. Not dlc.

[Dungeoncrawler]

Im talking about old expansion packs. That came in separate boxes. Not dlc.

Sure I remember those too

[Crawdaddy79]

Im talking about old expansion packs. That came in separate boxes. Not dlc.

Yep. I'm familiar with that.

[saumilsingh]

All the DLCs for this game were free.
HoS and B&W are expansion packs.

Unfortunately nowadays the terms are considered interchangeable.

[saumilsingh]

Interestingly, I have come across the CDPR CEO saying exactly that going as far back as 2012.
"DLC is free. Expansions are what you pay for."

On the other hand, I was looking at some old AC games during the Steam sale. Black Flag seemed to be the obvious choice.
And they are selling 'Time Saver' packs which are literally objective markers for half a dollar each ($2 when not on sale) .


OT, who is Odrin?
I went through 20min in-depth recaps of W1 and W2 before starting W3 and never was this Gentleman of Leisure mentioned.

I knew about all the major events and characters, but this guy is the only one interesting enough apart from Dijkstra.
Seems like he gets around .

[Munkus]

Interestingly, I have come across the CDPR CEO saying exactly that going as far back as 2012.
"DLC is free. Expansions are what you pay for."

On the other hand, I was looking at some old AC games during the Steam sale. Black Flag seemed to be the obvious choice.
And they are selling 'Time Saver' packs which are literally objective markers for half a dollar each ($2 when not on sale) .


OT, who is Odrin?
I went through 20min in-depth recaps of W1 and W2 before starting W3 and never was this Gentleman of Leisure mentioned.

I knew about all the major events and characters, but this guy is the only one interesting enough apart from Dijkstra.
Seems like he gets around .

IIRC Odrin was in W2. In the army camp, you hear drunken soldiers calling his name. When you talk to one, you get a quest to find Odrin.

[saumilsingh]

Well, this made me sad:

[yt]-juBfCeTRG0[/yt]

A clear case of Suicide by Witcher .



Another neat detail I came across:


I rejected payment from the emperor in exchange for Ciri and he gave me a new black horse instead.
Then later on I came across a random brown horse grazing just outside Kar Morhen near that stream. Except this one was equipped with a full saddle.

I think that's old Roach .
Geralt let her go free in the Kaer Morhen wilderness.

This was after the end of the base game, so there was nobody left in Kaer Morhen to whom the horse could've belonged to.

[Megaman]

Nothing is more sad than completing the Witcher 3 and its DLC. Nothing!

[saumilsingh]

You know, Velen has to be the most beautiful zone in the game. There's so much variety in ambience, mood and weather.

Skellige and Toussaint hit you hard when you first see them but it gets old fast.
Skellige especially is just too monotonous.

[metroidfox]

I've got occasional slowdowns on my rig, and I haven't yet made it to any large towns yet (beginning of Velen). It appears to be monstrously CPU intensive.

[saumilsingh]

The performance improves a lot after you've played it a bit.
I guess it just takes a while for the game to get all it's shaders compiled. I used to get heavy stutters in White Orchard which gradually disappeared over time.

Still get random 5 fps dips when galloping through a populated city, but I have accepted it as one of the engine's quirks.
Happens on even the beefiest rigs when galloping in cities afaik.


All in all, I'd say this is the most well optimized game I have ever played given it's massive scope.
You have a sprawling city like Novigrad and you're allowed to go inside residences which are quite detailed in themselves. All without a single loading screen.


The following tweaks are mandatory though:
- Set max pre-rendered frames to 1 in the Witcher 3 profile. Helps smooth out the random micro dips in cities.
- Disable in-game v-sync (it's garbage) and set fps limit to Unlimited.
- Use v-sync from the drivers (game must be in fullscreen mode, driver v-sync won't work with borderless window).
- Set draw distance to Medium instead of High.

[Dungeoncrawler]

Wonder if they will add ray-tracing to this thing?