Witcher 3 Witcher 3 Getting a Free Upgrade

The Witcher 3
After trying it for a bit, I don't like either option now.

I feel like the closer camera is more immersive, but I don't like how it places Geralt off to the left. It also sometimes makes it a little harder to spot things when you're scanning the environment.

The default camera otoh feels too far away. I like to be a little closer to the action than that. I'll probably end up using a mod whenever I get around to doing a full replay. I'd like a camera view that's somewhere in between those two.
I didn't have much of a problem with the default camera distance. And I kind of liked how it even zoomed out a little bit in combat, since it gives you that extra awareness.
But I do also like closer camera, say for ex in God of War. It's pretty good. But that game also has an issue with not seeing behind you, so it uses other notifications to let you know when an enemy or projectile is close enough.

What I was more surprised is how wonky the combat system feels in W3, compared to say Dark Souls. It really feels like it doesn't have weight, and Geralt is mostly just swinging his sword, either connecting or not. But there's little in terms of impact and weight in the swings, I feel. I think I noticed something similar initially, but I soon got accustomed to it and forgot it. Since for me W3 was never too much about combat, which was mostly serviceable and looked flashy, but mechanically it didn't really impress. But now, coming to it after so much Souls, it really sticks out.
 
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What I was more surprised is how wonky the combat system feels in W3, compared to say Dark Souls. It really feels like it doesn't have weight, and Geralt is mostly just swinging his sword, either connecting or not. But there's little in terms of impact and weight in the swings, I feel. I think I noticed something similar initially, but I soon got accustomed to it and forgot it. Since for me W3 was never too much about combat, which was mostly serviceable and looked flashy, but mechanically it didn't really impress. But now, coming to it after so much Souls, it really sticks out.
Most games aren't going to be on the same level as a FromSoft game when it comes to combat, but combat and exploration are most of what those games are about.

TW3 is more of a jack-of-all-trades. With it being as large as it is, and having so much effort put into the writing, voice acting, etc. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that the combat isn't going to match that of a game that specializes in it.
 
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A crappy upgrade to a great game everyone already played and it's dominating the conversation. Just play a different game. There are plenty of good ones out there.
 
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People are acting like CDPR stole their lunch money. It's pathetic. The update was free, and you don't have to use it.
Well, to play devil's advocate, it does kind of "brick" a perfectly functioning game. And I've only seen the performance issues.
On twitter I've seen various reports that are pretty wild in how the graphics are borked. From broken reflections, to incorrectly rendered grass and other various issues.

And in order to not have the update applied you basically have to use a workaround to force your version to not update anymore.
Which means you're also cut off from other future patches, if they do intend on making more fixes/changes.

If they're planning on still patching and fixing the update, and it will eventually get fixed, it might be ok in the long term.
But if they're unable to fix it, it probably would've been better if they branched out the RT/visual upgrades as an optional patch, and keep every other improvement and non-performance affecting alteration separately.
Or just keep them in the binaries, but have them stay latent until you flip the switch. Because that's not what's happening now. I haven't exhaustively tested it, but from what I've seen and mostly what I've read is that if you disable every newly added graphics configuration, and just try to run the game to as close of a configuration as it was before the update, it still runs worse.

Anyway, I's getting too deep in the weeds for me to care that much at this point. I'm just sad they it didn't turn out better.
Hopefully they'll be able to improve it.
 
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Well, to play devil's advocate, it does kind of "brick" a perfectly functioning game. And I've only seen the performance issues.
On twitter I've seen various reports that are pretty wild in how the graphics are borked. From broken reflections, to incorrectly rendered grass and other various issues.
It doesn't though. First, you don't have to use it. You can simply choose to use the DX 11 version if you prefer.

Second, I'm pretty sure it's a vocal minority that are having those issues. I didn't see any of that despite running it on a 5+ year old system. Granted, no one should be having them, but it's rarely the case that a new release doesn't have some issues, and we already know that CDPR will improve on it.

And in order to not have the update applied you basically have to use a workaround to force your version to not update anymore.
Which means you're also cut off from other future patches, if they do intend on making more fixes/changes.
It literally takes two clicks of your mouse to switch between versions. If that's what you consider a "workaround", you must have a very low tolerance for work. ;)
 
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Which means you're also cut off from other future patches, if they do intend on making more fixes/changes.
I don't see that as an issue. Until this update, there hadn't been any patches for the game for at least 4 years. They were done. If they do any new patches, it'll be fixing this borked update, so if they get that in decent shape you'd just allow the game to update again.
 
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So DirectX 11 mode is still the same as in the old version? Same performance? So you're not disabling updates, you're just forcing the engine to run on a different mode?
Was DirectX 12 not supported before this next-gen update? I don't remember.

If that all is true, then yeah, it's no biggy. I was under the impression you would have to stop updates from coming in, and I'm not sure how well that works with Steam, which forces updates on you.
You can postpone them for some time, but I believe at some point you can't refuse updates anymore. The experience might be different on GOG though.
 
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They could have done like Valve, who added "Portal with RTX" but left the original game separate.
I've been reading complaints GOG buyers can't even revert or download the classic version anymore. You get 404 errors tying to use the links the do so, and GOG support sucks.
 
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If that all is true, then yeah, it's no biggy. I was under the impression you would have to stop updates from coming in, and I'm not sure how well that works with Steam, which forces updates on you.
You can postpone them for some time, but I believe at some point you can't refuse updates anymore. The experience might be different on GOG though.
On Steam, you can set up beta branches, which in turn allows a player to roll back their game pretty easily to a previous version. Paradox makes heavy use of that for all of their strategy games (EU4 and so on). It's my understanding that CDPR has done that for the Witcher 3, keeping version 1.32 as an option. I did that for European Truck Simulator, and once I did, I didn't have to keep doing it for every new patch that came along.
 
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Tried it after the hotfix, and it's a huge improvement. I'm getting a steady 60fps on Ultra settings. That's actually a higher frame rate than what I was getting before the next-gen update.
 
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