CDProjekt admits game was downgraded...

Like always, consoles ruin PC games. I'm having great fun and the game still looks gorgeous, but it could have looked better:

http://games.on.net/2015/05/the-witcher-3-graphics-downgrade-pc-ps4-xb1/

If they made the foliage look less 2010 and more 2015 it probably wouldn't even matter. That's one of the most noticeable downgrades I can tell from the screenshots I've seen.

That's why I don't pay attention to hype and early looks. Developers like to display screenshots straight out of powerful development workstations. It's almost guaranteed the final product will be downgraded to accommodate a variety of hardware, including less capable PCs.....

Developers have been doing this for decades. Not surprised at all.

I find this claim awfully hilarious when computers have the widest range of performance when compared to consoles. The fact of the matter is that when games are made for PCs numerous hardware considerations has to be considered that significantly dwarfs console limitations. Consoles aid in setting the standard and PC gaming has always benefited graphically from newer consoles.

Huh?

That is surprising info to you? Where have you been the last 10+ years?

The mouse and keyboard controls are horrific.

The controller isn't better.

@FelipeInside: Well he is not wrong,new consoles means better graphics for multiplatform games

Only problem I have is the grass.

Everything else looks good enough to me.

Still waiting for courier to deliver it(preordered) *sigh*

I get a free witcher 3 t-shirt as preorder bonus though,will post when I get my hands on it

Whats wrong with the grass?

It's basically just 3 cardboard pieces laid out to form a triangle and it looks really flat.

And for some reason there is very little in shading on the grass to differentiate one piece from another so it all just merges together which doesn't look that good.

And this is with HBAO+ on.

Still don't get what you mean.

"The billowing smoke and roaring fire from the trailer? "It's a global system and it will kill PC because transparencies...."

What does that even mean? Why did they show it if they knew it wouldn't work?

Patch to tweak the .ini files more? Sweet. I'm here hoping there is a foliage mod. It really makes the game look bad with its draw distance.

I love how most of the PC players are having trouble running this, yet they think that the game should push the graphics even harder.

I'm playing this on a modest PC, and I'm happy that I can run it well. I'm sorry for holding back the people with the $1000 GPUs.

I agree, the foliage does look like shit. I had GTA San Andreas booted up the other day, and it was shockingly comparable, that also has intersected X textures.

Downgraded fallout new vegas too.

devs focus on consoles, when consoles are outdated, it affects us too. Problem being this gen is still shitty for console hardware

Actually they didn't confirm a downgrade. The info here is contradicted by an interview with Eurogamer where they state the game in its initial state was a vertical slice. It worked well for what it was, but once they actually started building a real game around it things started breaking. This wasnt an issue over things working poorly, but not working at all.

In short, there never was a version of TW3 that actually looked like the original trailer (something CDPR communicated extremely poorly). Only disconnected segments of demo.

Now could we have gotten a game that looked like that? Sure. But then there would have been "downgrades" in other places, making the game less fleshed out in some ways than what we see now. The only differnece between the graphics downgrade and this hypothetical one is that we can see and get angry about the former, we know exactly what we are missing out on. But if it was the latter downgrade we had would we be more or less upset?

...They aren't that bad at all. Dragon Age 3 had horrific keyboard controls at launch. W3's are a little funky but its 100% playable once you turn the mouse sensitivity down a bit. They are no more funky than Arma 2/3's for instance and those are the most PCish PC games around. I'm using a kb/m even though I have the option to use a controller.

Please keep your unsubstantiated drivel to system wars.

I find it amusing up until a week ago CDPR was on the same pedestal as Valve and deified because of their anti-DRM and PC first stance. Now they have sold out to the consoles and everyone has turned on them, just like with Crytek 5 years ago. I can't comment personally on their games, I have never played any of them, but I find the irony particularly entertaining.

I'm sorry if having an opinion on something that has been regarded by many as bad has offended you my friend, no disrespect.

Not sure why you brought up Arma 2/3, an entirely different genre. Two Worlds 2, Assassins Creed, Grand Theft Auto and even Batman: Arkham City and Shadow Of Mordor would have been more comparable. All of which work perfectly fine on a mouse and keyboard, btw.

Oh my god, people are still bitching about graphics? Let it go.

I've only used the kb+m controls and it feels just fine to me, quick and accurate as usual.

They didn't admit to "downgrading" it, they admitted to needing to scale back to get it running at reasonable levels on consumer hardware. They said, as they have all along, that development process goes down like this. And I agree. I really don't believe it's a scam.

I just don't get it - half the threads on here are complaining about how high the requirements are, and the other half are complaining that it needs to look even better... people wouldn't even be able to play the thing with 980s then! Fact is, this is the most gorgeous and fleshed out fantasy world I've played in, period

A patch has been released, supposedly performance as well as the keyboard controls have been improved.

PDATE: CDPR just released patch 1.03 for the PC, this is what it contains:

Improves stability in gameplay and the UI

Improves performance especially in cutscenes and gameplay

Fixes grass and foliage popping that could occur after density parameters were changed

Improves Nvidia Hairworks performance

Boosted texture anisotropy sampling to 16x on Ultra preset

Sharpen Post-process settings extended from Off/On to Off/Low/High

Blood particles will now properly appear after killing enemies on the water

Corrects a bug where player was able to shoot bolts at friendly NPCs

Improves menu handling

Corrects an issue with Stamina regeneration while sprinting

Fixes a cursor lock issue that sometimes occcured when scrolling the map

Generally improves world map focus

Improves input responsiveness when using keyboard

Corrects some missing translations in the UI

Corrects an issue in dialogue selections

Rostan Muggs is back

Minor SFX improvements

People froth at the mouth too much about this. The game looks good as it is. It doesn't need to beat out the best game with the shiniest graphics to be enjoyable. I'd also rather not shell out hundreds of dollars just to get acceptable framerates, either.

Yeah, the article didn't really complain that they had to nerf the PC version for consoles. It just said that logically by having to support multiple platforms that they can't put as much into it as they would have if they had focused on a single platform, but releasing the game on any one platform is not economically viable.

-Byshop

"It just said that logically by having to support multiple platforms that they can't put as much into it as they would have if they had focused on a single platform"

That's basically what is known as downgrading. The REAL reason is that they didn't want console gamers to complain when their version looked inferior.

"but releasing the game on any one platform is not economically viable."

Witcher 1, Valve and Blizzard say hello.

(I say all this but at the same time say that Witcher 3 looks great, and it's an awesome game)

Witcher 1 was PC exclusive, but that was eight years ago when PC exclusives were not yet that uncommon. Obviously, this is an ever changing industry so you can't really point to something that worked nearly a decade ago and say "hey, it worked then so it would also work today!". Also, Blizzard games, while mostly (but not entirely) PC exclusive have a HUGE following already that they can bank on, but that didn't stop them from releasing Hearthstone on pretty much every platform they could and later porting Diablo 3 to consoles.

Sure, games like Starcraft II are more expensive to make and are PC exclusive, but that game has a huge competative multiplayer component to drive it. Competative gaming leagues will keep that game alive for YEARS just like Starcraft 1 and Warcraft 3 before it. Witcher 3 is a single player, story driven RPG.

Like it or not, the PC market has dwindled because consoles have eaten some of its market share. It was different when there was a large rift between what a console could do versus a mid to high end PC, but these days the latest gen consoles can keep up with many of the PCs out there. The average gamer doesn't really care about the differences between what a PS4 can do versus a much more expensive gaming PC when the console is much cheaper, easier to set up, less prone to issues, etc. That is the reality of the gaming climate we live in today. PC exclusives can still exist, but if you look at all the recent PC exclusive single player RPGs that have come out you'll see that many of them had to resort to crowdsourcing to get made (Wasteland 2, Shadowrun Returns, Divinity: Original Sin, Pillars of Eternity, etc).

-Byshop

I don't disagree with any of your points, but Witcher 3 being a PC exclusive would have sold well.

And I still think that developers should code backwards:

- Create the PC version first pushing the tech as far as it can go

- Offer lower graphical and demanding versions for console and people with medium sized gaming PCs.

- Those that can afford to buy the latest tech should be allowed to play the game at highest setting. Those that can't and don't want to, tough. (You can't drive a Ferrari if you only have money for a Kia)

The patch did seem to help the controls abit, the weird 1-2 second pause while turning appears to be much more immediate.

The game has kind of pissed me off so I will play Shadowrun Dragonfall instead and come back at a later date when all the DLC is implemented as well.

Shouldn't let little things like that piss you off. Game is awesome if you can get past it.

That would have resulted in a much more expensive game. Salaries have to be paid to your developers if you're going to keep them around, and starting on a port right after the PC release could significantly increate production time (not to mention delaying DLC). These companies don't have unlimited resources, and Witcher 3 is already the most expensive game to come out of Poland.

-Byshop

I would think it would be easier to create your best product, and THEN take things away (lower requirements) for the weaker platforms.

If those platforms were just weaker PCs, sure, but they are completely different platforms with their own development tools. The game has to be written for each one, it's not just a question of taking away graphics options that they can't handle. Scoping out a significantly different version of the game for each platform in addition to writing it for each platform is expensive and time consuming.

-Byshop

I don't even understand how that makes sense to you.

Creating a game that works on all platforms at the start is far less expensive. Creating a graphical powerhouse and then spending more time and money trying to get those high end visuals to work on lesser hardware is definitely not the best approach for any game these days.

The Witcher 2 on 360 wasn't just the PC version on lower settings. They had to completely change the lighting and effects just to make it run on that platform.

That's what I mean though.

Take GTA5. The PS3 and XBOX360 version are basically the same game but with low settings (you can tell cause of the lower textures on the ground etc).

Aren't engine scalable? Wouldn't it be easier to create an engine (and game) that pushes the PC platform to the max it can go, and then just lower each asset for other platforms? (I'm no programmer, just my train of thought here)

To be honest I don't really care since I'm too busy enjoying the game. Game still looks great anyway.

AC: Unity didn't have this issue. Despite it's initial performance problems and bugs, It was made for consoles too and graphically it's fantastic. Even the shingles on the roofs are tessellated all with excellent detail but in Witcher 3 you can see how flat most everything is. They downgraded for the wrong reasons...to meet deadlines and save the headaches and time of dealing with scaling graphics to hardware and all the engine issues that arise from doing that.

They will always bitch about graphics. It's what validates most of their existences.

No, the PS3 and 360 versions aren't the "same game". They are two games designed to be the same but written for two completely different platforms. Things like art assets, 3d models, voice active, music, and the fundamental rules of the game are common between the two but they are written in different development platforms/languages/etc. It's not as much effort as making two completely different games, but it's still a lot of effort and it's a lot more effort if you do it in two completely separate development efforts.

-Byshop

Who are you referring to as THEY and THEIR?

Yeah but my point is, wouldn't it be easier to create the game at it's highest setting, then lower each asset depending on platform (and requirements)

You're not understanding me. Trust me on this, I work for a software development company and I understand how development projects work.

-Byshop

It's not that I don't trust you, I was just wondering if there was another way where everyone is happy and there isn't a need for downgrading :)

The answer is no. Its easier to create a game with at the "lowest" to completion and add more advance effects and features for the higher end systems afterwards. There is no magical switch that will automatically downgrade a game for the desired platform. Think about it like this, if the game can run well on the weaker system you know with great certainty that the faster systems would not have a hiccup when running the said game.