Witcher 3 - CD Projekt tackles downgrade issue

TheMadGamer said:
For example, underwater adventuring is back. WOW. That in itself is HUGE. When the hell was that feature in an RPG in any meaningful way?
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Daggerfall I'd say... I remember Daggerfalls underwater adventuring as some of the best ever - arguably not that many.. Ah, Might and Magic VIII also had some. And uh.. Lands of Lore? Memory fails. But you're right, that's a nice thing to bring back :)

Apart from that, I'm getting more and more convinced I should wait until this game is complete, which sadly means around february or so, when they release the (maybe) last of the DLC - or I could wait until the Enhanced Edition. But I really want to play this one, so.. hrm.

Ah, and Microsoft (and to a lesser extent Sony) not wanting devs to directly compare (and praise) a PC version over the XBox one is not a conspiracy theory, but standard business practice. I've been part of a company doing games for XBox. There's lots of things you try very hard not to say/be diplomatic about, not just this. In this case, it's clearly trapped CDP in a bind.

Personally I wish for the textures to be as good as they were in the 2013-2014 builds and presentations, as well as the fire particles. The technical difficulties with the lighting system change does sound like a true story, but the textures were much better looking imo before.
 
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lostforever said:
The downgrade is a none story but CDPR allowed it to drag on with their silence and misleading comments. The downgrade issue crept up about 6 months ago and CDPR could have nipped it in the bud back then and admitted the downgrade. If they have done that, then no one will be talking about this now. So this whole thing is PR disaster by CDPR.
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My point wasn't that though. I conceded to your argument with my prior post. What I'm trying to get at is that while everyone is talking all day long about downgraded visuals, it is robbing discussion on the many awesome gameplay features this game has. Five years from now, the decision makers are mostly going to remember 'make the game pretty' and not 'let's make sure to include underwater exploration.'

Usually I side with user reviews of games because they tend to be far more honest. But really for the first time in a LONG time, I'm siding with paid-reviewers because I actually think they 'get it' right now far better than gamers are with their huge obsession on this single issue. The tragedy being that gamers are perhaps shooting themselves in the foot with great RPG features in exchange for a game that looks really pretty but really has nothing much else to offer other than looking pretty.
 
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vurt said:
No, not just one video from years ago. They continued to release screens and videos from the older and superior renderer, even as late as in march this year. E.g: http://www.dsogaming.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/igrashka.org_14272306796.jpeg

If you know what to look for (lightning on the character) you can see obvious differences. So they changed the renderering in 2013 (according to the developer) but kept releasing screens from that version until just 1-2 months ago (and that's where the talk of "downgrade" or if it was actually the PC version began).
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Excellent point. The Eurogamer article does make them seem more sympathetic, but it is hard to ignore how they had the PR guy continue to push the false image of the game.

Anyway Vurt, more importantly, any plans to do a foliage overhaul mod for W3? It desperately needs it. I can't believe how low-res the foliage textures are. And even worse, in studying it, their mip-maps seem very poor. It seems they made no effort to manually craft mip-maps to optimize the alpha space. Currently the mip-maps are just a big mess. I'm really curious to see what horrible performance hit (or not) there would be by removing mip-maps.

Anyway, we need a major overhaul mod because I highly doubt CDPR will ever truly upgrade their foliage to the 2013 VGX quality, but I could be wrong...
 
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Darkhawk said:
Daggerfall I'd say… I remember Daggerfalls underwater adventuring as some of the best ever - arguably not that many.. Ah, Might and Magic VIII also had some. And uh.. Lands of Lore? Memory fails. But you're right, that's a nice thing to bring back :)
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I'm actually playing MM8 right now for the first time. It think I'm probably less than 1/3rd into the game at this point, but not sure since I've never played - just going by play hours. I'll be keeping my eye out for underwater fun. I played the first Lands of Lore but I don't remember anything underwater. But that was long ago so if you say there was then there was.

Darkhawk said:
Personally I wish for the textures to be as good as they were in the 2013-2014 builds and presentations, as well as the fire particles. The technical difficulties with the lighting system change does sound like a true story, but the textures were much better looking imo before.
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There's certainly nothing wrong with anyone wanting pretty graphics. I like pretty graphics. I spent the entire 80s looking forward to my next game console and PC upgrade pretty much for the sole purpose of prettier graphics.

But here in 2015 where most games look really good, including W3, I just have a hard time understanding the obsession over what I consider incrementally better visuals. That isn't to say that it's lost on me that perhaps CD Projekt should have done a better PR job managing this issue, but still the attention and outright anguish being expressed on the internet over this is stunning really.
 
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TheMadGamer said:
My point wasn't that though. I conceded to your argument with my prior post. What I'm trying to get at is that while everyone is talking all day long about downgraded visuals, it is robbing discussion on the many awesome gameplay features this game has. Five years from now, the decision makers are mostly going to remember 'make the game pretty' and not 'let's make sure to include underwater exploration.'

Usually I side with user reviews of games because they tend to be far more honest. But really for the first time in a LONG time, I'm siding with paid-reviewers because I actually think they 'get it' right now far better than gamers are with their huge obsession on this single issue. The tragedy being that gamers are perhaps shooting themselves in the foot with great RPG features in exchange for a game that looks really pretty but really has nothing much else to offer other than looking pretty.
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I don't see why this game or these developers should be treated differently. When Bethesda removed real time shadows for Oblivion it was the same, same with Watch Dogs etc..

Sometimes the devs needs to learn a lesson. I doubt either Bethesda or CDPR predicted how much of an issue it becomes when they intentionally lie. You shouldn't be able to promote the game in a certain way and then when the game is out you can just get away with "Nope, not in, we had to remove it. Too bad."

What if they start doing this with other features? Let's say they claim the game has awesome underwater exploration and they promote this feature until 1-2 months from release.

When asked if it's still there "yes, absolutely it's even more awesome in the final game!" When the game is out it's not there, can't even dive. "nope, not in.. i thought you would have figured that out, it's really hard to get it to work.. too bad if you believed us and made a purchase descision based upon on that.. kind of silly of you though, but ok."

Even if this talk about downgrade is annoying to a lot of people it just can't be tolerated.
 
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I'm CDPR's fan TMG but I don't think that it's as bad as that. Remember the storm about problems with TW1? People complained and CDPR listened and we got TW1EE and CDPR got kudos. It started them on their way. Remember something similar with TW2?

Now all grown up and bullish CDPR needed to have their bottom spanked to remind them that they haven't become untouchables? Game is good enough to weather this storm and CDPR already started talking about making it up to the PC users. So it might be that, eventually, we will get a prettier game and CDPR will return to our good graces :)
 
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For this game i think a lot of people are worried that they've also said that the game will be the same (basically) on all platforms.

But well, it's not like it would be the first time they say something and it's not the entire truth, so i guess that can be both good and bad.

There would obviously be a shitstorm if they release a PC-only patch with better graphics, it goes without saying. I highly doubt they would do that and piss off all console users who they've promised they will pretty much have a PC version of the game.

Maybe a PC EE in 2 years? ;)
 
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Yeah, I thought about commenting as well suibhne but it was just too stupid to bother.
 
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EE version that excludes consoles seems unlikely. Could get around it by unlocking INI settings with better lighting options, etc. Modders could take care of textures. And water. Please someone mod the water!
 
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Risine said:
Fact is they sold us a next-gen game, at least, and we have an oldgen title, beautiful one yes, but old gen anyway. That's why people are upset even if graphics are not that important for them, who can blame them!
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The whole thing was ratted out before release. Upset people could have avoided to buy the product.
It was all up to see so...
 
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ChienAboyeur said:
The whole thing was ratted out before release. Upset people could have avoided to buy the product.
It was all up to see so…
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Both yes and no.. They kept telling us "it's not downgraded" even in the later interviews. If you followed the comments on many forums the discussion was about if it was really the PC version they showed or if the console graphics just looked inferior, or maybe they were lying and there was a downgrade after all.

Yes, you can skip buying it, sure. There's no way around it though, that this is a really shitty thing to do.. People invest time in following their game for many years, reading interviews and looking forward to the game.
 
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TheMadGamer said:
I'm actually playing MM8 right now for the first time. It think I'm probably less than 1/3rd into the game at this point, but not sure since I've never played - just going by play hours. I'll be keeping my eye out for underwater fun. I played the first Lands of Lore but I don't remember anything underwater. But that was long ago so if you say there was then there was.
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No, turns out my memory was shoddy - I was thinking about Shadows over Riva (part three of the Realms of Arkania series, which I loved). Also, after thinking about those numbers, the underwater scene (and it's a short one) in MM is in Might and Magic VII, not VIII. It got me to think about other underwater scenes, and I think there was one in some SSI 'gold'box game as well. Actually fun trying to remember, there should be a list. But great that it's back in TW :)
 
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azarhal said:
The game is called The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and there are returning (and references to) TW1 characters as well. There are also characters who were in all 3 games (Triss, Dandalion, Zoltan, Radovid…although the last one had a more important role in TW1).

You also get to revisit areas from the first game, even if briefly.
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Sure, there are some connections obviously, but TW1 has little to do with the other 2 games in terms of plot. It shares many of the same characters, but the story is self contained.

On the other hand, the events of TW2 are directly continued in TW3.
 
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I'm pretty blown away by the characterisation in the cut scenes. It's absolutely brilliant and like nothing else Ive seen in a game before. Normally I'd skip these scenes, but they're so well done that they've got even me interested in them. Good job CDPR.

Now the KB+M controls are shabby - there's no doubt about that.

The graphics in general seem excellent though, and I am easily hamndling them on ultra with a GTX970 and i5 processor. But they are not the same as the 2013 demo sadly.
 
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Newsbit updated.
 
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vurt said:
Yes, you can skip buying it, sure. There's no way around it though, that this is a really shitty thing to do.. People invest time in following their game for many years, reading interviews and looking forward to the game.
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People who spent time fancying over the product sat in the front row to know the product would be different. They decided to skip or not. In the meantime, CDR Projekt gave them what they needed: material to fancy over.

Bethesda, up to the last moment, kept promoting procedural AI, kept telling that the player could influence the economy by destroying essential buildings etc

In some other departments, people have not yet popped up on this site to tell how much disgusting it is to threaten the economic security of people working for CDR Projekt, the moderation has not yet invited people to move their discussion elsewhere or simply lock up threads reporting the downgrade etc
It was all plain to see and people behaved the way they behaved.
 
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