Witcher 3 Witcher 3 - The alchemy of smoothness

http://www.pcgamer.com/durantes-witcher-3-analysis-the-alchemy-of-smoothness/#page-1

An older article from graphics guru Peter Thoman, on the importance of frame timing and how to use Riva Tuner to get smoother performance in W3. It's worth a read if you haven't used Riva Tuner before, as this applies to pretty much any 3D game.

I haven't played W3 yet, as I don't play until all the DLC is in. I was just getting it set up to see where it's at, and found this article useful.

thanks ripper, Playing the witcher 2 now, which unbelievably I'm having a hard time getting in to. It's not as polished as I thought it would be, combats not as tight, story and cutscenes seem jarring for a lack of a better word. Mostly minor annyonces but a surprising amount of them. anyway,

will play Dark souls 3 after this and then roll in to witcher 3 after all it's content is released.

Ripper said:

I haven't played W3 yet, as I don't play until all the DLC is in.

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Unlike ME3 DLC that is crucial to the story and characters parts and even brings up points to ending regardless of that ending quality, TW3 DLC will not change the main game in any possible way.
Play the game now and forget about DLC.

No I don't have TW3 season pass. Never bought it nor am planning to.
Well at least till it's heavily discounted.
Yes the game is that good it needs no DLC, instead it needs TW4.

That's good to know, thanks. Even so, I tend to prefer to have all the DLC in place and accessible during my first play-through, as it's usually my only play-through. If I do play again, it won't be till years later.

As I'm getting ready to play this, I'll be checking out the best mods and tweaks, and I'll post them here for anyone interested.

There was something I didn't like about the default camera and the way it moves, so the first one for me is Absolute Camera. It allows you to set up default camera positions for different activities in the game - one for exploring, one for combat, another for swimming, etc. I have it set so that when just walking around it's in first-person, and then switches to fairly close third-person for combat. It's amazing how much more immersive I find the game exploring in first-person, and how much more I appreciate the graphics. Highly recommended.

The next one is Better Loot Scaling. One of the biggest complaints I've seen is that exploring for loot was not very interesting, because the loot-levelling meant you rarely found anything really useful. This mod gives you a menu that lets you set a higher level range for loot, allowing for better rewards. As I haven't played yet, I can't say how this will affect balance, but I know that lame levelled-loot will upset me, so I'm going to play with this.

Finally, I discovered that using mods with the GOG version is broken for some of us. It's necessary to manually create a missing config file if you get errors when starting up with mods. See here: https://www.reddit.com/r/witcher3mo...r_anybody_having_script_compiler_errors_using

I've started skipping DLC entirely. Even the ones I paid for (PoEt, included). If the DLC isn't there when I want to play the base game, there's a good chance I will never play the DLC.

This practice started with Skyrim (or maybe DE:HR) and has served me well. I am a completionist by nature, but there are too many great new games being released nowadays to bother with DLC, IMHO.

Thrasher said:

I've started skipping DLC entirely. Even the ones I paid for (PoEt, included). If the DLC isn't there when I want to play the base game, there's a good chance I will never play the DLC.

This practice started with Skyrim (or maybe DE:HR) and has served me well. I am a completionist by nature, but there are too many great new games being released nowadays to bother with DLC, IMHO.

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I'm sure that's the smart thing to do. I think I'm just a pathological completionist. Even worse, I want all the DLC, plus a truck load of mods if at all possible.

Yep, know the feeling. I guess I am more anxious about playing unplayed new great games than playing DLC.

Ripper said:

I'm sure that's the smart thing to do. I think I'm just a pathological completionist. Even worse, I want all the DLC, plus a truck load of mods if at all possible.

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I'm the same way most of the time, but you'll be better off not having that mindset for TW3. That game is beyond massive, and it's not really designed for you to see and do everything in one playthrough.

I'll bear that in mind - I guess it could kill the fun to trawl every inch if it's truly on that scale.

The other slightly legitimate reason I'm waiting for the last DLC is that they're touting some major improvements to the overall game. The last DLC was accompanied by a 10gb patch and I'd expect some further refinements to accompany the next one. Also, even if I don't crawl the land for every side quest, I would want all the major DLC in place, as they add whole new areas and major plotlines, which I probably would want to include in my play-through.

Yeah, If I hadn't played it already, I would wait for the latest expansion as well, since it's so close. The risk being that I never get to it.

I'm kinda weird in that I usually have two "play throughs" of a game - one in the beginning and then one after a GOTY type edition is released. I did this with Skyrim; I played through it quickly with SkyUI being my only mod when it was released; cool, fun game, whatever... shelved it until the GOTY edition came out and played it again after the patches and DLC; it was like playing a somewhat (though not totally) different game.

I am looking forward to doing the same with PoE now that the DLC is complete. I played and beat the game when it came out, loved it, and now plan on trying to play the game with some other class. (I did the ranged Cipher the first go-round since it seemed like the most 'unique' class. Probably will do a melee mage or something like that second go-round.)

PoE will be next up for me. It seems to be just about in its full and final state.

I'm hoping that I'll love it. It's another one that came in for a fair bit of criticism in the RPG community, but I think it will probably please me quite a bit.

Ripper said:

PoE will be next up for me. It seems to be just about in its full and final state.

I'm hoping that I'll love it. It's another one that came in for a fair bit of criticism in the RPG community, but I think it will probably please me quite a bit.

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POE is playing at its best now, I started a new game last night with the both DLC and latest patch. The AI is now works in combat so you are not spending all your time micro managing it.