The Witcher 3

[kalniel]

Deploys the Bovine Defense Force Initiative.

Eep!

[stevie lee]

the hud, can now change it to small size, so its about 1/4 of what is was. also disable npc names and damage numbers above heads.

text and number size is bigger in the inventory, so you an read stuff now if you are in high resolutions.

the saves still work, played about 4 hours since patch came out. seems to run smoother.


and I don't know whether its me being overly cautious with my 6 year old PC, but I can run this game perfectly well with everything in high settings even with hairworks on, but im playing in low/medium just because its an old PC.


one thing not mentioned anywhere in game, or in the guides - did you know that horses can jump.

just press spacebar when moving, works at any speed. may need to double tap it though.
you cant re-bind it unless you do .ini editing.
unsure of what key it is on a controller though.

_____________

as for my play through, I'm up to 110 hours game time now.

got 35 unexplored points in novigrad/velen map, barely touched on exploring in skellige. so still a little bit to go through.

[jonathan_phang]

It's the A button, same as for Geralt. I'm pretty sure the HUD sizes have been in the game for earlier as I've been switching between the two before 1.05.

Yes after all the initial furore regarding graphics and performance I've been really happy with how it runs, esp since AMD got crossfire working. It's genuinely the most organic looking open world of its type that I can remember. There is so much dynamic movement in trees and grass etc that it's wonderful to just turn off music and his and just wander about.

I'm going to get into it now, was waiting for the XP fix as I'll probably do all side missions before main quest ones so might be over levelled. Either way I think CDPR deserve some credit for just being consistent and churning out patches etc that seem to keep improving the game, rather than making it worse

Oh and for those inclined I'm running a reshade preset called 1000 times better and it's great. The colours are muted a bit more to remove the overly red hue and everything looks very natural without over use of bloom and contrast which seems to happen in most others. Worth a look on Witcher Nexus

[kalniel]

one thing not mentioned anywhere in game, or in the guides - did you know that horses can jump.

Yes, it's in the tutorial when you first go on a horse... Useful for horse races when there are obstacles on the course.

Just spotted a fifty shades of grey reference

[stevie lee]

well I guess its just me who didnt notice horse jumping then, or that the hud size was in 1.01 version

so much for me actually paying attention to a game for once.

[jonathan_phang]

Or you could say that you actually were playing the game whilst we were getting bogged down in the details

[Dave_07]

Damn this a beautiful looking game, and the animations look really good. Hell even at low/medium settings the game still manages to look gorgeous.

Really sucks that it's having such a troubled release. Many people having crashing issues with it, including myself.

Also such a shame when a title has issues like this, even after a multiple patches.
Really de-motivates you from playing the game, because it makes it hard to invest hours playing if a bug can occur later after hours of play, which can effectively break any further progress. Namely the infamous "infinite loading screen" at the giant fight bug.

But were already up to v1.05 and it's only been 3 weeks since launch. So at least CDPR and pushing out patches regularly.

[jonathan_phang]

I have to say that for me at least, its been a relatively pain free experience, both performance and bug wise. I haven't experienced any crashes and no quest bugs yet either. Might be due to the fact that I haven't played that much of it yet though, and am still just pottering in the prologue area. Fingers crossed I don't end up encountering anything later on.

[jonathan_phang]

Eep!

I did think this was a bit odd. Apparently it's because there was some money exploit in white orchard where you could farm the cows if you meditated an hour in between or something. If that happens a high level troll appears to give you something else to think about.

[kalniel]

Really sucks that it's having such a troubled release. Many people having crashing issues with it, including myself.

Also such a shame when a title has issues like this, even after a multiple patches.

Actually by modern standards it seems to be one of the more stable games out there. Given the scope of the game that's incredible.

[herulach]

I'm very surprised by the low number of bugs, and equally by people reporting good performance. I have to have hairworks off and a couple of other things backed off to high (grass and NPCs iiirc) to get it playable. It seems to be very binary, knocking 90fps on high settings and about 35 with drops to 20 on ultra

[jonathan_phang]

Hairworks is by far the biggest drain in performance even with the AMD tesselation override in place. I can get it running ok with it all on but it makes it a touch chippy for my liking so I leave it off. Might experiment with it off a touch when I encounter more enemies that benefit from it.

Grass density is fine to ramp up but it's the foliage distance that is the next killer so I'd chuck to high and leave the rest to ultra. I have to to say that shadows is decent place to win back frames too as there really isn't that much perceptible difference between medium and ultra. NPCs is a max number which that can be shown and apparently it doesn't make much difference so try knocking the ones above off first.

[stevie lee]

this game doesn't end...

down to 6 unexplored points in velen, keep finding side quests on the points and on roads between them, some are only there if you've done other quests.
theres a few that are follow ups to quests I did in witcher 1, at least it seems like it.

110 points in skellige to go, majority out to sea. so need to find some unbroken boats. had fun smashing them into each other, so not many left

I've been doing the main quests and they just keep coming.

was that the last quest? no, theres another boss, that it? nope theres this bloke left. what about that sorceress? she wants a rabbit pie. why is there snow all over the place? oh theres still some more game.. and on and on and on..


even running game in high settings just because it works, may aswell enjoy it a bit more visually seem as the game will just keep going on and on and on. especially because they're adding more quests in DLC pack shortly.


now up to 122 hours 38 minute gametime, so if any of you are like me and just exploring, taking your time, but only playing an hour or two when you can. youll still be at it at Christmas.

[kalniel]

My hard drive failed so I'm on an enforced break at the moment until the replacement arrives and I see if I can rebuild everything fully. Can't wait to get playing again.

[kopite]

I cant get over how gorgeous it looks!

seem to spend a lot of time just riding around gawping at the graphics

Not a big fan of the gwent stuff as I never really got into magic the gathering but I'll suffer it to complete the game

[jonathan_phang]

Me too. Love it. Finally made it out of the prologue area after actually getting some time to play and looking forward to properly getting into the open world.

Wasn't sure about Gwent but played a few and I think I'm starting to like it