Dictator93
Member
Another image for OP.
But then again, this is dark and moody and lacks contrast. The must be pre-downgrade.
Also look how sharp it is.
Witcher 3 downgrade arguments in here and nowhere else
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But then again, this is dark and moody and lacks contrast. The must be pre-downgrade.
Also look how sharp it is.
Cave Johnson
Member
Regardless of what side of the debate I'm on, this right there is what sold me on this game, until now. I'm surprised their recent trailers can't even replicate it.
I dont get it. Isnt that Skyrim?Another image for OP.
Of course it is,I mean just look at this:
Those screens of the finished game posted in the OP don't look anywhere near as good.
Do we even have direct feed PC footage? Hell all I've seen posted so far are gifs and the OP's terribly compressed picture that isn't even taking into account same settings or TOD. No doubt there is a downgrade, I'm not saying there isn't, but how the hell can we truly know until after release? All this feels like is a knee jerk reaction to some leaked console footage.
Its a pretty shit joke.
Kenzodielocke
Banned
Majukun
Member
look back at the interview when the developers said that there would be no downgrade and that the final game would have looked even better
Psycho_Mantis
Banned
The downgrade is real. Still a good looking game. and graphics to such a extent are not a massive selling point to me.
Tbh The 2013 Witcher 3 could hafe only run on a 980 or Titan at most. Noone wouod have been able to max 8ut the game while havin stable 60fps. Just look at all the poor Star Citizen users (me included :c). I have a gtx 780, i7 4770k and 16gpb ram and star c7tizen runs at 30-45fps. The game will only get more demanding as development continues...
Gormenghast
Member
OF COURSE I question the quality of the game. It isn't out and the devs are unproven when it comes to big, sprawling open-world. There are way more reasons to be skeptical than reasons to be faithful.
We still have to see if the overall package will still be excellent despite some flaws, or if it will sink because of them.
A bit like Oblivion was FILLED with flaws and NOWHERE close to what people expected, yet it is still considered a great game.
The final result could go from: very broken and buggy - very good W2 sequel - the masterpiece everyone hopes for.
All those three stages are absolutely possible, for now.
Dictator93
Member
After all that time people spent trying to get CDPR to get rid of the terrible sharpening filter and over-done colour grading, it turns out a great deal of GAF loves this stuff and mistakes it for actual tangible technical changes in a game (worse texture resolution, different shading model).
A number of GAffers in this thread misuse the word lighting. People using it on average just mean colour palette... not actual technical details related to lighting and shading.
Apparently these images are cartoony dragon age wasteland:
And these are hyper realistic nextgen:
I am fine with people arguing this topic, but please argue points of actual technical merit and understanding.
A number of GAffers in this thread misuse the word lighting. People using it on average just mean colour palette... not actual technical details related to lighting and shading.
Apparently these images are cartoony dragon age wasteland:
And these are hyper realistic nextgen:
I am fine with people arguing this topic, but please argue points of actual technical merit and understanding.
But then I ask them, how can it be false advertising, when everything after the VGX trailer (end 2013) looks the same quality wise (no downgrade) or even better?
We didn't even had that much footage and advertising until this year to begin with.
His Majesty
Banned
There are in fact a lot of reasons to have faith in a good outcome. So far I haven't read a single negative impression of the youtubers who got to play the game for 12 hours.
Every game is downgraded, because every game goes through changes during development and every change is considered a downgrade by someone.
But that's only because most gamers have very little technical knowledge and are completely unqualified to judge such things. All it comes down to are their subjective impressions, which are not reliable in judging whether a game has suffered a technical downgrade or not.
Well I do somewhat agree that. The gaming press can be too positive about things and many of them are fanboys (eg. GTA game are only reviewed by GTA fanboys. So reading the reviews you'll never learn that those games have terrible controls, terrible and repetitive mission design and dull storylines).
That said, I don't think there's a big problem of games being overpriced, really. Usually I think I get my money's worth with majority of games that I buy and the DLC stuff is usually fairly fluff anyway - I have no issues with skipping it. It's those evil F2P games that are the real problem, but they're pretty much not covered at all by the enthusiast press nor are they played by people who comment on the industry on message boards such as Neogaf.
I think it has been pointed it several times in this page already. CDprojekt red specifically stated that the game would not only match the released footage, but likely exceed it. They also have used early screenshots of the original reveal build as current screenshots marketing the game on their website.
Darkstorne
Member
PCs have Options menus, you know. You don't have to run the game at Ultra settings.
Remember when Crysis released and High settings were achievable at a good framerate, medium and low at 60fps, but their equivalent of Ultra crippled everything under the sun and was only good for screenshots at the time? Yep, what a bad decision that was. Didn't benefit the game's longevity at all...
/s
I mean, just look how good the textures are in the bottom shots!!!
Can't wait for the inevitable 'Star Wars Battlefront was downgraded!' rage threads.
Yeah, people love CDPR. Yeah, people have been nursing semi's over the Witcher 3 since it's reveal. But to me the game will live and die by it's world building and mechanics rather than it's looks. If those elements live up to the hype but the graphics don't I won't be disappointed at all.
Trailers two years before release should always be taken with a grain of salt. That's not to say it's fair that we let CDPR off and go mad at other devs.
Yeah, people love CDPR. Yeah, people have been nursing semi's over the Witcher 3 since it's reveal. But to me the game will live and die by it's world building and mechanics rather than it's looks. If those elements live up to the hype but the graphics don't I won't be disappointed at all.
Trailers two years before release should always be taken with a grain of salt. That's not to say it's fair that we let CDPR off and go mad at other devs.
Why is this still being debated? It's blatantly obvious that the game has been significantly downgraded. That's a fact at this point.
It's just a matter of replicating those godly gifs on PC when it comes out and seeing how bad the downgrade really was. And then those gifs will forever be on the internet while we play the game, reminding us of what could have been...
You may personally feel it is justified but that wasn't really my point.
Just in about one/two generations the games industry has successfully:
Raised game prices
Began DLC to add extra money
Began developing DLC beside the main game and withholding it from the main product.
Day one DLC
Converted extras once considered to be free content into paid extras.
Rampant growth of in-app purchases in major franchises. Sports and multiplayer being the major victim.
Charged for online.
Expanded DRM
Pre-order bonuses
....I'm probably missing a few others. But this is kind of getting off topic. My point was merely that the music and film industry would of loved to have the sort of success rate with increased monetization attempts that the games industry has successfully achieved. Hence the most corporate friendly entertainment industry.
Pretty much this.
Yeah not that I care I'm just confused as to the bias
cripterion
Member
Chû Totoro;163393108 said:
Not mostly for the visuals but several people are sitting on rigs with SLI GTX 970/980/Titan X cards so of course they are interested in visuals.
All in all I think the writing was on the wall and I while I would like the game to look at its best, what I dislike actually about this whole thing is CDPR communication which I find to be messy and no really truthful (granted statements didn't always come from the same person)
I'll just copy/paste some extracts of an interview of January 28th :
When it comes to The Witcher 3, you haven’t talked much about its technical side. Let me quote your statement for Game Industry of March 2013: ‘The PC allows for more at the moment, but new platforms are stepping up. In the future, it should be much easier to unify the requirements.’ Has that future arrived?
I think so. It is impossible to make a game for three different platforms that will utilize all of the various platforms’ unique features and specs. It’s a technical fact. Making an exclusive title allows to squeeze more out of the target device.
The Witcher 3 is a rich production full of unique characters and a few thousand people. Let’s not forget castles, two large cities and the enormity of the world that has to be filled up. We’ve done everything we could to make the game look spectacular. And this doesn’t depend on the platform… We could up the resolution in the PC version, as the hardware is stronger, but at the same time we wouldn’t be able to do something new, like, e.g., rewriting the rendering engine that would be able to render such an amount of triangles. If we had lightmaps of interiors, the game would have looked much smoother, but in this case we wouldn’t have managed to simultaneously provide dynamic lightning in an open world. The game would have chunked all of the memory, even on PCs.
Platform unification exists – we have a single build, which is distributed to each one of them. The game is the same; the draw distance is the same. Minor differences result from the fact that the GPU has different parameters on different consoles, which can result in, e.g., the changes in color temperatures.
How will the PC ultra version hold up against consoles?
It will be possible to spot differences in, for example, Nvidia HairWorks, but those are very demanding graphically, so a strong PC will be needed. What I’m about to say might not be diplomatic. In the future you will be able to turn on the option of ubersampling, which, upon the release of The Witcher 2, was killing the game, and will probably do the same with this title, so we don’t want to unlock it for now. It makes the game look better, but the requirements are insane.
Are all the textures and models the same?
Yes, there is only one version, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to make the game in time. We would have to take it all apart, and then build it and test it on three different platforms at the same time, which is impossible to do. Therefore, we have one common basis, and then transfer it to other platforms.
We manage it differently on platforms with less memory. Less complex models are loaded; it all depends on what is going on on the screen at the moment. To sum up, there are only a few differences between PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. They are not aimed at changing the configuration; instead their purpose is to solve certain problems.
Have you followed the comments under The Witcher 3 VGA trailer? Many people were complaining about the drop in graphics quality in comparison to the first video materials.
Yes, we’ve seen them…
Aren’t you afraid that after its release the game will share the fate of Watch_Dogs, where the game was being compared to the first E3 gameplay?
If someone rewatches the trailer they will notice that the character models look better in the game; even Geralt is more polished – for instance, he has better shaders. We’ve added a bunch of details and we’ve significantly improved the facial expressions and the lip sync. We have 7 different dubbing versions, so we’re not able to record the changes on actors’ face with the performance capture technology, like it was done in, say, Call of Duty. That wouldn’t fit on three blu-ray discs. Keeping that in mind, we’ve implemented a dynamic system based on vowels and consonants, similar to the one in the previous two installments, where it did rather poorly. With The Witcher 3, the difference is astounding – we have set the bar really high for the entire industry as compared to other games that rely on this system (such as BioWare games – author’s note); that’s another thing that wasn’t visible in the trailer.
funkystudent
Member
I guess you played a version of W2 that wasn't a coloured bloom filled mess?
If anything the recent screens way more restrained and toned down from Witcher 2.
iRAWRasaurus
Banned
Goin to try not to judge the game until it's release. But personally as of now, I am not a fan of the new art design and perfer the older style that was presented. Perhaps changing the art style for whatever reason cause the game to appear different and downgraded?
No, it just looks more vibrant now, but on the other hand we haven't really seen many different locations.
SO the foliage has had a pretty big downgrade. (Foilage is now very flat with no shading or shadows)
And the Atmospheric effects have been either toned down to almost nothing or completely removed. (Fire smoke and particle effects have almost completely removed, Horse riding dusting is gone, general fog and dust has been removed from the world.)
Lighting has changed and seems very flat.
And the Atmospheric effects have been either toned down to almost nothing or completely removed. (Fire smoke and particle effects have almost completely removed, Horse riding dusting is gone, general fog and dust has been removed from the world.)
Lighting has changed and seems very flat.
Sodding_Gamer
Member
This is what I thought. They probably had physx and hair works working on multiple titans or something crazy for the trailers and for the recent gameplay videos those options are disabled due to performance issues. I remember reading they were having trouble optimising hair works/physx and that it takes a huge hit on frame rate.
Majukun
Member
gamers are usually more concerned about defending the developers than defending themselves from them
icecold1983
Member
those shots dont at all represent the changes between old and current witcher media. im surprised you of all people think the sharpening filter and colorgrading are the only changes.
edit - what your images do in fact show, is that the differences in foliage quality between old and current witcher media is not simply a sharpening filter.
The horses tail isn't flowing hair is now more static.
What? Surely you jest? I mean why would the pc version not have better draw distance like in all the other games?
Yeah if that is true, I will be thoroughly fucking pissed. I'm hoping I misinterpreted that statement.
There is no excuse to not allow a draw distance, lod slider and higher grade texture options for the PC version.
It would make the fear that I had about a possible parity clause in the Microsoft deal more real to me.
From this post. http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=163395676&postcount=1178
"Platform unification exists we have a single build, which is distributed to each one of them. The game is the same; the draw distance is the same. Minor differences result from the fact that the GPU has different parameters on different consoles, which can result in, e.g., the changes in color temperatures."
and...
Are all the textures and models the same?
"Yes, there is only one version, otherwise we wouldnt be able to make the game in time. We would have to take it all apart, and then build it and test it on three different platforms at the same time, which is impossible to do. Therefore, we have one common basis, and then transfer it to other platforms.
We manage it differently on platforms with less memory. Less complex models are loaded; it all depends on what is going on on the screen at the moment. To sum up, there are only a few differences between PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. They are not aimed at changing the configuration; instead their purpose is to solve certain problems."
I can safely say Bloodborne received a downgrade; i played some of the earlier versions they did not only have slightly better lighting/different lighting but also better AA. It seemed like the final game ran at 720p on PS4 whereas the earlier versions i played looked sharper. Also; low quality foliage.
DOWN
Banned
But it must be art decisions and time of day, you fool. /s
Sodding_Gamer
Member
I can make all my games look like that if I turn my TV's sharpen to 10. Yes, my TV's next-gen.
Or just don't overpromise two years before you plan to release your game.
eot
Banned
Yup yup.
List of not mutually exclusive things:
1) Game looking good
2) Game suffering a big visual downgrade
3) Calling out devs who misrepresent their games
Yep. And then to make it worse insist that your game will not only look as good as the footage released but likely look even better.
Wanted to point this picture that's not in the OP but is from the album where all the images in the OP come from.
Granted, this isn't the best comparison but if you've been keeping up with the game and have seen the media that CDPR has put out, you know for a fact that nothing even comes close to the bottom screenshot.
Granted, this isn't the best comparison but if you've been keeping up with the game and have seen the media that CDPR has put out, you know for a fact that nothing even comes close to the bottom screenshot.
icecold1983
Member
Wanted to point this picture that's not in the OP but is from the album where all the images in the OP come from.
Granted, this isn't the best comparison but if you've been keeping up with the game and have seen the media that CDPR has put out, you know for a fact that nothing even comes close to the bottom screenshot.
dat sharpening filter/dat diff TOD/dat diff season of the year
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