Witcher 3 downgrade arguments in here and nowhere else

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G

Golicz

Banned
Red Hood said:
Who wore the Great Mantel of Knight Downgrade better?
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I say Dark Souls 2, without doubt IMO; i.e. that's a really obvious visual evisceration of the same gameplay area.

Maybe I'm getting too old to care so much, but, I'm willing to cut the Witcher 3 devs some slack here, because I have no idea what they added into their game since 2013 which might have eaten up some of the available graphical horsepower, in terms of what their game engine could handle.

My priorities in terms of tech in a game are as follows: responsive controls with minimal lag, a stable framerate (30 is fine), bearable aliasing which doesn't hurt my eyes & a decent draw distance with unobtrusive pop-in. As for tufts of grass... well, I have other things to do than obsess over the details on a freaking bush, or a brick wall.
 
R

RedSwirl

Junior Member
Kenzodielocke said:
new comparison, german

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UIS5WHx4xDk

edit beaten.
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The draw distance in the final game is a little worse, but other than that and the foliage they look the same to me in the Novigrad section. This is probably one of the best-looking videos of the final PC game I've seen. I'll be very interested in seeing what that village on fire scene looks like in the final game, since we haven't seen that exact scene in any build since 2013.
 
J

jacksepticeye

Member
Bamihap said:
b4TnCh2.gif


2013:
Boring style.
Monotone graphics. Everything looks the same.
Hard to read.
Drap colours.
No depth.
All kinds of shaders to help give depth to the place.

2015:
Way more readable due to better contrast, colour separation, use of colour.
Real depth due to building design. Shadows.
Way more texture diversity.
Backgrounds are set apart from the foreground.
Main character pop-out from the environment way more.

All in all: very good adjustments.
Click to expand...

But the 2013 version is far denser and seems to have more and higher quality assets as well as a better LOD (as far as a small gif can show). not to mention dozens more NPCs

If the colours of the bottom one were in the top version it would be far and away the better one. It's just a little drab and over sharpened but it's a far busier and denser scene
 
T

Totobeni

An blind dancing ho
Nabbis said:
Consumers arguing for the benefit of a company that is using, possibly, illegal advertising methods... My head hurts.

Pretty sure some things that CDPR are doing fall under the clauses seen here. http://ec.europa.eu/consumers/consumer_rights/unfair-trade/false-advertising/index_en.htm
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it's baffling really, the problem is some fans will defend their favorite company shady practices even if it hurt them or was a clear misleading or false marketing. same thing happened in the Dark Souls 2 downgrade thread.

Fans need to separate their love to a developer from their rights as consumers.
 
N

Nabbis

Member
pixel monkey said:
Thanks, I've read it. My point is simply that none of this is anything remotely new.
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For whatever reason that may be, looking at the link i posted, there's plenty of practices in the gaming industry that could be judged as false advertising. In EU.

My personal opinion on why this is allowed to continue is that gaming is still seen as a children's thing and the people in the legal system have little to no understanding of digital goods.
 
Y

Yasae

Banned
Bufbaf said:
All I'm hoping is that bulllshit like this finally gets more people to stop preordering/season-passing everything on sight as soon as its announced.
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Gotta admit, the cumulative effect of all this (especially recent years) has made me shrug at game trailers and media. It's a "So what, I'm not gonna get to play that" reaction. "That's nice, but so what?" - at least in regard to visuals, and it may end up in some cases gameplay too, which is truly awful.

They won't ever stop doing this until there's a gun to their head. Games are ludicrously expensive to make now. There's just no room for them to be late to the party. And there are practically NO repercussions, which means it will only get worse until it can't. It will NEVER get better of any big dev's pure inclination. Don't look to them.

This hogwash is only exacerbated when the game is quality. A downgrade I can easily live with; it sucks but sure, it happens. The lies are a sour taste forever.
 
T

Totobeni

An blind dancing ho
Relaxed Muscle said:
To be fair, Dark Souls 2 was another level of bullshit. It was a straight up lie.

At least Bloodborne delivered. Team A wins.
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Witcher 2013 is really in the same level of bullshit as Dark Souls 2 if not worse imho (at least From tried to replicate it on way less powerful hardware.. it's still a lie to people tho)
 
A

antonz

Member
I preorder based on the pedigree of the developer and the series. That won't change. The Witcher series since the beginning has been top notch as has CDprojekt Red. Bite off more than they could chew this time around? Perhaps but it is not impacting the quality of the game and that is what matters.
 
R

Relaxed Muscle

Member
Totobeni said:
Witcher 2013 is really in the same level of bullshit as Dark Souls 2 if not worse imho (at least From tried to replicate it on way less powerful hardware.. it's still a lie to people tho)
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I think that at least W3 is similar to the product they showed us in 2013, yeah looks worse, effects were scaled down, shitty fooliage...wathever, but still both versions looks similar.

DS2 on the other hand, barely looks like the end product, to the radical lightning dowgrade, assets and detail totally gone, shaders and major gameplay features like the torches and the light an dark mechanic.
 
R

Red Hood

Banned
Relaxed Muscle said:
To be fair, Dark Souls 2 was another level of bullshit. It was a straight up lie.

At least Bloodborne delivered. Team A wins.
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How if I may ask? I can't see how Dark Souls 2's downgrade was a lie while the Witcher 3's downgrade can be seen as anything else than a lie. They're both shameless lies. If I remember correctly, they even explicitly mentioned that the final build will look better than the E3 build.
 
Haint

Haint

Member
pixel monkey said:
Wait, so bullshots are "illegal" now? Uh oh... E3 has been cancelled.
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They arguably are in parts of EU. Publishers have been successfully fined/sued for passing off CG commercials as gameplay, no doubt blatantly fake bullshots could probably be challenged under the same laws/regulations.
 
R

Relaxed Muscle

Member
Red Hood said:
How if I may ask? I can't see how Dark Souls 2's downgrade was a lie while the Witcher 3's downgrade can be seen as anything else than a lie. They're both shameless lies. If I remember correctly, they even explicitly mentioned that the final build will look better than the E3 build.
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Well, they are both lies in the sense, neither of these versions really existed.

But what I mean is that DS2 graphical fidelity was on another level of the actual game. Things like ligthning, assets, models and all looked barely like the reveal video, to the point it was basically like seeing a generation gap. That also had an impact in the level design and actual gameplay mechanics (the torches).

Meanwhile W3 managed to get closer in terms of concept and visual fidelity to the 2013, I mean the gap is noticiable and definetly we got Ubisoft'd but at least the end product has a notorious resemblance and the game looks fenomenal.

DS2 is a disgrace that still hurts this day.
 
T

Totobeni

An blind dancing ho
antonz said:
I preorder based on the pedigree of the developer and the series. That won't change. The Witcher series since the beginning has been top notch as has CDprojekt Red. Bite off more than they could chew this time around? Perhaps but it is not impacting the quality of the game and that is what matters.
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Thats ok, no one is telling you to to cancel your order or not playing the game.

However the problem with this is the massive downgrade and how CDPR handling it, since Anaxymenes exposed the downgrade last year here on GAF, CDPR insisted multiple times that their is no downgrade (so they were telling people that the game is still looking the same) and even kept the 2013 footage as gameplay and didn't correct anyone that the game will not look like the 2013 version. It's not about if this game is going to be good or not, it's about a company selling lies and using a footage to sell a game that now look worse than it was in 2013.
 
B

bidguy

Banned
Bamihap said:
b4TnCh2.gif


2013:
Boring style.
Monotone graphics. Everything looks the same.
Hard to read.
Drap colours.
No depth.
All kinds of shaders to help give depth to the place.

2015:
Way more readable due to better contrast, colour separation, use of colour.
Real depth due to building design. Shadows.
Way more texture diversity.
Backgrounds are set apart from the foreground.
Main character pop-out from the environment way more.

All in all: very good adjustments.
Click to expand...

holy shit

thats a huge difference, id definitely ask for a refund if it wasnt digital and i hadnt already preloaded it but damn thats crazy. 2013 version looks miles better its like day and night
 
R

raphier

Banned
I had pre-ordered this game early in 2014 with a binding clause that I cannot decline it, because I also got a copy of Gothic on GoG. This kind of PR material affected my opinions and expectations during the pre-ordering process. Never again.
 
J

Jonm1010

Banned
Subpar Spatula said:
Misrepresentations like this are low on the totem pole. You can be opposed to this but it's not something that will make or break this game.
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I disagree the misrepresentation is low but that is subjective on a person to person basis. But in comparison to other incidents of this it is actually pretty ballsy and blatant. I mean looping the unachievable gameplay footage on your site? Flashing pictures of the 2013 build on installation? Did Ubisoft even go that far?
 
R

RedSwirl

Junior Member
I think we need to remember, someone confirmed that 2013 Witcher 3 indeed existed as an actual game. It was shown internally at E3 that year.
 
D

DarkLordMalik

Member
RedSwirl said:
I think we need to remember, someone confirmed that 2013 Witcher 3 indeed existed as an actual game. It was shown internally at E3 that year.
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But was it a full fledged game or just a short vertical slice?

It is definitely the latter than the former. They probably discarded that version in favor of a more "playable" version, which ended up being the 2015 release.
 
H

HeelPower

Member
Bamihap said:
b4TnCh2.gif


2013:
Boring style.
Monotone graphics. Everything looks the same.
Click to expand...

Honestly,while I am in no way concerned with the downgrade,I actually MUCH prefer the old color palette.

It looked very bleak,gloomy and intriguing.In a sense it looked more "mature" if you will.
 
Subpar Spatula

Subpar Spatula

Banned
Jonm1010 said:
I disagree the misrepresentation is low but that is subjective on a person to person basis. But in comparison to other incidents of this it is actually pretty ballsy and blatant. I mean looping the unachievable gameplay footage on your site? Flashing pictures of the 2013 build on installation? Did Ubisoft even go that far?
Click to expand...

Then we disagree on what is considered harmful advertising. I hope you're as vigilant in this cause than just with graphics.
 
H

Hopeford

Member
HeelPower said:
Honestly,while I am in no way concerned with the downgrade,I actually MUCH prefer the old color palette.

It looked very bleak,gloomy and intriguing.In a sense it looked more "mature" if you will.
Click to expand...

I feel kind of the opposite about it. I kind of like the more colorful palette because it seems more "fantastic" so to speak. It stands out a lot more to my eye.
 
H

Horp

Member
Wild theory:
Maybe the big change was that there was no TOD (Time of Day) in the 2013 version.
TOD isn't a trivial thing. Every shader (which means every material of every object and every particle effect) must take this into consideration while rendering. Maybe a bunch of the shaders that made 2013 look so different just became to intensive/complex with TOD enabled. This could be the case for the forward lit soft particles, the old water shader, the old foliage shader and even geometry shaders (meaning they maybe cut down on tesselation to support TOD).
I know they said TOD was a feature back then too, but maybe they hadn't added support for TOD in all, or even most, shaders yet.
 
pixel monkey

pixel monkey

Banned
While clearly a perceptible downgrade, it's still a lovely and quite large open world game. I'm still pre-loaded and very much looking forward to putting my GTX 970 through it's paces with Geralt's latest.

And to be fair, there's downgrade and then there's Watch Dogs downgrade... this thankfully is not that.
 
A

antonz

Member
Geralt is wearing an entirely different armor set and has a SHARPENING FILTER. I mean everyone keeps going on and on about 2013. Yes 2015 is different. More colorful and downgraded in places.

But that Sharpening Filter is incredibly deceptive and makes things look far different.
 
A

Alienous

Member
Loakum said:
WITCHER 3 : DOWNGRADING, SEX, SPEEDRUN and more! Developer Interview | (No, this isn't that laughing man parody video)

https://youtu.be/IU9rlkCOk9E
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"No. We didn't ... we didn't downgrade. We didn't ... we didn't downgrade! We didn't, because ... okay ... it's impossible ... it's impossible to downgrade a game that didn't exist before, or wasn't playable before ... so there was a ... actually there was a guy on the internet that did a very ... he commented something like that, that you cannot downgrade something that a ... 'There was no grade to downgrade' so he was comparing a final product with a product that wasn't playable, that wasn't a game yet, so [people are] mistaken.

There are two things that people have to separate. Downgrade ... and optimization. Optimization is necessary to make the game run, downgrade is when you ... if you deliberately make the game worse, for whatever reason, to make the game run ... I mean, that's not ... that's totally not what happened.

There also another thing that people have to probably understand, is that, um, it's very unfair to compare trailers and gameplay demos. A trailer ... a trailer is a beautiful shot. A trailer is this prepared ... you take one location, you put perfect lights and the perfect camera angle, and the perfect ... and it looks absolutely beautiful, and it's captured at super high definitions and you post-process it and ... it's a trailer, it's a trailer. You pick beautiful shots.

But gameplay demos, that's when you see the real game, that's when you see what the real game looks like, and we had ... basically we had three or four gameplay videos, we had one in 2013 which was a demo in Skellige, which was a really long time ago, and actually shortly after that demo we completely ... if you look at that demo the graphics look totally different ... they look, uh, totally different, because at the time we were using a very old shader system, it wasn't this physically based shader with all the reflections and shiny metals, it was a little bit flatter. Some things were very sharp, too sharp even, we had some problems with the vegetation, they had the sharpening filter and it didn't work, after a while it would, uh, it was uncomfortable for the eyes, it's very hard to describe but it was .... when walking through the forest sharp vegetation is terrible, so we changed the whole shader system, we put the PBR shaders .... then one year afterword we did this demo, this 35 minute demo in Novigrad that with Jordy(?) demoing walking through the forest and it just keeps getting nicer and nicer. It's one of the most beautiful games ever made probably, which is amazing considering that it's so complicated."

lol
 
A

Acinixys

Member
Alienous said:
There also another thing that people have to probably understand, is that, um, it's very unfair to compare trailers and gameplay demos. A trailer ... a trailer is a beautiful shot. A trailer is this prepared ... you take one location, you put perfect lights and the perfect camera angle, and the perfect ... and it looks absolutely beautiful, and it's captured at super high definitions and you post-process it and ... it's a trailer, it's a trailer. You pick beautiful shots.
Click to expand...

Dev makes a game look good using proven techniques 2-3 years before it releases

People get butt blasted that said game isnt EXACTLY THE SAME as 24 month old footage

More at 11

facepalm.gif
 
W

Wreav

Banned
Bamihap said:
I'm a game designer (other development studio). I know how this happens. And believe me, everyone on the dev team wants the game to look super pretty. But guess what: development happen during development.

Usually the game gets build super pretty for a vertical slice. Framerates aren't important because the code isn't optimised yet. There will be tons of improvements so hopefully we'll keep these shiny graphics. Than 1 year before release there is a meeting: "So the game has this audio system now. It allows for actual sounds in the game, it's pretty important but heavy on the system. So we'll have to cut some of the graphics.". Particles are heavy, cut those. Draw distance, texture quality, shaders, they all need to be turned down.

The devs make these changed not because they suck, or they're evil. They make these changed to make the best product possible for everyone. Vertical slices are almost always prettier than the final product. It's a tool to convince you, the consumer, the publisher and to inspire the development team.
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Give this man GAF Gold.
 
R

RedSwirl

Junior Member
Wait what?

Geralt is wearing the same default armor set in the 2013 videos as he is in the recent videos. I think his face was changed slightly, but in terms of detail he looks the same.
 
Raven77

Raven77

Member
Alienous said:
"No. We didn't ... we didn't downgrade. We didn't ... we didn't downgrade! We didn't, because ... okay ... it's impossible ... it's impossible to downgrade a game that didn't exist before, or wasn't playable before
Click to expand...


So, they say that what they are showing ON THEIR HOME PAGE FOR THE GAME didn't even ever exist as an actual game. Even though they are clearly using it to try and sell copies right this very moment.

Unethical as it gets.

I respect CDPR, maybe that video has been looping for a year or more and nobody has bothered to take it down. I'd rather believe that than believe that one of my favorite developers when it comes to community relationship is being purposely deceptive.
 
S

Sid

Member
Acinixys said:
Dev makes a game look good using proven techniques 2-3 years before it releases

People get butt blasted that said game isnt EXACTLY THE SAME as 24 month old footage

More at 11

facepalm.gif
Click to expand...
The 2013 trailer literally says 'In game footage',what do you think that means?
 
W

Wreav

Banned
Sid said:
The 2013 trailer literally says 'In game footage',what do you think that means?
Click to expand...
That it was in game footage of a game halfway through development. Surely you get the implications of such a thing.

Everyone in this thread basing their purchasing decisions on 2 year old footage and not launch impressions needs to get right with Jesus.
 
S

Skyzard

Banned
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