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[Dirk Benedict]

Playing on Death March. Shit is so good. Everything is so crisp and sharp.. LOVE it.
Everything is maxed out, I have DOF and the like and CA OFF! and Fuck Motion Blur, too. RT Off, running this locked 4k/60fps, no DLSS. Everything is good.

Grinding for Red Mutagens, atm. God Speed, Strong Folk.

 

[BadBurger]

I forgot how much investigating a case and properly prepping for the encounter with the monster makes one feel like Batman. I am having so much fun keeping it to small sessions - just an hour or so at a time, or one mission a night, whichever comes first.

---

Tried it on PC, DX11 from the GOG launcher (I got this game free with my old GTX 670 back in 2015. Those were the days..... Anyways my specs:

11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-11900KF @ 3.50GHz, 3504 Mhz, 8 Core(s), 16 Logical Processor(s)
32GB RAM @ 3200 MHz
RTX 3080 10GB
SAMSUNG 990 PRO SSD 1TB PCIe 4.0 M.2 - 7450 MB/s read, 6900 MB/s write
ASUS ROG Swift PG32UQ 32" 4K HDR 144Hz DSC HDMI 2.1 Gaming Monitor, UHD (3840 x 2160), IPS, 1ms, G-SYNC enabled
Windows 10

Ultra RT, Nvidia Hair Works = Geralt, FSR = balanced, 120 FPS cap, 3840x2160: FPS hovered in the mid to high 40's, occasionally hit the low 50's, was never stable FPS wise, and was extremely choppy when moving the camera

Ultra RT, Nvidia Hair Works = off, FSR = balanced, 120 FPS cap, 2560x1440: FPS was consistently in the high 60's and sometimes the low 70's. No choppiness when moving the camera, FPS was a tiny bit more stable even when lots of enemies were on screen

Overall, doesn't look as good as it should to have such low and unstable framerates IMO. It's not like my rig is dated. It's just a few upgrades away from being bleeding edge.

PC version needs some work, I'll stick to the PS5 version for now. It is far, far more stable and doesn't even look much worse in comparison.

 

[Flyingpanther]

I get some weird shadow flickering on the ps5 in rt mode. Anyone else experience this? I don't have it in performance mode.

 

[TonyK]

I get some weird shadow flickering on the ps5 in rt mode. Anyone else experience this? I don't have it in performance mode.

Same here. But at least doesn't occur too often.

 

[Flyingpanther]

I

Same here. But at least doesn't occur too often.

Only played the intro, there it was pretty obvious. It gets better later on? Then i will stay in rt mode

 

[Flabagast]

New patch, adding notably all changes from the next gen edition to the switch

 

[JohnnyFootball]

Badly needed a new patch. Game has been a crash fest for me on PS5 as of late.

 

[Deleted member 848825]

Badly needed a new patch. Game has been a crash fest for me on PS5 as of late.

I was lucky and didnt have any on PS5 during the main quest. But stopped just before 4.02.

I've just tested this new 4.04 and performance is further increased over 4.02. To the point where by I dont see the need for VRR anymore on PS5. Haven't tested yet on XSX, but you'd hope its improved there too. I tested on pS5 around Novigrad at night and day time and also Crookback bog and it was locked 60fps aside from some very occasional area transition stutter in the bog area. So from a performance increase and only looking at the performance mode. This patch appears to be great.

The HDR calibration addition is welcomed. But for me it didn't appear to add a whole lot more to highlights etc. i.e its not massively improved the overall HDR presentation. But I likely need to play with it more.

 

[Flabagast]

I was lucky and didnt have any on PS5 during the main quest. But stopped just before 4.02.

I've just tested this new 4.04 and performance is further increased over 4.02. To the point where by I dont see the need for VRR anymore on PS5. Haven't tested yet on XSX, but you'd hope its improved there too. I tested on pS5 around Novigrad at night and day time and also Crookback bog and it was locked 60fps aside from some very occasional area transition stutter in the bog area. So from a performance increase and only looking at the performance mode. This patch appears to be great.

The HDR calibration addition is welcomed. But for me it didn't appear to add a whole lot more to highlights etc. i.e its not massively improved the overall HDR presentation. But I likely need to play with it more.

Have you tested the RT mode as well ?

 

[Deleted member 848825]

Have you tested the RT mode as well ?

Sorry no. And I never touched it previously, so unfortunately I wouldn't be able to give you any impressions to changes. 60fps only for me.

 

[Gorgon]

Badly needed a new patch. Game has been a crash fest for me on PS5 as of late.

Me too. Have been replaying the game in the last few weeks, clocked in about 60 hours. I've been doing several hours-long sessions and the game has crashed about 50% of the time (about once every 6-8 hours of gameplay). This is in performance mode on PS5.

Also noticed that the Blood & Wine expansion was patched too today. Dunno what the changes are.

 

[SkyHighTrees]

Happy to say they have finally fixed the disappearing-reappearing grass bug on the PS5 version. Very unknown bug, most people never noticed it, but CDPR did. I forwarded a video on their support website, maybe they've seen it or they already knew.

Game looks amazing now, best patch for consoles and makes the game run like it should - 8 months after release.

In this day and age, only a fool buys games at launch

 

[Flabagast]

Happy to say they have finally fixed the disappearing-reappearing grass bug on the PS5 version. Very unknown bug, most people never noticed it, but CDPR did. I forwarded a video on their support website, maybe they've seen it or they already knew.

Game looks amazing now, best patch for consoles and makes the game run like it should - 8 months after release.

In this day and age, only a fool buys games at launch

Any feedback on RT mode ?

 

[Fools idol]

Chrsit on a motorbike that patch improved performance dramatically, game looks and runs fantastic.

 

[Justin9mm]

Chrsit on a motorbike that patch improved performance dramatically, game looks and runs fantastic.

What platform you playing on?

 

[knguyen]

In this day and age, only a fool buys games at launch

Starfield at launch is going to be epic. There'll be so much melt down.

 

[Wunray]

I'm trying hdr out on pc and idk if it's working? It says it added calibration but it doesn't seem to be doing anything.

 

[spons]

Starfield at launch is going to be epic. There'll be so much melt down.

Especially the edition with which you can play 5 days early for one hundred US dollars. Thanks for beta testing, nerds. I'll just download the game pass version and the three day 1 patches and hotfixes it has received by then.

 

[Fools idol]

What platform you playing on?

Ps5

 

[kubricks]

What they are still patching the Switch version? Amazing.

 

[Fools idol]

it still blows my mind that the same company made this and Cyberpunk 2077. The difference in polish and quality is night and day.

 

[Red5]

it still blows my mind that the same company made this and Cyberpunk 2077. The difference in polish and quality is night and day.

I guess it's because Witcher 3 is a third iteration of a concept they're very familiar and comfortable with, CP2077 was a new concept for them, newsetting with a new direction, a RPG/FPS hybrid with an open world, Deus Ex meets GTA. Witcher 1 was janky as hell when it was released too.

 

[Deleted member 848825]

Chrsit on a motorbike that patch improved performance dramatically, game looks and runs fantastic.

From my brief time testing, I'm sure the DRS is able to hit higher resolution too due to the better performance. Great patch.

 

[RJMacready73]

Chrsit on a motorbike that patch improved performance dramatically, game looks and runs fantastic.

really? is there that much difference to the perf mode on the previous next gen patch

 

[Fools idol]

really? is there that much difference to the perf mode on the previous next gen patch

yes, especially in the swmpy areas and heavy weather. Popin and grass popin especially improved.

 

[RJMacready73]

yes, especially in the swmpy areas and heavy weather. Popin and grass popin especially improved.

did they improve the RT mode? i loved the look of the RT mode but it ran like shit so opted to finish the game on Perf mode

 

[JohnnyFootball]

After puitting a lot of time into the PC version here is the conclusion:
1. Ray tracing is just not stable enough to justify using. I was playing on my 4090 with ray ytracing to max with DLSS and frame generation and I would get crashes far too often. Things like painting my witcher armor would cause the game to crash. Very obvious light pop in in the night areas.

I had to turn off Frame Generation and ray tracing and the game seems to be stable.

 

[JohnnyFootball]

So I finished my playthrough and here are my thoughts. Overall the game gets a 10/10 for me, but it's still not perfect. I alternated between PS5 and PC. I did ALL of the sidequests, got all the Witcher 3 and earned a platinum trophy and also earned all the GOG achievements (not that anyone cares about those). This is a very underrated feature and I hope cross platform play becomes a thing. I went to my moms house, played Witcher 3 on my laptop, picked it up again on PS5 when I wanted to be in my living room and played it at max settings on my main 4090/7800X3D PC at 4K/120. That sort of platform cross play needs to become gold standard. Plus, it enabled me to put some time saving cheats and carry those cheats over to PS5!

The great:
1. I absolutely LOVED the QoL improvements, such as decreasing the amount of skill points needed to really make a build.
2. The oil autoapply is the single best QoL improvement EVER. I am surprised that CDPR put this one in, since reading the Beastiary's and figuring out the right potion to use was part of the game. Auto-applying oils took that away. Basically it was a free buff, if you had the oils in your inventory.
3. Allowing the right trigger to use signs was a god send of an amazing feature that took me a while to get used to, but it was so damn nice not having to switch between signs. Nobody should play without that feature.
4. Turning the RS into the run was nice as well.
5. They tweaked some of the Runewrights, which I can't say I took advantage of.
6. The new quest for the new Witcher gear was great and pretty damn messed up.

Mixed feelings:
1. They nerfed Euphoria which was a build that decimated anything if you used the right decoctions. It was still formidable, but it did allow me to try out other builds and I ended up settling on the Wolf Gear/ Conductors of Magic, where Igni just absolutely melted every single thing in the game. So it wasn't all bad.

The disappointments:
1. No real new content that fixed issues in the previous game. I was and many others were hoping (but not realistically expecting) that they would go back and restore parts of the Catrionic plague with Iorveth plotline. It didn't have to be big, but its a huge plothole for that character to be so brazingly cast aside.
2. Fixed the Reason of State where you have to kill Djistra. I didn't think much of it before, but the writing for that portion of the game is so absolutely god awful. They could have kept everything the same, while it would still have been "bad" it wouldn't have required characters like Djistra doing something so stupidly out of character.
3. Would have been nice to have killed that final crone and retrieved Vesamirs medallion.
4. On a personal note, I would have liked them to have added a few more mutagen slots.



Technical Issues:
1. The game crashes quite a bit. It happens on PC and PS5, suggesting the issue is game related. Its many times worse when you turn RTX and Frame Generation (FG) on. One thing that was gauranteed to crash the game was when I tried dye multiple parts of witcher clothing at once on PC. Never tried it on PS5 or with RT off. I should have. Be warned, the game will crash from time to time. When it crashed it would always crash before an autosave and/or loading a new area or dying witcher gear in a new color. I can't recall a time it froze up in a random place.

2. Ray tracing causes all sorts of weird pop-in issues and weird random lighting of areas. It could be pretty distracting at times.

Plot hole confusion:
1. For as powerful as the Wild Hunt is, I never understood how they didn't quickly regroup and attack Kaer Morhen if they can freely move between time and space. Ciri was no longer hiding at that point. What stopped them from attacking Novigrad, Skellige during the final preparations and such?
2. The Wild Hunt left and awful lot of time for Geralt and his crew to fortify their positions after she escaped from the Isle of Mists. It struck me as a odd that they didn't immediately follow and try to get the jump on Ciri. I feel like I missed something here that could have at least partially explained this.