B+W/1.21 High Resolution Texture Patch/DLC for PC Users, please!

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B+W/1.21 High Resolution Texture Patch/DLC for PC Users, please!

I have played the Witcher series from the beginning. I have played the first, second, and third Witcher installments through each of them several times. I proselytized for each and every installment of the series, and continue to give it my highest praise. When Witcher 3 came out, my current PC could barely run it, so I upgraded. I went from using a Radeon 5770 to an Nvidia GTX 960 GPU. The Nvidia card did not have any trouble playing on high settings, and the world was beautifully rendered. There was the occasional "popping-in" issue, where NPCs would just materialize right in front of you. When I upgraded my monitor, the game looked even better, so I swapped out the Nvidia for an AMD R9 390. The R9 390 renders textures with 93% more detail than the GTX 960 (not sure how they arrive at that number, I am quoting the third party GPU benchmark website i used to shop for it). Geeze, what a difference! After all that, the detail in the game was absolutely vibrant, immersive, and almost surreal. Geralt's face was incredibly rendered, the NPCs were detailed even from far away, and the environments more stunning than ever. With the 390 there was no stuttering, "popping-in," or any other graphical issue. I started playing the game at 1440 resolution, and could do so without a hitch. Magnificent! This was the best game I had ever seen, and being a huge fan of the series for 10 years it was like having Christmas every day to play it.

So, why does B+W/1.21 make it seem like I have jumped back to using that bargain Nvidia card? This is particularly irritating since I upgraded my PC to enthusiast grade to get get the full immersion of the Witcher experience. Much of the detail is gone. Geralt looks cartoonish and the grit and viscera I could feel in the 1.12 version of the game is gone. NPCs in the background look like old school Kings Quest participants, and Vivaldi looks like a 100 years younger, and also blocky and cartoonish. Several layers of detail are missing from the game. It is graphically flat. Many on here are calling it plastic, and complaining about this.

As I perceive it, the "graphics upgrades" of B+W/1.21 shift from texture-based rendering to effects-based rendering. Lighting and chromatic aberration are used to substitute for actual detail, like the yellow filter over all of Toussaint. While I find the use of these effects visually artistic in Blood and Wine, they cannot replace actual detail. If I go to a to a strip club and the dancer performs under red light to hide the pimples on her butt, she still has pimples on her butt. Similarly, a cartoonish image is still cartoonish when these effects are applied. Why these effects were applied throughout the whole of the game is beyond me. My thinking is it must be some sort of bug, or conflict between the two different rendering architectures. I notice a setting or two in the game is completely broken.

I can understand why for many people, the graphics are an upgrade. It was too much for a lot of systems out there. More efficiency is probably for most people some sort of enhancement, especially if they have a GPU that works more efficiently substituting effects for actual detail. However, it is clear to me, from my perspective, that these people should have just upgraded their hardware. Or be glad with the Witcher 3 they had, since these games have always tested the limitations of hardware.... remember? Like the first Witcher and Witcher II? Both took ages to load on the machine I had, but it did not make me love them any less.

I do not understand why there is an image of an Xbox controller in my UI. It makes me think these changes were made to increase playability or maybe even decrease that terrible load time on an Xbox. Well, I only have one thought on that: if Microsoft releases a platform with a fourth-generation-obsolete-at-launch Jaguar chipset, that is Microsoft's problem, not CDProjekt Red's. The Xbox could barely handle the game, and it didn't look nearly as good as it did on PC. Similarly, as a consumer, if I was happy with an Xbox grade experience I would have bought one. If you own an Xbox, please accept the fact that you will game at 720p. If you want to be upset with someone, call Microsoft, or just buy a PC.

The people who complain about W3's original graphics are wanting something for nothing. What CDPR had accomplished technically was beyond the capability of all but higher end machines, and the latest DLC is a clear and convincing indicator that there is no substitute for actual hardware. The changes of 1.21/B+W are actually inferior to your previous product.


Please release a fix for this, either in an upcoming patch or DLC. Witcher began as an enthusiast's game, please do not alienate the enthusiasts. The game really does appear unacceptable, and is a serious departure from the standard CDPR has set.

Thank you!
 
A long winded rant with a lot of assumptions there.

Patch 1.21 has NO "visual upgrades" for the base game or Hearts of Stone. The only thing that's changed for the base game in terms of graphics is the water shader and a few other minor things like storm lightning(I think?). The visual upgrades being talked about is ONLY the Toussaint region itself, containing things such as better foliage than the base game, better looking pavements and buildings etc. The base game is not affected.

I think you might be affected by a bug recently which makes the game stuck on low settings.
 
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Yeah, I guess this post also took into account that some people on here are wanting to make the whole game look like Toussaint. I am saying please do not do this, because I upgraded my entire system for this game. Also, there is an obvious loss of detail across the game. There are tons of posts on that, so I am not imagining it. I had the user.settings file issue so I fixed that, but there is still something not right. Maybe there is a bug or a broken setting. Maybe I would not notice if I was still using the 960, but fact is, I do notice. This game used to look wickedly good and now there is some issue, so something is wrong somewhere.
 
Any screenshots? It's hard to say what you might be experiencing without them. I have noticed no visual issues in the base game post-patch and I'm running almost full ultra since the beginning.
 
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like I said In another thread some things look a little lower res now even though i'm playing on the same settings and same pc. I don't know if it's just me or they did something but I never noticed npc armor and clothing before being that low res.

also if they changed they changed the texture of the water then they need to switch it back because it now has more color banding/gradients and never noticed that before unless I was underwater, now it's on the surface of the water. like I said I've changed nothing, same settings and pc. plus it was already a problem in the sky and they haven't fixed that now they made the water worse?
 
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Crom's Balls, I figured it out. The setting "sharpening" in postprocessing, not relevant to texture quality in 1.12 build, is now critical to graphics quality. Without it I was missing facial, clothing, road and vegetation detail. Same exact settings, completely different result. I am happy now, except for the fact I played 15 hours of the expansion with crappy graphics, lol. And I could have spared myself writing that long ass post about how disappointed i was. I suspect there are others on here pissed about playing with muddy textures. Well, this seems to have fixed it for me. Things still do look a little different. Are these setting changes detailed somewhere?

---------- Updated at 06:44 PM ----------

While we are at it, how do i get rid of these sharp edges to everything? That was what the setting "Sharpening" used to control. To me, they look unnatural and contribute to an artificial feel, that is why I had that setting off. How can I change this?
 
Crom's Balls, I figured it out. The setting "sharpening" in postprocessing, not relevant to texture quality in 1.12 build, is now critical to graphics quality. Without it I was missing facial, clothing, road and vegetation detail. Same exact settings, completely different result. I am happy now, except for the fact I played 15 hours of the expansion with crappy graphics, lol. And I could have spared myself writing that long ass post about how disappointed i was. I suspect there are others on here pissed about playing with muddy textures. Well, this seems to have fixed it for me. Things still do look a little different. Are these setting changes detailed somewhere?

---------- Updated at 06:44 PM ----------

While we are at it, how do i get rid of these sharp edges to everything? That was what the setting "Sharpening" used to control. To me, they look unnatural and contribute to an artificial feel, that is why I had that setting off. How can I change this?


seriously? I hated how everything became sharper with that setting I like things smoothed out.
the jagged edges? the anti-aliasing for this game is horrible to be brutally honest. wish they could add more of it because it really pulls me out of this game and distracting and is a shame because the graphics are so nice to look at.
 
Yes, I like my edges looking natural. What the hell happened and why do they look so unnatural in B+W? And why is texture detail now tied to the sharpening postprocessing effect, instead of, well, texture detail, which I had on ULTRA to begin with? I agree with you, the edges are distracting. I am pretty happy to have texture detail back, but if I could get rid of those edges, which were not present in build 1.12, I would be pleased as pie. Blackberry pie, with ice cream, even. Those edges are just an eyesore.
 
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