I'm sorry, but at THIS stage, I have become convinced that this " 'Next-Gen' Update" is actually an intentional SABOTAGE of The Witcher 3... :/

[A.P.P.]

...

I will resist to the maximum possible extent my desire to ramble at length, so I'll try to get right to the point...
...even though I fully realize that some may still interpret this oncoming post as being TOO long.

Regardless of that, I would kindly ask you to DO read until THE END,
and save your replies until you've made sure that you've fully understood and comprehended ALL the information presented here.

This is NOT an "I need advice!" or "Help me!" type of post...


Also, a NOTE of clarification to avoid any potential confusion or misinterpretation:
This post does not deal AT ALL with ANY of the DX12-related introductions to the game such as Ray-Tracing, DLSS, etc.
...
I am playing the game only through the DX11 .exe file.
Thus, all my complaints, criticisms, observations, etc.,
are ENTIRELY UNrelated to any graphical-side introductions to the game.

Also, I am NOT using ANY MODS.


========


With all that said and done... let's get to it, shall we?


You have before you here a Hardcore fan of The Witcher since 2007 !!


Proud possessor of not only the games, in their original, hard-copy form, but the books as well.
(...in a language translation dating from before they were ever even planned to get an English one.)


Throughout my PC gaming career, twice I have made costly (...-ish) upgrades to my machine,
specifically for the purposes of being enabled to adequately play the then-latest instalment of a Witcher game.
Just for THAT, and nothing else. Talk about dedication here !!
(Note the keyword "adequately" here. NOT "exceptionally well", not even "completely smoothly".)

For the record, these two occasions were:
1) In 2007, for The Witcher's release, when I bought a GFX card that back then was in the top 5 in the current market.
2) In 2015, for TW3's release, when I bought a card that back then was in the top 15 by performance in the contemporary market.

(Needless to say,
these two major modifications to my PC were NOT the only ones throughout the years.
I've made many others related to Display, Memory, Storage, PSU's, and CPUs,
NOT all of which were specifically and directly tailored to The Witcher.)


---


In case you are misinterpreting me here, let me clarify:
This is NOT meant as "a brag" ;
On the contrary -- in NO case have I EVER bought anything that was in the really-HIGH-end range of performance and price.
All this I've elaborated only with ONE aim:
To prove that at certain times in my life, getting The Witcher X to work adequately was my #1 top priority for my PC config.

And, in ALL of these cases,
the performance increase of my machine was sufficient to provide an adequate playing experience of the current Witcher game!


...


Now, to be perfectly frank,
I was never the type of gamer to demand maximum possible performance on the maximum graphics settings.

Me?
Just give me smooth enough performance on mid to mid-high settings,
and I'll be GLAD to enjoy The Witcher 3 and taking part in this immense & thoroughly immersive experience, story, and gameplay!

Thus, even though I was initially only experiencing The Witcher 3 at mid-high settings,
my performance was smooth enough for me to not give A DAMN that I was "missing out" on an even better graphics appearance.

Hell, if I'm to be perfectly honest... I was expecting this game so much, and wanting to get into it so eagerly and quickly --
-- I would have fully tolerated even having to play with everything on LOW if needed be !!!

I was simply too busy to enjoy THE HELL outta the game to even care about it NOT looking the best way possible!

...

.......


That is...


...UNTIL THIS " 'NEXT-GEN' UPDATE" dropped...


Booooooy, oh BOY !!! ...


...


Before I get into my rant proper, first things first:

It's true that my gfx card is the same since 2015.

But .. does it even matter?

If every diagnostic I've performed throughout the years,
both software-side and hardware-side, on ALL my hardware components, has demonstrated (nearly) excellent results,
and if the card was serving me MORE than well enough back when W3 first released,
AND if EVERY other game I've been enjoying since 2015, including such that released AFTER w3, have performed satisfyingly,
AND if I have upgraded multiple OTHER parameters of my hardware configuration since 2015, and considerably so as well...

...then it really SHOULDN'T matter that I'm still with the same gfx card... ...Right ??? ...


---


Once again let me reiterate a very important point from the beginning of my post, which is crucial to the entire affair here,
in case you missed it or didn't assimilate it completely:


This post does not deal AT ALL with ANY of the DX12-related introductions to the game such as Ray-Tracing, DLSS, etc.
I am playing the game only through the DX11 .exe file.
...
Thus, all my complaints, criticisms, observations, etc.,
are ENTIRELY UNrelated to any graphical-side introductions to the game.



.....



So, to finally get to my point here:


* With a considerably better hardware configuration than in 2015... (see P.S. for details)
* The "Next-Gen" update made The Witcher 3 run considerably WORSE for me...
* ...at actually MUCH LOWER SETTINGS than I was running the game back on my 2015 crappy config
* ...and all this from an update that was actually supposed to IMPROVE the game's performance !!! O_O
* NO MODS WHATSOEVER.

Read ALL that again... CAREFULLY.
Let it sink in.

Need I say anything more? ...

...


Well... actually... there IS more...

You see, initially, I was NOT quick to judge CDPR...
...because I've learned throughout the years, that it is their habit to initially mess things up,
but to still amend them after a while with patches and fixes.

So, my attitude was:
Meh. Just give them a week to issue a quick-fix patch, and all will be well ! (at least with regards to the performance issues...)

...

...Except that... days turned into weeks...
Weeks turned into A MONTH ...
...and there did not seem to even be an acknowledgement on CDPR's side which at least admitted the issues and made promises to rectify them.
(at least I didn't see any??)

Finally, though, an update was announced, and scheduled for February 2.

...

Now we are seeing that the patch didn't really do ANYTHING with regards to performance...

...and, boy... would you believe me if I told you that I could see this coming from the start ??

Reason being that the patch was supposed to take no more than 2 weeks to arrive...
...instead it took almost 2 MONTHS !!! ... :/

So, of course, when it took THAT long, for such an URGENT issue, I just knew: This patch ain't gonna do anything... :/

...

So yeah, once again, the title:


I have become convinced that this " 'Next-Gen' Update"
is actually an intentional SABOTAGE of The Witcher 3... :/



.


P.S. I don't wanna get into too much detail about my system specs, so here's the brief story:

* Was on a very-very crappy low-level Chinese SSD back in 2015. Now I'm on a pretty good nVME.
* Was on win 7 back then. Now Win 10.
* 8 gigs of RAM then. Now 16.
* CPU that actually was BELOW the official "minimum" sys reqs then. (if you can believe that... ! O_O ) ...
* ... vs. CPU tat FAR EXCEEDS the official "recommended" sys reqs now.
* GFX card that then was in the top 15 by performance.
* ^ NOW it OBVIOUSLY is NOT. But still, it exceeds the official "recommended" sys reqs.
* PSU now with about 250 Watts of more power.
* NO MODS WHATSOEVER.

LET ALL THAT SINK IN.

.

 

[John_Russell]

Why would they intentionally sabotage their best game? That doesn't make any sense. If there was any intentional sabotage it came from the Russian developers that originally worked on the update for over a year and handed back to CDPR a game with no real improvements. In hindsight they probably should have just shelved the update until the development on Cyberpunk was done which would have freed up their main game engine developers to work on making the game engine work correctly in DX12.

If you got the game through GOG you can go back to the original 1.32 version and get your original performance back

 

[UteausMuenchen]

If you got the game through GOG you can go back to the original 1.32 version and get your original performance back

I know that is usual recommendation, even from CDPR themselves.
But that is not so easy. Simply because of the changes they made to the gameplay. There are new items, changes in the skills, the skill tree and in the attributes of weapons and gear. These are the things the community discusses, not the old version of the game.
Rollback to 1.32 means to cut Yourself out of all these discussions. It means to accept that You are no longer a fan who knows the game well. Because You don´t. The bad performance splits the fan community in two: those who still can play the game - and those who are stuck with a version nobody wants to play anymore.

It happened to myself: When Next Gen was announced two years ago, a friend of mine and I planned to play parallel through all 3 witcher games. We had a lot of fun experiencing the first two games again at the same time. But when Next Gen finally came he could play it on PS5, while it is still unplayable for me on PC because of permanent stuttering. (And yes, I´m also on DX11) A rollback would not have helped me here. The opportunity to experience this together - as we had looked forward to for 2 years - is gone. Gone forever. Because they ruined the performance of the game on PC.

No, I do not think they did ruin the game on purpose. But I think they knew before the release on 14. 12 that there were bad performance issues and other problems on PC. There was a point in a video they released only a few days before release in which the developers discussed what was new. At one point they touched the topic if required hardware on PC - and they exchanged a view and changed the topic. I remember being worried from that moment on.

And yes, they should have postponed the release. That would have been the only way to avoid this awful mess.

It is time for them to finally learn the difference between "release" and start of "beta test".

 

[A.P.P.]

.

There are two things I wish to specify from my OP, which I had either forgotten to do so back then, or just didn't have the time:

1) I do not use ANY MODS whatsoever. Don't even have mods INSTALLED.

Think that's worthy of mention. It has now been edited in into the OP.

.


2) Regarding this:

.

This is NOT an "I need advice!" or "Help me!" type of post...

.

i did NOT mean to sound arrogant with this statement, so let me clarify:

Given that Computers have been my trade for nearly... 2 decades now, to be frank, I don't think that YOU can contribute anything
to my attempts at resolving my issues, which I haven't already tried myself.

I have applied a temporary mini-solution, while the months pass until CDPR finally fix their broken game,
which involves the nVidia Control Panel's settings.

This gives a minor boost to my performance, which is enough to make it BEARABLE, but still FAR from optimal or desirable.

Given my knowledge and experience, it's both the least AND the most I can do for my game,
while also knowing that NO ONE ELSE can contribute anything to further help me.

.


Lastly, to pay attention to this really weird post:

.

Why would they intentionally sabotage their best game? That doesn't make any sense. If there was any intentional sabotage it came from the Russian developers that originally worked on the update for over a year and handed back to CDPR a game with no real improvements.

.

Mind = blown.

[...]

 

[andrewdilley]

Why would they intentionally sabotage their best game? That doesn't make any sense. If there was any intentional sabotage it came from the Russian developers that originally worked on the update for over a year and handed back to CDPR a game with no real improvements. In hindsight they probably should have just shelved the update until the development on Cyberpunk was done which would have freed up their main game engine developers to work on making the game engine work correctly in DX12.

If you got the game through GOG you can go back to the original 1.32 version and get your original performance back

Um, have you a source for that?

Post automatically merged: Mar 8, 2023

No offence meant, but that's a REALLY HARD post to read And boils down to you feel there is active degradation in the DX11 version.

I've not seen that reflected elsewhere.

Post automatically merged: Mar 8, 2023

i did NOT mean to sound arrogant with this statement, so let me clarify:

Given that Computers have been my trade for nearly... 2 decades now, to be frank, I don't think that YOU can contribute anything
to my attempts at resolving my issues, which I haven't already tried myself.

Well, we've all been around a bit. But that does sound a bit arrogant.

I have applied a temporary mini-solution, while the months pass until CDPR finally fix their broken game,
which involves the nVidia Control Panel's settings.

Do tell.