http://www.thewitcher.com/forum/index.php?topic=17503.0 ? try all the fixesscottgw said:
Open letter to the designers, marketers and players of The Witcher.After one week of purchasing the game (enhanced version) I was still unable to get it to play reliably. I emailed Atari and still have not gotten a reply. I perused the forum and found King Faux's solution to the Min Reqs problem, but still was getting frequent crashes (every 20 min or so) some of which occured during saving, and many crashes that wiped out previous saves. What I did see in the forum were many unhappy players (many of whom felt the need to sign a petition of complaint) who were not getting their problems addressed.I am willing to support the designers of this game for several reasons. First, I have worked alongside and made friends with a few people from Poland and feel a connection because of our two countries history. Two, the potential for this game is HUGE! I haven't seen as good a game since Baldur's Gate 2. It seems the PC game market is shrinking against the competition of XBox, etc. Three, I prefer this genre of game compared to the many other types out there.However, in light of the horrible level of customer service, I returned the game to the retailer I purchased it from, and I encourage others to do the same if they feel as I do. Had I seen one message from the Company saying something to the effect of "Gee guys, sorry for all the bugs, we are working on it and hang with us a little bit longer", I probably would not have returned the product. Instead, what I see are a lot of people being apparently completely ignored by a Company who I assume doesn't give a damn.This is no way to do business, especially in a specialized market, especially if you are trying to increase marketshare. I have told others that I am willing to spend $100 for a game equivalent or better than Baldur's Gate 2. If I play it one time through it works out to be a dollar per hour of entertainment; thats cheaper than going to the movie theater!If in the future I see another Witcher product, or any Atari product, there is no chance that I will purchase it without checking first with other people who have purchased and played it. Thanks for listening.
maybe you should talk to ATARI to remove your key from your profile, since you no longer have the game10Qcountyseat said:
This is exactly the kind of response that I am talking about. Any company that wants to succeed has to care (or at least appear to care) about its customers or its customer base.
This long post is in response to the query "Wat?"This reminds me a bit of the carnival or fair. Here I am walking around with money burning in my pocket looking at all the game booths. The one where you throw a ping-pong ball into the gold fish bowl appeals to me; how hard can it be I say to myself. So I pay the quarter and throw my ball and come to find out that the ball has to exactly fit into the top of the tiny goldfish bowl or else it bounces completely away. Once I realize how impossible it will be to get a goldfish, I stop playing. I look at the booth attendant and he shrugs his shoulders as if to say "thats the game, mister, what did you expect" and then I shrug my shoulders and think "I should have known there was a catch." There is a reason why this type of doing business is restricted to flea markets and carnivals.The customer-base can be defined as anyone who is a potential customer to your product. For a computer game, anyone who has a computer and an interest in games is a potential customer. A successful business endeavors to attract and keep customers by researching what their customer-base needs, and then fulfilling those needs. Ideally, a business will sell multiple titles to the same customer over a long period of time. The portion of the total customer-base that a company wants to target is a strategic decision. Target too narrowly and you miss out on potential customers. Target too broadly and you may not be able to adequately satisfy all those varied needs. There is nothing wrong with a business targeting a very small subset of the overall market, but you do have to be clear about it to yourselves and to the market. For example, you can create a game targeting 16 year olds, who have the skills to do their own programming and who have no problem paying a couple hundred bucks for the latest video card. Again, nothing wrong with this approach, but it is obviously a very limited market, and you have to make it clear to those potential buyers out there what is expected of them. If I am a potential buyer, but not sixteen years old, not a computer programmer and do not have the latest video card, I won't purchase the game. Note: I wouldn't list those restrictions in fine print.When I buy or rent a video, I expect to be able to pop it into the machine and start watching. I don't expect to have to take apart my VCR and solder in fixes to the circuit boards to watch a freakin movie. My personal experience with computer games has been similar; I pop it in and start playing. I have played maybe 40 titles over the years. A game that cannot be popped in and played is called a BETA. I have played BETA versions before. Its not quite as fun, but if I like the game, I put up with it because my expectations are much lower (I expect it not to work perfectly). Trying to pass off a BETA as a regular product is not a good business practice. It is a slap in the face to the customer and hurts that goal of a long-term relationship mentioned earlier.Any business makes mistakes along the way. How that business reacts to these mistakes determines their long-term viability.A business also needs to have control over the customer experience at all points, including the forum. If a customer has a bad experience with the distributor, with the receptionist, with the forum moderator, etc it has a negative effect on the business relationship. Successful businesses make their employees aware of this fact. Don't be disapointed, but that is why the cute bank teller is always so happy to see you. Her and her boss understand that keeping you happy keeps your money in their bank.
there is nothing to talk since you already gave your game away, right?did you have problems that we *the unnofficial support* team could of helped you with? did you post here your problem? > The videocard is Intel G965 Express and has 128 Mb Memory as needed according to minimum requirementsthe video card is NOT enough, even if the memory size isdo read the game system requirements before making a purchasing decisionreading the box or here: http://www.thewitcher.com/community/en/game/system_requirements.htmlcountyseat said:
from the README.RTF
do read: http://witcher.wikia.com/wiki/Technical_information#Video_Card_ratings_from_The_Witcher_forum
since you are no longer the one that has the game, it's only fair to free the key linked to your account, so that a future buyer can register the key as his owncountyseat said:
Ah, finally a thorough response. Read: now I am being treated like a valuable customer.I admit I did not read the requirements as carefully as I should have. It is unusual (at least in my experience) to have requirements that are so unbalanced. Specifically, the video card requirements seem extreme compared to the other requirements. I have never seen unbalanced requirements like this in the past. Maybe that is the direction PC games are going; maybe The Witcher is somewhat unique. As stated earlier, I wouldn't hide this in fine print since it is obviously creating a problem for many players evidenced in the forum. Read: An opportunity for the company to fix a mistake.In spite of that, the excellent workaround provided by Lord Faux satisfied the Min Reqs restriction and enabled me to play the game.The other problems I had with the game: crashing, not saving and improperly linked quests; I don't suspect have anything to do with the video card although I could be wrong about this (remember, like most of your customer base I am not an expert in software nor hardware).As to why I don't write Atari about freeing up my account:One, is I am not done yet. I am holding on to a thin thread of hope that this company will give me satisfaction. Read: Never give up on a potential customer.Two, by me maintaining an account I don't think I am restricting anyone else from having one. I was able to join this forum even without keying in the reg code (don't know how that happened; it never asked). Three, Atari hasn't gotten back to me about my intial request for help. I am not going to waste my time writing a second message if they are not willing to spend their time on my first message. Read: if you are going to offer a below average quality product, you darn well better reinforce it with above average level of customer service.I would also agree with you that there may not be much more to be said since I am no longer an owner of the game. All I ask is that I be considered a valuable potential customer, that I be made aware of any solutions that have been instated or that are on the way to being instated, or alternatively, told that I just don't fit the profile of the target customer and that I should look for another booth.Finally, I would like to thank you for not automatically booting me from the forum. I deliberately tried to hide these comments in a section that many players won't even be clicking on. I am not looking to punish or harass anyone in any manner. Although the negative tone of my comments may influence other customers, it is also provides an opportunity for the company to demonstrate their willingness to make a disatisfied customer happy. Once we are finished with this dialog (we might be done already) I probably will only check the forum peridically to see what improvements are being made.
I agrre with you in your frustration as far as the bugs go, but i don't think that the devs or Atari are at all monitoring this forum. The people running this forum seem to be benevolant voulonteers trying to make the game experience better for it's players, but the real problrm is that we can't get to the ears of the devs. I develop educational software for a living, and I know as a dev if i get even 1 complaint or bug report, I make it my duty to try to fix it up and get the customer to keep his/her confidence in my product. This is a reality for indie devs, but unfortunately, large developpers and distributors don't really care after the product is out the door and sold. Returning software is not a practice which stores permit here in Canada, and so when you bought it, you have to keep it, or trade it in for 10% of it's value! They still got their money, and you get the frustration of having been screwed. What are you gonna do? That's the way it is. Chalk it up as a bad investment, and either keep it in hope of an timely update, or trade it in and avoid that company in the future.I'm going to hang on to mine a lottle while longer, but I think that in about 2 weeks, it'll be back at EB games if no sign of life is given by the devs. Too bad, it looks like a ton of work went into it's production, but too little into the playtesting. But still, if it weren't for the help I got from people on this forum, I would have returned it last week! Thank God for strangers willing to share their knowledge freely to help others, even without anything to gain except for a "thank-you".
what other recent (less than 2 years old) game have you played with such a *fine* video card?countyseat said:
the thing with system requirements it's like this: the game was not tested and will not be supported to run on anything lower than that, by purchasing the product you agree that if you try to run it on anything lower than that you are on your own, you will not have any official support, meaning, if it works, great, if not they are not at fault and they can not help you.Hi allI just bought this game, the enhanced version and Installed it. So I get this error: Insufficient Privileges, must be administrator when running this game for the first time. So... I tried everything I can think of. I have XP service pack 3 and it cant be the harware because my pc is pretty good. (Core2Duo 3ghz - 2gig ram - Gforce8 and so forth) I did the: Run file as administrator, changed/made new accounts, logged in with the standard administrator account as well. but no luck. Then I took the game to work, installed it on XP (i think its sevice pack 2) and then I didnt get that same error and the game loads. These specs are P4 3ghz - 1 gig ram - Gforce fx 5600 So I dont know if its my XP service pack 3 or what. If I missed something, sorry. Now busy installing on Vista to see what happens. any advice?
Your point is taken. I have mostly been playing online games the last year or so (Runescape, Travian) which don't require high-level video cards. I would agree that if my problems are caused by my having a video card below the minimum requirements listed on the box, then I should be on my own.However, what does the video card have to do with quests not being in the proper order?And, what does the video card have to do with game not saving, and continuous crashing?If I believed you, went out and purchased the most current video card, are you claiming that the quests would now work properly and the game would save properly and I would get minimal crashing? What kind of guarantee are you willing to offer with those statements?
do provide some detailscountyseat said:
did you use 3DAnalyzer to make the game work? since you are using a video card that is not up to the job you will get errorscountyseat said:
i have a nVidia 8600GT card ( i owned a 7600GS last year when the game was released ) and it works fine, it's not only the video card that is importantcountyseat said:
I am very encouraged by your comments that the nVidia 8600T card can potentially solve all or most of my problems, but I think I will wait six months or so and see if things improve.The quest problem I ran into was related to the dice, but I can't remember the sequence so unfortunately there is not much we can do about it here. If 95% of the quests work as they are supposed to, I can live with a few not working quite right.I think we have accomplished about all we can up to this point. I may seek you out in the future to see what updates or improvements have been made, and in the mean time I will be looking at Video card prices.Thanks for your help. I really hope that you guys are successful and looking forward to more titles.I know it must be very tedious seeing the same complaints over and over. I might suggest you reorganizing the Technical Help section so that the first thing that people read have to do with PC Wizard, and then a series of FAQs relating to each problem type. It is a bit disorienting for new forum users to not know where to go first and thinking they might have to sort through 58 pages of forum comments to find the ones relating to their problem.Cheers,
since nobody reads the stickies and just starts his/her own problem thread that's a moot pointcountyseat said:
I'm haveing a error whin trying to start the game saying that i dont not meet the minium requirements on my 64bit-32 bit OS vista computer but i put in my wifes cumpter and and her computer dose not have the Prossier power of ram and vidoe power my computer dose. My Compter runs cyciles around hers. I have a 2 AMD 2X duo core 4000+ prossciers 2 gigs of ram and a 6600 nivdai 512mbs vidoe card and a realtek sound card, 300 gig hard drive , my wifes computer has 1 gig of ram a 5200 nivdia 512 video card a ceavtive sound card a AMD Athonle 3000+ porcs and a 80gig hard drive and XP home and it runs it but slow can you tell me why my system wont run it whin i know i have more the she dose and to run it plz and how to fix it
read the FAQ: http://www.thewitcher.com/forum/index.php?topic=17503.0PhoenixOmega said:
I still got the Map corruption (crashes game) bug, I've tried everything suggested in the faq related to Vista crashing.UAC Quiet, Run as admin, Granted all privileges, Running in XP SP2 compatibility mode, Run in 640 x 480 screen resolution checked, Disable visual themes checked, Disable desktop composition checked, Auto Save turned OFF.
Hi Guys,I had so many Problems that im givin up now. I had original Witcher and then tried to upgrade 2 enhanced edition. Massive issue with register..tried it all! So I said sod it and bought special edition from shop BTW really nice. Installed and guess wot crashes again! Tried all the usual trick spent hours and hours on forums and got nowhere. It is really annoyin as I have read all the books and really wanted to game this. I dont understand why developers actually produce a fix for Vista users and mainly make it stable. When I game it takes about 5 min till I get the typical Appcrash witcher.exe tried all (winxp, and resolutions in compatibility) You sound like guys who actually know somethin (compare to the others....Quote one of them " what mouse are you usin?" that one made me laugh ) Is there something you could recommend part from usual follow this...and get nowhere My specsIntel Wolfdale dual coe 3.0GhzKingston 4GB on 1066MhzGeforce 9800GTX+Asus MoboOC Vista premium SP1I know that there is nothing with my system in general as Im runing anything I want on highest resolution with no Issues. Also there is no temp problems as CPU on 18C Mobo 28C and GPU 34C in Idle and around 60C in full.( yeah I spent a lot on cooling) Could you help me? is there any main reason why this game doesnt run(part from known fact that it has a loads of bugs) properly ?I appreciate any help guys.
) Is there something you could recommend part from usual follow this...and get nowhere My specsIntel Wolfdale dual coe 3.0GhzKingston 4GB on 1066MhzGeforce 9800GTX+Asus MoboOC Vista premium SP1I know that there is nothing with my system in general as Im runing anything I want on highest resolution with no Issues. Also there is no temp problems as CPU on 18C Mobo 28C and GPU 34C in Idle and around 60C in full.( yeah I spent a lot on cooling) Could you help me? is there any main reason why this game doesnt run(part from known fact that it has a loads of bugs) properly ?I appreciate any help guys.