Petition for the "Enhanced edition" aka Legacy for the ages

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Petition for the "Enhanced edition" aka Legacy for the ages


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We're arguing taste here. For MANY people, STLM 2.1 is not superior in any way to Vanilla. There are as many things I prefer in STLM than things I prefer in Vanilla. DOF, Ambient Occlusion, Dark Areas, Shadows, Colour Balance are all things far inferior in STLM 2.1, for my taste. Fortunately, any of the work accomplished by Essenthy is modular, and can be easily picked and rebuilt from scratch.

Water Reflections and Draw Distances for instance, are far better in STLM. Global Lights, Sun & Moon Balance, Sky, is arguable. All in all, it's a matter of taste, as a being a matter of taste, there are no rights and no wrongs, there is only preference.

No.
STLM addresses a portfolio of aspects, a few of which can be seen as subjected to personal preference, such as colour palette, whereas the rest are of objective nature. For example, who in his right mind would not want better Ambient Occlusion or not long for farther Draw Distance, both of which STLM delivers at a negligible FPS cost? The fact a lone modder managed to deliver objectively superior graphics on these two fronts warrants hope that an in-house team would be able to achieve even grander results at an equally low performance impact or, alternatively, just on beefed-up PCs.

Non released piece of game : Alpha Build - wait & see what you get when it's no longer an Alpha.

That's not the point.
The point is a PC exclusive wagering on bleeding edge graphics managed to collect $100 million from over a million crowdfunders way ahead of its release. This shows the demand exists, irrespective of whether or not the game will end up looking half as nice. CD Projekt would do well to bite into that sizeable market, which they've arguably neglected over platform parity. Moreover, much of the modding drive seems to be oriented towards restoring the visual exuberance flaunted by pre-release materials or simply beefing it up, which serves as additional evidence for the appetite for high-end PC graphics.

But don't you forget that even on PC, the game is very well optimized, but the current engine is not running that well on PC ? I mean, You do need a 980ti to run it Ultra in 1080p, at a decent framerate > 60 fps. Now, go 4K, and you need a SLI or 3 way SLI of those.

So, you're telling me, despite this, PC should have seen an even greedier build, just because we can bring down graphics ? After all, no one could run TW2 in ubersampling mods for a couple of years, and even with modern GFX cards (980ti), TW2 will not necessarily run at 60fps everywhere with Ubersampling.

I'm really not sure, as much as I like sweet GFX, I'm not sure it's smart as a company to spend loads of money improving the Gfx of a game which already value itself as the new Crysis when it was released, just for a few enthusiasts who wouldn't be able to run the game with those new GFX before a few years.

No, not just for a few enthusiasts.
It just so happens there's an overlap, a momentary coincidence of interests between PC hardliners, so to speak, and newcomers. Please note the following quotes, CEO Adam Kiciński speaking:
Apart from the second expansion we have some additional ideas. They should help us animate sales in 2016.
....
The game is selling so well, that we are convinced there are still many people who will buy it if we promote it further.
....
At the moment we're concentrating on The Witcher and don't want to distract users from that product, which we are still monetizing.
....
The Witcher 3 (...) is not a game that broke any sales record.

I'd argue come Q3 2016 anyone who has even a modest interest in RPGs will have already learned about TW3. A year will have passed since release, the game will have gone on sale a number of times, two additional marketing campaigns related to the expansions will have gone by. Therefore, it will be safe to assume that anyone who hasn't bought it is either unmoved by the PR or simply uninterested altogether. That means the push for higher sales Kiciński spoke about must necessarily concentrate on newcomers, casuals, drive-by gamers, whose heads will only turn at the sight of exceptional graphics by post-E3 2016 standards, something that in its current state, good as it is, TW3 can't aspire to deliver. So, all things considered, a graphical update is the sweet spot that serves both PC enthusiasts and newcomers, the latter apparently being the only market wedge TW3 can salivate at in order to animate 2016 sales like Kiciński wants to.
 
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Nothing offtopic there, as this discussion originated from "how easy it is to make graphics "superior", and why they should do an EE (or not)". Why don't you apply to be a moderator, while you're at it ?

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Read the books ;)
Regarding graphics, yet a slight upgrade would be nice, and an option to get rid of that horrid fog, and having better lightning would really help.

as for your suggestion about "reading the book", i shouldn't have to read the books in order to get a look at character's personality, as well as background. when watching a movie, a tv show, or play video game, i should expect to have a good characterisation for the characters in stage, with deph.
and let's face it, the problem doesn't lie in just the horrid portrayl of the wild hunt, but also the big majority of the third act as well.

TW3 has the potential to be "the lord of the ring: return of the king" for the series, but it turned out to be a mere "Spider-man 3": disappointing, but could've been so much better, if it had a better third act, and a better characterization for the villains.
 
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No.
For example, who in his right mind would not want better Ambient Occlusion or not long for farther Draw Distance, both of which STLM delivers at a negligible FPS cost?

So, out of about 11 or 12 categories that STLM changes, you have given 2, one of which is arguable (and submitted to Taste), and that allows you to claim that STLM is unarguably superior ?
Ambient Occlusion, please show me how "much superior" it is in STLM. I have yet to find a single moment where I have been able to judge it (and I do use STLM, so let's make it clear). Educate me, please. When it comes to Draw Distance and Water Reflections, those are not arguable. All the rest is a piece of art direction, and cannot thus be considered neither superior nor inferior.

That being said, we can agree to disagree. If we had to retain only one thing of STLM, we should remember that what Essenthy has done is only to change a few ("a few") settings in the environment files of the Red Engine. And that only had been bringing a lot of happiness to a lot of people. Can we see an Enhanced Edition of TW3 with more of this (and professionnally made, by a studio knowing perfectly their engine, which obviously Essenthy can't hope to achieve despite his talent), on top of more advanced gameworks effect, and a DX12 port ? I surely would hope so, even though the latter may not be straight forward to achieve.

There is a lot of ground for an EE. I'm not the singlest bit arguing that. And I believe you are right on one thing : there are probably more people who could buy it, but I'd say if they do it, they will do it the way they have done it in the past : release a 3rd DLC (the success of the game has been unexpected, so they might go there), on top of an EE (or version 2.0), which would probably come with all DLCs on top of the 3rd one. Obviously, the EE would come for free for owners, but the 3rd DLC + sale of the EE edition for new owners (or collectors) would make it a worthwhile venture.

---------- Updated at 05:48 PM ----------

as for your suggestion about "reading the book", i shouldn't have to read the books in order to get a look at character's personality, as well as background. when watching a movie, a tv show, or play video game, i should expect to have a good characterisation for the characters in stage, with deph.
and let's face it, the problem doesn't lie in just the horrid portrayl of the wild hunt, but also the big majority of the third act as well.

I fully agree. I however was merely suggesting to read the books because this simply would bring you the information you require, one of which being that Eredin is globally quite a second rank character in the books, and globally most characters are second hand characters. Only Ciri & Geralt are really main protagonist. So building on the Wild Hunt was not an easy one.
 
So, out of about 11 or 12 categories that STLM changes, you have given 2, one of which is arguable (and submitted to Taste), and that allows you to claim that STLM is unarguably superior ?
Ambient Occlusion, please show me how "much superior" it is in STLM. I have yet to find a single moment where I have been able to judge it (and I do use STLM, so let's make it clear). Educate me, please. When it comes to Draw Distance and Water Reflections, those are not arguable. All the rest is a piece of art direction, and cannot thus be considered neither superior nor inferior.

That being said, we can agree to disagree. If we had to retain only one thing of STLM, we should remember that what Essenthy has done is only to change a few ("a few") settings in the environment files of the Red Engine. And that only had been bringing a lot of happiness to a lot of people. Can we see an Enhanced Edition of TW3 with more of this (and professionnally made, by a studio knowing perfectly their engine, which obviously Essenthy can't hope to achieve despite his talent), on top of more advanced gameworks effect, and a DX12 port ? I surely would hope so, even though the latter may not be straight forward to achieve.

There is a lot of ground for an EE. I'm not the singlest bit arguing that. And I believe you are right on one thing : there are probably more people who could buy it, but I'd say if they do it, they will do it the way they have done it in the past : release a 3rd DLC (the success of the game has been unexpected, so they might go there), on top of an EE (or version 2.0), which would probably come with all DLCs on top of the 3rd one. Obviously, the EE would come for free for owners, but the 3rd DLC + sale of the EE edition for new owners (or collectors) would make it a worthwhile venture.

This is not the place for a disquisition on STLM or the Nature of Objectivity.

A third expansion - which everybody would surely welcome - looks problematic given the tight schedule. Hearts of Stone came out mid October; Blood and Wine launches Q2 2016. So on top of the full semester apparently needed to release 20 hours of content whose production has been planned well in advance, you would have to factor in the time it would take for them to readjust and accommodate an impromptu expansion at the very same time Cyberpunk 2077's being developed full steam ahead. This would push the release into 2017, a no-no marketing wise, as it'd likely bite into CP2077 PR campaign, and probably one of the reasons why they have explicitly stated Blood and Wine is TW3's swansong.


I do not believe an expansion presumably released more than a year and a half after the base game retains the power to drive sales of the latter forward. It caters to veterans, not newcomers. But a visual revamping to update TW3 to late 2016 standards arguably would, with the notable advantage it would rehash engine work that, presumably, is already underway for Cyberpunk 2077.
 
Nowadays, the easiest way to get something like this done is via a kickstarter project.

You're serious about an Enhanced Edition, you think TW3 shall have an Enhanced Edition. Get in touch with CDPR, ask them how much it would cost them, in their opinion, to release an Enhanced Edition, define objectives for support threshold (what do you want done for 100 000€, 200 000€, 300 000€ [...]), review this with them, and launch it.

CDPR is a serious company, but they are investing their time in Cyberpunk 2077 now, along with TW3 extension. Like any company, they have resources (investment) that they use to the best of their ability. Bring fresh amount of money, and they will be able to reinforce staff and get things done.

Now, are we ready to get there ? I certainly am, but this is gonna take more than my money and a poll to get it done ;)

I dont think that money is a problem anymore,their publisher would just provide them with whatever money they need as the success of a GOTY Edition is pretty much guaranteed. The only obstacle in a possible Enhanced Edition ,is the developement of Cyberpunk 2o77 in my opinion and nothing more
 
No doubt there will be an enhanced edition, after the Dev team has finished creating content for the game and when computers become more powerful. The extra content you are asking for is probably not part of the dev's vision. There will always be people asking for more, and a line needs to be drawn somewhere. We should leave that to the very capable developers. This game and the numerous awards are a testament to that.
 
was there improved graphics in Witcher 2 EE?

frankly i don't see that to be a priority, that's a huge amount of work for little gain-- witcher 3's visuals are quite beautiful already.

i'd rather CPDR work on expanding the game universe-- i'd love to see the post-game developed more extensively. my overall impression is that so much time and effort went to the side-quests in W3 that the main quests suffered in comparison. i wanted to do more quests involving main characters-- geralt with zoltan, or dandelion, or triss, etc. and those quests that would expand on THEIR stories, which i actually care about.

helping out some random poor dude on skellige trying to find his lost son? or find out where his brothers went? sorry, not that interesting. there's occasional touching gems (Black Pearl, for instance), but it's rather outnumbered by mundane contracts/side-quests and of course the boring use-your-witcher-sense-to-find-witcher-gear-diagrams-hidden-behind-a-shaded-wall treasure hunts.

as has been discussed many times before, the more you play W3 the lonelier the game universe gets as in-game characters start going away. for instance, after kaer morhen, keira, lambert, eskel, and of course vesimir all go away. one of the most depressing moments of the game is when you fire up that NewGame+-- you start out in a completely deserted Kaer Morhen, with that rather sad Kaer Morhen theme music.

couldn't high-tail out of it fast enough to go somewhere with people, ie Novigrad.

as it is, i've paused my game in "Final Preparations" awaiting Blood and Wine.
 
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was there improved graphics in Witcher 2 EE?

It does not seem to be mentioned here, but I think the engine was updated to a newer version - not sure how much difference that made, perhaps it only affected performance and maybe added some minor features. The biggest changes in TW2:EE were the two new side-quests in Chapter 3 (The Secrets of Loc Muinne on Iorveth's path, and Lilies and Vipers on Roche's path), and new/improved cutscenes and cinematics. Other than that, it fixed many bugs.
 
frankly i don't see that to be a priority, that's a huge amount of work for little gain-- witcher 3's visuals are quite beautiful already.

How would you know it's «a huge amount of work»? What makes you assume such work isn't already underway for Cyberpunk 2077 anyway?

i'd rather CPDR work on expanding the game universe
(...)

As you have every right to. But that's precisely the problem with the analysis - it's entirely constructed from the perspective of the seasoned fan, rather than from CD Projekt's.

Why should they release an Enhanced Edition? What's in it for them? The game has already achieved unprecedented popular and critical acclaim, climbing to the top of numerous high-profile GoTY lists which invariably praise story, characters and writing at large, but not climbing nearly as high on sales charts. Sales, that's what's in it for them. A year after release will there likely be any veteran gamers left who still won't have learned about TW3? By then, the only market share open for conquest consists of drive-by gamers, casuals, newcomers, none of which can possibly be sensitive to improvements on the story front as they're not familiar with the bare rudiments of the story to begin with. This demographic is typically susceptible to bleeding edge graphics, which TW3 will no longer be offering by late 2016 standards. Therefore, to boost sales, graphics will have to be revamped.

An Enhanced Edition has to be sensible form a return on investment point-of-view. It has to generate sales that otherwise wouldn't happen. Those sales inevitably involve a specific potential audience, newcomers. The way to their minds and wallets is graphics. So, in reality, even if your chief or even sole concern is to iron out the story, perhaps flesh out the final act, perhaps breath some depth into the antagonist, you nonetheless will acknowledge those refinements won't by themselves bring fresh cash in and you will also acknowledge a graphics overhaul as the necessary tactical vehicle through which those refinements can still be smuggled in into the altogether financially sustainable project.

Otherwise, how are you going to justify side-tracking personnel from other projects such as Cyberpunk 2077 to make improvements only veteran fans are in a position to appreciate but won't be required to spend a single dime on to get?
 
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this is why i asked my question before-- as far as i can tell, witcher 2 EE didn't really highlight improved graphics, did it? heck, CPDR released EE for free if you already had the original IIRC.

everything you wrote above also applied to witcher 2.

don't get me wrong, if they want to revamp graphics that would be great, assuming it doesn't suddenly require a lot more engine power. (my brand new GTX 970, overclocked a hefty amount, just about handles graphics at 60fps at highest setting on my 1920x1080. just.)

OTOH i don't think it's that big of a priority, nor do i think graphics is necessarily the driver for sales. Fallout 4's graphics sorta suck in comparison to W3, yet it's doing just fine sales-wise.

your mileage may vary, of course.
 
I guess graphical improvements would also be limited somewhat by the fact that there is only really much room for them on PC, while the majority of TW3 copies were sold on consoles. On the other hand, it is true that engine improvements would also be useful in CP2077.
 
Depends on what you mean with "enhanced edition":

1- An edition with even more content than the original game + HoS + B&W? I would pay for that, but if I could download the new content as a paid DLC I would find that more convenient for me.

2- An edition with all the bug fixes? I have no doubts that we'll keep getting patches for free, without having to buy an enhanced edition for those.

3- An edition with new tweaks to dialogues and plot? This is risky: seeing how things went with patch 1.10 I think that every further tweak will satisfying a small portion of the fan base, while pissing off some others and passing under the radar of 90% of the players. Not worth it I would say, even more so since the game is already 95% perfect as it is.

4- An edition with improved combat, controls, interface etc? I would include that kind of changes in the field of those we should get for free with paches.
 
What can realistically be expected in an enhanced edition, assuming one is made at all in the first place ? It is probably best to have a look at the previous two games:

The Witcher: Enhanced Edition
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings: Enhanced Edition

Neither of these made changes to the story, or added notable content with the main characters of the games. Many of the changes in these enhanced editions are of the type (like bug fixes) that are already being made to TW3 in the patches. And the purpose of a hypothetical EE would be mainly to promote sales of the game. So, it could include things like gameplay improvements (such as new difficulty settings, arena mode, etc.), which are not expensive to implement, but look good on a checklist of features. Also some graphical tweaks, but I guess these would be limited to what is possible on the consoles, and/or also useful in the future in Cyberpunk 2077. New content (if any) would probably be side-quests or monster contracts at most, like those in the free DLCs (which could end up being bundled with the main game), in addition to simpler things like new armors and weapons. Again, the most likely types of additions are those that are not too expensive to make, but can attract more of the average gamers when shown on a list of new features.
 
Yes, but what I meant is that they are only side-quests, of which originally there were very few in Chapter 3.

They were both long though. Two hours each on Roche's or Iorveth's path. The story book scenes between the chapters probably equal about 30 minutes combined too.

If they added back that cut idea about Geralt infiltrating The Wild Hunt, I think a lot of the criticisms about Eredin and the Hunt being under-developed would be laid to rest. Plus, the game needs rebalancing anyway. Doing HoS and B&W after the main quest doesn't make sense. There could be monsters (we actually know this from the scripts file) or new gameplay features that would fit in Velen and Skellige too.

Watching the PAX Aus video, I also get the feeling that there are a lot of people in CDPR who are disappointed that they didn't get to do everything that they wanted to. I think the game is getting an Enhanced Edition, even if it's only to do the rebalancing (but I think they'll do more though). TW3 should have been the best game in the series, hands down. With some more care, it could be.
 
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If they added back that cut idea about Geralt infiltrating The Wild Hunt, I think a lot of the criticisms about Eredin and the Hunt being under-developed would be laid to rest.

Agreed.

Doing HoS and B&W after the main quest doesn't make sense. There could be monsters (we actually know this from the scripts file) or new gameplay features that would fit in Velen and Skellige too.

Very good point, actually. I had hoped to use a dynamic level scaling mod to fix the issue, but the author removed it from the witcher 3 nexus, so that will be problematic.

Watching the PAX Aus video, I also get the feeling that there are a lot of people in CDPR who are disappointed that they didn't get to do everything that they wanted to. I think the game is getting an Enhanced Edition, even if it's only to do the rebalancing (but I think they'll do more though). TW3 should have been the best game in the series, hands down. With some more care, it could be.

I really hope they would be able to afford having an extra team just working on enhancing Witcher 3 after the expansions, I really do.
 
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