The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Next-Gen Update Patch Notes Revealed

Peter_Brosdahl

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The well-publicized update sees the game bundled with many mods from the gaming community along with numerous bug fixes and updates for modern PC and console hardware.

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Online Features
  • Added a cross-progression feature between platforms. Your latest saves will be automatically uploaded to the cloud so you can easily pick up where you left off on other platforms. Cross-progression provides the latest save for every save type. This feature becomes available after you log into your account.
  • By signing up to MY REWARDS in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, players can receive:
• Swords of the Nine-Tailed Vixen
• White Tiger of the West Armor
• Dol Blathanna Armor Set
• Roach Card

Detailed information on how to redeem the rewards will be available from Dec 14th, 1 AM CET at thewitcher.com/my-rewards.
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The cloud saves are okay as long as they're optional, but I don't like the sound of the "signing up to MY REWARDS" part. None of the content should have strings attached that requires the player to do more than purchase and download the game.

I'm curious what, if any, effect the update has on PC system requirements if none of the optional graphical enhancements are activated. Hopefully it's still playable on the same pre-update hardware, assuming the system wasn't borderline-capable before.
 
I guess nobody should be surprised but a number of people are saying this has launched as a buggy mess. I encountered one off the drop, the W2 simulated save thing, but was so tired that I went to bed. Here's hoping they the fixes out quickly. It's not consistent, some are saying the game works fine but there's also a spectrum of those experiencing crashes and so on.
 
I did some playtesting with this last night on my 4930K rig for about an hour or so. I was able to use a W2 game save along with a completed W3 save for a newgame+ campaign. It was something I'd wanted to do since I really liked the weapons/armor I had at the end of my last playthrough. The first 10 minutes had some stutters but I think that was perhaps while it was compiling whatever and after that, it did get better.

As this is now my 2nd DLSS 3 game that has prevented MSI AB from working I believe that may have something to do with at least some of the crashing reports. I had the same thing happen with Portal if I tried to use EVGA's Precision X1 OSD so I didn't even both trying to force any kind of OSD.

That being said, I had it on RT Ultra, turned off the usual junk (blur, lens flare, etc.), and set it to V-Sync @ 60 FPS. The 4930K/3090 Ti did o.k. with this at 5120x1440. I believe it was averaging 40-60 FPS. Unfortunately, CDPR did not update the engine to recognize UW aspect ratios or give an option to manually change, so the cutscenes are still 16:9 but I plan to re-find the hex code fix for it as the ones from earlier versions are great because there is content visible in 32:9 that is not seen with 16:9.

Other than that, I do see some improvements but have only just barely gotten into it. Face textures seem the same but overall scenery such as vegetation, buildings, sky, and water, is where I noticed the most improvements. However, since I've been using Halk's mods since around 2018 a lot it still looks similar to his last overhaul but I'm happy with that since I really enjoyed it with my last play-through.
 
Peter_Brosdahl said:
I guess nobody should be surprised but a number of people are saying this has launched as a buggy mess. I encountered one off the drop, the W2 simulated save thing, but was so tired that I went to bed. Here's hoping they the fixes out quickly. It's not consistent, some are saying the game works fine but there's also a spectrum of those experiencing crashes and so on.
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Little more than a few crashes here; been playing both on my desktop with 12700K + 3080 12GB under water at 3840x1600, which is very smooth using conservative RT settings, and my living room rig with 5800X3D + RX6800 at4k, which is far less smooth using minimum RT settings.

Biggest issue so far - graphics settings are sync'd between systems!

Have to go back and forth enabling FSR2 or DLSS. Game would probably run much better on one of the new 7900 AMD cards rather than the 6800, which I may have to cut RT to keep playable during fight scenes, which is why I used the desktop rig at all; I can at least say that on the 3080, it looks great!


[for those that would point it out - the RX6800 is the only high-end GPU I own that isn't attached to a water block, and the living room rig is in a Hyte Revolt 3, an ITX 'tower' rig - it's the only option at the moment, unfortunately]
 
LazyGamer said:
Biggest issue so far - graphics settings are sync'd between systems!
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Good to know. I'll be playing on the 5800X3D rig tonight and I still have to install it on my laptop.

One spaghetti mess I'm not looking forward to is cleaning up my cloud saves. Since I've played this game so many times it is full and not allowing sync to do its thing so now I've got 3 different rigs with 3 different sets of save files. I really wish Steam/GOG, etc. gave the option to delete all cloud saves (I'm using GOG) instead of all of the fun with deleting on various rigs and then the other hoops with turning it on/off in order to get the cloud to sync to reset itself. I went through this before with the Steam version before I got it on GOG about 4 years ago and now the GOG version is full too.
 
Well, tested on the 5800X3D rig and as expected it was a much smoother experience but I attribute that to brute force more than anything. Played for about 90 minutes. I doubt it went much beyond 60 fps but it looked a lot better and more consistent. Still, no crashes on either rig. However, yes this thing could use some optimization. It has always had issues with things popping in but it's much worse now. I think another issue relates to global illumination RT due to how quickly time passes within the game so it constantly has to do a bazillion calculations as the sun/moon quickly traverses the sky, plus weather. The old trick to enable the console still works and I did it last night. I'm pretty sure there's a command to change the rate at which time passes and I'm going to experiment with that. When indoors frames seem much higher but I've noticed that no matter what there's an exaggerated delay/stutter when quickly turning no matter where you are. This also used to be an issue but is worse now.

Beyond that, the game looks spectacular on the LG C2. So much more detail to be seen on an OLED. I think it looked nice on the CRG9 but it doesn't compare to the added contrast/colors on the C2. I'm also going to try and see if I can get the X1 OSD to work but I'm expecting crashes. Still no luck with MSI AB.
 
oh, I forgot to mention that I did see a statement from CDPR yesterday regarding the bugs. It's pretty generic. They're aware of some stuff, working on some stuff, and asking people to continue to report as needed but also the usual reply of making sure to update your drivers. It didn't really directly address everything so I chose to not post a story about it.
 
Peter_Brosdahl said:
Beyond that, the game looks spectacular on the LG C2. So much more detail to be seen on an OLED. I think it looked nice on the CRG9 but it doesn't compare to the added contrast/colors on the C2.
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I'm actually somewhat disappointed with how it looks on my 2017 OLED - seems that there's no 'native' HDR support, or perhaps I'm just doing something wrong (with the panel, GPU drivers, Windows 11...). Might have to go through the whole display stack again.

Peter_Brosdahl said:
I'm also going to try and see if I can get the X1 OSD to work but I'm expecting crashes. Still no luck with MSI AB.
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So, the Geforce Experience overlay does work. It does also cover up the map in its default position, but that's configurable. Can't say whether it contributed to a crash or not as I've spent much more time with my AMD system, and as far ahead as AMDs UI seems, their overlay is much more frustrating to use.
 
LazyGamer said:
seems that there's no 'native' HDR support,
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Yeah, they got lazy. It is there as part of Halk's mods. The C2 did give me a notification that it kicked in but I'm also dissapointed there's no toggle. However that HDR notification appeared multiple times while the game is loading, not unusual, but w/o MSI AB I can't truly verify it (AB turns red as HDR increases on my displays).

LazyGamer said:
So, the Geforce Experience overlay does work. It does also cover up the map in its default position, but that's configurable. Can't say whether it contributed to a crash or not as I've spent much more time with my AMD system, and as far ahead as AMDs UI seems, their overlay is much more frustrating to use.
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Good to know. If I can't get X1 to work w/o crashing the game I'll put that on. I haven't used it since around the time GE debuted.
 
As expected, X1 caused it to crash and since I'd have to install the driver all over again I opted to just enjoy the game for a bit this morning before heading out to visit some family, I will say that I was impressed by the new gifts Yennefer left in the emperor's castle. I'll install GeForce Experience tomorrow and let you know what some of the real numbers tomorrow (it's been so long that I don't know everything it reports beyond FPS).
 
There's a way to record frametimes as well, if you're really interested in digging into the data - but realistically just playing it for the 'feel' would be enough.

I've also stuck with RT on the 6800; it feels more 'consolie' with the lower framerates, along with playing with a controller. Still 'playable', if not by enthusiast definition then by me actually being able to play the game.
 
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