Witcher 3 1.03 Patch Out Now

Looks like a new patch just hit, though not the huge patch supposedly coming in the next week or so. Here is the changelog from GOG's site

• Improves stability in gameplay and the UI
• Improves performance especially in cutscenes and gameplay
• Fixes grass and foiliage popping that can occur after density parameters change
• Improves Nvidia Hairworks performance
• Boosted texture anisotropy sampling to 16x on Ultra preset
• Sharpen Postprocess settings extended from Off/On to Off/Normal/High
• Improves menu handling
• Improves input responsiveness when using keyboard
• Corrects an issue with stamina regeneration while sprinting
• Fixes a cursor lock issue that sometimes occcurs when scrolling the map
• Generally improves world map focus
• Corrects a bug where player was able to fire bolts at friendly NPCs
• Corrects an issue in dialog selections
• Corrects some missing translations in the UI
• Minor SFX improvements -Blood particles will now properly appear after killing enemies on the water
• Rostan Muggs is back

I'm at work until 6, but I'd love to see what some of these new graphical changes look like. Anyone care to jump in and post some screenshots?

@grtkbrandon: Things look much the same as before but smoother for me when I crank it to Ultra. More stable too - I've tried to force all the things which I suspected were causing crashes before and it's been rock solid.

@dave_tacitus: This looks good. Facial details look a bit sharper to me. What are your system specs and what was your performance like before compared to now?

@grtkbrandon: Sharpening now has a Medium and High setting rather than on or off. That pic is on High.

I'm running a 4670K, 780 GTX (overclocked to nearly ti levels though), 16GB RAM, 1080p. Been getting a solid 60 (70+ with vsync off and not many NPCs around) pretty much everywhere pre-patch with Hair off and graphics on High apart from detail which is Ultra. Not really had time to spend with a framerate display yet with the patch but running through towns at the above settings seems smoother than before - I was dropping to 55 (yeah, I know, first world problems) pre-patch in built up areas.

The game is running too well for me, and I'm liking the controls and interface too much, to install a new patch that might break it, cause crashes or change something I like into something I don't like.

I think I'm gonna try to avoid all patches.

@dave_tacitus: I was getting between 60 - 70 at 1080p with my 290. I plugged in my 1440p ultrawide and it plummeted to 30-40 with the same settings, so it'll be interesting to see how the patch might have improved performance on AMD's platform. Good to see that it does seem like a noticeable improvement, though! And I think I remember you mentioning all the crashes you were experiencing in the discussion thread, glad to see you got those sorted.

They've also submitted this to PSN and Xbox and it's awaiting certification.

@grtkbrandon: Yeah, I'd have been fine with no performance improvements but some greater stability. Looks like CDPR have managed both in a couple of hundred MB.

@johnnymcginley said:

Oh, good to know. I've been wondering if this was strictly a PC patch this time around after reading the fixes. Would have thought they'd just wait for the big patch next week until they do another patch on console.

Wait, what else is there?

EDIT: Anyway, does anyone know how to check on gog galaxy what version the game is within the client? Basically to check if the patch downloaded, because I have them set to auto download.

Well there are some gruesome loadtimes aswell. At least on the consoles.

Also the "cutscenes" doesnt specify if its the in engine cut scenes or the stuttery pre rendered ones thats improved. I would guess first one.

The perks of having a SSD. I don't even have enough time to read the tips during load times.

@grtkbrandon: Well me to but i know Alex clocked the loadtimes on xbox one over 1min in the quicklook.

It brings me back to The Witcher one where it was like 60h gameplay and 40h loadtimes for a playthrough if you played the game at release.

@rethla: I haven't gotten around to watching the actual Quick Look yet, but ouch, that's really rough. Are there more frequent load screens on the console version than PC?

@grtkbrandon: No the amount of loadtimes is the same as PC but they are just superlong. Basicly he died and had to wait like 70sec to spawn again.

i like how cdpr releases a patch in the first week that really improves peformance (was the same w/ witcher 2)*

*having said not tried witcher 3 patch yet

I don't even have a SSD, but the load times have been ten seconds or less. What Alex showed in the quick look was brutal!

yaay looks like the site is dead.

so the text size issue will that be in next weeks big patch ?

@balrogsbain: Well, I'm confused about next week's big patch because now there is talk that there was a misunderstanding about the information Eurogamer got. Now they're saying that the day one patch was the huge patch they were referring to, but they've specifically said that it was sent to certification yesterday. I'm not sure if they were referring to the 1.03 patch that went to certification or what.

Given the size of the Witcher 3 audience I doubt it'll be an issue, but every time I see "awaiting certification", I think back to the months the Europe folk had to wait for Sony to publish the Binding of Isaac Rebirth patch. What a hassle that was.

gog galaxy won't detect installed games?

@grtkbrandon: well lets hope they fix the text size soon im sat 2 feet away and its still not good, had the same issue with the first deadrising

@balrogsbain: They've said there was a pending fix for this coming, so I'm sure it's something they're working on, just gotta play the waiting game.

A reddit user posted some comparison screenshots of the sharpening option. Here is a direct link to the imgur album, and here is a link to a gif that's comparing high to off.

@grtkbrandon: Im not a fan of CDPRs heavy use of sharpening. The first thing i did when starting W3 was disable sharpening.

Basicly they seem to be throwing every filter availible from sweet FX into their games without any reason behind it. It takes alot of hard work with the game files to get natural colors and a good picture in W2 and i havnt even tried with W3 yet but it cerntainly got that blown out CDPR look right out of the box.

Has anyone tried Hairworks with this patch yet? That was the only thing keeping me from hitting a steady 60 with graphics on all the highest settings. I'd like to turn it back on because I like how the hair on beasts bounce around. It looks awesome.

@rethla: I haven't seen it in-game yet, but it doesn't look great based on those pictures. Low looked the worst, oddly enough. They really just need to allow more .ini files to be tweakable because at this rate, until modding gets going, I think users will be able to get the best visual results themselves.

Anyone have any info on what the next ps4 patch will fix?

Has anyone here played over 1 hour with the new patch and can confirm that it improves, not breaks, the game?

@terminatorz: No crashes despite me fiddling with every option possible at length for a couple of hours this afternoon so it's a definite improvement for me.

I can't confirm if it'll improve or break your game. Only you can do that.

I know what you mean, but at the same time you're wrong! You know when a patch comes out and folks online unanimously agree after a couple of days that it ruined an aspect of the gameplay, imbalanced the game or made it unstable? That's what I had in mind when I asked, so I'm waiting for opinions.

@terminatorz: Maybe hit up Twitter or reddit? If there are widespread problems there'll be drama somewhere.

I hope whatever they're doing for PS4 removes the little hitch that occurs constantly, particularly on horseback. Has a petition to colloquially refer to this game as The Hitcher started yet?

Are the updates releasing simultaneously for all platforms? AKA can I expect this for my X1 when I get home?

@nodima: does sean bean star in it?

Console patches have to go through the certification process before they'll be released, but you guys should be seeing it soon.

Cool, I'm gonna install it here soon. Has anyone turned the hairworks stuff back on to see if it still drains framerate?

@colourful_hippie: Just checked and still hitting my 780 by around 10 frames. Same as it was pre-patch.

Is anyone playing it with the Sharpening set to High? I've just tried it now and it doesn't really effect performance (for me anyway) but it kinda looks too sharp if you know what I mean?

So this patch broke my game... Cut-scene starts and finishes the first line of dialogue then hangs and never continues.

@andrewf87462: Yeah, I have it set to Low but might turn it off altogether soon. It makes characters stand out too much from the environment or something - Just a bit off.

Played like 3 hours with it today. I didn't notice much different but it was fine before, for me. Performance and stability wise.

Is the hair performance noticeably different? Up until now it has crippled performance even on Titan cards so I don't expect much change.

@ripelivejam: Shame on you for making a reference to the Sean Bean remake instead of the Rutger Hauer original.

Wait, 1.03 is being certified by PSN and XBL?

So, what happened to 1.02? I'm on PS4, and the latest patch we've got is 1.01.

Anyone know if the 680 gets an improvement in fps? The 780 and 980 seemed to get some improvement from what i have read so I figure it will but don't know if anyone has first hand knowledge.

@alistercat: Seems like it still runs like poop. I have everything else maxed out but the hair drops my frames from 60 to 50

Consider yourself lucky. It's still a 20-25 fps drop for me.

@grtkbrandon: I guess it's becaues I have a 980 but I still would rather keep things close to 60 as much as possible

I'm continually confused by this Hair issue. Am I the only one who thinks the "fancy" hair looks worse that the standard hair? The animals look a little cooler, true, but Geralt no, no, no.

meh, some patches got lumped up.

@xyzygy: absolutely do not expect same time updates. Never expect that! Console patches go through certification, PC patches do not.

The only exceptions are games where devs can push out back end updates like Mortal Kombat X or Warframe. Those updates do not go through cert.