Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

CD Projekt's Cyberpunk 2077 Update 2.0 + Phantom Liberty Expansion Thread

Gargaune

Magister
Joined
Mar 12, 2020
Messages
3,137
The problem is that some consumers seem to have expected more from the open world content, and while that's mostly their own fault, CDPR did make some promotional statements in the past that might've fueled such aspirations, stuff like faction systems and "activities" and LARPing opportunities. Take that old line about Night City having "a thousand NPCs with daily routines in a full day/night cycle" - CDPR might have some plausible deniability in that (a) there may be 1000 NPC models and (b) the city has a full day/night cycle with a variation routine (e.g. crowd and traffic density), but it's not surprising that people might've interpreted that as Bethesda Game™ NPCs with their own homes and jobs etc. In the end, I suspect there's plenty CDPR wanted to do through development, but they dropped all of it as they fell farther behind and struggled to just deliver The Witcher 3-with-Raytraced-Guns.
Ok, let assume it's *us* consumers that had the wrong expectations. There are however many large and small details that points to CDPR not even being able to deliver a game which is on the same level,technically wise, as the others game on the market. One example is the retarded traffic AI. How about water? It's just a flat polygon covered by a static shader. Throw something and it will clip without even a sprite simulating the ripples. What was the last time we saw such static water? Even in Morrowind with a DX8 card the water was animated. While the poor game mechanics can be a direct consequence of bad design decisions, there's no excuse to how 'primitive' the game feels. Even if they rebooted the story and mechanics twice, what were the programmers doing meanwhile? Why car AI and phisics are shit? It's not as if going from 3rd person to 1st person or rewriting the story to give a bigger role to mr. Reeves required a complete rewrite of the game physics!
I didn't italicise "some" as a diss, just to indicate that not all prospective buyers had those expectations in terms of content. What I was covering in that paragraph was exclusively in relation to gameplay complaints, features and mechanics. My suspicion is that CDPR misjudged the scope and cut down on some of the extra features they'd planned.

On the tech side, you're dealing with a similar situation most likely. The developers pursued that original, grand vision for Night City, pushing harder and harder on graphical detail and cell streaming to achieve that seamless city from the design docs, and ended up struggling to keep the game running on older hardware. So they pushed other detail elements to the side, such as traffic physics or water simulations, and went all hands on deck trying to duct tape Cyberpunk to a PS4. Take AI, for instance, it's something that's usually CPU-bound, but CBP's already riding your processor hard even without any sophisticated AI behaviours.

It all comes down to mismanagaing the project plan, CDPR aimed very high but, for whatever reasons, ran out time and processing power to execute so at some point in development they dropped everything else and scrambled to deliver on just the "core experience" of the game, those elements that the bulk of the playerbase will most interact with. I guess it's why there are no water effects, but the dildo weapon vibrates...

And anyway, I'm not excusing it, just trying to break down what went wrong.
 

Kev Inkline

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Nov 17, 2015
Messages
5,074
A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
TLDR: The bugstravaganza seems to come from fancy high settings if your toaster can't take it. Or the classic internal AA problem, even Bethesda fucked that up.
I hesitate blaming pc players for blowing it up, but.... knowing those entitled shits today they probably tried to run it on super ultra deluxe on their 5 yo notebook and whine on twitter because they saw a bluescreen for the first time in their life.
There's another catch here that has me worried. Iwinski outright said that they developed the game to look great on PC and then retrofitted it to consoles, which proved much more difficult than expected. Now, as much as we might giggle at the consoleplebs finally playing second fiddle and getting a taste of their own medicine, it'll only reinforce the industry-wide practice of developing for console first. Strap in for more decline, boys.
Funny that retrofitting it to consoles includes the most retarded controls and UI I've seen in a modern game. Duh, even dwarf fortress is a paragon of usability and accessibility compared to this mess.

Want to change a grenade type amidst combat and don't want to go to inventory as it is cumbersome? Sure, press alt down to bring up the weapon wheel, use mouse scroll to find the grenade slot and cycle through types of grenades with 'q' and 'e'. Simple as. What were they thinking?
 

Gargaune

Magister
Joined
Mar 12, 2020
Messages
3,137
Funny that retrofitting it to consoles includes the most retarded controls and UI I've seen in a modern game. Duh, even dwarf fortress is a paragon of usability and accessibility compared to this mess.

Want to change a grenade type amidst combat and don't want to go to inventory as it is cumbersome? Sure, press alt down to bring up the weapon wheel, use mouse scroll to find the grenade slot and cycle through types of grenades with 'q' and 'e'. Simple as. What were they thinking?
Don't get me started, I just tried to unfuck the keybinds a bit last night. I wouldn't call it the worst in recent memory, it's no Baldur's Gate "3": Throne of Bathrooms at any rate, but there's definitely plenty that could've been done much, much better.
 

typical user

Arbiter
Joined
Nov 30, 2015
Messages
957
Someone said it here or on Reddit: if developers had to crunch for a year it meant the game was a year behind schedule. Like how fucked-up CTO or lead you have to be to be doing overhours for a fucking year? I understand a 1-month crunch when the game is about to go gold, to get Day 1 patch ready or to test servers, whatever, but when you have all the money from investors and you crunch people rather than hire more and better skilled and divide them on teams working on different features and then have someone responsible for integration? Ah, I am no developer but come on, a head-of-department doesn't need knowledge how to code more than he needs to know how underlying teams are doing, if they are reaching milestones. What the fuck they were doing? What did they expect? That people are blind and won't give a bad rep? This isn't just crunching to deliver a masterpiece like RDR2. This was crunching to release a demo with barely any gameplay.
I think I've explained this before, oh, maybe a hundred pages back, but that's not how it works. Staffing logistics aren't just a function of temporary resource requirements, since hiring people is expensive, time-consuming in training and subject to long-term growth plans under the influence of applicable legislation. Independent contractors, on the other hand, are more costly and harder to manage in the context of a large development. Additionally, timeframes do not scale linearly against the number of resources, there's only so many programmers who can work on the same curly bracket.

You'll say that a whole year (if your Reddit post is correct, and that's huge "if") doesn't count as "temporary resource requirements", but look back to what I wrote a few posts up, CDPR completely missed the mark on scoping out the outstanding work over 2020 as evidenced by the haphazard delays, that was their critical failure.

Basically, this story does not hinge on "just hire more people lol." Trust me, I'm a developer, we know everything. Next Friday I'll tell you about the best bridges for sale in Florida.

That's a good and perfectly valid point. I know there is a limit and eventually you hit the wall as bigger teams can actually slow down progress but you can clearly estimate if a team missed a milestone by 2 months then you can predict to an extent how big a delay is needed if there are 6 more to reach. That is 1-to-1 scenario and just by looking at a spreadsheet. But as a head-of-studio you should have team leaders delivering the feedback of their teams, the atmosphere their projections how much time they will need vs. the schedule etc. If members of your studio are saying the game in it's current scope without changing any features will be ready in 2022 when you have given the release date for 2020 then you done fucked it up. Even more so when you threw 4 years of pre-production into bin. I wonder what was discarded, protype systems like AI or combat mechanics? Or quests drafts, the structure of non-linear story listing all branches? Anyway having people do overtime for entire year is beyond retarded no matter the details.

God bless Crowbcat for his video, finally something retarded shills can't defend their precious "masterpiece" against

One shitbag from lowsodium subreddit said his video is just compilation of bugs. Missing ripple effects from shooting your gun, lack of AI are not bugs. Crowbcat did a great thing when he has shown SkillUp and other journos saying the game is living to the hype while they have Cyberpunk merch on the cameras.

Today I had a car half-sunk into ground (patch 1.06). I punched it with a katana and it started spazzing out like a crackhead without fix.
 

Xeon

Augur
Joined
Apr 9, 2013
Messages
1,858
I don't think I can fault the journos for their impressions that much without knowing their experience, I think they said in the video they played for 4-5 hours? unless they could freeroam as they like and not play an already well properad demo by CDPR, and they probably played it on a monster PC as well.

The ending for Crowbcat's video was brilliant, pretty funny.
 

Paul_cz

Arcane
Joined
Jan 26, 2014
Messages
1,996
Crowbcat video is masterfully put together, as is always the case with him/them (No Man's Sky is still the masterpiece though).

But apart from the AI and lacking physics, it was not accurate representation of the game I played, since I haven't encountered vast majority of the issues shown. Of course, I only played on my decently high-end PC.
 

DalekFlay

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Oct 5, 2010
Messages
14,118
Location
New Vegas
No, I'd reply with the fact the UI is missing any sound effects or feedback from basic actions. This is not a finished game, and I'm stunned by the fact that people are still in denial over that. This is not normal, and it's not like your average Ubisoft or EA release. It's a very visible example of what happens when project management totally fails and there are no safeguards.

I never really noticed any sound issues with the UI honestly, but that aside... I think the debate here is between "unfinished" and "reduced in scope to get it out the door." I don't know where that line is, and I suspect the definitions there are subjective to a large degree, but we generally agree that the game lacks a lot of stuff a finished AAA game should have. It's obvious they went "oh shit we gotta get this out before people lose interest and the PS4 is done for" and acted accordingly.

I'm just saying the basic gameplay, the fundamental design philosophy and structure they went for, is exactly what I expected from the studio that made Witcher 3. That doesn't mean Witcher 3 wasn't better made, it just means this idea that "CDPR lost their mojo and staff and whoops they made this game" bounces off me, because this is exactly the type of game they made last time to universal acclaim. They just forgot the story part for their storyfaggotry.
 

Zeriel

Arcane
Joined
Jun 17, 2012
Messages
13,383
For me, the line is at use item -> no sound effect, no pop-up, no animation, and "craft item, tied to entire skill tree, core part of game, zero sound effect or visual feedback". I could understand if this was some rare side activity, but it's basic stuff. You can't even tell you used an item in the inventory except by the split-second pause as the game logic calculates.
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
I didn't italicise "some" as a diss, just to indicate that not all prospective buyers had those expectations in terms of content.
reminder that if everyone just listened to me then nobody would be disappointed
Yeah, CP2020 has like 10 dedicated social skills(interrogation, persuasion, streetwise, etc.) CP2077 has none as far as i know.

Wait there's no social skill at all? Nothing even like basic ass speech ?
Why would there be? It's not an RPG.
Did GTA5 have social skills?
 

Semiurge

Cipher
Joined
Apr 11, 2020
Messages
6,083
Location
Asp Hole
What people don't seem to understand is the importance of the spectacular and very public failure of Cyberpunk 2077.

Gaming is a big herd of sacred cows. There exists this unspoken rule that some companies/games are not to be criticized, least you incur the wrath of the gaming press or the rabid fanbase.

As an example, how many years did Bethesda get away with their overabundance of bugs, poor writing, lackluster gameplay and general lack of quality to their games? How many years have people just memed the glaring faults away and laughed at the bugs and called them a quirky part of the design?

And then came Fallout 4 and Fallout 76, and suddenly the faults were so obvious and numerous that no amount of intimidation and journalist spin could make it go away. The number of detractors dwarfing the rabid, vocal fanbase to such an extent that it suddenly became socially acceptable to mock Fallout 4 and 76, and by extension Bethesda and all their previous games.

Now, after the success of Witcher 2, and especially Witcher 3, CDPR was the golden Polish darling of gaming - delivering the kind of "deep" and "mature" storytelling that would validate the worthless existence of game journalists and finally put an end to the endless mockery they experience from family, friends, random strangers and pretty much every other human on the planet.

The fact CDPR games were mechanically subpar, buggy and half-finished didn't matter, because they produced a "mature cinematic experience" (read: post-modernist, nihilist filth designed to make you feel like shit) and thus ascended to the endless pastures of gaming's sacred cows and were thus exempt from criticism. They were also the "good guy devs", the people's publisher, the ones that took a stance against greed, lies and deceit - thus becoming haloed sacred cows.

But then Soyberpunk 2077 came along, and it was an undeniably shit game on every level, such that not even journalists could make the bad press go away, and it revealed CDPR to the public as (and this is the most important part) just another shitty publisher, perfectly capable of resorting to the underhanded kind of shit EA, Ubisoft and Activision do on a regular basis.

Now that they have been unceremoniously deposited outside the pearly gates it's hip and cool to shit on them, the spell is broken and they will never again win back that implicit trust. Whenever they try to hype up a new product there will always be a large number of people that will remind the rest of the NPCs about Cyberpunk and the broken promises and scummy behavior. This will forever remain a corrosive poison eating at their success.

And if you don't believe that this will impact their bottom line - just look at what a string of failures have done to Ubisoft. Few companies go bust overnight due to a single failure, it's usually a death by a thousand cuts that sees them slowly crumble from within. CDPR is no Activision or EA, they don't have a reliable money printing IP, they're no Ubisoft with a large number of franchises they can fall back on, they're not even a Rockstar that actually can deliver on their promises.

They're just a collective of underpaid Polish labor monkeys led by inept cretins. 2077 was their one-in-a-million chance to make it into the big leagues, and they thoroughly fucked it up in the most public way imaginable.

Worst case scenario: they go out with a whimper, not a bang.
 

Yosharian

Arcane
Joined
May 28, 2018
Messages
9,430
Location
Grand Chien
For me, the line is at use item -> no sound effect, no pop-up, no animation, and "craft item, tied to entire skill tree, core part of game, zero sound effect or visual feedback". I could understand if this was some rare side activity, but it's basic stuff. You can't even tell you used an item in the inventory except by the split-second pause as the game logic calculates.
I thought was going crazy the first time I experienced that. Like wait is there really no sound effect when you craft an item??? Lmao.

What a fucking shit game.
 

Xeon

Augur
Joined
Apr 9, 2013
Messages
1,858
Didn't a lot of people complain about you having to craft parts or something one by one instead of bulks? its probably a blessing crafting not having sounds. Listening to dings or whatever every time you craft worthless things would probably drive people insane.
 

Correct_Carlo

Arcane
Joined
Jul 19, 2012
Messages
8,469
Location
Pronouns: He/Him/His
Crowbcat video is masterfully put together, as is always the case with him/them (No Man's Sky is still the masterpiece though).

But apart from the AI and lacking physics, it was not accurate representation of the game I played, since I haven't encountered vast majority of the issues shown. Of course, I only played on my decently high-end PC.

All of the issues in that video were known issues with the PS4 version. It's not really reflective of the PC version in anyway. CDPR should not have released the game on PS4 and XBOX. Everyone knows that at this point. CDPR knows that at this point. Honestly, while I was all in on the backlash to this game on its release, now I'm sick of the backlash and am ready for a backlash to the backlash.

To me the game is comparable to CDPR's past work on most levels. It doesn't have near the level of story content of Witcher 3, but it definitely has the same amount, if not more, than Witcher 2. It has better combat than Witcher 2 and 3 and I even think it has greater variety in builds, although that admittedly doesn't say much. To me the game has three major issues that mark a severe decline from CDPR's previous work that they should legit be criticized for, some of which were clearly due to outright fuck-ups, while others were due to poor design decisions.

1. The open world NPC AI is so bad that it has to be an overt fuck up. It wreaks of being a last minute patch job where they gutted whatever system they were working on and replaced it with NPCs who were more or less entirely aesthetic. Yes, Witcher 3's NPCs weren't always brilliant. However, they didn't warp in and out when you looked around, and while most were filler content who were primarily there for aesthetic reasons, it employed enough scripted NPCs with set schedules in various locations that it gave things a bit more life.

2. The Gig system, which comprises the vast majority of the game's side quests, is a questionable design decision, yet seems intentional to me. They have little story content and are fairly formulaic, yet the way that they are designed seems so fundamental to how the game works, that I can't imagine that they were a last minute compromise. It seems like they were consciously planned from the start to work this way, something supported by the fact that while they have little story content, they nonetheless tend to have frequently elaborate, unique, levels with multiple paths for accomplishing objectives (or almost all do, I think I saw them re-use the same layout for a compound once or twice). They also tie into the over all Fixer quests and will occasionally yield one or two missions that are more involved and scripted. That said, the game relies WAY too heavily on the formulaic ones for content, so it's very possible that the GIGs were originally intended to be more elaborate, yet as the developers approached the deadline, they started creating a bunch more using the formula just to add content.

3. The lack of C&C in the main and side quests is the other issue, and I'm not sure if this was conscious or a fuck up. CP's scripted missions are as well-written as anything CDPR has done before, but they lack C&C, so they always feel on-rails. Even the gameplay in them is so limited, compared to the variety of ways you can tackle objectives in the Gigs, that they remind me of Half-Life 2 at times.

Beyond those 3 issues, I think the game largely matches or exceeds CDPR's past work.
 
Last edited:

Axioms

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Jul 11, 2019
Messages
1,486
Given that the game was intended to have several more characters equivalent to Johnny, characters that exist and are highly fleshed out in the ttrpg lore, as well as more life path and relationship content, it makes sense that the CnC is weak. They cut like 70% of the main content and went all in on Keanu.
 

502

Learned
Joined
Mar 28, 2020
Messages
277
Location
Ankara
For the record I have an i7-7700k and GTX 1070 and I built my gaming PC in 2017. I also installed the game on a Samsung EVO SSD.

Haven't experienced any of the "common" visual glitches in that video, except the trees bending over in the distance and erecting back up when you approach them. The only major gameplay related issue I can think of was Jackie and Misty not letting me continue after seeing Vik downstairs, which wasn't even a softlock as I had feared. It was simply resolved going outside and doing a skirmish with a gang and going back. They also fixed it permanently with 1.04
  • Fixed Jackie’s issues with sitting still in The Ripperdoc.
Of course itemization and perks are completely broken and fucked and in dire need of an Enhanced Edition.
 

Mefi

Prophet
Patron
Joined
Apr 7, 2005
Messages
1,364
Location
waiting for a train at Perdido Street Station
My experience of the game is one which varies by save file. I've one save where I'm hard pushed to spot an actual bug or glitch beyond the odd T-pose when driving. I've another where I can near guarantee any triggered event will result in something falling from the sky, being stuck in the floor, or other engine goofiness. And a couple which range in the middle of those extremes. It's very peculiar, and all were started under 1.06. Samsung Evo 860 SSD, AMD 5600x, 16gb Gskill at sweet spot for the CPU, and a GTX 1080sc. It's not CPU related as I've also tried swapping my old 1600x back in and nothing changed, for better or worse, by save file. CTDs are likewise by save file and also very streaky with lots happening in short periods when they do start. Does make me wonder what would cause such variable experiences of the game.
 
Vatnik Wumao
Joined
Jan 29, 2019
Messages
13,187
Location
Niggeria
CDPR should not have released the game on PS4 and XBOX.

I keep hearing this and it is a sign of denial, reasoning. "B-but maybe if they dropped this version the game would be better".

Look, this is what you can play on consoles, so don't tell me CP2077 can't be:


RDR2 doesn't have the same urban density or verticality that Cyberpunk does.
 

Ezekiel

Arcane
Joined
May 3, 2017
Messages
5,374
"The trailer for Cyberpunk 2077 strikes me as GTA skinned-over with a generic 80s retro-future, but hey, that's just me."

I wish I had known William Gibson said this weeks ago when I got into an argument with a bunch of shills for saying the cyberpunk in CP 2077 is shallow at best. It would have been perfect, because they were using a Wikipedia definition that had part of a Gibson quote. They told me he is the authority on the subject and locked my thread. Would have been perfect.
 

Gargaune

Magister
Joined
Mar 12, 2020
Messages
3,137
All of the issues in that video were known issues with the PS4 version. It's not really reflective of the PC version in anyway.
Was gonna say the same, much as I loved crowbcat's video and especially that quip about "needing an upgrade" at the 13-minute mark, this hasn't been my experience. If that's what PS4 players are getting I'm not surprised they're pissed, but I can't relate.

I'm curious, though, anyone here play it on Xbox? I mean, Microsoft haven't pulled it from the store, I'm wondering whether it's purely a performance problem, or if it's compounded by bad PS4 optimisation in particular.

CDPR should not have released the game on PS4 and XBOX. Everyone knows that at this point. CDPR knows that at this point.
We're recycling arguments at this point, but no, that was absolutely impossible from a business perspective. The project was commercially planned to target the entire mainstream segment, and that still means Xbox One and PS4 much more than it does PC, you can't just change those financial projections at the end of development. The Xbox Series X and PS5 are just out the door to coincide with Cyberpunk's release after its multiple delays, and they're subject to severe supply shortages as-is, it'll be Christmas 2021 before they make up any sizable market segment among the core gaming demographic, and even then it'll have probably been insufficient to support a re-targeting. As for doing a staggered release, PC and new consoles before the old generation, that would've likely been shot down by Sony and Microsoft since even though it might've encouraged adoption of their new platforms, it also ran the risk of chasing some customers to PC, especially given the supply shortages and related high prices for early adoption.

Honestly, while I was all in on the backlash to this game on its release, now I'm sick of the backlash and am ready for a backlash to the backlash.
I do agree with this. As serious as the problems are, the situation's been blown out of proportion by social media and an "enthusiast" press who love bitching more than a Codexer at a RTwP convention.

RDR2 doesn't have the same urban density or verticality that Cyberpunk does.
Yes, from a technical perspective, RDR2 is a higher-res/poly Witcher 3, it won't be as resource-intensive as CBP. That's not to say CDPR didn't fuck up, but it's not an apples-to-apples comparison.
 

Bliblablubb

Arcane
Joined
Mar 1, 2014
Messages
2,925
Location
Copium Den
Heh, I just found out my game has crashed a total of... 106 times so far.

Why do I know that? Because there are 106 crash reports with a total size of 2.5gb in the game's "ReportQueue" folder. :hahano:
:negative:


"You clicked on 'don't send error report' when we asked you to? Fuck you player, we let those files bloat up your HD now forever!"
 

Gargaune

Magister
Joined
Mar 12, 2020
Messages
3,137
Heh, I just found out my game has crashed a total of... 106 times so far.

Why do I know that? Because there are 106 crash reports with a total size of 2.5gb in the game's "ReportQueue" folder. :hahano:
:negative:


"You clicked on 'don't send error report' when we asked you to? Fuck you player, we let those files bloat up your HD now forever!"
Where is the ReportQueue folder? Install dir or Docs?

Regarding the crashes, are you using the Cyber Engine Tweaks mod? I just installed it last night and found that the game now crashes every time I click Quit Game. I mean, it shuts down alright, but the Crash Reporter pops up. Solution? Go into Cyberpunk 2077\bin\x64\CrashReporter and rename Crash Reporter.exe to hobble it. Just one warning, though, I have had the 1.06 patch refuse to deploy after I tinkered with the game files, so if you start messing with things, be prepared to have to download the full setup again if you update in the future.

Edit: Scratch that, disabling Crash Reporter.exe stops the popup asking you to send the damn thing, but the game still writes a crash report. So, really, you're better off leaving Crash Reporter.exe as it is, so you know when your hard drive's getting littered, and instead quitting the game via Task Manager if you have the same problem that I do.

By the way, I found the folder, it's AppData\Local\REDEngine\ReportQueue, and yes, you will want to clear it if you experience regular crashes.

Fuck's sake, CDPR, I just wanna pimp my ride. :negative:
 
Last edited:

Yosharian

Arcane
Joined
May 28, 2018
Messages
9,430
Location
Grand Chien
So guys, what's the rough consensus?

I noticed it didn't do too well in the GOTY poll.
Consensus is it will be a fairly above average action game with mild RPG elements... in a year's time when it's properly patched
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom