Is Dan Vavra popamole?

[RobotSquirrel]

I firmly believe like with the gaming crash that happened in the 80s the same thing isn't that far off. The gaming industry with all it's bullshit can't sustain itself for that much longer in it's current form. And the inevitable crash is what need and rebuild after that. I don't think there will be many survivors with the crash that's coming but it will get rid of all the people and culture that has gaming and I think it's applicable for other forms of media as well in the state that it is. Can't wait.

1. You like myself 10 years ago are very foolishly optimistic if you honestly think a consumer backlash in this day and age is ever going to work, the whale economy exists. There are always new customers who are gullible to fall for it. As long as there is infinite renewal the industry can behave poorly and get away with it.
2. The irony that Varva said that but then defends CDProjekt for Cyberpunk knowing full well that this quote was exactly why Cyberpunk was a disaster. They had a lot of talented nobodies working on it when their veterans left half way through the development. A countries culture and heritage has absolutely nothing to do with excellence in game development. For that you need talent and you need to respect that talent.

I don't mean any disrespect by this btw a consumer backlash is exactly what needs to happen and I agree. But its just not going to happen.

 

[Paul_cz]

The irony that Varva said that but then defends CDProjekt for Cyberpunk knowing full well that this quote was exactly why Cyberpunk was a disaster. They had a lot of talented nobodies working on it when their veterans left half way through the development. A countries culture and heritage has absolutely nothing to do with excellence in game development. For that you need talent and you need to respect that talent.

It's Vávra, and also that's nonsense. Cyberpunk had shitton of CDP veterans on it, and it wasn't a disaster because of some "nobodies", it was a disaster because the management was so far up their own ass they thought they could ship the game before it was ready and get away with it.
And Vávra defended Cyberpunk because he played it on highend PC and enjoyed it a ton, which isn't particularly weird, it is and was a great game there.

 

[TheSoul]

My stance on this issue has done a complete 180 after seeing gamers learn nothing after repeated overhyped, overpriced failures. People are stupid and more are turning to gaming because every other entertainment medium shot itself in the foot over the past 15 years going woke. They'll put up with anything, because there aren't any alternatives left.

Game developers are half assing everything because cucks still support their products. They deserve to be sucked dry by microtransactions at this point.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

and it wasn't a disaster because of some "nobodies", it was a disaster because the management was so far up their own ass they thought they could ship the game before it was ready and get away with it.

Go look at the credits for the game there was an awful lot of outsourcing going on with Cyberpunk a lot more than was the case with Witcher 3. They also did a big hiring blitz to try and deal with the burn out the team was having from Witcher 3's development, it felt like CDPR was always having trouble hiring the specialists they needed. CDPR has never done shooters or vehicular combat before they were extremely inexperienced for the game they were making. They also had personality clashes throughout development as was exposed in the media. On top of this their post-release support has been abysmal so far I'm doubting a redemption arc is even possible at this point. Granted I'll give you a point that it did seem like there wasn't much in the way of planning and managing the project hence having to restart during production and the subsequent delays.

We'd need a detailed post-mortem. I do hope at some stage they do one so we'll know for certain.

 

[Tacgnol]

re: Vavra and Cyberpunk, the guy just likes open world RPGs of any stripe.

He's a good writer but has quite popamole taste in games. IIRC he stopped by the Codex in the past and got offended by people calling his tastes popamole.

 

[J_C]

re: Vavra and Cyberpunk, the guy just likes open world RPGs of any stripe.

He's a good writer but has quite popamole taste in games. IIRC he stopped by the Codex in the past and got offended by people calling his tastes popamole.

The guy who made Mafia and Kingdom Come cannot be popamole.

 

[lightbane]

o look at the credits for the game there was an awful lot of outsourcing going on with Cyberpunk a lot more than was the case with Witcher 3.

Someone repost the pics of Cybertranny's main writer. That one was a literal whale.

 

[Tacgnol]

re: Vavra and Cyberpunk, the guy just likes open world RPGs of any stripe.

He's a good writer but has quite popamole taste in games. IIRC he stopped by the Codex in the past and got offended by people calling his tastes popamole.

The guy who made Mafia and Kingdom Come cannot be popamole.

He isn't a popamole designer, but his personal tastes do seem to lean that way.

It doesn't matter at the end of the day. He's a good writer and designer. He's also based.

If he happens to like games like Oblivion/Skyrim on the side, so what? It doesn't seem to influence his own design decisions.

 

[J_C]

re: Vavra and Cyberpunk, the guy just likes open world RPGs of any stripe.

He's a good writer but has quite popamole taste in games. IIRC he stopped by the Codex in the past and got offended by people calling his tastes popamole.

The guy who made Mafia and Kingdom Come cannot be popamole.

He isn't a popamole designer, but his personal tastes do seem to lean that way.

It doesn't matter at the end of the day. He's a good writer and designer. He's also based.

If he happens to like games like Oblivion/Skyrim on the side, so what? It doesn't seem to influence his own design decisions.

Yeah, he can fuck furry transvestites in his free time as far as I'm concerned, as long as he makes games like Mafia and KCD.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I made this point before but Vavra is essentially an auteur whose main virtue is his unwillingness to compromise. He is convinced the future of RPGs lies in an immersive simulationist and story driven approach, which is questionable for Codexers but that's what he believes and by God he'll see that vision through.

 

[passerby]

Vavra is a setting and story designer, he doesn't seem to care about gameplay and he was impressed by art, setting and story of Cyberpunk.

He doesn't interfere with gameplay design as a studio lead though and they had ex Bohemia Interactive programmers doing gameplay and AI design for KC.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I didn't follow his brief and disastrous stint in the Codex too closely but from what i remember he genuinely thought the games used abstractions in the past only because the technology wasn't advanced enough to actually put you in the shoes of your character. Thus, stuff like turn based gameplay is more of a thing of the past. Now that we can do realistic first person combat we don't have to simulate it with dice rolling. Those weren't his exact words but i remember that was the general gist of what he believed and why he pissed off all the Codex autists for whom strategy and number crunching is an important aspect of RPGs.

I don't think that makes him popamole though, because he is actually serious in wanting you to experience combat first hand. Kingdom Come is a simulation, it's not LARPing. That's an important distinction because in modern popamole games the issue is that you get to "see" your character do a lot of things but you yourself ain't doing shit. In game cinematics, quick time events, press a button and see your character do "awesome" take downs or cool backflips or whatever the fuck. In the end it's all fluff, and that's not what Vavra is talking about at all, even if for some of the more retarded Codexers the distinction may not mean much.

Arma and Call of Duty are both trying to put you in the "role" of the character, but how they go about this is very different and only one can be called popamole.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Vavra is a setting and story designer, he doesn't seem to care about gameplay and he was impressed by art, setting and story of Cyberpunk.

I think this is probably relevant on how Vavra sees things when it comes to story:

https://twitter.com/DanielVavra/status/1061914561740189696

 

[RobotSquirrel]

Bohemia Interactive programmers doing gameplay and AI design for KC.

ENGAGE ENEMY HENRY 200 METERS NORTH WEST doot. Joking aside they did great work.

 

[Paul_cz]

Go look at the credits for the game there was an awful lot of outsourcing going on with Cyberpunk a lot more than was the case with Witcher 3. They also did a big hiring blitz to try and deal with the burn out the team was having from Witcher 3's development, it felt like CDPR was always having trouble hiring the specialists they needed. CDPR has never done shooters or vehicular combat before they were extremely inexperienced for the game they were making. They also had personality clashes throughout development as was exposed in the media. On top of this their post-release support has been abysmal so far I'm doubting a redemption arc is even possible at this point. Granted I'll give you a point that it did seem like there wasn't much in the way of planning and managing the project hence having to restart during production and the subsequent delays.

Outsourcing is normal for any game of such insane scope. Particularly for asset creation. But the writing/design team was similar to that of Witcher 3, with few exceptions (Stachyra and couple extra people going to Techland). However you are right that Cyberpunk represented such a shift from Witcher - in every way - setting, perspective, gameplay - everything - that they clearly bit off more than they could chew. I do however maintain that on PC it is a great game with issues, rather than terrible irredeemable garbage as some people claim.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I didn't follow his brief and disastrous stint in the Codex too closely but from what i remember he genuinely thought the games used abstractions in the past only because the technology wasn't advanced enough to actually put you in the shoes of your character. Thus, stuff like turn based gameplay is more of a thing of the past. Now that we can do realistic first person combat we don't have to simulate it with dice rolling. Those weren't his exact words but i remember that was the general gist of what he believed and why he pissed off all the Codex autists for whom strategy and number crunching is an important aspect of RPGs.

KCD combat is garbage tho

 

[Lyric Suite]

I didn't follow his brief and disastrous stint in the Codex too closely but from what i remember he genuinely thought the games used abstractions in the past only because the technology wasn't advanced enough to actually put you in the shoes of your character. Thus, stuff like turn based gameplay is more of a thing of the past. Now that we can do realistic first person combat we don't have to simulate it with dice rolling. Those weren't his exact words but i remember that was the general gist of what he believed and why he pissed off all the Codex autists for whom strategy and number crunching is an important aspect of RPGs.

KCD combat is garbage tho

It isn't popamole. If there's problems with the combat it is because they didn't entirely succeed in what they wanted to create, but the aim was still a simulation, not LARPing.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I didn't follow his brief and disastrous stint in the Codex too closely but from what i remember he genuinely thought the games used abstractions in the past only because the technology wasn't advanced enough to actually put you in the shoes of your character. Thus, stuff like turn based gameplay is more of a thing of the past. Now that we can do realistic first person combat we don't have to simulate it with dice rolling. Those weren't his exact words but i remember that was the general gist of what he believed and why he pissed off all the Codex autists for whom strategy and number crunching is an important aspect of RPGs.

KCD combat is garbage tho

It isn't popamole. If there's problems with the combat it is because they didn't entirely succeed in what they wanted to create, but the aim was still a simulation, not LARPing.

It's a simulation of something alright. Not sure if I'd go with combat, probably closer to a simulation of a pile of shit.

 

[Efe]

I didnt play release version but from what I gathered combat was easily abusable and ai tried to give you 1v1 duels even with crowds.
then they patched it into a state of turdness

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I didnt play release version but from what I gathered combat was easily abusable and ai tried to give you 1v1 duels even with crowds.
then they patched it into a state of turdness

at release you could beat anyone just by using a bow and backpedaling

 

[Tacgnol]

I didnt play release version but from what I gathered combat was easily abusable and ai tried to give you 1v1 duels even with crowds.
then they patched it into a state of turdness

I completed KCD at release and newer versions, the big nerfs/changes they made to combat were:

1. They nerfed stat scaling massively. Max strength caused you to do about double the base weapon damage. In the newer versions you get about a 25% damage bonus over base for having maxed strength or dex. At end game this made combat stupidly easy as you could murder anyone in a couple of hits regardless of how well armoured they were.

2. They removed the ability to damage enemies whilst disengaged. At release there was an easy exploit where you could hit shift to disengage an enemy and hit them without being locked on, they weren't able to dodge or block in this state and you could kill them easy. People soloed all the cumans in the starting village with this trick.

3. They made enemies aggressively rush you if you tried to "kite" with a bow, previously enemies would continue to cautiously approach you so you could keep backpedalling and slowly whittling them down.

 

[Parabalus]

I didn't follow his brief and disastrous stint in the Codex too closely but from what i remember he genuinely thought the games used abstractions in the past only because the technology wasn't advanced enough to actually put you in the shoes of your character. Thus, stuff like turn based gameplay is more of a thing of the past. Now that we can do realistic first person combat we don't have to simulate it with dice rolling. Those weren't his exact words but i remember that was the general gist of what he believed and why he pissed off all the Codex autists for whom strategy and number crunching is an important aspect of RPGs.

KCD combat is garbage tho

It isn't popamole. If there's problems with the combat it is because they didn't entirely succeed in what they wanted to create, but the aim was still a simulation, not LARPing.

It's a simulation of something alright. Not sure if I'd go with combat, probably closer to a simulation of a pile of shit.

Best melee combat since DMoM&M.

 

[mondblut]

IIRC he stopped by the Codex in the past and got offended by people calling his tastes popamole.

Don't call your action game an RPG because "b-but you play a role!", and you won't be called popamole.

 

[Pentium]

The guy who made Mafia and Kingdom Come cannot be popamole.

Mafia is very much popamole, tho. Ok, I'm not saying it was a bad game - I enjoyed it myself - but it is a completely linear storyfags' haven which, generally speaking, doesn't blow my mind. We also need to consider it was his first project as a lead designer and probably the first city sandbox to have been in development, even before GTA 3.

 

[RNGsus]

I didn't follow his brief and disastrous stint in the Codex too closely but from what i remember he genuinely thought the games used abstractions in the past only because the technology wasn't advanced enough to actually put you in the shoes of your character. Thus, stuff like turn based gameplay is more of a thing of the past. Now that we can do realistic first person combat we don't have to simulate it with dice rolling. Those weren't his exact words but i remember that was the general gist of what he believed and why he pissed off all the Codex autists for whom strategy and number crunching is an important aspect of RPGs.

KCD combat is garbage tho

It isn't popamole. If there's problems with the combat it is because they didn't entirely succeed in what they wanted to create, but the aim was still a simulation, not LARPing.

It's a simulation of something alright. Not sure if I'd go with combat, probably closer to a simulation of a pile of shit.

Best melee combat since DMoM&M.

Yeah, and still not as sweet as Sir Kicksalot Deathboot.