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

[Haplo]

Well, the levelled loot is quite something. I've found a level 20 requirement sniper rifle at... level 2. On the other hand... might this mean hand-placed loot?

Yeah most of iconic weapons (basically New Vegas style special versions of weapons) are euiter rewards from quests or handplaced they usually come with recipe for crafting which means that you can down the line craft better version of it.

Thing is, this rifle was not iconic. Nothing special about it really... apart from the level and DPS rating. Definitely looked hand placed, was located on a high balcony where some sniper probably was perched at a time, that you could reach via an elevator. Although its possible that you can find a randomized sniper rifle there?

 

[Konjad]

Just finished the game, doing almost all side quests and gigs too.

How long did it take? Did you speed through them or take your time?

Took my time, as I said I did almost everything. It took 4 days playing from morning to evening with few breaks, so around 40 hours. However, I did not wander pointlessly around the city much, went from mission to mission.

 

[Konjad]

A lot of content and possible ending variations are locked behind doing the "main" side quests, and even some random gigs have awesome stories in them and have impact on the main missions, so it's more like - you can play it in 10 or 70 hours.

Also while there are all these larger than life characters running around, the story is deeply personal - you know, a young lowlife with a gun being faced with mortality and all. Kinda hit me in the feels that.

I feel like we should have better slower introduction to V, his buttbudies and fixers than cutscene montage, 1 gig for Wakako and 1 sudden gig for Dex. Right after that sudden attention from supposed smartest of the fixers (he was off'd from the story in an almost Tarantino comedic way, not very smart), the story unfolds in a rollercoaster fasion. Game should have saved its slower pace and have at least some introductory content, not thrown into these big events like now.

It seems clear that the beginning was supposed to be much longer, but instead of a dozen or so missions we got the same "gameplay cutscene" as in the trailer. Such a shame.

 

[msxyz]

Thing is, this rifle was not iconic. Nothing special about it really... apart from the level and DPS rating. Definitely looked hand placed, was located on a high balcony where some sniper probably was perched at a time, that you could reach via an elevator. Although its possible that you can find a randomized sniper rifle there?

I noticed that missions usually contain some hand placed loot (not all of it, money and junk is still random) that appears even if you reload an earlier save or play with another character. Never encountered such a disparity in levesl though. The max difference I found was +3 levels and that was a random weapon dropped by a gang member on the streets.

 

[Black]

Is there the Bladerunner pistol?

 

[Correct_Carlo]

They probably had people on the team who were nowhere near as experienced as people in studios like Rockstar or Naughty Dog. They were inexperienced, they were incompetent and that is what they could cook up in this timeframe.

Don't forget overly ambitious.

There is such a massive rift between what Cyberpunk does incredibly well (World design, graphics, and main-story writing) and what it does awfully (everything else). Playing the game is almost whip-lash inducing as you will frequently run up against something that is almost transcendentally brilliant, in the sense that you've never seen anything like it in another video game before, and then run smack dab into some awful, 2000s era, shovelware level shit 5 minutes later that isn't just bad, but shockingly bad. Games rarely both succeed as marvelously and fail as miserably as Cyberpunk 2077 does, so there has to be an interesting story behind this failure: stuff that was dramatically cut, studio in-fighting, compromises, and etc.

Everyone is rightly shitting on the AI, for example, but I highly, highly, doubt that this is what CDPR had planned. The AI is so colossally bad that I guarantee you that they had a more interesting AI system that was in some degree of completion in previous builds that they ended up having to cut at the last minute for some reason and quickly mock up this monstrosity just to ship the game. Why they did this, I don't know. It could be to make the game work on PS4, it could be because they alienated their staff, or it could just be that whatever they had planned wasn't working so they had to cut it. However, the game has such promise that I hope they are able dig out and finish some of the stuff they may have half-way implemented and cut.

Who knows, though? It's also possible that none of this shit ever went beyond the planning phase and there was some kind of radical mismanagement going on behind the scenes which resulted in a rift between the high-level game designers and the actual coders. We are still close enough to the game's release that the recriminations haven't started yet, but at some point people who worked on the game will start talking about what happened behind the scenes. It's happened with every massively anticipated game that's been a mess on release.

 

[Trithne]

A lot of content and possible ending variations are locked behind doing the "main" side quests, and even some random gigs have awesome stories in them and have impact on the main missions, so it's more like - you can play it in 10 or 70 hours.

Also while there are all these larger than life characters running around, the story is deeply personal - you know, a young lowlife with a gun being faced with mortality and all. Kinda hit me in the feels that.

I feel like we should have better slower introduction to V, his buttbudies and fixers than cutscene montage, 1 gig for Wakako and 1 sudden gig for Dex. Right after that sudden attention from supposed smartest of the fixers (he was off'd from the story in an almost Tarantino comedic way, not very smart), the story unfolds in a rollercoaster fasion. Game should have saved its slower pace and have at least some introductory content, not thrown into these big events like now.

It seems clear that the beginning was supposed to be much longer, but instead of a dozen or so missions we got the same "gameplay cutscene" as in the trailer. Such a shame.

The "Gameplay cutscene" is also what gave people the impression that they could do things like go dancing, etc.

I feel like Act 1 makes more sense if you assume that Dex always planned to do what he does, which there's several hints towards being the case.

Literally just one or two more missions with Jackie before the Dex job would make things feel less like you're on a Rollercoaster. Locking the Dex job behind a little bit of Street Cred would also ease the player in and push them into doing the Side Gigs, which are otherwise easily missed in all the noise. Maybe you could even take Jackie on them, and then I might actually miss him in Act 2.

 

[Origin]

They probably had people on the team who were nowhere near as experienced as people in studios like Rockstar or Naughty Dog. They were inexperienced, they were incompetent and that is what they could cook up in this timeframe.

Don't forget overly ambitious.

There is such a massive rift between what Cyberpunk does incredibly well (World design, graphics, and main-story writing)

Tastes aside, graphics in this game is in no way done incredibly well.

Only great part of the graphics is the general art style.

Everything else about graphics is a hacked mess, covered with a layer of ray tracing to mask it.

There is nothing technologically advanced about CP 2077 engine.

Everybody can make game which looks nice while keeping still and falls apart as soon as you start moving, turn around etc.

 

[Fedora Master]

Even the look of the city starts to crack once you look closer. Its obvious they had only a very limited amount of assets to work with, that's why there are vending machines EVERYWHERE, sometimes dozens of them, even when it makes zero sense. Same with the dildos and those waving cats and so on.

 

[North Gibraltarian Dog]

New official statement by CD Projekt CEO, guys!



-He reiterates his deep concern.

-Talks for first time about rpg systems and mechanics!

- And explain in detail what he think should be the next steps to fix every problem.

 

[ChildInTime]

A lot of content and possible ending variations are locked behind doing the "main" side quests, and even some random gigs have awesome stories in them and have impact on the main missions, so it's more like - you can play it in 10 or 70 hours.

Also while there are all these larger than life characters running around, the story is deeply personal - you know, a young lowlife with a gun being faced with mortality and all. Kinda hit me in the feels that.

I feel like we should have better slower introduction to V, his buttbudies and fixers than cutscene montage, 1 gig for Wakako and 1 sudden gig for Dex. Right after that sudden attention from supposed smartest of the fixers (he was off'd from the story in an almost Tarantino comedic way, not very smart), the story unfolds in a rollercoaster fasion. Game should have saved its slower pace and have at least some introductory content, not thrown into these big events like now.

It seems clear that the beginning was supposed to be much longer, but instead of a dozen or so missions we got the same "gameplay cutscene" as in the trailer. Such a shame.

The "Gameplay cutscene" is also what gave people the impression that they could do things like go dancing, etc.

I feel like Act 1 makes more sense if you assume that Dex always planned to do what he does, which there's several hints towards being the case.

Literally just one or two more missions with Jackie before the Dex job would make things feel less like you're on a Rollercoaster. Locking the Dex job behind a little bit of Street Cred would also ease the player in and push them into doing the Side Gigs, which are otherwise easily missed in all the noise. Maybe you could even take Jackie on them, and then I might actually miss him in Act 2.

Yeah, I suppose that cutscene was really meant to be played in full after lifepath prologues. What little time V spent with Jackie didn't stop me from feeling sad at his death, you can actually visit his funeral, talk to his mother, Misty is there as one of the central characters of the whole narrative etc, also

Spoiler

that scene on the roof in one of the endings, where you meet his construct while inside Mikoshi... him repeating those phrases from the beginning of the game, was pretty heartbreaking, female V voice actress really sells all those emotional scenes.

 

[AwesomeButton]

And the drama keeps you going...

 

[Daedalos]

The introduction, lifepaths and everything else starting off feels very undercooked.

V just darts off right away. no pre-text really, you just get put into this world without knowing anything about it.

and then ur supposed to care about jackie, watch cutscene, wow u had a great time together, suddenly you meet the best fixers ever.

it's all kind of chaotic and messy, you don't feel the progressions at the start, you're just thrown into it head first.

The rags to riches story is great, but feels tacked on here.

 

[T.Ashpool]

remember when they said during dialogue you can look at objects and things like that, which would give you additional dialogue choices and change conversations? the whole reason they made them from an fp perspective instead of third person like in witcher. it barely exists,
i think looking at johnny gave me additional lines a couple times but that's it. another feature that got cut or downgraded to a point where you barely can say it's in anymore.

 

[Dexter]

The problem is disappearance, not sprites. They are supposed to be replaced with models as they get closer. But we wouldn't all be here if this game worked as it is supposed to be

https://forums.gta5-mods.com/topic/...o-lods-fix-for-disappearing-cars-when-distant

Apparently they just disappear instead. Billboards must be too advanced a technology.

Using moving sprites as replacement for traffic isn't common practice in Open world games whether they disappear or not - I can't think of one, has never been as far as I can think back. Static objects like bushes, trees or similar in older games where it's not immediately hilariously apparent that there's a .jpg moving around in the background, especially in older games yes, things like traffic not so much. I wonder if it's as obvious and jarring in Cyberjunk because everyone is turning off all the Filtering stuff like Motion Blur, Film Grain, Depth of Field, Chromatic Aberration and Lens Flare that were meant to somewhat mask such inconvenient details in the distance.

"Cyberjunk 2077 - The best elevator with three light sources rendering the world has ever seen!"

Fair enough. Have not seen any rain aside from a scripted mission. And yea I really would have expected water droplet physics to have been far higher priority for a cyberpunk game, I mean what did they spend eight years working on!? I better go make a 0/10 steam review on this issue.

The rain is really ugly, though. It looks like a flat, 2D, plane in the sky and parts of it fade in and out. It looks weird. I know I've seen the same exact effect in other games before, so it's weird that a game with so many bells and whistles has such bog-standard, ugly, rain.

I never actually noticed it is 2D looked great to me. Until someone posted that and i noticed there are no droplet shader. Obviously it waas not that high on their priority list

The rain looks like shit I was hoping for a "Blade Runner visual overhaul mod" with Rain, fog and constant night.

Not like this was important for the setting and aesthetic or anything...


"Dobry, put a filter on the screen, nobody notice."

 

[AwesomeButton]

The introduction, lifepaths and everything else starting off feels very undercooked.

V just darts off right away. no pre-text really, you just get put into this world without knowing anything about it.

and then ur supposed to care about jackie, watch cutscene, wow u had a great time together, suddenly you meet the best fixers ever.

it's all kind of chaotic and messy, you don't feel the progressions at the start, you're just thrown into it head first.

The rags to riches story is great, but feels tacked on here.

I had the same feeling that the pre-heist part of the main quest is going too quickly, but you have to read a little bette than the common peasant. Jackie is overhyped about Dexter and is prone to overstating how famous a fixer he is. Dex is just putting on airs a lot, and that's calculated for effect on impressionable wannabes like V and Jackie. He tests the ground with you from the beginning by starting with the question that's essentially "so do you want to become a big name in this business?" and keeps working in that direction in order to manipulate you into doing dangerous stuff for little pay. It's kind of like the Vito and Joe story, except Joe dies early on. It's true they could have delved longer on this motive of the story, so that the contrast with the player's outlook post-heist would be sharper, and the feeling of V becoming a "grownup" overnight is better emphasized and impacts the player's mood as well.

 

[Dexter]

The executives also said the company found itself overwhelmed by efforts to make “Cyberpunk” playable on nine platforms at launch. It previously developed games for three platforms at a time.

We HaVe tO tHiNk oF tHe ShArEhOlDeRs aNd MaXiMiZe PrE-OrDeR PrOfItS.

It's also probably more of a pragmatic "We only have the Hype for release once and we know the game internally is a Shitshow, if we stagger out the release the Hype bubble will have already popped and we have to work and get Sales from the game as-is not as people hoped it would be in their imagination after all the Opinions, reviews and YouTube videos are out there."
You only get one shot at this at Launch and they managed 8million+ Pre-Orders and turning Profit Day1 based on Hype alone before anyone even knew what the game was like. You can do staggered releases with added platforms with highly praised titles with generally positive mainstream player Feedback like GTA or the Elder Scrolls. You will only get one chance with a title that you know is highly flawed.

89 metacritic score. Nice

Console versions seem to have enough reviews to have a Score now too:
https://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/cyberpunk-2077
https://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-one/cyberpunk-2077

 

[Fenix]

Btw how do i turn off nudity ? serious question

Yeahif you cn do that, game could be more bearable.

 

[Mintbarbecue]

So basically the game is in Early acces "very early indeed".
No wonder they were pushing the whole penis customization thing and having Jhon Wick aka Keanu wooden actor of the decade in the game.
They probably tought that would make everything magically disappear.
Smoke and mirrors all the way to the bank.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Well, the levelled loot is quite something. I've found a level 20 requirement sniper rifle at... level 2. On the other hand... might this mean hand-placed loot?

Yeah most of iconic weapons (basically New Vegas style special versions of weapons) are euiter rewards from quests or handplaced they usually come with recipe for crafting which means that you can down the line craft better version of it.

Thing is, this rifle was not iconic. Nothing special about it really... apart from the level and DPS rating. Definitely looked hand placed, was located on a high balcony where some sniper probably was perched at a time, that you could reach via an elevator. Although its possible that you can find a randomized sniper rifle there?

Iconic means it's just rare and you cannot really find them on street gangs. They have some slight differences too.
There are lots of hand placed weapons, armors and experience boosters, they are just drowned under tons of thrash loot.
And then there is unique weapons. They've special names and some can only be crafted, others hidden or behind some quests. I got one unique sniper from a brawl quest as reward. It shoots explosive ammo.
Another I found is a pistol that normally shots two rounds with each shot. You can rise up the number of rounds with charging it.
My personel favorite is the "smart" pistol though. Levels up with you.

 

[Origin]

Today I learned how you spend $314 million budget.

https://www.topgear.com/car-news/gaming/gaming-cars-cyberpunk-2077#1

This is fifth time this year I'm reading the same article on Top Gear.

Priorities are priorities.

It's a pity folks at Top Gear didn't try driving these cars.

What exactly is the point of wasting money on sponsored article in Top Gear? So it could attract car enthusiasts?

What is there for them? Atrocious physics? Crazy vehicles behaving possessed?

Some people here suck up on CD Projekt's apology, but it seems they still insist on deceiving potential customers.

What you might not be aware of, however, is the extent to which this game caters for lovers of all things automotive.

LOL

 

[msxyz]

50/100 official score on MC for consoles is going to cause a shakeup in CDPR management. Some heads will roll (not necessarily the real culprits, scapegoating is common in corpo culture while the real cunts usually land on their feet).

Even a sub 90 for PC is surprising. From what I've experienced first hand, the bugs on the PC version are not even at Bethesda level; it must have been due to the game not being 'progressive' enough (or maybe Bethesda hands out better stuff to the reviewers)

 

[Bloodeyes]

Cyberjunk 2077

 

[Dexter]

Today I learned how you spend $314 million budget.

https://www.topgear.com/car-news/gaming/gaming-cars-cyberpunk-2077#1

This is fifth time this year I'm reading the same article on Top Gear.

Priorities are priorities.

It's a pity folks at Top Gear didn't try driving these cars.

Btw. people noticed that while bikes exist and you can ride them as a player there isn't a single NPC in the Open World that is actually riding them, maybe it would break the "stay in line" "Traffic AI" that the game has: https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberpunkg...s_the_only_person_that_rides_a_bike_in_night/

 

[RobotSquirrel]

"Cyberjunk 2077 - The best elevator with three light sources rendering the world has ever seen!"

You need to realise that on a PBR/PBS engine that you're using a pre-baked reflection map so you can only have so many light sources. Even with RTX they're still using a hybridisation approach which generates reflections over the top of a reflection map this is why it looks consistent regardless of if you're using RTX or not plus if you see what games look like with just raytracing they tend to look really artificial and sterile the reflection maps add that much needed texture to them. I can't fault them on the technique its textbook in the way its done in Cyberpunk.

Personally though I don't like to dabble in PBR because its too much handling of assets. I'm the sort of developer that just likes to be done with things and move on so I'm not a fan of the workflow but I can't fault the results in that they do look amazing when done right.
I tend to just go as far as Diffuse , Normals, AO, Emssive and Specular. Any more than that and I feel you're over doing it since you're going to be ideally putting it into atlases anyway which again is a whole other ballgame of overhandling of assets.

Game development is hard lol.