Cyberpunk 2077 Grieving Thread

[Slimy Time]

It's very puzzling to me especially as CDPR had to have seen prior disastrous launches -- FO76, No Man's Sky, WWE 2k20. And then they just forged ahead anyways!

The only thing I can compare it to is when you're a kid, and you know the shit is about to hit the fan, but you keep going because you can't think of any way to change things. Maybe, just maybe, it won't be as bad as you imagine.

I mean, they had issues from the outset with management fucking around, but surely someone knew this was a dumpster fire beyond the rank and file, right?

But then, no one ever went broke underestimating the ability of people to not just lie to each other, but to themselves.

Lying to their shareholders and investors probably was one of the key reasons. Eventually someone higher up probably pulled the trigger when the delays became ridiculous.

 

[Disc]

Before i say anything, have redditors discussing sexual content in cyberpunk:

https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberpunkgame/comments/mk7vng/whats_up_with_sex_in_cyberpunk/

NMS had some major problems upon release, but they had quite a few going against them in hindsight over CP2077. They had a vastly smaller team working on the game (wasn't it like 18 people by the release?), had the lead designer try to sell the game when he clearly did not like public speaking, said dev clearly couldn't just say no to things when pushed, and the flood that nearly fucked their entire work progress. Since they are so small, they did the smart thing, laid low from any form of media and kept repairing their mistakes.

CDPR has garnered a large dev team from The Witcher's success despite having shit management, announced their game around 8 years ago but didn't bother start working on it seemingly at all until 4 years ago, did not have marketing & the dev team talking with each other to manage their hype train, and had source material to reference for gameplay quirks but only scratched the surface for simplicity. Since they're already talking about making a new Witcher, they are clearly trying to walk away from this royal fuck up.

To put it simply, whether or not they can pull a nms or an FFXIV comes down to 'do they recognise the problem'?

For NMS, the problem was overpromising with shitty journalists making someone who doesn't do well under peer pressure into a messiah. so they shut the fuck up, bolted down the hatches and didn't talk until it was fixed.

For FFXIV, there were many problems, but the biggest was the game was really poorly optimised and designed from the ground up. They broke the entire game down to it's roots and built it up again, they completely remade the game, to save it.

For CP2077, the big problems most people can agree on is Management and Marketing. The FFXIV problems too, but those are the keys. We have seen nothing that would lead us to believe they have internalised that and started making the necessary changes, and all of the updates included in these patches are surface level - they don't really address the larger core issues.

 

[robobobo]

NMS wasn't broken, it was just missing huge swaths of features that they'd promised or at least strongly implied. Cyberpunk has huge gaping flaws in addition to missing the huge swaths of features. The two aren't really comparable. They're going to need to rebuild a large portion of Cyberpunk just to make it stable and not janky as fuck before they can even begin to work on the cut content. I don't think that's outside the realm of possibility, the question is whether CDPR is actually going to invest the money into that much work when it's probably not going to result in many more sales.

 

[WinchesterPremium]

NMS wasn't broken, it was just missing huge swaths of features that they'd promised or at least strongly implied. Cyberpunk has huge gaping flaws in addition to missing the huge swaths of features. The two aren't really comparable. They're going to need to rebuild a large portion of Cyberpunk just to make it stable and not janky as fuck before they can even begin to work on the cut content. I don't think that's outside the realm of possibility, the question is whether CDPR is actually going to invest the money into that much work when it's probably not going to result in many more sales.

The question is what options they have.
> Try and fix it, make money from the multiplayer and things like the show

Would take a bunch of time and resources that might not pan out, unlikely to revive the hype.

>Dump it and move on to the next game

They made one game people actually liked and where banking on that reputation to sell their other games. It will be the better part of a decade old when their next game comes out and they'll have Bugpunk2077 ruining their reputation

It seems like they're screwed either way lol

 

[DeadwastePrime]

NMS wasn't broken, it was just missing huge swaths of features that they'd promised or at least strongly implied.

oh no, it totally was busted at launch. various bugs, graphical errors, random crashes, poor optimization where even the 1080 couldnt handle it sometimes. it was a mess that took probably several months before it got to a playable state. it was obviously missing content too of course, and it wouldnt be for like another year or 2 after launch until people could even begin to trust hello games ever again, but still the game was jank at launch.

 

[Had]

I played through the whole game when it came out on pc on day one and didn't care for anything but the main quest line.
I enjoyed the story not something I say a lot about games, most of the time I find they do nothing but get in the way but here it was it's main asset,
pushed though a lot of the bigger bugs buy saving a ton and shrugging it off, over all I'd say I had a lot of fun.
When I came back to the game to just mess around in the city I found it to be nothing but annoying without a goal or place to get to do, the shitty cops and shitty driving are all the game has left. unlike a game like watch dogs 2 or far cry 5 where I felt like I could play hours fighting from the cops and doing fun stupid missions or multiplayer. Here I was left with nothing but a wallpaper generator but no real world.

In short the campaign is good but after than the world feels empty and there's nothing else to do but replay the story.

 

[Captain Syrup]

The foundations that make up Cyberpunk are so poor they are outmatched by games 20 years old.

Shadowrun Returns is way more deep, and that's a shitty little mobile game from 8 years ago.

The biggest hurdles for me were the RPG elements and the Badlands. CDPR had a good concept: randomly generated NPCs. The rest is pretty derivative, a mashup of Fallout and Grand Theft Auto.

The city is too colorful on the whole, and makes me wonder if AAA games can do anything meaningful with 'cyberpunk.'

 

[Ruin]

Shadowrun Returns is way more deep, and that's a shitty little mobile game from 8 years ago.

The biggest hurdles for me were the RPG elements and the Badlands. CDPR had a good concept: randomly generated NPCs. The rest is pretty derivative, a mashup of Fallout and Grand Theft Auto.

The city is too colorful on the whole, and makes me wonder if AAA games can do anything meaningful with 'cyberpunk.'

They really should have gone with the dark moody pseudo noir of Blade Runner. Night city just looks like LA, the setting is absurdly boring.

 

[Captain Syrup]

Night city just looks like LA

I keep seeing Night City compared to Los Santos, which worries me. The game engine literally turns up the brightness setting when you're driving, but not when you look out the side windows. Just like Vice City/GTAV.

I'm starting to wonder if there's a cultural barrier. Can a Polish developer engage with cyberpunk in the same way the US/UK can? Or are they just aping the highest-grossing games? Hell, even Saint's Row was more atmospheric:

 

[Dr. Sexbot]

I keep seeing Night City compared to Los Santos, which worries me. The game engine literally turns up the brightness setting when you're driving, but not when you look out the side windows. Just like Vice City/GTAV.

I'm starting to wonder if there's a cultural barrier. Can a Polish developer engage with cyberpunk in the same way the US/UK can? Or are they just aping the highest-grossing games? Hell, even Saint's Row was more atmospheric:


View attachment 2062883

I feel like they were torn between the typical dark, rainy, Blade Runner look, and the vaporwave/synthwave 80-s bright colorful neon aesthetic that has been popular more recently. They ended up utterly failing at both, doe.

 

[jje100010001]

They really should have gone with the dark moody pseudo noir of Blade Runner. Night city just looks like LA, the setting is absurdly boring.

Night City lacks scale, and is far too flat and open. Arasuka Tower is like, 50 stories max? Plus the city almost absurdly transitions from city to countryside at North Oak- which is the result of having to cram everything into a map that systems can reasonably run.

You'd expect a Cyberpunk game to have massive 200+ story towers lining the horizon, and truly multi-level environments- this is one of the reasons why I actually think the open world aspect is a net negative as the detail/graphic fidelity expectations increases, and that they should have gone for a more 'rooms and corridors'-type world design instead, basically smaller open world Deus Ex-type hubs loosely connected by highways/transit, with some larger open world areas like deserts on the periphery.

This would have allowed for a more atmospheric & large-scale set-building, since they don't need to worry about realistic placement for everything, and not need to not have to completely model & detail a city (i.e. a back alley people only use once) or worry about system restrictions to map density.

 

[mr.moon1488]

So I guess they're actually going to try to release DLC for this shit? It's sad there are actually people dumb enough to drop more money on this dumpster fire.

 

[An Avenging Bird]

I like to imagine when the announcement was made that they were bringing in Keanu Reeves to become a huge part of the game by some big wig to the dev team.
"Guess what guys/gals/he/her/they/them/it, we are bringing in...Keanu Reeves. He's basically taking over the story. You feeling this? Eh? Ehhhh? Anybody?"

 

[Captain Syrup]

I like to imagine when the announcement was made that they were bringing in Keanu Reeves

To be fair, they owe all of their success to him. Not just the publicity, but the story campaign. Take away Silverhand, and what's left?

I spoke about this earlier, but I imagine it's a situation similar to Death Stranding. Kojima conned a lot of good actors with his pitch. This isn't a game, this is a social experiment, we are "bridging" the divide in America, etc.

Reeves was in over his head. He doesn't understand the business.

 

[X Pac Heat]

Take away Silverhand, and what's left?

probably the original premise of a criminal trying to rise ot the top, which would have worked MUCH better for this GTA clone abortion.

 

[Trans Fat 41g]

How should I feel about tech reviewers (not exactly obnoxious ones, per-se) doing benchmark tests of hardware using Cyberpunk 2077 as an example?

I've called one out for using such a broken mess that can barely run on anything and that it wasn't really fair for showcasing the hardware itself.

To be 100% clear, unfair - solely for the hardware-, I don't mind laughing at this dumpster fire AAA shit.

 

[X Pac Heat]

How should I feel about tech reviewers (not exactly obnoxious ones, per-se) doing benchmark tests of hardware using Cyberpunk 2077 as an example?

I've called one out for using such a broken mess that can barely run on anything and that it wasn't really fair for showcasing the hardware itself.

To be 100% clear, not fair -for the hardware-, I don't mind laughing at this dumpster fire AAA shit.

Cyberpunk to benchmark hardware? Unless it's an April Fools joke or them specifically showcasing how inconsistent it is across systems or something they should be disregarded and viewed as completely retarded.

There've been reports in this very thread of mid-tier rigs running it without any bugs while high end multiple thousand dollar PC's have numerous crashes and issues.

Who's doing this, if you don't mind me asking

 

[Trans Fat 41g]

Cyberpunk to benchmark hardware? Unless it's an April Fools joke or them specifically showcasing how inconsistent it is across systems or something they should be disregarded and viewed as completely retarded.

There've been reports in this very thread of mid-tier rigs running it without any bugs while high end multiple thousand dollar PC's have numerous crashes and issues.

Who's doing this, if you don't mind me asking

Taki Udon, another being ETA Prime.

 

[Bogdandoff]

I don't understand why they didn't add a barbershop.

 

[X Pac Heat]

I don't understand why they didn't add a barbershop.

First playthrough I went nomad, and made my guy have a messy haircut and look super dirty since I assumed there would be character customization within the actual game and it felt weird having a nomad start out as a pretty boy.

Guess I'm the retard for assuming.

Taki Udon, another being ETA Prime.

Eh this isn't that bad I guess since it's just showing how it handles a large assortment of games.

I was thinking you meant more along the lines of it being used as a major benchmark like Crysis used to be.