Cyberpunk 2077 - CDProjekt's New Joint

But even putting aside the fact that NMS fell so short of the hype, perhaps you forget that there were critical, game breaking bugs at release. Like common issues where the core what chain would break, and then you wouldn’t get fundamental recipes like warp fuel, and then couldn’t leave the first system.

I mean, i played it at release as well, and i probably enjoyed it more than most as i tend to be able to work around such bugs… But NMS was absolutely broken in very fundamental ways at release.

I never noticed it was broken in that way. The Atlas key thing was inconsequential to the way I was playing, and it was fixed before it became an issue for me, and it’s also the only “game-breaking” bug I can recall. Sure, there were issues with texture streaming and whatnot, but those were not a big deal either.

But NMS had the advantage of being a new, unique thing, which made its faults less apparent. Cyberpunk 2077 is in a well established genre, which makes all its faults even more glaring. Seeing similar animals in NMS? A limitation of the technology, I get it. Seeing identical NPCs in Cyberpunk? Immersion breaking.

NMS was trying something completely new. That makes one more accepting of oversights and mistakes because, well, it’s a new thing. It’s unexplored space, and as such you must expect issues and limitations. Cyberpunk 2077 was supposed to be an evolution of something we already know well, with several celebrated games it could be compared to.

Cyberpunk 2077 and NMS have many things in common, though. The sheer ambition. The hype machine before release, including lies about the state of the game and what it could or could not do. The does-not-live-up-to-the-hype-at-all release.

Now the question is whether the post-release support will be as good for CP2077 as it was for NMS. Hello Games just sat in silence and let their work on the game speak more than words, the improvements they made, offered for free, serving as an apology and a statement of intent. They were set on making NMS the game they wanted it to be. And they’re still doing that to this day.

I can’t say the same of CDPR, though. The video shifts blame and avoids many raised issues, and their “plan” lacks any details on what they are fixing and why. But maybe their work on the game will speak for itself. We’ll see.

This is true. But what @TurinTur brings up is valid, I think. Much of what needs to be changed impacts the main pillar of the game, the storyline and V’s path. In particular, one of the game’s most glaring weaknesses, the lack of any sort of faction or reputation system to tie together all of the different gangs and players, who it is implied though not implemented that they have their own agendas, priorities, and what not, can’t be fixed I don’ think without fundamentally changing the game world and affecting V’s choices and options relative to the main quest. Not, at least, without further compartmentalizing the main quest line from the rest of the world.

The game is the unholy amalgamation of an open-world sandbox with severely underdeveloped or broken components and a linear, narrative-driven story RPG with severely underdeveloped or broken components. The flashes of brilliance in both areas are enough for folks like me to put in a ton of hours, but ultimately neither part of the game really works, nor does the unified whole.

Some of those things might be possible to implement in updates and patches. They could add a gang reputation system, for instance. But giving more weight to your choices in the game, and further expanding the effect of those choices in the world? Nearly impossible without essentially making a new game. And yeah, all those improvements would isolate the main quest even more.

I guess CDPR realized at some point that they couldn’t live up to their own ambition within any reasonable timeframe and tried to make do with what was possible. And they’re unwilling to admit that because it’s embarassing. Or maybe they got so entangled in the technical aspects of the game’s look and feel (and they allude to that in the video when they talk of the streaming technology) that they failed to give the proper attention to other parts of the game.

So yeah, maybe it isn’t “fixable”. I want to see they try, though. It’s the least CDPR can do to recover some of the good will they lost with the whole thing.

As comparison, here’s the first post-release communication done by Hello Games back in 2016, a month after the release of the game:

Hello,

Over the last few weeks since No Man’s Sky released we’ve been inundated with feedback and discussion about No Man’s Sky.

No matter what feedback you gave us, you have been heard and we are listening carefully. Thank you.

Here’s what we’ve been busy with in the weeks since release:

  • A community/support management team has been brought on board.
  • Support issues raised are been categorised by that team, and we are fixing them in order of priority.
  • We’ve released a bunch of patches for PC and PS4.
  • We’ve written up patch notes for all those patches. You can find them here.

What matters now, as always, is what we do rather than what we say. We’re developers, and our focus is first on resolving any issues people have with the game as it is, then on future free updates which will improve, expand and build on the No Man’s Sky universe.

This is a labour of love for us, and it’s just the beginning.

If you have suggestions please mail (email address)

Thank you,
Hello Games

Benchmarks at 4k w/ everything on max and DLSS on Quality average in the mid 30’s.

There’s more to those small gigs than you think though, I had to neutralize a target in a dance club but once there I could start a conversation with the guy giving him the chance to leave the city. That was really easy to miss, also due to some interface bug. Several gigs also refer to one another. A lot of stuff is buried underneath something else in this game or doesn’t come through as clean/precise as it should which is perhaps the biggest issue, even in the gigs. You have to wade through too many UI layers / shards to see the interesting lore stuff. Coupled with the multi-approach level design I’d say this is the best collection of Deus Ex-like (mini-)missions I could think of. That’s the game’s true heart. Once the game systems are better balanced/the graphical/physics problems are fixed and / or modded people are going to beg Square-Enix to build the next Deus Ex in this engine or folks will try to convince Paradox to switch Vampire: Bloodlines 2 over to this. The NCPD skull missions and cyberpsycho sightings are more of a missed chance because they really feel like filler (except for a few surprises).

Maybe too many of these things are small details (like the hasty Takemura-dilemma in the main quest which a lot of people missed just because the game didn’t spell it out, that did have a bigger consequence all the way to the end though) but they are present.

Runs great on a three year old PC rig and it has me wishing for more. I got the Vampire: Bloodlines feeling (great setting, unresolved mystery stuff and most characters act and feel life-like) and that’s a rare thing nowadays. Biggest difference with Bloodlines is that more stuff to do will eventually come, even if we have to wait for a year.

Geez, that is rough. I admit that I can’t maintain 60, but I checked last night and mine is running mostly around 55 FPS, a few dips down to 52 and a few spikes up to 59/60 - but I haven’t noticed any drops with the naked eye.

I’m sorry your experience has been subpar - but for where I’m at, the 48" LG with 3080 has been the best immersive experience that I have personally had.

Those aren’t my benchmarks, they’re from Techspot’s benchmarking review.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s awesome to gawk at in 4K HDR, and it can spike to higher frame rates, it’s not at all unplayable. I prefer a more stable high frame rate. I could try downscaling to 1440 on the LG, but if I’m gonna do that I have a nice ultrawide sitting right next to it, which is probably the best fit for the 3080.

Hahahaha. I guess anything can happen.

Welcome back.

Oh, no doubt; I’ve commented on this earlier in the thread. There are cool little things buried in the game, with outcomes that vary depending on your actions. As you say, though, they are easy to miss. Also, they don’t matter in the grand scheme of things, which I’m pretty much fine with, but they also don’t matter at the mid-level, the sort of day to day world level. If there consequences to constantly ganking a gangs members or stealing their loot or whatever, the little side mission things would be far more meaningful.

DF posted a pretty great tweaking video which should get at least 15fps more at 4k from max settings without meaningful loss of visual quality.

Contact Shadows: On
Improved Facial Lighting Geometry: On
Local Shadow Mesh Quality: High
Local Shadow Quality High
Cascaded Shadows Range: High
Cascaded Shadows Resolution: Medium
Distant Shadows Resolution: High
Volumetric Fog Resolution: 1080p Ultra, 1440p High, 4K Medium
Volumetric Cloud Quality: Medium
Max Dynamic Decals: Ultra
Screen Space Reflections Quality: Low but High if you find the amount of grain distracting.
Subsurface Scattering Quality: High
Ambient Occlusion: Low (there is barely a difference)
Colour Precision: Medium
Mirror Quality: 1080p High. 1440p High, 4K Medium
Level of Detail: High

The one I mentioned was pretty massive… you could get in a state where you never got the recipe to make warp fuel. Then you couldn’t warp… which kind of breaks everything.

Personally, I also ran into a number of issues with quests breaking when you left a system.

Then, when they made some of the biggest follow up patches that added new features, I ran into bugs where the quest lines designed to give you recipes for core gameplay elements broke, so I just got stuck and could never proceed.

This happened to me, personally, probably 4-5 times where some quest line broke and I couldn’t continue. I especially had this happen when some of the new big patches came out, where I then played them for a while, and was like, “Hey, this is cool, they added a bunch of new stuff…” but then at some point the quest introducing the new stuff broke, and I just put the game down again.

I had a couple progression blockers like that in NMS, it was a real mess. Like you I went back after one of the big patches and ran into more issues. Not surprising for there to be issues after a major update but as someone who hadn’t really had a chance to dig into the game it basically sucked all the motivation to play it out of me.

I went through Cyberpunk with one T-pose and maybe a couple glitched sidequest steps where a reload fixed it. I died one time getting out of my car. On an ultrawide monitor, there were occasions where part of my UI would be cut off but just hitting Start on my gamepad to bring up the menu would fix it. Other than that, no issues and I finished the game. I guess I just got lucky.

I played on PS4 Pro, almost complete media black prior to and after launch so I didn’t know about the drama and scandal with the bugs etc until I was almost done. It was a little rough but played well enough.

I absolutely Loved most of it. A triumph. Some of it hit me in the feels with how well some of the quests and dialogs went. It spoke to me and was right up my alley.

At the end, i had nothing left to do but finish the main story. It was last Wednesday morning, I had 4 possible endings. I was feeling melancholy and did with the suicide ending, fully intending to complete the other endings. It fucked me up. Then Wednesday day happened, and we all know how that went down. I didn’t feel like playing anymore and deleted the game.

I look forward to playing it fully again once enough time passes, cd project puts a lot more work into it, and I get a ps5 or gaming rig. Until, it was quite the experience.

The inevitable behind-the-scenes Schreier feature is out:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-16/cyberpunk-2077-what-caused-the-video-game-s-disastrous-rollout

Nice!

It performed so poorly that Sony Corp. removed the game from the PlayStation Store and offered refunds, an unprecedented move, while Microsoft Corp. slapped on a label warning customers that they “may experience performance issues on Xbox One until the game is updated.”

I see people keep referencing this like Sony and MS pulled it from the store because it was so buggy, but I don’t remember it happening it like that. I think Sony and MS would never have done that if CDPR first hadn’t have come out and said you will get a refund if you ask for it. Apparently they didn’t clear this with Sony and MS, which of course went on the offensive after the announcement to have to avoid paying for a bunch of charge backs and return hassles.