CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14)(cdprojekt.com)
cdprojekt.com
CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14)
https://www.cdprojekt.com/en/wp-content/uploads-en/2020/12/call-transcript_en.pdf
674 comments
CDPR sounds like a relatively progressively run game company tbh. A lot of game dev companies deny you overtime during the run up to a major release and massively layoff staff after releases.
Up here in British Columbia all technical workers[1] are overtime exempt because EA ran roughshod over our labour laws a number of years ago and people are too afraid to change them for fear of driving off businesses.
1. Vaguely defined - in practice includes anyone who uses a keyboard or has anything to do with the film industry.
Up here in British Columbia all technical workers[1] are overtime exempt because EA ran roughshod over our labour laws a number of years ago and people are too afraid to change them for fear of driving off businesses.
1. Vaguely defined - in practice includes anyone who uses a keyboard or has anything to do with the film industry.
Something similar happened in NZ too under the "Hobbit Law" bought and paid for by Warner Brothers. Now everyone in the film and game industry is considered an independent contractor by default and aren't subject to the usual rights and legal protections afforded to company employees.
> bought and paid for by Warner Brothers
Hang on I remember mass protests by the artists themselves in favour of that law?
Hang on I remember mass protests by the artists themselves in favour of that law?
Could you find some details on this?
Also, "even a shitty job is better than no job" might lead to people campaigning for that law if that means they get to work on LotR in their home country. Of course this is not really a viable strategy long term.
Also, "even a shitty job is better than no job" might lead to people campaigning for that law if that means they get to work on LotR in their home country. Of course this is not really a viable strategy long term.
For example http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/4279251/Jackson-I-feel-enorm....
I think the union leaders trying to block the law were getting death threats from the workers they were supposed to be representing. There's some documentaries about it online as well. I think the union were completely at odds with their own members. Bizarre situation and an example of why people should be cautious about unions.
I think the union leaders trying to block the law were getting death threats from the workers they were supposed to be representing. There's some documentaries about it online as well. I think the union were completely at odds with their own members. Bizarre situation and an example of why people should be cautious about unions.
Peter Jackson played a blinder on that one.
Some of the people who showed up were colleagues. I wouldn't go as far as to call it a rent-a-mob but there was a lot of misinformation being spread on internal mailing lists leading up to the day.
Indeed, when I worked at EA in BC we were promised comp time for working 'coverage' (overtime) and I even got into trouble for refusing to work on Labour Day! The comp time fizzled into nothing because they fired the Development Manager of our group on the DAY of shipping the game. He just disappeared along with all of his promises. I alone got paid for the overtime because I refused to work TFT (temporary full time - which they pressured me to do) and instead was a true contractor.
I dunno, my impression is that for a game company, CDPR is fairly employee friendly. Of course that's relative to the rest of the gaming industry, which is a well-known employee welfare shithole.
I'm not familiar with Polish labour law, but it could be that in Poland like in many other European countries concepts such as "denying overtime" are inherently illegal.
In Poland most of developers run own companies to pay linear income tax (19% flat) plus €350 a month for state pension instead of paying 18% tax for first €20k earned plus 32% for overages plus mostly hidden to employees installment for pension scheme. So when your cost to the employer is €100k a year:
- under labour law you take home €5.7k per month
- running a company you take home €7k per month
For a country with a minimal wage of €610 this is a significant difference.
Most of the companies will offer paid time off to contractors, end even companies offering high-paying jobs like pilots do in do the same: https://www.ft.com/content/b8f77f16-d865-11e8-ab8e-6be0dcf18...
For a country with a minimal wage of €610 this is a significant difference.
Most of the companies will offer paid time off to contractors, end even companies offering high-paying jobs like pilots do in do the same: https://www.ft.com/content/b8f77f16-d865-11e8-ab8e-6be0dcf18...
> under labour law you take home €5.7k per month - running a company you take home €7k per month
I dunno about Poland, but where I live this type of employment has some caveats:
- You need save for your time off (holidays) yourself. - You save on social security taxes, but it means your salary is not compensated by it when you are ill (or your kids are ill and you need to take care of them), thus you need to save for this yourself. - I would like to say that you would need to save up more yourself for your retirement fund (as you pay less for state pension), but at these level of incomes, usually at both scenarios (self-employed vs being employed) you would like to do that, so it cancels out.
Also it may be illegal, i.e. if you are employed like a full time employee - you cannot work as an independent consultant/contractor. Though AFAIK this definition of "like a full time employee" is not very strict.
IMO problem is that income taxation should be treated (mostly) the same, no matter how you earn the money. Because now (where I live), the wealthier you are, the more elaborate schemes you can run to avoid paying taxes on your income.
I dunno about Poland, but where I live this type of employment has some caveats:
- You need save for your time off (holidays) yourself. - You save on social security taxes, but it means your salary is not compensated by it when you are ill (or your kids are ill and you need to take care of them), thus you need to save for this yourself. - I would like to say that you would need to save up more yourself for your retirement fund (as you pay less for state pension), but at these level of incomes, usually at both scenarios (self-employed vs being employed) you would like to do that, so it cancels out.
Also it may be illegal, i.e. if you are employed like a full time employee - you cannot work as an independent consultant/contractor. Though AFAIK this definition of "like a full time employee" is not very strict.
IMO problem is that income taxation should be treated (mostly) the same, no matter how you earn the money. Because now (where I live), the wealthier you are, the more elaborate schemes you can run to avoid paying taxes on your income.
> Also it may be illegal, i.e. if you are employed like a full time employee - you cannot work as an independent consultant/contractor. Though AFAIK this definition of "like a full time employee" is not very strict.
Polish here. It is like you described but a) not many people know about this (sometimes I surprise some guys telling them their employment form - independent contractor for one company where you are actually working full time - is illegal) and b) I've never heard of someone being caught practicing this.
Polish here. It is like you described but a) not many people know about this (sometimes I surprise some guys telling them their employment form - independent contractor for one company where you are actually working full time - is illegal) and b) I've never heard of someone being caught practicing this.
> b) I've never heard of someone being caught practicing this
Yup. Me too.
It's not as bad with design/IT agencies anymore, but I know that lawyer agencies are still notorious for this. Big-ish lawyer agencies with dozens of lawyers have no employees, everyone is a "partner" (or whatever the term is).
Yup. Me too.
It's not as bad with design/IT agencies anymore, but I know that lawyer agencies are still notorious for this. Big-ish lawyer agencies with dozens of lawyers have no employees, everyone is a "partner" (or whatever the term is).
The difference is a law "partner" is called that because they become a partner in the LLP. In other words they are given a very real ownership stake in the firm. They are paid a portion of the firms profits in addition to any salary.
Associate lawyers (what you are before partner) are paid a regular salary as employees.
Law firms aren't healthy workplaces, but I wouldn't worry about the legal rights of the lawyers working for them.
Associate lawyers (what you are before partner) are paid a regular salary as employees.
Law firms aren't healthy workplaces, but I wouldn't worry about the legal rights of the lawyers working for them.
I think that is kinda normal for lawyers though. In the Czech Republic (I've been here 16 years and work with a lot of lawyers) it's normal for lawyers to be "contractors", very few are salaried.
In fact it's a funny rite of passage for most lawyers: after graduation they have to work for 3 years for a law firm before they are allowed to take the bar exam and become "real" lawyers. During this time they earn a salary. When they finally become "real" lawyers by passing the bar, they get fired. :) And immediately taken back on as contractors.
In fact it's a funny rite of passage for most lawyers: after graduation they have to work for 3 years for a law firm before they are allowed to take the bar exam and become "real" lawyers. During this time they earn a salary. When they finally become "real" lawyers by passing the bar, they get fired. :) And immediately taken back on as contractors.
I'm also Polish, I know quite a few people in IT who used to do exactly that, but this year they all had to stop or figure out some workarounds, because the Polish tax office has started asking for proof that their company is actually working with more than one client. If they only have a single client in a year then they have to convert to full time employment. So yes, people are absolutely getting caught by this.
most of the countries now have something like that but for sole proprietship. if you have an llc, you can do basically whatever you want because it is taxed different, and somebody has to be employed there, so the country gets the taxes. its just that you can pay yourself some salary and the rest you can pay out at the end of the year as profit that is taxes different.
No, it is not illegal - I've been practicing this for the last 10 years, never had any trouble with tax office.
It all depends on how your contract is written - if you have clauses that put some of the business risk on you (e.g. you give 3 month warranty on the code you write, or have some bogus penalties for contract breach, or other things, which I've never seen enforced) then it cannot be treated as full time employment, even if you have just one client for which you issue invoices.
The only thing that is an actual red flag for tax office is when you start as a full time employee, and then switch to running sole proprietorship and your previous employer remains your only client - then it is too obvious that this is just employment in disguise.
EDIT: Also, those "independent contractor" contracts come in different shapes. I, for example have just an hourly rate set, and then I get paid for the hours worked. Some people prefer to have flat monthly rate, and even some paid vacations included in their "B2B contracts", which makes it more suspicious.
It all depends on how your contract is written - if you have clauses that put some of the business risk on you (e.g. you give 3 month warranty on the code you write, or have some bogus penalties for contract breach, or other things, which I've never seen enforced) then it cannot be treated as full time employment, even if you have just one client for which you issue invoices.
The only thing that is an actual red flag for tax office is when you start as a full time employee, and then switch to running sole proprietorship and your previous employer remains your only client - then it is too obvious that this is just employment in disguise.
EDIT: Also, those "independent contractor" contracts come in different shapes. I, for example have just an hourly rate set, and then I get paid for the hours worked. Some people prefer to have flat monthly rate, and even some paid vacations included in their "B2B contracts", which makes it more suspicious.
This depend on the kind of legal relationship one has with the company. If you’re working as independent contractor with a B2B arrangement, the notion of overtime does not really exist. If however you are employed through the “employment contract” (“umowa o prace”), the limits on overtime are really strict, and you must be paid for it, in fact 50% extra, and double pay for overtime worked during nights, sundays and holidays.
I don’t know what’s the typical arrangement in game industry, but in software engineering industry at large, B2B contracts are very common, due to rather preferable tax treatment. B2B gives 10-30% increase in net pay, and its downsides are lack of mandatory severance, mandatory time off days, overtime pay etc. In most scenarios these are not an issue, because if one can negotiate high pay justifying B2B, one can also negotiate time off and lack of overtime. Don’t know about game industry though.
I don’t know what’s the typical arrangement in game industry, but in software engineering industry at large, B2B contracts are very common, due to rather preferable tax treatment. B2B gives 10-30% increase in net pay, and its downsides are lack of mandatory severance, mandatory time off days, overtime pay etc. In most scenarios these are not an issue, because if one can negotiate high pay justifying B2B, one can also negotiate time off and lack of overtime. Don’t know about game industry though.
> If you’re working as independent contractor with a B2B arrangement, the notion of overtime does not really exist.
That's correct. But if you're paid for an hour of work ("time & material") you will get paid for your "overtime".
> I'm not familiar with Polish labour law, but it could be that in Poland like in many other European countries concepts such as "denying overtime" are inherently illegal.
Which explains why so many Ubisoft games are made in Canada...
Which explains why so many Ubisoft games are made in Canada...
No, the reason why so many Ubisoft games are made in Canada(and other studios as well, take a walk around central montreal, there's tonnes of games studios there) is that the Canadian government is giving out massive subsidies to the game industry to grow it there(last I've heard it's literally half of every salary - an absolutely ridiculous amount of money). If you compare the cost of having an employee in Canada to most other places, Canada works out pretty cheap, and it's an attractive place to move to and live in, without the ridiculousness of the American immigration.
I’ve always thought it was interesting that video games are the only kind of software that’s often made outside big tech hubs - not to mention the only kind an ordinary person enjoys using enough to emulate!
Does Canada not subsidize other tech work? I’ve heard the pay at Blackberry was terrible for instance. The only good thing is that Canadians will be impressed if you call yourself a software engineer because they think you have an iron ring.
Does Canada not subsidize other tech work? I’ve heard the pay at Blackberry was terrible for instance. The only good thing is that Canadians will be impressed if you call yourself a software engineer because they think you have an iron ring.
Ubisoft, specifically, versus some of the other companies has the interesting added factor that with their upper-management being primarily based in France it is useful to them to utilize countries/provinces that can also speak French.
Yea Ubisoft is a rather special case. And their montreal studios have actually long be lauded as a pretty good place to work if you're in the game industry.
Never understood why they tried so hard to be the destination for offshoring instead of fostering home grown studios.
That and pitching Vancouver as an ideal HQ2 location since tech workers are worth ~50K less than in America[0]. Is this something that Canadians approve?
[0] https://www.vancouvereconomic.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02...
That and pitching Vancouver as an ideal HQ2 location since tech workers are worth ~50K less than in America[0]. Is this something that Canadians approve?
[0] https://www.vancouvereconomic.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02...
As a Canadian, Vancouver resident, and software developer, I certainly don’t approve of the discount all software companies get here, including ones based here. Not only do companies pay out 60 cents on the dollar, they can also qualify for large refundable tax credit subsidies from provincial and federal governments.
In other words, there are plenty of your “home-grown studios” here, who benefit from the manipulated market created by the multinationals that came before them.
Salaries won’t rise to meet parity until labour gets organized, but as a previous commenter pointed out about labour laws and overtime pay, it’s a massive uphill battle.
In other words, there are plenty of your “home-grown studios” here, who benefit from the manipulated market created by the multinationals that came before them.
Salaries won’t rise to meet parity until labour gets organized, but as a previous commenter pointed out about labour laws and overtime pay, it’s a massive uphill battle.
Nope, and most software developers in Vancouver aren't participating with foreign companies at those rates. The laws remain how they are mostly to disenfranchise QA testers which remain a very hard labour segment to mobilize. There are thousands of "I can make money playing games?!?" folks out there that drown out the really good QA folks and insure that EA can maintain its churn.
For regular dev jobs, I think the market is less imbalanced than it appears on the surface. Cost of living isn't cheap in BC but free medical care is a big bonus and the city is quite pleasant. Senior devs will end up pulling senior dev money - it's mostly the entry level wages that are depressed.
For regular dev jobs, I think the market is less imbalanced than it appears on the surface. Cost of living isn't cheap in BC but free medical care is a big bonus and the city is quite pleasant. Senior devs will end up pulling senior dev money - it's mostly the entry level wages that are depressed.
Actually, senior dev money is half as much in Vancouver as it is in the US. The higher up the tree you go, the more the gap widens.
I wonder why. There must be a skill gap, else the senior engineers would simply drive three hours and double their earnings.
... No, The answer is immigration.
1. If you have a problematic history (which includes things entirely outside of your control, like being born in the wrong part of the world[1]), it can be nearly impossible.
2. If you don't have a problematic history, it's incredibly stressful. If you're on a TN visa, you can be turned away at the border at any time, for any reason whatsoever, including no reason whatsoever. If you're on an H1B visa, you can also be turned away from the border at any time, for any reason whatsoever, including no reason whatsoever. If you lose your job, you need to immediately start dealing with immigration issues, while looking for a new one, or you have to leave the country.
3. If you're married, your spouse can't work for a long time.
4. If you aren't married, your girlfriend/boyfriend/whomever can't even try immigrate with you, even if they wanted to.
5. Being three hours and a border away is not remotely the same thing as being three hours away from your friends and family.
6. There is a long, long, long list of cultural reasons for why a comfortably-living Canadian may prefer to avoid living in the US, even for double the paycheck.
[1] I had a friend whose family fled from Saddam's Iraq, due to their political activities, when he was a child. As an adult, he was consistently singled out for harassment, intimidation, and delays during his crossings at the US-Canadian border. [2] According to him, getting a work visa in the US was not remotely a possibility.
[2] Isn't it wonderful how passports list your country of birth?
1. If you have a problematic history (which includes things entirely outside of your control, like being born in the wrong part of the world[1]), it can be nearly impossible.
2. If you don't have a problematic history, it's incredibly stressful. If you're on a TN visa, you can be turned away at the border at any time, for any reason whatsoever, including no reason whatsoever. If you're on an H1B visa, you can also be turned away from the border at any time, for any reason whatsoever, including no reason whatsoever. If you lose your job, you need to immediately start dealing with immigration issues, while looking for a new one, or you have to leave the country.
3. If you're married, your spouse can't work for a long time.
4. If you aren't married, your girlfriend/boyfriend/whomever can't even try immigrate with you, even if they wanted to.
5. Being three hours and a border away is not remotely the same thing as being three hours away from your friends and family.
6. There is a long, long, long list of cultural reasons for why a comfortably-living Canadian may prefer to avoid living in the US, even for double the paycheck.
[1] I had a friend whose family fled from Saddam's Iraq, due to their political activities, when he was a child. As an adult, he was consistently singled out for harassment, intimidation, and delays during his crossings at the US-Canadian border. [2] According to him, getting a work visa in the US was not remotely a possibility.
[2] Isn't it wonderful how passports list your country of birth?
That still doesn't explain the gap when they are working for the same company.
When you're working for the same company, the gap exists bcause the company can get away with it. What are you going to do? Go across the street to a competitor who pays just as little?
I worked for an above-market-rate firm in BC. When I got a job offer in SV, my boss could only counter-offer the financial gains if I relocated to their SV office.
I worked for an above-market-rate firm in BC. When I got a job offer in SV, my boss could only counter-offer the financial gains if I relocated to their SV office.
Any decent software employer in the US will have good insurance that basically guarantees your max out of pocket health expenses won’t exceed a few thousand dollars. That doesn’t really account for the difference.
>>your max out of pocket health expenses won’t exceed a few thousand dollars.
Wait, that's meant to be good? What kind of insanity is this. Why do you have to pay anything out of your pocket at all??
Wait, that's meant to be good? What kind of insanity is this. Why do you have to pay anything out of your pocket at all??
In the US, there is no ceiling to your potential health expenses if you are without insurance. A few thousand dollars looks like a pretty good ceiling compared to infinity.
It depends on what type of health plan you have. For instance, a high deductible health plan allows you and your employer to put money into a savings account pre-tax (thus lowering your tax burden) to be used to pay out of pocket costs. As the money accumulates you can begin to diversify it in part with various investments. In years where you have few or no health issues the account begins to grow much like a retirement account. You keep the money after leaving the company and it can be used for healthcare any time in your life.
So yes it’s very good, or can be. Putting pre-tax money away and also lowering your tax burden while saving over time for healthcare matters is nice. Because you have a “maximum out of pocket” cost each year you stay ahead of it.
There are many different healthcare schemes in the USA that work best in different ways for people that have different circumstances.
So yes it’s very good, or can be. Putting pre-tax money away and also lowering your tax burden while saving over time for healthcare matters is nice. Because you have a “maximum out of pocket” cost each year you stay ahead of it.
There are many different healthcare schemes in the USA that work best in different ways for people that have different circumstances.
Note that HSAs are not pre-tax in California, you still have to pay state income tax on them. Theoretically. In practice HSA providers don’t report your accounts, nor is there even a way to get the info you’d need from an HSA investment to pay the taxes.
Don’t Canadians also have to pay for prescriptions and dental work? Some of that is included in the US benefit cap.
Yes. But I've never worked for a company that didn't provide coverage for that as well. My current plan provides $1500/yr for routine dental coverage, $15k for dental emergencies and accidents. $30k/yr prescription coverage. Massage, chiro, accupuncture up to $1k/yr. Counseling for up to 6 sessions free, then 50% coverage. This is not an unusual benefits package as far as I can tell. My last company even provided a $400 wellness spending account on top of all that. Anything I could justify as 'wellness' was covered to that amount. Running shoes, ski passes, recreational classes. This isn't some special package for high value employees. This is standard for any FT employee.
My out of pocket expenses this year for all health related stuff is around $100. That is made up mostly of prescription dispensing fees ($10 for a 3 month supply), and massage fees that were over the per visit limit (they only cover the first $100/hour. My massage therapist is $115/hr)
Benefits in Canada blew my mind when I moved up here.
The downside is that I make $80k ($62kUSD) as a mid level web dev, and that is not really considered low for the position.
My out of pocket expenses this year for all health related stuff is around $100. That is made up mostly of prescription dispensing fees ($10 for a 3 month supply), and massage fees that were over the per visit limit (they only cover the first $100/hour. My massage therapist is $115/hr)
Benefits in Canada blew my mind when I moved up here.
The downside is that I make $80k ($62kUSD) as a mid level web dev, and that is not really considered low for the position.
In Canada it varies. Dentists are terrible and always covered by private insurance. In BC pharmacare is capped out-of-pocket by the province but it's a high cap so you will generally have employer insurance just like you have in the US - while as Ontario has full prescription coverage.
Oh the same thing goes for vision insurance, alternative medicine (RMTs and acupuncture) and some medical devices - i.e. a CPAP for Sleep Apnea.
Oh the same thing goes for vision insurance, alternative medicine (RMTs and acupuncture) and some medical devices - i.e. a CPAP for Sleep Apnea.
Hundreds out of pocket is better than thousands out of pocket though.
(I'm not Canadian, but here in Europe, without insurance, I've never paid more than a few hundred for dental work or tens for prescriptions. Even if its more in Canada, I imagine its still less than "thousands")
(I'm not Canadian, but here in Europe, without insurance, I've never paid more than a few hundred for dental work or tens for prescriptions. Even if its more in Canada, I imagine its still less than "thousands")
There is typically some out of pocket component to prevent moral hazard. A good plan will still be covering something like 90% of your costs until you hit the max out of pocket, then it becomes 100%. It’s so you are at least a little conscientious in choosing doctors and pharmacies and such.
I'm sorry, but $7000/year is not about "preventing moral hazard". NHS charging a flat £9/per prescription is preventing moral hazard so you don't request medicine nilly willy. The out of pocket expenses that people quote in this thread are insane - having to suddenly pay few thousand dollars for treatment would cripple my finances, and I'm a software engineer.
You’re very unlikely to spend that much. If you have multiple serious medical emergencies in the span of one year, $7000 is nothing for having your life saved and getting treatment. Also, the cap is usually much lower than $7000. Also, remember, they’re still covering ~90% of every individual expense. By the time you’ve spent $7000, the insurance company has put down many times that.
Our medical providers are competing private businesses. There are really good doctors, really bad doctors, and everything in between. Everyone wants to go to the better doctor, but there’s just not enough of them. Price differentiation is important.
There are $0 deductible and $0 copay plans and $0 coinsurance plans. They are also exorbitantly expensive because of the absurd moral hazard they create.
It’s a strange mindset to think that something should just be free. We pay for our cars, our housing, our food. Medicine is not free to provide. The America system is broken in many ways, but not because people have to pay for medical care. The problem is that it’s too expensive because of artificial constraints on the supply of doctors and other medical resources.
Our medical providers are competing private businesses. There are really good doctors, really bad doctors, and everything in between. Everyone wants to go to the better doctor, but there’s just not enough of them. Price differentiation is important.
There are $0 deductible and $0 copay plans and $0 coinsurance plans. They are also exorbitantly expensive because of the absurd moral hazard they create.
It’s a strange mindset to think that something should just be free. We pay for our cars, our housing, our food. Medicine is not free to provide. The America system is broken in many ways, but not because people have to pay for medical care. The problem is that it’s too expensive because of artificial constraints on the supply of doctors and other medical resources.
>>It’s a strange mindset to think that something should just be free.
When it comes to healthcare? Yes, it should absolutely be free to the recepient.
I don't know why it's such a strange concept to you - afer all, Americans are also used to receiving certain services for free - you don't have to pay the police for coming to help you, or the fire brigade for that matter. To me it's the same thing - if your house on fire, the fire brigade will come and help, free of charge - that's what taxes are for. So if I'm ill, I will be given any and all help needed - also free of charge, after all, that's what taxes are for.
>>They are also exorbitantly expensive because of the absurd moral hazard they create.
Like, sometimes I think Americans live literally on a different planet. Do you think that in countries where healthcare is free to use people have medical procedures without any reason and simply because they don't have to pay for it?
In general, it's simple - if a country wants to have healthy, productive citizens, it should pay for their healthcare, I don't understand why it's such a divisive concept. The crown example of how crazy the US system is, is the fact that you have to pay to give birth. Like.....so US cares so little for its citizens that literally the very act of giving birth to new ones is not covered by the government? That's....beyond mind boggling.
When it comes to healthcare? Yes, it should absolutely be free to the recepient.
I don't know why it's such a strange concept to you - afer all, Americans are also used to receiving certain services for free - you don't have to pay the police for coming to help you, or the fire brigade for that matter. To me it's the same thing - if your house on fire, the fire brigade will come and help, free of charge - that's what taxes are for. So if I'm ill, I will be given any and all help needed - also free of charge, after all, that's what taxes are for.
>>They are also exorbitantly expensive because of the absurd moral hazard they create.
Like, sometimes I think Americans live literally on a different planet. Do you think that in countries where healthcare is free to use people have medical procedures without any reason and simply because they don't have to pay for it?
In general, it's simple - if a country wants to have healthy, productive citizens, it should pay for their healthcare, I don't understand why it's such a divisive concept. The crown example of how crazy the US system is, is the fact that you have to pay to give birth. Like.....so US cares so little for its citizens that literally the very act of giving birth to new ones is not covered by the government? That's....beyond mind boggling.
You have to pay for food. That doesn’t mean that eating isn’t important or that a society wants people to go hungry. By your logic, the private market would just be the domain of luxuries and useless trinkets. The government here provides health insurance for the very poor and subsidizes private insurance for the somewhat poor.
Police and fire are public services because they would not work as market systems. Fires spread from house to house, for example, regardless of who pays or doesn’t, so private fire brigades would have to protect non-payers in order to also protect payers. That’s a classic market failure that can be solved by public services. (Potentially, that problem could have been solved by requiring fire coverage, but then there's the further problem of a row of houses, each with different fire services, some better than others, with the better ones still needing to protect the houses insured by the worse ones to protect their own customers. Not to mention that a single house fire can lead to a whole city burning down. It's just not a service that the market can effectively provide in most places.)
And no, of course people don’t completely waste care in other systems either. That’s because it’s rationed by the government. Elective procedures have long wait lists, access to specialists is specially guarded, etc. Limited resources always have to be rationed by some mechanism.
Our system in the US is far from perfect: we let the doctor’s guild limit the supply of doctors, we are too uncomfortable with ending care for the very old and terminally ill, and the whole hospital and medical device industries could use an antitrust shakeup.
Police and fire are public services because they would not work as market systems. Fires spread from house to house, for example, regardless of who pays or doesn’t, so private fire brigades would have to protect non-payers in order to also protect payers. That’s a classic market failure that can be solved by public services. (Potentially, that problem could have been solved by requiring fire coverage, but then there's the further problem of a row of houses, each with different fire services, some better than others, with the better ones still needing to protect the houses insured by the worse ones to protect their own customers. Not to mention that a single house fire can lead to a whole city burning down. It's just not a service that the market can effectively provide in most places.)
And no, of course people don’t completely waste care in other systems either. That’s because it’s rationed by the government. Elective procedures have long wait lists, access to specialists is specially guarded, etc. Limited resources always have to be rationed by some mechanism.
Our system in the US is far from perfect: we let the doctor’s guild limit the supply of doctors, we are too uncomfortable with ending care for the very old and terminally ill, and the whole hospital and medical device industries could use an antitrust shakeup.
> if your house on fire, the fire brigade will come and help, free of charge
Unless you're in a "no pay, no spray" area and haven't paid your fire subscription fee. Wish I wasn't being serious.
Unless you're in a "no pay, no spray" area and haven't paid your fire subscription fee. Wish I wasn't being serious.
Canadian living in USA. My brain is regularly fried by healthcare here, it ends up being a simple high level equation.
My out of pocket max per year is around $6000 USD, and my salary is double what I was (under)paid in Toronto, and taxes are a bit lower here (CA).
So the take home pay is mid-5-figures more, and worst-case scenario healthcare is mid-4-figures, so it balances out very favourably for my situation (anyone in tech with a full-time job, basically).
(Of course, those who aren't well-paid in tech have a much worse situation and I can't imagine how difficult that must be.)
My out of pocket max per year is around $6000 USD, and my salary is double what I was (under)paid in Toronto, and taxes are a bit lower here (CA).
So the take home pay is mid-5-figures more, and worst-case scenario healthcare is mid-4-figures, so it balances out very favourably for my situation (anyone in tech with a full-time job, basically).
(Of course, those who aren't well-paid in tech have a much worse situation and I can't imagine how difficult that must be.)
Out of pocket maxes in the 10-20K range aren't that uncommon in the US. Even when I've seen places with plans where it's <5K, that's only for single workers, and it doubles with a partner or family.
And I’d rather have extra 100k and pay the 10k for health.
I’ve never seen out of pocket maxes that high but I’m limited to my own experiences. I’d imagine the premiums would be super low for such a high deductible.
Even the high deductible plans I’ve seen are no more than $3500/single or $7k family per year out of pocket max. And those allow you and your employer to put money into a high deductible savings account pre-tax like a retirement account. And it can be used for any qualified health payment for the rest of your life and is passed down upon death. It’s really like a 401k for health payments.
Even the high deductible plans I’ve seen are no more than $3500/single or $7k family per year out of pocket max. And those allow you and your employer to put money into a high deductible savings account pre-tax like a retirement account. And it can be used for any qualified health payment for the rest of your life and is passed down upon death. It’s really like a 401k for health payments.
My plan for a family of 5 has an out of pocket max of 4K with no deductible.
The theory goes that the big foreign corp (ie. EA) hires a bunch of locals, and over time those locals get good and leave to form their own company.
There's a fair amount of evidence that this works. It's not like Vancouver is solely populated by foreign studios. Local game companies like Kabam, Black Bird Interactive, Relic, United Front, etc would have all either had their roots in EA workers or would have hired ex-EA workers.
There's a fair amount of evidence that this works. It's not like Vancouver is solely populated by foreign studios. Local game companies like Kabam, Black Bird Interactive, Relic, United Front, etc would have all either had their roots in EA workers or would have hired ex-EA workers.
Offshoring companies bring investment into the community, while funding startups costs the local community. Also if your startup needs skill and services not available locally that have to be sourced outside that’s more cost, whereas a company coming in will have to provide those services at its own expense.
If local salaries are depressed like that, this implies the outside investment is sorely needed. If there was enough investment available locally and local companies had the resources to hire more workers and were successful enough to pay them well, those salaries would be higher, but the resources to make that happen have to come from somewhere.
If local salaries are depressed like that, this implies the outside investment is sorely needed. If there was enough investment available locally and local companies had the resources to hire more workers and were successful enough to pay them well, those salaries would be higher, but the resources to make that happen have to come from somewhere.
> while funding startups costs the local community
I'm not sure I completely understand.
> If local salaries are depressed like that, this implies the outside investment is sorely needed.
It's interesting because a lot of capital is flowing into Vancouver right now in the form of real estate speculation.
I'm not sure I completely understand.
> If local salaries are depressed like that, this implies the outside investment is sorely needed.
It's interesting because a lot of capital is flowing into Vancouver right now in the form of real estate speculation.
You'd be shocked at what Canadians put up with. Look closely at any industry here and corruption/abuse run rampant.
[deleted]
That document is not saying they are "worth" less than in America but that they are undervalued which I imagine a lot of them would agree with.
Well, according to the market they are worth less.
I am honestly not sure why Canadian developers are paid so much lower than our American counterparts.
Vancouver is a large market for tech as is Toronto, and now the rest of the cities in Canada are picking up. Anecdotally I have never seen this much recruiter activity in Alberta as we're seeing right now.
Vancouver is a large market for tech as is Toronto, and now the rest of the cities in Canada are picking up. Anecdotally I have never seen this much recruiter activity in Alberta as we're seeing right now.
Not true of EA, at least in the United States. EA hires junior employees as non-exempt for their first couple of years. They are also in my experience among the most progressive big publishers when it comes to overtime and work/life balance. Not perfect, but certainly trying in a real way across most of its studios.
Source: Worked for, but not currently employed at, several EA studios over the last decade, including as a junior engineer paid overtime.
Source: Worked for, but not currently employed at, several EA studios over the last decade, including as a junior engineer paid overtime.
I worked at EA for five years (2015-2019) in Sweden and during that time I heard a lot of talk about minimising overtime and new measures to prevent it. Every game new alternatives and policies would be introduced. Then, when it became clear that we couldn't deliver on what everyone always said was over scoped, all of that was thrown out the window and we went back to ordinary crunch.
We did sometimes get compensated, but always in comp days, never money, and it was usually very uncertain ahead of time if and how it would work.
We did sometimes get compensated, but always in comp days, never money, and it was usually very uncertain ahead of time if and how it would work.
I work at Ubisoft(in the UK[0]) and overtime and crunch are heavily discouraged, to a point where as a matter of policy, we are asked to report to higher management if anyne is asked to do overtime - it just shouldn't be happening at all. I've worked on two big AAA releases in the last 6 years and my total overtime was statistically zero, I did some extra hours in the last 2 weeks leading to release, but that was mostly to watch over the server infrastructure to make sure the launch went smoothly.
We've had people join from Rockstar, EA, CDPR, and one thing everyone is always surprised by is how good the work/life balance is. I'm personally in around 8am and always done by 4pm(7.5 hours a day).
[0] - now, all Ubisoft studios set their own policies. Please don't extrapolate my experience in the UK to experiences in other Ubisoft studios in other countries.
We've had people join from Rockstar, EA, CDPR, and one thing everyone is always surprised by is how good the work/life balance is. I'm personally in around 8am and always done by 4pm(7.5 hours a day).
[0] - now, all Ubisoft studios set their own policies. Please don't extrapolate my experience in the UK to experiences in other Ubisoft studios in other countries.
Yeah the games company I used to work for has gradually improved over the years - I have one good friend who stayed the whole time, and it's gone from "mandatory unpaid weekends" to "a bit of paid overtime here and there".
The key part I think is just making overtime paid, then the incentives all align much better.
The key part I think is just making overtime paid, then the incentives all align much better.
It's sad if that counts as "progressive" business practices in the games industry.
It really, really doesn’t IME. This is basically what the industry was like when I joined 15 years ago.
> deny you overtime during the run up to a major release
This made me stop. Do you mean deny you paid overtime, because actively preventing extra work in the run up to a milestone is absolutely not normal for the games industry. The opposite is far more common.
EA Vancouver might be more carefully watched, but one way of avoiding regulations like this is to make sure employees are only logging normal workday hours - if at all - regardless of how long they actually work.
This made me stop. Do you mean deny you paid overtime, because actively preventing extra work in the run up to a milestone is absolutely not normal for the games industry. The opposite is far more common.
EA Vancouver might be more carefully watched, but one way of avoiding regulations like this is to make sure employees are only logging normal workday hours - if at all - regardless of how long they actually work.
I took it to mean you have to work, but they don’t pay extra for overtime, in the context of others not even being allowed overtime. In the US, that would be standard. I’m not aware of developers in the US getting paid overtime rate for overtime work in development, period, but overtime work is definitely expected a little too often, and if you work for a company where it isn’t, it’s either a large company with other ways of dealing with such things or they just haven’t had it happen yet or recently. However, the US isn’t a bad place to work; whenever overtime is expected, often times there are financial incentives. Just try not to burn out.
I believe those rules only apply to companies that are primarily tech companies (like EA of course). Tech workers at non-tech companies can get overtime.
Programmers in the non-gaming parts of the industry are treated better not because of any labour laws, but because of supply and demand.
CDPR is paying their staff the full bonus for Cyberpunk 2077 due to the circumstances of the release.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-11/cd-projek...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-11/cd-projek...
Making it less terrible after-the-fact, after tons of bad press and outside pressure, and when you desperately need the devs to stay on and fix the problems left after the launch they no doubt told you was not going to work… not sure that deserves much praise.
Don't get me wrong, it's better than not doing it, but it doesn't fix the underlying issue with the system there.
Don't get me wrong, it's better than not doing it, but it doesn't fix the underlying issue with the system there.
I'm not praising them, just stating facts.
Probably need them to stay and fix the bugs instead of rage quitting when their bonuses are withheld likely because decisions made outside their control.
I felt like management withheld the bonuses to get them to stay on to finish the game. Major patches have already been promised for Jan and Feb because it's basically early access quality, and I bet more than a few devs are ready to walk away.
I know if tensions were high after a long crunch and I just got a big payout before a major family holiday, I'd need some convincing to go back in.
I know if tensions were high after a long crunch and I just got a big payout before a major family holiday, I'd need some convincing to go back in.
I heard the bonuses were paid out prior to the last release bump, so they got much less than they could have.
Lots of companies have a bonus which is a combination of 'corporate wide' bonus, 'performance' bonus and 'personal contribution'.
This just seems to formalize some of the parts which are often just arbitrarily decided by some governance committee.
This just seems to formalize some of the parts which are often just arbitrarily decided by some governance committee.
No reason to not give the bonuses when accomplishments are recognized then, instead of tying it to the team's success at a singular date (delivery). It forces everyone to work in overdrive. It's plainly not a personal contribution/performance bonus at all. If CDPR makes a bad hire that causes a delay (even outside of development, like marketing?), then everyone suffers for that from a lack of a bonus.
This is particularly shitty when combined with the stress and demands and low pay of the game industry as it is.
Also, super curious if the tokens can be forged. Can I just show up at the end of release with 50 tokens and cash in? Surely they were tracking it elsewhere, making the tokens useless.
This is particularly shitty when combined with the stress and demands and low pay of the game industry as it is.
Also, super curious if the tokens can be forged. Can I just show up at the end of release with 50 tokens and cash in? Surely they were tracking it elsewhere, making the tokens useless.
Plenty of companies recognise contributions by handing out tokens that can't be cashed in immediately, that have a value that depends on the fortunes of the company, and that might fall in value precipitously. Just usually they name the tokens "stock options" or "pre-IPO shares"
I agree there are plenty of shitty practices in the games industry, of course.
I agree there are plenty of shitty practices in the games industry, of course.
In the US, those are regulated. I'm not aware of the details, but I doubt these "certificates" in Poland have the same level of regulation as US securities.
This merely makes these certificates worth less than the same but named stock options and regulated.
The employee will "just" need to discount the value of these certificates accordingly.
The employee will "just" need to discount the value of these certificates accordingly.
It would also be weird if managers were to capriciously hand out options to employees as short term performance bonuses.
Weird, normal-and-accepted, guess it depends what part of the industry you work in.
You've piqued my curiosity - where is this normal and accepted?
Normally at tech companies there’s a review and bonus twice a year. At ours we only participate in one of them, the other is done by management, and for most of my career ours would just pretend he decided to give us a bonus for our hard work one day. You had to ask around and notice it was always the same week to figure out how it worked.
It’s pretty usual for a company financial target to need to be hit before the bonus payout starts - in fact it’s unusual for a bonus payout to happen regardless of financial performance (companies want to give employees certainty about what the rules are to trigger a bonus, but don’t want to have to give out bonuses if they are going under).
I’ll assume the bonus is probably actually tied to the companies financial performance rather than the release, but that the release was required for the revenue target to be hit.
I’ll assume the bonus is probably actually tied to the companies financial performance rather than the release, but that the release was required for the revenue target to be hit.
Good practices in management are still developing in Poland, unfortunately.
Many companies around here do experiments like this one hoping to see improvements. Most of such attempts fail miserably.
I've seen my share of weird, counterproductive ideas from grades like in school to work logged down to the second.
My last company, even though it was over 500 people strong, was basically winging it.
Many companies around here do experiments like this one hoping to see improvements. Most of such attempts fail miserably.
I've seen my share of weird, counterproductive ideas from grades like in school to work logged down to the second.
My last company, even though it was over 500 people strong, was basically winging it.
I think the hardest part about running such "experiments" is ever knowing whether they were success or failures. Even here, we (and I doubt CDPR) don't know enough to really judge whether the tokens things helped or hurt. Or if it helped, whether it helped as much as a more traditional system. Except for small experiments that can be run many times (or in many similar departments in parallel), circumstances just change too much to ever compare apples to apples. (Here, devs may have loved this game's concept so much that they worked hard in spite of the tokens. Or didn't love the game concept but loved the tokens.)
Frankly it's why it doesn't make too much sense to veer very far from practices proven to work. But what's shown to work in a HBR studies may not apply in a different cultural landscape than the US.
All that being said, I'm sure there are many possible practices that are better than traditional approaches. It's just risky trying to find them.
Frankly it's why it doesn't make too much sense to veer very far from practices proven to work. But what's shown to work in a HBR studies may not apply in a different cultural landscape than the US.
All that being said, I'm sure there are many possible practices that are better than traditional approaches. It's just risky trying to find them.
Doesn't sound much different than getting paid in equity at a startup.
There's centuries worth of legislation about equity. You can still get screwed, but "I'm giving you the right to own shares in this company" means something in the eyes of the law. Getting paid in participation tokens doesn't.
This is absolutely technically correct. Practically speaking, maybe not so much.
http://stockoptioncounsel.com/blog/standards-ownership-canth...
http://stockoptioncounsel.com/blog/standards-ownership-canth...
Most areas of the world use at-will employment but I'm specifically familiar with the US and Canada. In either of those you can kill options dead due to expiration clauses[1] - actual equity issuance tends to be rarer due to the tax liabilities around it and, either way, dilution can destroy your value and it's completely legal. Additionally, if you crunch for work, you can be denied promised bonuses[2], be fired before they arrive[3], or just be suddenly downsized and end up needing to eat that bonus while you find another job.
Do not work overtime without compensation, no company is your baby and companies have no legal obligation to remember your service. Labour laws are terribly slanted against employees so be very conservative about your expectations from work and never sacrifice your health (mental or physical) due to some B.S. team oriented camaraderie.
I work hard at my shop, I really love all the things we've managed to accomplish and I appreciate all the folks I've built them with. But when it comes to money it is good to be incredibly self-interested because no one else will do it for you.
1. You can be put in a position where you're able to exercise your options but you'll be doing so blindly - trading personally held cash for stock and hoping the company doesn't end up tanking.
2. Bonuses are almost never legally promised in practice, so they remain at the grace of the employer.
3. At-will employment laws means that all future implied payments can be retracted if employment is terminated excepting those that are contractually owed.
Do not work overtime without compensation, no company is your baby and companies have no legal obligation to remember your service. Labour laws are terribly slanted against employees so be very conservative about your expectations from work and never sacrifice your health (mental or physical) due to some B.S. team oriented camaraderie.
I work hard at my shop, I really love all the things we've managed to accomplish and I appreciate all the folks I've built them with. But when it comes to money it is good to be incredibly self-interested because no one else will do it for you.
1. You can be put in a position where you're able to exercise your options but you'll be doing so blindly - trading personally held cash for stock and hoping the company doesn't end up tanking.
2. Bonuses are almost never legally promised in practice, so they remain at the grace of the employer.
3. At-will employment laws means that all future implied payments can be retracted if employment is terminated excepting those that are contractually owed.
You can be employee #2 of a startup, receive a lot of stock early on and then see it dillute to fractions of a cent. Perfectly legal.
This happened to me back in the 90's.
Company 1: The company went bankrupt, founder renamed the company, started a new company with the same name as the original, transferred some assets for pennies on the dollar. It later went public, but collapsed in the dot-com crash.
Company 2: Company raised $50 million during the dot-com boom. After 5 or so years, it still did not have much revenue to speak of. After several down rounds, it was eventually was sold to a major corporation for pennies on the dollar. All common stock was worthless.
Company 3: Still working on it. There have been several down rounds. All employees got their options re-issued at the lower price after a key employee threatened to walk...
Company 1: The company went bankrupt, founder renamed the company, started a new company with the same name as the original, transferred some assets for pennies on the dollar. It later went public, but collapsed in the dot-com crash.
Company 2: Company raised $50 million during the dot-com boom. After 5 or so years, it still did not have much revenue to speak of. After several down rounds, it was eventually was sold to a major corporation for pennies on the dollar. All common stock was worthless.
Company 3: Still working on it. There have been several down rounds. All employees got their options re-issued at the lower price after a key employee threatened to walk...
> Company 1: The company went bankrupt, founder renamed the company, started a new company with the same name as the original, transferred some assets for pennies on the dollar. It later went public, but collapsed in the dot-com crash.
Is that legal? It looks like the CEO of the company willingly harmed the company's interest to enrich himself, which is basically fraud.
Is that legal? It looks like the CEO of the company willingly harmed the company's interest to enrich himself, which is basically fraud.
My understanding is that it was done in a legal manner. The majority of the investors were "friends" and had to give sign off. They got a smaller stake in the new venture and promise of larger returns, etc.
Unsure why you are being downvoted.
Perhaps some founders and investors don't want this to be known...
Perhaps some founders and investors don't want this to be known...
I guess no one paid attention during The Social Network because they spelled it out clearly in that movie.
Happened to me three times... upvoted to bring light to this as startup finances is tricky for most mortals. Dilution, premium vs standard, cliff, etc.
When I was negotiating my current job, I had a competing offer for around $100k more plus equity but it was essentially Engineer #1 after the technical co-founder.
In my negotiations I inquired about said equity and the other founder was vague as hell around all of those important questions that early employees need to ask.
The extra $100k wasn't worth it and I'm making the difference in real, liquid equity (and then some) from my current employer.
In my negotiations I inquired about said equity and the other founder was vague as hell around all of those important questions that early employees need to ask.
The extra $100k wasn't worth it and I'm making the difference in real, liquid equity (and then some) from my current employer.
They know full well what they are doing or they are naive. It’s so important to know the terms before you commit. However, another ace is living in at at-will-to-work state so I can just quit once I realize I was bamboozled. I’ve done this. I’m not proud of it, but my time is mine. I have goals. Help me achieve my goals and I’m all yours to help you achieve yours. Sad to say but there are founders/CEO’s that know engineers are itching for an early-in to a “rocket ship” and will manipulate to get momentum. Don’t buy it. Do your due diligence. Research. Ask about the terms, the equity, the stock, current value? Dilution? Who’s invested? Who has what stake? Who’s on the board? Prove to me it’s a rocket ship... sales? When do you recognize revenue? How? Opportunity pipelines healthy? All of these things are proxy to an engineer yet all of these things effect the engineer joining the company as employee <50.
So can any equity holder in a company.
Maybe, but if you have RSUs in a FAANG those are your property and pretty safe. They can (must) also be sold when paying tax so pretty liquid asset.
Once you accept a RSU grant they are your property once vested. Regardless of where you work.
Yeah, but for smaller companies there is usually options and preferred ones etc. The upside is a lot larger as well of course.
That's what happened to Eduardo Saverin.
Leading to a lawsuit that was settled with undisclosed terms, but he's reportedly worth $15B now [1], so he must have received quite a lot.
1: https://www.forbes.com/profile/eduardo-saverin/?sh=1b75ae527...
1: https://www.forbes.com/profile/eduardo-saverin/?sh=1b75ae527...
So is Zuckerberg an actual villain?
Well they state it right in the movie that he deceptively tried to screw Saverin over and his own lawyer in a nutshell said "Settle. Because what do you think a jury will say?"
Took you way longer than enough
It happens to a lot of other folks that aren't currently worth 15B. He made out well but the majority of folks are left with nothing.
I thought that was PascalCase and this is camelCase? Have I been wrong all these years?
This is something that I miss about forums of yore and sort of hate about HN, Reddit, and their ilk: the deprioritization of a post author's identity. It took me way too long to figure out you were talking about the username of the person you were replying to. I miss being able to scan through a forum's post listing and readily pick out names of posters I recognized after being involved in the site for a while. It was an additional signal of post quality (or lack thereof, depending on the user). Here, the username is hidden in a sentence of status text, on the same visual level of the number of minutes ago the post was made, all of which is rendered in a light grey font. It's clearly intentional, and I can't for the life of me figure out why the forum owners don't want users to be able to build a consistent identity.
I made a quick little userscript that allows you to attach tags to users on HN. There's pretty much no documentation, I didn't really expect to release it, but it puts a little [t] next to usernames on HN and you can click it to add tags that persist in localstorage and show up next to that user wherever they post on HN. Feel free to use it and adapt it however you like. Only tested on Firefox and I'm sure it's full of bugs and unintended side effects!
https://gist.github.com/errantspark/7000c8a5192eb0b8ee64ba21...
https://gist.github.com/errantspark/7000c8a5192eb0b8ee64ba21...
Cool! It works in ViolentMonkey on MS Edge Chromium.
I didn't realize how easy this was to setup and do. Here's a first crack at making user names more prominent.
I didn't realize how easy this was to setup and do. Here's a first crack at making user names more prominent.
That's weird, I could have sworn I shared the link
https://gist.github.com/capnmidnight/b61dcecf587949d6adf1dc4...
https://gist.github.com/capnmidnight/b61dcecf587949d6adf1dc4...
Wow. You make excellent points, I never realized it was intentional how the usernames blend in on the page on HN and Reddit. This is fascinating! Is it that usernames distract from the content?
wikipedia, the world's highest authority on matters of nitpicking, says camel case can be either; capitalization of the first letter is unspecified.
in practice, I've certainly heard people use camel case to refer to either convention. I hear pascal case a lot when people specifically mean a capitalized first character. wikipedia lists dromedary case as the complement of pascal case, but I've never actually seen this term used IRL.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camel_case
in practice, I've certainly heard people use camel case to refer to either convention. I hear pascal case a lot when people specifically mean a capitalized first character. wikipedia lists dromedary case as the complement of pascal case, but I've never actually seen this term used IRL.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camel_case
I've always seen it like camel case when it's not important if you capitalize the first letter or not and lower camel case or upper camel case if it's important.
Yes. CamelCase is such, you're referring to mixedCase. (The first letter is the camel's head.)
I would say the same.
If I got paid in tokens at a startup, I would riot. That’s some “company town” bullshit.
It's just a bonus, not regular compensation, right?
Did you not know about the tokens when you were hired?
Why is your first reaction to "riot" instead of just "quit"? Unless it's in your contract, you don't deserve a bonus.
Why is your first reaction to "riot" instead of just "quit"? Unless it's in your contract, you don't deserve a bonus.
I can't imagine HR going into it any more than "there is possible bonus compensation" when hiring.
My company's HR people and recruiter both spelled out the bonus plans in great detail (cash vs equity, what you're rated on, typical amounts for my incoming level, etc etc). Don't just accept wishy-washy answers, this stuff matters.
That would still have been a description of the company's nice intentions, and not a contract/legal promise.
Why, when someone tries to take advantage of you, is your first reaction to retreat?
If I knew about the tokens before I was hired, no advantage is taken.
Honestly not even sure I agree that you're being taken advantage of if the policy is enacted after your hiring.
A bonus is a bonus. It is given out at the companies discretion, unless stipulated in your employment contract.
Honestly not even sure I agree that you're being taken advantage of if the policy is enacted after your hiring.
A bonus is a bonus. It is given out at the companies discretion, unless stipulated in your employment contract.
> If I got paid in tokens at a startup, I would riot.
>> Why is your first reaction to "riot" instead of just "quit"?
>>> Why, when someone tries to take advantage of you, is your first reaction to retreat?
Because, "rioting" when you don't get your way is... unprofessional?
>> Why is your first reaction to "riot" instead of just "quit"?
>>> Why, when someone tries to take advantage of you, is your first reaction to retreat?
Because, "rioting" when you don't get your way is... unprofessional?
[deleted]
Because I want to. It’s my job, and I’d like to keep it. I take great pride in my position. I do graphics programming myself, and those jobs aren’t exactly numerous.
Quitting is for cowards.
Quitting is for cowards.
> Quitting is for cowards
No, quiting is for people who want something they don't have. Loss-aversion is a very powerful force, especially in the hands of senior leadership.
No, quiting is for people who want something they don't have. Loss-aversion is a very powerful force, especially in the hands of senior leadership.
I hope you'll reconsider your position because it greatly benefits your employer.
You don't have to be your job. I wish you well.
You don't have to be your job. I wish you well.
Awful? This is miles ahead of nearly ever other game studio out there. How do I know?
One of the people I served with aboard the USS Honolulu is a game designer for Darkpaw Games. They have nothing like this. Not even close.
Another person is a high-level executive at Activision-Blizzard. He has compensation that is generous, but it took him 17 years to get there.
Yet another personal friend is a junior developer at Obsidian Entertainment. They don't have anything like this, at his level.
Maybe their system isn't perfect, but its a hell of a better than nothing.
One of the people I served with aboard the USS Honolulu is a game designer for Darkpaw Games. They have nothing like this. Not even close.
Another person is a high-level executive at Activision-Blizzard. He has compensation that is generous, but it took him 17 years to get there.
Yet another personal friend is a junior developer at Obsidian Entertainment. They don't have anything like this, at his level.
Maybe their system isn't perfect, but its a hell of a better than nothing.
Changing the terms post-hoc is pretty scummy. Logically you would assume having something is better than nothing, as I assume most would - simple math. The reality is anticipating more than you actually receive can be more detrimental. You make sacrifices you normally wouldn't if you are lead to believe there is a reward. Perhaps you turned down another job offer since you had been factoring those extra projektbucks and then they suddenly devalue at the end of the race. Maybe you treated yourself or your loved ones to a gift as a small token of appreciation for the effort spent on this rather than them. That $2000 in fairy-bucks turns out to be $500 and those extra hours amount to less-than-legal-minimum-wage.
Regardless of whether it's better than nothing - there is a tangible risk to having something accounted for that turns out to be short.
The game development industry has been a cesspool for worker exploitation for the longest time and this adds to a long list.
Regardless of whether it's better than nothing - there is a tangible risk to having something accounted for that turns out to be short.
The game development industry has been a cesspool for worker exploitation for the longest time and this adds to a long list.
Obsidian is downright abusive towards any of their staff that isn't part of the old guard, and doesn't compensate any more to make up for it.
source: three people I know who worked there
source: three people I know who worked there
sounds like a sure fire way of baking in "low hanging fruits" in release, and heroically picking them to get the bonus :)
don't game the game devs man...
don't game the game devs man...
On some level it makes sense:
-if we succeed massively, you should get an outsized portion of those winnings because of your immediately obvious hard work in the now that paid off later.
If not, then it literally doesn’t matter.
-if we succeed massively, you should get an outsized portion of those winnings because of your immediately obvious hard work in the now that paid off later.
If not, then it literally doesn’t matter.
If getting anything at all for overtime and crunch is your definition of shittiest, you've not seen shit :)
I worked for a game studio that did this. Tokens could be used for a raffle. It was kind of a silly thing though and wouldn't be considered compensation, there were normal bonuses and stock grants. It also (usually) wasn't tied to crunch. The tokens were handed out by peers
That seems far more like being paid for the windfall of hard work than most (eg) executive bonus schemes, where you're disproportionately rewarded for the work of others.
But no, they should absolutely also pay overtime.
But no, they should absolutely also pay overtime.
Why is this sort of practice so common with video game studios but not elsewhere in the technology industry?
This is well-trod ground, but it's common with any job where the supply/demand ratio is severely in the employers favor.
Not a ton of those jobs in tech, but the dynamic is frankly pretty similar to professional cheerleaders. Lots of people want the job, relatively few of them, and the skill floor isn't all that high.
Not a ton of those jobs in tech, but the dynamic is frankly pretty similar to professional cheerleaders. Lots of people want the job, relatively few of them, and the skill floor isn't all that high.
It's common in tech two.
Of the places I've worked that promise some form of bonus, I have only been paid a single one - $172.
In my experience, bonuses are almost solely a carrot to hang over people's head. They rarely actually get paid out even if the company is doing well.
Stock and options have there downfalls, but at least their terms are in writing.
Of the places I've worked that promise some form of bonus, I have only been paid a single one - $172.
In my experience, bonuses are almost solely a carrot to hang over people's head. They rarely actually get paid out even if the company is doing well.
Stock and options have there downfalls, but at least their terms are in writing.
Because they have a line of people wanting to work for them despite everything.
Wasn't it obvious to anyone who play-tested on last-gen consoles that the game is nearly unplayable and so will receive horrendous reviews? Presumably CDPR employees are not afraid to convey such bad news to the management. So why did the management still decide to go ahead with the release this year?
After reading this transcript, I didn't find the answer to these questions.
"Underestimated the scale and complexity of the issues": it's not like they needed to estimate anything. This is not an MMO that behaves differently after the million users log in. This is not a PC that behaves differently on unpredictable end-user's systems. This is not a game where problems only occur under some rare combinations of factors.
"We ignored the signals about the need for additional time to refine the game": signals implies some indirect evidence that can be interpreted differently. It seems, however, that the management would have a pretty unambiguous information at their disposal.
After reading this transcript, I didn't find the answer to these questions.
"Underestimated the scale and complexity of the issues": it's not like they needed to estimate anything. This is not an MMO that behaves differently after the million users log in. This is not a PC that behaves differently on unpredictable end-user's systems. This is not a game where problems only occur under some rare combinations of factors.
"We ignored the signals about the need for additional time to refine the game": signals implies some indirect evidence that can be interpreted differently. It seems, however, that the management would have a pretty unambiguous information at their disposal.
Don't think for a second that employees 'are not afraid to convey such bad news'. Between the massive years-long hype, delays and bad press about crunch time around the title, not to mention being the most lucrative time of year for a game release, it's very likely that management egos were fully engaged in this release. When that happens reality is no longer driving, or even on, the bus. There may have been one or two brave souls who spoke up and when no good came as a result of speaking up (at best they were disregarded, at worst it was a career limiting move), everyone else tends to fall in line. So when management holds their various last minute go/no go meetings, people tend to nod their heads in agreement recognizing the futility of trying to point out the obvious.
I heard an interesting take: that CDPR knew that this would happen, but had to choose between "missing the holidays" and "launching even though it's broken" and decided the latter was just less of a problem.
Launching broken isn’t an unexpected thing for this type of game. Everyone is used to falling-apart-at-the-seams Bethesda games, constant patches, even full-on crashes are now apparently acceptable on a console. I saw some people saying “I bought it, but I’ll wait a few months to play until they’ve patched it,” and they think that’s fine. I totally understand why CDPR made that choice. A console game being broken on release is no longer a disaster.
Maybe. It's also quite possible that they felt so much pressure that they believed what they needed to believe rather than the reality.
IMO they should have just delayed the last-gen consoles. Would have sucked, but that would have avoided most of the backlash for another delay as well as that for the buggy console release.
IMO they should have just delayed the last-gen consoles. Would have sucked, but that would have avoided most of the backlash for another delay as well as that for the buggy console release.
They announced the game in a Microsoft E3 presentation and were supposed to be a launch title on the new consoles. That probably comes with contractual obligations, like the requirement to release on PS, XBox and PC at the same time, with materially the same game (plus/minus graphics).
It's not like the PC version was ready. It has issues that can not be fixed in another 6 months of development. But as bad as the PC version is, it's at least somewhat playable in contrast to the console version.
I've watched a few streams; while there are bugs, they are more of the variety found at Skyrim's or Witcher 3's launch. Annoying, frustrating maybe, but not to the point of making the game unplayable as it stands on PS4. The severe performance issues appear to be solved by just flipping a setting or two.
I believe tsss is referring to things such as terrible AI on PC, and other complaints about the game such as a lack of interactability with the world outside of quests. Not bugs necessarily (although the AI certainly is in a grey area) but issues with the game, certainly. Whether they'll be fixed remains to be seen
It could be like a Bethesda game where there’s more bugs than actual game content, it’s never fixed, but nobody actually cares because everyone plays with a hundred mods.
Witcher 3 was very buggy on launch, the bugs were fixed over time and it runs flawlessly nowadays.
Skyrim still has plenty of content-related bugs (i.e. not graphical or performance related); Bethesda never fixed them but oddly enough, modders did and you can download a bugfix mod from Nexus or Steam.
Skyrim still has plenty of content-related bugs (i.e. not graphical or performance related); Bethesda never fixed them but oddly enough, modders did and you can download a bugfix mod from Nexus or Steam.
Pretty plausible. It would be hard to put off that cash infusion.
perhaps they didn't have the choice of not launching, money-wise?
Oh man.. I have personally been a victim to the results of management ego aka my first and only death march project.
Not just game companies where this happens - I've worked at more than a few places in normal software development where management ego rather than cold hard reality drives the bus and yeah, speaking up is definitely a career limiting move.
[deleted]
CDPR is owned in 66% by investors. And investors want ROI and there is nothing better than holiday season for that.
They also knew about how bad the game runs on PS4 and released it either way because “money>everything”.
Its really that simple.
They also knew about how bad the game runs on PS4 and released it either way because “money>everything”.
Its really that simple.
>They also knew about how bad the game runs on PS4
If by "they" you mean investors, I'm not sure if that's correct.
>CD Projekt joint-CEO Adam Kaciński has praised Cyberpunk 2077's performance on PS4 and Xbox One in an investor call.
>Speaking earlier this week on Wednesday (and transcribed by Seeking Alpha), Kaciński said that Cyberpunk 2077's performance on the base PS4 and Xbox One consoles is "surprisingly good, I would say, for such a huge world." The CEO went on to say that although the performance on these base consoles is lower than their "pro" counterparts (the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X), it's still surprisingly good.
https://www.gamesradar.com/cyberpunk-2077-runs-surprisingly-...
If by "they" you mean investors, I'm not sure if that's correct.
>CD Projekt joint-CEO Adam Kaciński has praised Cyberpunk 2077's performance on PS4 and Xbox One in an investor call.
>Speaking earlier this week on Wednesday (and transcribed by Seeking Alpha), Kaciński said that Cyberpunk 2077's performance on the base PS4 and Xbox One consoles is "surprisingly good, I would say, for such a huge world." The CEO went on to say that although the performance on these base consoles is lower than their "pro" counterparts (the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X), it's still surprisingly good.
https://www.gamesradar.com/cyberpunk-2077-runs-surprisingly-...
Of course by "surprisingly good" he meant "I'm surprised it runs at all" and everyone else heard "it runs great".
[deleted]
I'd think this was worse for the investors than not releasing in December and delaying until ~March? Stock price down over 30%.
> Stock price down over 30%
Yet the game is the second largest retail launch of the year in the UK, only topped by FIFA 21 [0], it allegedly already recouped it's development costs one day after release [1].
Just gets to show that stock prices a very bad measure for actual performance of a company releasing a product, it's mostly driven by hype/shitstorms, of which there is currently a lot surrounding CP2077, some of it justified, other just coming across as tone-deaf and needlessly hostile.
[0] https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-12-13-cyberpunk-...
[1] https://www.polygon.com/2020/12/11/22170468/cyberpunk-2077-s...
Yet the game is the second largest retail launch of the year in the UK, only topped by FIFA 21 [0], it allegedly already recouped it's development costs one day after release [1].
Just gets to show that stock prices a very bad measure for actual performance of a company releasing a product, it's mostly driven by hype/shitstorms, of which there is currently a lot surrounding CP2077, some of it justified, other just coming across as tone-deaf and needlessly hostile.
[0] https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-12-13-cyberpunk-...
[1] https://www.polygon.com/2020/12/11/22170468/cyberpunk-2077-s...
I think they'd care about sales rather than their stock price. The stock price will bounce back, and with the game being on sale, I'd imagine many players will just hold off until patches come through. They probably made more money launching as is than they would have if they had just waited.
A sign that Investors in this company are not looking to build long term fundamental business. They are there only to rip off immediate profit. Too bad.
Christmas, new console releases, new graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia, and a pandemic. Take the pandemic out of the equation and it is still extraordinarily rare to have all of those events at the same time.
Weigh the costs of having a bad release against the costs of missing these extraordinary circumstances. It’s not hard to see why they made the decision they did.
Weigh the costs of having a bad release against the costs of missing these extraordinary circumstances. It’s not hard to see why they made the decision they did.
History shows that great games will be successful no matter what. Something like World of Warcraft is successful simply because product is great, not because it was released at the right moment.
May be CDP had reasons to do what they did - I'm not questioning that. But what it shows - CDP is just another game studio.
I would like to see some company to go Apple-way, price their games accordingly, take their time and earn some reputation, but release games that are great time after time. CDP gave this hope after Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk PR but failed to deliver. The game is still good, so they might be still on the path. We will see in the next iteration. May be Blizzard makes comeback and releases something epic again. It takes someone like Steve Jobs to pull this off and may be in game industry it is tricky.
Anyway, this is how I think about it.
Anyway, this is how I think about it.
And just so 2020 can give you a kick in the teeth on the way out the door, you can't buy any of these technological wonders unless you pay a scalper on eBay a 100% premium.
Alas, can't buy neither a new 3080 nor a new PS5. Imagine the sales numbers if supply wasn't so badly constrained
Supply is artificially constrained by bot-wielding cartels of middlemen with the aim only to “flip” them for profit.
If people would stop buying the middlemen’s supply, their exclusivity premium would evaporate, and the rest of the supply chain would be able to catch up and serve the real demand.
If people would stop buying the middlemen’s supply, their exclusivity premium would evaporate, and the rest of the supply chain would be able to catch up and serve the real demand.
That bot-wielding only works on products where supply is limited. Otherwise they’d be scalping every single sector of PC hardware, not just the new GPUs.
Is this not a fundamental truth of shareholder value theory? No one should be surprised when a duck quacks.
No it isn't. Shareholders have no interest in owning a failing company, it is in their best interests for the company to be sucessful and profitable because they are the ones with skin in the game.
Oh so then shareholders do not care about quarterly dividends and constant growth forever?
Publicly owned companies are all inherently sick.
Publicly owned companies are all inherently sick.
Shareholders demonstratably don’t care about dividends since many large companies like Amazon/Uber don’t have any, aren’t even ever going to be profitable, but just have a really cool story.
But theoretically shareholders don’t care about these things as long as the company will grow a lot in the next 30 years. There are some alternative stock markets set up to encourage this.
And stockholders hardly exercise their powers. CEOs tend to not get fired.
But theoretically shareholders don’t care about these things as long as the company will grow a lot in the next 30 years. There are some alternative stock markets set up to encourage this.
And stockholders hardly exercise their powers. CEOs tend to not get fired.
Investors don't make money from sales. They just lost 30% of their investment. Literally no one benefited from this.
And you think the stock price wouldn't have gone down if they'd announced a delay until March? The stock price went up 20% since beginning of November to early December, I somehow doubt that'd have happened if they'd postponed.
> They just lost 30% of their investment.
They only lost money if they bought on the peak and then sold the stock after the 30% fall. Otherwise, they're just stil holding a piece of CDPR, whose market value fluctuates and is not that relevant until you decide to sell.
They only lost money if they bought on the peak and then sold the stock after the 30% fall. Otherwise, they're just stil holding a piece of CDPR, whose market value fluctuates and is not that relevant until you decide to sell.
I feel like I did. Playing on a 3080, minor bugs I've experienced aside it has been a true taste of the next generation of games. Mostly in a visual sense though.
Ah yes. You can see the global illumination ray traced lighting specular reflections off of the face of a T-posed one-line-of-dialog hooker.
The game looks way better than pre-release marketing footage [0], which gets zero recognition and only a bunch of hate.
Meanwhile when Ubisoft releases yet another "Doesn't look anything like the marketing footage", usually also crunched into existence, people just shrug it off.
In that context it's really weird how everybody seems to be dog-piling on CDPR right now for the most weird reasons, when otherwise they have a pretty pro-consumer track-record, particularly compared to the bigger AAA publishing fishes in the pond.
[0] https://youtu.be/Ogihi-OewPQ
Meanwhile when Ubisoft releases yet another "Doesn't look anything like the marketing footage", usually also crunched into existence, people just shrug it off.
In that context it's really weird how everybody seems to be dog-piling on CDPR right now for the most weird reasons, when otherwise they have a pretty pro-consumer track-record, particularly compared to the bigger AAA publishing fishes in the pond.
[0] https://youtu.be/Ogihi-OewPQ
I'd say that it feels like someone in the media has an axe to grind here. CDPR's policies seem like above average for the admittedly dismal field of game development, but they're drawing particular flack, especially when other companies with worse treatment conditions (naughty dog) instead get lionized.
> I'd say that it feels like someone in the media has an axe to grind here.
Most definitely when looking at some of the not so technical complaints, like about "representation" or how the studio is allegedly all kinds of phobic and the general tone not being PC enough.
Particularly cynical to complain about the commodification of trans-people, in a setting where even peoples memories and individual body-party are just another commodity. When that's very big part of that dystopian worlds settings, always has been, and not some specific dig against trans people.
Makes me wonder how much of that is simply a pile-on effect from the general situation in Poland with LGTBQ+ issues and CDPR getting drawn into that as some kind of scapegoat.
Most definitely when looking at some of the not so technical complaints, like about "representation" or how the studio is allegedly all kinds of phobic and the general tone not being PC enough.
Particularly cynical to complain about the commodification of trans-people, in a setting where even peoples memories and individual body-party are just another commodity. When that's very big part of that dystopian worlds settings, always has been, and not some specific dig against trans people.
Makes me wonder how much of that is simply a pile-on effect from the general situation in Poland with LGTBQ+ issues and CDPR getting drawn into that as some kind of scapegoat.
Some of the criticism has been unmerited, but no more than expected. That doesn’t invalidate the valid, merited criticism though, of which there is much.
Sony has pulled the game from the Playstation Store. This is a historically bad release. CDPR might actually implode from this.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/17/22188007/sony-cyberpunk-...
Sony has pulled the game from the Playstation Store. This is a historically bad release. CDPR might actually implode from this.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/17/22188007/sony-cyberpunk-...
People want unicorns, they thought they were going to get a unicorn, and instead they got an old, beaten-down horse.
That “horse” is what anyone who is familiar with CDPR games would expect.
Also, I hope you’re being sarcastic (seeing the silly takes from some critics about how Cyberpunk is not the “future of gaming” they were expecting, I’m not sure anymore).
I was talking about perception, rather than reality.
The world is completely dead, though.
It looks very impressive, but I still boot up assassin's creed Odyssey (of all games) just to wander around (i.e. an OK game but an excellent world), Cyberpunk so far feels like what people who don't like games feel games are like.
It looks very impressive, but I still boot up assassin's creed Odyssey (of all games) just to wander around (i.e. an OK game but an excellent world), Cyberpunk so far feels like what people who don't like games feel games are like.
Oh I meant no one benefited from them releasing on old-gen consoles. I wonder if perhaps they were contractually not allowed to release only PC + next-gen consoles, and delay old-gen consoles?
It may be good for investors getting in now, however. I picked up a few shares.
You are betting that CDPR will put in its due dilligence to regain trust of consumers. If they fail to deliver in the next 12 months, future sales will be bad. It’s rather pathetic that consumers give such leeway to irresponsible management.
> If they fail to deliver in the next 12 months, future sales will be bad.
Citation needed. In my experience gamers are very quick to forgive and forget a bad game and will still line up for the next hyped release from the same publisher/studio.
Citation needed. In my experience gamers are very quick to forgive and forget a bad game and will still line up for the next hyped release from the same publisher/studio.
TW3. CDPR dropped the ball (though not quite this hard) but pulled through within a year. No Man’s Sky missed that target but still managed to eventually have a (supposedly) decent product. Ask the average gamer how they feel about No Man’s Sky.
Most other big budget case studies either completely failed, were decent within a year, or shipped in a complete state.
Most other big budget case studies either completely failed, were decent within a year, or shipped in a complete state.
Wasn't just TW3, pretty much every Witcher game had issues on release that where fixed over the following time period trough a combination of patching, free DLC and paid DLC, ultimately culminating in the enhanced editions.
In that context CDPR has a very positive track record many people just flat out ignore; I've seen people on Reddit claim the game is an "unfixable mess" and how CDPR will just "cut their losses" by never patching it, it's inane beyond belief.
In that context CDPR has a very positive track record many people just flat out ignore; I've seen people on Reddit claim the game is an "unfixable mess" and how CDPR will just "cut their losses" by never patching it, it's inane beyond belief.
Yeah, for giant open world games I kinda just expect a year of bugs before it's actually pretty dialed in... Bethesda has done a lot of work to lower expectations in this genre.
This close to par for CDPR, but it clearly is below their par. The bad outcome is that they bit off more than they can chew and CP2077 takes too long to get to a good state or the “good state” is not good. The good outcome is that they make a decent looking product by the end of 2021 and gamers (maybe) forgive CDPR for releasing an unfinished game. There’s a large expectation of goodwill from both sides. Both sides have consistently demonstrated that goodwill, but that goodwill could sour.
The game is apparently moddable, and given that it's the first game in years to really have that capability on this scale it could be around for a while a la old fallouts
Well, no one is saying it was the smartest choice, just the most obvious one.
Blaming investors underplays how much CDPR messed up. Basically all AAA games are funded by investors, so it's not an excuse for a bad release.
Investors were told that the game would release in April, which is why many of them invested in the company in the first place. It's reasonable to expect them to finish 7 months later.
Investors were told that the game would release in April, which is why many of them invested in the company in the first place. It's reasonable to expect them to finish 7 months later.
I don't know how the Polish corporation works, but at least in my country, nebulous "investors" would have a lot of difficulty pushing through random product decisions in a public company.
I noticed a lot of extremely successful companies were employee-owned for a significant fraction of their early growth.
I'm thinking Valve (still is!) and Microsoft. Wonder if there's a correlation.
I'm thinking Valve (still is!) and Microsoft. Wonder if there's a correlation.
100% the truth right here, to believe anything else requires a bit of gymnastics.
Management may very well have had little or no choice in the matter. The game had already been pushed multiple times and there was half a $Billion in pre-orders alone waiting to be collected.
Estimates put the dev budget a little over $300 million [0]. After retailers & Steam take their cut and given that a lot of sales were full-cut direct through GOG, that puts the game around break-even status before it even hits normal retail sales.
Given this picture, it is highly likely that investors forced through this decision to go forward as much or more than management did. Push the game again and you'll really start losing pre-orders, and the next time a release date comes around people will be even more hesitant to drop $60 before release.
(As a side note, I'm playing the game on low-end gaming hardware and it works fine. Occasional graphical glitches, 1 crash. It's hard to live up to the hype, but it's still a great game. Feels like a mashup of GTA V with heavy RPG elements set in a future dystopia. Small hints of Assassin's Creed stealth, maybe more if you build your character in that direction.)
[0] https://www.altchar.com/game-news/cyberpunk-2077-set-to-beco...
Estimates put the dev budget a little over $300 million [0]. After retailers & Steam take their cut and given that a lot of sales were full-cut direct through GOG, that puts the game around break-even status before it even hits normal retail sales.
Given this picture, it is highly likely that investors forced through this decision to go forward as much or more than management did. Push the game again and you'll really start losing pre-orders, and the next time a release date comes around people will be even more hesitant to drop $60 before release.
(As a side note, I'm playing the game on low-end gaming hardware and it works fine. Occasional graphical glitches, 1 crash. It's hard to live up to the hype, but it's still a great game. Feels like a mashup of GTA V with heavy RPG elements set in a future dystopia. Small hints of Assassin's Creed stealth, maybe more if you build your character in that direction.)
[0] https://www.altchar.com/game-news/cyberpunk-2077-set-to-beco...
I saw someone post a synopsis on Reddit (forgot the sub) of the actual recorded phone call and these were the points mentioned:
- QA was limited and done in-house, thus remotely by people working on the game
- Overestimated their ability to fix the problems before launch
- Reviewers didn't have access to last-gen console versions because they were still working on the last-gen versions through the certification process up until launch day
Of course, I don't put much weight on any of these. However, I'm sure there was a fair bit of pressure from investors to release during the holidays considering some of the questions asked during the call, like how "sticky" the game was despite the problems and whether they would still receive their full cut regardless of the refunds.
- QA was limited and done in-house, thus remotely by people working on the game
- Overestimated their ability to fix the problems before launch
- Reviewers didn't have access to last-gen console versions because they were still working on the last-gen versions through the certification process up until launch day
Of course, I don't put much weight on any of these. However, I'm sure there was a fair bit of pressure from investors to release during the holidays considering some of the questions asked during the call, like how "sticky" the game was despite the problems and whether they would still receive their full cut regardless of the refunds.
This was the call: https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/kde2jj/cd_projekt_re...
Question remains, why did Microsoft and Sony certify them?
You have to ask? Its holiday season in the middle of the worst pandemic in 100 years, with hundreds of millions of people worldwide being on lockdown, or some form of lockdown, with absolutely jack shit to do other than work from home (if you even can), learn something (most people will not do this), or play video games.
New movies and television have been woefully shitty.
Its always easier for ask for forgiveness than permission. <- old military adage
They're asking for forgiveness now, and I'd argue it'll work.
New movies and television have been woefully shitty.
Its always easier for ask for forgiveness than permission. <- old military adage
They're asking for forgiveness now, and I'd argue it'll work.
As someone who bought the game as a Christmas gift, I am more concerned about how it will play at a Christmas-day patch level. I am actually happy I was able to get the physical media ahead of time, even if what they shipped at launch was buggy.
You'll probably be happy with your purchase. There's already a patch that fixes 600 bugs, and they're working on another patch that should be released by December 21st. Christmas Day should be a little shitty for your gift recipient, in that that they'll have to download a big fat patch, but hey, at least the game should work well.
Assuming you got the PC / PS5 / Xbox Series X version. If you didn't... yikes.
Assuming you got the PC / PS5 / Xbox Series X version. If you didn't... yikes.
Unfortunately PS4 (although at least they are running a PS4 Pro).
They estimate February, but honestly I'm thinking it'll be never.
The sad simple truth is that this game was never designed with current gen consoles in mind. It was always designed for PCs. When the now-current gen consoles were announced and specs got tossed around, CDPR realized they were basically mid-tier gaming PCs, so they would run the game fairly well.
The sad simple truth is that this game was never designed with current gen consoles in mind. It was always designed for PCs. When the now-current gen consoles were announced and specs got tossed around, CDPR realized they were basically mid-tier gaming PCs, so they would run the game fairly well.
I'll reserve final judgement for when the PS5 version comes out, but aside from 60FPS, the current build looks like crap on PS5. It runs sub 1080p most of the time, lighting and shadows are horrific, it's technically speaking the worst looking PS4 game I've played, including on an actual PS4.
Visually in terms of atmosphere it looks great, if you can see through the low resolution and terrible LOD. I believe they can and will fix these things; what I'm not confident will ever be fixed though, is the AI/game logic, it seems like it just hasn't been written/implemented at anything more than the most basic placeholder.
Visually in terms of atmosphere it looks great, if you can see through the low resolution and terrible LOD. I believe they can and will fix these things; what I'm not confident will ever be fixed though, is the AI/game logic, it seems like it just hasn't been written/implemented at anything more than the most basic placeholder.
> runs sub 1080p most of the time
Does it change resolution as you play?
Does it change resolution as you play?
In theory it's using DRS (Dynamic Resolution Scaling) but I've never seen it change to a "good" resolution.
The 1.04 patch improved things but many textures are extremely poor while others right next to them are sharp and clear. For example, a building or railing texture will be good, but a dumpster or any other object which isn't fixed will be extremely low resolution. On the whole it's very soft and just gives a "blurry" or "out of focus" feel.
The result for me is eye strain as it feels like I'm always trying to focus on something that won't be focused.
Subjectively speaking, it _feels_ worse quality than a 1080p game when I was playing on PS4. I don't have any real evidence to back it up though.
The 1.04 patch improved things but many textures are extremely poor while others right next to them are sharp and clear. For example, a building or railing texture will be good, but a dumpster or any other object which isn't fixed will be extremely low resolution. On the whole it's very soft and just gives a "blurry" or "out of focus" feel.
The result for me is eye strain as it feels like I'm always trying to focus on something that won't be focused.
Subjectively speaking, it _feels_ worse quality than a 1080p game when I was playing on PS4. I don't have any real evidence to back it up though.
I played a few hours on PS5 and have parked it until the PS5 version comes out. The game logic/features are a far cry from what was advertised; I've waited 7-8 years for this game and the disappointment is immeasurable. I don't believe they can fix the short-coming by Jan/Feb (As a software Engineer myself I just don't see how they can implement/fix so much missing logic in that short of a time frame).
I'm holding out for the PS5 patch so that at least I can play what _is_ there at a decent resolution. The game looks nice, that and the story is pretty much all it has going for it (in my opinion). The PS4 build is running at such a low resolution (60FPS though) with terrible lighting and shadows on PS5 right now that it's embarrassing. That's once you get past the 10+ times the game has totally crashed out on my since the 1.04 update.
I want to enjoy the game and right now I can't. Let's see how it fairs in a couple of months.
If you want a feel for how it'll play for your giftee on PS4/Pro (at the current patch level) check out Digital Foundry's reviews on YouTube.
I'm holding out for the PS5 patch so that at least I can play what _is_ there at a decent resolution. The game looks nice, that and the story is pretty much all it has going for it (in my opinion). The PS4 build is running at such a low resolution (60FPS though) with terrible lighting and shadows on PS5 right now that it's embarrassing. That's once you get past the 10+ times the game has totally crashed out on my since the 1.04 update.
I want to enjoy the game and right now I can't. Let's see how it fairs in a couple of months.
If you want a feel for how it'll play for your giftee on PS4/Pro (at the current patch level) check out Digital Foundry's reviews on YouTube.
"Easier for ask for forgiveness than permission": perhaps, but it's not obvious to me.
One the one hand, a further delay risks losing out a big part of sales. Dedicated fans will buy anyway, but presumably a large fraction of preorders came from people who just jumped on the hype. And who knows if you can recreate this hype after the pandemic ends, after other games come out, after you delay the release over and over. And yes, you can fix some of the damage later.
On the other hand, the company had an incredible reputation for quality, maybe one of the best in the industry. How much of the lost reputation will not be recovered, even after all the refunds and patches? Future games will get less preorders, so less cashflow, so more dependence on external funding - an extra source of risks and tension. Future games will not get as much hype, so will sell less. Even hiring might suffer as the best candidates are quite sensitive to the employer reputation.
One the one hand, a further delay risks losing out a big part of sales. Dedicated fans will buy anyway, but presumably a large fraction of preorders came from people who just jumped on the hype. And who knows if you can recreate this hype after the pandemic ends, after other games come out, after you delay the release over and over. And yes, you can fix some of the damage later.
On the other hand, the company had an incredible reputation for quality, maybe one of the best in the industry. How much of the lost reputation will not be recovered, even after all the refunds and patches? Future games will get less preorders, so less cashflow, so more dependence on external funding - an extra source of risks and tension. Future games will not get as much hype, so will sell less. Even hiring might suffer as the best candidates are quite sensitive to the employer reputation.
Anyone that's truly on the fence already knows what to do, they've seen it happen with all three Witcher games. Wait two years, then buy them for $40, or wait for a GOG sale and get the Game of the Year Edition for $20.
I pre-ordered Cyberpunk 2077 because I like this setting much more than the setting of The Witcher. Don't regret it.
I pre-ordered Cyberpunk 2077 because I like this setting much more than the setting of The Witcher. Don't regret it.
This kind of ruins one of the selling points of consoles - that the game that you buy for them just work. They're more expensive than PC ones, but there experience is disappointment and frustration free. Looks like it's not so anymore.
I saw this answered somewhere: the certification is only concerned with if your game bricks the console and not at all about the quality of the game itself.
Having said that, surely someone from the certification process would have commented on it: hey guys, your game doesn't brick the base PS4, but come on, its a buggy mess!
Having said that, surely someone from the certification process would have commented on it: hey guys, your game doesn't brick the base PS4, but come on, its a buggy mess!
For me it's highly probable the last delay have been caused by the game being denied the certification at first.
Since it's a critical time for both of them not only because it's christmas but also because of the new gen I'm also pretty sure they decided it was more worthwhile for them to still certify it the second time even if it wasn't up to the standards.
Since it's a critical time for both of them not only because it's christmas but also because of the new gen I'm also pretty sure they decided it was more worthwhile for them to still certify it the second time even if it wasn't up to the standards.
Doesn't the article answer that? CDPR was confident they would fix it in time for release, and MS and Sony trusted them due to the track record.
Though looking at especially the Xbox One S footage, it is hard to believe anyone could be trusted to make it playable in a few weeks.
Though looking at especially the Xbox One S footage, it is hard to believe anyone could be trusted to make it playable in a few weeks.
From what I understand, certification is mainly making sure the game doesn't:
1. Crash often
2. Cause issues with the underlying OS intentionally or not (like how an Anthem update supposedly caused PS4s to need to be initialized or recovered)
3. Disobey guidelines like using the official patch process, multiplayer APIs, etc.
1. Crash often
2. Cause issues with the underlying OS intentionally or not (like how an Anthem update supposedly caused PS4s to need to be initialized or recovered)
3. Disobey guidelines like using the official patch process, multiplayer APIs, etc.
From what I am reading it certainly does crash often on PS4.
It has been years since I worked for an AAA game company, but at least at that time (and probably still) the pressure from publishers to release in time for Christmas season is beyond intense.
The revenue difference between selling at Christmas (even if reviews are awful) vs selling around Easter, the next available "good" retail holiday, is huge.
And since these days, patches are the standard - as in, release with known deficiencies and patch your way to "OK" - it is very likely that from an overall financial perspective, releasing now was the right answer.
If a game studio wants to maintain a very high level of quality, they have to be willing to lose a publisher by rejecting this. Unless that studio is already so well established that they are in demand, they just cannot afford to fight their publisher.
The revenue difference between selling at Christmas (even if reviews are awful) vs selling around Easter, the next available "good" retail holiday, is huge.
And since these days, patches are the standard - as in, release with known deficiencies and patch your way to "OK" - it is very likely that from an overall financial perspective, releasing now was the right answer.
If a game studio wants to maintain a very high level of quality, they have to be willing to lose a publisher by rejecting this. Unless that studio is already so well established that they are in demand, they just cannot afford to fight their publisher.
I'm playing on a PS4 slim and the game is fine, I really don't understand all the negativity (v 1.0.4). I had 2-3 crashes and saw some bugs like objects hanging in the air or the weapon not being visible.
Performance is fine. Bought the game a couple of days after launch and after reading the reports about horrible performance while downloading, I disabled everything under graphics, but then after a crash it reset its settings (yeah, I know) and it seems to work fine even with all settings on.
Performance is fine. Bought the game a couple of days after launch and after reading the reports about horrible performance while downloading, I disabled everything under graphics, but then after a crash it reset its settings (yeah, I know) and it seems to work fine even with all settings on.
I find it interesting but maybe not entirely surprising that games can actually crash on consoles. It still surprises me when it happens on my Nintendo Switch.
Though my last console experience before that was on a Nintendo 64 and I don't think any game ever crashed on it.
Though my last console experience before that was on a Nintendo 64 and I don't think any game ever crashed on it.
I’m kind of dumbstruck you brought up the switch. I have never — and I am not exaggerating — never had a game freeze on me on a Nintendo system, save for a busted ass cart on a 30 year old NES.
Especially lately, I feel as though Nintendo is the only brand who actually cares to provide that “just works” console experience.
Especially lately, I feel as though Nintendo is the only brand who actually cares to provide that “just works” console experience.
I had the same feeling the first time it happened. Though I think it still holds true for Nintendo games. They are rock solid.
The games I have had crashes with have all been ports from other consoles.
The games I have had crashes with have all been ports from other consoles.
> I find it interesting but maybe not entirely surprising that games can actually crash on consoles. It still surprises me when it happens on my Nintendo Switch.
Yeah. What about the testing that is a part of mandatory game certification process? Do console vendors look the other way for key games?
Yeah. What about the testing that is a part of mandatory game certification process? Do console vendors look the other way for key games?
They overestimated how much they could fix in the time between the initial delivery and the day-one patch.
Yeah it reads to me more like they were pressured to release it quickly before the holidays by investors, and the decision makers didn't listen to those below saying that it just couldn't be done (to the quality everyone expected).
I've been playing it on both PS4 Pro and PC and haven't experienced any game-breaking issues, and I was as hyped about this game as anyone (huge fan of the original RPG and CDPR in general), but I still would've preferred they just came out and said "We fucked up, we need more time" and delayed it until next year. People would've been pissed, media would've eaten them alive, but ultimately when the game came out it would've been 10x bigger than it is even now, and the game truly has potential to be one of the greats... after about another year of work.
I've been playing it on both PS4 Pro and PC and haven't experienced any game-breaking issues, and I was as hyped about this game as anyone (huge fan of the original RPG and CDPR in general), but I still would've preferred they just came out and said "We fucked up, we need more time" and delayed it until next year. People would've been pissed, media would've eaten them alive, but ultimately when the game came out it would've been 10x bigger than it is even now, and the game truly has potential to be one of the greats... after about another year of work.
...or it could have become Duke Nukem Forever, the game which was always just one year away, and was ultimately disappointing. DNF was a product of the culture of the 90s, and just didn't work when it was eventually released.
There's a real risk that if Cyberpunk was delayed further, whatever cultural winds drive its sails (and sales) could shift and the game would stall.
There's a real risk that if Cyberpunk was delayed further, whatever cultural winds drive its sails (and sales) could shift and the game would stall.
Yeah, Duke Nukem 3D was shocking for its time.
Duke Nukem Forever just feels like your creepy uncle telling the same sexist jokes from almost 25 years ago. The shtick didn't age well.
Duke Nukem Forever just feels like your creepy uncle telling the same sexist jokes from almost 25 years ago. The shtick didn't age well.
Or just marketed it as early access.
> Presumably CDPR employees are not afraid to convey such bad news to the management.
it seems pretty clear that they're terribly abusive employers, so if anything I would assume the opposite is true: that it's an environment where the QA staff is chronically underpaid, lives in perpetual fear of dismissal, and is told that working on the biggest game ever is the honor of a lifetime.
it seems pretty clear that they're terribly abusive employers, so if anything I would assume the opposite is true: that it's an environment where the QA staff is chronically underpaid, lives in perpetual fear of dismissal, and is told that working on the biggest game ever is the honor of a lifetime.
> it seems pretty clear that they're terribly abusive employers
How so? They changed the revenue based bonuses to be paid out regardless of review averages [0]. They at least tried to make a commitment to less crunch, while over at Rockstar the amount of crunch for RDR2 was something the co-founder publicly bragged about [1].
Now people on forums are citing RDR2 as an example for "How to make a great open world game!", while at the same time lynching CDPR for not living up to their attempt to minimize crunch, after several delays.
The double standards at play here are mind-boggling.
[0] https://www.pcgamer.com/cyberpunk-2077-developers-will-be-pa...
[1] https://www.vulture.com/2018/10/the-making-of-rockstar-games...
How so? They changed the revenue based bonuses to be paid out regardless of review averages [0]. They at least tried to make a commitment to less crunch, while over at Rockstar the amount of crunch for RDR2 was something the co-founder publicly bragged about [1].
Now people on forums are citing RDR2 as an example for "How to make a great open world game!", while at the same time lynching CDPR for not living up to their attempt to minimize crunch, after several delays.
The double standards at play here are mind-boggling.
[0] https://www.pcgamer.com/cyberpunk-2077-developers-will-be-pa...
[1] https://www.vulture.com/2018/10/the-making-of-rockstar-games...
But crunch has little to do with the state of the game right now. It's a fundamentally broken game, still fun, lots of positive points as well and with a great main quest line. You can see the effort and love (on PC).
But several critical components of the system seem like placeholders. Especially AI in all its forms is really bad (combat, driving, NPCs).
But several critical components of the system seem like placeholders. Especially AI in all its forms is really bad (combat, driving, NPCs).
lot of problems with this comment.
First of all, it's not a double standard: Rockstar faced similar criticism because of the crunch culture surrounding the development of RDR2. The specific article you mentioned wound up being terrible PR for Rockstar; as a direct consequence of that article, their behavior was widely criticized: https://www.engadget.com/2018-10-25-red-dead-redemption-2-re... https://kotaku.com/inside-rockstar-games-culture-of-crunch-1...
etc. Search "Red Dead Redemption crunch" or "Rockstar Games crunch" and you'll find loads of similar articles.
and the other problem is the usage of the term "lynching". Lynching refers to a vigilante execution by citizenry having no legal authority. It overwhelmingly refers to hate crimes along the basis of race or religin. By contrast, CD Projekt is a corporation worth billions of dollars that is being called out for treating its employees poorly. To equate the two is absurd.
First of all, it's not a double standard: Rockstar faced similar criticism because of the crunch culture surrounding the development of RDR2. The specific article you mentioned wound up being terrible PR for Rockstar; as a direct consequence of that article, their behavior was widely criticized: https://www.engadget.com/2018-10-25-red-dead-redemption-2-re... https://kotaku.com/inside-rockstar-games-culture-of-crunch-1...
etc. Search "Red Dead Redemption crunch" or "Rockstar Games crunch" and you'll find loads of similar articles.
and the other problem is the usage of the term "lynching". Lynching refers to a vigilante execution by citizenry having no legal authority. It overwhelmingly refers to hate crimes along the basis of race or religin. By contrast, CD Projekt is a corporation worth billions of dollars that is being called out for treating its employees poorly. To equate the two is absurd.
Rockstar didn't receive "similar" criticism. They got some fallout over that interview, but the whole issue was very much forgotten the moment the game was released and everybody was just fawning over all the details.
At that point working conditions at Rockstar became a side-topic barely mentioned in reviews and discussions about the game, if at all.
While with CP2077 CDPR at least tried to do better, they set for themselves the goal not to crunch, take the time the game needs, they were not in the press giving interviews glorifying crunch as something awesome and necesseary.
Which for such an ambitious project was aiming very high, maybe naively so, but at least they tried. Yet currently the majority of discourse around the game is dominated by what an evil company CDPR is for still having to put in crunch. To such a degree where mentioning anything positive about the game will trigger responses talking about "slave labor". Which often is, quite uncynically, followed up with "Just look at Rockstar, that's how you make a proper open-world game!", a lot of eating the cake while still wanting to have it.
So what's the lesson here? That crunch is only bad if the resulting product ain't an unmitigated Rockstar style success?
> (lynching) It overwhelmingly refers to hate crimes along the basis of race or religin.
It overwhelmingly refers to the practices by Charles Lynch punishing loyalist supporters of the British during the American Revolutionary war, which had nothing to do with race or religion. Colloquially used it refers to citizen vigilante justice, and that's very much how a lot of this CDPR hate feels like.
> CD Projekt is a corporation worth billions of dollars that is being called out for treating its employees poorly.
CDPR is not even worth half a billion, they are a dwarf compared to actual billion dollar corporations like Take2, Ubisoft, EA or Activision Blizzard.
CDPR also has pretty much the best pro-consumer practices track-record out of all of them, releasing AAA titles with not even as much DRM as a serial; Just an executable anybody could copy and distribute.
They don't sell single-player games with predatory MTX as all the aforementioned publishers do, even for single-player games.
They at least tried to make an commitment to less crunch and taking their time, until the realities of investor financing forced their hand.
Yet apparently none of that is worth any goodwill, nor do labor-rights at companies like Ubisoft, EA or ActiBlizz really factor in any of these discussions right now, even tho they also just released massive games that very likely involved crunching to get them out of the door.
I would understand this whole situation if they all faced criticism like that, particularly the actual billions dollar worth corporations, but that's not happening: Ubisoft and ActiBlizz get a complete pass, while CDPR is made out to be the new EA of the industry.
At that point working conditions at Rockstar became a side-topic barely mentioned in reviews and discussions about the game, if at all.
While with CP2077 CDPR at least tried to do better, they set for themselves the goal not to crunch, take the time the game needs, they were not in the press giving interviews glorifying crunch as something awesome and necesseary.
Which for such an ambitious project was aiming very high, maybe naively so, but at least they tried. Yet currently the majority of discourse around the game is dominated by what an evil company CDPR is for still having to put in crunch. To such a degree where mentioning anything positive about the game will trigger responses talking about "slave labor". Which often is, quite uncynically, followed up with "Just look at Rockstar, that's how you make a proper open-world game!", a lot of eating the cake while still wanting to have it.
So what's the lesson here? That crunch is only bad if the resulting product ain't an unmitigated Rockstar style success?
> (lynching) It overwhelmingly refers to hate crimes along the basis of race or religin.
It overwhelmingly refers to the practices by Charles Lynch punishing loyalist supporters of the British during the American Revolutionary war, which had nothing to do with race or religion. Colloquially used it refers to citizen vigilante justice, and that's very much how a lot of this CDPR hate feels like.
> CD Projekt is a corporation worth billions of dollars that is being called out for treating its employees poorly.
CDPR is not even worth half a billion, they are a dwarf compared to actual billion dollar corporations like Take2, Ubisoft, EA or Activision Blizzard.
CDPR also has pretty much the best pro-consumer practices track-record out of all of them, releasing AAA titles with not even as much DRM as a serial; Just an executable anybody could copy and distribute.
They don't sell single-player games with predatory MTX as all the aforementioned publishers do, even for single-player games.
They at least tried to make an commitment to less crunch and taking their time, until the realities of investor financing forced their hand.
Yet apparently none of that is worth any goodwill, nor do labor-rights at companies like Ubisoft, EA or ActiBlizz really factor in any of these discussions right now, even tho they also just released massive games that very likely involved crunching to get them out of the door.
I would understand this whole situation if they all faced criticism like that, particularly the actual billions dollar worth corporations, but that's not happening: Ubisoft and ActiBlizz get a complete pass, while CDPR is made out to be the new EA of the industry.
If you don't work for CDPR I have no idea why you care so much about them. Also CDPR has a market cap of over $8bn so I'm not sure where you're getting your information from.
Also comparing them to other companies is completely pointless and besides the point. Everything you are saying holds no value, and adds nothing to the conversation. You are defending CDPR using illogical and tangentially related arguments.
CDPR saying they worked to reduce crunch means literally nothing. Just because a company produces a product you like does not mean you have to turn a blind eye to horrible practices. Witcher 3 had horrible crunch, it was reported and CDPR didn't address it. It happens again with 2077, they admit it and now I'm your eyes they're the misunderstood good guys? Laughable.
Also comparing them to other companies is completely pointless and besides the point. Everything you are saying holds no value, and adds nothing to the conversation. You are defending CDPR using illogical and tangentially related arguments.
CDPR saying they worked to reduce crunch means literally nothing. Just because a company produces a product you like does not mean you have to turn a blind eye to horrible practices. Witcher 3 had horrible crunch, it was reported and CDPR didn't address it. It happens again with 2077, they admit it and now I'm your eyes they're the misunderstood good guys? Laughable.
> Also CDPR has a market cap of over $8bn so I'm not sure where you're getting your information from.
I get my information from total company assets instead of highly fluctuating market cap.
> CDPR saying they worked to reduce crunch means literally nothing.
Trying to make a commitment to less crunch is at least making an attempt at improving the situation, the same can't be said about bragging about how it's a "lifestyle" and then everybody being in awe about all the crunched in details, like pooping horses.
> Just because a company produces a product you like does not mean you have to turn a blind eye to horrible practices.
It's not about me liking the product or not, it's about the fact how crunch is conveniently overlooked when the final product is critically acclaimed and well received, which is apparently how this works when looking at plenty of other examples.
The only lesson corporate leadership takes from that is that crunch is okay as long as the final product justifies it, and because that's the default assumption for any product, as nobody aims to create a mediocre one, it will effectively change nothing about the underlying culture that's the actual root of the problem.
That's why I take issue with singling out CDPR as it's happening right now; It's a scapegoat distracting from an industry-wide problem. I'm willing to bet money that if CP2077 would have turned out like a GTAV or RDR2, then the public discourse around crunch would have gotten drowned out among all the positivity, just as it happened with those two, and plenty of other, games.
I get my information from total company assets instead of highly fluctuating market cap.
> CDPR saying they worked to reduce crunch means literally nothing.
Trying to make a commitment to less crunch is at least making an attempt at improving the situation, the same can't be said about bragging about how it's a "lifestyle" and then everybody being in awe about all the crunched in details, like pooping horses.
> Just because a company produces a product you like does not mean you have to turn a blind eye to horrible practices.
It's not about me liking the product or not, it's about the fact how crunch is conveniently overlooked when the final product is critically acclaimed and well received, which is apparently how this works when looking at plenty of other examples.
The only lesson corporate leadership takes from that is that crunch is okay as long as the final product justifies it, and because that's the default assumption for any product, as nobody aims to create a mediocre one, it will effectively change nothing about the underlying culture that's the actual root of the problem.
That's why I take issue with singling out CDPR as it's happening right now; It's a scapegoat distracting from an industry-wide problem. I'm willing to bet money that if CP2077 would have turned out like a GTAV or RDR2, then the public discourse around crunch would have gotten drowned out among all the positivity, just as it happened with those two, and plenty of other, games.
have you ever even heard of hindsight bias?
Yeah, Rockstar received all of the same criticism for a few weeks, then people stopped talking about it and forgot. Give it a month or two and people will stop talking about this one too.
> It overwhelmingly refers to the practices by Charles Lynch punishing loyalist supporters of the British during the American Revolutionary war
No, it doesn't, that's just some pedantry you learned on Wikipedia. Literally nobody uses the word "lynching" in that way. Language changes.
Yeah, Rockstar received all of the same criticism for a few weeks, then people stopped talking about it and forgot. Give it a month or two and people will stop talking about this one too.
> It overwhelmingly refers to the practices by Charles Lynch punishing loyalist supporters of the British during the American Revolutionary war
No, it doesn't, that's just some pedantry you learned on Wikipedia. Literally nobody uses the word "lynching" in that way. Language changes.
Yeah I don't get it, TW3 was unplayable for quite a while on base consoles, sub 30 fps throughout most of the game, and CB2077 is a game with much bigger scope the base consoles couldn't handle the NPC rich areas in TW3 so no matter how much optimization they would do I don't understand who thought that this game will ever be playable on the base previous gen consoles.
People who saw a game sold for their platform assumed it was fit for purpose.
I don't understand who tries to complicate that with sentiments like "they should have known better"
I don't understand who tries to complicate that with sentiments like "they should have known better"
Isn't not quite consistent 30fps basically the norm on PS4/Xbox one?
Yes and no, TW3 was bad like really really bad it still is really sucky on base consoles.
TW3 played perfectly fine on base PS4 for me. Sure, some very action-heavy segments have some frame drops, but overall, it performed acceptably. I played it six months after release, for over 150 hours and I only had one severe bug in that time (I fell through the world, but was able to get back out, so wasn't even game breaking).
This point is incorrect. If they’re releasing the game for current gen, it should be playable on it.
Current gen is the PS5 and Xbox Series, except for occasional crashes the game looks and performs really well on those.
The game's been announced 7 years ago and multiple original release dates were prior to the PS5 and Xbox Series even coming out.
If Cyberpunk 2077 wasn't targetting PS4 and Xbox One, CDPR shouldn't have released it for them at all.
If Cyberpunk 2077 wasn't targetting PS4 and Xbox One, CDPR shouldn't have released it for them at all.
> If Cyberpunk 2077 wasn't targetting PS4 and Xbox One, CDPR shouldn't have released it for them at all.
Exactly. If they release and advertise it for a platform, it better work. If it doesn't, don't release on that platform.
Exactly. If they release and advertise it for a platform, it better work. If it doesn't, don't release on that platform.
The PS5 is running a backported PS4 game. There is no release for the current console generation.
It's because of Christmas, that's pretty much the whole reasoning for why they released when they did.
> Presumably CDPR employees are not afraid to convey such bad news to the management.
I do not think this is a safe assumption to make. You're assuming each person passes this higher and higher up in the chain for a decision to be made.
I do not think this is a safe assumption to make. You're assuming each person passes this higher and higher up in the chain for a decision to be made.
Besides other reasons I think management thought they could get away with it.
Reviewers were given the PC version, so I imagine it was a calculation of “how many reviewers are willing to wait on traffic, just to review old consoles?”
It just didn’t work out for them.
Reviewers were given the PC version, so I imagine it was a calculation of “how many reviewers are willing to wait on traffic, just to review old consoles?”
It just didn’t work out for them.
I'm shocked nobody else has pointed out the responsibility of Microsoft and Sony here - the whole job of a console maker is to keep crap like this off their box so you never have to stress about whether it runs properly or not. It's supposed to be the whole advantage over having a PC.
It was their job to refuse certification and say "Nope, come back when the game runs properly" and they failed. That's part of what they get their money for when we pay more for console games than PC.
It was their job to refuse certification and say "Nope, come back when the game runs properly" and they failed. That's part of what they get their money for when we pay more for console games than PC.
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My assumption is that all of this doesn't matter when the share holders and investors pressure the company... it's not an easy to decision whether to delay the product again, especially when there is already a negative public reaction to the multiple delays.
Don't underestimate the ability for people to dilute the impact of bad-news as it moves up the chain. I'm sure people play-tested it and tried to raise alarms, but bad news regularly get's softened, maybe to accept less blame/responsibility?
If you are in management of a company that literally publishes one game, it would make some sense to actually play this game.
Probably they knew what is up: investors told them to publish, so they published.
Probably they knew what is up: investors told them to publish, so they published.
> So why did the management still decide to go ahead with the release this year?
The game should have been delayed until Xmas 2021 but CDPR probably had contracts they couldn't break with Sony, Xbox, or maybe even Nvidia.
The game should have been delayed until Xmas 2021 but CDPR probably had contracts they couldn't break with Sony, Xbox, or maybe even Nvidia.
> So why did the management still decide to go ahead with the release this year?
Because there isn't a single other major December release.
Because there isn't a single other major December release.
Good catch, the root of the word Underestimate is estimation and it shall not be confused with Underrate.
I see CDPR being bashed a lot and I wanted to chip in: I bought the game on release day on GOG and am playing it on a Macbook Pro via Geforce Now.
It's running very well for me. I've had 0 crashes. Very few glitches, and if, then they were cosmetic i.e. didn't cause any gameplay problems†.
The visuals are absolutely amazing. Combat is very nice. The skill tree is interesting. Night city is beautifully immersive and the story is thrilling. I'm not much of a gamer, but I feel that I'll sink a large amount of time into this game. As of now, I can't stop thinking about the game when I'm away from it.
† Although I almost had a heart attack as one time a bad guy that I had taken down just got up and sat back down on the bench he was sitting on before. He was still "dead" but just chilling on the bench. Hidden zombie mode?
It's running very well for me. I've had 0 crashes. Very few glitches, and if, then they were cosmetic i.e. didn't cause any gameplay problems†.
The visuals are absolutely amazing. Combat is very nice. The skill tree is interesting. Night city is beautifully immersive and the story is thrilling. I'm not much of a gamer, but I feel that I'll sink a large amount of time into this game. As of now, I can't stop thinking about the game when I'm away from it.
† Although I almost had a heart attack as one time a bad guy that I had taken down just got up and sat back down on the bench he was sitting on before. He was still "dead" but just chilling on the bench. Hidden zombie mode?
You're not seeing the issues because you're not playing the affected versions. Notice how all of the positive anecdotes are coming from PC players?
IGN went so far as to split their Cyberpunk 2077 review into two separate reviews: One for consoles, and one for PC. Quote from the console review:
> The Xbox One/PS4 version is nearly unrecognizable compared to the PC version.
The PC version scored 9/10 and the console version scored 4/10.
They also concluded that console gamers should request a refund from CDPR as soon as possible. I suspect console gamers are requesting refunds in droves due to the issues, which is surely going to impact their long-term sales projections.
IGN went so far as to split their Cyberpunk 2077 review into two separate reviews: One for consoles, and one for PC. Quote from the console review:
> The Xbox One/PS4 version is nearly unrecognizable compared to the PC version.
The PC version scored 9/10 and the console version scored 4/10.
They also concluded that console gamers should request a refund from CDPR as soon as possible. I suspect console gamers are requesting refunds in droves due to the issues, which is surely going to impact their long-term sales projections.
I'm playing on the PS4 slim and yes, there were some crashes and some graphics bugs, but so far the game's at least a solid 8 for me. I was actually worried while downloading and reading all the comments from the doomsayers on reddit, but I figured that they will eventually fix the bugs and I do like Deus Ex-style games so I don't really have much to lose by getting it now.
If one liked Deus Ex: Mankind divided they will like Cyberpunk 2077.
If one liked Deus Ex: Mankind divided they will like Cyberpunk 2077.
I’ve been playing on PS4, and while not particularly pretty (not that I expected it to be) it’s been surprisingly fine, especially after the 1.0.4 patch.
I admit I'm one of those PC players, but out of curiosity I looked at reviews of PS4 and (ignoring the purposefully over-exaggerated pictures/videos) frankly it doesn't seem as bad either. Well, the crashes are bad, but they surely will fix it. I don't know what these people expected on 7 year old consoles. My previous PC is exactly 7 year old (it was beefy back in 2013) but I wasn't even thinking to play the game on it. It is just barely meeting the minimum requirements.
> The PC version scored 9/10 and the console version scored 4/10.
CD Projekt games historically have been PC with console ports after launch. They probably would have done the same here if not being pushed to be a launch title for "next gen" consoles.
I think Sony/Microsoft are just as much to blame. They also had to QA the game and sign off on it.
CD Projekt games historically have been PC with console ports after launch. They probably would have done the same here if not being pushed to be a launch title for "next gen" consoles.
I think Sony/Microsoft are just as much to blame. They also had to QA the game and sign off on it.
As someone working in the game industry and had to deal with the MS and Sony, I’ve experienced myself how strict they can be when it comes to QA, especially in things related to stability and performance. For a less hyped-up project, a single crash during a walkthrough (or an FPS dipping too low) could result in the game not being able to get released on an affected platform until it was fixed.
But... It's not a lunch title for the new consoles. The only versions released were PC, PS4 and Xbox One.
>They also concluded that console gamers should request a refund from CDPR as soon as possible.
Refunds are actually up to the seller in question. They clarified how there's no refund arrangement with CDPR and Microsoft/Sony and that all refunds are subject to normal Microsoft/Sony refund policies. Unsurprisingly, a lot of people are failing to get their games refunded.
Refunds are actually up to the seller in question. They clarified how there's no refund arrangement with CDPR and Microsoft/Sony and that all refunds are subject to normal Microsoft/Sony refund policies. Unsurprisingly, a lot of people are failing to get their games refunded.
... shouldn’t consoles be an easier target to develop for, since they’re more consistent and stable?
They're not easier to target when your game is very unoptimised. Apparently even the PC version is very unoptimised and that you might be able to get better performance out of it by modding it.
It's not that it's entirely "unoptimized," it's that it's targeting high-end GPUs first and low-end setup a distant second. The game appears to make great use of advanced features and performs as expected on the highest settings with the latest cards by just turning down one or two problematic settings. The problem of course is that most of the players will not have that kind of setup and have been let down.
I agree that high end gaming PCs can be a bad target to aim for because they’re unrepresentative of most rigs, the advantage that consoles have is consistency. No game developer should be surprised by their games performance on consoles at any point in the development lifecycle, since this is a known factor from day 1.
It has been working well for me as well (on a PC). I love the story and the visual. However the combat system is simply broken. Police spawns out of nowhere when a crime is reported[1]. Really bad reticle drifting behavior[2]. Enemy sniper can 1-hit kill you even when they are far away enough for the game to not render them. Enemy spamming Overheat from behind a wall (even with all cameras disabled, which is game-breaking on Very Hard), and much, much more.
I wasn't even looking for them, but they managed to find me. I still enjoy the game a lot, but combat has been nothing but frustration.
[1]: https://www.polygon.com/2020/12/10/22167436/cyberpunk-2077-w...
[2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberpunkgame/comments/kbwpps/retic...
I wasn't even looking for them, but they managed to find me. I still enjoy the game a lot, but combat has been nothing but frustration.
[1]: https://www.polygon.com/2020/12/10/22167436/cyberpunk-2077-w...
[2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberpunkgame/comments/kbwpps/retic...
The overheat thing is absolutely the most annoying thing in the game for me. It's way to hard to tell where its coming from, and with everything else going on it's just too much. And there doesn't seem to be a cooldown so the moment the effect wears off you're hit again.
Theres a part where you're upstairs and you can hear the ai trying to attack you from the floor below. The game is fun but only barely and I think the novelty is going to wear off quite quickly.
Theres a part where you're upstairs and you can hear the ai trying to attack you from the floor below. The game is fun but only barely and I think the novelty is going to wear off quite quickly.
Took me a while to figure out the overheat thing. There's a character skill that highlights who's hacking you, which you should get.
Then once you know who's hacking you, you either need to shoot them, or disable the camera (by hacking or shoot) they're using to hack you with (they can use cameras to scan, just like you can).
Then once you know who's hacking you, you either need to shoot them, or disable the camera (by hacking or shoot) they're using to hack you with (they can use cameras to scan, just like you can).
I Spy only solve half the problem with Overheat. Enemy nethackers can Overheat you behind a cover, and moving out of line of sight doesn't stop Overheat from uploading.
Yeah that is annoying, but you can do the same back. My primary issue with overheat is not the mechanic itself, but the complete lack of education in game on how best to defend yourself.
The whole quickhack, netrunner aspect of the game is completely lacking in tutorials or explanation. Which is a real shame, because it looks like a really interesting mechanic.
The whole quickhack, netrunner aspect of the game is completely lacking in tutorials or explanation. Which is a real shame, because it looks like a really interesting mechanic.
The game gives you a quickhacking tutorial at the very beginning. The mission with four tutorials in total, two optional
Yeah, but for instance I don't remember any callout of the cyberdeck inventory section, which is critical if you're playing a combat hacker. It only occurred to me to look into it after I got past a point where the devs had previously advertised all the hacking opportunities and I realized my character might be underdeveloped there somehow.
Not that I'm complaining much. There've been tons of bugs and wonkiness for me, but I've been enjoying the heck out of the game anyway (wonkiness is par for the course in a AAA open-world game anyway). But it definitely has lots of room for polish. Given how above and beyond they went on TW3, I have no concerns it'll receive it eventually (hopefully -after- a well-deserved Christmas break).
Not that I'm complaining much. There've been tons of bugs and wonkiness for me, but I've been enjoying the heck out of the game anyway (wonkiness is par for the course in a AAA open-world game anyway). But it definitely has lots of room for polish. Given how above and beyond they went on TW3, I have no concerns it'll receive it eventually (hopefully -after- a well-deserved Christmas break).
[deleted]
Yeah I did the tutorial, but found it very basic.
Really looking for something that helps better explain how to fit quick hacking into broader combat. I have really progressed beyond pings and optical reboots, which makes me feel like I’m leaving at lot on the table, but the games hasn’t really expressed what that is.
Really looking for something that helps better explain how to fit quick hacking into broader combat. I have really progressed beyond pings and optical reboots, which makes me feel like I’m leaving at lot on the table, but the games hasn’t really expressed what that is.
You need to go to a ripperdoc and buy a cyberdeck upgrade. Then you'll go from only 2 program slots to something like six (depending on the upgrade you buy) as well as more RAM. Really opens up combat hacking options, and as far as I've seen this is never explained.
Exactly this. One of the rare (blue) hacks fries enemies for a good hit of damage. I've seen it one-hit a lot of trash-level mobs. You can tag em in slow-mo, run around a corner while the hack uploads, then pop back out and finish them off as they react to the pain.
There's a really good sonic blast one that functions like a flash bang. Super nifty.
I have that skill and have yet to see it highlight anyone. I have a feeling its just another bug where the ai can see you through walls.
That’s because the AI are quite effectively using cameras to get at you before you even see them.
The skill gives you a yellow damage indicator and highlights the hacker in yellow outline.
The skill gives you a yellow damage indicator and highlights the hacker in yellow outline.
The camera one is easy to fix and I found it to be a fair mechanic. However the bug here is even all camera is disabled (either via a daemon, turning them off individually, or shooting them down, or even in area with no cameras, e.g. Nash part in Ghost Town quest) they can Overheat you from behind a solid wall or even in a different room.
My guess is this is similar to enemy sniper sometimes can see you through walls. If they're close enough to a wall, then their line of sight is calculated as if they were in front of a wall.
My guess is this is similar to enemy sniper sometimes can see you through walls. If they're close enough to a wall, then their line of sight is calculated as if they were in front of a wall.
I mean, that's great for you, but people are bashing CDPR for a good reason: the last-gen console versions are unfinished buggy messes. In a few hours of playing I've had multiple crashes, constant bugs, drops to 15 FPS, just generally terrible performance. I've literally never played such a buggy game before. For a game that had 8 years of dev time the state of the game is pretty egregious
I actually think the bugs/performance issues are helping CDPR right now. Everybody is talking about them rather than how bad the game actually is.
The combat is simplistic. The AI opponents are basically broken. The quickhack system does indeed feel like a quickly hacked together game mechanic. V is stuck in a weird state between existing background (a la witcher) and player action defined: I didn't get the feeling of any player agency in what my character is, but neither did I get the warm feeling of learning/experiencing Geralt's(Witcher series MC) life. Life paths, also, are basically devoid of any meaningful relevancy to the storyline.
The combat is simplistic. The AI opponents are basically broken. The quickhack system does indeed feel like a quickly hacked together game mechanic. V is stuck in a weird state between existing background (a la witcher) and player action defined: I didn't get the feeling of any player agency in what my character is, but neither did I get the warm feeling of learning/experiencing Geralt's(Witcher series MC) life. Life paths, also, are basically devoid of any meaningful relevancy to the storyline.
These tweets have some interesting look at the world AIs: E.g. apparently traffic can't handle disturbances at all and it's "solved" by very aggressive despawning of things you don't look at. (To be clear, every open-world game will do some amount of that, but this is extreme and if the AI can't handle existing for longer they can't easily fix it)
https://twitter.com/JumpOvertheAge/status/133892916630199091...
https://twitter.com/JumpOvertheAge/status/133892916630199091...
I'm pretty happy with it (on a high-spec PC).
I've never seen a great interstitial "hacker" interface in a game. Unless you go full Shenzhen I/O, it has to be simplified into meaninglessness.
I wonder if some people just prefer dirt and elves and magic to steel and glass. I like Witcher 3 well enough, but it's not a world I want to spend endless time in. I see the charm, but I'm not that interested in that world.
Shadowrun is probably more engaging as cyberpunk source material, though.
I've never seen a great interstitial "hacker" interface in a game. Unless you go full Shenzhen I/O, it has to be simplified into meaninglessness.
I wonder if some people just prefer dirt and elves and magic to steel and glass. I like Witcher 3 well enough, but it's not a world I want to spend endless time in. I see the charm, but I'm not that interested in that world.
Shadowrun is probably more engaging as cyberpunk source material, though.
> I've never seen a great interstitial "hacker" interface in a game. Unless you go full Shenzhen I/O, it has to be simplified into meaninglessness.
While comical, the lore in the source material drives home that netrunners interact with 3D visualizations of the ‘net. There was a lot of fun gameplay possibilities here, but it was ultimately squandered for the poor breach mini game and quickhack system.
While comical, the lore in the source material drives home that netrunners interact with 3D visualizations of the ‘net. There was a lot of fun gameplay possibilities here, but it was ultimately squandered for the poor breach mini game and quickhack system.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution showed how a good hacking mini game can be done. Besides, hacking is only one instance in a long series of disappointments. Pretty much every single feature of this game is shallow and badly implemented.
Normally when the game starts with a character creator, I expect a lot more agency. Instead, V seems to have a well-established character, and the dialog options just serve as additional flavor to their established character.
Also, can we talk about how atrocious everything involving driving is? The AI, GPS/pathing, handling, etc is all well behind what GTA IV was doing over 10 years ago.
Also, can we talk about how atrocious everything involving driving is? The AI, GPS/pathing, handling, etc is all well behind what GTA IV was doing over 10 years ago.
I would argue the driving is in fact where GTA IV was 10 years ago - awful. The vehicles are completely unresponsive, taking forever to brake and suffer from massive understeer even at reasonable speeds.
Out of curiosity, how far into the game are you?
Combat and hacking definitely felt noodley and weak at first, but after a few levels, some slightly better weapons (3 hours in?) and a new OS implant combat is much improved.
Combat and hacking definitely felt noodley and weak at first, but after a few levels, some slightly better weapons (3 hours in?) and a new OS implant combat is much improved.
I've literally never played such a buggy game before
Pff. You kids. When I was your age, I once played a game so buggy that when my character walked back & forth to school he had to do in the snow & up hill both ways. Now get off my lawn.
Pff. You kids. When I was your age, I once played a game so buggy that when my character walked back & forth to school he had to do in the snow & up hill both ways. Now get off my lawn.
Not wrong about the bugs and crashes, I've been experiencing a lot of them on my Xbox. But despite that, the storytelling and game play is so compelling that I'm just ignoring the crash every 1.5 hours etc
I think that huge testament to quality of the story and game in general. Even if it's sorely missing a decent final polish, I'll be excited to play it second time in 6 months time once all the patches are out.
I think that huge testament to quality of the story and game in general. Even if it's sorely missing a decent final polish, I'll be excited to play it second time in 6 months time once all the patches are out.
The patches they’ve released so far have already started to make a difference. On a base PS4, the game at version 1.0.4 is already much improved.
If it runs well on PC and current gen consoles, then they should have delayed the release on previous gen consoles.
I'm going to guess that they released on all platforms at once because of contractual obligations.
I'm going to guess that they released on all platforms at once because of contractual obligations.
There technically isn't a release for current gen consoles. They're running the previous gen version of the game with backwards compatibility.
With the performance budget that it looks like they have remaining on Series X in quality mode, I'm curious to see how the "next gen" version will be much different.
So far on PC I’ve had a crash right after the character editor that caused the game to crash every time I open it. The next day a patch was pushed that fixed it. I could’ve even play on Day 1.
Dum Dum followed me around until I met Keanu’s character. He would move in front of people during cutscenes and I couldn’t even tell what was going on. Sometimes he would attack Jackie during combat and other times help us.
The first scene with the ripper doc was scrambled. Cutscenes played out of ordered or repeated.
Combat is like someone took Mass Effect 1 and combined it with a bunch of Bethesda bugs from Fallout and Skyrim.
Dum Dum followed me around until I met Keanu’s character. He would move in front of people during cutscenes and I couldn’t even tell what was going on. Sometimes he would attack Jackie during combat and other times help us.
The first scene with the ripper doc was scrambled. Cutscenes played out of ordered or repeated.
Combat is like someone took Mass Effect 1 and combined it with a bunch of Bethesda bugs from Fallout and Skyrim.
> Combat is like someone took Mass Effect 1 and combined it with a bunch of Bethesda bugs from Fallout and Skyrim.
Totally agree with you.
In terms of gunplay, there are ancient PS3/Xbox 360 era games that are so much better. Deus Ex HR, Far Cry 3, MGS IV, Bioshock, etc.
Edit:
This gameplay from almost 10 years ago is way better than Cyberpunk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3eszAJWHKY
Totally agree with you.
In terms of gunplay, there are ancient PS3/Xbox 360 era games that are so much better. Deus Ex HR, Far Cry 3, MGS IV, Bioshock, etc.
Edit:
This gameplay from almost 10 years ago is way better than Cyberpunk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3eszAJWHKY
And yet I'd rather play Cyberpunk than any of these games. The combat is good. It's not great or amazing, but it's good and is fun and satisfying. But gunplay isn't why I bought Cyberpunk, so this idea that because some PS3 games that I have zero interest in have "better" gameplay, Cyberpunk isn't worth playing seems insane to me.
> this idea that because some PS3 games that I have zero interest in have "better" gameplay, Cyberpunk isn't worth playing seems insane to me.
It's not really about Cyberpunk not worth playing, but rather that Cyberpunk severely underdelivered by raising the expectations of players who enjoyed these past games and were expecting something even better. I wasn't expecting something better than DeusEx or older Bioware games (knights of the old republic, dragon age: origins, mass effect, neverwinter nights), but I really wasn't expecting the mediocre story and the abundance of bugs.
It's not really about Cyberpunk not worth playing, but rather that Cyberpunk severely underdelivered by raising the expectations of players who enjoyed these past games and were expecting something even better. I wasn't expecting something better than DeusEx or older Bioware games (knights of the old republic, dragon age: origins, mass effect, neverwinter nights), but I really wasn't expecting the mediocre story and the abundance of bugs.
I didn't say it's not worth playing. The story bits are absolutely fantastic.
> Combat is like someone took Mass Effect 1 and combined it with a bunch of Bethesda bugs from Fallout and Skyrim.
And removed any semblance of a working cover system.
And removed any semblance of a working cover system.
Haha, I had the same Dum Dum glitch as you.
I got it on Stadia and it’s blowing my mind. I can play it on my
Tv or projector thru chromecast ultras, or on my pc seamlessly and it looks great. I got to try it on the iPad Pro next. I love it. This is the breakout game for cloud computing.
Thanks I was wondering about what hardware stadia is running the game on and if they would have the same console issues. Im planning to buy stadia for this game.
AMD Vega 56ish GPUs and Intel CPUs, the game runs on medium settings on Stadia at 1080p.
30 fps target?
60 fps. There's also a 4K 30 fps option but my screen doesn't support that so not sure how good it is
I’ve listened to 3 hours of CP2077 performance reviews (it helps me work, I swear). A medium quality 1080p60 target on Vega 56 doesn’t ring true to me. It must be missing the frame rate target 100% of the time.
Yet 60fps 1080p medium is possible even on the RX480. It's not like the game requires a lot of performance, it's more that performance is inconsistent and while some players might get great performance, others with the same hardware won't
That's what they claim it is, I'm not very attuned to that stuff so can't really say. They automatically refund before some time threshold if you want to try
Gamers Nexus has made interesting pieces on Stadia performance in the past. I don’t think they have public plans to do more work with it. Subjective experience is the most important metric.
I stand corrected: 1080p60 medium is reasonable.
https://youtu.be/fIjkYrRKy7w
https://youtu.be/fIjkYrRKy7w
How do you find the latency?
Imperceptible with a controller on TV (as compared to an Xbox One on the same TV, which has a decent amount of input lag already).
On Chrome on PC with a low-latency gaming monitor, you can notice the difference if you play a game natively and then stream it, but honestly you stop thinking about it pretty quickly as long as your ping is under ~25 ms or so. I'm loving Cyberpunk on Stadia and I've been playing shooters on PC since MoH:AA in 2002.
Edit: I have Comcast Cable, not fiber.
On Chrome on PC with a low-latency gaming monitor, you can notice the difference if you play a game natively and then stream it, but honestly you stop thinking about it pretty quickly as long as your ping is under ~25 ms or so. I'm loving Cyberpunk on Stadia and I've been playing shooters on PC since MoH:AA in 2002.
Edit: I have Comcast Cable, not fiber.
To contradict sibling, I don't notice any latency on 75 mbps plan (might be a lack of sensitivity to that as someone who hasn't gamed in years)
This is a question that has two answers
1. Not good
2. I have fiber
Obviously generalization and I don’t care if someone has 2008 DSL and it “runs awesome”.
1. Not good
2. I have fiber
Obviously generalization and I don’t care if someone has 2008 DSL and it “runs awesome”.
2. I have fiber and I'm close to a Stadia datacenter.*
I assume they don't release in markets that aren't physically close to the hardware though - it's not available at all here in New Zealand for example.
I assume they don't release in markets that aren't physically close to the hardware though - it's not available at all here in New Zealand for example.
Fiber wouldn't do much would it? Does it reduce actual travel time for the signal?
Depends a lot what you compare fiber to.
mobile broadband can easily have 20-30 ms latency to the ISP.
DSL is often 10-20 ms. Coax is in the same range, depending ont he provider.
Fiber is usually 1-3 ms.
mobile broadband can easily have 20-30 ms latency to the ISP.
DSL is often 10-20 ms. Coax is in the same range, depending ont he provider.
Fiber is usually 1-3 ms.
You do not seem to live in a rural area.
I don't understand why rural is relevant to the latency I posted?
Very anecdotal but I just switched from cable to fibre and latency significantly reduced, form like 20-30ms to 5ms.
General-purpose computing is slipping from our grasp quickly enough as-is. Why would you accelerate this trend by buying on streaming services?
Presumably because it's a lot cheaper and more convenient.
I'm playing on a Ryzen 3800x, a GTX 2060 Super with 32GB of 3600 MHz Ram. I think the game looks bad (with playable settings) and hasn't been compelling enough for me to sink that much time into it, while the missions are pretty grindy.
I'd say play GTA V and the Witcher 3 for a comparison in immersive open world story telling and high caliber graphics. I haven't played Spiderman (2018, 2020) but in gameplay footage (which is only on console) it looks much better as well.
I feel like I'm crazy when I say that the graphics are incredibly underwhelming. It looks good, and there's neat stuff. But I don't care how pretty a shadow looks when the hundreds of NPCs walking around look so rough.
I'd say play GTA V and the Witcher 3 for a comparison in immersive open world story telling and high caliber graphics. I haven't played Spiderman (2018, 2020) but in gameplay footage (which is only on console) it looks much better as well.
I feel like I'm crazy when I say that the graphics are incredibly underwhelming. It looks good, and there's neat stuff. But I don't care how pretty a shadow looks when the hundreds of NPCs walking around look so rough.
Just get a copy of Ghost of Tsushima and enjoy a top rate open world gaming experience.
This ^^^^ absolutely stunning on a PS4 Pro.
thanks for the suggestion!
Playing on a RTX 2070, I have to decide between having a very low framerate, a blurry picture, but good graphics thanks to raytracing, or low framerate and very normal but disapointing graphics.
It seems the blurriness can be removed by disabling film grain and another setting, also framerate improves drastically if you reduce "cascading shadows." I'm curious if you've done that or if you haven't and it improves things. I haven't bought the game yet, expecting bugs.
I tried the various recommended settings and editing of text CSV files. I'm considering sacrificing a virgin goat or waiting 5 years before playing the game again. I will try disabling the grain filter.
Have you got DLSS enabled, my friend has the same card and is getting 65+ FPS on reasonably high settings at 1440p
I think it may really depend on what settings you have going. The developer really needs to optimize this game for older hardware, but I'd think there's a set of settings that'll get it to look good on your actually very recent machine. Could be wrong of course, but have you seen how good it can look at the top end? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZp8fXLXgqg (Digital foundry's visual tech tour of the game)
I disagree on the gameplay/grindy part, but yeah the game isn't pretty. I've heard it justified as deliberate: It's a futuristic dystopian city overrun by constant advertising, corporatism, and crime. That doesn't make for a pretty environment. Of course if that was a deliberate artistic decision then maybe they should have gone a different way.
My experience on a mid range PC has been good in terms of performance and bugs.
The game has some truly amazing aspects such as writing, characters, music, etc, but IMO it falls flat in terms of gameplay. Gunplay, stealth, hacking, open world mechanics, driving... it's all very mediocre even poor at times.
The game has some truly amazing aspects such as writing, characters, music, etc, but IMO it falls flat in terms of gameplay. Gunplay, stealth, hacking, open world mechanics, driving... it's all very mediocre even poor at times.
I felt the same but after spending more time, things are starting to click.
Stealth for example is not nearly as good as Deus Ex: Mankind Divided or The Metal Gear Solid series. The tutorial seemed alright but when it came to real gameplay I felt like stealth just didn’t work and I just resorted to guns blazing. But after more effort and getting a better hang of quick hacking I have found stealth to be viable actually. You really do need to make heavy use of quick hacking though. Also that game is very visually busy which makes it easy to miss a camera.
Driving feels pretty good, but not as good as GTA. So far driving really seems to be a way to get from point A to point B and not a core gameplay mechanic like it is with GTA. The NPC driving AI and Cop AI is downright bad compared to GTA but besides being a little immersion breaking it doesn’t seem to affect the actual gameplay much. GTA is very focused around driving and avoiding police, most of the missions involve it in some way. Cyberpunk doesn’t really rely on driving so I can give it a pass on those faults.
Gunplay really bothered me at first. It felt chaotic and a bit clunky. Other FPS/RPG hybrid games have suffered the same issues. Shooting powerful or higher level enemies will just feel bullet spongy. Some of that just needs to be accepted as “this is an RPG, not a shooter”. The cover system isn’t very sophisticated or obvious either. However the more I play the more I get the hang of it and I have found the gunplay to actually be quite satisfying.
Stealth for example is not nearly as good as Deus Ex: Mankind Divided or The Metal Gear Solid series. The tutorial seemed alright but when it came to real gameplay I felt like stealth just didn’t work and I just resorted to guns blazing. But after more effort and getting a better hang of quick hacking I have found stealth to be viable actually. You really do need to make heavy use of quick hacking though. Also that game is very visually busy which makes it easy to miss a camera.
Driving feels pretty good, but not as good as GTA. So far driving really seems to be a way to get from point A to point B and not a core gameplay mechanic like it is with GTA. The NPC driving AI and Cop AI is downright bad compared to GTA but besides being a little immersion breaking it doesn’t seem to affect the actual gameplay much. GTA is very focused around driving and avoiding police, most of the missions involve it in some way. Cyberpunk doesn’t really rely on driving so I can give it a pass on those faults.
Gunplay really bothered me at first. It felt chaotic and a bit clunky. Other FPS/RPG hybrid games have suffered the same issues. Shooting powerful or higher level enemies will just feel bullet spongy. Some of that just needs to be accepted as “this is an RPG, not a shooter”. The cover system isn’t very sophisticated or obvious either. However the more I play the more I get the hang of it and I have found the gunplay to actually be quite satisfying.
There is no NPC driving AI. They just follow a pre-defined scripted path and teleport if they can't keep up in missions.
This is the first game in which I rather drive a first person view motorcycle than a third person view car. I don't know why they spent so much time recording real motor sounds if your vehicle is unmanageable at mid speed.
If you don't game much you made be blind to the fact that the gameplay is a poor, and the AI is about 15 years behind the cutting edge (GTA SA was more advanced)
I personally haven't seen a single FPS beating the AI of FEAR back in the day. I honestly don't expect anything anymore. It's been so long. Cyberpunk 2077 is a bit worse than other FPS of our time. But all are worse than FEAR anyway.
This comment doesn't include things like traffic AI. Only combat.
This comment doesn't include things like traffic AI. Only combat.
FEAR AI is excellent:
https://alumni.media.mit.edu/~jorkin/goap.html
The original Halo is similar. Play it on a higher difficulty level and the behaviours of the different enemy types are super immersive and challenging. It's available on PC as well. I haven't played the other titles in the series so I don't know if they kept the great AI.
While I love FEAR AI it was very much specialized for interiors. It wouldn't work in open world.
Old school good open world AIs think of Far Cry and STALKER. Especially the STALKER AI is pretty much one of the main reasons I keep replaying that game, all the unexpected stuff happening.
Old school good open world AIs think of Far Cry and STALKER. Especially the STALKER AI is pretty much one of the main reasons I keep replaying that game, all the unexpected stuff happening.
FEAR for FPS AI, and IMHO, Ultima VII for open-world NPC AI.
I don't know if that's entirely fair (or maybe I haven't played long enough to realize how bad it is). the combat model is pretty different from GTA; it's more of a shooter/rpg hybrid (similar to mass effect 1) than a straight-up shooter. it's not perfect; but I'm five hours in and already consider it the best AAA title I've played recently.
the most annoying thing I've encountered so far is the way doors work. there are a lot of points where the door is supposed to automatically open. I feel like it always opens about 100 ms after I expect it to, making me wonder if I'm supposed to open it myself. maybe this is "working as designed", I dunno.
the most annoying thing I've encountered so far is the way doors work. there are a lot of points where the door is supposed to automatically open. I feel like it always opens about 100 ms after I expect it to, making me wonder if I'm supposed to open it myself. maybe this is "working as designed", I dunno.
The AI is super dumb and buggy, it can't deal with sniper rifles and smart guns.
I'm playing on hard and other than the lucky shot when I'm doing content 10+ levels above mine (based on the level of the drops since you can't see NPC levels easily) I feel pretty invincible.
The cyberware launchers are also dumb as fuck no cooldown and infinite ammo you can just sit there and spam rockets all day and as long as you take the perk that makes you immune to your own grenade damage you can use them in CQC also.
The game looks great, the story is pretty good and CDPR really nails voice acting and direction but the actual game mechanics are retarded as fuck, everything seems unbalanced there is no real difficulty because you can heal as much as you like (you won't run out of meds) and hide behind cover without anyone rushing you and with smart guns that unlock way too early you can basically shoot at enemies without looking at them, aiming at them and when they are behind cover (that is if you get bored with 1 shoting enemies with the big bore sniper rilfes since they get 3-5 headshot damage multiplier which is enough to kill enemy of pretty much any level in this game with early level guns).
They really need to look at how Mass Effect solved combat...
A few hours in and I'm already invincible and I also found basically an infinite money trick, craft the blue incendiary grenades that cost 1 uncommon crafting item and 1 uncommon upgrade item and they disassemble into rare crafting items and money is no longer a problem either.
Oh and the driving which is supposed to be a big part of the game is so terrible I rather walk and use fast travel because the car handling makes driving painful it takes you like half a mile to stop and the cars start to drift if you as much as look sideways.
I don't know how much time it would take them to fix it but there is no way that these issues haven't been brought up in testing all previous CDPR games had balance issues but because all combat was essentially melee or within melee range you couldn't cheese that easily (well unless you went into a quen spec in the TW3 early patches, then you had an invincibility bubble that would damage enemies and heal you...).
This game is like 3-6 months away from release on all platforms, it's not just performance and technical issues the core game elements aren't anywhere near ready.
I'm playing on hard and other than the lucky shot when I'm doing content 10+ levels above mine (based on the level of the drops since you can't see NPC levels easily) I feel pretty invincible.
The cyberware launchers are also dumb as fuck no cooldown and infinite ammo you can just sit there and spam rockets all day and as long as you take the perk that makes you immune to your own grenade damage you can use them in CQC also.
The game looks great, the story is pretty good and CDPR really nails voice acting and direction but the actual game mechanics are retarded as fuck, everything seems unbalanced there is no real difficulty because you can heal as much as you like (you won't run out of meds) and hide behind cover without anyone rushing you and with smart guns that unlock way too early you can basically shoot at enemies without looking at them, aiming at them and when they are behind cover (that is if you get bored with 1 shoting enemies with the big bore sniper rilfes since they get 3-5 headshot damage multiplier which is enough to kill enemy of pretty much any level in this game with early level guns).
They really need to look at how Mass Effect solved combat...
A few hours in and I'm already invincible and I also found basically an infinite money trick, craft the blue incendiary grenades that cost 1 uncommon crafting item and 1 uncommon upgrade item and they disassemble into rare crafting items and money is no longer a problem either.
Oh and the driving which is supposed to be a big part of the game is so terrible I rather walk and use fast travel because the car handling makes driving painful it takes you like half a mile to stop and the cars start to drift if you as much as look sideways.
I don't know how much time it would take them to fix it but there is no way that these issues haven't been brought up in testing all previous CDPR games had balance issues but because all combat was essentially melee or within melee range you couldn't cheese that easily (well unless you went into a quen spec in the TW3 early patches, then you had an invincibility bubble that would damage enemies and heal you...).
This game is like 3-6 months away from release on all platforms, it's not just performance and technical issues the core game elements aren't anywhere near ready.
"Cutting edge" isn't a very good role model these days tbh. Also I don't remember SA having an AI. It looked like "if (enemy visible) { shoot; } else { run towards enemy; }". Everything else was scripted.
IIRC, if you walked in front of a car in GTA:SA it would eventually go around you. In CP77 the cars on just on rails, kinda like Autopia at Disneyland. They can accelerate and decelerate on their preordained paths but that's it.
The PC version has an 89 on Metacritic after 62 reviews and those reviewers play a lot of games, I'm guessing.
Well, the subreddit is literally full of people either complaining or coping. These are people who have actually sunk cost into the game.
I'm generally in the same place as you but I gotta say combat is pretty shit. The AI is bonehead stupid, I've killed a guy (not using a silencer) that was standing three feet from another guy and his partner didn't alert. Meanwhile 5 guys from outside the building did, rushed in the building then stopped dead and didn't ever shoot.
I found the following bugs which are very likely not related to the platform:
1. Friendly NPC left behind in mission area which was scripted to become inaccessible. Couldn't reach the NPC to finish the mission. 2. Killed an NPC two times: once in a side mission and once in a main mission 3. The player goes to sleep perpendicular to the bed and with the bottom half side of the body outside the bed. 4. Friendly NPCs start to shout randomly during stealth missions. 5. There's no driving AI, all machines follow predefined paths sometimes going through one another as if there's no collision.
And probably lots more I didn't remember. And these exclude the physics and rendering bugs and I encounter every 5 minutes.
1. Friendly NPC left behind in mission area which was scripted to become inaccessible. Couldn't reach the NPC to finish the mission. 2. Killed an NPC two times: once in a side mission and once in a main mission 3. The player goes to sleep perpendicular to the bed and with the bottom half side of the body outside the bed. 4. Friendly NPCs start to shout randomly during stealth missions. 5. There's no driving AI, all machines follow predefined paths sometimes going through one another as if there's no collision.
And probably lots more I didn't remember. And these exclude the physics and rendering bugs and I encounter every 5 minutes.
Side question: how do you find the quality of GeForce Now? What games have you tried?
I've had Geforce Now for over a year now and have completed The Witcher 3, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, and Death Stranding on it. I use an Nvidia Shield to play it on my TV. I've never had any problems with the streaming quality or latency. I could see that depending on location though, I'm playing in West Coast Canada. Some of the games I've been disappointed with the performance, Assassin's Creed Odyssey for instance couldn't hit 60 fps even after lowering the graphic settings. Cyberpunk 2077 has been amazing though, high fps and maxed settings, including ray tracing.
A few other things of note. 1080p is the max resolution. Unlimited Internet is probably a requirement as its about 10gb per hour. After 6 hours the session ends and you need to save and relaunch the game. Your entire Steam library is not available, its up to publishers to allow their games on it.
A few other things of note. 1080p is the max resolution. Unlimited Internet is probably a requirement as its about 10gb per hour. After 6 hours the session ends and you need to save and relaunch the game. Your entire Steam library is not available, its up to publishers to allow their games on it.
Really appreciate the answer thanks
FWIW, I signed up for both GeForce Now and Stadia, and find Stadia to be both easier to use and better-looking. For comparison, I ran Cyberpunk side-by-side and killed the GeForce Now version after a few minutes.
You bought the game on both stadia and steam/gog/epic?
Yes, for science. It was ~$100 to check if I can avoid spending $2k+ on a PC rig because I can do my casual gaming on a MacBook Air. Turns out I can, so it was money well spent.
If you're only testing compatibility/performance, and so don't play for long, you can request a refund from Steam.
Thanks for the info!
>chip in
;)
I've also had zero crashes but I do notice quite a few minor bugs. They're a little annoying but I've still sunk 30 hours in. I also can't remember the last open world game that didn't have similar bugs.
;)
I've also had zero crashes but I do notice quite a few minor bugs. They're a little annoying but I've still sunk 30 hours in. I also can't remember the last open world game that didn't have similar bugs.
you're really going with "it works on my machine" as justification for why it's good enough ... on a programming forum?
Take away the bugs and cosmetic performance problems; the game is just lousy. Every mechanic it implements is lousy and half-baked. From the driving, to the shooting, to the looting, to the AI, it's just mediocre.
Try this tonight: make sure you're absolutely alone and shoot someone. A cop will spawn behind you. No AI, no chase, no nothing, just bloop here's a cop.
The game has destroyed the reputation of this company overnight.
Try this tonight: make sure you're absolutely alone and shoot someone. A cop will spawn behind you. No AI, no chase, no nothing, just bloop here's a cop.
The game has destroyed the reputation of this company overnight.
I mean I'm pretty sure the cop spawning itself is a placeholder mechanism they just never got around to. If you think about, the crime-notification probably calls a "spawn law enforcement" handler which basically just runs the spawn economy and drops them in, with a comment along the lines of "TODO: waiting on NPC driving mechanics" (which are also missing).
> I mean I'm pretty sure the cop spawning itself is a placeholder mechanism they just never got around to
Is this meant as an excuse? Because it's not. Either they left it out because they ran out of time, or they didn't bother implementing it from the beginning, but the result is the same: they released a game without core mechanics fully implemented and the critiques are justified.
Is this meant as an excuse? Because it's not. Either they left it out because they ran out of time, or they didn't bother implementing it from the beginning, but the result is the same: they released a game without core mechanics fully implemented and the critiques are justified.
I think there's a difference between the game being half-baked (it is) and just genuine failure on the part of the developer. Basically I'm pretty sure the cop mechanic wasn't intended to be the way it is.
That doesn't really make it good, but I don't think it represents the feature design.
That doesn't really make it good, but I don't think it represents the feature design.
The whole game is a placeholder. What did they even do in all those years? By now you'd think that in a _released_ game that people paid $60 for, they would have "gotten around" to replacing those placeholders. If I buy a dish washer I expect it to wash dishes and not just that squirt them with a water gun because "washing is a placeholder that they never got around to implementing".
I did some volunteering on an open source game.
Game goes through various phases of:
Game goes through various phases of:
A) This system is suboptimal but works
B) Let's rewrite suboptimal system
C) Oh god, we forgot our rewrite to propagate, so it's combination of A and B
D) This system doesn't do anything let's delete it
E) nVidia and rayTracing
F) unreleased consoles
G) consoles that are old enough to write
H) OpenGL, DirectX, Vulkan, Mantle, etc.
I) Marketing trying to hype gamers by promising Pie in the Sky
J) Multiple platformsCombat absolutely sucks, and it's the one thing I loathe about the game. You have to empty two magazine clips in any given opponent to take him down. I've never seen a game with such weak weaponry. It feels unrealistic.
Seems similar to borderlands
Borderlands has sequel rot in my opinion. The first one had a relatively linear weapon plot, as you gained levels, you'd find a replacement weapon (one of four) about every level or two. borderlands 2 was a "better game" except for the weapons and overall upgrade path. Borderlands 3 i couldn't get through without cheating due to extremely low drop chances of anything good, and i had already passed the refund time limit - family emergency caused me to leave the house with the game running, out $60.
Having "literally millions of weapons" looks good on paper, but it makes for non-engaging gameplay if done incorrectly, which it was in the numbered sequels, in my opinion.
overall, borderlands 2 and 3 felt like a chore to play, "get one hour of grinding in", regardless of how pretty it was or interesting the other mechanics were.
And you know what the main difference was between 1 and 2 & 3? Paid loot boxes / real money transactions.
Having "literally millions of weapons" looks good on paper, but it makes for non-engaging gameplay if done incorrectly, which it was in the numbered sequels, in my opinion.
overall, borderlands 2 and 3 felt like a chore to play, "get one hour of grinding in", regardless of how pretty it was or interesting the other mechanics were.
And you know what the main difference was between 1 and 2 & 3? Paid loot boxes / real money transactions.
It's an RPG, not a tactical sim shooter. What's with this criticism?
Combat is a big part of the game, so I would expect it to be decent.
Mass effect was also a RPG, but had much much better combat.
Combat in the witcher 3 was pretty good.
Mass effect was also a RPG, but had much much better combat.
Combat in the witcher 3 was pretty good.
Being an RPG doesn't nullify this criticism if combat is a primary game mechanic. Deus Ex is an action RPG, and they did combat (both stealth and gunplay) much better than Cyberpunk.
>Being an RPG doesn't nullify this criticism if combat is a primary game mechanic.
It does, because a common running theme in RPGs is that you get stronger as the game progresses, and in Cyberpunk, by the middle of the game every character build (melee, stealth, guns) easily dismantles enemies. It is only early-game where the enemies seem difficult because your character hasn't had their skill-trees built up yet.
It does, because a common running theme in RPGs is that you get stronger as the game progresses, and in Cyberpunk, by the middle of the game every character build (melee, stealth, guns) easily dismantles enemies. It is only early-game where the enemies seem difficult because your character hasn't had their skill-trees built up yet.
I didn't say I found the combat to be difficult; I said it wasn't very good. I understand how RPG progression works, and my criticism was about the mechanics of the combat (stealth, gunplay, hacking, etc).
The simplistic AI behavior makes stealth unengaging, the hacking feels really disappointing (why don't cameras or turrets get harder to hack?), the cover system is worse than Mass Effect, and gunplay is middling at best—better than Fallout: NV, but worse than Fallout 4 or Destiny.
Notice how I only compared it with other action/shooter RPGs? Clearly RPG progression isn't my issue with it.
The simplistic AI behavior makes stealth unengaging, the hacking feels really disappointing (why don't cameras or turrets get harder to hack?), the cover system is worse than Mass Effect, and gunplay is middling at best—better than Fallout: NV, but worse than Fallout 4 or Destiny.
Notice how I only compared it with other action/shooter RPGs? Clearly RPG progression isn't my issue with it.
Yeah, I've found the combat really lackluster in the beginning, but after developing my handgun + blades build, getting the mantis blades and double jump implants, it got really really fun. I think the game doesn't do a good job explaining its combat mechanics fully, especially the hacking.
Having played cyberpunk on PC it's mostly a fancy light show and not a lot of substance. You can't even customize anything past the creation screen, no car paint jobs no hair cuts and no body modification, no transmog system..
They tried to hide the console issues while reaffirming time and time again that current-gen console will be a first class citizen, that's an EA tactic not something that CDPR I thought I knew would do...
Moreover CDPR was given a $7 million grant to develop the artificial intelligence. This game has one of the worst open-world AI I have ever seen.
Cops spawn on you, the drivers and pedestrians AI is almost non existing. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas from 2004 is miles ahead of this game.
They even announced that they are "very sorry" and that people can get a refund only that Sony won't refund if you played or even downloaded the game not to mention this game is very badly optimized on AMD systems the current gaming king.
They tried to hide the console issues while reaffirming time and time again that current-gen console will be a first class citizen, that's an EA tactic not something that CDPR I thought I knew would do...
Moreover CDPR was given a $7 million grant to develop the artificial intelligence. This game has one of the worst open-world AI I have ever seen.
Cops spawn on you, the drivers and pedestrians AI is almost non existing. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas from 2004 is miles ahead of this game.
They even announced that they are "very sorry" and that people can get a refund only that Sony won't refund if you played or even downloaded the game not to mention this game is very badly optimized on AMD systems the current gaming king.
So fortunately I've never played any open-world game except for Skyrim, which just didn't really hold my interest... or maybe it was the fact I lost my save game due to a faulty SSD, I dunno.
At any rate, I love this game. I love the story. I love Night City. I love the graphics. I won't lie and say I'm a huge Cyberpunk pen & paper fan; I'm not. I knew more about Shadowrun than Cyberpunk, and that was from the old SNES game and Shadowrun Returns. However, I've talked with hardcore Cyberpunk pen & paper players, and they say its un-fucking-believable how well CDPR has brought to life the Cyberpunk universe in this game.
Yes, there are bugs. I have every confidence though that CDPR will iron all this shit out like they did with The Witcher III. This will be a great game by mid-to-late 2021, in every sense of the word.
I genuinely hope in Cyberpunk 2077 II that they'll be able to flesh out the game world, because I really love this game and this world.
At any rate, I love this game. I love the story. I love Night City. I love the graphics. I won't lie and say I'm a huge Cyberpunk pen & paper fan; I'm not. I knew more about Shadowrun than Cyberpunk, and that was from the old SNES game and Shadowrun Returns. However, I've talked with hardcore Cyberpunk pen & paper players, and they say its un-fucking-believable how well CDPR has brought to life the Cyberpunk universe in this game.
Yes, there are bugs. I have every confidence though that CDPR will iron all this shit out like they did with The Witcher III. This will be a great game by mid-to-late 2021, in every sense of the word.
I genuinely hope in Cyberpunk 2077 II that they'll be able to flesh out the game world, because I really love this game and this world.
I played the pen and paper way back in the day, and I agree. They have absolutely nailed the aesthetic: a dusting of kitsch and campiness that isn’t over the top. I’m also enjoying the story and game mechanics. It’s my first open world AAA title, so I don’t have much to compare it with, but I’m having fun!
Sure, maybe it will be a great game in six months.
But you don't buy a new car and say "in six months this is going to be a great car" - you have expectations when you put the money down...
But you don't buy a new car and say "in six months this is going to be a great car" - you have expectations when you put the money down...
> But you don't buy a new car and say "in six months this is going to be a great car"
Tesla disagrees. Full Self Driving is coming in 2015 ergh 2016 ergh 2017 ergh 2018 ergh 2019 ergh.. end of 2020...
Now the Tesla fanboys are saying that it will come in 2021.
Just look at the world we live in: it contains 6 billion people. If a small fraction of it is into buying a car or a game that will only work as advertised a decade after they buy it, you might still be able to sell the millions of cars, games, etc.
If you check out the news, the amount of people that's delusional is not a "small fraction", but actually closer to ~50% of the population.
Tesla disagrees. Full Self Driving is coming in 2015 ergh 2016 ergh 2017 ergh 2018 ergh 2019 ergh.. end of 2020...
Now the Tesla fanboys are saying that it will come in 2021.
Just look at the world we live in: it contains 6 billion people. If a small fraction of it is into buying a car or a game that will only work as advertised a decade after they buy it, you might still be able to sell the millions of cars, games, etc.
If you check out the news, the amount of people that's delusional is not a "small fraction", but actually closer to ~50% of the population.
> But you don't buy a new car and say "in six months this is going to be a great car"
Sure you do, because we're moving to a new type of reality whereby software is a determinant of features. A lot of people haven't gotten the memo on this yet though.
All Tesla vehicles ship with everything necessary for Autopilot, all the hardware and sensors. If you want to turn it on, you just unlock it with software. Tesla vehicles also get feature updates regularly.
Computer hardware has been this way for awhile. NVIDIA specifically has a history of improving the performance of their GPUs simply with new driver updates, in some cases with ridiculous performance gains on the order of 7-10%. Just from software optimization.
A video game is purely software, so the optimization limits are truly limited only by the hardware upon which it is run and stored.
Sure you do, because we're moving to a new type of reality whereby software is a determinant of features. A lot of people haven't gotten the memo on this yet though.
All Tesla vehicles ship with everything necessary for Autopilot, all the hardware and sensors. If you want to turn it on, you just unlock it with software. Tesla vehicles also get feature updates regularly.
Computer hardware has been this way for awhile. NVIDIA specifically has a history of improving the performance of their GPUs simply with new driver updates, in some cases with ridiculous performance gains on the order of 7-10%. Just from software optimization.
A video game is purely software, so the optimization limits are truly limited only by the hardware upon which it is run and stored.
Playing it on PC and I'm really enjoying it.
There seem to be two factions: Anyone who expected a GTA like open world game has to be severely disappointed. But if you're there for the story and Cyberpunk look & feel, you'll have a good time.
Of course, this excludes the console issues. Console players got shafted. CD Project might be able to fix that to some degree, but the reputational damage is done.
There seem to be two factions: Anyone who expected a GTA like open world game has to be severely disappointed. But if you're there for the story and Cyberpunk look & feel, you'll have a good time.
Of course, this excludes the console issues. Console players got shafted. CD Project might be able to fix that to some degree, but the reputational damage is done.
PC here, agree it's fun and I think some people are definitely expecting GTA from a developer that has absolutely no experience making something like GTA.
GTA is GTA because Rockstar perfected the formula and the engine over several iterations of the game. I'm sure every GTA is a mountain of work to create, but its a considerably smaller mountain than starting from scratch.
But putting GTA aside, I don't think CDPR ever promised to create a Cyberpunk-GTA clone.
There's a lot of small bugs. It doesn't run particularly well, but I'll say it again - the core game is fun and story well written. I'm taking a break, but I look forward to revisiting after the first few big patches.
Edit: One thing that's always worked for me is to amortize the cost of purchase by time played. If I get only six hours of Cyberpunk 2077 played at $60. That's 10/hr for entertainment... which is better than a lot of stuff.
I'll probably sink 50 or 60 hours into the game completing the main story. That's $1/hr of entertainment... ridiculously good value.
Gamers are so cranky.
GTA is GTA because Rockstar perfected the formula and the engine over several iterations of the game. I'm sure every GTA is a mountain of work to create, but its a considerably smaller mountain than starting from scratch.
But putting GTA aside, I don't think CDPR ever promised to create a Cyberpunk-GTA clone.
There's a lot of small bugs. It doesn't run particularly well, but I'll say it again - the core game is fun and story well written. I'm taking a break, but I look forward to revisiting after the first few big patches.
Edit: One thing that's always worked for me is to amortize the cost of purchase by time played. If I get only six hours of Cyberpunk 2077 played at $60. That's 10/hr for entertainment... which is better than a lot of stuff.
I'll probably sink 50 or 60 hours into the game completing the main story. That's $1/hr of entertainment... ridiculously good value.
Gamers are so cranky.
>some people are definitely expecting GTA ... I don't think CDPR ever promised to create a Cyberpunk-GTA clone
I don't think this is fair at all. From the earliest days of their marketing, CDPR was promising that Cyberpunk2077 would have "unprecedented" levels of customization, open world interaction, and next-level AIs. It may have been foolish for people to believe that would come true, but CDPR definitely did promise this, and I think it's perfectly understandable that many people feel that they were straight up lied to.
It's a classic case where CDPR just overhyped itself too much. If you ignore the ridiculous amount of bugs, it is a decent game, but it definitely is not at all the "unprecedented" game that CDPR hyped it up to be.
I don't think this is fair at all. From the earliest days of their marketing, CDPR was promising that Cyberpunk2077 would have "unprecedented" levels of customization, open world interaction, and next-level AIs. It may have been foolish for people to believe that would come true, but CDPR definitely did promise this, and I think it's perfectly understandable that many people feel that they were straight up lied to.
It's a classic case where CDPR just overhyped itself too much. If you ignore the ridiculous amount of bugs, it is a decent game, but it definitely is not at all the "unprecedented" game that CDPR hyped it up to be.
> If you ignore the ridiculous amount of bugs
It has some open world jank, which is inconvenient but pretty much part of the genre even for experienced behemoths like Rockstar, but so far I haven't seen any wide-spread reports of actually game-breaking stuff.
When talking about "ridiculous amounts of bugs", in an open-world game, much worse offenders come to mind that have been doing so for literally decades and are somehow still held in somewhat high regard regardless of that, like a Bethesda.
It has some open world jank, which is inconvenient but pretty much part of the genre even for experienced behemoths like Rockstar, but so far I haven't seen any wide-spread reports of actually game-breaking stuff.
When talking about "ridiculous amounts of bugs", in an open-world game, much worse offenders come to mind that have been doing so for literally decades and are somehow still held in somewhat high regard regardless of that, like a Bethesda.
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>One thing that's always worked for me is to amortize the cost of purchase by time played. If I get only six hours of Cyberpunk 2077 played at $60. That's 10/hr for entertainment... which is better than a lot of stuff.
I'll probably sink 50 or 60 hours into the game completing the main story. That's $1/hr of entertainment... ridiculously good value.
The amount of time we have is finite, attaching a dollars per hour figure to it is a hilariously bad metric to judge how much value entertainment has. People don't play X's and O's all day because it's great value.
I'll probably sink 50 or 60 hours into the game completing the main story. That's $1/hr of entertainment... ridiculously good value.
The amount of time we have is finite, attaching a dollars per hour figure to it is a hilariously bad metric to judge how much value entertainment has. People don't play X's and O's all day because it's great value.
I agree.. its very much a quality of experience for me.
I paid $250 for a six person table with dinner at the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra while they played all the best pieces of John Williams' music from his many film scores. Only a two hour concert, but the Jurassic Park theme made me tear up, and I was only 10 feet from the orchestra.
I paid $300 for two Conductor's Box seats at the MSO for myself and a girl I was dating to see the Harry Potter in Concert series, where you watch a Harry Potter movie while the orchestra plays all the music from the film live. For me, it was hit or miss, since I was too old to really get into Harry Potter, but the lady I was seeing was 15 years younger than me, so it really affected her, which of course really benefited me.
Both cases, money well spent.
I paid $250 for a six person table with dinner at the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra while they played all the best pieces of John Williams' music from his many film scores. Only a two hour concert, but the Jurassic Park theme made me tear up, and I was only 10 feet from the orchestra.
I paid $300 for two Conductor's Box seats at the MSO for myself and a girl I was dating to see the Harry Potter in Concert series, where you watch a Harry Potter movie while the orchestra plays all the music from the film live. For me, it was hit or miss, since I was too old to really get into Harry Potter, but the lady I was seeing was 15 years younger than me, so it really affected her, which of course really benefited me.
Both cases, money well spent.
Imagine bragging about buying sex.
Some people spent hours in No Man's Sky too. The cost per hour only matters if you can put up with 'flaws'.
Most expected the latest and greatest, what they got was not that. Every hype/drop cycle is the same, but this cycle is filled with more valid complaints than normal, depressingly.
People felt burnt on Oblivion in 2013 because it was boring green forests and unappealing face design. That game pretty much worked for hundreds of hours of content. Cyberpunk can't even get the basic mechanics right.
Most expected the latest and greatest, what they got was not that. Every hype/drop cycle is the same, but this cycle is filled with more valid complaints than normal, depressingly.
People felt burnt on Oblivion in 2013 because it was boring green forests and unappealing face design. That game pretty much worked for hundreds of hours of content. Cyberpunk can't even get the basic mechanics right.
Oblivion was released way earlier than 2013 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls_IV:_Oblivion
Are you saying No Man's Sky is a bad game? It's the greatest comeback the gaming world has ever seen. I've clocked hundreds of hours by now. Absolutely amazing game.
When it came out it was a pointless and mostly buggy grind-a-thon. Some played it to 'chill out and relax' and could have argued the $/hr was a positive ratio when 99.95% of people did not share that experience.
I haven't played it since launch, it made for a good internet historian video!
I haven't played it since launch, it made for a good internet historian video!
Ah, I misunderstood. Sorry!
I agree. I played it a few hours on launch at a friend's place and it was completely underwhelming.
I agree. I played it a few hours on launch at a friend's place and it was completely underwhelming.
Yeah, the hype surrounding 2077 had me thinking this was a GTA/Witcher 3 style game. Haven't played it yet.
See what I did there? Compare GTA and W3? Because to me, they are similar. I mean, you can't kill random people in W3, but the "go where you want and collect and build" seems the same.
If you're telling me 2077 is not open world, I'll be disappointed.
See what I did there? Compare GTA and W3? Because to me, they are similar. I mean, you can't kill random people in W3, but the "go where you want and collect and build" seems the same.
If you're telling me 2077 is not open world, I'll be disappointed.
Imagine the Novigrad chapter in Witcher 3, but 20× larger and in a futuristic setting instead. That's basically 1:1 Cyberpunk. And it's why I love Cyberpunk so much.
550 hours on Overwatch, 11 cents an hour is pretty good.
I wouldn't mind paying more than $60 if they actually delivered on what they promised the game was going to be.
These were the expectations set by CDPR and their marketing team. Open world mechanics are a joke in this game. Pedestrians look same. Driving mechanics are janky.
> Anyone who expected a GTA like open world game has to be severely disappointed
I personally don't expect a GTA like game, but I would expect an AI/police mechanism at least as good as gta3 (2001), and it's clearly not the case which is ridiculous.
Having 2020 graphics/interactions coupled with early 2000s AI breaks the immersion so bad
I personally don't expect a GTA like game, but I would expect an AI/police mechanism at least as good as gta3 (2001), and it's clearly not the case which is ridiculous.
Having 2020 graphics/interactions coupled with early 2000s AI breaks the immersion so bad
The game has an overwhelming amount of very detailed content in the main job and side jobs, and also provides plenty of flexibility in combat if you explore the various upgrade systems. It's an evolution of the Witcher 3, not Grand Theft Auto. Better driver AI and haircuts would be cool, but they're not central to what the game is.
> Better driver AI and haircuts would be cool, but they're not central to what the game is.
The problem though is the AI is outright stupid right now, and that does affect the game. It doesn't have to be groundbreaking, it just has to not break. Enemies that can see you through a door or try to shoot through the floors is a problem - and probably why performance is so bad.
The problem though is the AI is outright stupid right now, and that does affect the game. It doesn't have to be groundbreaking, it just has to not break. Enemies that can see you through a door or try to shoot through the floors is a problem - and probably why performance is so bad.
Agreed. I think the AI could use a lot of work. I notice most enemies have some kind of "approach distance" where they won't come any closer. Perhaps it's intentional but if enemies never come closer to engage, at any point in time or their HP, I can just hide behind something a few meters away and pick them off with quickhacks and headshots, even when they're completely aggro'd.
It's worse than that.
I was hacking a turret and slowly picking them off one by one while they "approached" me (all of them immediately knew where I was even when I was in cover) and never even engaged with the turret in the middle of the camp blasting them off.
Enemy combat range is based on the weapon they have. Snipers will hold long range, medium range for rifles and pistols, close range for melee/fists.
Seeing through doors is fine in this game. The player can do it to using things like "ping" or taking control of cameras, so I don't mind if enemies can too. Trying to attack through doors isn't very smart though. However I also very much enjoy when AI has an enemy hiding away in some corner trying to hack my brain while I fight off a few others directly. Or when an enemy I'd tagged but lost track of visually has taken a path around me & come up from behind. So there's some problems, but in general it seems okay to me.
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> Having played cyberpunk on PC it's mostly a fancy light show and not a lot of substance.
That really depends on individual expectations. With many people treating the game like the second coming of gaming Jesus a lot of the disappointment was pretty much guaranteed.
Personally I didn't expect anything like that, I was hoping for an open world Deus Ex like, with a more "colorful" setting, and that's pretty much what I got.
> not to mention this game is very badly optimized on AMD systems the current gaming king.
AMD has been the "current gaming king" only since Zen 3 desktop release, which happened just last month, most of these CPUs are still completely impossible to buy at actual MSRP.
Regardless of that even Zen 2 is mostly performing very well with the game [0], which the HEXedit fix will only improve once it's patched in officially.
In that context this complaint sounds very much like still complaining about the lack of an epilepsy warning; Sure it's not great to overlook something like that, but it's inane to act as if these are unfixable and nonredeemable issues, particularly in an industry where "games a service", releasing early access products, has become the new low-key norm even for much bigger publishers.
[0] https://youtu.be/-pRI7vXh0JU
That really depends on individual expectations. With many people treating the game like the second coming of gaming Jesus a lot of the disappointment was pretty much guaranteed.
Personally I didn't expect anything like that, I was hoping for an open world Deus Ex like, with a more "colorful" setting, and that's pretty much what I got.
> not to mention this game is very badly optimized on AMD systems the current gaming king.
AMD has been the "current gaming king" only since Zen 3 desktop release, which happened just last month, most of these CPUs are still completely impossible to buy at actual MSRP.
Regardless of that even Zen 2 is mostly performing very well with the game [0], which the HEXedit fix will only improve once it's patched in officially.
In that context this complaint sounds very much like still complaining about the lack of an epilepsy warning; Sure it's not great to overlook something like that, but it's inane to act as if these are unfixable and nonredeemable issues, particularly in an industry where "games a service", releasing early access products, has become the new low-key norm even for much bigger publishers.
[0] https://youtu.be/-pRI7vXh0JU
AMD has been very popular in gaming PCs for the last 3 years now. The Zen 2 release offered 99% of the gaming performance of an intel chip at a fraction of the cost and it completely blows away intel in non gaming workloads so its what most people picked unless spending an extra $300 for 2fps is your thing.
> The Zen 2 release offered 99% of the gaming performance of an intel chip
Zen 2 is a good deal for it's overall versatility and particularly the amount of physical cores one gets for the amount of money paid.
But gaming wise Zen 2 struggles to keep pace with any Intel CPU above the 10600k, particularly when the Intel's are overclocked, where they have much more headroom than both Zen 2 or Zen 3.
Meaning that anybody who wanted maximum gaming performance, above all else, had pretty much no other choice except for Intel, that only changed with Zen 3, last month.
Now with Zen 3 AMD has the "crown" in both gaming and productivity with CPUs like the 5900x, but that comes at the cost of a price premium as Zen 3 is not nearly as generously priced as Zen 2.
Zen 2 is a good deal for it's overall versatility and particularly the amount of physical cores one gets for the amount of money paid.
But gaming wise Zen 2 struggles to keep pace with any Intel CPU above the 10600k, particularly when the Intel's are overclocked, where they have much more headroom than both Zen 2 or Zen 3.
Meaning that anybody who wanted maximum gaming performance, above all else, had pretty much no other choice except for Intel, that only changed with Zen 3, last month.
Now with Zen 3 AMD has the "crown" in both gaming and productivity with CPUs like the 5900x, but that comes at the cost of a price premium as Zen 3 is not nearly as generously priced as Zen 2.
>anybody who wanted maximum gaming performance, above all else, had pretty much no other choice except for Intel
Which means nothing for the vast majority of users since the cpu was far from holding them back which is why we have seen most pc builds include an AMD cpu for the last few years because very few people want to pay way more to get a slightly higher number in a specific benchmark and see nothing in reality for the money.
Which means nothing for the vast majority of users since the cpu was far from holding them back which is why we have seen most pc builds include an AMD cpu for the last few years because very few people want to pay way more to get a slightly higher number in a specific benchmark and see nothing in reality for the money.
> since the cpu was far from holding them back
A common misconception, but in reality the CPU actually is very responsible for min frames and thus pushing up the average frames, preventing frames from skipping. That becomes particularly important in demanding scenarios like PCVR and generally running high-resolutions with high-refresh rates.
> which is why we have seen most pc builds include an AMD cpu for the last few years
We've seen that because they offer excellent price and performance ratio, but that didn't make them the "gaming king", it made them them "budget all-rounder king", which is not the same.
A common misconception, but in reality the CPU actually is very responsible for min frames and thus pushing up the average frames, preventing frames from skipping. That becomes particularly important in demanding scenarios like PCVR and generally running high-resolutions with high-refresh rates.
> which is why we have seen most pc builds include an AMD cpu for the last few years
We've seen that because they offer excellent price and performance ratio, but that didn't make them the "gaming king", it made them them "budget all-rounder king", which is not the same.
> that's an EA tactic not something that CDPR I thought I knew would do...
EA gets a lot of well-deserved criticism, but it's important to recognize their behavior is typical of all major players in the games industry. The whole thing is rotten and you shouldn't trust any of them. They certainly haven't earned it. Always wait for reviews.
EA gets a lot of well-deserved criticism, but it's important to recognize their behavior is typical of all major players in the games industry. The whole thing is rotten and you shouldn't trust any of them. They certainly haven't earned it. Always wait for reviews.
I'm not saying it's all bad. The art style is amazing, the sound track is awesome. The lips sync, facial expressions and body movement are pretty damn good. Yes there some nice side missions and the main story line is ok I guess but it's not really cyberpunk or really engaging.
They advertised it as a cyber punk open world RPG and promised so many things and then literally changed the marketing of the game to an action shooter after the game came out...
* it's not really cyberpunk*
Having read a bunch of great (and not so great) cyberpunk fiction from the 80's & 90's, that's actually a theme that really shines through here for me. Crazy cybernetics & brain/computer interfaces, hacking, drugs, weird AI doing things like running a transport/security company with some splinter groups that have existential crisis... I really get that original cyberpunk vibe.
Having read a bunch of great (and not so great) cyberpunk fiction from the 80's & 90's, that's actually a theme that really shines through here for me. Crazy cybernetics & brain/computer interfaces, hacking, drugs, weird AI doing things like running a transport/security company with some splinter groups that have existential crisis... I really get that original cyberpunk vibe.
It has the vibe (aesthetics), like most modern "cyberpunk" works. The tech, hacking, drugs, and weird AI were mostly the setting for the main themes of corporate power and how technology enabled new forms of control/manipulation.
When an article compared William Gibson's visions to Second Life, he rejected the notion explicitly[1]:
Unfortunately, the trend over the last few decades in cyberpunk has steadily shifted towards aesthetics. The only true counterexample I know of (and by far the best cyberpunk movie ever made is Sleep Dealer (2008). Its aesthetics suffered due to a very tiny budget, but it was shockingly prescient in its depiction of the "gig economy" and drone violence.
[1] http://williamgibsonblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/#8519138918500...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZr8A_9VZBw&disable_polymer=...
When an article compared William Gibson's visions to Second Life, he rejected the notion explicitly[1]:
But as Gully Jimson says, in The Horse's Mouth,
"It wasn't the vision I had."
Neither is Second Life.
Chia and her buds build their treehouses in
corporate ghost sites. That's the difference.
Interstitial. Gotta be interstitial.
Unfortunately, the trend over the last few decades in cyberpunk has steadily shifted towards aesthetics. The only true counterexample I know of (and by far the best cyberpunk movie ever made is Sleep Dealer (2008). Its aesthetics suffered due to a very tiny budget, but it was shockingly prescient in its depiction of the "gig economy" and drone violence.
[1] http://williamgibsonblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/#8519138918500...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZr8A_9VZBw&disable_polymer=...
Don't worry, after a few twists and turns the story becomes very, very cyberpunky. But there's a large gap until that happens. I think of it as an 8-hour long tutorial.
Your main character says not all cops are bastards. Strong punk energy. eyeroll
It's extremely a game that is pastiche of cyberpunk, diving neither into the cyber nor punk beyond skinning things. Where's the Ghost in the Shell examination of the self? Where's the dive into what it means to have modifiable bodies? Where's the anti-establishment story (oh wait, the game opens with praise of the cops by multiple characters, including V).
For a game that wants to be cyberpunk, it sure relies on a lot of stereotypes about people and what they can be.
To me, it reads a lot like a Boomer/GenX take on what they remember cyberpunk being (NEON AND CHROME) and not an actual understanding of the genre (exploration of what it means to be a human in a corporate, transhuman world.)
If you want to play an actual cyberpunk game, check out Umurangi Generation or Shadowrun: Dragonfall. The Final Fantasy 7 Remake that came out this year is more cyberpunk than Cyberpunk.
That said, the game is a serviceable noire and shooter with some extremely always on aesthetic choices which aren't really my taste but they might be other's tastes.
It's extremely a game that is pastiche of cyberpunk, diving neither into the cyber nor punk beyond skinning things. Where's the Ghost in the Shell examination of the self? Where's the dive into what it means to have modifiable bodies? Where's the anti-establishment story (oh wait, the game opens with praise of the cops by multiple characters, including V).
For a game that wants to be cyberpunk, it sure relies on a lot of stereotypes about people and what they can be.
To me, it reads a lot like a Boomer/GenX take on what they remember cyberpunk being (NEON AND CHROME) and not an actual understanding of the genre (exploration of what it means to be a human in a corporate, transhuman world.)
If you want to play an actual cyberpunk game, check out Umurangi Generation or Shadowrun: Dragonfall. The Final Fantasy 7 Remake that came out this year is more cyberpunk than Cyberpunk.
That said, the game is a serviceable noire and shooter with some extremely always on aesthetic choices which aren't really my taste but they might be other's tastes.
>Your main character says not all cops are bastards.
IIRC this comment was made when you're on a quest and partnered with probably the one good cop on the force, who was also suspended for doing his job. The quest started based on the incompetence of the police leading to him needing to ask V for help to pursue the case. And the comment was made in reference to this one guy you're trying to help out. Meanwhile the next quest V will matter-of-factly state that the cops can't be trusted to handle so-and-so issue.
So please don't take lines out of their context.
IIRC this comment was made when you're on a quest and partnered with probably the one good cop on the force, who was also suspended for doing his job. The quest started based on the incompetence of the police leading to him needing to ask V for help to pursue the case. And the comment was made in reference to this one guy you're trying to help out. Meanwhile the next quest V will matter-of-factly state that the cops can't be trusted to handle so-and-so issue.
So please don't take lines out of their context.
Some additional context-- you have to engage in a system where you get paid to kill people for the police. And then there's this, https://twitter.com/TurboBurpo/status/1338945708200656896?s=...
Remember that Night City evolved out of LA and imagine that description applied to the LAPD.
Remember that Night City evolved out of LA and imagine that description applied to the LAPD.
That tweet looks to be deleted, so I don't know what you're referencing.
But back to the point: you work with all sorts of terrible people in the game. That's sort of one conclusion of the Cyberpunk genre: every level of society is rotten has decayed even as technology progressed. The police are no better (and no worse) than any other faction of human traffickers, politicians, crime syndicates, drug dealers, fixers - everyone is simply looking out for their own interests. You regularly get gigs with orders to kidnap or kill people with no questions asked. So it seems unnatural for you to single out the police as being the one faction where it is unforgivable for the game to have you side with at any point.
But back to the point: you work with all sorts of terrible people in the game. That's sort of one conclusion of the Cyberpunk genre: every level of society is rotten has decayed even as technology progressed. The police are no better (and no worse) than any other faction of human traffickers, politicians, crime syndicates, drug dealers, fixers - everyone is simply looking out for their own interests. You regularly get gigs with orders to kidnap or kill people with no questions asked. So it seems unnatural for you to single out the police as being the one faction where it is unforgivable for the game to have you side with at any point.
Eh, this comes across as hipsterism. I know it's trendy to hate on the game right now, but c'mon.
How much of the game have you played? The entire main quest is about transhumanism and corporate control. Cyberpsychosis and the Maelstrom are used as a means for examining the results of the overuse of body modification.
Just like the Cyberpunk RPG, it was very heavily inspired by Gibson's work, and I mean that in a good way.
How much of the game have you played? The entire main quest is about transhumanism and corporate control. Cyberpsychosis and the Maelstrom are used as a means for examining the results of the overuse of body modification.
Just like the Cyberpunk RPG, it was very heavily inspired by Gibson's work, and I mean that in a good way.
I think that cyber psychos are a really tired way to translate an old tabletop game mechanic into a story beat. What's more interesting -- amputees and disabled folks go BERSERK when they get treatment, or what if we escaped the bounds of the human form. Why does this game have such an extremely boring view of what humanity could be if you had access to mods. Gender, race, body type, even the configuration of limbs and the like seem like they should be things of the past in 2077. Instead we have a tired Japanese stereotype, a Haitian gang, and some pretty boring ideas about the human condition.
Gibson himself offered the critique that the game looked like GTA papered over with 80s retrofuturism.
I think it's totally reasonable to critique the game as not really doing anything interesting in the genre or even doing anything more than appropriating genre tropes.
Gibson himself offered the critique that the game looked like GTA papered over with 80s retrofuturism.
I think it's totally reasonable to critique the game as not really doing anything interesting in the genre or even doing anything more than appropriating genre tropes.
Step into the shoes of almost any past futurist and you'll find that humanity usually took the boring, predictable route, technologically. There is an inherent cynicism in the setting that needs to shine through as a fundamental part of the genre's identity.
Also, it's only 57 years in the future. You're not going to advance that much in that time. Personally I think the aesthetic seems a little too trapped in 80s retrofuturism -- I guess I agree with Gibson there -- but that was always the interpretation of cyberpunk and scifi that I liked the most so it gets a pass.
There is plenty of whimsical, optimistic visions into the future, and while I think a setting that explores "high tech, low life" in that context would be cool to see, it'd feel a lot closer to Star Wars than "cyberpunk".
Also, it's only 57 years in the future. You're not going to advance that much in that time. Personally I think the aesthetic seems a little too trapped in 80s retrofuturism -- I guess I agree with Gibson there -- but that was always the interpretation of cyberpunk and scifi that I liked the most so it gets a pass.
There is plenty of whimsical, optimistic visions into the future, and while I think a setting that explores "high tech, low life" in that context would be cool to see, it'd feel a lot closer to Star Wars than "cyberpunk".
That makes sense. Something like Bruce Sterling's Schismatrix really gets wild with what posthumanism can look like. Cyberpunk taken to the next 200 years.
That said, media like ghost in the shell and altered carbon (the novels) gesture in this direction. Altered carbon, for instance, has people who have modded their bodies with animal features. GitS goes hard on the ship of Theseus metaphors and has lots of mods that don't fit a standard human shape. Not to mention plenty of discussions of gender and gender roles in a society where you can just choose whatever body you want.
That said, media like ghost in the shell and altered carbon (the novels) gesture in this direction. Altered carbon, for instance, has people who have modded their bodies with animal features. GitS goes hard on the ship of Theseus metaphors and has lots of mods that don't fit a standard human shape. Not to mention plenty of discussions of gender and gender roles in a society where you can just choose whatever body you want.
A bit into the game, Cyberpunk starts to resemble Altered Carbon in some ways. I'm not super far into it, and I don't want to spoil anything, but it definitely has some things to say about transhumanism and at one point I felt like it was sharing some vocabulary with AC.
You are right in that I think the universe could explore those themes more thoroughly, but then maybe it will and I'm just not there yet
You are right in that I think the universe could explore those themes more thoroughly, but then maybe it will and I'm just not there yet
I'm a HUGE fan of Gibson's books, but let's be honest: he's 72 years old, and might not be the best judge of modern video games. He was also involved in (and wrote the screenplay for) the Johnny Mnemonic movie, which was one of the blandest attempts at mainstreaming cyberpunk ever.
The Japanese stereotypes and Haitian gangs are lifted straight off the pages of Neuromancer and Count Zero. I dig the retrofuturist 80s vibe, but then I love retrofuturism in general so that's not surprising.
In the end, CP2077 is a AAA video game. It has to appeal to the general population, so yeah, it's probably not going to be the most experimental take on the genre. As mainstream cyberpunk attempts go, can we at least agree it's heads-and-shoulders better than Netflix's Altered Carbon? :)
The Japanese stereotypes and Haitian gangs are lifted straight off the pages of Neuromancer and Count Zero. I dig the retrofuturist 80s vibe, but then I love retrofuturism in general so that's not surprising.
In the end, CP2077 is a AAA video game. It has to appeal to the general population, so yeah, it's probably not going to be the most experimental take on the genre. As mainstream cyberpunk attempts go, can we at least agree it's heads-and-shoulders better than Netflix's Altered Carbon? :)
Netflix's Altered Carbon?
Yes. It definitely fell flat for me. Having read the source material probably didn't help there since it was so much better. Although even the book... I re-read about 2 years ago and it wasn't nearly as good as I remembered it from around 2006.
Yes. It definitely fell flat for me. Having read the source material probably didn't help there since it was so much better. Although even the book... I re-read about 2 years ago and it wasn't nearly as good as I remembered it from around 2006.
I agree on altered carbon for sure. The Haitian gangs, however, are based on the Voodoo Boys from the original source material. (Though I understand why they changed the game to have them not be a bunch of racist white dudes with dreads.)
Yeah, but Mike Pondsmith no doubt drew inspiration for the Voodoo Boys from the Rastafarians living in orbit in Neuromancer, and from the AIs representing themselves as Haitian voodoo gods in Count Zero.
The tabletop game draws heavily on Gibson and Philip K. Dick by the way of Blade Runner. (And to be clear, I love that!)
The tabletop game draws heavily on Gibson and Philip K. Dick by the way of Blade Runner. (And to be clear, I love that!)
There's a very strong "cops can be dicks" theme in literally the first opening scene. There's a very strong theme of cops being a tool of corporate interests.
On what to means to have a modifiable body, there too from the beginning the game puts it right in front of you where it causes a sort of body dysmorphic disorder that can drive people crazy. There's even a series of side quests that deal directly with this.
On what to means to have a modifiable body, there too from the beginning the game puts it right in front of you where it causes a sort of body dysmorphic disorder that can drive people crazy. There's even a series of side quests that deal directly with this.
The dialog in that scene says, effectively, he must have done something to deserve it. To me it showed police violence and then immediately tried to justify it. I took away a very different message from that scene.
But that's the beauty of critique, I think we can both look at the same work and draw different messages from it.
But that's the beauty of critique, I think we can both look at the same work and draw different messages from it.
Cyberpunk never was cyber + punk.
It literally was explicitly that. Gibson and others started writing in this genre, which then took it's name from CYBERPUNK by Bruce Bethke a short story that was named to elicit a feeling of technology and punk attitudes.
The common idiom high tech, low life is another way of describing the genre and also succinctly suggests that the genre is, in fact, cyber + punk.
Happy to provide references, but a quick internet search clearly shows that what you've suggested is factually incorrect.
The common idiom high tech, low life is another way of describing the genre and also succinctly suggests that the genre is, in fact, cyber + punk.
Happy to provide references, but a quick internet search clearly shows that what you've suggested is factually incorrect.
I know all that. You're just misusing the word "punk" as a free variable.
The game has a different take on the cyberpunk universe and I think that is okay.
Personally, it's a great game. I find myself caring about the characters and the outcomes of my actions. Despite technology being everywhere, everything feels so human.
Personally, it's a great game. I find myself caring about the characters and the outcomes of my actions. Despite technology being everywhere, everything feels so human.
I’m playing on first gen threadripper and a 580rx card with no major issues, the game is gorgeous and I am having a blast.
I agree that the AI is horrible and the UI is a pain, especially when you want to do things like sell a lot of items
I've seen it summarised as maybe a mile wide and an inch deep, that there aren't particularly interesting systems at play, there isn't actually much meat to the pretty bones.
I fully agree. It's mostly a fancy light show and not much more. Gameplay wise, this reminds me of games from the Xbox 360 / PS3 era.
> we’ve actually shown console footage, but never on the last-gen consoles. The reason is that we were updating the game on last-gen consoles until the very last minute, and we thought we’d make it in time. [...] That was not intended; we were just fixing the game until the very last moment.
This is absurd. They didn't hide console footage because they were sure they'd miraculously turn around the entire game at the last second; they hid it because they didn't want people to see it so they could have massive launch day sales. If you're going to apologize just apologize. Don't pretend it was some innocent oversight.
This is absurd. They didn't hide console footage because they were sure they'd miraculously turn around the entire game at the last second; they hid it because they didn't want people to see it so they could have massive launch day sales. If you're going to apologize just apologize. Don't pretend it was some innocent oversight.
It's better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.
There is also the lesser known axiom: it's better to pretend a problem doesn't exist than to admit wrongdoing and ask for forgiveness.
There is also the lesser known axiom: it's better to pretend a problem doesn't exist than to admit wrongdoing and ask for forgiveness.
It’s better to not be caught committing fraud than to be caught.
I completed it twice -more out of boredom and getting my money's worth than actual enjoyment- and my biggest complaint is that the game is totally dumb and a complete waste of time to those more philosophically inclined. It feels like a throwback to the dumbest action games of the 90s: here's a main story and a bunch of quests that you'll be completing on railtracks.
Your choices don't really matter, the world is empty and soulless, the writing is lazy and you can't stop but keep thinking how superficial everything feels.
There is no emergent gameplay which is simply unacceptable, taking all the promises and descriptions of groundbreaking immersive gameplay into account.
Great for teenagers looking for mindless action kicks, bad for everyone else.
There is no emergent gameplay which is simply unacceptable, taking all the promises and descriptions of groundbreaking immersive gameplay into account.
Great for teenagers looking for mindless action kicks, bad for everyone else.
Wait a second... how did you "complete" the game twice in less than a week?
I've put more than 40 hours in and I'm nowhere close to completing it even once. I'm pretty sure all the dialogue alone adds up to that much.
Even completing the main story, gigs and side-missions is probably going to take me around 100 hours. Maybe someone faster could do it in 40, or maybe 20 if you skipped all of the dialogue and played on a low difficulty. I spend/wasted a lot of time just exploring the city and surrounding areas, doing 'bounties' or climbing on random places to see if there's something interesting/loot to be found.
I suppose you mostly played the main story line on a low difficulty, ignoring all the side activities (which do impact the main story and vice-versa) and likely rushed through or past everything else.
If you were looking to have a good time you didn't exactly set yourself up for success. A bit like reading a book and skipping all of the chapters that follow minor characters for world-building purposes.
I agree that the life paths don't have major consequence, which is a bit disappointing, but saying "choices don't matter" as a blanket statement is just factually incorrect, considering there's a long list of choices that have a lasting effect on the game world, and there are at least 3-5 different endings depending on the choices you made earlier in the game.
There's a list of (so far known) major choices here if you want to spoil yourself: https://www.ign.com/wikis/cyberpunk-2077/Choices_and_Consequ...
I've put more than 40 hours in and I'm nowhere close to completing it even once. I'm pretty sure all the dialogue alone adds up to that much.
Even completing the main story, gigs and side-missions is probably going to take me around 100 hours. Maybe someone faster could do it in 40, or maybe 20 if you skipped all of the dialogue and played on a low difficulty. I spend/wasted a lot of time just exploring the city and surrounding areas, doing 'bounties' or climbing on random places to see if there's something interesting/loot to be found.
I suppose you mostly played the main story line on a low difficulty, ignoring all the side activities (which do impact the main story and vice-versa) and likely rushed through or past everything else.
If you were looking to have a good time you didn't exactly set yourself up for success. A bit like reading a book and skipping all of the chapters that follow minor characters for world-building purposes.
I agree that the life paths don't have major consequence, which is a bit disappointing, but saying "choices don't matter" as a blanket statement is just factually incorrect, considering there's a long list of choices that have a lasting effect on the game world, and there are at least 3-5 different endings depending on the choices you made earlier in the game.
There's a list of (so far known) major choices here if you want to spoil yourself: https://www.ign.com/wikis/cyberpunk-2077/Choices_and_Consequ...
IGN removed that page a few hours ago. Looks like their wiki is still very much work-in-progress.
Here's the most recent google-cached version I could find, archived via archive.is: https://archive.is/DFb7d
Here's the most recent google-cached version I could find, archived via archive.is: https://archive.is/DFb7d
Honestly thank you for saying that. I felt like I'm going crazy, I can't figure out how people are enjoying this game, I tried to find a redeeming quality and "pretty lights" is all I can think of.
Edit: Scrolled down and found great r3view that put what felt into words better then I can.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25436061
Edit: Scrolled down and found great r3view that put what felt into words better then I can.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25436061
> a complete waste of time to those more philosophically inclined
At a surface level it is very reminiscent of the Deus Ex games, but if you go in expecting something profound you will be disappointed
At a surface level it is very reminiscent of the Deus Ex games, but if you go in expecting something profound you will be disappointed
It really feels like a mashup of GTA 5 and Deus Ex, except without GTA's sense of humor and Deus Ex's feeling of personal agency. That said, I am really enjoying it, I mean a mashup of those two things is very compelling even if it doesn't quite manage to borrow the charm of either.
I got serious DX vibes, but as soon as the surface is scratched you can see that it’s not an ice cream sundae but a shit sandwich.
How can you claim you don't like a game but also complete it twice in the space of about a week?
The main story is short and as I said, you're on railtracks. It's not like you can get lost in the world like in GTA or RDR, there is no world for you to get lost in. It's all smoke & mirrors. Also, pandemic lockdown in my country has left me with plenty of free time.
The game offers you three "life paths" at the beginning so after I finished it once I had to see if a different path would be better.
Well it turns out life paths change nothing besides the introduction. It's still the same dumb game with the same railtracks and the same story. Your choices don't matter and you realize that you've been swindled since the promises and descriptions of the immersive and emergent open-world nature of the game turned out to be a bunch of lies.
Hearing all the stories about refunds being hard or impossible to execute, one has to wonder if legal action is justifiable here. The CP2077 that CDPR framed and advertised gameplay-wise has very little to do with the end result that they delivered. And I'm not even talking about the bugs, but the game itself.
It goes without saying that I'm done with them and my intuition tells me that the CDPR brand will be poisonous to a lot of gamers out there after this fiasco. Bugs are one thing, but blatant lies quite another.
The game offers you three "life paths" at the beginning so after I finished it once I had to see if a different path would be better.
Well it turns out life paths change nothing besides the introduction. It's still the same dumb game with the same railtracks and the same story. Your choices don't matter and you realize that you've been swindled since the promises and descriptions of the immersive and emergent open-world nature of the game turned out to be a bunch of lies.
Hearing all the stories about refunds being hard or impossible to execute, one has to wonder if legal action is justifiable here. The CP2077 that CDPR framed and advertised gameplay-wise has very little to do with the end result that they delivered. And I'm not even talking about the bugs, but the game itself.
It goes without saying that I'm done with them and my intuition tells me that the CDPR brand will be poisonous to a lot of gamers out there after this fiasco. Bugs are one thing, but blatant lies quite another.
It doesn't sound like you gave it much of a chance tbh. If you only play the main quests it might be possible to do 2 playthroughs since launch. I'm at 43h in and haven't finished the first playthrough yet, on normal difficulty.
The gameplay is pretty much identical to w3, which is what I expected going in. If you expected more than that you were bound to be disappointed.
The gameplay is pretty much identical to w3, which is what I expected going in. If you expected more than that you were bound to be disappointed.
It took me around 20 hours to finish it the first time. Second time was a lot faster since I was essentially playing the same game and I could fly through the same situations and dialogs. It's a hollow experience, pretty but zero substance.
I know there are additional endings and side quests, but the problem is that game has no depth whatsoever so I'm not exactly motivated to spend more time. It's mindless action with a few variations on the quests that keep repeating themselves. After playing the game for a few hours, the shallowness and superficiality of it all starts weighing on you.
I know there are additional endings and side quests, but the problem is that game has no depth whatsoever so I'm not exactly motivated to spend more time. It's mindless action with a few variations on the quests that keep repeating themselves. After playing the game for a few hours, the shallowness and superficiality of it all starts weighing on you.
> My biggest complaint is that the game is totally dumb and a complete waste of time to those more philosophically inclined.
What are some modern games that are like this?
I came looking for something to scratch my Deus Ex 1 itch and I’ve so far been satisfied. Not terribly engrossed in the world, but otherwise not disappointed.
What are some modern games that are like this?
I came looking for something to scratch my Deus Ex 1 itch and I’ve so far been satisfied. Not terribly engrossed in the world, but otherwise not disappointed.
The Witness was great as was The Talos Principle.
SOMA and Fallout: New Vegas were good.
SOMA and Fallout: New Vegas were good.
I would add Spec Ops: The Line (depending on what online communities you're a part of this game is either hugely underrated or hugely overrated), and the entire Bioshock series.
There also some simpler indie games like The Stanley Parable, Papers Please, and This War of Mine
There also some simpler indie games like The Stanley Parable, Papers Please, and This War of Mine
New Vegas is a great example, and is better than I remember on this dimension [0].
[0]: https://youtu.be/gzF7aHxk4Y4
[0]: https://youtu.be/gzF7aHxk4Y4
NieR: Automata is like that.
I've had friends tell me NieR: Automata is one of the best 'artistic' games you can buy for PS4. Though the combat and dialogue is pretty, uhm, Square-Enix-ish, it is one of my favorite games/stories of all time.
Nier is truly fantastic and dives headfirst into discussions of identity in a posthumanism world.
New Deus Ex games (Human Revolution and Mankind Divided) are pretty good.
Hard disagree, I’ve played through both multiple times and was disappointed with how they presented and discussed the metastory even though the gameplay was far more polished and fluid. My favorite part of Deus Ex was the conversation with the bartender [0]. There’s at least one similar, if dumbed down conversation in 2077 but I admire that they at least tried.
[0] https://youtu.be/JKF0IYwhrjk
[0] https://youtu.be/JKF0IYwhrjk
> I completed it twice ... There is no emergent gameplay which is simply unacceptable
getting some really mixed signals here
getting some really mixed signals here
People can play games for reasons other than fun or enjoyment. Spec Ops: The Line isn't a 'fun' game, but holy shit I couldn't stop playing it.
uh I'm a gamedev at my dayjob and I'm working on a game design mfa so ... I know? my favorite game is INSIDE and it's a total chore to play. But I think it has a LOT going on and is extremely interesting. OP is saying Cyberpunk is not fun -and- it has nothing going on intellectually -and- they played it all the way through twice? Really, that's a mixed set of signals. If you think it's not fun -and- it has nothing going on, why play it -twice-?
> the game is totally dumb and a complete waste of time to those more philosophically inclined
really reads like "I liked it, but I'm ashamed to like it, so I'm going to say I didn't like it instead"
> the game is totally dumb and a complete waste of time to those more philosophically inclined
really reads like "I liked it, but I'm ashamed to like it, so I'm going to say I didn't like it instead"
> If you think it's not fun -and- it has nothing going on, why play it -twice-?
"If you think the car is no fun to drive, why take it for a spin, twice?"
Playing it twice is what allowed me to form this opinion. The game offers multiple "paths" after all. It's called giving it the benefit of the doubt.
"If you think the car is no fun to drive, why take it for a spin, twice?"
Playing it twice is what allowed me to form this opinion. The game offers multiple "paths" after all. It's called giving it the benefit of the doubt.
eh, I dunno. I used to do that, thinking that I "needed to get my money's worth", but I've started bailing on games if I'm not having fun after 2 or 3 hours and don't ever regret it. The way I look at it now is that paying for a game is like paying the price of admission to a museum. If I'm not liking the show on display, I'm not going to stay there for longer just to feel like I got my money's worth. Paying the price of admission isn't a promise of enjoyment.
but like, I'm not really trying to convince you of anything, I'm trying to get clarity on what you're saying, because your original comment is so ambiguous that it doesn't actually help me figure out whether or not I want to play Cyberpunk.
but like, I'm not really trying to convince you of anything, I'm trying to get clarity on what you're saying, because your original comment is so ambiguous that it doesn't actually help me figure out whether or not I want to play Cyberpunk.
You got one answer, but I'd also suggest that someone might play a game out of spite. They might play it to check their experience ("maybe I was in a bad mood the first time"). Maybe all the coverage in the media made them feel like they needed to give the game a second chance. Maybe they wanted to see if the path or play style they chose was just a bad fit. Maybe they wanted to ensure they had enough data to back up their critique.
As someone who has spent years in the games industry, I strongly encourage you to take your players seriously and don't just assume you know better.
As someone who has spent years in the games industry, I strongly encourage you to take your players seriously and don't just assume you know better.
it's not "assuming you know better" to talk about the subtext of someone's comment.
Factorio wasn't particularly fun for me and I couldn't stop playing that. That game really stressed me out and I was very relieved when I could set it aside.
honestly I found playing Cookie Clicker to be really transformative in terms of perceiving those situations. Ever since then, I look at games differently. The most recent example of this is Hades. I played that game very compulsively, and feel that most of the serotonin I was getting out of it was the result of operant conditioning, not something that I really like. That game has an absolutely perfectly designed reward loop, but I wasn't really enjoying playing it very much.
> I completed it twice -more out of boredom and getting my money's worth than actual enjoyment
You should familiarize yourself with the concept of a "sunk cost"[0]. You'll probably be happier for it.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost#Fallacy_effect
You should familiarize yourself with the concept of a "sunk cost"[0]. You'll probably be happier for it.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost#Fallacy_effect
If you watch game footage, it's obvious it's half-baked. However, so many people violated the number one rule: no preorders. This is literally the only thing gamers can do to incentivise developers to not release buggy games. But here we are again.
Eh, I always appreciate the early adopters who provide feedback and pressure on devs to fix the games so that I can play a much better game 6 months or a year later.
Larian does a great job with their early access releases, soliciting the community to report bugs, play testing etc. I put like 70 hours into the new Baldur’s Gate on different builds and it’s only like a third of the game. There were a lot of bugs and some crashes I reported, but has otherwise been a blast. Don’t understand why CDPR couldn’t have done the same.
is the inverted side of "no preorders" also "No epic games"? Something has to fund development and at a certain point investors will not risk the lack of sales. Versus a preorder is an actual sale.
That doesn’t make sense as most of the money is invested long before a release date is even announced.
Preorders aren’t used to invest development, but rather recoup some costs. They also provide a signal to publishers that allows delays to happen.
You’ll still be in the “red” during your marketing push, especially since marketing is so expensive.
You’ll still be in the “red” during your marketing push, especially since marketing is so expensive.
Not really, I'm going to give the worst example of all - Star Citizen (aka Scope Creep The Video Game) - which was IIRC crowdfunded, and according to the wiki page below remains the most expensive game in terms of development cost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_g...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_g...
These games rake in hundreds of millions of dollars. Games are bigger and fancier than ever because they have reached mainstream appeal and accessability. It has nothing to do with preorders.
Preorders just allow them to release buggy games in a beta state and patch it later.
Preorders just allow them to release buggy games in a beta state and patch it later.
The whole project feels terribly mismanaged. Even from the character editor it is obvious the game had to be scaled down in the last year to even ship. Considering the amount of crunch, it is heartbreaking it ended like this for every interested party.
I find it hard to believe that the launch of the new consoles did not have an effect on the launch date. CD Projekt could have taken the Rockstar approach, release the game on the last gen or PC and Stadia first, then polish and release on the second platform and then finish with the next gen. Releasing on seven or more platforms at the same time would not go well even before covid.
I find it hard to believe that the launch of the new consoles did not have an effect on the launch date. CD Projekt could have taken the Rockstar approach, release the game on the last gen or PC and Stadia first, then polish and release on the second platform and then finish with the next gen. Releasing on seven or more platforms at the same time would not go well even before covid.
I do get a sense of mismanagement as well, however the platform situation is a bit complicated.
Stadia release was probably contractually obligated to happen with the first volley. It was a big bet for Google, they never shut up about how Cyberpunk will come out for Stadia. Based on a few reviews I've read, the Stadia version seems to have turned out OK.
The PS5/SeriesXS versions are coming out in 2021. They don't exist right now. The reason the game runs on PS5/SeriesXS is backwards compatibility. That backwards compatibility didn't exist at the time when GTA5 was released for PS3/Xbox360.
The PS4/XBoxOne versions of Cyberpunk should have definitely been delayed. However I think it's not just the holiday season that is a factor here. It's also that the new generation of consoles already came out. Rockstar managed to get GTA5 out for PS3/Xbox360 a few months before PS4/XBoxOne.
It's clear that the PC version was the focus for CDPR - as it has always been for its games. It would have helped to schedule the PC version for later (like Rockstar scheduled GTA5 for PC - 2 years after PS3/XBox360) so that initially the focus could be on PS4/XBoxOne - it would probably have resulted in better reviews and a way more polished game. However ignoring PC for so long can be a hard pill to swallow for a PC centric developer - and indeed, they chose not to do it. According to the Q&A PC pre-orders made up 59% of their sales, so from a sales perspective delaying PC probably not the best choice either.
--
I do wonder how the PS4/XboxOne version of Cyberpunk looked 6 months ago and how much progress has there been. Hard to imagine it being way worse, but if it has been consistently so bad then it's puzzling why there wasn't significant steps taken as the quality of the game on those platforms wasn't changing.
Stadia release was probably contractually obligated to happen with the first volley. It was a big bet for Google, they never shut up about how Cyberpunk will come out for Stadia. Based on a few reviews I've read, the Stadia version seems to have turned out OK.
The PS5/SeriesXS versions are coming out in 2021. They don't exist right now. The reason the game runs on PS5/SeriesXS is backwards compatibility. That backwards compatibility didn't exist at the time when GTA5 was released for PS3/Xbox360.
The PS4/XBoxOne versions of Cyberpunk should have definitely been delayed. However I think it's not just the holiday season that is a factor here. It's also that the new generation of consoles already came out. Rockstar managed to get GTA5 out for PS3/Xbox360 a few months before PS4/XBoxOne.
It's clear that the PC version was the focus for CDPR - as it has always been for its games. It would have helped to schedule the PC version for later (like Rockstar scheduled GTA5 for PC - 2 years after PS3/XBox360) so that initially the focus could be on PS4/XBoxOne - it would probably have resulted in better reviews and a way more polished game. However ignoring PC for so long can be a hard pill to swallow for a PC centric developer - and indeed, they chose not to do it. According to the Q&A PC pre-orders made up 59% of their sales, so from a sales perspective delaying PC probably not the best choice either.
--
I do wonder how the PS4/XboxOne version of Cyberpunk looked 6 months ago and how much progress has there been. Hard to imagine it being way worse, but if it has been consistently so bad then it's puzzling why there wasn't significant steps taken as the quality of the game on those platforms wasn't changing.
I mean, they could ideally go PC and Stadia (since it is basically PC with fixed specs) -> Xbox One/PS4 -> Xbox Series/PS5. It wouldn't hurt the contract with Google and it would help with the terrible technical state on consoles.
I've personally tried the game on Xbox One X and only problems I've found were graphical glitches but it still is not a great experience. It's honestly pretty sad it ended like this with the amount of crunch and the token system the developers had.
I've personally tried the game on Xbox One X and only problems I've found were graphical glitches but it still is not a great experience. It's honestly pretty sad it ended like this with the amount of crunch and the token system the developers had.
release the game on the last gen or PC and Stadia first
It is only released on last gen consoles. There's no native PS5 or Xbox series X/S version you can buy. You buy the PS4/Xbox One version and play it via backwards compatibility. Apart from video resolution or low FPS, have there been significant problems on the last gen consoles in terms of bugs that aren't on the new gen?
It is only released on last gen consoles. There's no native PS5 or Xbox series X/S version you can buy. You buy the PS4/Xbox One version and play it via backwards compatibility. Apart from video resolution or low FPS, have there been significant problems on the last gen consoles in terms of bugs that aren't on the new gen?
I'm really enjoying the game on PC, it runs reasonably well on my GTX 1070. I'm staggered how many bugs there are though. I run into one about every five minutes. So far off the top of my head:
- NPCs floating in space
- NPCs walking through solid objects
- NPCs randomly spawning in view
- I have a gun that wont fire if I use a scope on it
- I have another gun whose model disappears in car chases
- Some objects have meshes that duplicate (cigarette floating in space while the character is also holding it)
- Randomly getting flagged by the cops for a crime when im literally just walking around with my weapon holstered
- Quest goals not registering/having to repeat certain actions
None of these are like a huge deal, sometimes it's even really funny, but dear god is it incredibly buggy.
- NPCs floating in space
- NPCs walking through solid objects
- NPCs randomly spawning in view
- I have a gun that wont fire if I use a scope on it
- I have another gun whose model disappears in car chases
- Some objects have meshes that duplicate (cigarette floating in space while the character is also holding it)
- Randomly getting flagged by the cops for a crime when im literally just walking around with my weapon holstered
- Quest goals not registering/having to repeat certain actions
None of these are like a huge deal, sometimes it's even really funny, but dear god is it incredibly buggy.
I'm having the same experience. I thoroughly enjoy the game, mostly because I'm a sucker for world building. The universe is fantastic, albeit a bit too pubescent and "edgy" at times. It also runs fine on my 1660 super. I don't really mind the "shallowness" of the gameplay mechanics. Horses for courses, I suppose.
But man, oh man, is it buggy. I've never been soft locked this many times in a game before. As a software developer, it's honestly a bit amusing to find the obvious cases where the individual sub systems trip each other up.
Primary offender is the scripted mission system vs. telephone. You get a phone call just as you enter a scripted cutscene? Two calls coming in simultaneously? You start a yellow dialogue while on the phone? Welp, time to reload.
But man, oh man, is it buggy. I've never been soft locked this many times in a game before. As a software developer, it's honestly a bit amusing to find the obvious cases where the individual sub systems trip each other up.
Primary offender is the scripted mission system vs. telephone. You get a phone call just as you enter a scripted cutscene? Two calls coming in simultaneously? You start a yellow dialogue while on the phone? Welp, time to reload.
I'm curious how this could be happening, like do we think there is some 'job subsystem' bug that just causes game-tasks (whether its loading an image, or processing a message, ...) just randomly gets dropped and not processed?
It sounds like such a systemic issue its not like a particular component (eg AI or rendering) is the issue.
It sounds like such a systemic issue its not like a particular component (eg AI or rendering) is the issue.
Just some guesses:
- I'm figuring floating NPCs and walking through solid surfaces might be from incorrect navmeshes. IE maybe they baked them, moved some stuff around, and forgot to rebake. Or forgot to mark some objects static, etc.
- Meshes disappearing.. not sure, thinking maybe theyre using some fixed size arrays to avoid reallocations but maybe theyre hitting a fixed size limit and things get evicted.
- Weird spawns. Guessing this might be something like a broken line of sight calculation. Maybe similar to the theorized navmesh thing -- occluders could be wrong too
- I'm figuring floating NPCs and walking through solid surfaces might be from incorrect navmeshes. IE maybe they baked them, moved some stuff around, and forgot to rebake. Or forgot to mark some objects static, etc.
- Meshes disappearing.. not sure, thinking maybe theyre using some fixed size arrays to avoid reallocations but maybe theyre hitting a fixed size limit and things get evicted.
- Weird spawns. Guessing this might be something like a broken line of sight calculation. Maybe similar to the theorized navmesh thing -- occluders could be wrong too
Seems to me they have a lot of "show this at that time" bugs - I relatively often see UI elements that shouldn't be there or active layered on top of each other as well.
Additionally to hands and props disappearing at random.
Additionally to hands and props disappearing at random.
> After 3 delays, we as the Management Board were too focused on releasing the game. We underestimated the scale and complexity of the issues, we ignored the signals about the need for additional time to refine the game on the base last-gen consoles. It was the wrong approach and against our business philosophy.
Management at game dev company ignores all team feedback about timeline and quality, instead promises an arbitrary release date and pushes to crunch to meet deadlines. What a shocker ;)
Management at game dev company ignores all team feedback about timeline and quality, instead promises an arbitrary release date and pushes to crunch to meet deadlines. What a shocker ;)
As someone who works as a leader of a tech team building a financial engine, from my personal experience. When teams are doing overtime it means some bad management happened somewhere. Either someone under-estimated the scope and was never adjusted / communicated, or someone couldn't keep promise of not changing things as a result the developers and final product suffer.
Software projects are very difficult to estimate. Especially when you are building 'one of a kind' products. How do you give an estimate of something you've never built. You may know how efficient your team is at building a past product but you do not know about the upcoming problems you will face when building something new.
After working on a project for sometime you have a better idea and give better estimates however pinning 'deadlines' on a 'one of a kind' product never works out.
This is just another one of those cases. They should have just released the PC version first, and the other consoles could have come later. It would have been a better release for everyone and a better product.
Having engineers work overtime also is generally quite bad. Engineers are humans they get tired, when they're tired they make more mistakes. I guess it shows very clearly in this game all the 'mistakes' the developers made.
How long did they spend making this game? And to rush it at the last minute to hit a 'deadline' and to have an outcome like this. Was it worth it?
Software projects are very difficult to estimate. Especially when you are building 'one of a kind' products. How do you give an estimate of something you've never built. You may know how efficient your team is at building a past product but you do not know about the upcoming problems you will face when building something new.
After working on a project for sometime you have a better idea and give better estimates however pinning 'deadlines' on a 'one of a kind' product never works out.
This is just another one of those cases. They should have just released the PC version first, and the other consoles could have come later. It would have been a better release for everyone and a better product.
Having engineers work overtime also is generally quite bad. Engineers are humans they get tired, when they're tired they make more mistakes. I guess it shows very clearly in this game all the 'mistakes' the developers made.
How long did they spend making this game? And to rush it at the last minute to hit a 'deadline' and to have an outcome like this. Was it worth it?
Let's not forget that games are actually just way more than software products. Sure, you need to write a lot of software, but you also need to figure out good gameplay, setting, mood of the game, design levels, create a shitton of art, have actors act in mocap etc. etc.
Games are most likely biggest and most complex "artistic" projects on earth (certainly they dwarf movie production). And doing artistic things is harder than typical software development for e.g. banks, where you have clearly stated requirements, whereas in games the requirement don't go beyond "it has to be cool and play great". Both of these can often only be verified in advanced stages of development, which leads to big delays where company heads realize that the game they've been developing for the past 4 years is indeed sucky and needs a huge revamp...
Games are most likely biggest and most complex "artistic" projects on earth (certainly they dwarf movie production). And doing artistic things is harder than typical software development for e.g. banks, where you have clearly stated requirements, whereas in games the requirement don't go beyond "it has to be cool and play great". Both of these can often only be verified in advanced stages of development, which leads to big delays where company heads realize that the game they've been developing for the past 4 years is indeed sucky and needs a huge revamp...
It seems like in the games industry they really want to advertise release dates or at least a release window for marketing purposes. Which results in the bad cruch periods, since you can only delay so much once you've stamped that date on it. This happens all the time, but this is an exceptionally bad example.
On the one hand, I wish companies wouldn't do this kind of crap, but on the other hand, the consumers need to be more responsible. This game has already made back the development costs, so all this backlash will probably amount to nothing. It's harsh to say, but gamers will seemingly believe anything the marketing machine tells them hook line and sinker.
On the one hand, I wish companies wouldn't do this kind of crap, but on the other hand, the consumers need to be more responsible. This game has already made back the development costs, so all this backlash will probably amount to nothing. It's harsh to say, but gamers will seemingly believe anything the marketing machine tells them hook line and sinker.
Exactly and this whole thing really solidifies the concept of never giving out specific deadlines unless you've basically completed the product and just doing minor touchups and even then you _still_ pad it by 2x.
The problem however is that execs want exact dates and meanwhile marketing is just hyping up the product which yields to crazy expectations from consumers and this forces the engineers to even more crunch and degrade the quality of the whole thing. Vicious cycle indeed.
The problem however is that execs want exact dates and meanwhile marketing is just hyping up the product which yields to crazy expectations from consumers and this forces the engineers to even more crunch and degrade the quality of the whole thing. Vicious cycle indeed.
Then there's the opposite problem too, where absent of any deadline, you get Duke Nukem Forever.
"we started with a score of 70, but now it’s 79. If you filter those who have played 10 hours or more, the score is 85 –so the more you play the more enjoyment you feel."
Lying with statistics 101. It's obviously impossible that people who didn't enjoy the game played less than 10 hours
Lying with statistics 101. It's obviously impossible that people who didn't enjoy the game played less than 10 hours
Came here to post this. The obvious conclusion is that you are at the very least filtering out people who stopped playing because of game breaking bugs.
did he actually lie?
he also stated that _overall_ score that includes everyone went from 70 to 79.
he also stated that _overall_ score that includes everyone went from 70 to 79.
CD Project forced their employees to crunch to get a game out, missed deadlines, and shipped a game that is buggy on some definition of last-gen hardware. Assuming all that is true: how is this news? This essentially describes every ambitious, genre defining game for the last 35 years. As someone who tearfully tried to play Doom on a 286, I have some sympathy but the level of outrage is hard for me to understand.
In my experience playing the game on a PS4 Pro (does that qualify as a last-gen console? Not sure), I have experienced no game breaking bugs or performance issues that warrant the level of criticism here. Instead I have been blown away by the level of detail and beauty of the world they created and I personally am over the moon with the fact the game that I had been eagerly awaiting exceeds my expectations for it.
Congrats CD Projekt, take a vacation, give some bonuses, let people upgrade their 5 year old hardware and chill out.
In my experience playing the game on a PS4 Pro (does that qualify as a last-gen console? Not sure), I have experienced no game breaking bugs or performance issues that warrant the level of criticism here. Instead I have been blown away by the level of detail and beauty of the world they created and I personally am over the moon with the fact the game that I had been eagerly awaiting exceeds my expectations for it.
Congrats CD Projekt, take a vacation, give some bonuses, let people upgrade their 5 year old hardware and chill out.
> This essentially describes every ambitious, genre defining game for the last 35 years.
This is news because the quoted statement is false. In fact, the opposite is true. Every genre defining game of the past 35 years has had a genre defining gold print. CP2077 is a dumpster fire. It will never be considered a great because of its launch.
This is news because the quoted statement is false. In fact, the opposite is true. Every genre defining game of the past 35 years has had a genre defining gold print. CP2077 is a dumpster fire. It will never be considered a great because of its launch.
I assume you’ve actually played the game on a console, and experienced game breaking bugs? Or maybe you subjectively consider the quality to not match your well thought out expectations previous to purchasing it? Can you please expand on your personal experiences with the game that led you to the dumpster fire conclusion?
I’m also curious about your statement that every genre defining game has had a genre defining gold print. Can you point to one or more similar games that launched flawlessly across all platforms, on time, without negative reviews?
I’m also curious about your statement that every genre defining game has had a genre defining gold print. Can you point to one or more similar games that launched flawlessly across all platforms, on time, without negative reviews?
I played 2 hours of cyberpunk on PC. I returned it when I saw just how buggy it was. I don’t have a documented list of bugs, because that’s not how I enjoy games. Documentation of 1.04 bugs are plenty of places. You can’t miss them. They get in the way of playing. The most annoying bugs are related to weapons and NPCs. CDPR’s known for their storytelling, but when the game makes the story difficult to consume, then it isn’t worth my money.
Flawlessly launched genre defining games:
- Quake (and its arena shooter successor: Halo)
- Assassin’s Creed
- Grand Theft Auto III
- Super Mario 64
- Your favorite fighting game
- Your favorite racing game
- Your favorite rhythm game
- Your favorite JRPG
- Deus Ex
Quake? Flawless?! I played that on a 486 25 that was rated as the minimum spec and it would barely load and crunched along at 6 FPS but I loved it and was happy to get it. I played Skyrim and fallout 3 on a MacBook and it was truly painful but again that doesn’t detract from the incredible work, artistry and effort that went into the game and that it carried the genre forward.
If you came to different conclusions chalk it up to subjective differences. I completely disagree that it’s a dumpster fire but I suspect we want different things out of cutting edge games or technology in general.
If you came to different conclusions chalk it up to subjective differences. I completely disagree that it’s a dumpster fire but I suspect we want different things out of cutting edge games or technology in general.
[deleted]
I'm going to skip telling about all the bugs I have run into, so I'll just get down to what I think happened here.
Two primary things:
One) They targeted consoles when they shouldn't have. Cyberpunk is a game that should have been pc only first, and then later ported to consoles. They had a hammer (the engine) and saw nails (consoles), but in the game dev world the largest sets of complications come from trying to support different environments. The same can be said often in the normal software world, trying to be cross compatible when sometimes thats the wrong thing to do. When you do the math, targeting consoles, and especially if you go for last gen, the beancounter numbers show the ROI increase over just pc or just pc and latest gen are very high... and then instead of the development resources that should have gone into the AI, customization, bug-squashing, etc, go into console work.
Two) They focused too much on building the individual quests instead of the emergent opportunities which abound. It seems like they spent too much time on hand crafting quest levels, especially the ones that involved Silverhand. Many quests have their own complete loaded levels you can't get to from the main game world. By doing so, they probably wasted tons of tester and dev hours on those individual levels instead of the open game world bugs and features.
I suspect also that quite a few features just got ripped out and replaced with placeholders while the bugs get worked out more. There is no way the AI they touted so long ago is really in this state, for example, so I suspect if you give it half a year, lots of expected features will suddenly start showing up in updates and the game will end up in a much better state.
All in all, I enjoy the game world, and it has moments where it really shines. It also has madness inducing and show stopping bugs that most normal players just won't put up with... (~100+ proc kills/game freezes to finish main story line on linux/proton).
Why do beancounters always ruin everything they touch? What should have been one of the best games ever released was one of the best releases to ever money.
Two years from now it will be primo, I'm sure. The question is will there be enough backlash to change anything? Given the amount of money they made and are still making, I doubt it. Different industry, same bullshit as everywhere else.
Two primary things:
One) They targeted consoles when they shouldn't have. Cyberpunk is a game that should have been pc only first, and then later ported to consoles. They had a hammer (the engine) and saw nails (consoles), but in the game dev world the largest sets of complications come from trying to support different environments. The same can be said often in the normal software world, trying to be cross compatible when sometimes thats the wrong thing to do. When you do the math, targeting consoles, and especially if you go for last gen, the beancounter numbers show the ROI increase over just pc or just pc and latest gen are very high... and then instead of the development resources that should have gone into the AI, customization, bug-squashing, etc, go into console work.
Two) They focused too much on building the individual quests instead of the emergent opportunities which abound. It seems like they spent too much time on hand crafting quest levels, especially the ones that involved Silverhand. Many quests have their own complete loaded levels you can't get to from the main game world. By doing so, they probably wasted tons of tester and dev hours on those individual levels instead of the open game world bugs and features.
I suspect also that quite a few features just got ripped out and replaced with placeholders while the bugs get worked out more. There is no way the AI they touted so long ago is really in this state, for example, so I suspect if you give it half a year, lots of expected features will suddenly start showing up in updates and the game will end up in a much better state.
All in all, I enjoy the game world, and it has moments where it really shines. It also has madness inducing and show stopping bugs that most normal players just won't put up with... (~100+ proc kills/game freezes to finish main story line on linux/proton).
Why do beancounters always ruin everything they touch? What should have been one of the best games ever released was one of the best releases to ever money.
Two years from now it will be primo, I'm sure. The question is will there be enough backlash to change anything? Given the amount of money they made and are still making, I doubt it. Different industry, same bullshit as everywhere else.
> Hi, this is Michał Nowakowski – the second question; would having more developers help deliver the game on old-gens? In terms of delivering the game at a certain point, it’s really not about the number of people; it’s not like throwing in – in the last month – 200 or so people would actually help. So, the answer is no; this is not related to the fact that we could have thrown 300 or 500 more people into the fray and things would have happened differently.
This is interesting info for someone like me that doesn't work in this field. It's something that I can understand intuitively, but it's nice to see that confirmed.
This is interesting info for someone like me that doesn't work in this field. It's something that I can understand intuitively, but it's nice to see that confirmed.
There is a maxim from the essay "The Mythical Man-Month" saying that adding people to a late software project makes it later.
It takes time for new people to become productive, communication becomes difficult and some tasks can't be "parallelized".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law
It takes time for new people to become productive, communication becomes difficult and some tasks can't be "parallelized".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law
That wasn’t really the analyst’s question though. He wondered given the size and complexity of the game, should more people have been on the project from the ground floor (not added in the last month once they weren’t going to clear the bug tracker), or was it a organizational/management issue that they couldn’t get something good from the talent they had?
You are correct. I think that Nowakowski misunderstood the question, and assumed it's mainly about the delays.
[deleted]
I've come up with what I think is reasonably relateble analogy.
If I want to build a 1000 brick wall and it takes a bricklayer 1 sec to lay a brick will getting 1000 brick layers allow me to build the wall in 1 sec?
If you analyse this analogy you see where you might be able to get some scale, such as pipeline and starting on different parts, but it highlights challenges there such as alignment and communication.
If I want to build a 1000 brick wall and it takes a bricklayer 1 sec to lay a brick will getting 1000 brick layers allow me to build the wall in 1 sec?
If you analyse this analogy you see where you might be able to get some scale, such as pipeline and starting on different parts, but it highlights challenges there such as alignment and communication.
Maybe the speedup is not linear, but thinking back to the hospital built in a few days in Wuhan, you can speed up building by employing lots of people.
A massive contributor to that would also be a lot of prefabrication. Which also fits well, if you can some how have much of construction standardised and ready to go. The brick was that what at a very granular level.
I think this can still relate to software in many ways as well.
I think this can still relate to software in many ways as well.
[deleted]
Yeah it confirms the sort of teachings of the mythical man month.
The old adage is that 9 women cannot make a baby in a month,
It looks like there are major issues besides the bugs on the last gen consoles and a lot of promised features/content were not delivered:
> no practical difference between life paths chosen
> AI system broken/unfinished
> length of the game + no replayabity factor
> linear playthrough
It has been suggested that the game was rewritten to accommodate the Keanu character.
From what I've gathered this game is a solid 7/10. It's interesting to see so many nine and ten out of ten reviews from the "professional" reveiewers and the reviews from the players. This is a trend that has been going on for some time now.
> no practical difference between life paths chosen
> AI system broken/unfinished
> length of the game + no replayabity factor
> linear playthrough
It has been suggested that the game was rewritten to accommodate the Keanu character.
From what I've gathered this game is a solid 7/10. It's interesting to see so many nine and ten out of ten reviews from the "professional" reveiewers and the reviews from the players. This is a trend that has been going on for some time now.
In the last couple of months friends have asked me "are you gonna get Cyberpunk?", and some seem taken aback by my answer when I say I'm gonna get it next year. Usually when I explain my reasoning (which I apply to almost all new game releases), people seem to understand:
a) There is no way of knowing if the game is gonna be good until real copies land in the hands of people who play games to have fun, instead of reviewers who are too worried about giving an honest review with the fear that they won't get future review copies or get sued.
b) Games generally get steep discounts a year or so after release. This is not universal, but if you avoid buying into the hype then you'll save yourself a considerable amount of money.
The only way to hold these companies accountable is to vote with your wallet, and so I always encourage people to reconsider pre-orders.
I'll be eagerly waiting to see if the game gets the love it deserves over the next year and if it turns out to be a flop, it'll just join long line of over-hyped AAA release flops.
a) There is no way of knowing if the game is gonna be good until real copies land in the hands of people who play games to have fun, instead of reviewers who are too worried about giving an honest review with the fear that they won't get future review copies or get sued.
b) Games generally get steep discounts a year or so after release. This is not universal, but if you avoid buying into the hype then you'll save yourself a considerable amount of money.
The only way to hold these companies accountable is to vote with your wallet, and so I always encourage people to reconsider pre-orders.
I'll be eagerly waiting to see if the game gets the love it deserves over the next year and if it turns out to be a flop, it'll just join long line of over-hyped AAA release flops.
Why is everyone just talking about last-gen consoles? My partner has been playing on the PS5 and it still crashes at least every hour. Sure, not every 10 min but nothing to gloss over either. This doesn’t even mention the texture glitches, clipping, unachievable quest glitches, animation bugs, etc
The next gen version isn't out yet, the PS5 is playing the PS4 version, so their complaints and yours are indeed for the same version.
Can’t believe I missed that, thanks
Most people still only have last-gen consoles, so that's where the majority is.
For those wondering what all the fuss is about, CD Projekt Red is the company that released a popular game called "Cyberpunk 2077" with critical deficits on PS4 and Xbox One platforms.
I've had the misfortune of interacting with some of the engineers at CD Projekt Red in the course of my job in the past. There is a serious competence issue. It's not surprising in the slightest bit that they have this many problems with their release. On top of that, those engineers were arrogant AF when I talked to them.
I'm genuinely curious, do you have more details?
Wish at least one game studio/publisher would come out and say "We are just like any other software company. We work 40 hour weeks and have a healthy work/life balance. We don't have crunch time".
As the industry grows ever larger, that has to be a good way of attracting talent.
As the industry grows ever larger, that has to be a good way of attracting talent.
It exists. The result is a slower-paced release process and "smaller" (as in, not absurd attempts at simulations of megacities) games, but instead forcing them to rely on story-telling and strong art. See SuperGiant games and their recent enormous success with Hades.
https://kotaku.com/the-secret-to-the-success-of-bastion-pyre...
https://kotaku.com/the-secret-to-the-success-of-bastion-pyre...
I play PC with a pretty good rig (RTX 2080S and i7-9700) and performance has been fine. I do struggle to hit 1440p60 at high settings in certain scenes (driving in populated areas etc.) but the game has been pretty bug-free for me at least. I had some bad crashes on D1 but after the 1.04 patch I had no problems at all besides a single isolated animation bug where a single character's glass would hover six inches to the side of her hand. Maybe this is just me?
I've been loving the game. I completed it and am starting my second playthrough. Honestly, my only complaint is that it's too _short_, and I think CDPR took comments about the Witcher 3's long length a little too much to heart. I would not have complained for a second if it was double the length or more.
I've been loving the game. I completed it and am starting my second playthrough. Honestly, my only complaint is that it's too _short_, and I think CDPR took comments about the Witcher 3's long length a little too much to heart. I would not have complained for a second if it was double the length or more.
I played it Day 1 and it runs reasonably well on my RTX 2080, nothing spectacular tho. I've had like 3 crashes in the 20 hours I've put in yet. I enjoy the game a lot, even with the bugs but what really let me down were the life paths.
I started a corpo character, got some fancy tech and a lot of cash 5 minutes in, then I ride a cool flying car around, I felt good and liked my choice. 10 minutes later I'm in a bar and 2 people come up to me that I have a meaningless dialogue with, they steal the tech and cash and from that point on I'm just a regular street kid?
It made no sense to me, I played on for an hour and then restarted as a street kid.
I started a corpo character, got some fancy tech and a lot of cash 5 minutes in, then I ride a cool flying car around, I felt good and liked my choice. 10 minutes later I'm in a bar and 2 people come up to me that I have a meaningless dialogue with, they steal the tech and cash and from that point on I'm just a regular street kid?
It made no sense to me, I played on for an hour and then restarted as a street kid.
[deleted]
Are there any videos of this "unplayable performance"?
All the PS4 videos I could find barely stuttered and seemed well above the threshold of playable
All the PS4 videos I could find barely stuttered and seemed well above the threshold of playable
Incumbent consoles hardware refresh cycle is so horribly long due to lack of competition, that it holds the whole industry back and damages progress.
I tried the game on Linux (Wine + vkd3d-proton). Thanks to CDPR for at least giving the game to Wine and Mesa developers in advance, even though they could make a native Linux release already due to all the Stadia work.
I tried the game on Linux (Wine + vkd3d-proton). Thanks to CDPR for at least giving the game to Wine and Mesa developers in advance, even though they could make a native Linux release already due to all the Stadia work.
No Mans Sky devs turned failure into a big win in a year or so after release. Miracles do happen, I hope CDPR can pull it off too.
I am running a last gen system (PC) and the game runs fine even with everything on max (except for ray-tracing which I don't think look that good but hits performance a lot).
I don't think CDPR should have released for old consoles, it's going to misrepresent the game no matter what, and just take extra effort.
I don't think CDPR should have released for old consoles, it's going to misrepresent the game no matter what, and just take extra effort.
They barely answers any questions. If the leadership team is not tracking the metrics they'd need to answer questions like "roughly how have last-gen console sales compared to expectations" or "are you seeing lots of refund requests", it's really no wonder they're in this situation.
I have experienced exactly one bug, namely every tree within view-distance being visible through walls at all times. It is possibly the single most immersion breaking bug I have experienced in a video game and every time I see it I cringe.
And, yet, twelve hours and counting.
And, yet, twelve hours and counting.
Update your video drivers. Known issue.
I was once to CD Projekt here in Warsaw, almost 20 years ago. I got a defective Baldur's Gate CD and got option to have it mailed or take it in person. As me and my friend wanted to play very badly we just went for a free HQ tour:)
They were very nice about it.
They were very nice about it.
Related from Wired/Cecilia D'Anastasio
https://www.wired.com/story/cyberpunk-2077-bugs-reviews-nda/
https://www.wired.com/story/cyberpunk-2077-bugs-reviews-nda/
[deleted]
That’s interesting: a lot of releases seem to sell up to 2-3x more in console than pc, but approx 60% of their sales are for pc. Is that because of Covid, or is it a trend?
Does anyone know what the timelines are for new DLC? Also, are Cyberpunk 2077 and the Witcher series the only games that CD Projekt has?
we do not have direct visibility of how this CD or digital download is being used by gamers and which machines they’re using – the newest consoles or older ones.
“ we do not have direct visibility of how this CD or digital download is being used by gamers and which machines they’re using – the newest consoles or older ones.”
Game wasn't ready for consoles, they just lied about it.
And it looks like even the PC game feels incomplete "It's all style but no substance.".
https://steamcommunity.com/id/outxider/recommended/1091500/
"Janky. If I can describe it with one word.
8 years of hype to launch what looks like an Early Access game.
It's glitchy, it's buggy, it doesn't run well unless you have an RTX card and DLSS enabled. And that's barely passable.
But those can eventually be fixed.
The core of the game, the massive open world, is incredibly superficial, with nothing to do in it. CDPR crafted a beautiful, detailed world, with braindead AI and overly simplistic gameplay.
There's no roleplaying involved like you would find in Deus Ex. There's no extracurricular activities that doesn't involve shooting a bunch of bad guys like you would find in Red Dead Redemption 2. You won't find tight gunplay like you would see in Destiny 2.
The AI completely lacks any sort of intelligence. Enemies rush you without the sense of self-preservation. Oftentimes standing there letting you blast them in the face. Cops spawn literally yards behind you without any chase, or any threat. Walk a block down and they completely forget you exist. No bounty on your head, no search and apprehend procedures. But stand next to them for 3 seconds and they'll shoot you on sight.
Really, there's not much to do except shoot things. Guns feel impactful enough, if you use revolvers or tech weapons, and melee combat is passable. You can go for a stealth or hacking approach, but those don't feel as good as just pulling the trigger on some thugs. Hacking is just pointing your reticle at someone, and then make a selection from the menu. And depending on what you chose, sparks just fly out of their head. That's it.
The story is engaging, yet forgettable. This is a cyberpunk setting, but it's in appearances only. There's all these talks about megacorporations taking over the world, but only one corporation takes center stage. There's no political intrigue, no conspiracy theory that actually turns out to be true, no investigation into a greater mystery. Keanu Reeves is literally taking your breath away and you go out to make sure that doesn't happen.
Your personal backstory is forgettable. It's literally 20 mins long, and your entire introduction to Night City is a montage. CDPR failed the show, don't tell aspect. They could've squeezed in a few good hours of character development and worldbuilding with the opening hours. Instead, you get taken straight into Night City, told to care about certain things, and want to have this lofty ideal of becoming a living legend for some unknown reason. You don't have a story to tell, there's a story being told to you.
The characters definitely carry the narrative, from Silverhand's personal vendetta, to Panam's sense of belonging, and Takemura's strong honor code.
Regardless, I did enjoy this game. But there's so many glaring flaws that becomes hard to ignore.
So it pains me to say, I do not recommend this game. The numerous technical issues make this equivalent to an Early Access title. But the gameplay loop, the promise of an immersive experience, a sandbox for you to get lost in are totally nonexistent. It's a beautiful world CDPR created, but it's just a glorified loading screen going from one mission marker to another.
It's all style but no substance."
"Janky. If I can describe it with one word.
8 years of hype to launch what looks like an Early Access game.
It's glitchy, it's buggy, it doesn't run well unless you have an RTX card and DLSS enabled. And that's barely passable.
But those can eventually be fixed.
The core of the game, the massive open world, is incredibly superficial, with nothing to do in it. CDPR crafted a beautiful, detailed world, with braindead AI and overly simplistic gameplay.
There's no roleplaying involved like you would find in Deus Ex. There's no extracurricular activities that doesn't involve shooting a bunch of bad guys like you would find in Red Dead Redemption 2. You won't find tight gunplay like you would see in Destiny 2.
The AI completely lacks any sort of intelligence. Enemies rush you without the sense of self-preservation. Oftentimes standing there letting you blast them in the face. Cops spawn literally yards behind you without any chase, or any threat. Walk a block down and they completely forget you exist. No bounty on your head, no search and apprehend procedures. But stand next to them for 3 seconds and they'll shoot you on sight.
Really, there's not much to do except shoot things. Guns feel impactful enough, if you use revolvers or tech weapons, and melee combat is passable. You can go for a stealth or hacking approach, but those don't feel as good as just pulling the trigger on some thugs. Hacking is just pointing your reticle at someone, and then make a selection from the menu. And depending on what you chose, sparks just fly out of their head. That's it.
The story is engaging, yet forgettable. This is a cyberpunk setting, but it's in appearances only. There's all these talks about megacorporations taking over the world, but only one corporation takes center stage. There's no political intrigue, no conspiracy theory that actually turns out to be true, no investigation into a greater mystery. Keanu Reeves is literally taking your breath away and you go out to make sure that doesn't happen.
Your personal backstory is forgettable. It's literally 20 mins long, and your entire introduction to Night City is a montage. CDPR failed the show, don't tell aspect. They could've squeezed in a few good hours of character development and worldbuilding with the opening hours. Instead, you get taken straight into Night City, told to care about certain things, and want to have this lofty ideal of becoming a living legend for some unknown reason. You don't have a story to tell, there's a story being told to you.
The characters definitely carry the narrative, from Silverhand's personal vendetta, to Panam's sense of belonging, and Takemura's strong honor code.
Regardless, I did enjoy this game. But there's so many glaring flaws that becomes hard to ignore.
So it pains me to say, I do not recommend this game. The numerous technical issues make this equivalent to an Early Access title. But the gameplay loop, the promise of an immersive experience, a sandbox for you to get lost in are totally nonexistent. It's a beautiful world CDPR created, but it's just a glorified loading screen going from one mission marker to another.
It's all style but no substance."
That review hits home for me. The game was ok. It can be beautiful at times, but everyone has done it already and did it better ( GTA, Fallout, Deus, Skyrim, Half-life ). For some reason, I decided to try out Stadia version and it was an acceptable experience for me.
But the part about the immersion breaking over ridiculously bad AI, shallow world... Yeah.
I read the transcript and based on what I saw, there is no way there is not a CYA email saying something along the lines of 'it is not ready. if you release it, it will bomb'. I wonder whether board members will be removed.
edit: Well, now I am annoyed. I can't mow down children in car ..sigh
But the part about the immersion breaking over ridiculously bad AI, shallow world... Yeah.
I read the transcript and based on what I saw, there is no way there is not a CYA email saying something along the lines of 'it is not ready. if you release it, it will bomb'. I wonder whether board members will be removed.
edit: Well, now I am annoyed. I can't mow down children in car ..sigh
> It's glitchy, it's buggy, it doesn't run well unless you have an RTX card and DLSS enabled. And that's barely passable.
I haven't found this to be true. it took a bit of playing around with the settings, but with dynamic fidelityFX, I am getting great image quality on my 1080 ti at 4K, sitting right around 50 fps.
I haven't found this to be true. it took a bit of playing around with the settings, but with dynamic fidelityFX, I am getting great image quality on my 1080 ti at 4K, sitting right around 50 fps.
> The core of the game, the massive open world
Maybe it's just me, but I definitely wouldn't consider this the core of the game. For me the core is the single player story ("main quest" I guess). Maybe this is because I have played every CDPR game and The Witcher 3 is the only one so far with an open world and, and even there it was clear that the main story line was the crown jewel.
Maybe it's just me, but I definitely wouldn't consider this the core of the game. For me the core is the single player story ("main quest" I guess). Maybe this is because I have played every CDPR game and The Witcher 3 is the only one so far with an open world and, and even there it was clear that the main story line was the crown jewel.
I think you're ok feeling that, especially with your CDPR experiences. But a lot of the promotional material heavily emphasizes 'night city' and the whole worldbuilding aspect. They even coin it as 'the next generation of open world adventure' at the end of this trailer. I think the promotional material definitely focused more on the setting rather than the characters and their stories.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO8lX3hDU30
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO8lX3hDU30
Cyberpunk 2077 review: dad rock, not new wave - Polygon
https://www.polygon.com/reviews/22158019/cyberpunk-2077-revi...
https://www.polygon.com/reviews/22158019/cyberpunk-2077-revi...
mattmanser(2)
The major underappreciated factor for this release is the impact of COVID lockdowns - particularly enforced WFH - on the final development of this title.
For me this is the single factor which has lead to so many of the problems inherent in the game. You cannot just pickup a multi-hundred person digital interactive art project (ie. a video game) and shift it online overnight.
Still, I think CDPR were right to release the game. Its good enough, content is complete, and they need to have the product on shelves before Christmas and before people lose interest in last-gen consoles.
Having the product out there will motivate its staff - still stuck at home in Lockdown Poland - to work on the very public bugs.
Its also interesting that Poland seems to have had basically the same COVID case and death profile as Ukraine, despite Ukraine having a significantly less strict lockdown (bars, restaurants, workplaces never shut this Autumn or Winter).
For me this is the single factor which has lead to so many of the problems inherent in the game. You cannot just pickup a multi-hundred person digital interactive art project (ie. a video game) and shift it online overnight.
Still, I think CDPR were right to release the game. Its good enough, content is complete, and they need to have the product on shelves before Christmas and before people lose interest in last-gen consoles.
Having the product out there will motivate its staff - still stuck at home in Lockdown Poland - to work on the very public bugs.
Its also interesting that Poland seems to have had basically the same COVID case and death profile as Ukraine, despite Ukraine having a significantly less strict lockdown (bars, restaurants, workplaces never shut this Autumn or Winter).
There is a theory that development was restarted several times, most notably in 2018 to incorporate Keanu into the main story. It seems like they couldn't stick to a singular vision and shifted goals too many times.
I hope we get a sequel to Schreier's Anthem article for this game [he now works for Bloomberg]. Many repeating patterns.
https://kotaku.com/how-biowares-anthem-went-wrong-1833731964
https://kotaku.com/how-biowares-anthem-went-wrong-1833731964
I really don't understand why they have Keanu in this. I mean the _character_ he plays is fine, and Keanu's performance is fine, I just don't understand the appeal/necessity of getting the likeness of a real world actor in a digital game. I imagine it also must have cost a fortune..
It doesn't detract from the game or anything, but it just seems like an odd way to spend a limited development budget.
It doesn't detract from the game or anything, but it just seems like an odd way to spend a limited development budget.
I think the hype speaks for itself, doesn't it? You want people to talk about your product, and having an A-list celebrity involved does just that. If you then categorize the extra expense under "marketing", I'd say it's not a bad ROI compared to other, incredibly expensive, marketing efforts.
For the same reason why Hollywood producers pay $10m for a Brad Pitt, where they could get some rando who looks and acts just as good for $100k - Brad is marketing device, the movie will get much more publicity because of him, and people will go see the movie just because of him. Same for Keanu here.
I'm curious if that's actually true though. A lot of recent huge hits in TV at least were made up of casts of either relative unknowns or people that didn't have huge star power anymore. "Stranger Things", as one example. Mad Men and Breaking Bad created a lot of stars, but they weren't famous to start with. The Walking Dead was the most popular show on TV for a long time and I can't really recall an A-lister.
Even a lot of much older shows didn't need star power. Think about something like Star Trek TNG. The most famous person on that cast when it started was Will Wheaton. Obviously Patrick Stewart became huge but he was a total unknown prior.
Even a lot of much older shows didn't need star power. Think about something like Star Trek TNG. The most famous person on that cast when it started was Will Wheaton. Obviously Patrick Stewart became huge but he was a total unknown prior.
Which I never understood: how is an actor supposed to suddenly carry the whole game? I mean, he's got those cool movies(where he plays the same guy over and over again), but he's no Jesus to be worshiped like that.
His impact on the game is probably similar to that of a celebrity in an ad: the celebrity isn't cast because of their acting/posing ability, they're just very likeable, recognizable people that you want to associate your product with. The electric reception he received at the game announcement show and the reddit memes he has generated seem to prove this. No one was under any illusions that Keanu was going to elevate the story, they just really love Keanu.
He's also, bluntly, not a very good actor
He's a great person. His acting range is limited, but within that range, he's good at what he does. Whether that makes him a suitable actor for a computer game is debatable, but on the other hand, he's also a beloved actor, so it's probably good PR.
I have no problem with them including Keanu in the game. I do have a problem with crunch and releasing a very buggy game.
I have no problem with them including Keanu in the game. I do have a problem with crunch and releasing a very buggy game.
I take Tom Hanks or Bill Murray over Keanu any time, but he's extremely dedicated. The amount of work he put into gun and martial arts training...Maybe that's part of being a good actor, after all.
His lines in this game... Sometimes I'm really just cringing at how demotivated/drunk/high they either want him to sound or he sounds by default.
some actors are just pretty faces. Orlando Bloom also springs to mind.
You make it sound like having a leading role in a game is the highest honor in the land one can bestow upon an individual.
Or Maradona
Yeah. It's pretty obvious. It's quite interesting how more games end up like that. Final fantasy 15 was restarted twice as well. And it ended up having potential but alas it was unfinished.
I still have no idea why all these big game developers are releasing new titles and still supporting last gen hardware. You would think games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Halo Infinite would be launch titles that would entice people to buy new consoles.
Cyberpunk 2077 is ~2 years delayed and was marketed heavily as the pinnacle of what the last generation of consoles could do, to the extent that they released a limited edition Xbox One X bundle for the game [0]. They couldn't exactly do that and then not sell it on that console, could they?
[0] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/xbox-one-x-1tb-console-cyb...
[0] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/xbox-one-x-1tb-console-cyb...
This wasn't originally meant to be only for the next-gen consoles. It was advertised as being for the current gen with improvements for the next-gen consoles once released.
On the other hand, there are still games being released now that work and look perfectly fine on PS4. Spider-Man looks and plays great on my base PS4 non-Pro. Miles Morales had some crashes and bugs but those were patched within two weeks and now that game works smoothly and looks beautiful on my older PS4.
You could argue that it's a first-party game and it gets better attention due to that.
I understand Cyberpunk 2077 won't look nearly as good on my PS4 compared to PC's or PS5's, but there's no reason it should have PS2-era graphics/pop-in...
On the other hand, there are still games being released now that work and look perfectly fine on PS4. Spider-Man looks and plays great on my base PS4 non-Pro. Miles Morales had some crashes and bugs but those were patched within two weeks and now that game works smoothly and looks beautiful on my older PS4.
You could argue that it's a first-party game and it gets better attention due to that.
I understand Cyberpunk 2077 won't look nearly as good on my PS4 compared to PC's or PS5's, but there's no reason it should have PS2-era graphics/pop-in...
This game was clearly overmarketed early on. Everyone at CDPR was evidently far too optimistic about what could be achieved in a few years on last gen console hardware and how fast they could churn out content vs optimize the core gameplay. The end result is an unfinished mess on anything other than great pc hardware or stadia with a great network connection.
Two problems with that. A) New consoles are pretty tightly supply-limited on release, so people won't buy the game until they know they can pick up the console. You've totally killed the preorder market.
B) You risk losing even more game sales towards the end of the console lifecycle, as soon as rumors start flying around about new hardware about to hit the market.
B) You risk losing even more game sales towards the end of the console lifecycle, as soon as rumors start flying around about new hardware about to hit the market.
You really have no idea? The number of people on previous gen consoles dwarfs the people on new console, especially in a world where new consoles can't even nearly keep up with demand.
But wouldn't this be true for every console generation? I'm used to seeing launch titles drive new hardware sales.
This is true for some games that basically has "drive console sales" as part of the mission statement. In those cases, the game studios are getting economic incentives from the console company to focus on next-gen, even if the market share is smaller. In other cases the studios themselves are controlled by the same company that sells the consoles. See Gears of War, Halo etc.
If the mission is simply "sell as many copies as possible", it will always make sense to not ignore the largest market share. This is why CP2077 is not having proper next-gen features, but is rather running the same (poorly optimized) last-gen build on both systems. Ironic as it sounds, it seems like the focus was to provide a serviceable experience for last-gen gamers first and foremost.
They clearly failed on that front. So now they have a poorly running game on last-gen, and a gimped one on next-gen.
Sorry, I'm rambling.
If the mission is simply "sell as many copies as possible", it will always make sense to not ignore the largest market share. This is why CP2077 is not having proper next-gen features, but is rather running the same (poorly optimized) last-gen build on both systems. Ironic as it sounds, it seems like the focus was to provide a serviceable experience for last-gen gamers first and foremost.
They clearly failed on that front. So now they have a poorly running game on last-gen, and a gimped one on next-gen.
Sorry, I'm rambling.
The latest console generation is literally a couple of weeks old. At this point in the lifecycle yes it's absolutely true of every generation.
I imagine one very real reason right now is that most people cannot buy the new consoles right now, or at least don't want to play the in-stock game to try to snag one when they drop and are available for 5 minutes at retailers.
So lots of people who have the last gen hardware see that the new consoles are constantly out of stock, and decide that they are 'good enough' for now until you can actually just order a new console w/o hassle. That may not be till well into the new year.
So lots of people who have the last gen hardware see that the new consoles are constantly out of stock, and decide that they are 'good enough' for now until you can actually just order a new console w/o hassle. That may not be till well into the new year.
The launch date for this game got pushed back multiple times. It was originally targeted for the then current gen consoles, and had many pre-orders on those consoles.
Market reach, the new consoles have just released and are very hard to get.
Big AAA need plenty of market reach to be profitable unless they have some exclusivity deal.
Big AAA need plenty of market reach to be profitable unless they have some exclusivity deal.
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There are only a few million of each new console sold. Even if you somehow managed to sell to 75% of the owners, that’s not many people.
Wiki says Cyberpunk started development in 2016. Wiki also says hardware design for Xbox Series X started in 2018.
Wouldn't Cyberpunk team have been developing the game for 2 years before rumors even surfaced about the development of a next gen console?
The time lines don't seem like they line up to only building it for a next gen console that didn't have hardware architecture planned out yet.
Wouldn't Cyberpunk team have been developing the game for 2 years before rumors even surfaced about the development of a next gen console?
The time lines don't seem like they line up to only building it for a next gen console that didn't have hardware architecture planned out yet.
FTA:
> We have an internal QA department and we’re working with external companies as well. One thing that perhaps didn’t help us is COVID: internal testers are able to test the game working from home because we provide them with our own connected machines and so on, but external testers working for external companies were not able to test the game from homes –they have test centers and if they’re not there, they’re not able to work. So, we have seen a decrease in the number of testers, but I wouldn’t point to it as a major source of problems.
> We have an internal QA department and we’re working with external companies as well. One thing that perhaps didn’t help us is COVID: internal testers are able to test the game working from home because we provide them with our own connected machines and so on, but external testers working for external companies were not able to test the game from homes –they have test centers and if they’re not there, they’re not able to work. So, we have seen a decrease in the number of testers, but I wouldn’t point to it as a major source of problems.
With how badly this game turned out, I can only guess that lack of testers and bug reports was last on the priority list of problems.
> For me this is the single factor which has lead to so many of the problems inherent in the game.
This is absolutely not the case. The game was in dire straights long before Covid. (When did Poland lockdown?)
It's not clear to me that you can make the claim you made without providing some additional evidence as everything I've read about the project suggests that it has been in development for 8+ years, and has had a real rough go of things.
This is absolutely not the case. The game was in dire straights long before Covid. (When did Poland lockdown?)
It's not clear to me that you can make the claim you made without providing some additional evidence as everything I've read about the project suggests that it has been in development for 8+ years, and has had a real rough go of things.
There are game companies where salaries are not paid until a release is delivered.
Not really. You might have a big bonus tied up in a release, but unless you're a self-funded indie dev (typically with single digit employees), you have to pay your staff.
People aren't that desparate to work on games.
People aren't that desparate to work on games.
No there aren't.
Yes there are, in Europe. e.g.: Crytek.
https://www.polygon.com/2016/12/10/13908156/crytek-employees...
A much better situation than CD Projekt, which is also a European company (from Poland).
https://www.polygon.com/2016/12/10/13908156/crytek-employees...
A much better situation than CD Projekt, which is also a European company (from Poland).
that's the sort of claim that really needs to be substantiated with any sort of evidence whatsoever.
Is this even legal? I guess it depends on the country but doesn't sound legal at all where I live.
The most common form of theft is wage theft. It is very common around the world.
Contractors especially get ripped off all the time.
"Hey, that tile is slightly off, I am not paying for any of this".
Contractors especially get ripped off all the time.
"Hey, that tile is slightly off, I am not paying for any of this".
In my experience, it's usually the contractors that are the ones stealing.
So, what sales-related project management questions for the CD Projekt Management Board does this answer for the HN crowd?
Are people upset that this AAA game that is trying do everything on all devices for a huge audience doesn't perform well on the last-gen consoles on it's initial rollout?
Are people upset that this AAA game that is trying do everything on all devices for a huge audience doesn't perform well on the last-gen consoles on it's initial rollout?
Last-gen consoles? If it wasn't for the most recent delay of release date, Cyberpunk 2077 would've been released before PS5 and the new Xbox were even available for purchase. You're acting like people are trying to play this game on an NES.
If the game ain't gonna work on a certain console, don't sell it for that console. Plain and simple. Or if you're going to release it anyway, at least let gaming critics review it and let the public make an informed decision, which CDPR deliberately didn't do.
I'm baffled as to why so many people are defending this incredibly shady business practice by CDPR.
If the game ain't gonna work on a certain console, don't sell it for that console. Plain and simple. Or if you're going to release it anyway, at least let gaming critics review it and let the public make an informed decision, which CDPR deliberately didn't do.
I'm baffled as to why so many people are defending this incredibly shady business practice by CDPR.
The complaints aren't about CP77 performance on Xbox Series X or PS5. They're about it's performance on non-X Xbox One and non-Pro PS4s. Which aren't just last-gen consoles, they're the lowest tier of last gen consoles. I don't think CDPR should have released the games on those platforms if they don't have their performance scaling right. I'm not defending their actions, but I think most people just have their expectations out of whack.
CP77 is the first AAA game released in a long time that was built for PC first and ported to consoles, instead of the other way around. Instead of PCs getting crappy ports hard-limited to 60fps no matter how much GPU you throw at it, and crappy control schemes, the dregs of last-gen consoles got really poor performance and visuals compared to people on PS4 Pros, Xbox One X, and the latest 2020 gen consoles. It's not acceptable, but it's also hard to imagine how you could have made people happy when they're that far underpowered from a hardware department for a game like CP77.
CP77 is the first AAA game released in a long time that was built for PC first and ported to consoles, instead of the other way around. Instead of PCs getting crappy ports hard-limited to 60fps no matter how much GPU you throw at it, and crappy control schemes, the dregs of last-gen consoles got really poor performance and visuals compared to people on PS4 Pros, Xbox One X, and the latest 2020 gen consoles. It's not acceptable, but it's also hard to imagine how you could have made people happy when they're that far underpowered from a hardware department for a game like CP77.
Thats funny because I felt like it was a port because of the horrible control scheme. You cant move slower, so you have to tap keys to move slowly, but tapping keys does dashes, exactly the opposite what you would want. Dig around some conf files to fix it. Crouch button is c, but it doesnt work during dialogue, even if you rebind the dialogue skip button that is also c by default.
Its like nobody playtested it at all on PC
Its like nobody playtested it at all on PC
I feel like your PC port complaints are about 5 to 10 years out of date. I can't think of a AAA game I've played on PC in the last 5 years that was locked to 60fps and had crappy controls—All the big AAA ports like Tomb Raider and Assassin's Creed have all been fine recently.
And yeah, the PS4 and Xbox One are long in the tooth, but there are plenty of games that look absolutely stellar on them. I'm going to only give some PS4 examples here, since that is the one I have, but Horizon Zero Dawn, Ghost of Tsushima, Spiderman, and The Last of Us Part 2 all came out recently and look _really_ good even on a 7 year old console. And 3 of those are open world.
It's definitely possible to make a base PS4/Xbox one game that looks really good, and I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility for CDPR to have taken those consoles into account from the beginning. If so, they might have had a chance of them being fine on day one. I just hope people on a PS4/Xbox One that bought the game will eventually get a patch that make it run reasonably, since apparently refunds aren't really happening.
And yeah, the PS4 and Xbox One are long in the tooth, but there are plenty of games that look absolutely stellar on them. I'm going to only give some PS4 examples here, since that is the one I have, but Horizon Zero Dawn, Ghost of Tsushima, Spiderman, and The Last of Us Part 2 all came out recently and look _really_ good even on a 7 year old console. And 3 of those are open world.
It's definitely possible to make a base PS4/Xbox one game that looks really good, and I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility for CDPR to have taken those consoles into account from the beginning. If so, they might have had a chance of them being fine on day one. I just hope people on a PS4/Xbox One that bought the game will eventually get a patch that make it run reasonably, since apparently refunds aren't really happening.
This is also on the console makers. They brought PC fragmentation to the consoles by making different versions of the same console over the decade.
To make it worse, they will not let a publisher publish just to PS4 Pro or Xbox One X. Your game has to work on all versions of the console.
It's beyond idiotic and I'm surprised it took so long for the consequences to be visible.
I'm glad Sony at least seems to have backed away from fragmenting their own platform in this generation.
CDPR should have done their due diligence, obviously, but the platform owners have done them no favors by adding another dimension to the testing matrix.
To make it worse, they will not let a publisher publish just to PS4 Pro or Xbox One X. Your game has to work on all versions of the console.
It's beyond idiotic and I'm surprised it took so long for the consequences to be visible.
I'm glad Sony at least seems to have backed away from fragmenting their own platform in this generation.
CDPR should have done their due diligence, obviously, but the platform owners have done them no favors by adding another dimension to the testing matrix.
The developers essentially transformed the game from a current gen to a next gen title between 2018 and 2020.
Compare the 2018 version to the release: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ogihi-OewPQ
They probably should've just come out and said they're not releasing the game for the last gen after all, and people would have been somewhat more understanding.
Compare the 2018 version to the release: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ogihi-OewPQ
They probably should've just come out and said they're not releasing the game for the last gen after all, and people would have been somewhat more understanding.
I'm using their own terminology.
Oh, come on. This level of transparency is really fascinating. What other gaming companies, or tech companies for that matter, do you remember going into the details of a bad launch this soon after it happened. Or really even much later.
Square Enix with FFXIV 1.0
They took full responsibility. Suspended the subscripton for months. People who subbed for at least 3 months before the shutdown got permanent discounted subscription in the new version. They changed the whole upper management of the division responsible of the game. And much more.
Honestly there are 2 games that had a remarkable turn around from a total disaster launch: FFXIV 1.0 and No Man's Sky. Not sure Cyberpunk can do it too.
They took full responsibility. Suspended the subscripton for months. People who subbed for at least 3 months before the shutdown got permanent discounted subscription in the new version. They changed the whole upper management of the division responsible of the game. And much more.
Honestly there are 2 games that had a remarkable turn around from a total disaster launch: FFXIV 1.0 and No Man's Sky. Not sure Cyberpunk can do it too.
It doesn't seem like they address the main issues, like AI. I doubt you can treat the absence of major attributes of an open-world game, like car chases, as a bug. They're cleverly focusing on minor glitches and bugs in their talk.
They explicitly addressed the AI point:
So, for the first question – whether we’re focusing just on technicalities or gameplay elements; things like AI – for example. To be honest – these are the same for us, from the production standpoint AI and NPC behavior fall within the general category of bugs, so if I can give you an answer – I think it does actually include that as well.
So, for the first question – whether we’re focusing just on technicalities or gameplay elements; things like AI – for example. To be honest – these are the same for us, from the production standpoint AI and NPC behavior fall within the general category of bugs, so if I can give you an answer – I think it does actually include that as well.
But there's a big difference between bugs in AI and no driving or pursuit AI at all. That's why people aren't satisfied with their statement, they're trying to blur the line between bug and non-existent feature.
[deleted]
Various AAA titles released over the last 4 years look better, perform better, and have better AI
Alternatively they could have reskinned the Witcher and people would have been content
This game will be good in 2021 when released again on the new generation of consoles
Alternatively they could have reskinned the Witcher and people would have been content
This game will be good in 2021 when released again on the new generation of consoles
"CDPR leaders would hand out tokens every month to staffers who went above and beyond, and those tokens were supposed to be transferrable into bonuses if the game met “certain criteria, like critical acclaim and a timely release,” according to the report." [1]
Get paid in "crunch mode experience points" handed out by middle managers, who can apparently change the terms of this so-called bonus any time they want? Awful.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/11/22170655/cyberpunk-2077-...