Cyberpunk Catch-All

Further upthread we briefly discussed the Cyberpunk multiplayer.

But the latest report from Kotaku suggests CD Project Red's plans for Cyberpunk multiplayer have become a little murky.

Two things that stood out to me were:

- That the planned multiplayer was actually to be a standalone product, rather than a mode for the current game. I did not realise this.
- That they might not release a Cyberpunk-themed multiplayer game in the near future.

New hot fix just out with a bunch of quest bug fixes and some minor quality of life stuff.

In case anyone was worried about CD Projekt Red

Cyberpunk 2077 refunds barely dented CD Projekt Red’s bottom line

Today, with the release of the CDPR's Consolidated Financial Statement for the 2020 fiscal year (which ended December 31), we know how much that refund program cost the company last year and how much CDPR expects those refunds and lost sales to cost in 2021. All told, it seems the impact will be very low to an otherwise record-setting financial year.
farley3k wrote:

In case anyone was worried about CD Projekt Red

Cyberpunk 2077 refunds barely dented CD Projekt Red’s bottom line

Today, with the release of the CDPR's Consolidated Financial Statement for the 2020 fiscal year (which ended December 31), we know how much that refund program cost the company last year and how much CDPR expects those refunds and lost sales to cost in 2021. All told, it seems the impact will be very low to an otherwise record-setting financial year.

Can't say that's surprising.... our role as paying beta-testers for game releases moves even closer!

I would be curious to know how much money CDPR could have made if the game hadn't been delisted from Sony.

Arguably the real damage won't be seen until pre-orders are available for their next game. But, I mean, that's five plus years away minimum, so the current crop of execs likely don't care. And I suppose they could salvage things by aggressively patching CP2077. I just wish they'd baked it for another year, to be honest.

Who am I kidding, people will pre-order the next game anyway. There will be moaning on forums and whatever social media we have in 2027, but millions of people will still pre-order.

Just skimmed that article, but I've read others that indicate those numbers are only through CDPR's own refund program. I'd be more interested in seeing the numbers of refunds that Sony and Microsoft had on their platforms. I mean, for Sony to stop selling it on the Playstation store it would have to have been a significant number.

Mr E.B. Slugworth wrote:

Just skimmed that article, but I've read others that indicate those numbers are only through CDPR's own refund program. I'd be more interested in seeing the numbers of refunds that Sony and Microsoft had on their platforms. I mean, for Sony to stop selling it on the Playstation store it would have to have been a significant number.

Yeah, based on the money they've allocated to handle liabilities, it looks as though the real number of returns was at least 20 times greater than the 30k number that's being spread around.

farley3k wrote:

In case anyone was worried about CD Projekt Red

Cyberpunk 2077 refunds barely dented CD Projekt Red’s bottom line

Yes, but the stock price certainly got shafted. I (thankfully) sold my CDPR stock the week before launch, at it's peak, and now it's trading at a third of that price.

Happy Dave wrote:

Arguably the real damage won't be seen until pre-orders are available for their next game. But, I mean, that's five plus years away minimum, so the current crop of execs likely don't care. And I suppose they could salvage things by aggressively patching CP2077. I just wish they'd baked it for another year, to be honest.

Who am I kidding, people will pre-order the next game anyway. There will be moaning on forums and whatever social media we have in 2027, but millions of people will still pre-order.

Indeed. We gamers have very short memories.

The next time I'm about to buy a game sight unseen, I'd like a warning notice to pop up before I enter my credit card details. It just needs to say "Remember Cyberpunk?". Or better still, "Star Citizen".

In 2027 you'll still be able to pre-order Star Citizen

TW3 was kinda buggy when it shipped, but they worked and worked and worked on it, until it ended up in pretty good shape. So I expecting CP2077 to be kind of rough when it first shipped, figuring it would have lots of semi-functional quests and stuff.

On the PC, it's actually quite close to what I expected in terms of quality. It runs well for me, and has never really given me any problems. I was expecting lots of patches, and that's what I've gotten so far, but just like TW3, the early bugs didn't bite me very hard. The only real issue is that I ran everywhere because I couldn't navigate traffic.

What I was not expecting is that I don't actually like the game. I'm only at about ten hours in, maybe, but I just got bored and stopped. I didn't care very much about the protagonist or her problems, didn't especially like Silverhand, and was only moderately pleased with the NPCs. I didn't really like the combat system, either. So it's been sitting there, waiting, and I haven't touched it in ages. I mean, the graphics are spectacular, but that's kinda all. I have no urge to pick it back up.

That's the reason why I probably won't pre-order their next game. On a technical basis, I'm okay with what I got, but on a game basis, I'm really not.

Yeah, it's a mix of a lot of interesting things that struggles to cohere in any way. There are some truly baffling design decisions that take away from the game world.

They simply made the world too big. A more focused, Yakuza-sized city would've probably made for a better game and overall story. It probably would've made for a better open world too. Without a reputation system and with large parts of the game feeling unfinished and empty outside of buildings, there's little reason to explore most of the time. Sure, there's lots more of the "kill enemy, get reward" 'missions' and a ton of text on the gigs that pop up, but they all play out the same. Main story and side quests are where it's at. The rest is for grinding, more or less.

I've uninstalled and reinstalled numerous times now, but atm I'm still playing the game and focusing on finishing up side quests. The writing continues to be top notch, even if I can't stand V as a character and the stories they're telling mostly fail on any level other than being depressing or edgy. A little more light at the end of a mission couldn't hurt to help soften the depressive edge.

Moggy wrote:

In 2077 you'll still be able to pre-order Star Citizen

Fixed that for ya

garion333 wrote:

Yeah, it's a mix of a lot of interesting things that struggles to cohere in any way. There are some truly baffling design decisions that take away from the game world.

They simply made the world too big. A more focused, Yakuza-sized city would've probably made for a better game and overall story. It probably would've made for a better open world too. Without a reputation system and with large parts of the game feeling unfinished and empty outside of buildings, there's little reason to explore most of the time. Sure, there's lots more of the "kill enemy, get reward" 'missions' and a ton of text on the gigs that pop up, but they all play out the same. Main story and side quests are where it's at. The rest is for grinding, more or less.

I don't know that the play area was too big. Perhaps my memory is playing tricks on me, but I remember Liberty City in GTA IV being similarly sized. But I agree that it was largely devoid of interesting places to visit.

On your point about the "kill enemy, get reward" missions, the game I'm reminded of most in this regard is 'Ghost of Tsushima'. By the end, that game felt similarly one note. Go to an encampment. Murder everyone there. Pick up a side quest. Go to a location and murder everyone there. Come across a small band of Mongols. Murder everyone there.

Of course, I understand that avenging and revenging is precisely what the story is about, but I think players still need to be given changes of activity and changes of pace.

I never felt that Sucker Punch made best use of the World they created. And I never felt that they were able to disguise the amount of repetition in the game.

I continue to plunk away at this game. Only a couple hours a week. After every patch I immediately see a horribly mangled animation or bug pop up within 5 minutes of loading the game.

I played last night for the first time in about 3 weeks, and immediately saw someone "leaning" against a window frame in the middle of busy traffic. Cool.

Also, a car exploded as it drove by.

TW3 on PS4 I only really recall one side quest breaking bug in Heart of Stone. And it wasn't worth restarting the entire quest line from an old save to get some piece of armor I didn't want. Other than that I don't really remember anything, not even goofy animation bugs in TW3.

Cyberpunk on PC took almost no time to see goofiness on animations and scripting. And just a general unpolished feel compared to TW3.

garion333 wrote:

Yeah, it's a mix of a lot of interesting things that struggles to cohere in any way. There are some truly baffling design decisions that take away from the game world.

They simply made the world too big. A more focused, Yakuza-sized city would've probably made for a better game and overall story. It probably would've made for a better open world too. Without a reputation system and with large parts of the game feeling unfinished and empty outside of buildings, there's little reason to explore most of the time. Sure, there's lots more of the "kill enemy, get reward" 'missions' and a ton of text on the gigs that pop up, but they all play out the same. Main story and side quests are where it's at. The rest is for grinding, more or less.

I felt they must have fired their writers. I never found a quest - outside the main story - that was nearly as interesting as the Jenny of the Woods quest in W3.
There was also no real advantage/point in trying different things. In W3 I tried the Jenny quest three times picking the different options because I didn't like how the quest ended. I don't recall any quest in Cyberpunk where I felt that way. Almost all of them ended with everyone dead and me walking to a "sell here box" with 50 guns to hock.

farley3k wrote:
garion333 wrote:

Yeah, it's a mix of a lot of interesting things that struggles to cohere in any way. There are some truly baffling design decisions that take away from the game world.

They simply made the world too big. A more focused, Yakuza-sized city would've probably made for a better game and overall story. It probably would've made for a better open world too. Without a reputation system and with large parts of the game feeling unfinished and empty outside of buildings, there's little reason to explore most of the time. Sure, there's lots more of the "kill enemy, get reward" 'missions' and a ton of text on the gigs that pop up, but they all play out the same. Main story and side quests are where it's at. The rest is for grinding, more or less.

I felt they must have fired their writers. I never found a quest - outside the main story - that was nearly as interesting as the Jenny of the Woods quest in W3.
There was also no real advantage/point in trying different things. In W3 I tried the Jenny quest three times picking the different options because I didn't like how the quest ended. I don't recall any quest in Cyberpunk where I felt that way. Almost all of them ended with everyone dead and me walking to a "sell here box" with 50 guns to hock.

Tis true. All the quests pretty much end without any real choice. Here we all imagined a CDPR cyberpunk RPG with choices and consequence, but in the end we got an action adventure game trying to be the next GTA in all its edgy glory.

The writing is still good, imho, if hokey and too edgy for its own good, but the lack of user impact on things makes the stories all samey seeming.

farley3k wrote:

I felt they must have fired their writers. I never found a quest - outside the main story - that was nearly as interesting as the Jenny of the Woods quest in W3.
There was also no real advantage/point in trying different things. In W3 I tried the Jenny quest three times picking the different options because I didn't like how the quest ended. I don't recall any quest in Cyberpunk where I felt that way. Almost all of them ended with everyone dead and me walking to a "sell here box" with 50 guns to hock.

Christ! I'd forgotten about guns! It took me back to the dark days of 'Borderlands' and 'Destiny'. Endlessly comparing the minor differences between 20 different weapons.

By about halfway through the game, it would have been quicker and preferable to 'weigh them in' rather than sell them individually. I think I regularly got to the point where the drop stations were simply running out of money.

Part of the problem was that once I got the Widowmaker and Skippy, I was pretty much set for the rest of the playthrough. There wasn't really any incentive to use anything else.

This f*ckin' game man.

So having finished it back in... what, early December? I decided to load it back up today to try it again now that it's had several patches since.

And I literally cannot get through the Nomad intro mission without a CTD. No warnings, I get out of the car at the inspection point to go into the office, and as I do, splutz.

Every time.

I updated my graphics drivers, restarted my PC, same thing.

This is the second time this has happened to me with this game, and it's an experience I can only say I've had replicated in a Skyrim game where I was running some jiggity-skillion mods.

Honestly, just unbelievable at this point. There is not a single other game in my Steam library I have had this kind of issue with. And based on my last experience, I'm stuck until they release a patch to address this issue.

EDIT: Tried the other two intros, same issue. f*ckin' amazing. Several patches have taken me from "Well, I can still play this" to "I can enjoy the game's first 15 minutes."

EDIT v2: Still annoyed about this. Had been hyping myself up for another playthrough all Saturday, and nada.

After putting about 16 hours into this, I have shelved it.

The cosmetic bugs are just too much. Nothing game breaking, but seeing so much janky sh*t is taking me out of a game that is built on atmosphere and aesthetics. Even scripted cutscenes have whacky animations; a lady with long hair looks down and HER HAIR DOES NOT FALL WITH GRAVITY. It sticks to her like a helmet, never changing its direction.

Maybe in 3 months or so I'll come back to it, but I felt no urge to go back to it every night... so I didn't. And then I forgot what I was supposed to be doing, so that was my sign to delete the save file and try again some time later.

Games that are lore heavy are easily broken for me if it reminds me at every corner that it's a video game and not a living world.

Vrikk wrote:

After putting about 16 hours into this, I have shelved it.

The cosmetic bugs are just too much. Nothing game breaking, but seeing so much janky sh*t is taking me out of a game that is built on atmosphere and aesthetics. Even scripted cutscenes have whacky animations; a lady with long hair looks down and HER HAIR DOES NOT FALL WITH GRAVITY. It sticks to her like a helmet, never changing its direction.

The in-world answer is that it's Cyber hair. Anything that floats, sticks out, flies off wildly or otherwise acts other than expected is cyber. It's all meant to happen.

Personally, I've long forgotten it isn't a living world, but that bandaid rip took a long time to wear off. It's a shame because it looks like a living world sometimes, but it's woefully not.

Instead, it's a cyberpunk game with some stories and decent combat. It's a bad open world game in most ways.

It's my most-played game of the past year for some crazy reason.

garion333 wrote:

Personally, I've long forgotten it isn't a living world, but that bandaid rip took a long time to wear off. It's a shame because it looks like a living world sometimes, but it's woefully not.

Instead, it's a cyberpunk game with some stories and decent combat. It's a bad open world game in most ways, for some people.

It's my most-played game of the past year for some crazy reason.

FTFY

For every complaint there's probably that many people (i'd bet even more) that don't have those issues.

I had very few.

garion333 wrote:

It's my most-played game of the past year for some crazy reason.

For a game I consider to be "pretty good but a little disappointing" I also put a ton of hours into it.

Malor wrote:

TW3 was kinda buggy when it shipped, but they worked and worked and worked on it, until it ended up in pretty good shape. So I expecting CP2077 to be kind of rough when it first shipped, figuring it would have lots of semi-functional quests and stuff.

On the PC, it's actually quite close to what I expected in terms of quality. It runs well for me, and has never really given me any problems. I was expecting lots of patches, and that's what I've gotten so far, but just like TW3, the early bugs didn't bite me very hard. The only real issue is that I ran everywhere because I couldn't navigate traffic.

What I was not expecting is that I don't actually like the game. I'm only at about ten hours in, maybe, but I just got bored and stopped. I didn't care very much about the protagonist or her problems, didn't especially like Silverhand, and was only moderately pleased with the NPCs. I didn't really like the combat system, either. So it's been sitting there, waiting, and I haven't touched it in ages. I mean, the graphics are spectacular, but that's kinda all. I have no urge to pick it back up.

That's the reason why I probably won't pre-order their next game. On a technical basis, I'm okay with what I got, but on a game basis, I'm really not.

I always wondered how good the story was going to be. For those who read the books it was clear that writing in W3 was directly inspired by them. Before Cyberpunk came out I was interested to see how well the writers would do making their own story.

I'm still upset that this went from my most anticipate game to something where I'm extremely wary of anything CDProjekt does going forward. Still haven't played Cyberpunk 2077, either.

I feel kinda bad for the staff there, because they obviously worked incredibly hard on the game, but their management and writing team both kinda screwed the pooch. Even ignoring the technical problems, even if the game's code was perfect, it's not actually that good.

I'm having more fun with the $5 copy of Mad Max I picked up in a GOG sale awhile back.

ranalin wrote:
garion333 wrote:

Personally, I've long forgotten it isn't a living world, but that bandaid rip took a long time to wear off. It's a shame because it looks like a living world sometimes, but it's woefully not.

Instead, it's a cyberpunk game with some stories and decent combat. It's a bad open world game in most ways, for some people.

It's my most-played game of the past year for some crazy reason.

FTFY

For every complaint there's probably that many people (i'd bet even more) that don't have those issues.

I had very few.

You found the open world to be functional and immersive? I wasn't talking about the technical side of things, but the actual open world design and function itself. It's clearly unfinished in a lot of places, the police system is still pretty thin, multiple stories with the 'must do this now or die' that is in direct competition with the game as an open world, driver and citizen AI being nonexistent, the texts and phone calls at all times, and so on.

There's pockets of interesting things in the game, but wandering outside of those areas is generally filled with empty, dead space (more or less space depending on which area you're in. And, no, I don't mean the Badlands, but the farther you get from City Center, really. Wandering the streets in Kabuki is much more interesting and rewarding than Santo Domingo and at the top of the map. There's less crowds, which is fine, but there also less loot pickups littering places, less activities, fewer travel spots and the spaces between the set pieces feel less connected and more obviously placed.

It's a game at war with itself in a lot of ways, but the open world feels diametrically opposed to some of the stories they were telling.

garion333 wrote:
ranalin wrote:
garion333 wrote:

Personally, I've long forgotten it isn't a living world, but that bandaid rip took a long time to wear off. It's a shame because it looks like a living world sometimes, but it's woefully not.

Instead, it's a cyberpunk game with some stories and decent combat. It's a bad open world game in most ways, for some people.

It's my most-played game of the past year for some crazy reason.

FTFY

For every complaint there's probably that many people (i'd bet even more) that don't have those issues.

I had very few.

You found the open world to be functional and immersive? I wasn't talking about the technical side of things, but the actual open world design and function itself. It's clearly unfinished in a lot of places, the police system is still pretty thin, multiple stories with the 'must do this now or die' that is in direct competition with the game as an open world, driver and citizen AI being nonexistent, the texts and phone calls at all times, and so on.

There's pockets of interesting things in the game, but wandering outside of those areas is generally filled with empty, dead space (more or less space depending on which area you're in. And, no, I don't mean the Badlands, but the farther you get from City Center, really. Wandering the streets in Kabuki is much more interesting and rewarding than Santo Domingo and at the top of the map. There's less crowds, which is fine, but there also less loot pickups littering places, less activities, fewer travel spots and the spaces between the set pieces feel less connected and more obviously placed.

It's a game at war with itself in a lot of ways, but the open world feels diametrically opposed to some of the stories they were telling.

It wasn't everything i wanted from a Cyberpunk game, but i did find it fun and immersive. I played through it 2.5 times because of it.