Cyberpunk 2077

[G51]

To be fair it’s become way too common recently for games to be rushed out for release date while still full of bugs. Developers think they can get away with it because of how easy it is to patch games on consoles now, but it’s still not right. 
 

Hopefully this experience will make others go through more rigorous testing protocols before release.

[Gaz]

Have they No Man's Skied it?

Edited December 18, 2020 by Gaz

[Mr. Brightside]

Presumably CDPR rushed it out pre-Christmas at the behest of investors or shareholders so its quite funny to see how fucked they are. Hopefully a lesson for the future for devs/publishers that rush out games to make a deadline.

 

[Sherrif John Bunnell]

What a shambles. It's hard to think of a more rapid fall from grace for a publisher than CDPR. At least the No Man's Sky folk had the excuse of being a indie developer that were in way over their head.

I can't imagine the Sony head honchos were too happy when the CDPR guy on the investor call the other day tried to throw Sony and Microsoft under the bus for allowing the game to dodge the normal certification procedures.

[forameus]

I think Sony are just reacting to CDPR throwing them under the bus.  Looks like CDPR said people could have refunds and to talk to Sony, but neglected to actually tell the latter they were going to do it.  Given you can't usually get refunds from Sony, it put them in a bit of an awkward position.  So I expect they've pulled the game as a bit of a f**k you.

It does seem like a bit of an overreaction.  Refunds, fine.  I think you'll still get a huge number of people taking the piss and getting one despite having few issues and already having their money's worth, but it's a gesture.  Taking the game down completely seems overkill.  

15 minutes ago, G51 said:

To be fair it’s become way too common recently for games to be rushed out for release date while still full of bugs. Developers think they can get away with it because of how easy it is to patch games on consoles now, but it’s still not right. 

Hopefully this experience will make others go through more rigorous testing protocols before release.

While I can see where you're coming from, games are getting far, far more complex than they used to be, and with that is always going to come bugs.  It doesn't matter how much testing you do, you're going to come out the other end with some.  

11 minutes ago, Gaz said:

Have they No Man's Skied it?

It hasn't gotten that bad, and likely won't.  CP has suffered more for bugs, but NMS was a colossal disaster through being utterly boring.  In its current state CP could have been so much better, but I'll still likely get 50 or so hours out of it.  At release you were lucky to get 5 out of NMS before you realised how incredibly shallow it was.  They've of course completely righted that ship, and it's a lot of fun now.  I expect CP will get the same treatment.

[NotThePars]

Presumably CDPR rushed it out pre-Christmas at the behest of investors or shareholders so its quite funny to see how fucked they are. Hopefully a lesson for the future for devs/publishers that rush out games to make a deadline.
 

Narrator: no lessons were learned

[Mackie The Staggie]

1 hour ago, TheScarf said:

What's happened here? It doesn't work on the PS4 or summat?

There's a lot of issues with regards to framerates and general poor looking textures on the base PS4, in the early game car chase the FPS dropped to about 15FPS which makes it almost impossible to play for some.  Also the PS4 lacks any real sharpness in the visuals, everything looks a bit blurry.   I know that this is a game on 7 year old hardware, but when you market a game to be played on that console which CDPR did, you at least expect it to be playable.

 

[GiGi]

Aye Sony have flexed the muscle on CDPR over their promises of refunds, and likely the embarrassment of actually releasing it on platforms it was not meant to be played on.

At the very least I reckon CDPR will not be releasing any more big titles in future in this condition. I'm glad they're getting pelters and hopefully the refunds will hit them in the pocket a fair bit as well. Not to mention any legal action that Sony and others may take.

[Mr. Brightside]

Why do folk have consoles anyway? They're just plain worse than PCs on every measure that matters.
 

Apart from the two most important measures.

[GiGi]

24 minutes ago, Mr. Brightside said:

Apart from the two most important measures.

Go on then.

[GiGi]

 

[Mr. Brightside]

Go on then.

Accessibility and cost.

[GiGi]

10 minutes ago, Mr. Brightside said:

Accessibility and cost.

This is subjective. Prebuild PCs are just as accessible and while a good gaming PC will generally come in dearer than a latest gen console, the performance will be better, the customisation is greater, the games are cheaper and you actually get a PC to go with the games.

Being cheaper is just one metric and you get what you pay for.

[NotThePars]

I simply cannot be arsed with trying to engage with PC gaming and it’s proponents generally haven’t done a good job of selling it. With the Xbox and PS4 I just had to go into a shop, buy it, and not think about it for another 5-7 years.

[Mr. Brightside]

13 minutes ago, GiGi said:

This is subjective. Prebuild PCs are just as accessible and while a good gaming PC will generally come in dearer than a latest gen console, the performance will be better, the customisation is greater, the games are cheaper and you actually get a PC to go with the games.

Being cheaper is just one metric and you get what you pay for.

They're not as accessible though are they? Do you think the average parent even knows gaming PCs exist? They probably need help getting a Word document open correctly. Can you go to Tesco (or any other high street retailer) and pick up a gaming PC? Do you think the layman is going to care about customisation or will they care more about the ease of use and what they see as up-front cost?

[GiGi]

8 minutes ago, Mr. Brightside said:

They're not as accessible though are they? Do you think the average parent even knows gaming PCs exist? They probably need help getting a Word document open correctly. Can you go to Tesco (or any other high street retailer) and pick up a gaming PC? Do you think the layman is going to care about customisation or will they care more about the ease of use and what they see as up-front cost?

None of these points are wrong but different things matter to different people. Some parents or laymen as you say may be ill informed or even intimidated by PCs, but overall PC gaming is probably on a par with consoles these days. So much so that it's actually really difficult to get a hold of high end components due to the demand outstripping supply.

Decent article I read here https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/314009-3-billion-people-worldwide-are-gamers-and-nearly-half-play-on-pcs

So cost and accessibility are obviously not the main drivers for a lot of people.

It also seems like PC gaming is less prevalent in the UK vs the rest of Europe so may be some confirmation bias too -  https://www.pcr-online.biz/2017/10/10/european-pc-gaming-market-is-growing-but-uk-carries-the-rear/

[Steve_Wilkos]

PC gaming, apparently, is vastly superior to that found on consoles. 

But, the PC has a massive image issue. Spotty geeks who play on World of Warcraft and whose intonation rises at the end of a sentence. - Wee guys

Meanwhile, PS4 is one of the lads who likes a few tinnies of lager and contributes to the banter on a semi-regular basis. - Shagger

[NotThePars]

PC gaming, apparently, is vastly superior to that found on consoles. 
But, the PC has a massive image issue. Spotty geeks who play on World of Warcraft and whose intonation rises at the end of a sentence. - Wee guys
Meanwhile, PS4 is one of the lads who likes a few tinnies of lager and contributes to the banter on a semi-regular basis. - Shagger

lol when I tried looking into PC gaming it was at the height of the “PC master race” stuff and I just thought “damn if PC gaming has you using Nazi language to justify your purchases then I’ll stick with my inferior box thank you”

[TxRover]

Dropping in to see how the Cyberpunk meltdown is being viewed in the P&B community, and I find we’re back to PC’s versus Consoles, oh my. I used to be a PC acolyte, but to continuous need to upgrade and update became almost a job. The Console solves problems for the game developer by establishing a solid baseline for “minimum system requirements” when they are developing a game. As long as you set the playable minimum at a level that will allow Console K and on to play it, you have a nice customer base to pitch the game to. The PC gaming market is much harder to aim at because of the plethora of options and choices that can kneecap even a brilliant machine with a single chokepoint. Add to that the fact that PC players and builder all prioritize in a differing manner, and you end up with a much harder to reach audience.

I suspect that this Cyberpunk 2077 fiasco is simply the culmination of the push for more open environments and varied game play. Take a game like GTA and look at the development timelines...GTA III was the first real “open world” hit, and it wasn’t supplanted for two years with an effective reskin to support daylight and the beach (Vice City) that also opened a few more buildings. Then another 4 years before IV (bigger world, more interiors and some new interactions...that were bugged and not activated {see Hot Coffee}). After that, it was five years to V, much bigger and open, and will be an estimated nine years to the next one.

More recently, in CoD:MW, the updates have simple been opening new areas that were externally mapped, but closed off at release. This allowed more time for the developer to finalize these areas, something that this developer declined to do in their rush to meet a poor chosen deadline. Hopefully this mess will cause developers to step back from the edge, either by staged release (such as CoD, allowing time to iron out play and display issues) or by admitting that they can’t support older consoles and PC’s, and thus must reduce development spending rather than trying to allow the game to play in a crippled manner on older equipment.

Finally, sorry, but GTA V style graphics would be fine on Cyberpunk, and would allow a number of “older” systems to play it pretty easily. Instead they go for the wow factor and end up with the egg on their face.

[GiGi]

They just shouldn't have bothered with previous gen at all - that's what caused the egg on face, not the graphics being too good. New game, leading visuals, new tech needed. They should have been honest about that from the start. They shouldn't hamstring development just so people can get GTA graphics on a game that's supposed to be a new benchmark. And tbf on a good rig it looks amazing.