its just lame from a game studio to troll gamers like that... patching exploits is one thing but changing in and outcome of components via game mechanics just because someone found a legit way to make money/components the devs weren't aware of is just BS... they shouldn't even follow peoples creative ways to make money - they should fix real bugs and not strategies player came up with... I mean this is a SP game - no esports or mmo so who cares if u are a millionaire? why making it harder for everyone? is there logical reason?
edit: thx Dhampir for your insight <3
It is single player for now, but who knows what will happen in the future. No Man's Sky was single player in 2016, but today it's not just multiplayer - it's even fully cross-platform multiplayer, allowing PS, XBox, Steam, Gog and other platforms' users to all play together in parties up to dozens people large.
But still there is more to this. Even "patching exploits" is often not as what it seems to be, and mere action of patching 'em - actually hurts both players _and_ CDPR, it's just CDPR can't see how and why it happens.
One excellent, clear-cut and "we can talk about it here since it's already fixed" example of a glitch - is what patch 1.2 does to Crafting skill experience when disassembling only one item at a time out of a stack of items. If you were not aware - it worked like this: you play the game normally and don't care about Crafting until you gain your Tech attribute as high as you planned it be. While at it, you collect just one particular type of drinks: let's say, it's just usual cola. One can easily get hundreds, even thousands cans of it from vendor machines. Having 500 would be enough for this glitch, having ~800 is more than enough.
Then, you'd just disassemble 1 can of cola outta that 500+ cans stack at a time. The glitch was, every time you do it you were granted Crafting experience as if you disassembled whole stack (500+ cans) rather than just 1 can of it. Obviously, this allowed to learn up to 20 Crafting skill in merely couple minutes or so, give or take.
And now, with 1.2, CDPR "fixed" this glitch. From purely formal, mechanical point of view - yes, this fix is "proper" and "appropriate". But what this fix _does_? The answer - is simple: it makes the game _worse_. Because the sum of the following 3 effects:
- the fix makes no difference at all to players who never used this glitch, or did not want to use this glitch;
- the fix pisses off players who were using this glitch, since now whenever they know for any new playthrough with any high Crafting skill, they'd need to spend hours mindlessly clicking "craft" button in the menu;
- and, the fix pisses off many of those who did not know about this glitch before, then updated to 1.2, then learned about it and realised that they are now unable to use it.
The _real_ problem in this example - is not that there was this glitch. As one can figure from the above, the real problem - is that Crafting skill takes way too long a time to develop to any high value while offering no good gameplay whatsoever to do it. It's just clicking buttons in a menu - a kind of "gameplay" very same to what lots of modern humans do during their work hours. And so, if this glitch fix is required, then the way to make it good - would require to do the fix together with massive increase (many fold) for experience given per every crafting action, and/or introduction of some mini-game or any other kind of interesting play which would be the source of crafting experience.
Then and only then this fix - and many others not unlike it - would actually be good for the game, overall. Be it single-player or multi-player, too. But what we got with 1.2 is a hasted bunch of fixes, some of which spawn new bugs. Seems like nobody had time nor desire nor skill to think it through - rather, it's mass-produced "should probably work" sort of fixes bunched together and sent out.
If CDPR would continue with this quality of major updates and patches, then i think by the end of 2021 CP2077 will end up unplayable mess, largest fiasco of modern gamedev and big hole in the pockets of all who invested and/or own any fraction of CDPR. It'd be a tragedy given lots of good story and potential the game has, but 1.2 makes me think this tragedy is a bit more likely - not less.
