I agree. I just don't know which might be worse. To be angry for great lengths of time or to feel you have to protect an ideal/entity and their ideals for great lengths of time (which might include being untruthful to your beliefs or even losing perspective of what is one's point of view); both wanting to see it reflected in other people's vision.
It's just both might be wrong, one just seems overall more authentic to me. We are in an era where anger is propagandized and promoted, so I know there is manipulation either way; it's just anger, however it may be coming from a staged or promoted scenario is a gut reaction to something. The "racional" defense to an argument made with a goal to preserve an image or ideal can be more perverse in my view because there's a semi-intentional or semi-conscience reasoning going on. It reminds me of that school exercise in rhetoric where a student must defend a point of view they don't agree with; I find this exercise very useful to promote empathy, view a situation from multiple perspectives,... But the point of the exercise in the end is, to me, for the student to learn ways of gathering all sorts of information and different angles so that he can in the end, arrive at better conclusions and more informed view on the subject. It is not to develop this tool to be successful in the systems we live in by talking bulshit convincingly, which seems like the best curriculum for some people on their jobs.
But is it really more authentic?
I don't disagree with you that people who fall squarely into the definition of "fanboy" often come across as disingenuous. The same thing can be said of the "haters" though.
If you lean more towards one side or the other, that side will most likely feel more genuine to you. To people on the other side, yours feel disingenuous. For people like me who are more in the middle of things and don't really lean one way or the other, both sides feel very manufactured. I feel like both side offer plenty of manufactured "hate" or "love" for the game because of personal opinion instead of objectively looking at the product.
I know, really never took it differently or aimed at me.
Good! Just making sure since the written medium is mostly tone deaf.
I think it would change a lot. A misbehaved student class can change their overall tone dramatically with a different teacher. With a humble and more communicative approach from the beginning I think the overall tone would change a lot. Of course there are always loud haters but I believe the change would be substantial.
What doesn't make sense to me is the argument that whatever CDPR would say they were being roasted in every sentence. To me, again, that problem came from CDPR talking to players before release as semigods of game developing in their promotion of the game (regardless of unfulfilled promises or that kind of talk) to - disaster release - to - disguised apology video - to - almost not talking to players and when talking, still carrying this ubris around - . And talking to investors mostly; I find this very disrespectful and the opposite of promoting healthy discussions. I'm at the same time very grateful for the work they managed to put into the game. But that's why I find the developing side of the company and the management/PR side very different, and am only criticizing the latter.
Before patch 1.5 some great news came out from inside the company that CDPR was allowing developers to work at their own rhythm and making more decisions. Looking at a companie's behavior towards the players is also a way to see the importance the managerial side of it gives to the actual product and the player enjoyment of it versus to investors and the money side of things. These are living relations that over time can shift one way or the other.
Here is where the effects of leadership come into play in my view. A consistent, player focused, humble approach to communication with the users of the product themselves, along with the work to rectify it, would leave everyone without a reason not to see repent. The voices that wouldn't, what do you do?? Nothing in my opinion.
Again, I'm not totally disagreeing or agreeing with you here.
I agree, CDPR isn't communicating enough. On that, I fully agree. I think it's time to test the waters and try reconnecting with their community. I don't think them communicating with their investors and not with us is disrespectful. They communicate with their investors because they have to (duty to, drive investments, etc) not because they want to. No upper management likes making these reports. It's incredibly stressful and can go wrong at a moment's notice.
I do have to ask, what do you mean by "humble" approach to communications? They messed up, they know that. Regardless of how genuine we think the apology was, they know they messed up. Are they to apologize profusely for the next decade before it's ok?
I want them to open up communication channels but only for better update on how things are moving along. It's a company, they're not my friends and I don't want them to act as if they were and they want to "mend" our relationship. I get the feeling what you want is different, if so, can you elaborate?
I agree with you that actions are much more valuable than words. That's why an apology is only real if it reflects a change in tone. That's the action I'm missing from the corpo CDPR.
If you agree that actions are much more valuable than words then wouldn't the fact the game is in way better shape than it was 17 months ago be proof of a certain degree of humbleness and plenty of willingness to listen to players?
I'm getting the impression you want CDPR to apologize on a somewhat "personal" level to players. Like a friend would apologize to another friend they've wronged. I may be wrong and correct me if I am.
And it's important for companies to hold themselves to a high standard. And it's our role too to ask for it.
This is true but it's also important to remember that our role is to do so the right way. Being extremely angry at them, like some, for over a year is definitely not the best way to hold them to higher standards. It's ok to criticize but it's also important to calm down and look at things in an objective way. What's actual feasible and what people want can be two entirely different things. If things don't work out the way you want, the best way to let them know is with your wallet.
It's not difficult: if your overhyped game has underdelivered and disappointed playerbase, only way you can turn things around is..overdeliver, post launch.
CDPR management still hasn't figured this out.
This is like a football match, where your team is losing 0-3, you need a victory to pass into next round, there is less than 15 minutes until the end. And CDPR's management is like a coach who tells his team:
"Slooow and steady, boys. No unnecessary risks."
Fallout 76 is still flawed and buggy as hell, but Bethesda has hugely improved it's reception thanks to how much they added to it. If nothing else, they deserve respect for that.
Cyberpunk has 3 critical areas where it disappointed majority of it's audience:
- Technical performance and bugs: they did a good job here. Obviously some things like physics and fundamental changes to AI cannot be drastically improved, but the game is, more or less, in good state post 1.5 patch.
- Roleplaying aspect and mechanics: Almost nothing.
- Open world content, dynamic and interactivity: Very small changes/additions.
So unless 1.6 ( and other patches) and the expansion(s) completely overhaul and enhance rpg and open world systems, Cyberpunk will remain a black stain on CDPR's repuation, even if expansions on their own are good.
I don't get the impression you actually want to discuss things but let's try this.
I don't disagree the game was overhyped but there is a
strong player driven component to hype, I'm sure we can agree on that. How do you
overdeliver on a product when it's users have overhyped it so much? How do you overdeliver on a game when a lot of people who got overhyped thought it would be something different? Do you expect CDPR to re-write the game to overdeliver on the highest expectation players had regardless of whether the game was
ever meant to be the product they thought it would be?
Don't you think we also have a duty, as users, to know the product we are buying?
One last thing, where are you getting your statistics to claim CDPR disappointed a "majority" of it's audience? From where I'm standing, the majority on PC likes the game and so does the majority of PS5/Xbox series S/X(?). I'm not basing this off nothing either, I'm actually talking about scores on Metacritic, Steam, GoG, etc. A majority of last-gen users seem to have been disappointed but most of these scores have not been updated to reflect the current state of the game - the
vast majority on metacritic are from December 2020 - Feb 2021 on both PS4 and Xbox one. Furthermore, most of the negative posts are about the bugs/performance which has improved drastically across the board.
So I ask again, where are you getting this majority?