After 3 years, the same mistakes

[IskrasFemme]

I really try to understand what happens. After 3 years of Cyberpunk development, mechanics that proved to be bad in themselves are reformulated on the same previous basis (gameplay design that generates codes/scripts) or attempts are made to improve them, resulting in results that are as bad or worse than those those previously observed.

An example, the Night City Police, traffic and pedestrians/people/NPCs, in general.

The engine has proven, at least to me, that it is incapable of producing - for now - good results. Bugs in version 2.0 are repeated, they catch your eye on the streets of Night City. Stopped cars that crash into each other, for no reason, and face the police (and nothing happens). The hostile police, also for no reason or ignoring everything around them at all. Pedestrians who literally throw themselves in front of cars. Cars parked in the middle of the road for no reason. Everything without reasons, random, that doesn't fit together, doesn't work as intended.

All - absolutely all of these problems could be easily and quickly overcome, changing the conception we have about Night City. But CDPR appears to be reluctant to 'change' or accept change.

Night City could be a much more alive city (still static, inert, dead) if design directors changed their ideas about it. One element, just one, was enough to radically change the game into something infinitely better - in its mechanical sense, interactive between 'player and environment'.

I remember a scene in the film Blade Runner (1982) where a police officer is in an observation booth. I also remember award-winning games, recognized worldwide where 'small towers' of weapons 'secured the perimeter or surroundings'. As opposed to 'random cops' walking the streets of Night City, doing absolutely nothing - except when those cops look at the player - would save CDPR from delving into endless bugs when it comes to 'navmesh'. engine - which proved to be average).

Another element that would save CDPR from repeating mistakes 'in game' (producing bad things) is with regard to cars and pedestrians. The 'climate' element was enough to justify the exponential decrease in load on processors. I explain, a city under climate bombardment would support the idea that people exist protected in buildings - and not walking randomly - and stupidly - through the streets.

I only narrate design elements that precede codes, which would alleviate or spare CDPR from gigantic problems. Simple game design things that support limited engines or limited hardware and that could 'open more doors' in Night City, instead of having tons of random elements, difficult to code, that don't even fulfill the task the developers intended.

Post automatically merged: Sep 25, 2023

Sometimes I catch myself thinking: what if night city didn't have cars, police and pedestrians?

Certainly, the game would be infinitely better - at least we wouldn't witness bizarre bugs that - literally - break all the immersion intended by the developers. The stories are good, the missions work. Combat, in its 2.0 version, has been very well improved.

Imagine now, a city with more interaction - where vendors on the streets interacted with the player; that things like 'food' were really useful to the 'player' and the 'gameplay'. That buildings were open where there are huge neon signs saying 'open'? Wouldn't it be infinitely better than this anachronistic 'thing' of 'closed doors', things with no reason to be 'things' (like food, drink)?

Cyberpunk has the chance for its redemption - it hasn't happened yet, at least for me. Things have improved, as I mentioned, in combat or what sets up combat. But only this? Wasn't it an RPG?

I think much more is needed.

 

[manoj_k30]

Entire engine is running on fumes and held together by tape.
I am not sure how they managed better npc's in Witcher 3 in big cities, though Witcher 3 had advantage that npc's had no cars and few had horses outside city.

 

[IskrasFemme]

I will give a simple example

There is a 'mod' on Nexus that brings things sellers to life on the streets of Night City. The size of the script is no more than a few 'kb' (1). The creator of this asset himself says he doesn't understand much about codes and, with a simple file, he gave more life to the city and didn't affect the performance at all, at least here, of my 10th generation i5.

When I ran CP with this 'mod', I asked myself: why didn't CDPR do this, having in its hands all the means to do this effectively and easily?

I kept asking myself: why doesn't CDPR allow the city of Night City to have more interaction, such as active vendors, benches where we could sit - even to take photos or whatever...?

These are simple resolution issues, resolved by 'moders' that should be in the base game (where there is a chance they could be better developed).

 

[hebdomas]

This update is low key a disaster.
2.0 is focused on action gameplay and catering almost exclusively to streaming gamers/teenagers fixated on going on a rampage.

 

[Surrendertothevoid]

Just reposting my video from earlier showing the police not working at all in 2.0 on PS5:

I'm not buying Phantom Liberty until this is all fixed, whats the point? It's been 3 years as well and the game still doesn't function correctly.

 

[manoj_k30]

The thing is this game is a result of "too many cooks spoil the broth".
It took them 3 years to come out of unnanounced early access.

We have come from having "changing leather seats in car" to not even having interactable vendors.
Shops with "Open" signs and closed doors.
Phantom Liberty might be great, but still has no use for lifepath.

As for police, I committed crime right outside my apartment door, police spawned inside my room.

2.0 is just a marketing gimmick to sell PL.

 

[BabaBooey88]

I really try to understand what happens. After 3 years of Cyberpunk development, mechanics that proved to be bad in themselves are reformulated on the same previous basis (gameplay design that generates codes/scripts) or attempts are made to improve them, resulting in results that are as bad or worse than those those previously observed.

An example, the Night City Police, traffic and pedestrians/people/NPCs, in general.

The engine has proven, at least to me, that it is incapable of producing - for now - good results. Bugs in version 2.0 are repeated, they catch your eye on the streets of Night City. Stopped cars that crash into each other, for no reason, and face the police (and nothing happens). The hostile police, also for no reason or ignoring everything around them at all. Pedestrians who literally throw themselves in front of cars. Cars parked in the middle of the road for no reason. Everything without reasons, random, that doesn't fit together, doesn't work as intended.

All - absolutely all of these problems could be easily and quickly overcome, changing the conception we have about Night City. But CDPR appears to be reluctant to 'change' or accept change.

Night City could be a much more alive city (still static, inert, dead) if design directors changed their ideas about it. One element, just one, was enough to radically change the game into something infinitely better - in its mechanical sense, interactive between 'player and environment'.

I remember a scene in the film Blade Runner (1982) where a police officer is in an observation booth. I also remember award-winning games, recognized worldwide where 'small towers' of weapons 'secured the perimeter or surroundings'. As opposed to 'random cops' walking the streets of Night City, doing absolutely nothing - except when those cops look at the player - would save CDPR from delving into endless bugs when it comes to 'navmesh'. engine - which proved to be average).

Another element that would save CDPR from repeating mistakes 'in game' (producing bad things) is with regard to cars and pedestrians. The 'climate' element was enough to justify the exponential decrease in load on processors. I explain, a city under climate bombardment would support the idea that people exist protected in buildings - and not walking randomly - and stupidly - through the streets.

I only narrate design elements that precede codes, which would alleviate or spare CDPR from gigantic problems. Simple game design things that support limited engines or limited hardware and that could 'open more doors' in Night City, instead of having tons of random elements, difficult to code, that don't even fulfill the task the developers intended.

Post automatically merged: Sep 25, 2023

Sometimes I catch myself thinking: what if night city didn't have cars, police and pedestrians?

Certainly, the game would be infinitely better - at least we wouldn't witness bizarre bugs that - literally - break all the immersion intended by the developers. The stories are good, the missions work. Combat, in its 2.0 version, has been very well improved.

Imagine now, a city with more interaction - where vendors on the streets interacted with the player; that things like 'food' were really useful to the 'player' and the 'gameplay'. That buildings were open where there are huge neon signs saying 'open'? Wouldn't it be infinitely better than this anachronistic 'thing' of 'closed doors', things with no reason to be 'things' (like food, drink)?

Cyberpunk has the chance for its redemption - it hasn't happened yet, at least for me. Things have improved, as I mentioned, in combat or what sets up combat. But only this? Wasn't it an RPG?

I think much more is needed.

While the engine, and the costs to 'make it right', poses a challenge to accomplishing a number of tasks - those alone don't make it impossible. Mods, which by their nature will weigh the game down more than native mechanics even when the difference is negligible, have shown more can be done than what's here; CDPR themselves actively choose not to implement certain features and behaviors.

Again; I don't doubt a large amount of that comes down to budgets and time with regard to a number of things, but what appears to pride or dissonance is apparently preventing them from making things work nearly as believably as can be achieved.

As someone who is very fond of the game while being a stern critic(apparently holding a merchant to their words is a bad thing now), I will say I don't expect the next game to be much more interactive. CDPR has insisted this update would herald dynamic and random encounters while they're anything but. They've built an entire lore with history, shards, news reports, all the material leading up to the game and fleshed out history between the P&P entries and this one - much of which they've shredded because it was far easier to have the police spawn in to Pacifica when you punch a hobo rather than make it the VDBs... that's not even considering that Scissors modded in a witness call system over a year and a half ago - Militech responds in the badlands, VDB in Pacifica and... at one point Tyger's responded in Kabuki but I think he changed this later. Clearly what's here isn't the limit of what's possible; The fact of the matter is they didn't do it because they didn't want to.

It really does call into question why they built a vehicle combat system with complimentary perks when none of the gangs or even beat cops can utilize vehicles in their immediate vicinity. Is it really just for the GTA cop-killer catharsis? Perhaps I lack creativity with my combat, but there's virtually no opportunity to make use of these perks throughout the game, even with regard to most gigs or NCPD scanner hustles.

They've given themselves a rather convenient out with the engine and it's own woes, but they'll have little excuse once the next title in this series or any other drops.

Perhaps this will change later today. I hope so. There's a lot of good in this recent patch but it's not what they said it would be. Coupled with a handful of new issues that degrade the experience for me; I will be watching closely the state in which PL launches tonight.

EDIT: Grammar

 

[IskrasFemme]

Let be fair, about graphics CD are doing miracles. Im playing here with a GTX 1650 in ULTRA...and a hight FPS... impressive the CDPR work about it.
It's really impressive - I sometimes find myself in awe - with the engine's advances in terms of graphics.

I even understand the concern about the hardware upgrade on their page, but I'm on ULTRA, probably with 30 fps+ with a simple i5 (10th gen) 32 GB RAM and a GTX 1650...

 

[manoj_k30]

This game has just become testing grounds for Nvidia in terms of graphics.

For police system, I believe they are just saving face since car-combat was datamined and people made mods to bring it out.
If they didn't bring it with PL, reputation might have been hit a lot.

And it's not even that good, GTA 4 still did it better.

 

[IskrasFemme]

CMD is dead for now, need update, so, no mods to me

 

[BabaBooey88]

This game has just become testing grounds for Nvidia in terms of graphics.

For police system, I believe they are just saving face since car-combat was datamined and people made mods to bring it out.
If they didn't bring it with PL, reputation might have been hit a lot.

And it's not even that good, GTA 4 still did it better.

Well, the combat systems themselves are good but there's no 'there' there. You can't make use of it unless you intentionally start shit with the NCPD. I think it would shine if gangs and random mercs f*ck with V the way they advertised this thing.

Post automatically merged: Sep 25, 2023

CMD is dead for now, need update, so, no mods to me

 

[ShinAkira00]

I really try to understand what happens. After 3 years of Cyberpunk development, mechanics that proved to be bad in themselves are reformulated on the same previous basis (gameplay design that generates codes/scripts) or attempts are made to improve them, resulting in results that are as bad or worse than those those previously observed.

An example, the Night City Police, traffic and pedestrians/people/NPCs, in general.

The engine has proven, at least to me, that it is incapable of producing - for now - good results. Bugs in version 2.0 are repeated, they catch your eye on the streets of Night City. Stopped cars that crash into each other, for no reason, and face the police (and nothing happens). The hostile police, also for no reason or ignoring everything around them at all. Pedestrians who literally throw themselves in front of cars. Cars parked in the middle of the road for no reason. Everything without reasons, random, that doesn't fit together, doesn't work as intended.

All - absolutely all of these problems could be easily and quickly overcome, changing the conception we have about Night City. But CDPR appears to be reluctant to 'change' or accept change.

Night City could be a much more alive city (still static, inert, dead) if design directors changed their ideas about it. One element, just one, was enough to radically change the game into something infinitely better - in its mechanical sense, interactive between 'player and environment'.

I remember a scene in the film Blade Runner (1982) where a police officer is in an observation booth. I also remember award-winning games, recognized worldwide where 'small towers' of weapons 'secured the perimeter or surroundings'. As opposed to 'random cops' walking the streets of Night City, doing absolutely nothing - except when those cops look at the player - would save CDPR from delving into endless bugs when it comes to 'navmesh'. engine - which proved to be average).

Another element that would save CDPR from repeating mistakes 'in game' (producing bad things) is with regard to cars and pedestrians. The 'climate' element was enough to justify the exponential decrease in load on processors. I explain, a city under climate bombardment would support the idea that people exist protected in buildings - and not walking randomly - and stupidly - through the streets.

I only narrate design elements that precede codes, which would alleviate or spare CDPR from gigantic problems. Simple game design things that support limited engines or limited hardware and that could 'open more doors' in Night City, instead of having tons of random elements, difficult to code, that don't even fulfill the task the developers intended.

Post automatically merged: Sep 25, 2023

Sometimes I catch myself thinking: what if night city didn't have cars, police and pedestrians?

Certainly, the game would be infinitely better - at least we wouldn't witness bizarre bugs that - literally - break all the immersion intended by the developers. The stories are good, the missions work. Combat, in its 2.0 version, has been very well improved.

Imagine now, a city with more interaction - where vendors on the streets interacted with the player; that things like 'food' were really useful to the 'player' and the 'gameplay'. That buildings were open where there are huge neon signs saying 'open'? Wouldn't it be infinitely better than this anachronistic 'thing' of 'closed doors', things with no reason to be 'things' (like food, drink)?

Cyberpunk has the chance for its redemption - it hasn't happened yet, at least for me. Things have improved, as I mentioned, in combat or what sets up combat. But only this? Wasn't it an RPG?

I think much more is needed.

Sooo....you want Night City to be...empty? Am I getting that right? I'm not sure where the climate bombardment thing comes from but no Cyberpunk medium that I ever watched had ppl inside all the time, if anything the City would be enclosed. In any case everyone beng sheltered in apartments would not be practical design for a game like this.

Sure there are issues and the devs are working to resolve those. Considering this is their first entrance into this type of game and genre, I think this is a good foundation. They can and hopefully will improve on it for the next one.

Post automatically merged: Sep 25, 2023

While the engine, and the costs to 'make it right', poses a challenge to accomplishing a number of tasks - those alone don't make it impossible. Mods, which by their nature will weigh the game down more than native mechanics even when the difference is negligible; CDPR themselves actively choose not to implement certain features and behaviors.

Again; I don't doubt a large amount of that comes down to budgets and time with regard to a number of things, but what appears to pride or dissonance is apparently preventing them from making things work nearly as believably as can be achieved.

As someone who is very fond of the game while being a stern critic(apparently holding a merchant to their words is a bad thing now), I will say I don't expect the next game to be much more interactive. CDPR has insisted this update would herald dynamic and random encounters while they're anything but. They've built an entire lore with history, shards, news reports, all the material leading up to the game and fleshed out history between the P&P entries and this one - much of which they've shredded because it was far easier to have the police spawn in to Pacifica when you punch a hobo rather than make it the VDBs... that's not even considering that scissors impleneted a witness call system over a year and a half ago - Militech responds in the badlands, VDB in Pacifica and... at one point Tyger's responded in Kabuki but I think he changed this later. Clearly what's here isn't the limit of what's possible; The fact of the matter is they didn't do it because they didn't want to.

It really does call into question why they built a vehicle combat system with complimentary perks when none of the gangs or even beat cops can utilize vehicles in their immediate vicinity. Is it really just for the GTA cop-killer catharsis? Perhaps I lack creativity with my combat, but there's virtually no opportunity to make use of these perks throughout the game, even with regard to most gigs or NCPD scanner hustles.

They've given themselves a rather convenient out with the engine and it's own woes, but they'll have little excuse once the next title in this series or any other drops.

EDIT: Perhaps this will change later today. I hope so. There's a lot of good in this recent patch but it's not what they said it would be. Coupled with a handful of new issues that degrade the experience for me; I will be watching closely the state in which PL launches tonight.

I agree with most of what is said but why would gang or cops need to utilize random cars in the vicinity? You reference GTA but that sound smore like a GTA thing. Since this game doesn't revolve around that kind of dynamic, it makes little sense to have that since direct combat is the core feature of the game, not car chases.

I think too many ppl want this game to be something it's not and the devs are spending to much time trying to meet every expectation that they are beginning to lose sight of what the game is supposed to be. Maybe they are still figuring out what they want CP 2077 to be and that's ok. If this is the "Witcher 1" of the franchise then I can only hope it ends like Witcher 3. Though this is a different team and the company has now gone Public which means their priorities have changed, so that may be wishful thinking on my part.

 

[IskrasFemme]

English is not my first language. No, I just illustrated a situation by stating that problems could be overcome by changing the design of Night City. It's not about having an empty city, but one populated in a way that guarantees both the performance and the fidelity of the script and mechanical aspects. This is not about 'taking everything to solve problems' - that would be mediocre.

Secondly, I am an indie game developer, I will not reveal my identity here and I would not have any reason to. My idea is not to denigrate something, but to improve something based on what I understand about game design.

 

[Reaper290897]

Cdpr may make the best RPGs but they've proven to be no better than the other companies they once lorded over

 

[Martind_Forlon_]

Personally I disagree with OP that do changes like mentioned would be easy, but it looks like a well reasoned post ... imo if one want to criticize something, this look as a proper way how to do it.

 

[YshtolaRhul]

I think too many ppl want this game to be something it's not and the devs are spending to much time trying to meet every expectation that they are beginning to lose sight of what the game is supposed to be. Maybe they are still figuring out what they want CP 2077 to be and that's ok. If this is the "Witcher 1" of the franchise then I can only hope it ends like Witcher 3. Though this is a different team and the company has now gone Public which means their priorities have changed, so that may be wishful thinking on my part.

They are definitely trying to meet too many expectations.

The stamina for shooting and weapons, coupled with limited healing and grenades, makes me think they are trying to emulate souls-like games.

Just like turrets now ignoring your shut off commands, so they are free to turn back on and force you to keep spending RAM while you're in that area. All to screw over stealth gameplay and force action, by using a grenade to destroy the turret instead. Which is noisy, and will draw enemies in.

WTF is the point of remote deactivation if it only lasts 20 seconds or so?

 

[zzzfrofzzz]

English is not my first language. No, I just illustrated a situation by stating that problems could be overcome by changing the design of Night City. It's not about having an empty city, but one populated in a way that guarantees both the performance and the fidelity of the script and mechanical aspects. This is not about 'taking everything to solve problems' - that would be mediocre.

Secondly, I am an indie game developer, I will not reveal my identity here and I would not have any reason to. My idea is not to denigrate something, but to improve something based on what I understand about game design.

i feel the same way
all new revamp system , to be fair isn't "bad" but its seems it missing balance or the one thing that make the feature succefull.
i'm taking the example of new poilice , the idea is good but now its more NCPD city than Night city , on each coner you see now NCPD lol
new crafting system is great , but the econoy to craft is tottaly broken . the thing like as Cyberware offering new way to play , its become consumming to level up and get the other option on a game loop .
new perk system , all perks 're good , but on old system player can quickly choose a style of gameplay , this new system is all about grinding to unlock the proper tier so the early stage of the game not really fun/cool if you want to play as you want .

on the good and bad , i feel some core design 're more focus on "time" to play and not anymore "fun" to play .
player get the "fun" to play , but he need to grind as hell lol .
i'm always ok , when it comes to leveling , to put a system that follow the progression to avoid the god "syndrome" as eraly stage but those new mecanics just ensure to keep the player to play , spend time in-game but not focus on a balance tracking , leveling vs getting stronger/get more gameplay option

 

[Alekzie]

This is the very first time I experienced so many issues with my gameplay. Leaving aside my feelings for some of the changes and the new endings of the game, I have this:
- They still haven't fixed the issue (after all these years) of your EXP buff getting removed every time you pick up a skill shard. Now that they're dropping regularly on enemies, your buff gets removed over and over again.
- Some NPCs vanish in thin air when they collide. Petrova walked straight onto an NPC and it disappeared. Also some this happening with unnamed NPCs in the street.
-After finishing Claire's first race, 2 cars suddenly positioned themselves right in front of us, and claire kept ramming them until the doors fell off. I accepted her lift to the garage, and it took her forever to turn back to drive away, cause she kept driving erratically.
- When Claire drops me in the garage, she then proceeds to try to run me over on the sidewalk, driving erratically again.
- Never ever since launch I saw so many 'clones' walking around in both enclosed and open spaces. I found it funny when people commented it cause I never saw it, but now whenever I go to the Afterlife, I see min 3 clones and max 7 of the same NPC.
- The NCPD AI is chaos. Sometimes they're cool with you helping, sometime they decide the sight of your weapon is offensive and they try to kill you. I alwaso had an incident where a cop was jaywalking and approaching my car in the middle of the road. They still weren't even close to it when the cop took damage, fell down and then started shooting me.
- Some NPCs will get scared when you draw a weapon and start shooting at you. In the past, you'd take care of them and nothing would happen. Now the NCPD will automatically target you if you defend yourself, even if you already took damage from the NPC.
- "Guess what? We removed the need to use mech to craft awesome stuff! But now you have to upgrade your weapons and cyberware with components!!! Buuuuuut.....you cannot buy them from vendors anymore, and we also reduced the amount of junk found in-world!!! And quickhack components? You can't either buy them nor craft them! Cheeers!"

Ever since launch I'd say I completed at least 10 runs with different choices/combinations/romances/paths and I never ever experienced those issues until now. I haven't even checked if River's nephew and niece haven't been fixed yet, but if they haven't it wouldn't surprise me. I'm just very disappointed in CDPR right now.

 

[Surma.]

I have quite the opposite reaction to 2.0.

If more than anything the engine finally proves it CAN do what's required, and I was actually getting worried how much police chases would drain computing power. And most perks are finally interesting and do DIFFERENT things other than just add some solid 10% damage to headshots (though I still think those talents do exist).

Some glitches certainly have emerged, as I've reported, like NPC's trying to dodge are lifted like half a feet above ground. In some scenarios I got really huge loads of same NPCs even when all my settings were turned off, but granted I did tweak them a lot to try to optimize to my hardware, so that's less of an issue. I've noticed NPC's stacking on chairs (seems to happen especially when loading into an earlier stage after death).

Mechanics wise I think the game performs much more enjoyably, though I feel like they should've added 1 extra difficulty for the current hardest difficulty setting. I just keep getting shot down in random NCPD gigs even when I try to play it safe. The enemies don't necessarily have high amount of HP but they deal so much damage compared to the current survival mechanics, on top of how much I am able to drain my own health while using hacks.

Some stuff certainly needs to be toned down and stuff tweaked a little, but it's certainly a solid release. If someone would ask me if they should play now or wait a fix patch, I'd probably say to wait for a fix, just to get bugs ironed out and certain builds to be more optimized, I'm quite sure there's going to be a fix patch or two within a month so most people just playing in less challenging difficulties or playing just 1 hour per day I would likely recommend to play now. Those wanting to have the ultimate experience for experienced player, yeah maybe wait or take it slowly for at least 1 fix patch.

If I have something bad to tell about current state, I think the police seem to be super aggressive toward gunfire, even when there's a clear fight happening with them and some gang, you trying to intervene and help seems to trigger them to attack you very easily. Seems like they don't really recognize your ability to help, and instead just hear gun fire and assume you're the enemy even if you're there to help. Just something that's irritated me couple of times. Doesn't happen every time but when it does it gets annoying.


One thing I'd like to see instantly fixed is to be able to organize weapons not only based on DPS but the damage based on single shot. Because I tend to shoot a lot around corners so I'd rather have pistol that shoots 50 damage than pistol that shoots 35 but fires 50% faster.

 

[eLmeFist0]

I will give a simple example

There is a 'mod' on Nexus that brings things sellers to life on the streets of Night City. The size of the script is no more than a few 'kb' (1). The creator of this asset himself says he doesn't understand much about codes and, with a simple file, he gave more life to the city and didn't affect the performance at all, at least here, of my 10th generation i5.

When I ran CP with this 'mod', I asked myself: why didn't CDPR do this, having in its hands all the means to do this effectively and easily?

I kept asking myself: why doesn't CDPR allow the city of Night City to have more interaction, such as active vendors, benches where we could sit - even to take photos or whatever...?

These are simple resolution issues, resolved by 'moders' that should be in the base game (where there is a chance they could be better developed).

Because gaming companies want to make most amount of money for least amount of work .
Starfield lacked simple quality features moders put them in game in 1 day after release.
They care more about profit then make good games for gamers.