Did over ambition harm Cyberpunk 2077?

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Night City looks great, but is by no means a realistic open world metropolis. You all know what I mean: not only bugs and glitches, but the complete absence of crowd AI, driver AI, a functional crime/wanted system, realistic NPC reactions, and meaningful interactivity outside of quests. What happened CDPR? I can't help but to suspect that over-ambition drove CDPR way over their heads, and they committed to something that they were unprepared to make.

Think about it: CDPR had previously made zero games with shooting, zero games with driving, zero games with stealth, zero games with crowd AI, zero games with a crime/wanted system, zero games with deep NPC interaction outside of quests, and zero games with procedurally generated enemy encounters. What on earth convinced CDPR - a studio not exactly known for its technical prowess - that they could outperform GTA V's and RDR2's open world building, and make "the most believable city in an open world game to date" in one go?

Compare that to GTA V, an open world that is by no means perfect, yet before making that game Rockstar had an entire franchise (GTA 3, VC, SA, 4) plus some driving games (Midnight Club) to hone their driving programming. They had the Max Payne franchise to practice programming shooting, RDR1 to practice storytelling, and virtually every game before that to practice crowd AI. And in GTA V it all came together. This is not to say that GTA V is perfect - far from it - but that to even build a functional and believable modern open world it takes years of accumulation of technical experience.

Witcher 3 also lacked crowd AI, crime system, or realistic NPC reactions, but those points didn't stick out so much because, first, roleplaying as a witcher discourages players from messing around; second, most locations in Witcher 3 are in a stable situation lore-wise, and worked fine without random enemy encounters, hence no need for advanced NPC AI. Most fights in Witcher 3 are not in human settlements. Also the shining spots of Witcher 3 redirected attention from its flaws. But Night City is different. It is a crime-ridden modern metropolis with constant violence, armed with a brutal police force, and V is a mercenary on the street who does get his/her hands dirty at times. This kind of open world needs crime and violence to be believable, so it needs crowd AI, crime system, realistic NPC reactions etc. that GTA has but Night City doesn't.

Obviously I'm not an insider and I can only guess, but my guess is that all those praises from the Witcher 3 went to CDPR's head, and convinced them that it's actually not that hard to build "the most believable city." How hard can it be? You just put down some NPC spawning spots, create a bunch of arts for a bunch of NPCs (which, granted, they did a good job with that), put in some combat scenarios here and there, and voila, the most believable video game city. Did they not at least wonder how far they fell behind technically compared to the open worlds of GTA or RDR2?

Going forward, CDPR should really respect the profound difficulty of video game world building and put their ambition in check. Making a super believable modern open world is pretty damn hard - why wouldn't it be - and it takes lots and lots of technical power and experience. It's better to make one solid step forward at a time and succeed, than to take a leap that only ends up landing facedown in the muck.
 
Night City looks great, but is by no means a realistic open world metropolis. You all know what I mean: not only bugs and glitches, but the complete absence of crowd AI, driver AI, a functional crime/wanted system, realistic NPC reactions, and meaningful interactivity outside of quests. What happened CDPR? I can't help but to suspect that over-ambition drove CDPR way over their heads, and they committed to something that they were unprepared to make.

Think about it: CDPR had previously made zero games with shooting, zero games with driving, zero games with stealth, zero games with crowd AI, zero games with a crime/wanted system, zero games with deep NPC interaction outside of quests, and zero games with procedurally generated enemy encounters. What on earth convinced CDPR - a studio not exactly known for its technical prowess - that they could outperform GTA V's and RDR2's open world building, and make "the most believable city in an open world game to date" in one go?

Compare that to GTA V, an open world that is by no means perfect, yet before making that game Rockstar had an entire franchise (GTA 3, VC, SA, 4) plus some driving games (Midnight Club) to hone their driving programming. They had the Max Payne franchise to practice programming shooting, RDR1 to practice storytelling, and virtually every game before that to practice crowd AI. And in GTA V it all came together. This is not to say that GTA V is perfect - far from it - but that to even build a functional and believable modern open world it takes years of accumulation of technical experience.

Witcher 3 also lacked crowd AI, crime system, or realistic NPC reactions, but those points didn't stick out so much because, first, roleplaying as a witcher discourages players from messing around; second, most locations in Witcher 3 are in a stable situation lore-wise, and worked fine without random enemy encounters, hence no need for advanced NPC AI. Most fights in Witcher 3 are not in human settlements. Also the shining spots of Witcher 3 redirected attention from its flaws. But Night City is different. It is a crime-ridden modern metropolis with constant violence, armed with a brutal police force, and V is a mercenary on the street who does get his/her hands dirty at times. This kind of open world needs crime and violence to be believable, so it needs crowd AI, crime system, realistic NPC reactions etc. that GTA has but Night City doesn't.

Obviously I'm not an insider and I can only guess, but my guess is that all those praises from the Witcher 3 went to CDPR's head, and convinced them that it's actually not that hard to build "the most believable city." How hard can it be? You just put down some NPC spawning spots, create a bunch of arts for a bunch of NPCs (which, granted, they did a good job with that), put in some combat scenarios here and there, and voila, the most believable video game city. Did they not at least wonder how far they fell behind technically compared to the open worlds of GTA or RDR2?

Going forward, CDPR should really respect the profound difficulty of video game world building and put their ambition in check. Making a super believable modern open world is pretty damn hard - why wouldn't it be - and it takes lots and lots of technical power and experience. It's better to make one solid step forward at a time and succeed, than to take a leap that only ends up landing facedown in the muck.
I think they made a very good job making a believable city, yes it has glitches and such and they need to iron it out. But overall it does the job. I feel Night city as being much more alive than GTA for instant, not that it does a bad job at it either.

I still don't know why people are so angry about the shooting, stealth or driving. Shooting given it's an RPG so its not just point and click, it works very well I think. You automatically look around corner, above things, you feel the cover actually works. Stealth seems pretty decent as well, you have a lot of option to lure people, hide bodies, even pull them away, hack them through cameras etc. The driving to me, is at least as good as in GTA 5, as I didn't like it there, it's fairly easy to get around in Night city in 1st person driving, some of the cars are a bit oversteering like in GTA 5 and a bit to aggressive.

That is not to say that Night city is perfect and if you scratch the surface, you will find odd things, so agree on that. But I don't think one should play it as they would GTA, just driving around with the throttle all the way down and killing people randomly, then you are better off with GTA for sure. But if you try to "fit" into the world, I really don't think its that bad.
 
I agree on over ambition being one of the few issues that trampled CDPR during development. The others being mismanagement and Executives wanting the game out early. They were clearly going for something big and ended up getting overwhelmed by all the work that they had to add. So they pretty much streamlined many mechanics and rushed the actual "RPG" aspects of it.

This IS their first open world city game with guns and vehicles, so I guess inexperience fits in with the whole AI debacle. Not to mention the AI in this game is reminiscent to Witcher 3's AI, which was very basic at best.
 
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I agree on over ambition being one of the few issues that trampled CDPR during development. The others being mismanagement and Executives wanting the game out early. They were clearly going for something big and ended up getting overwhelmed by all the work that have to add. So they pretty much streamlined many mechanics and rushed the actual "RPG" aspects of it.

This IS their first open world city games with guns and vehicles, so I guess inexperience fits in with the whole AI debacle. Not to mention the AI in this game is reminiscent to Witcher 3's AI, which was very basic at best.

They are like my B.A thesis ... I planed much, in my brain and world it was perfect, world changing... ended up in a classic stereo "at least its done to its minimum..."- work :D

But ye, the main reason definitely is/was the crunch, from fresh out of alpha to a finished game in 1 year is just... nobody could have handled that. The hope is there that they keep develop it.
 
Night City looks great, but is by no means a realistic open world metropolis. You all know what I mean: not only bugs and glitches, but the complete absence of crowd AI, driver AI, a functional crime/wanted system, realistic NPC reactions, and meaningful interactivity outside of quests. What happened CDPR? I can't help but to suspect that over-ambition drove CDPR way over their heads, and they committed to something that they were unprepared to make.

Think about it: CDPR had previously made zero games with shooting, zero games with driving, zero games with stealth, zero games with crowd AI, zero games with a crime/wanted system, zero games with deep NPC interaction outside of quests, and zero games with procedurally generated enemy encounters. What on earth convinced CDPR - a studio not exactly known for its technical prowess - that they could outperform GTA V's and RDR2's open world building, and make "the most believable city in an open world game to date" in one go?

Compare that to GTA V, an open world that is by no means perfect, yet before making that game Rockstar had an entire franchise (GTA 3, VC, SA, 4) plus some driving games (Midnight Club) to hone their driving programming. They had the Max Payne franchise to practice programming shooting, RDR1 to practice storytelling, and virtually every game before that to practice crowd AI. And in GTA V it all came together. This is not to say that GTA V is perfect - far from it - but that to even build a functional and believable modern open world it takes years of accumulation of technical experience.

Witcher 3 also lacked crowd AI, crime system, or realistic NPC reactions, but those points didn't stick out so much because, first, roleplaying as a witcher discourages players from messing around; second, most locations in Witcher 3 are in a stable situation lore-wise, and worked fine without random enemy encounters, hence no need for advanced NPC AI. Most fights in Witcher 3 are not in human settlements. Also the shining spots of Witcher 3 redirected attention from its flaws. But Night City is different. It is a crime-ridden modern metropolis with constant violence, armed with a brutal police force, and V is a mercenary on the street who does get his/her hands dirty at times. This kind of open world needs crime and violence to be believable, so it needs crowd AI, crime system, realistic NPC reactions etc. that GTA has but Night City doesn't.

Obviously I'm not an insider and I can only guess, but my guess is that all those praises from the Witcher 3 went to CDPR's head, and convinced them that it's actually not that hard to build "the most believable city." How hard can it be? You just put down some NPC spawning spots, create a bunch of arts for a bunch of NPCs (which, granted, they did a good job with that), put in some combat scenarios here and there, and voila, the most believable video game city. Did they not at least wonder how far they fell behind technically compared to the open worlds of GTA or RDR2?

Going forward, CDPR should really respect the profound difficulty of video game world building and put their ambition in check. Making a super believable modern open world is pretty damn hard - why wouldn't it be - and it takes lots and lots of technical power and experience. It's better to make one solid step forward at a time and succeed, than to take a leap that only ends up landing facedown in the muck.
Sorry I dont get what you mean, this is my favourite game of the last ten years I reckon.
 
I think that in this medium we have two alternatives nowadays

Throwing ourselves into the 'adventurism' of immediate things, of immediate satisfaction and thus running the risk of crashing into a giant wall and breaking ... or ...

Preserving our history, enduring gales, even if, losing a little, to win over time ...

A difficult choice, because in this environment - or anywhere else - the monopoly settles with the smallest and / or most fragile. But, if it were me, if it depended on my will, I would choose the second option. The first we know where it resulted ...
 
personally I wouldn't say ambition ruined it, it is an ambitious project, I think unrealistic time constraints(crunch) made this game what it is atm, coupled with over zealous tech requirements needed to run it, if they either left it in development for at least another year or decided to make this game 5 yrs from now, this game would be even more bloody amazing, it still has the potential to be amazing...after some tlc and patching
 
Well some people affected by over ambition but it wouldn't be realistic to simplify the situation like this.

There are four major problems in my opinion.

1 - Game is not working properly on last gen consoles.
2 - So many features that can improve immersion are missing or removed. (Being able to drink at bars, bad car navigation system, not being able to sit on chair or eat hotdog somewhere, not being able to change appearance, removed braindances, removed sexual content)
3 - The game is buggy and have performance problems.
4 - Some people have abnormal expectations and don't realize it's a video game, it's scripted and made by people.

So in my opinion, highly expectations are one of the least important cause of this problem. They could have prevent what happened by just avoiding first three problem.
 
personally I wouldn't say ambition ruined it, it is an ambitious project, I think unrealistic time constraints(crunch) made this game what it is atm, coupled with over zealous tech requirements needed to run it, if they either left it in development for at least another year or decided to make this game 5 yrs from now, this game would be even more bloody amazing, it still has the potential to be amazing...after some tlc and patching

An ambitious project, for sure, in a good sense. But it should have followed that same firmness of logic as to its development, perhaps. It does not, under any circumstances and under any circumstances, allow any practices against workers' rights. They had capital for that and investors. I don't know how and if they suffered external pressure, probably (speculating here). But I think they could have been firmer in that case.
 
People not being able to buy rtx 3080s and ps5s because of the botters led to this fiasco with cb77 its fucked and no one is talking about it
 
It's imo impossible to make great game without high ambitions. Imo is also not possible make any game perfect just from start because there is missing plaeyers feedback (I know, this may be tricky). FDproject created game which have all the potencial to be great ... it's up to them if they will be put enough additional effort and used players feedback for it. They may just fix bugs and let game be, or ...
 
No. It was no issue of overambition. Something's wrong happened two years ago, so they had to throw away nearly everything. Even after readjusting plan to the more realistic one, they should deliver at least some acceptable quality and effort. Hard to call normal acceptable quality product an "overambitious one". Everyting about CP2077 feels like cut out, dumbed down, implemented in haste in sloppy way with lowest effort possible. Everything in CP feels like a placeholder or a sad remains of planned long time ago features. Besides RT and very well implemented DLSS games 10 years old do most things just better in more interesting, engaging way.
 
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I would have ditched the whole open world structure, drastically reduce the size of the map ( and maybe improving it with future dlcs or patches ) but really focus the RPG aspect of the game.
While many may had unrealistic expectations, I would have been an happy person with a good RPG which improved many of the formulas employed by Fallout New Vegas and Outer Worlds with a very BIG EMPHASIS on body modification, distopyc city / story and choices ( that matter ) and consequences.
 
I would have ditched the whole open world structure, drastically reduce the size of the map ( and maybe improving it with future dlcs or patches ) but really focus the RPG aspect of the game.
While many may had unrealistic expectations, I would have been an happy person with a good RPG which improved many of the formulas employed by Fallout New Vegas and Outer Worlds with a very BIG EMPHASIS on body modification, distopyc city / story and choices ( that matter ) and consequences.
Can't you just play Deus Ex? I don't really want that in Cyberpunk
 
I can't cut a break for CDPR on the grounds of 'never having made this type of game before'. They had 8 years. Saints Row 1 through 4 was developed over about 9 years total... 4 games, at least two of which can be considered massive polished AAA titles in the free-roaming GTA-style genre. That's plenty of time to develop all the talent and systems they need to make a great game.... which they did. Cyberpunk 2077 is a great game if you're playing on a PC with the hardware to handle it.

Cyberpunk 2077 is a victim of mismanagement. The obvious one is it never should have released on last-gen consoles in the state that it did...which is a clearly unplayable state. Their marketing and interviews promised, teased, and insinuated many features the game just doesn't deliver on. That created a lot of hype for a game, setting players up for disappointment. Management should have either reigned in the marketing or made the team was setup to deliver on it. Instead they just let the hype train run out of control, ensuring massive preorders and day 1 sales, but also a major, and well deserved, backlash. That letdown would have probably been manageable with some promises to catch up on features if they hadn't completely botched the launch on last-gen consoles, which has essentially destroyed the trust the community had in them.

The trust issue with what happened on last-gen consoles is a big problem. There is no way any sort of QA team would have called that playable. They hid the issue from reviewers, probably banking on being able to fix the problems before launch, but that didn't happen. They could have delayed the release on last-gen consoles (which may have required delaying it for all consoles) or warned people about the issues, but they didn't. It's a series of choices that just screams of corp greed. It's going to take a lot to dig out of that hole, and the trust issue they've created threatens the income stream they need to even do that digging. DLC plans have to be delayed. They need to keep a big team on the project to get in fixes and add missing features. That team has to be payed. They've already lost sales they might have made on Sony's side over the holidays. Stock value is down by a billion dollars. Refunds are starting to hit hard. I hope they have enough cash laying around to keep their dev team paid or we'll probably be looking at a CDPR buyout in the future.

It's all so sad, because most everyone agrees we have the bones of a great game here. If only it had a brain!
 
I would have ditched the whole open world structure, drastically reduce the size of the map ( and maybe improving it with future dlcs or patches ) but really focus the RPG aspect of the game.
While many may had unrealistic expectations, I would have been an happy person with a good RPG which improved many of the formulas employed by Fallout New Vegas and Outer Worlds with a very BIG EMPHASIS on body modification, distopyc city / story and choices ( that matter ) and consequences.
I wouldn't have ditched all the open world aspects, but I would have had instanced areas in the game, what's a few transition loading screens nowadays? that may have taken the system load off a bit and improved performance for some users.
 
I wouldn't have ditched all the open world aspects, but I would have had instanced areas in the game, what's a few transition loading screens nowadays? that may have taken the system load off a bit and improved performance for some users.

That too would have been a good idea. Less impact on the performances too.
 
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