The major problem was the marketing for Cyberpunk 2077.
They spoiled the majority of the main mission on trailers.
There were a lot of misleading marketing, just showing how gangs, and weapons were unique and very important. How the game would be RPG, and not a loot and shooter. Promissed immersion, and showed a very realistic city, with V and his/her apartment. It is all about players choice.
Sounds great.
But in reality:
Game was buggy and unplayable for PS4/Xbox players (until this day) - playing the game in an unstable 20 fps. Animations were rough, unrealistic, predetermined, had very bad continuity errors, and the disparity between campaign animations and the other characters of the world, in quality, is absurd.
Behind the thick blanket of bugs.
Physics - horrible. Even water doesn't react to what V does. Tyres doesn't seem to take bullet damage. Even some walls doesn't register the bullets when you shot at it.
Collision - Not rare to call more than 3 cars at the same time just to see them flying around because they spawn in some place (God knows where) that collided with some other object that was already there. When more than one enemy lies dead, or beated, if another one falls in the same place, they overlay each other, sometimes even with walls.
Some times it doesn't work, so characters can pass throught V like ghosts. Car collisions can make cars "enter each other" space. It's terrible.
AI - One of the worst I had experience in gaming. Not rarely enemies just stays where they are, shouting, but doing nothing at all. They never try to flank, use supress fire, flashbang, or move around the map. Close quarters are a complete joke, as their time reaction is very poor.
Cars - They look great, the interiors are incredible - top of the market, but their handling have a lot to improve, they slide too much, drifting is impossible because you can't control the car. The exception is, in my experience, Mizutani Shion Coyote - which is the best car to drive (now).
Police System - Terrible. It's a "Back off, man" system. They spawn behind the player, are very agressive, and keep spawning forever, unless you manage to take some car, drive 150 meters away, then come back like nothing ever happened.
Pedestrian behavior - Completely flawed. They are one of the most artificial people that I saw in gaming since 2010. They shout a lot of nonsense phrases that clearly are out of context. The "boxing simulation" they do sometimes take place in the most unreasonable places, like in some crossing, in the middle of the city, or on some random parking lot, usually dressed like, I don't know, a cousine chef and a corpo.
Combat - Terrible. There is no kind of challenge on VH difficulty. You can one shot enemies on Very Hard. It's like they didn't had any kind of vision, they didn't decide what could make V stronger, so your weapon become stronger if you level up, if you buy skills, if you make it better by crafting, if you insert modifications, if you do cyberimplants, if you mod cyberimplants, if you hack enemies they become weaker, and so on. But no one thought what would happen when all these effects stacked on each other.
Story - Great, main story is great. But clearly lacking on some areas. Like the friendship with Jackie being a youtube promo video. The lack of choice is staggering - you either choose to do the mission, there's no other alternative path. There's a lot of fake paths that leads nowhere (like Meredith Stout, for example).
Fixer System/NCPD - A severe flaw of this game. It's like CDPR not knowing that the storytelling are their main product. As there is no personal relation between V and the quest benefactor (which made the side quests in Witcher 3 so special), the missions play in a very grindy way. V never leads anything, quests are always ordered by fixers, and V is always passively obeying.
If it was in Witcher 3 it would be like instead of going directly on the location to speak to people, Geralt was always being followed by a messenger in horse, or being interrupted by a messenger pigeon.
Choices - Severely flawed to be RPG. There is no alternative path, or last boss. You either choose to do it, or literally kill yourself. There is no much options in secondary missions too. It's like I said: CDPR forgot what made Witcher 3 so special for players.
Animations - Very limited standart options for it. It's funny to see how V enters the cars in a very realistic way, but all other regular citizens just teleports into them. Some characters opens the doors, and enter the cars in a normal way.
Useless/Oportunity lost - That's what defines most of "features" in Cyberpunk 2077. What do I mean by that?
a) Apartment? No gameplay effect. You can rescue a cat, but you can't pet it. You can store items, just as you can do with your car. Wardrobe - there is some items there, but after you take them, there is no use. TV? If forces you to stay put to watch, so it's almost better to watch TV in elevators, and most programs are ads.
b) Romance and friendship? After the side quests are done, there is no use for them as V can't do anything with the characters. Just call to listen a very limited amount of lines. Texting is a very poor way to develop relations.
c) Food and Drinks absurd number of machines? Despite being used to farm crafting materials to sell and use "infinite money exploit", they're almost useless because the effect is so mild that it have no importance at all. Even the variety is useless because they all cost the same and all do the same (food gives "nutrition state", while drinks gives "hidratation state", and alchool just have bad effects - because they're on the same inventory page with medication, it's an absurd amount of visual polution).
d) Crafting bar - useless. To force the player to wait for 0.8 seconds before crafting 1 item is boring, tedious, and have no use at all besides making the player wait while looking at the inventory screen instead of playing.
e) Sleep - useless, no gameplay effect. V doesn't even lay down in a regular way, the sleep position is a meme.
f) Street vendors - cool to make a scenario, but most of them are useless, as they don't sell anything, and shout immersion breaking nonsense.
g) Restaurants, bars and clubs - useless, because, as there is no eating/drinking animations, there is no reason to go there. In clubs you can dance, nothing more than that happens. It's basically sneaking/shoot out scenarios.
h) Weapon info? Mostly always useless. Why? You can have a pistol that deals "1,400" damage, but in reality, every shot does 500k damage (depending on where you shoot). Same goes for shotguns, SMGs, and so on. The DPS and Damage number is far from the damage you really deal when using these weapons.
i) Nudity - There's no use for it. Nobody reacts if you go around naked.
j) Clothing style - Useless, because if you're dressing to look good, probably will have very bad defense stats. How to fix this? I) Make all clothing avaiable to craft when you break them once; II) All clothing have 0 armor; III) Clothing gain armor and stats only by armadillo mod insertion. That's it.
So, the game clearly wasn't ready.
But even knowing it. The marketing pushed the game foward, and promissed a lot.
In interviews they really created a lot of expectations about immersion, how the worlds was alive, how style was important, and so on. They shouldn't release the game this year, nor they should promisse to do so, they should stay quiet and release this on 2021, and start marketing campaign by july of 2021, and not resume it in 2018.
Now, how could CDPR fix these? Are there anything more to add? Leave your thoughts.
They spoiled the majority of the main mission on trailers.
There were a lot of misleading marketing, just showing how gangs, and weapons were unique and very important. How the game would be RPG, and not a loot and shooter. Promissed immersion, and showed a very realistic city, with V and his/her apartment. It is all about players choice.
Sounds great.
But in reality:
Game was buggy and unplayable for PS4/Xbox players (until this day) - playing the game in an unstable 20 fps. Animations were rough, unrealistic, predetermined, had very bad continuity errors, and the disparity between campaign animations and the other characters of the world, in quality, is absurd.
Behind the thick blanket of bugs.
Physics - horrible. Even water doesn't react to what V does. Tyres doesn't seem to take bullet damage. Even some walls doesn't register the bullets when you shot at it.
Collision - Not rare to call more than 3 cars at the same time just to see them flying around because they spawn in some place (God knows where) that collided with some other object that was already there. When more than one enemy lies dead, or beated, if another one falls in the same place, they overlay each other, sometimes even with walls.
Some times it doesn't work, so characters can pass throught V like ghosts. Car collisions can make cars "enter each other" space. It's terrible.
AI - One of the worst I had experience in gaming. Not rarely enemies just stays where they are, shouting, but doing nothing at all. They never try to flank, use supress fire, flashbang, or move around the map. Close quarters are a complete joke, as their time reaction is very poor.
Cars - They look great, the interiors are incredible - top of the market, but their handling have a lot to improve, they slide too much, drifting is impossible because you can't control the car. The exception is, in my experience, Mizutani Shion Coyote - which is the best car to drive (now).
Police System - Terrible. It's a "Back off, man" system. They spawn behind the player, are very agressive, and keep spawning forever, unless you manage to take some car, drive 150 meters away, then come back like nothing ever happened.
Pedestrian behavior - Completely flawed. They are one of the most artificial people that I saw in gaming since 2010. They shout a lot of nonsense phrases that clearly are out of context. The "boxing simulation" they do sometimes take place in the most unreasonable places, like in some crossing, in the middle of the city, or on some random parking lot, usually dressed like, I don't know, a cousine chef and a corpo.
Combat - Terrible. There is no kind of challenge on VH difficulty. You can one shot enemies on Very Hard. It's like they didn't had any kind of vision, they didn't decide what could make V stronger, so your weapon become stronger if you level up, if you buy skills, if you make it better by crafting, if you insert modifications, if you do cyberimplants, if you mod cyberimplants, if you hack enemies they become weaker, and so on. But no one thought what would happen when all these effects stacked on each other.
Story - Great, main story is great. But clearly lacking on some areas. Like the friendship with Jackie being a youtube promo video. The lack of choice is staggering - you either choose to do the mission, there's no other alternative path. There's a lot of fake paths that leads nowhere (like Meredith Stout, for example).
Fixer System/NCPD - A severe flaw of this game. It's like CDPR not knowing that the storytelling are their main product. As there is no personal relation between V and the quest benefactor (which made the side quests in Witcher 3 so special), the missions play in a very grindy way. V never leads anything, quests are always ordered by fixers, and V is always passively obeying.
If it was in Witcher 3 it would be like instead of going directly on the location to speak to people, Geralt was always being followed by a messenger in horse, or being interrupted by a messenger pigeon.
Choices - Severely flawed to be RPG. There is no alternative path, or last boss. You either choose to do it, or literally kill yourself. There is no much options in secondary missions too. It's like I said: CDPR forgot what made Witcher 3 so special for players.
Animations - Very limited standart options for it. It's funny to see how V enters the cars in a very realistic way, but all other regular citizens just teleports into them. Some characters opens the doors, and enter the cars in a normal way.
Useless/Oportunity lost - That's what defines most of "features" in Cyberpunk 2077. What do I mean by that?
a) Apartment? No gameplay effect. You can rescue a cat, but you can't pet it. You can store items, just as you can do with your car. Wardrobe - there is some items there, but after you take them, there is no use. TV? If forces you to stay put to watch, so it's almost better to watch TV in elevators, and most programs are ads.
b) Romance and friendship? After the side quests are done, there is no use for them as V can't do anything with the characters. Just call to listen a very limited amount of lines. Texting is a very poor way to develop relations.
c) Food and Drinks absurd number of machines? Despite being used to farm crafting materials to sell and use "infinite money exploit", they're almost useless because the effect is so mild that it have no importance at all. Even the variety is useless because they all cost the same and all do the same (food gives "nutrition state", while drinks gives "hidratation state", and alchool just have bad effects - because they're on the same inventory page with medication, it's an absurd amount of visual polution).
d) Crafting bar - useless. To force the player to wait for 0.8 seconds before crafting 1 item is boring, tedious, and have no use at all besides making the player wait while looking at the inventory screen instead of playing.
e) Sleep - useless, no gameplay effect. V doesn't even lay down in a regular way, the sleep position is a meme.
f) Street vendors - cool to make a scenario, but most of them are useless, as they don't sell anything, and shout immersion breaking nonsense.
g) Restaurants, bars and clubs - useless, because, as there is no eating/drinking animations, there is no reason to go there. In clubs you can dance, nothing more than that happens. It's basically sneaking/shoot out scenarios.
h) Weapon info? Mostly always useless. Why? You can have a pistol that deals "1,400" damage, but in reality, every shot does 500k damage (depending on where you shoot). Same goes for shotguns, SMGs, and so on. The DPS and Damage number is far from the damage you really deal when using these weapons.
i) Nudity - There's no use for it. Nobody reacts if you go around naked.
j) Clothing style - Useless, because if you're dressing to look good, probably will have very bad defense stats. How to fix this? I) Make all clothing avaiable to craft when you break them once; II) All clothing have 0 armor; III) Clothing gain armor and stats only by armadillo mod insertion. That's it.
So, the game clearly wasn't ready.
But even knowing it. The marketing pushed the game foward, and promissed a lot.
In interviews they really created a lot of expectations about immersion, how the worlds was alive, how style was important, and so on. They shouldn't release the game this year, nor they should promisse to do so, they should stay quiet and release this on 2021, and start marketing campaign by july of 2021, and not resume it in 2018.
Now, how could CDPR fix these? Are there anything more to add? Leave your thoughts.