Opinion: CDPR was right to publish CP2077 so early (...maybe)

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At first I was convinced that it was wrong to publish the game so early and it should have been more polished.
But looking back now – and especially how little CDPR got done in the seven months after release – it's clear the game couldn't have gotten much better, even if they waited another year.

So what I am NOT saying is:
– I like the game as it is -> I wished for more (minigames, interactivity, better quests overall, better AI in battles/driving)
– It was right to pretend, the PS4 bugs are not so bad - > It absolutely wasn't

What I AM saying, is:
– it was good to finally stop the crunch in the studio -> would have been even better to not crunch at all
– from a business standpoint, the game had to come out, especially since everybody was waiting for it so long AND we had a pandemic and not much else to look forward to. It would have been an even bigger marketing and backlash nightmare if the game came out as it is now (Patch 1.3) in June 2021.

I was lucky: My PC ran it with good settings, I enjoyed my first playthrough – and it stayed my only playthrough, sadly, because of the already mentioned missing interactivity. So, for me all the patches up until now changed absolutely nothing.

Maybe some of you have heard about path dependence*. It's a concept in social sciences and economics and one of the main takeaway-messages is: Sometimes small decisions in the beginning (decision=choosing a path) lead to consequences which can cause big mistakes. I think, CDPR made some of those small choices, and looking back at them, they finally pulled the emergency parachute and released the game.

So, discussion time: What do you think?

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependence
 
I'm not so sure it was a good idea to release it on the base consoles at the same time. Most releases have problems on their first day (the main game and patches including such games as wow.. one patch caused infection to spread which killed players), especially open world games, PC owners are more used to this and dealing with it. Once the game is out there priorities changed, before this scope creep comes in more and more the longer a game is in development, At some point the project manager has to draw the line and say.. "get it out" else it will never be finished especially with an open ended it will be ready when it is ready. Call it early access so as to warn the PC buyers that the game is playable but not perfect.
 
For speak generally :
Good choice to release it to early ? maybe not.
Good choice to release it on base console ? maybe not.
Good choice to release it like a full release (not as early access) ? maybe not.


For speak selfishly from my point of view :
Absolutely, a great choice !
I really wanted to play it (even if there were bugs/problems)
I was able to play it at the same time as the PC players (that's rare).
And maybe also a good idea for Microsoft, 'cause after constating that my faithful XB1x was not enough powerful for playing it, I have bough a XBSX (that was not planned at all before).
 

Guest 3847602

Guest
Yes on PC and next-gen consoles, no on PS4 and Xbox One.
Biggest mistake they ever made was decision to start with taking pre-orders way too early (June 2019). From then on, it was practically impossible to separate release dates of PC and base console versions without backlash.
 
The "emergency parachute" should have been something that actually respected the community of players and fans.

They should have been honest and tell the community, "guys, we're releasing a BETA VERSION of the game, so EXPECT it to be incomplete and to have big problems on EVERY console, especially on older machines, but we're working hard and we'll fix it in a year or so, to give you gamers the experience you deserve and be true to what we showed you."

What they basically said instead was, "we're going to knock averybody's socks off and release an absolutely finished, complete and awesome game which, based on what we said and showed you in years of trailers and gameplay videos, is gonna be REVOLUTIONARY and will change every player's life". And they released it at full price.

I know i'm being exaggerated and what i said is a hyperbole, but that pretty much sums it up and isn't actually far from the truth.

So, no. They should have waited, or be honest about it and declare the game unfinished from the start. I don't care about stakeholders or investors, i'm a gamer, and as a gamer i cannot forgive their behavior in the slightest. They had a GREAT, absolutely MIND-BLOWING concept and they nearly nailed it. The story, the art direction, etc, are really mind blowing, but the gameplay elements really did NOT deliver, and a lot of content is missing.

Too bad the CEOs ruined almost all of what should have been with their shortsighted, money-grabbing attitude.

EDITED: They could have said, "the pandemic didn't help with development, so sorry if you'll have to wait for some more months / one year", and most people with a brain would have understood that.
 
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on PC and next gen consoles yes, the game isn't a beta, it's just buggy like most AAA titles on release, but it's finished imo, you can go on and on about "potential" and what not, but it's a video game after all, not a life simulator, no one shits on any other Open World RPG for not having xyz, and yes i didn't follow the hype which explains why i'm not disappointed like most people
 
The game has been taken out of the PS store and even though many already bought it there by that time, I think that the damage might have been comparable to another delay.
In my opinion, fixing bugs is a bit easier if you do not have to do it in form of patches on released game, finding way how to be compatibile with saves and what not.

So as I see it, it rather was not the right decision. The game should have been delayed.
Even though I personaly enjoyed the game, had not that many bugs and none critical I would prefer if they released it now and I did see even less bugs. But more importantly, so people would not get stucked in phone calls and such.
 
no one shits on any other Open World RPG for not having xyz

Quite a lot of people did shit on unmodded Skyrim or Fallout 4 actually, to name just the most glaring examples. But those were established IPs, and people were more inclined to accept it and, well, mod the hell out of both games. But with a brand new IP you simply must try harder, not just expect people to have faith in you because "we made Witcher 3".
 
Quite a lot of people did shit on unmodded Skyrim or Fallout 4 actually, to name just the most glaring examples. But those were established IPs, and people were more inclined to accept it and, well, mod the hell out of both games. But with a brand new IP you simply must try harder, not just expect people to have faith in you because "we made Witcher 3".
the outrage doesn't compare though, but fair enough
 
I guess lots of things had to get cut to get it playable. I just watched McVicker's video where he compares the console Gold disc release compared to the current release. Personally I hope things he mentions gets re-integrated in the game at some point.
 
It should of came out when it was ready like they said..not this trash that we got and seems to be going nowhere. They should of put it out 2022 when it might of been finished..nothing cut and a longer story and made it for pc and the new generation of consoles..I get that not everyone has those to play on yet..but old generation version of this game is garbage nd they can't really improve it and its pointless in doing so..their time should be on new generation fixes and pc. Re-release the game when its 100%..
 
It was their best choice. But they had to choose between shit and really shit. And they are the ones responsible for their lacking options.

One would hope they learned from their mistakes, but they decided to start the development of 2 AAA games and a mobile game simultaneously all while organizing the Witcher con too. Literal weeks after realizing they weren't capable of developing a single AAA game at once.
Seems legit.
If you ever wondered whether fixing CP77 is their priority number one, you might now know the answer.
 
It's a bit of a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. Delaying CP2077 again might have hurt CDPR and the game anyway, but probably not to the current degree, I think best case scenario it wouldn't be removed from the PS Store for 7 months; I doubt further development would see all of that "cut content" get put back in the game and it's likely people were going to be disappointed anyway.

I am glad it released when it did regardless. Even on PS4, I loved playing.
 
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The whole "when it's ready" is a challenging thing to promise, because it is a promise. And a bold one. And the funny thing with crunch time - it's almost inevitable no matter how much time you have and the more time you think you have, well, you get my point :D because yes things break and it gets disheartening at times and they still have to push through, fix and release the thing. This is normal. Well, not really.
Now of course management-wise it probably always was a deadline(-s).
Psst, if you can (and you can) always blame management - they had one job xD

Just pondering and honestly don't really care. Was not even following the exact release date and got the game in April and was excited about it and kind of enjoy finding some bugs, so win-win xD

But do feel sorry for those to whom game was very broken/unplayable and they waited and had expectations, even pre-ordered.
 
they promised in the messages they used to tell us of the three delays that they delayed the game to give us the best gaming experience possible. They did not deliver. So they should have postponed again until it was really ready.

Their original sin was that they announced the game much too early (I mean 2018 not when the game was first revealed) and then continuously hyped it. If you announce a game maybe one year or less before you plan to release it, people are more likely to forgive any delays than when they have already waited for two years and then get three additional delays.

I'm not sure you can call that path dependency though, since they could have corrected that course several times. [...] When the second delay happened, they could have used Covid as an excuse to delay it even further and most players would probablystill have been okay with it, but they didn't. After the third delay it got really ridiculous, because they had already declared it had reached Gold status and told people on Twitter they could book their vacations...I guess that was the point of no return, where they couln't delay a forth time.

But yeah, they announced it just way too early, many of their problems could have been avoided if they hadn't done that.
 
So from a business standpoint, not sure if it was a good thing to be honest. Sure they made a bunch of money from the initial release, but the question now is, how is this going to impact CDPR in the future. Things to look at here are:

1) Stock Prices: Stocks tanked, and I mean tanked, to the lowest stock on the Polish Stock Exchange, lower then the initial selling price. How much money was lost due to that alone? Stock prices have been slowly climbing again, but they're not back up to initial selling prices yet.

2) investor Confidence: This ties in to #1, but the real question is, what's investor confidence like? From all reports, investor confidence is at an all time low, and this can be seen in the super-low stock prices. If investors are skeptical to invest in CDPR, no new money comes in, and all that money that they made off of initial sales spends quick.

3) Employee Confidence: It's a known fact that the employees are dissatisfied with CDPR management. Now you've got here a thing where people won't quit the company, where else are they really going to go, but no knew blood will really be brought in. Mind you this has been slightly disproven by CDPR bringing in two new managers, but if they can't keep them, or they continue to treat their employees like crap, figure they won't be able to keep them too much longer, and won't bring new blood in.

4) Consumer Confidence: This is the big one really. How much will future sales be effected by alienating a good minority(?) of their consumers? Even their most loyal fans have had the seeds of doubt planted into their brains, even as they sit on these forums and very vocally defend CDPR. But more importantly, how badly has their reputation been tarnished by Average Joe Gamer? Will they pre-purchase any future CDPR games or wait for release? How many Average Joe Gamers will wait until their next release goes on sale now, figuring it'll take them over 6 months to make their next release playable? How many Average Joe Games have walked away from CDPR totally, and the next release they won't even be bothered to buy at all? A tarnished reputation can be a horribly bad thing for any company. Unless you have EA levels of money to literally buy off the "worst company in the world" tag, you have an uphill battle once people start doubting you.

5) Management Confidence: Okay this is going to sound weird I know, but the confidence of management has got to be shaken. Even as they walk away with huge bonuses, they're looking at all the negative press, the law suits, the PS4 debacle, the stock prices tanking, the less-then-stellar follow up sales, and wondering "what did we do wrong exactly?" A smart question, to be sure, and one that needs to be asked. The question they have to start asking is "how bad is it and can the current group of managers fix it?" The problem CDPR has is that they are a public company acting like a private company, with their major investors literally running the day to day operations of the business. So they can't just "get rid of underperforming producers" like EA would? So how do you fix it? Confidence wise, when there isn't a huge clear fix in sight, it's going to bring you to your knees.

So from a business standpoint, yes it may have for the short term been a good choice, for the long term, it may end up costing them more then they made from releasing early. Only time will tell.
 

Pufty

Forum regular
Just because my previous comment was considered hostile, I still want to say that I hope the management isn't getting away without learning a lesson. This untruthful, silent and slow development is painful for me (painful not in a physical way...) to keep thinking about, but I can't help checking whether CDPR has turned the tide and is getting back on track.

The sad thought is that CDPR has changed in a way and won't return how it was.
 
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