Problem with shards.

[weirdwayne15]

Alright. So I'm the kinda guy who sought out and read every codex entry in every mass effect game, read every short story on computers in Fallout, and every book in The Elder Scrolls. Shards....there are WAY too freakin' many. Most are complete junk and some have information better passed in other ways. Very few actually provide anything interesting and if you're looking for one specifically you're generally not going to have an easy time of it. Anyone else find shards far more annoying than they're worth?

 

[Casualclick]

Sure. Your option is to buy the sourcebooks for the TTRPG.

That's what the Shards do - if not directly related to a mission (i.e., find evidence of crime), they give small, easily consumed pieces of CP backstories. Why is Lat-Am War important? Well, Johnny served in that war, that's how he came to get his prosthetic, and partly why he's disgusted at the Aldecados hijacking the you know what in Act 2, esp. all the former vets.

How did the NET Crash occur? Why is the NET so primitive now, and who/why NetWatch? When you use a public terminal, or V's apartment computer, why is the NET of the future look like an HTML 1.0, and notably, only has info links on NC but not anything else, NUSA or beyond?

 

[ArvGuy]

The main problem with the shards is that they're not organized in any way in your journal. You'll end up with 15 articles, 10 shards about the world, and then 200+ dumped in random order in a category helpfully called "other", not to be confused with the other "other" or "notes".

And you're totally hosed if you don't read a shard right away, because finding it later in that complete mess is extremely hard. Now, if the shards were actually connected and organized in some way so we could understand their relation to one another, quests, characters, and V, then they'd be awesome.

But right now they're a complete mess.

 

[Casualclick]

Give it's an open world, and the effort to build a dynamic Shard system where different shards show up in a certain order no matter where you go seems superfluous given everything else that needs to be addressed post launch, how exactly do you provide that kind of spoon-feeding to the player?

Even FO4 didn't go to that lengths, and arguably they had a larger Canon and previous versions to cover and be consistent in.

When you go to a certain mission to rescue a fixer's colleague,most of the shards in his office are related to his current project and motivation. You see many repeated shards elsewhere because you rightfully can't predict where a player will go to in NC next.

 

[ArvGuy]

Give it's an open world, and the effort to build a dynamic Shard system where different shards show up in a certain order no matter where you go seems superfluous given everything else that needs to be addressed post launch, how exactly do you provide that kind of spoon-feeding to the player?

Even FO4 didn't go to that lengths, and arguably they had a larger Canon and previous versions to cover and be consistent in.

When you go to a certain mission to rescue a fixer's colleague,most of the shards in his office are related to his current project and motivation. You see many repeated shards elsewhere because you rightfully can't predict where a player will go to in NC next.

I'm not saying shards should show up in the world in a particular order. I am saying that in your journal, you should be able to make sense of them. Currently that is impossible.

 

[Casualclick]

Being out of order isn't taking away from readibility. What is actually more problematic is the categorization.

If anything, consistently siloing them into Information vs Actionable would be the one change I would want more than anything else. The Other vs other just seems to be a QA rush job result.

What is also problematic is the need to immediately take action on a Shard that is manipulatible. If you don't, sometimes the action is not available later.

 

[weirdwayne15]

I mean even if you could check a box to "hide" a shard moving it into a different section that would help significantly. That said I think there could have been a much better interface overall to access shards.

 

[warner11]

Maybe just a variety?

eg. In watchdogs you can pick up audio recordings of conversations. A lot of shards are exactly that except they are text files written like a script.
Person a: I stole this stuff
Person b: that’s crazy
Person a: I stashed it here

etc etc

but it makes it so hard to read and engage with. Those shards would be better as actual voice recordings.

just for varietyagainst the text ones

maybe even a few video recording of events? Something That could have been developed into BD’s!?!

 

[ArvGuy]

Being out of order isn't taking away from readibility. What is actually more problematic is the categorization.

If anything, consistently siloing them into Information vs Actionable would be the one change I would want more than anything else. The Other vs other just seems to be a QA rush job result.

What is also problematic is the need to immediately take action on a Shard that is manipulatible. If you don't, sometimes the action is not available later.

Having well over 200 shards in the category "other", and no contextual information aside from that, makes it completely impossible to figure out which shard goes with what. If you forgot to read a shard right away then even finding it among all the other unread shards in "other" is going to be a problem.

Any way you try to angle this, it just is not good information management to dump 200 disconnected tidbits into the same folder.

 

[Guest 4402625]

Pillars of Eternity 1, every game developer whoever interested in story telling should play that game. The way they delivered the story was a masterpiece. It was like reading a novel.

On the other hand shards in the Cyberpunk was all over the places, some of them was totally irrelevant and bunch of mumbo jumbo so it was hard the follow. So I was never able to get in the background story.

Also another problem with the shards were the background colors, font colors ,and the UI. It really hurt my eyes so after a while I stopped reading them.

 

[CamilCorbeau]

For me, the shards are the best part of Cyberpunk. The pen-writting is simply great. Shards tell the story of this world (the really dark one but sometimes also funny) and give it a depth. Just a pity that there exists limited number of them and they repeat themsleves more and more often...
However, management of shards in the UI is a real mess. I always try to read them ASAP whenever they pop (left arrow on PS4 controller). Else I can't find a new ones.

 

[Etrnlhaze]

there is too many and it gets annoying trying to collect them all !

 

[spayler8]

I have been playing the game for the first time recently, and have been looking for a thread on exactly this! There is so much amazing lore in Cyberpunk, but it's really difficult to access it in game. The shards just scatter the information so it's impossible to read more about a specific part of the lore you want to know more about in game.

I absolutely think CDPR should use something similar to the Mass Effect system in all their games. Information properly organised by category (characters, locations, corporations, organisations weapons etc) ideally with the most important stuff actually read back to you. It would help being immersed into the world so much more. It also saves you from spoilers when you have to Google some part of the lore, since in the Mass Effect system the entries update depending on where you are in the story.

Of course it's a lot of effort, but 100% there would be tons of positive reactions to this feature being implemented for the next games. It provides a huge opportunity to get people into the lore of Cyberpunk and the Witcher. Even if not a lot of people have asked for it in the past, people won't have realised what they were missing. Definitely worth the effort!!!!!

Cheers

 

[the_underw0rld]

Having well over 200 shards in the category "other"

Try having over 400 in 'OTHER' and most all look alike

 

[strangerr3]

I do have have problem with shards. Text window, font, colour, background noise - I think combination of all those leads to struggle when trying to read them. Its a good concept but sooo annoying to read. If they could format them in a more pleasable way it would be much cooler. There are loads of shards about historic events or people - why not have few photos included making them look more like articles you would read in web? I know its so simple to copy and paste text without upgrading anything but I think its missed opportunity. Especially for a RPG game where people would expect players to read more text than averate tweet.

Searching for a particular shard in inventory is activity for strongest and bravest.