Was CP too ambitious?

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The game wasn't too ambitious, this isn't what's hurting them. What's hurting them is their attitude of "we made money so this is fine" and not addressing people's biggest concerns with the game. In the last 6 months modders who aren't even getting paid have done more to address the game's problems than the people who made it...this in and of itself speaks volumes.

There is something drastically wrong with CDPR's management structure, and I'm seeing a pattern I've seen with other companies over the years that makes me genuinely concerned for CDPR's future.
Eh maybe that is a bit too much, it is also possible that they have 1 group on the side fixing bugs (only) and the rest working on dlc/expansions. And management just have went the other way from 'talking too much' to 'being silent and let our actions speak' sort?
....though why they don't add small stuff like bottun for walking I don't know:)
 
The game wasn't too ambitious, this isn't what's hurting them. What's hurting them is their attitude of "we made money so this is fine" and not addressing people's biggest concerns with the game. In the last 6 months modders who aren't even getting paid have done more to address the game's problems than the people who made it...this in and of itself speaks volumes.

There is something drastically wrong with CDPR's management structure, and I'm seeing a pattern I've seen with other companies over the years that makes me genuinely concerned for CDPR's future.
Modders are amazing for games, the same could be said about Skyrim and Fallout, these games are kept alive due to modders. And also them that have solved a lot of issues in these games. Not only superficial things, but general bugs and short comings, performance increases etc. Modders never fail to amaze me, in how much or what things they manage to do for some of these games. And hopefully, at some point when CP is fixed, my hope is that modders will eventually turn the game into what I wanted it to be.

And I agree, i remembered people saying in the beginning that CDPR would probably need 2-4 month to fix the game and then it would be fine. I never bought that, the amount of bugs and issues is not something you quickly fix, not in a game that were released way to early. And I agree, some mismanagement definitely interfered with the development, maybe they lost control with it, I don't know and I don't think we will know until much later maybe, when they feel confident enough about a new project and have to make it sound like that is completely under control, then they might say that they learned a lot from CP and have done a lot of changes :)
 
The game wasn't too ambitious, this isn't what's hurting them. What's hurting them is their attitude of "we made money so this is fine" and not addressing people's biggest concerns with the game. In the last 6 months modders who aren't even getting paid have done more to address the game's problems than the people who made it...this in and of itself speaks volumes.

There is something drastically wrong with CDPR's management structure, and I'm seeing a pattern I've seen with other companies over the years that makes me genuinely concerned for CDPR's future.

modding is a bit of a different beast. Modders are sometimes pros, they also only have to care about their own work, and if they introduce bugs, its not a problem. The Current modders don't have access to much either, which makes it easier to not mess stuff up. They also don't have to worry about consoles, which are usually less easy to work outside of the box with. They also often put a lot of time into their mods.

And this is the case for any company, Bethesda, bioware, etc. most games with a strong mod community, the modders can create way more content overall than the company.
 
They got one assault in Watson near some alleyway tiger claws, with afterlife mercs on the corner, if you run around a lot you can aggro all of them by accident. I don't think most people like that though.
I agree, but I don't think that is the issue. But rather because the agro system doesn't work for everything. To me the moment I hear that word "agro" I instantly think about MMORPG games :) You have some camp or monster and if you get to close they attack you. And for certain things it works. But for having these types of camps in a city which are suppose to be realistic I don't think that is the optimal solution.

AC handles it pretty well, and CP does as well in certain cases. Like when you have building that belong to a gang, that they obviously are not interested in you poking around there. But then you have these "monster" camps in the middle of the street where they are bullying some people. etc. And if you get to close they attack you, not anyone else only you. The same with the police if you stand to close to them for to long they attack and kill you.

I think one of the biggest issues in CP with the whole gang thing and enemies in general, is that you basically have two types of enemies. humans and robots. And its not a world in difference in regards to how you fight them. Whereas in TW3 you had animals, humans and then all the different monsters, and even though TW3 didn't have the best combat system ever, it still was fun, because you needed or could use different tactics depending on what enemy you fought, like each monster was like a mini boss.

But that doesn't really work in CP I think. And I don't think that they should start adding all kinds of weird enemies to the game. But they could make the features around gang be a lot more interesting and integrate them more into the game in new and different ways. Meaning like how you interact with them. How can you take a very few types of enemies and still make them interesting? Because that is a challenge to be honest.

Like for instance in AC: Valhalla, you can fight animals you have certain enemies that are stronger than others, they use abilities depending on weapon they have and if they are special NPCs. But for the most part its also a lot of humans. But in their case, you can then do raids, you can stealth as normal. There is a distinct difference in which weapon you use. There are environment stuff you can use, like explosive barrels. You have the whole system of conquering areas etc. So even though its humans and they wear different uniforms, you have a lot of things around it, that makes it more interesting even though its not directly connected to the fighting itself.

I would have liked if CP had done more in that department. How do we make it so, combat or is more interesting or meaningful, and its not just one type of enemy with a different name and 3d model?

Because at least for me, it doesn't really take long before you hardly know or care who you are shooting, is it maelstrom or tiger claws? Doesn't really matter.

they are either a nomad(who generally live with and deal with conflict) a counter Intel corpo(goes on missions for the corp) or a streetkid who shows no fear of jacked up gangers.
Yeah that is the illusion, it obviously makes absolutely no difference in regards to actual gameplay. The corpo is equally well at dealing and killing with any type of enemies as the others are.

Also note, V even before the heist is doing fairly well. most people in night city are working poor, mercs make more for a gig than most others make in a week. Even mid level corpos don't have V's money/earning (though they get complimentary housing, Healthcare and food)
Yes, but again. As I mentioned to someone earlier (might have been you), I can't roleplay something like that if the game doesn't support it. The illusion of people living on the street or being poor, just doesn't work in CP in my opinion. Simply looking at the amount of stuff V just pick up randomly on the street, there is no reason for anyone to starve. Again, V pick up dildos and condoms, ashtrays, old pizzas etc. because they apparently have value, any person in NC could do that, there are enough of these things to go around. Also you will find random high tech weapons and armors just laying there, food right next to a starving person.

Fair enough if this illusion works for people and they can buy it it. But for me, it just doesn't cut it. And I know this is the same in other games, but this idea in CP in my opinion is stretch to far, where I it becomes unbelievable.

point is most regular people have no chance against V, or even the guys V fights.
I agree, V very quickly becomes a God. And personally I don't like it, its doesn't improve the gameplay for me, and would call it poor balancing. Obviously its a personal taste, some enough it, I don't. I think you should be challenged throughout the game, especially on very hard, but in my opinion, even on that difficulty the game is very easy, and im not good at FPS. Which is not required, when you can kill enemies basically off screen or through walls and they can't do anything about it.
 
The game wasn't too ambitious, this isn't what's hurting them. What's hurting them is their attitude of "we made money so this is fine" and not addressing people's biggest concerns with the game. In the last 6 months modders who aren't even getting paid have done more to address the game's problems than the people who made it...this in and of itself speaks volumes.

There is something drastically wrong with CDPR's management structure, and I'm seeing a pattern I've seen with other companies over the years that makes me genuinely concerned for CDPR's future.

I'm not sure this is accurate because in addition to 2020 being Covid-19 ridden (the one acceptable excuse to delay again that no one took), they also had to deal with hacking. They've also been devoting the past seven months to try to deal with the problems of the consoles that they utterly boned. Modders can't fix the problems of the game on consoles and there's effectively four games being worked on in order to try to get their performance up to snuff.

Yes, but again. As I mentioned to someone earlier (might have been you), I can't roleplay something like that if the game doesn't support it. The illusion of people living on the street or being poor, just doesn't work in CP in my opinion. Simply looking at the amount of stuff V just pick up randomly on the street, there is no reason for anyone to starve. Again, V pick up dildos and condoms, ashtrays, old pizzas etc. because they apparently have value, any person in NC could do that, there are enough of these things to go around. Also you will find random high tech weapons and armors just laying there, food right next to a starving person.

You make a kind of interesting mention here because it's once more a case of world-building that Cyberpunk 2020 embraced. The vast majority of people in Night City don't have actual legal jobs and they survive by literally scavenging like it's Fallout. The rich and powerful of Night City produce so much food waste and trash that they've largely avoid starvation by picking over the ruins of the enormous garbage piles that are produced daily. I was impressed they remembered the detail that Night City is a place where the poor survive by literally the massive wastefulness of its population's 1% and there were city-sized trash heaps outside the city.
 
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I would have liked if CP had done more in that department. How do we make it so, combat or is more interesting or meaningful, and its not just one type of enemy with a different name and 3d model?

Because at least for me, it doesn't really take long before you hardly know or care who you are shooting, is it maelstrom or tiger claws? Doesn't really matter.
In terms of the ambition angle you might have a case there, even if it's speculative.

I think you're absolutely right on the placement aspect. You travel around NC and eventually it begins to feel like all these miscellaneous pieces of content are evenly distributed throughout. A crime in progress or organized crime location feels eerily similar to a generic bandit camp in TW3. Those random encounters with gangs are functionally identical to random monster packs in TW3. So you have an "open world" but the content within quickly begins to appear static (TW3 had this problem too, for the record).

The same is true on the variation aspect. There are different types of behaviors for NPC's within the game world but those quickly begin to appear redundant as well. There isn't enough variation and it fails to feel dynamic. Once you've bagged one set of gangers you've bagged them all.

I think the game left a lot on the table in both areas. The trouble is the additional work necessary to go beyond any of that. The volume of work needed to deliver what exists is hard enough. Adding on top to achieve a more organic appearance and feel is a tall order.

I could see a version of events where CDPR was trying to create this massive, believable city, got to the point of dropping these encounters into the game and quickly realized going further with it wasn't in the cards. There are only so many hours in a given day. The end result being this massive, beautiful city and not much room to liven it up. Whether it's actually how it went down or not is, again, admittedly a bit speculative.
 
The game wasn't too ambitious, this isn't what's hurting them. What's hurting them is their attitude of "we made money so this is fine" and not addressing people's biggest concerns with the game. In the last 6 months modders who aren't even getting paid have done more to address the game's problems than the people who made it...this in and of itself speaks volumes.

There is something drastically wrong with CDPR's management structure, and I'm seeing a pattern I've seen with other companies over the years that makes me genuinely concerned for CDPR's future.
CDPR have recruited some talented modders by the way. I guess things in a company don't work so simple: I wanna do this so I will do it. If a mod doesn't work it can just be uninstalled without further consequences. Also, everything in the original game should work also on multiple platforms.
 
Personally I think you were supposed to play the "six months cut scene" as the "first act". Why do I say that, well when I play as I Nomad, in the "cut scene" you are plainly seen delivering goods to Padre, and getting paid for it. However when you actually start the game you have never met him before as he introduces himself.

In my opinion V and Jackie were supposed to do all the "Fixer Gigs" first leading up to the Heist, which would have been the next act, with Johnny and all the Main Missions.

Look at the evidence, you supposedly have been doing "gigs" in Night City for 6 months yet the only Fixer who has heard of you is Wakako! All the others contact you after your spectacular failure with the heist. It doesn't' hang together and felt wrong from the first time I played it. The chip is killing you. You have to find an answer, why are you messing around with ordinary gigs!! In several of the Main Missions you are told "don't keep me waiting", Hanako memorably says it when meeting her at Embers yet doing that will end the game. Aside from the main story there are 92 side quests, and 86 gigs you are trying to do while dying, makes no sense and lead me to feeling "rushed" on my first playthrough.

The six months was cut and the gigs were added to the main storyline so Johnny could be added to the game earlier. That is my opinion and I can see little evidence to the contrary.
Not to return too much to a topic that is discussed almost daily, but in narrative structure terms if you played the montage you would have a bloated, wheelspinning section at the beginning of the game that has absolutely nothing to do with the main plot and delays the main plot. The only character goal in that section would be to get rich and famous. There would be no tension. Narratively, it would be random and rather immature (in the sense that that is a very amateurish way to deliver a story).

You COULD spend more time with Jackie at the beginning, but to do it in a narratively satisfactory manner (something about which CDPR clearly care), it wouldn't be the montage content. It would need to be some kind of linear plot that either sets up in some way the darker themes of the game proper or leads directly into the heist.
 
This game screams ambition and all the marketing leading up to release confirms that. Management at CDPR wanted to create the best RPG, the best Action Adventure and the best Open World game period. Considering that companies like Rockstar and Ubisoft have way more resources at their disposal and still struggle with their "less ambitious" releases, one can only imagine what development of this game must have been like for the devs at CDPR.
 
Not to return too much to a topic that is discussed almost daily, but in narrative structure terms if you played the montage you would have a bloated, wheelspinning section at the beginning of the game that has absolutely nothing to do with the main plot and delays the main plot. The only character goal in that section would be to get rich and famous. There would be no tension. Narratively, it would be random and rather immature (in the sense that that is a very amateurish way to deliver a story).

You COULD spend more time with Jackie at the beginning, but to do it in a narratively satisfactory manner (something about which CDPR clearly care), it wouldn't be the montage content. It would need to be some kind of linear plot that either sets up in some way the darker themes of the game proper or leads directly into the heist.

I think that there's a reason that it keeps getting brought up, though. The Six Month Montage is right after the first "introduction." The Life Paths were only thirty minutes and then we're seeing a serious jump in time. This leaves it more disjointed and confusing in where your character is, what they're doing, and how their relationships have evolved than if they'd just begun the game with Jackie and V sitting in the car waiting to take down the Scavengers. You could have left it to the imagination and it probably would have worked better.


The things you do see are also interesting in their own right. You go to live with Jackie in Jackie's basement and meet his mom. You do a couple of minor missions. Presumably you do a job for the Padre and that allows you to buy your own apartment. That could have been a couple of hours of gametime that would have made you feel like you were moving up the criminal world.

Given how short the main questline was, I don't think the montage was a great idea. Either make it playable or just ditch it and make a tighter game.
 
I think that there's a reason that it keeps getting brought up, though. The Six Month Montage is right after the first "introduction." The Life Paths were only thirty minutes and then we're seeing a serious jump in time. This leaves it more disjointed and confusing in where your character is, what they're doing, and how their relationships have evolved than if they'd just begun the game with Jackie and V sitting in the car waiting to take down the Scavengers. You could have left it to the imagination and it probably would have worked better.


The things you do see are also interesting in their own right. You go to live with Jackie in Jackie's basement and meet his mom. You do a couple of minor missions. Presumably you do a job for the Padre and that allows you to buy your own apartment. That could have been a couple of hours of gametime that would have made you feel like you were moving up the criminal world.

Given how short the main questline was, I don't think the montage was a great idea. Either make it playable or just ditch it and make a tighter game.
Reposting, because it is well said and worth repeating imo:)
Not to return too much to a topic that is discussed almost daily, but in narrative structure terms if you played the montage you would have a bloated, wheelspinning section at the beginning of the game that has absolutely nothing to do with the main plot and delays the main plot. The only character goal in that section would be to get rich and famous. There would be no tension. Narratively, it would be random and rather immature (in the sense that that is a very amateurish way to deliver a story).

You COULD spend more time with Jackie at the beginning, but to do it in a narratively satisfactory manner (something about which CDPR clearly care), it wouldn't be the montage content. It would need to be some kind of linear plot that either sets up in some way the darker themes of the game proper or leads directly into the heist.
So? Even if that was true, which I don't believe it is (corpo V for example would have plenty of drama - they are almost in a new world and have to get used to it), it would have.....well the quote above said it best:)
 
I think that there's a reason that it keeps getting brought up, though. The Six Month Montage is right after the first "introduction." The Life Paths were only thirty minutes and then we're seeing a serious jump in time. This leaves it more disjointed and confusing in where your character is, what they're doing, and how their relationships have evolved than if they'd just begun the game with Jackie and V sitting in the car waiting to take down the Scavengers. You could have left it to the imagination and it probably would have worked better.


The things you do see are also interesting in their own right. You go to live with Jackie in Jackie's basement and meet his mom. You do a couple of minor missions. Presumably you do a job for the Padre and that allows you to buy your own apartment. That could have been a couple of hours of gametime that would have made you feel like you were moving up the criminal world.

Given how short the main questline was, I don't think the montage was a great idea. Either make it playable or just ditch it and make a tighter game.
I liked the montage and personally would prefer to play extra quests related to the lifepath than the skipped 6 months with Jackie.
 
Presumably you do a job for the Padre and that allows you to buy your own apartment.
My little detail, like always. V is poor, V rents his apartment.
Anyway, I love this montage, It is awesome. The best I have seen from a good while (maybe the best ever for me), I never tire of looking at it :D

Edit : The first time I see it (10th december), the first thing I said to myself was not "Crap, I would have liked to play these 6 months", but rather "Goddamn, I'm going to have fun, I can feel it !".
 
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My little detail, like always. V is poor, V rents his apartment.
Anyway, I love this montage, It is awesome. The best I have seen from a good while (maybe the best ever for me), I never tire of looking at it :D

....in the streetkid and nomad lifepath maybe? At least I don't remember them having creds there. But in the corpo path you do have (after everything) 40k credits...and if the cars are an indication of the prices (a supercar costing just 200k) maybe a relatively small apartment like V's is around 40-50k?
 
....in the streetkid and nomad lifepath maybe? At least I don't remember them having creds there. But in the corpo path you do have (after everything) 40k credits...and if the cars are an indication of the prices (a supercar costing just 200k) maybe a relatively small apartment like V's is around 40-50k?
I think in corpo lifepath you also receive the mail and the message after "The Heist" because you haven't paid your rent :)
You receive 45800 eddies by Jenkins who are added to your account (and stay on your account), eddies that V surely spent on a new start (probably quick to wast them in Night City when you want to be the One), It's like the price of the iguana in the Nomad Lifepath.
 
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I think in corpo lifepath you also receive the mail and the message after "The Heist" because you haven't paid your rent :)
Yea, which pisses me off to be honest. Let us pay our damn rent on time!
...oh, but I thought it was more for general taxes (building etc), but you might be right and corpo V lose the credits or use them for something else:)
 
Yea, which pisses me off to be honest. Let us pay our damn rent on time!
...oh, but I thought it was more for general taxes (building etc), but you might be right and corpo V lose the credits or use them for something else
"Rent Past Due"
Dear Sir/Madam,
Our records show we have not received this month's rent payment for your unit in Megabuilding H10....

I think, that all megabuildings units are rented and not sold. It is downright more profitable for the owner than to sell them (surely a Corpo)
 
Those random encounters with gangs are functionally identical to random monster packs in TW3. So you have an "open world" but the content within quickly begins to appear static (TW3 had this problem too, for the record).
This is not unique for TW3 or CP. Its an issue for all open world games. They need to fill the world with stuff and random camp of enemies is one of those. But I don't think its as huge a problem in games like TW3 and AC, because the world map is so big and you have areas between cities where it make sense for enemies to live. But NC is not really that big, when it comes to these things. Where you in AC or TW3, can have old castle ruins, cave systems etc. where bandits or monsters can hide, while still being believable that they live these places.

That doesn't mean that it doesn't work at all in CP, because a lot of places it works well, like warehouses, military camps etc. that if the player goes here they will be attacked.

I think CDPR should maybe have approached CP in a different way, when it comes to these monster camps, where they are just random crimes in progress or gang members standing random spots and attacking you if you get to close. Maybe they should have made them more like minor quest events such as they are in AC, which would be small things, where the player could interact with them, some simply helping them, others could end in a fight, them trying to rob the player etc. At least to me, they quickly become like camps you just farm like in an MMORPG, no real background to why they are there, just a camp of XP and gear to loot. Maybe just to sum it up, these encounters are not very creative :)

This game screams ambition and all the marketing leading up to release confirms that. Management at CDPR wanted to create the best RPG, the best Action Adventure and the best Open World game period. Considering that companies like Rockstar and Ubisoft have way more resources at their disposal and still struggle with their "less ambitious" releases, one can only imagine what development of this game must have been like for the devs at CDPR.
I agree with you on some of this. I do think that Ubisoft and Rockstar have more experience in creating these open world games than CDPR have. And probably also have more resources.

But I don't agree with their games being less ambitious than CDPRs game. But they don't marketing a lot of the stuff in their games as being completely unique and ground breaking. Because im currently playing AC: Valhalla and even though its not perfect, a lot of work went into this game and the amount of things you can do here.

You have a massive world which is unique as you travel around it. You can ride horses, shoot from them, with auto travelling around the map, you have boats, you have some city building, you can fish, hunt, play games. You can customize your character, unique finishing moves for all the weapons, you can upgrade them both in quality and with runes. You have that crow you can fly around with. And the list goes on. It is not some cheap none feature rich thing put together.

But again, they didn't make a huge deal out of a lot of these things as CDPR did. I would say in AC, if they made it, so you could customize your character a bit more, like body shape etc. and added a lot more branching stories and character development that the player was in charge of, it would be a damn good game to be honest. And I could easily imagine how Ubisoft, could create an open world RPG game, using the same mechanics as in AC to really create one massive new IP blockbuster of a RPG. Simply combining a lot of the features from their last 3 AC games into one. Like ship combat, base building, conquering land, raids or massive battles, more like an open world RPG sandbox game, they seem to have all the experience from what I can see, to actually pull off something like that.
 
Reposting, because it is well said and worth repeating imo:)

So? Even if that was true, which I don't believe it is (corpo V for example would have plenty of drama - they are almost in a new world and have to get used to it), it would have.....well the quote above said it best:)

he isn't saying there are no interesting stories there, he is saying those stories don't connect well to the main story, They muddy the narrative core. Even the heist part can do that to an extent, if the player chooses to spend tons of time there. But, its needed to make set up the story of a fall, you need to feel like your rising before you can feel a fall.

Telling more story before the fall would likely bother the reader more, they would be more invested in the rise, and that whole plot concept only to take it away from them. Its possible to get around this, with a great narrative design, but let's be honest, the game was hard enough to produce as is. Adding an even longer story of similar quality and branches/dialog etc is a huge endeavor, and it serves no real purpose for the main story. If done well, its a nice story that sets up the main story, but it isn't needed. And the title of this thread asks the question of if they were already too ambitious.

so yeah, I don't think it would be a good idea to extend Vs origin and early days in NC, all things considered
 
This purpose of this thread is not about whether CP lived up to what it set out to be or not, or what they said or didn't. But more from a technical point of view. I watched this video earlier, which covers a lot of issues with the whole thing, from start to finish:


However Im currently playing some Assassins creed Valhalla, which made me think about it, and even though CP is a FPS. I couldn't help wondering if it was simply to ambitious a project for CDPR?

Because I think most people will agree, that NPC AI is not good, neither is the Traffic AI, Police not so much, even a lot of the effects are not very complete as also pointed out in the video.

But as I was playing AC: Valhalla I couldn't help notice that here you have your ship that you can sail down the rivers etc. You can pretty much mark any place of the map and tell it to sail there automatically and the AI will go there, raise and lower sail as needed. But also you can do the exact same thing with your horse. As most people know that have played any of the newer AC, you can do a lot of crazy stuff in it, especially in Valhalla it seems that they have added a lot of stuff to it.

You obviously don't have as many NPCs gathered in one place as in the CP, but still enough to make the places feel alive and them getting out of your way or them dodging out of your way if you are about to hit them with your horse and then yell stuff at you. And the list goes on, there are a lot of things going on here, that it would take a long time to name them all.

So when I compare them it still makes me wonder, how come CP seem to be so far behind in pretty much all aspects or features, except for the quests.

Lets assume that they had to change the story along the way, even if that were the case, that shouldn't really impact the general traffic AI or NPC AI, police might be a bit harder to program, but still its add an absolutely minimum at the moment. In AC, the NPCs have no issue climbing stairs, ladders or walking around these huge castles.

And even though cyberpunk is a FPS, a lot of games, including AC, sometimes goes into FP when you shoot your bow for instance, which doesn't really seem to change a lot about how the game plays, it just automatically switches between these as you switch weapons. My point being that even though CP is a FPS, a lot of the things are identical compared to if it had been in 3rd person. Exactly as the camera switches to 3rd person when you ride on the bike or car, its not like the whole game changes.

Even in the TW3, if I recall correctly, places like Novigrad had quite a lot of NPCs as well, and NPC reacting somewhat similar as they do in AC if you hit them with your horse and lots of small cool AI features, which again have nothing to do with it being FP.

Also CP is better graphics, but that shouldn't really impact how well the AI is, it might hurt performance graphically, but then again there are options to turn that down as well.

To me, it just seems like it is two completely different teams that have made CP and TW3, because a lot of the experience from TW3 should be possible to transfer to CP, such as the NPC AI, and obviously improve it. But I think CP NPC AI is far worse than in TW3, I at least don't recall having any major issues with them.

So do you think that CP was to ambitious? And if so why? Why do you think there is such a huge difference between the NPC AI in CP compared to TW3? And again, all those things which are not linked to it being a FP game?
In a word, yes.
 
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