We must give CDPR time the problems are in RED ENGINE

[msxyz]

There are currently more than 2 times the number of people playing The Wither 3 in Steam than those playing Cp2077.

CDPR can eventually fix the software issues and optimize the engine (though, at least on PC, every new patch since 1.04 brought a downgrade in graphics) but the essence of the game cannot be 'fixed', as it would involve rewriting portion of the missions, altering the world and changing the mechanics. It simply won't happen. Take the game as it is, enjoy the fun parts (roaming, sightseeing) and then move on.

Besides, there's not much to wait. Six months after, there is no free DLC (TW3 had 16 of them in less than five months!), few patches and no expansion announced (TW3 had 2 large expansions in one year). It seems to me CDPR has completely given up trying to engage the community.

 

[Spectral_Warrior]

There are currently more than 2 times the number of people playing The Wither 3 in Steam than those playing Cp2077.

CDPR can eventually fix the software issues and optimize the engine (though, at least on PC, every new patch since 1.04 brought a downgrade in graphics) but the essence of the game cannot be 'fixed', as it would involve rewriting portion of the missions, altering the world and changing the mechanics. It simply won't happen. Take the game as it is, enjoy the fun parts (roaming, sightseeing) and then move on.

Besides, there's not much to wait. Six months after, there is no free DLC (TW3 had 16 of them in less than five months!), few patches and no expansion announced (TW3 had 2 large expansions in one year). It seems to me CDPR has completely given up trying to engage the community.

Are these fair comparisons though? I'm just speculating, but how can we know wether or not separate team may have already been working on those expansions and other updates.
What were their scope?
I mean, just on account of the numbers, it doesn't really means much I would think.

For the moment I believe there are good reasons for why we 'get less'.

 

[incomingdamage]

Many technical issues with the game (at least on my end) seem to be the result of hardware not being enough powerful, yet I don't have a very weak computer. It's not the newest machine, but it's still quite decent and there were some people mentioning that they have even weaker computers, but they experience none of the bugs I'm having. So... it's confusing to me.
Maybe in some cases it is indeed something about the engine not being fully tailored to this type of game and this level of complexity. I'm almost certain though, that at least some problems were caused by the haste in production.

Btw, as a side note, one wonders how Bethesda's engine would handle such a technological beast as CP2077 They had serious problems making Fallout 4 run smooth in Boston downtown areas, if I remember well. Just imagine all this Night City complexity in the same place

 

[Guest 3847602]

There are currently more than 2 times the number of people playing The Wither 3 in Steam than those playing Cp2077.

For comparison, 6 months after its release (November 2015) TW3 had 6235 concurrent players. Those numbers rose after 2 meaty expansions and some other factors that caused active playerbase to skyrocket in December 2019.
It's no secret that right now, TW3 has much more content to spend time with than CP2077, but it wasn't like that in 2015.
Edit: Just to add another example, RE Village came out 1.5 months ago, it's got 4266 concurrent players despite having "overwhelmingly positive" user reviews.

 

[SigilFey]

There are currently more than 2 times the number of people playing The Wither 3 in Steam than those playing Cp2077.

TW3 was a game that was a magic blend. Its parts came together in a way that was a hit with a lot of people. Successes like that come along once in a blue moon. No one can expect to maintain that level of success, as changing anything about the formula (the characters, the storyline, the genre, the motif, the control scheme, the world and setting, the combat mechanics, etc...) will automatically take what was working so amazingly well together and make it different.

The Witcher 1 wasn't this popular. The Witcher 2 wasn't this popular. Gwent and Thronebreaker weren't this popular. None of those games won the sheer number of awards or the massive following that TW3 generated. There are droves of people all over the world who love Tolkein's Lord of the Rings to death. The Hobbit and The Silmarillion are not as loved. The first Matrix film was a huge, smash hit. The Matrix 2 and 3 didn't fare as well. Morrowind and Skyrim are lauded as some of the best games ever. Arena, Daggerfall, Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Fallout 4 get far more mixed reviews.

Take the game as it is, enjoy the fun parts (roaming, sightseeing) and then move on.

This is the important part. Clearly, it's not a game that has the same mass appeal as TW3, but there's a lot of fun to be had.

Besides, there's not much to wait. Six months after, there is no free DLC (TW3 had 16 of them in less than five months!), few patches and no expansion announced (TW3 had 2 large expansions in one year). It seems to me CDPR has completely given up trying to engage the community.

Not sure about this. If I was running the project, I'd take my careful time to fix up the technical issues and squish bugs. And there are a fair few -- it will take time.

Then, I'd take more time to develop DLC that's likely to give players more of the experience they're clearly asking for. More non-linear activities to do that are engaging and rewarding, gameplay wise. Narratives that branch more and let the player create a persona of their own for V, rather than be solidly fixed in the Johnny questline from beginning to end. Build in more of the living Night City elements, like the subway, more dynamic faction interactions on the streets, tweak the combat system, introduce more uses for technical or netrunning skills, etc.

The foundation for all of this is already there. The game needed more time. There's no reason not to take the time.

 

[incomingdamage]

Not sure about this. If I was running the project, I'd take my careful time to fix up the technical issues and squish bugs. And there are a fair few -- it will take time.

Then, I'd take more time to develop DLC that's likely to give players more of the experience they're clearly asking for. More non-linear activities to do that are engaging and rewarding, gameplay wise. Narratives that branch more and let the player create a persona of their own for V, rather than be solidly fixed in the Johnny questline from beginning to end. Build in more of the living Night City elements, like the subway, more dynamic faction interactions on the streets, tweak the combat system, introduce more uses for technical or netrunning skills, etc.

The foundation for all of this is already there. The game needed more time. There's no reason not to take the time.

Thanks for this! I admit that, although enjoing the title, I'm still having some "ups" and "downs" and serious doubts about the game being fixed and "improved" (the heap of bugs doesn't help either), but ... well... come to think of it, it would be a folly on the company's side to drop this product now - so much potential to expand the experience, build on these foundations, also for a more down-to-earth reason for CDPR: further profit from this IP. Really wish it would turn out that way; that they won't stop only at fixing the technical issues and releasing two story dlcs, but will also continue adding some sweet things that will enrich this interesting setting and immerse the players more in the game world.
Still experiencing a lot of "ugliness" on the technical side, so the game is kind of a mixed bug for me in some aspects. If however the whole scenario would go the way you described, I'm quite certain that CP2077 could become a game to get back to many times, for many people. It's a win-win scenario really. Not idea what's to come, but hope it will go that way.

 

[MrGuyton]

Still experiencing a lot of "ugliness" on the technical side, so the game is kind of a mixed bug for me in some aspects. If however the whole scenario would go the way you described, I'm quite certain that CP2077 could become a game to get back to many times, for many people. It's a win-win scenario really. Not idea what's to come, but hope it will go that way.

Really agree with a lot of what you've said, my playthrough is on pause again at the moment. I'm on base PS4 and whilst it's nowhere near as bad as some would have you believe it definitely still needs some technical tweaks! I've been really busy with work for the last couple of weeks so I've been eagerly awaiting the next patch as a stimulus to start playing again, and further down the line I can't wait to see what else they can add with DLC if there's a season pass I'll buy it like I did for TW3! Storytelling and world-building wise they've still got my trust.

There are droves of people all over the world who love Tolkein's Lord of the Rings to death. The Hobbit and The Silmarillion are not as loved.

You're not wrong about the Silmarillion, started reading it at the age of 14, finally got through it at 28! The Hobbit is a classic, just needs to be read to you by your gran when you're very small!

Not sure about this. If I was running the project, I'd take my careful time to fix up the technical issues and squish bugs. And there are a fair few -- it will take time.

Then, I'd take more time to develop DLC that's likely to give players more of the experience they're clearly asking for. More non-linear activities to do that are engaging and rewarding, gameplay wise. Narratives that branch more and let the player create a persona of their own for V, rather than be solidly fixed in the Johnny questline from beginning to end. Build in more of the living Night City elements, like the subway, more dynamic faction interactions on the streets, tweak the combat system, introduce more uses for technical or netrunning skills, etc.

The foundation for all of this is already there. The game needed more time. There's no reason not to take the time.

Yup really hope that they take this kind of approach, and why wouldn't they?
All the "it's broken" blah blah, "they should move on" sentiment doesn't make sense given what we know of them as a company and also the cold reality of business or their development cycle. TW4 or whatever the next big project is will probably be five or six years down the line. They've invested $millions in CP2077. They already have teams working on DLC.
If there are problems with the engine then it would make sense to me to tweak it now whilst patching CP2077 to give a more stable and versatile platform for the next project.
If they can get the other dynamic emergent elements of Night City working now whilst the community has resigned itself to a work in progress then it will not only mean they can focus on the "next iteration" for TW4 or CP2 but also hopefully rebuild some of the trust with the community.

 

[SigilFey]

Still experiencing a lot of "ugliness" on the technical side, so the game is kind of a mixed bug for me in some aspects.

Yeah, much like TW3, the game is pretty particular in it's technical demands. I certainly had issues, like pop-in and characters walking through solid walls and stuff, but I never experienced much of the other craziness people were describing. I never saw much T-posing, disappearing body parts, extremely slow texture draw in, scenes vanishing if I looked away then back again, etc. Most of those things, I never encountered. But...I also keep my system in relatively streamlined gaming shape. I also take my time and normally troubleshoot for several days if I encounter any significant issues with games. That's just my normal mode, and in CDPR's defense, I've had to do this with a lot of games at launch.

I also don't think that many people are clearly remembering just how many issues TW3 had at launch either. I spent a good 3 years talking about technical issues on Witcher 3 boards. Complex games like this will always have issues. In order to create gigantic, sweeping, non-linear, go-anywhere / do-anything types of games, there need to be a lot of moving parts. The more complex the machine, the more things can and will go wrong. I have no doubt that CDPR will continue to support their work and polish up the technical issues exactly as they did for TW1, 2, and 3.

You're not wrong about the Silmarillion, started reading it at the age of 14, finally got through it at 28! The Hobbit is a classic, just needs to be read to you by your gran when you're very small!

Right? I tried to read it when I was about 14 or so as well. Started and stopped about 5 times. Got through it in university, but read it 4-5 times now...and I still can't organize the sheer number of characters and events in my head. Game of Thrones is child's play compared to it!

Yup really hope that they take this kind of approach, and why wouldn't they?
All the "it's broken" blah blah, "they should move on" sentiment doesn't make sense given what we know of them as a company and also the cold reality of business or their development cycle. TW4 or whatever the next big project is will probably be five or six years down the line. They've invested $millions in CP2077. They already have teams working on DLC.
If there are problems with the engine then it would make sense to me to tweak it now whilst patching CP2077 to give a more stable and versatile platform for the next project.
If they can get the other dynamic emergent elements of Night City working now whilst the community has resigned itself to a work in progress then it will not only mean they can focus on the "next iteration" for TW4 or CP2 but also hopefully rebuild some of the trust with the community.

It's still an iteration of the REDengine, so it's not like they're working on unfamiliar ground. I think the biggest challenge would simply be the sheer amount of detail it's capable of creating. Very hard to budget all of that data, keep the AI functioning, and make it look solid even on lower-end hardware. They've definitely got a challenge in front of them!

For expansion DLC, I think there's a wealth of opportunity to remain true to the vision and work in a lot of the things players want to see. I'd handle it at the beginning of the game. Pick your starting lifepath, do the intro, arrive in NC...

...and right there, the DLC content could "suspend" the start of the main game. You get to be "V". You get to both work with Jackie and independently on a whole range of gigs. Each one could be wholly standalone, or they could be woven together any number of ways, arriving at really different outcomes and possible questlines. Be whatever you want to be. Play V however you want to play him/her. The goal could be to earn enough rep and street cred to be noticed by the big players in NC. You can achieve it however you want -- just get out there and make a name for yourself in the city. I'd be interested to see if something like that changes the way the main story feels for people that thought it was too abrupt or too linear.

 

[MrGuyton]

Yeah, much like TW3, the game is pretty particular in it's technical demands. I certainly had issues, like pop-in and characters walking through solid walls and stuff, but I never experienced much of the other craziness people were describing. I never saw much T-posing, disappearing body parts, extremely slow texture draw in, scenes vanishing if I looked away then back again, etc. Most of those things, I never encountered. But...I also keep my system in relatively streamlined gaming shape. I also take my time and normally troubleshoot for several days if I encounter any significant issues with games. That's just my normal mode, and in CDPR's defense, I've had to do this with a lot of games at launch.

I also don't think that many people are clearly remembering just how many issues TW3 had at launch either. I spent a good 3 years talking about technical issues on Witcher 3 boards. Complex games like this will always have issues. In order to create gigantic, sweeping, non-linear, go-anywhere / do-anything types of games, there need to be a lot of moving parts. The more complex the machine, the more things can and will go wrong. I have no doubt that CDPR will continue to support their work and polish up the technical issues exactly as they did for TW1, 2, and 3.


Right? I tried to read it when I was about 14 or so as well. Started and stopped about 5 times. Got through it in university, but read it 4-5 times now...and I still can't organize the sheer number of characters and events in my head. Game of Thrones is child's play compared to it!


It's still an iteration of the REDengine, so it's not like they're working on unfamiliar ground. I think the biggest challenge would simply be the sheer amount of detail it's capable of creating. Very hard to budget all of that data, keep the AI functioning, and make it look solid even on lower-end hardware. They've definitely got a challenge in front of them!

For expansion DLC, I think there's a wealth of opportunity to remain true to the vision and work in a lot of the things players want to see. I'd handle it at the beginning of the game. Pick your starting lifepath, do the intro, arrive in NC...

...and right there, the DLC content could "suspend" the start of the main game. You get to be "V". You get to both work with Jackie and independently on a whole range of gigs. Each one could be wholly standalone, or they could be woven together any number of ways, arriving at really different outcomes and possible questlines. Be whatever you want to be. Play V however you want to play him/her. The goal could be to earn enough rep and street cred to be noticed by the big players in NC. You can achieve it however you want -- just get out there and make a name for yourself in the city. I'd be interested to see if something like that changes the way the main story feels for people that thought it was too abrupt or too linear.

TBH that would be the one place that DLC expansion would make sense without having to declare an ending cannon or creating a side story that would be complained about because it deflects the urgency of V's predicament. Also given the issues they've had forcing players to start afresh might not be a bad idea particularly if some people are likely to try and continue with bugged saves from Dec / Jan and then be disappointed.
If they tied it to some content that enhanced the lifepaths relevance early on ie pre prologue/montage and dropped in a few lifepath specific questlines later in the game too I think you'd be on to a winner.

 

[Hayte]

I don't know what gives people the idea that REDengine is unoptimized. It is hyper optimized for asset streaming, at times to the point of absurdity and futility. Theres an entire 10gb archive of cooked appearances for no reason I can think of except for some marginal relief for the people stuck on SATA 2 hdds? I don't know. You can delete this archive if you own a PC built in the last 10 years and see no performance loss whatsoever. The only downside is every time the game updates, it will re-download 10gb of stuff you don't need.

I posted elsewhere about the materials system in this game which is kinda incredible after doing the research into it. The game uses tiny, tileable textures, mostly greyscale, 256x256 roughness/metalness/masks, 256x256 detail normals, 4x32 pixel gradients etc. In the case of cap gradients, the bit depth is so low they don't display correctly in game if you export RGB 8 bit colour in photoshop. You have to switch to index colour mode and creating a sub 32 colour palette LUT. Total file size is 2270 bytes when compressed and this texture colourizes all buzzcuts in the game.

All short hair strands/clumps for the player character and all npcs are atlased onto a single 512x512 greyscale identity, gradient, alpha and flow map. Total size of all the textures when compressed = 592kb (!). When I made 4k short hair cards they did not look better than the basegame ones (after 4 designs). Total size 42.7mb compressed. That is what we call inefficient. 90 times the file size for marginal increase in quality and in some cases, they just look straight up worse.

If you think the meshes have loads of verts, think again. There aren't even any subdivisions in the hair cards (which is a problem when they curl or twist since the hair strand textures will zig zag instead of curve. If you look at weapon models, they have hyper efficient geo where flat planes have barely anything in terms of tris/quads but where the topology needs to be complex, its subdivided like crazy. This game doesn't use really high poly anything.

Asset streaming in this game is completely off the chain. It loads and unloads world sectors on the fly containing quest scenes and entities loading hundreds of meshes with hundreds of material assignments consisting of thousands of textures, maps and masks with no loading screens. And it runs on my haswell potato.

 

[Nevirate]

Best we can do is just wait. The game, in truth, needs an overhaul, and I'd be willing to wait.

 

[msxyz]

(...). If I was running the project, I'd take my careful time to fix up the technical issues and squish bugs. And there are a fair few -- it will take time.

Then, I'd take more time to develop DLC that's likely to give players more of the experience they're clearly asking for. More non-linear activities to do that are engaging and rewarding, gameplay wise. Narratives that branch more and let the player create a persona of their own for V, rather than be solidly fixed in the Johnny questline from beginning to end. Build in more of the living Night City elements, like the subway, more dynamic faction interactions on the streets, tweak the combat system, introduce more uses for technical or netrunning skills, etc.

The foundation for all of this is already there. The game needed more time. There's no reason not to take the time.

The development may need more time, but how many out there care to give more time? There's 14M of people who spent money, invested their time in playing, made up their mind about the game. Most of them already moved on. With games taking 100GB on hard disk, nowadays you just don't leave a game installed hoping that someday, new content is released or the game is improved. You play it, uninstall and forget about it for good.

CDPR talked about how they want to make CP2077 a product with a 'long tail' of sales (damn sure they'd love to, since you don't invest 300M+ nowadays for a 'mere' 14-14M copies sold) but, so far, they seem to be doing everything that is not recommended to do, if you want to keep your customers engaged.

If I have to take a bet now, I'd say the sales of the first expansion will be far below expectations (regardless of what they'll say in their investors call) and there won't be a second one.

 

[SigilFey]

The development may need more time, but how many out there care to give more time? There's 14M of people who spent money, invested their time in playing, made up their mind about the game. Most of them already moved on. With games taking 100GB on hard disk, nowadays you just don't leave a game installed hoping that someday, new content is released or the game is improved. You play it, uninstall and forget about it for good.

CDPR talked about how they want to make CP2077 a product with a 'long tail' of sales (damn sure they'd love to, since you don't invest 300M+ nowadays for a 'mere' 14-14M copies sold) but, so far, they seem to be doing everything that is not recommended to do, if you want to keep your customers engaged.

If I have to take a bet now, I'd say the sales of the first expansion will be far below expectations (regardless of what they'll say in their investors call) and there won't be a second one.

That would be business. And anyone that gets into it will experience both successes and losses. But I'll reaffirm that there's no huge disaster. It was simply a lot of work that didn't have the effect everyone was hoping for. (And anyone that gets into Arts will experience that, as well.)

As for how many out there will be willing to give it more time? Lots! A whole lot, actually. And there are people that will wind up buying it later on for the first time. And there are many that will come back to it in the future. There's no point in worrying about the people that are done with it forever -- that's their choice. The work being done is for the people that are still interested.

 

[animalfather]

the problems with the game are not technical imo..

 

[PepeSmug]

the problems with the game are not technical imo..

I agree. But the technical issues are going to preclude addressing the non-technical problems.

 

[animalfather]

I agree. But the technical issues are going to preclude addressing the non-technical problems.

the non technical problems can only be solved with a complete reboot. going back to the drawing board.

 

[Lucas10crz]

Yes, we all need to help CD PROJEKT, it's not their fault that RED ENGINE isn't good, let's all buy the next dlcs, I feel very sorry for them, they need our money to fix the ENGINE

 

[LeKill3rFou]

it's not their fault that RED ENGINE isn't good

Maybe before said that, you could read a previous post by Hayte. Pretty interesting

I don't know what gives people the idea that REDengine is unoptimized. It is hyper optimized for asset streaming, at times to the point of absurdity and futility. Theres an entire 10gb archive of cooked appearances for no reason I can think of except for some marginal relief for the people stuck on SATA 2 hdds? I don't know. You can delete this archive if you own a PC built in the last 10 years and see no performance loss whatsoever. The only downside is every time the game updates, it will re-download 10gb of stuff you don't need.

I posted elsewhere about the materials system in this game which is kinda incredible after doing the research into it. The game uses tiny, tileable textures, mostly greyscale, 256x256 roughness/metalness/masks, 256x256 detail normals, 4x32 pixel gradients etc. In the case of cap gradients, the bit depth is so low they don't display correctly in game if you export RGB 8 bit colour in photoshop. You have to switch to index colour mode and creating a sub 32 colour palette LUT. Total file size is 2270 bytes when compressed and this texture colourizes all buzzcuts in the game.

All short hair strands/clumps for the player character and all npcs are atlased onto a single 512x512 greyscale identity, gradient, alpha and flow map. Total size of all the textures when compressed = 592kb (!). When I made 4k short hair cards they did not look better than the basegame ones (after 4 designs). Total size 42.7mb compressed. That is what we call inefficient. 90 times the file size for marginal increase in quality and in some cases, they just look straight up worse.

If you think the meshes have loads of verts, think again. There aren't even any subdivisions in the hair cards (which is a problem when they curl or twist since the hair strand textures will zig zag instead of curve. If you look at weapon models, they have hyper efficient geo where flat planes have barely anything in terms of tris/quads but where the topology needs to be complex, its subdivided like crazy. This game doesn't use really high poly anything.

Asset streaming in this game is completely off the chain. It loads and unloads world sectors on the fly containing quest scenes and entities loading hundreds of meshes with hundreds of material assignments consisting of thousands of textures, maps and masks with no loading screens. And it runs on my haswell potato.

 

[dahifar718]

Yes, we all need to help CD PROJEKT, it's not their fault that RED ENGINE isn't good, let's all buy the next dlcs, I feel very sorry for them, they need our money to fix the ENGINE

Yeah, I totally agree.
We can maybe open a fund raising campain to help CDPR finish the game they already sold us.

 

[Spectral_Warrior]

I read the post of @Hayte before as well and when I translate that to (as example) small custom model making where a ordinary texture is 1024x1024 and worth 1MB of space (and 3 are needed at minimum at all times) yeah, they've got a quite unique approach to how to display models.

But... If we would surmise that REDengine may have been build for such streaming performance... Usually there also somewhere the 'other side of the coin'
I dont know the engine, how it operates and whatnot. And I can definately believe there are elements that can cause the engine to get derailed as it were.

Huh... All of a sudden I'm reminded of the matrix...
When REDengine tries to correct, or runs into some code problems.. you'll get glitches or a crash if worstcase scenario.