It's been about 3 and 1/3 months (3 months and 11 days, exactly), and the way some gamers are rounding this up to 4 is actually kinda funny to me. I've seen some people call it 5 months, even, which is some interesting gamer math.
Let me quote myself:
And they still won't work properly 4 months after the game was released.
As you can see, I was referring to the release of the patch 1.2 in the (not so distant, I hope) future.
When you consider that a month of development time was lost due to a hack that some people cheered about on reddit and Twitter, I have to be real - I'm not that sympathetic towards the "its been X months" stance.
You are referring to Jason Schreier as a credible source. He wrote that around two weeks of development time were lost. Not a month.
CD Projekt Ransomware Hack Severely Disrupts Work on Cyberpunk Updates
Well, let me quote you this time:
the way some gamers are rounding this up to [...] is actually kinda funny to me.
I would even go so far as to say that progress has been coming along at a decent pace when you consider how much work has to be put into making the game more stable on consoles before serious gameplay tweaks can even be considered.
I am not arguing that CDPR is not making (some) progress. What I am saying is that CDPR is not able to provide some of the features that are often taken for granted as an obvious content of "the next patch".
This leaves a legitimate question as to whether the devs can't get car chases to work properly, or if they simply didn't have time to given release deadlines.
Well, in my opinion, they
can't. Some features were cut off long before the release date (e.g. NCART) and some were abandoned later (e.g. vehicle customization). I think that they tried to implement car chases for a long time and couldn't make them work. Not only because of the time constrains. The amount of systems that need to be refined before introducing proper car chases is really huge. They need to fix pathfinding, collisions, pedestrian AI, city traffic, police, wanted system etc. They need to rewrite huge parts of the engine. And I am not certain if it is possible now. The game was already released: it's very probable that calibrating or rewriting such a huge part of the code would alter some values and information that are included in the saved games (files). You can't (or rather shouldn't) make people start their game from the beginning after applying a patch. It's only acceptable with the use of some huge DLC/expansion.
The game seems unfinished. It's full of placeholders or broken systems (AI, city traffic, perks, UI, crafting etc.). But it's also a very complex net of interdependent systems. One can not change two puzzles and expect a hundred of other pieces to match what was changed. If you touch the AI, every part of this complex equation needs to be altered. And it requires a lot of time and and testing. Rewriting them all would be possible before the release. Not now. I think the last announcement was quite clear: CP2077 will not follow NMS route (if it comes to patches). CDPR will try to alter the existing systems. They will not rewrite them (or add some new ones). That's why "fixing police" means only "changing some values in the existing equation", not "changing the equation itself". They simply altered the spawn time and radius for specific actors. That's all. They can't make these actors behave differently (e.g. try to arrest the player, not follow shoot-at-sight order). They can't make them use proper pathfinding in vehicles (e.g. enter the car and chase the player). They can't make them react differently (e.g. accept bribes). I also think that they will not implement anything that might stress-test CPUs of the last-gen consoles even more. And more complex AI behavior while streaming this huge city would make Jaguar bleed. So... perhaps the introduction of some better AI would also require some serious optimizations to the streaming (rendering) system?
Remember MAX-TAC? And their AV ("vehicle") scripted appearance in ONLY one mission (The Rescue) and ONE scene (the ride with Jackie)? There'a a reason why you see them in different parts of the city AFTER the landing of AV. And if these aerodynes take off, the MAX-TAC members simply disappear and (presumably) "teleport" inside the flying vehicle. You do not see them entering (or exiting) the AV with the client. It would make sense to allow police or MAX-TAC to arrive immediately at the crime scene in AV (or some car), drop down from above (or exit the car), and then interact with the player. It's so obvious -- and I am certain CDPR tried to implement this solution. To no (bug-free) effect. So they had to use this infamous placeholder (teleportation).
Obviously, all of the above are just my opinions. Right after the release of CP2077 I was also hoping for some huge changes to the broken systems in the next patches. But the more I played the game, the more interconnected placeholder solutions I noticed. And it became quite obvious that all this mess in practically beyond repair. Especially if you consider all the other problems that CDPR has to take care of right now (bugs, glitches, broken quests, console performance issues etc.).
Also consider that the studio will want to recover as much goodwill from gamers as they're able to for future projects, which means addressing prominent criticisms like the state of police A.I.
The way they handled "the state of police A.I" in this patch makes me think that they are trying to do what they can under these unfavorable circumstances. But it also shows that their evident willingness is severely restrained by their abilities to make necessary changes. I am not accusing CDPR of the lack of good intentions. I am just saying that many of us expect too much from this developer. Remember: this game has to work properly on PS4. And they are struggling to make it happen even with the current state of all AI systems. Refining them and making more sophisticated seems to be beyond their level of ability right now. I keep my fingers crossed, but I am not expecting much any more.
Do you think that the devs are incapable of creating a car pathing system that can navigate around objects in the road, for example? To me, this very much feels like an aspect of the game that is simply unfinished rather than something that was scrapped due to engine limitations or insufficient ability on the part of the dev team.
Do you think that the devs are incapable of making AI drive a motorcycle (beside prescripted cutscenes)? It seems easy to code in a short period of time. And yet... they can't make it happen. Because there are hundreds of other factors (unfinished systems) to consider while coding this "feature". You need to fix (rewrite, alter) all of them before introducing some new element. And then you need to test them (preferably in the whole campaign and in every place of the city). And you need to make sure that they do not corrupt any of the existing saved games.
![Wink ;) ;)](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)