Wild theory about what might have happened concerning lack of features and stuff

[jordangold527]

I had something happen to me on a film project I helped make a while back. Editor forgot to make backups of footage and then their hard drive crashed. Lost 65% of the footage for the short film. Wasn't enough time or resources to reshoot so they had to make due with a previous "bare bones" cut and some additional B-roll footage. Film was kind of a disaster.

Y'all think something similar happened with Cyberpunk? They had a bunch of the dynamic systems/features from the 2018 tech demo all stored in one place then lost the data somehow? All the things like, most clothing items, dynamic combat animations, barber/tattoo/plastic surgery shops, AI routines and programming, other weapon types, polished textures for current gen console versions, cyberweapon bonus abilities, etc. all just got lost/deleted by mistake and then they had t0 rush to fix the problem?

I know this is a potentially crazy conspiracy theory, but given how shallow a lot of the features are in the game, I'm kinda curious if maybe something happened and they had a major setback somewhere in the last year of development. IDK. Just a weird thought.

 

[IskrasFemme]

Theories and assumptions?

Aliens, man, the aliens ...

 

[gallantchar]

I had something happen to me on a film project I helped make a while back. Editor forgot to make backups of footage and then their hard drive crashed. Lost 65% of the footage for the short film. Wasn't enough time or resources to reshoot so they had to make due with a previous "bare bones" cut and some additional B-roll footage. Film was kind of a disaster.

Y'all think something similar happened with Cyberpunk? They had a bunch of the dynamic systems/features from the 2018 tech demo all stored in one place then lost the data somehow? All the things like, most clothing items, dynamic combat animations, barber/tattoo/plastic surgery shops, AI routines and programming, other weapon types, polished textures for current gen console versions, cyberweapon bonus abilities, etc. all just got lost/deleted by mistake and then they had t0 rush to fix the problem?

I know this is a potentially crazy conspiracy theory, but given how shallow a lot of the features are in the game, I'm kinda curious if maybe something happened and they had a major setback somewhere in the last year of development. IDK. Just a weird thought.

Until they actually say what it is, there’s no knowing. But the fact of the matter is that they need to be more transparent right now, more than ever.

 

[CallMeHoot]

Occam's razor, mate.

The tech demo was heavily scripted to generate hype. They were never going to be able to push the features they touted on current/last gen consoles so they purposely prevented footage of that going out (as admitted by CDPR themselves in their latest "We're sorry!" tweet) and the game is a pared back version of what it was promised to be likely because they realised too late that they'd reached too far. Who woulda thunk that a single game can't be the new, improved, best looking GTA/Deus Ex/Mass Effect/Witcher all in one game.

Simple case of over ambition.

Of course, all I care about at the moment is that they work on the code and get it running on my rig at 60+ FPS (hell, I'd take a solid, consistent 30 at this point) like every other current gen game.

 

[trench1]

Until they actually say what it is, there’s no knowing. But the fact of the matter is that they need to be more transparent right now, more than ever.

Pretty much.

CDPR was supposedly a beacon of hope for the industry, as many, like myself has touted as such. But, I suppose, that we've set our expectations way too high in this. But then again, my expectations were pretty tampered and had to limit myself, as I suspected that there were something amiss in all of this.

At least, CDPR has the capacity to tell their consumers on what has happened, unlike other companies that we all know and love----hate.

 

[IskrasFemme]

Occam's razor, mate.

The tech demo was heavily scripted to generate hype. They were never going to be able to push the features they touted on current/last gen consoles so they purposely prevented footage of that going out (as admitted by CDPR themselves in their latest "We're sorry!" tweet) and the game is a pared back version of what it was promised to be likely because they realised too late that they'd reached too far. Who woulda thunk that a single game can't be the new, improved, best looking GTA/Deus Ex/Mass Effect/Witcher all in one game.

Simple case of over ambition.

Of course, all I care about at the moment is that they work on the code and get it running on my rig at 60+ FPS (hell, I'd take a solid, consistent 30 at this point) like every other current gen game.

Ambition...from Microsoft, Sony, nvidia what still selling hardwares with insues and fake news drivers? So... the pressure is huge... get easy.

 

[gallantchar]

Pretty much.

CDPR was supposedly a beacon of hope for the industry, as many, like myself has touted as such. But, I suppose, that we've set our expectations way too high in this. But then again, my expectations were pretty tampered and had to limit myself, as I suspected that there were something amiss in all of this.

At least, CDPR has the capacity to tell their consumers on what has happened, unlike other companies that we all know and love----hate.

For some, yes, I’ll concede that the expectations might have been too high.

For myself, though, I only held expectations based on what they said and promised, and adjusted those expectations according to what they say, the best example of adjusted expectations was the tram system. I was disappointed, mind you, but I accepted it and hoped they’d just put it in in a DLC later on.

But it’s hard to not feel lied to/misled when your expectations aren’t dictated by third parties hype trains and speculation, but only directly by what CDPR states will be in the game?

I had come off of Game Freak’s SwSh release, and I’m sure most of you are aware of their method of “breaking the news” and delivering an arguably subpar console game that is also arguably not worth the price.

 

[adamsgog]

in my mind there is no reason why they couldnt remain on par with other rpg developmens ie assassins creed valhalla*, watch dogs 3?, rdr 2, heck even that graphical showcase spiderman.

i personally think cd project red (coped out) half way through and changed direction, then covid hit, they simply didnt want to let their workers, work on the game from home for operational security.

and wierdly ive noticed the adult themes be bugged too, when the hanky panky comes on, the light gets ugly, and there is 0 meta, and way more adult phallic objects, its some sort of leftist uturn, i presume, mandated to sabotage cultural hit.

prove me wrong, the body of evidence is on CDPR, i can see class action lawsuits up the wazoo coming, from business partners, like sony/microsoft/nvidia and thats not even getting to the consumer rights lawsuits.

i'll see you in court CDPR, good day.

 

[animalfather]

what happened was that the entire time from april to now was them removing features so the bloody game can run on last gen consoles.

 

[gallantchar]

what happened was that the entire time from april to now was them removing features so the bloody game can run on last gen consoles.

You say that like they’ve been working on this game to be for next gen only and just decided to make it work on last gen because the fans begged.

The game was made for last gen. Period. End point. And they couldn’t deliver. These are farcical excuses and do nothing to alleviate the misrepresentation of the game as a whole.

 

[animalfather]

You say that like they’ve been working on this game to be for next gen only and just decided to make it work on last gen because the fans begged.

The game was made for last gen. Period. End point. And they couldn’t deliver. These are farcical excuses and do nothing to alleviate the misrepresentation of the game as a whole.

dont know about fans begging but i think its more about them not alienating 150 million potential buyers. imo they should have made the ciri game and then made cp77 for nexgen only but then we would be talking a release date of 2024..

 

[gallantchar]

dont know about fans begging but i think its more about them not alienating 150 million potential buyers. imo they should have made the ciri game and then made cp77 for nexgen only but then we would be talking a release date of 2024..

And they’d probably never actually release the game.

So based on the merit of your argument, I fully and wholeheartedly disagree. They should have held off on next gen compatibility (I mean, still have it run the game) and focused on getting it solid on consoles and PC. Even if the game launched stable and had cut content, they’d have to just say “Hey, due to monetary issues we had to release the game ahead of our expected ‘time’, but don’t worry, we’ll work on patching in all the content we had to leave out, and work on DLC after we’ve fleshed out the game. Thank you for supporting us and please be patient as we work on delivering the game we promised.” That’s all they had to do.

The last gen console issue isn’t a hardware limitation considering how long they’ve been working on this game for these consoles. It’s an optimisation issue. They clearly focused more on PC first, then probably pulled the PS4/Xbone build to next gen and improved it, but forgot about PS4/Xbone until it was too late. Who knows.

But suggesting they DO eliminate pretty much all of the console community (because as stated many times already, all over this forum, most console owners don’t have their hands on the next gen.

 

[CallMeHoot]

And they’d probably never actually release the game.

So based on the merit of your argument, I fully and wholeheartedly disagree. They should have held off on next gen compatibility (I mean, still have it run the game) and focused on getting it solid on consoles and PC. Even if the game launched stable and had cut content, they’d have to just say “Hey, due to monetary issues we had to release the game ahead of our expected ‘time’, but don’t worry, we’ll work on patching in all the content we had to leave out, and work on DLC after we’ve fleshed out the game. Thank you for supporting us and please be patient as we work on delivering the game we promised.” That’s all they had to do.

The last gen console issue isn’t a hardware limitation considering how long they’ve been working on this game for these consoles. It’s an optimisation issue. They clearly focused more on PC first, then probably pulled the PS4/Xbone build to next gen and improved it, but forgot about PS4/Xbone until it was too late. Who knows.

But suggesting they DO eliminate pretty much all of the console community (because as stated many times already, all over this forum, most console owners don’t have their hands on the next gen.

It might be a bit elitist of me to say so, but in my opinion they should have just developed it for the PC only. They could have done that, then ported it to consoles a year later, with full current-gen/next-gen optimisations and it would STILL have sold like hot cakes. Maybe even more so, because a solid PC release would have people going nuts about how good it was and then there would be a surge in interest as the console release approached.

I can tell you something though, this will be the last "triple A" (read that in Jim Sterling's voice please) title I buy at launch. I waited 8 months to buy Doom Eternal and it runs like a dream on max settings and I got it for half the price of release with DLC content included. Buying games on release seems to be a mug's game these days.

 

[gallantchar]

It might be a bit elitist of me to say so, but in my opinion they should have just developed it for the PC only. They could have done that, then ported it to consoles a year later, with full current-gen/next-gen optimisations and it would STILL have sold like hot cakes. Maybe even more so, because a solid PC release would have people going nuts about how good it was and then there would be a surge in interest as the console release approached.

I can tell you something though, this will be the last "triple A" (read that in Jim Sterling's voice please) title I buy at launch. I waited 8 months to buy Doom Eternal and it runs like a dream on max settings and I got it for half the price of release with DLC content included. Buying games on release seems to be a mug's game these days.

I agree with you to a point—release in the opposite fashion, though, as is standard in the gaming industry.

As it stands right now, for PC you have to have an essential dreadnought of a PC to run the game perfectly, and that’s just not feasible for everyone.

I would say in essence it is elitist of you to say that, but I’d say it’s even more elitist for others to make excuses and act like the game was never made for last gen consoles and use that mindset as an excuse for why it doesn’t function well. It’s a hollow excuse, truly.

Mind you, once availability of next gen consoles is out, or if I have the funds to buy a good gaming rig, I’ll do that, but for now, the PS4 Pro works well and has handled the recent games (FF7R and GoT) VERY well—I can’t fathom why, other than optimisation issues, it can’t run on PS4 Pro decently.

 

[Setzor21]

As it stands right now, for PC you have to have an essential dreadnought of a PC to run the game perfectly, and that’s just not feasible for everyone.

I would say in essence it is elitist of you to say that, but I’d say it’s even more elitist for others to make excuses and act like the game was never made for last gen consoles and use that mindset as an excuse for why it doesn’t function well. It’s a hollow excuse, truly.

you need to get real, the game is going to look like shit on ps4/xbone compared to even the lowest PC quality settings. they are going to have to massively scale back the world/npcs/textures/render distance. the reality is a game of this magnitude/depth was never going to work on last-gen. i guarantee most cut content is because they ran tests going down the list and testing how many fps they could regain on ps4 if they simply leave it out. this is why cars and npcs are dumb as shit, this is why what you see on the screen at the time is all there is and things disappear the second they leave your peripherals.

 

[gallantchar]

you need to get real, the game is going to look like shit on ps4/xbone compared to even the lowest PC quality settings. they are going to have to massively scale back the world/npcs/textures/render distance. the reality is a game of this magnitude/depth was never going to work on last-gen. i guarantee most cut content is because they ran tests going down the list and testing how many fps they could regain on ps4 if they simply leave it out. this is why cars and npcs are dumb as shit, this is why what you see on the screen at the time is all there is and things disappear the second they leave your peripherals.

The game looks decent on PS4 Pro. It has issues with pop in and frame rate issues, which is a huge giveaway that it’s an optimisation issue.

And the whole thing about the world disappearing after it leaves your LoS is a standard in the industry. Look at BotW, it uses that feature, and the game works well. Ghost of Tsushima also does this, and works well. The issue is optimisation. It’s not like we’re trying to get it to work on a PS3.

 

[WileyMarmot]

what happened was that the entire time from april to now was them removing features so the bloody game can run on last gen consoles.

Things that make you go; Hhhhhhhmmmmmm??????? You may be onto something.

Given the size of the game world, the desire to take advantage of RTX and other GFX gimmickry, and all the "immersive" and "adult" game features touted at one time or another in the PR run up to release; there's a good chance the decision/s to scale the game across last gen gear, next gen, and PCs was a bone call from the git go. Leaving them (CDPR) no coice but to "feature back pedal" as you suggest.

 

[cypajek]

its gamers lack of braIN

 

[IndifferentEmpathy]

Who woulda thunk that a single game can't be the new, improved, best looking GTA/Deus Ex/Mass Effect/Witcher all in one game

But we do have example of kitchen sink games - MMOs. They have huge feature sets and technical complexity. But such big projects require very clear vision, good management, and well established technology stack (so the project does not run into unexpected delays).

We know that with Cyberpunk much of it was up in the air for majority of development, it underwent at least one reboot and it was only pieced together during the last year.

CDPR way of making games is same as "Bioware magic". It worked out with Witcher 3, it did not with Cyberpunk.

 

[CallMeHoot]

I agree with you to a point—release in the opposite fashion, though, as is standard in the gaming industry.

As it stands right now, for PC you have to have an essential dreadnought of a PC to run the game perfectly, and that’s just not feasible for everyone.

For a game like this, developing for PC first would make a lot more sense precisely because of the range of hardware among PC gamers. If you can get a game running well over a large spectrum of setups, optimising for a standardised setup (i.e. a console) is a doddle.

Depending on how things go, I might approach Humble see if I can get a refund. Their policy states 60 days so we'll see.