The irony is not lost on me, that Im here giving feedback.. But Ive always thought fan input was one of the worst things developers ever adopted. I much prefer they stick to their own vision, and create it with passion.. (ANY input! Shareholders, ceos, publishers, included)
The best answer I can give is it depends. Things get messy when interfacing with shareholders, publishers, and studio heads, but the short answer is studio heads are supposed to filter feedback from shareholders and publishers to the leads, and down the chain.
When it comes to fan feedback though, developers are usually looking through Reddit and forums to get feedback since their game is out in the wild finally. That said, there's a much higher chance of a developer actually taking feedback well if it's reasonable.
For example, "good" feedback could be asking for a more open-ended story with choices that feel impactful and the world react to. This kind of feedback does not infringe on pre-existing content or serves more as food for thought, and is feedback that could be brought up with the story team for future content. It's worth noting that Blood and Wine took a good chunk of player feedback into account, especially people asking for an expansion on the game's pre-existing romances.
"Bad" feedback could be some posts asking to make an expansion for the 6 month montage with Jackie, or to completely redo the skill tree. Both involve ripping out features teams spent months, if not years, working on, and would not be received well.
Genuinely curious here. What about this makes it an rpg for you? I admit, I consider character creation, and progression to be a part of it.. But. Thats about all it has. Creation, and a skill tree... Theres not really choices, unless you count the choice whether or not to do a mission at all.. Theres no way to play the bad guy, the nice guy, or even pacifist. You cant talk your way out of anything.. Your playthrough, and mine, will be exactly the same. You may do the quest markers in a different order, but each quest will be the same. You kill everyone, and the outcome will emd the same. At the end, you pick 1 of 7 endings..
Im not trying to argue with you, but I think the term "RPG" may have become so diluted, that simply having a single rpg element, seems to be enough for some to consider it an rpg.. Even the devs now have it as "Action Adventure Game"
Hi, excuse the interjection as I'm not the person you're replying to.
I believe there are a few staple features of a story driven RPG in the game, besides character stats, customization, items, gameplay options, skills and stats with atributes that level up individually as you use them, and the Street Cred system that gives access to side quests.
For example the way you approach quests, yes you can actually be a bad guy (getting Saul killed, be quite cold with Judy and affect the outcome of her quest line and many other events) to the point of locking yourself out of endings all together even by doing the respective side quests (and I don't just mean the secret ending).
One example is literally disregarding Johnny, even doing Chipping In was locked out of Rogue's arc even if I wanted to do it.
As for the actual Role Playing factor there are specific templates presented to you during the game that can be combined to achieve quite a unique V, but you also have the option to meta-game and get everything in one go, but that means flip-flopping about with the character to the point where it's really hard to connect to your V since they don't make sense.
A few examples:
As a Corpo finishing the Arasaka ending, your story, based on dialogue responses, can be about restoring your Corpo rep (depending on your choices, the dialogue and interactions reflect that so it's not just me projecting).
As a Streetkid finishing with Rogue, your story could be about becoming a Legend of Night City, again the dialogue can reflect that depending on how you play your V.
As a Nomad finishing with Aldecaldos, your story could be about trying to stay alive at any cost and find a sense of belonging, and again the dialogue and interactions can reflect that.
Or you can make your own path mixing and matching in between creating a unique V.
Of course as soon as you start thinking like a gamer and mini-max all the decisions and dialogue options (heck, not responding is an option that changes the tone of the interaction, making them either lighter, colder or damn right tensed) it becomes hard to connect to your character as it transforms into this Frankenstein's monster that's bipolar to boot.
Don't get me wrong, it's not a perfect game, it's not as deep as a CRPG (which I'd classify New Vegas as, as well) like Divinity, Planescape, Pillars, Wasteland, Fallout 1-2 etc.
But it's an unfair comparison and I really don't believe such a thing was at all ever promised.
From all the marketing material all I gathered is that this would be akin to The Witcher, Mass Effect, Deus Ex (which has way less impacting decisions than people give it credit for) Dragon Age or something in the same vein, set in a near-future dystopian city with a cinematic storyline that is more personal to the main character (literally what Mike Pondsmith said about Cyberpunk, it's a story about saving yourself). And just to add, in every instance they mentioned that you would be playing V, the character, and not V yourself.
Players: But we want to go to the temple of the forbidden goddess of Spank.
DM: Yeah but I spent six weeks mapping out the Underground temple of the goddess of the holy 34 shenanigans because you said that's where you were going next.
Players: That was before we met Sister Upfront Sue.
DM: Look I know what she said. I wrote her. But I think you got this whole input/output thing confused. You know its more complicated than girlfriend boyfriend right? Okay. If that's what you reeeaaaaly want: It will be a bit sketchy and don't blame me if it ends in tears or, at least, something eyewatering.
*names and places changed to protect the innocent......mostly innocent if viewed from a certain distance and in the right light anyway.
Roleplaying is something that is almost totally unique to humans with some socially organised animals having similar but less sophisticated versions. Computers just can't do it. They can provide elements of an RPG though. There's the skills and the perks and the character development. That is there. Its not very well balanced and it really needs sorting. Not a complicated issue. easily solved. There is a really immersive environment. That's there now although there are some places that could stand to have some life put into them.
The choice issues shouldn't be conflated with the mechanics or whether its an RPG or not. I have run and played in pencil and paper campaigns that were somewhat linear and campaigns that were free flowing. Its not a property of an RPG that dictates how good it is unless the player makes it one.
Choice for a human DM presents huge problems and increases the workload of generating and running a campaign. There are things you can do but, in general, the freer the campaign the less detailed it is. In my experience everyone has their own take on where a good balance is and, for everyone to have a good time, there have to be understandings between players and the DM. This is tricky with four of five humans but for a computer program serving a few million people things get a little harder
Choice in computer games raises the amount of work required exponentially. It rapidly creates complexity which rapidly gives rise to the kinds of bugs that send programmers off packing to the funny farm. Each choice requires exponentially more recorded dialog which diverts more money from other areas of the game. More assets to create and manage. it goes on and on. Given this you tell me what year you reckon they would have released it in if they had added that kind of complexity to the game. Maybe they tried. Maybe that's part of the reason we are where we are now.
The witcher, Which I absolutely loved and willingly sacrificed at least a few days of my life to those damned loading screens in order to play was amazing. It had Atmosphere, some great characters well, you know.
That said you could almost describe it as a glorified graphical text adventure, as far as complexity goes, when compared to TW3. I never got on the hype train. haven't seen all the ghosts from it. From my point of view its not logical to expect CP1 to be the equal of TW3 in scope or quality.
I hope there is A CP2 and I hope it has more choice in it but right now there is too much boot in the criticism and not enough constructiveness. As someone has already said: start talking, in specific terms, about what you want in the game now and in the future.
It is as much as a choice as it is a choice to do quests in the order you want.
I mean back in the old days it was a new RPG feature when you could pick up which planet you wanted to go on first in Kotor. It was something Bioware was proud of.
Every feature, be it so small, which provides the player with agency is considered a choice. Is it enough in a game of such a scope ? Thats another debate but nontheless, it's still a (small) choice.
That's not ripping out. That's adding in stuff to make us care about Jackie, T-Bug. Introduces Misty, Vik, the fixers all properly for all LP's. That's a failure at the scripting level. If they had wrote the characters better. Where we can care about them more. Or get introduced better. Rather than a random phone call. People wouldn't have cared about the 6 month skip. River has more depth than T-Bug. That is the type of mission structure that's needed to flesh Jackie/T-Bug out.
More choice than TW3 in terms of actual GAMEPLAY. With CP you get 4 different final quests to play based on your choices, and 4 different playable epilogues (with more variations within them). Also it is based on your actions if you will actually unlock all these quests/epilogues. None of that existed on TW3. Of course TW3 had more illusion of choice with more dialogues and ending world states, but in terms of actual gameplay, far less variation based on player's choice.
Sure TW3 is a MUCH better game, but these "accusations" have no merit whatsoever.
Considering the (alleged) inspiration for Cyberpunk, that should’ve been something of a minimum goal. But I suppose you’re right. It is far fetched to expect something like that from CDPR (or any other triple-A studio, to not point a finger at only one direction).
That's not ripping out. That's adding in stuff to make us care about Jackie, T-Bug. Introduces Misty, Vik, the fixers all properly for all LP's. That's a failure at the scripting level. If they had wrote the characters better. Where we can care about them more. Or get introduced better. Rather than a random phone call. People wouldn't have cared about the 6 month skip. River has more depth than T-Bug. That is the type of mission structure that's needed to flesh Jackie/T-Bug out.
Yea I was about to say that montage needs to be changed.
I say this time and time again, since I guess cut content is bad to say for feedback, if we going to be real and honest, we all know what that 6 month montage was. It's so in your face is damn near insulting what it is given the fact it's also in most of their marketing material.
Especially because if you look closely it's tailored to streetkid V's lifepath. Yet I'll be fair, if it's not cut content, it sure as hell is unfinished content.
Especially because if you look closely it's tailored to streetkid V's lifepath. Yet I'll be fair, if it's not cut content, it sure as hell is unfinished content.
I agree totally. My first character was a streetkid and I thought the montage was a street kid montage because all of it was fitting for that lifepath. For the other 2, not so much.
That's bad consumerism. You can't just put a blanket statement like that. As you can see, CD is being held accountable and they will release proper patches for the game because of people not liking the game.
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