CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14) • Hacker News Board

Re: CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14)

#371

Post by kodt » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 5:27 AM UTC

pier25 wrote: post #113

dotdi wrote: post #9

I see CDPR being bashed a lot and I wanted to chip in: I bought the game on release day on GOG and am playing it on a Macbook Pro via Geforce Now. It's running very well for me. I've had 0 crashes. Very few glitches, and if, then they were cosmetic i.e. didn't cause any gameplay problems†. The visuals are absolutely amazing. Combat is very nice. The skill tree is interesting. Night city is beautifully immersive and t…

My experience on a mid range PC has been good in terms of performance and bugs. The game has some truly amazing aspects such as writing, characters, music, etc, but IMO it falls flat in terms of gameplay. Gunplay, stealth, hacking, open world mechanics, driving... it's all very mediocre even poor at times.

I felt the same but after spending more time, things are starting to click.

Stealth for example is not nearly as good as Deus Ex: Mankind Divided or The Metal Gear Solid series. The tutorial seemed alright but when it came to real gameplay I felt like stealth just didn’t work and I just resorted to guns blazing. But after more effort and getting a better hang of quick hacking I have found stealth to be viable actually. You really do need to make heavy use of quick hacking though. Also that game is very visually busy which makes it easy to miss a camera.

Driving feels pretty good, but not as good as GTA. So far driving really seems to be a way to get from point A to point B and not a core gameplay mechanic like it is with GTA. The NPC driving AI and Cop AI is downright bad compared to GTA but besides being a little immersion breaking it doesn’t seem to affect the actual gameplay much. GTA is very focused around driving and avoiding police, most of the missions involve it in some way. Cyberpunk doesn’t really rely on driving so I can give it a pass on those faults.

Gunplay really bothered me at first. It felt chaotic and a bit clunky. Other FPS/RPG hybrid games have suffered the same issues. Shooting powerful or higher level enemies will just feel bullet spongy. Some of that just needs to be accepted as “this is an RPG, not a shooter”. The cover system isn’t very sophisticated or obvious either. However the more I play the more I get the hang of it and I have found the gunplay to actually be quite satisfying.

Re: CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14)

#372

Post by pbourke » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 5:28 AM UTC

cbozeman wrote: post #366

TheGuyWhoCodes wrote: post #42

Having played cyberpunk on PC it's mostly a fancy light show and not a lot of substance. You can't even customize anything past the creation screen, no car paint jobs no hair cuts and no body modification, no transmog system.. They tried to hide the console issues while reaffirming time and time again that current-gen console will be a first class citizen, that's an EA tactic not something that CDPR I thought I knew…

So fortunately I've never played any open-world game except for Skyrim, which just didn't really hold my interest... or maybe it was the fact I lost my save game due to a faulty SSD, I dunno. At any rate, I love this game. I love the story. I love Night City. I love the graphics. I won't lie and say I'm a huge Cyberpunk pen & paper fan; I'm not. I knew more about Shadowrun than Cyberpunk, and that was from the old SN…

I played the pen and paper way back in the day, and I agree. They have absolutely nailed the aesthetic: a dusting of kitsch and campiness that isn’t over the top. I’m also enjoying the story and game mechanics. It’s my first open world AAA title, so I don’t have much to compare it with, but I’m having fun!

Re: CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14)

#373

Post by cbozeman » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 5:30 AM UTC

shawnz wrote: post #364

cbozeman wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to ask? Its holiday season in the middle of the worst pandemic in 100 years, with hundreds of millions of people worldwide being on lockdown, or some form of lockdown, with absolutely jack shit to do other than work from home (if you even can), learn something (most people will not do this), or play video games. New movies and television have been woefully shitty. Its always easier for ask for forgiveness th…

As someone who bought the game as a Christmas gift, I am more concerned about how it will play at a Christmas-day patch level. I am actually happy I was able to get the physical media ahead of time, even if what they shipped at launch was buggy.

You'll probably be happy with your purchase. There's already a patch that fixes 600 bugs, and they're working on another patch that should be released by December 21st. Christmas Day should be a little shitty for your gift recipient, in that that they'll have to download a big fat patch, but hey, at least the game should work well.

Assuming you got the PC / PS5 / Xbox Series X version. If you didn't... yikes.

Re: CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14)

#374

Post by freeflight » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 5:31 AM UTC

_cs2017_ wrote: post #63

pojzon wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CDPR is owned in 66% by investors. And investors want ROI and there is nothing better than holiday season for that. They also knew about how bad the game runs on PS4 and released it either way because “money>everything”. Its really that simple.

I'd think this was worse for the investors than not releasing in December and delaying until ~March? Stock price down over 30%.

> Stock price down over 30%

Yet the game is the second largest retail launch of the year in the UK, only topped by FIFA 21 [0], it allegedly already recouped it's development costs one day after release [1].

Just gets to show that stock prices a very bad measure for actual performance of a company releasing a product, it's mostly driven by hype/shitstorms, of which there is currently a lot surrounding CP2077, some of it justified, other just coming across as tone-deaf and needlessly hostile.

[0] https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-12-13-cyberpunk-...

[1] https://www.polygon.com/2020/12/11/22170468/cyberpunk-2077-s...

Re: CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14)

#375

Post by overgard » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 5:33 AM UTC

plasma wrote: post #310

overgard wrote: post #238

I'm really enjoying the game on PC, it runs reasonably well on my GTX 1070. I'm staggered how many bugs there are though. I run into one about every five minutes. So far off the top of my head: - NPCs floating in space - NPCs walking through solid objects - NPCs randomly spawning in view - I have a gun that wont fire if I use a scope on it - I have another gun whose model disappears in car chases - Some objects have…

I'm curious how this could be happening, like do we think there is some 'job subsystem' bug that just causes game-tasks (whether its loading an image, or processing a message, ...) just randomly gets dropped and not processed? It sounds like such a systemic issue its not like a particular component (eg AI or rendering) is the issue.

Just some guesses:

- I'm figuring floating NPCs and walking through solid surfaces might be from incorrect navmeshes. IE maybe they baked them, moved some stuff around, and forgot to rebake. Or forgot to mark some objects static, etc.

- Meshes disappearing.. not sure, thinking maybe theyre using some fixed size arrays to avoid reallocations but maybe theyre hitting a fixed size limit and things get evicted.

- Weird spawns. Guessing this might be something like a broken line of sight calculation. Maybe similar to the theorized navmesh thing -- occluders could be wrong too

Re: CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14)

#376

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 5:34 AM UTC

maxk42 wrote: post #295

cgrealy wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with that adage is that it assumes you want only one baby (which, to be fair, most people do, at least initially) :)

Nine women can't make two babies in a month either.

[deleted]

Re: CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14)

#377

Post by freeflight » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 5:38 AM UTC

willis936 wrote: post #265

zyemuzu wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like I did. Playing on a 3080, minor bugs I've experienced aside it has been a true taste of the next generation of games. Mostly in a visual sense though.

Ah yes. You can see the global illumination ray traced lighting specular reflections off of the face of a T-posed one-line-of-dialog hooker.

The game looks way better than pre-release marketing footage [0], which gets zero recognition and only a bunch of hate.

Meanwhile when Ubisoft releases yet another "Doesn't look anything like the marketing footage", usually also crunched into existence, people just shrug it off.

In that context it's really weird how everybody seems to be dog-piling on CDPR right now for the most weird reasons, when otherwise they have a pretty pro-consumer track-record, particularly compared to the bigger AAA publishing fishes in the pond.

[0] https://youtu.be/Ogihi-OewPQ

Re: CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14)

#378

Post by smabie » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 5:39 AM UTC

29athrowaway wrote: post #298

dysoco wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this even legal? I guess it depends on the country but doesn't sound legal at all where I live.

The most common form of theft is wage theft. It is very common around the world. Contractors especially get ripped off all the time. "Hey, that tile is slightly off, I am not paying for any of this".

In my experience, it's usually the contractors that are the ones stealing.

Re: CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14)

#379

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 5:40 AM UTC

blihp wrote: post #250

_cs2017_ wrote: post #27

Wasn't it obvious to anyone who play-tested on last-gen consoles that the game is nearly unplayable and so will receive horrendous reviews? Presumably CDPR employees are not afraid to convey such bad news to the management. So why did the management still decide to go ahead with the release this year? After reading this transcript, I didn't find the answer to these questions. "Underestimated the scale and complexity…

Don't think for a second that employees 'are not afraid to convey such bad news'. Between the massive years-long hype, delays and bad press about crunch time around the title, not to mention being the most lucrative time of year for a game release, it's very likely that management egos were fully engaged in this release. When that happens reality is no longer driving, or even on, the bus. There may have been one or t…

[deleted]

Re: CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14)

#380

Post by shawnz » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 5:42 AM UTC

cbozeman wrote: post #373

shawnz wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who bought the game as a Christmas gift, I am more concerned about how it will play at a Christmas-day patch level. I am actually happy I was able to get the physical media ahead of time, even if what they shipped at launch was buggy.

You'll probably be happy with your purchase. There's already a patch that fixes 600 bugs, and they're working on another patch that should be released by December 21st. Christmas Day should be a little shitty for your gift recipient, in that that they'll have to download a big fat patch, but hey, at least the game should work well. Assuming you got the PC / PS5 / Xbox Series X version. If you didn't... yikes.

Unfortunately PS4 (although at least they are running a PS4 Pro).