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)

#501

Post by mekkkkkk » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 10:05 AM UTC

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 having the same experience. I thoroughly enjoy the game, mostly because I'm a sucker for world building. The universe is fantastic, albeit a bit too pubescent and "edgy" at times. It also runs fine on my 1660 super. I don't really mind the "shallowness" of the gameplay mechanics. Horses for courses, I suppose.

But man, oh man, is it buggy. I've never been soft locked this many times in a game before. As a software developer, it's honestly a bit amusing to find the obvious cases where the individual sub systems trip each other up.

Primary offender is the scripted mission system vs. telephone. You get a phone call just as you enter a scripted cutscene? Two calls coming in simultaneously? You start a yellow dialogue while on the phone? Welp, time to reload.

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

#502

Post by jachee » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 10:06 AM UTC

nikanj wrote: post #442

cwhiz wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Christmas, new console releases, new graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia, and a pandemic. Take the pandemic out of the equation and it is still extraordinarily rare to have all of those events at the same time. Weigh the costs of having a bad release against the costs of missing these extraordinary circumstances. It’s not hard to see why they made the decision they did.

Alas, can't buy neither a new 3080 nor a new PS5. Imagine the sales numbers if supply wasn't so badly constrained

Supply is artificially constrained by bot-wielding cartels of middlemen with the aim only to “flip” them for profit.

If people would stop buying the middlemen’s supply, their exclusivity premium would evaporate, and the rest of the supply chain would be able to catch up and serve the real demand.

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

#503

Post by nekopa » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 10:07 AM UTC

trymas wrote: post #471

kkarpkkarp wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also it may be illegal, i.e. if you are employed like a full time employee - you cannot work as an independent consultant/contractor. Though AFAIK this definition of "like a full time employee" is not very strict. Polish here. It is like you described but a) not many people know about this (sometimes I surprise some guys telling them their employment form - independent contractor for one company where you are actua…

> b) I've never heard of someone being caught practicing this Yup. Me too. It's not as bad with design/IT agencies anymore, but I know that lawyer agencies are still notorious for this. Big-ish lawyer agencies with dozens of lawyers have no employees, everyone is a "partner" (or whatever the term is).

I think that is kinda normal for lawyers though. In the Czech Republic (I've been here 16 years and work with a lot of lawyers) it's normal for lawyers to be "contractors", very few are salaried.

In fact it's a funny rite of passage for most lawyers: after graduation they have to work for 3 years for a law firm before they are allowed to take the bar exam and become "real" lawyers. During this time they earn a salary. When they finally become "real" lawyers by passing the bar, they get fired. :) And immediately taken back on as contractors.

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

#504

Post by killtimeatwork » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 10:08 AM UTC

_cs2017_ wrote: post #187

wmichelin wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they'd care about sales rather than their stock price. The stock price will bounce back, and with the game being on sale, I'd imagine many players will just hold off until patches come through. They probably made more money launching as is than they would have if they had just waited.

Investors don't make money from sales. They just lost 30% of their investment. Literally no one benefited from this.

> They just lost 30% of their investment.

They only lost money if they bought on the peak and then sold the stock after the 30% fall. Otherwise, they're just stil holding a piece of CDPR, whose market value fluctuates and is not that relevant until you decide to sell.

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

#505

Post by himinlomax » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 10:09 AM UTC

tsss wrote: post #467

himinlomax wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. It's also quite possible that they felt so much pressure that they believed what they needed to believe rather than the reality. IMO they should have just delayed the last-gen consoles. Would have sucked, but that would have avoided most of the backlash for another delay as well as that for the buggy console release.

It's not like the PC version was ready. It has issues that can not be fixed in another 6 months of development. But as bad as the PC version is, it's at least somewhat playable in contrast to the console version.

I've watched a few streams; while there are bugs, they are more of the variety found at Skyrim's or Witcher 3's launch. Annoying, frustrating maybe, but not to the point of making the game unplayable as it stands on PS4. The severe performance issues appear to be solved by just flipping a setting or two.

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

#506

Post by mekkkkkk » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 10:13 AM UTC

overgard wrote: post #233

jontaydev wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a theory that development was restarted several times, most notably in 2018 to incorporate Keanu into the main story. It seems like they couldn't stick to a singular vision and shifted goals too many times.

I really don't understand why they have Keanu in this. I mean the _character_ he plays is fine, and Keanu's performance is fine, I just don't understand the appeal/necessity of getting the likeness of a real world actor in a digital game. I imagine it also must have cost a fortune.. It doesn't detract from the game or anything, but it just seems like an odd way to spend a limited development budget.

I think the hype speaks for itself, doesn't it? You want people to talk about your product, and having an A-list celebrity involved does just that. If you then categorize the extra expense under "marketing", I'd say it's not a bad ROI compared to other, incredibly expensive, marketing efforts.

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

#507

Post by killtimeatwork » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 10:18 AM UTC

cbozeman wrote: post #359

jay_kyburz wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Question remains, why did Microsoft and Sony certify them?

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…

This kind of ruins one of the selling points of consoles - that the game that you buy for them just work. They're more expensive than PC ones, but there experience is disappointment and frustration free. Looks like it's not so anymore.

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

#508

Post by bdhnddnjd » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 10:20 AM UTC

teamonkey wrote: post #494

munk-a wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CDPR sounds like a relatively progressively run game company tbh. A lot of game dev companies deny you overtime during the run up to a major release and massively layoff staff after releases. Up here in British Columbia all technical workers[1] are overtime exempt because EA ran roughshod over our labour laws a number of years ago and people are too afraid to change them for fear of driving off businesses. 1. Vaguely…

> deny you overtime during the run up to a major release This made me stop. Do you mean deny you paid overtime, because actively preventing extra work in the run up to a milestone is absolutely not normal for the games industry. The opposite is far more common. EA Vancouver might be more carefully watched, but one way of avoiding regulations like this is to make sure employees are only logging normal workday hours -…

I took it to mean you have to work, but they don’t pay extra for overtime, in the context of others not even being allowed overtime. In the US, that would be standard. I’m not aware of developers in the US getting paid overtime rate for overtime work in development, period, but overtime work is definitely expected a little too often, and if you work for a company where it isn’t, it’s either a large company with other ways of dealing with such things or they just haven’t had it happen yet or recently. However, the US isn’t a bad place to work; whenever overtime is expected, often times there are financial incentives. Just try not to burn out.

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

#509

Post by kuschku » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 10:26 AM UTC

willis936 wrote: post #291

sidibe wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

60 fps. There's also a 4K 30 fps option but my screen doesn't support that so not sure how good it is

I’ve listened to 3 hours of CP2077 performance reviews (it helps me work, I swear). A medium quality 1080p60 target on Vega 56 doesn’t ring true to me. It must be missing the frame rate target 100% of the time.

Yet 60fps 1080p medium is possible even on the RX480. It's not like the game requires a lot of performance, it's more that performance is inconsistent and while some players might get great performance, others with the same hardware won't

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

#510

Post by disiplus » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 10:29 AM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #474

kkarpkkarp wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also it may be illegal, i.e. if you are employed like a full time employee - you cannot work as an independent consultant/contractor. Though AFAIK this definition of "like a full time employee" is not very strict. Polish here. It is like you described but a) not many people know about this (sometimes I surprise some guys telling them their employment form - independent contractor for one company where you are actua…

I'm also Polish, I know quite a few people in IT who used to do exactly that, but this year they all had to stop or figure out some workarounds, because the Polish tax office has started asking for proof that their company is actually working with more than one client. If they only have a single client in a year then they have to convert to full time employment. So yes, people are absolutely getting caught by this.

most of the countries now have something like that but for sole proprietship. if you have an llc, you can do basically whatever you want because it is taxed different, and somebody has to be employed there, so the country gets the taxes. its just that you can pay yourself some salary and the rest you can pay out at the end of the year as profit that is taxes different.