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

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601–610 of 682 posts

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

#601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that cyber psychos are a really tired way to translate an old tabletop game mechanic into a story beat. What's more interesting -- amputees and disabled folks go BERSERK when they get treatment, or what if we escaped the bounds of the human form. Why does this game have such an extremely boring view of what humanity could be if you had access to mods. Gender, race, body type, even the configuration of limbs a…

Step into the shoes of almost any past futurist and you'll find that humanity usually took the boring, predictable route, technologically. There is an inherent cynicism in the setting that needs to shine through as a fundamental part of the genre's identity. Also, it's only 57 years in the future. You're not going to advance that much in that time. Personally I think the aesthetic seems a little too trapped in 80s re…

That makes sense. Something like Bruce Sterling's Schismatrix really gets wild with what posthumanism can look like. Cyberpunk taken to the next 200 years.

That said, media like ghost in the shell and altered carbon (the novels) gesture in this direction. Altered carbon, for instance, has people who have modded their bodies with animal features. GitS goes hard on the ship of Theseus metaphors and has lots of mods that don't fit a standard human shape. Not to mention plenty of discussions of gender and gender roles in a society where you can just choose whatever body you want.

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

#602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TW3. CDPR dropped the ball (though not quite this hard) but pulled through within a year. No Man’s Sky missed that target but still managed to eventually have a (supposedly) decent product. Ask the average gamer how they feel about No Man’s Sky. Most other big budget case studies either completely failed, were decent within a year, or shipped in a complete state.

Wasn't just TW3, pretty much every Witcher game had issues on release that where fixed over the following time period trough a combination of patching, free DLC and paid DLC, ultimately culminating in the enhanced editions. In that context CDPR has a very positive track record many people just flat out ignore; I've seen people on Reddit claim the game is an "unfixable mess" and how CDPR will just "cut their losses" b…

This close to par for CDPR, but it clearly is below their par. The bad outcome is that they bit off more than they can chew and CP2077 takes too long to get to a good state or the “good state” is not good. The good outcome is that they make a decent looking product by the end of 2021 and gamers (maybe) forgive CDPR for releasing an unfinished game. There’s a large expectation of goodwill from both sides. Both sides have consistently demonstrated that goodwill, but that goodwill could sour.

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

#603
post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fiber wouldn't do much would it? Does it reduce actual travel time for the signal?

Depends a lot what you compare fiber to. mobile broadband can easily have 20-30 ms latency to the ISP. DSL is often 10-20 ms. Coax is in the same range, depending ont he provider. Fiber is usually 1-3 ms.

You do not seem to live in a rural area.

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

#604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that cyber psychos are a really tired way to translate an old tabletop game mechanic into a story beat. What's more interesting -- amputees and disabled folks go BERSERK when they get treatment, or what if we escaped the bounds of the human form. Why does this game have such an extremely boring view of what humanity could be if you had access to mods. Gender, race, body type, even the configuration of limbs a…

I'm a HUGE fan of Gibson's books, but let's be honest: he's 72 years old, and might not be the best judge of modern video games. He was also involved in (and wrote the screenplay for) the Johnny Mnemonic movie, which was one of the blandest attempts at mainstreaming cyberpunk ever. The Japanese stereotypes and Haitian gangs are lifted straight off the pages of Neuromancer and Count Zero. I dig the retrofuturist 80s v…

I agree on altered carbon for sure. The Haitian gangs, however, are based on the Voodoo Boys from the original source material. (Though I understand why they changed the game to have them not be a bunch of racist white dudes with dreads.)

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

#605

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You’re very unlikely to spend that much. If you have multiple serious medical emergencies in the span of one year, $7000 is nothing for having your life saved and getting treatment. Also, the cap is usually much lower than $7000. Also, remember, they’re still covering ~90% of every individual expense. By the time you’ve spent $7000, the insurance company has put down many times that. Our medical providers are competi…

>>It’s a strange mindset to think that something should just be free. When it comes to healthcare? Yes, it should absolutely be free to the recepient. I don't know why it's such a strange concept to you - afer all, Americans are also used to receiving certain services for free - you don't have to pay the police for coming to help you, or the fire brigade for that matter. To me it's the same thing - if your house on f…

> When it comes to healthcare? Yes, it should absolutely be free to the recepient.

Medical care requires the labor of others. You have no right to it, nor should you put a gun to their head and demand it.

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

#606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any decent software employer in the US will have good insurance that basically guarantees your max out of pocket health expenses won’t exceed a few thousand dollars. That doesn’t really account for the difference.

Out of pocket maxes in the 10-20K range aren't that uncommon in the US. Even when I've seen places with plans where it's <5K, that's only for single workers, and it doubles with a partner or family.

My plan for a family of 5 has an out of pocket max of 4K with no deductible.

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

#607
post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

uh I'm a gamedev at my dayjob and I'm working on a game design mfa so ... I know? my favorite game is INSIDE and it's a total chore to play. But I think it has a LOT going on and is extremely interesting. OP is saying Cyberpunk is not fun -and- it has nothing going on intellectually -and- they played it all the way through twice? Really, that's a mixed set of signals. If you think it's not fun -and- it has nothing go…

You got one answer, but I'd also suggest that someone might play a game out of spite. They might play it to check their experience ("maybe I was in a bad mood the first time"). Maybe all the coverage in the media made them feel like they needed to give the game a second chance. Maybe they wanted to see if the path or play style they chose was just a bad fit. Maybe they wanted to ensure they had enough data to back up…

it's not "assuming you know better" to talk about the subtext of someone's comment.

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

#608
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…

I found the following bugs which are very likely not related to the platform:

1. Friendly NPC left behind in mission area which was scripted to become inaccessible. Couldn't reach the NPC to finish the mission. 2. Killed an NPC two times: once in a side mission and once in a main mission 3. The player goes to sleep perpendicular to the bed and with the bottom half side of the body outside the bed. 4. Friendly NPCs start to shout randomly during stealth missions. 5. There's no driving AI, all machines follow predefined paths sometimes going through one another as if there's no collision.

And probably lots more I didn't remember. And these exclude the physics and rendering bugs and I encounter every 5 minutes.

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

#609
post #127

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> Combat is like someone took Mass Effect 1 and combined it with a bunch of Bethesda bugs from Fallout and Skyrim. Totally agree with you. In terms of gunplay, there are ancient PS3/Xbox 360 era games that are so much better. Deus Ex HR, Far Cry 3, MGS IV, Bioshock, etc. Edit: This gameplay from almost 10 years ago is way better than Cyberpunk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3eszAJWHKY

And yet I'd rather play Cyberpunk than any of these games. The combat is good. It's not great or amazing, but it's good and is fun and satisfying. But gunplay isn't why I bought Cyberpunk, so this idea that because some PS3 games that I have zero interest in have "better" gameplay, Cyberpunk isn't worth playing seems insane to me.

> this idea that because some PS3 games that I have zero interest in have "better" gameplay, Cyberpunk isn't worth playing seems insane to me.

It's not really about Cyberpunk not worth playing, but rather that Cyberpunk severely underdelivered by raising the expectations of players who enjoyed these past games and were expecting something even better. I wasn't expecting something better than DeusEx or older Bioware games (knights of the old republic, dragon age: origins, mass effect, neverwinter nights), but I really wasn't expecting the mediocre story and the abundance of bugs.

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

#610
post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take away the bugs and cosmetic performance problems; the game is just lousy. Every mechanic it implements is lousy and half-baked. From the driving, to the shooting, to the looting, to the AI, it's just mediocre. Try this tonight: make sure you're absolutely alone and shoot someone. A cop will spawn behind you. No AI, no chase, no nothing, just bloop here's a cop. The game has destroyed the reputation of this compan…

I mean I'm pretty sure the cop spawning itself is a placeholder mechanism they just never got around to. If you think about, the crime-notification probably calls a "spawn law enforcement" handler which basically just runs the spawn economy and drops them in, with a comment along the lines of "TODO: waiting on NPC driving mechanics" (which are also missing).

> I mean I'm pretty sure the cop spawning itself is a placeholder mechanism they just never got around to

Is this meant as an excuse? Because it's not. Either they left it out because they ran out of time, or they didn't bother implementing it from the beginning, but the result is the same: they released a game without core mechanics fully implemented and the critiques are justified.

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