6 ms·

> it's the typical open-world-game level of buggy There is controversy around this idea. The game is certainly buggy and many similar open world games have al

by slg 6y ago

> it's the typical open-world-game level of buggy There is controversy around this idea. The game is certainly buggy and many similar open world games have also been buggy on release. However, a lot of the problems in Cyberpunk 2077 don't appear to be bugs. They appear to be active design decisions that were made as a shortcut on promised features. Here is a Twitter thread with some examples of design decisions that might appear as bugs to an untrained eye.[1] It seems like CDPR knew they had an unfinished game and couldn't deliver it close to its release date. Management decided to do whatever had to be done to release a game in time for Christmas. This "open world games are always buggy on release" narrative plus some shady behavior surrounding how they handled reviews[2] allowed them to get largely great reviews and a huge influx of cash. Hopefully that provides enough capital to justify a long term commitment to finishing this game because it is doesn't appear to be a few bug fixes or performance improvements away from being the game that was promised. [1] - https://twitter.com/jumpovertheage/status/1338929166301990914 https://twitter.com/jumpovertheage/status/133892916630199091... [2] - https://screenrant.com/cyberpunk-2077-ps4-xbox-one-review-scores/ https://screenrant.com/cyberpunk-2077-ps4-xbox-one-review-sc...

kmonsen 6y ago
I’m loving the game so far (on a PC with a 3080), but it is certainly wide instead of deep. It feels really really shallow. There is a lot of content but very little feels meaningful. Outside of the missions with the girlfriend there is very little relationship building. Even this come short compared to most other rpg’s. I have also had a few insane bugs, but nothing came breaking. For example for a while my character was standing naked in his bike, and in another instance a lady was standing like the Rio Christ statue for a whole mission. I don’t really mind the examples in the Twitter thread, but I do mind that you really cannot interact with the world in any meaningful way.
- esyir 6y ago
  Sounds like the eternal issue of open world games though. Olympic size wading pools is how I like to describe them. Many things to do, but with minimal depth and little, if any, impact on the game world. None other than skyrim is one of the best examples of this.
  - kmonsen 6y ago
    Sure, but cyberpunk is based on a pen and paper RPG so I really hoped it had a little more. But yeah your description is pretty good. For me it was great on the beginning, the mood and the graphics are pretty good. Some missions are great as well. But now I’m not really sure if I will even finish it. It doesn’t really feel meaningful. Also even though there are some explicit sex scenes (but so few I’m not sure why they are there), it is really not edgy at all. It’s like a corporation designed the game which is everything cyberpunk is not supposed to be. There are a ton of great ideas in there, but then someone realized it would take too long so they half assed everything.
    - aspaviento 6y ago
      > There are a ton of great ideas in there, but then someone realized it would take too long so they half assed everything. Totally agree. Take for example character backgrounds. They are meaningless. You have a custom 5 min introduction for that background and then you are playing the same game as everybody with the addition of just a few dialogs. They could have just focused on one background and make the side quests more relevant to that background.
    - usrusr 6y ago
      If you role-play your character there is zero room for toying around with side missions once the story kicks in. cp77 simply isn't a do whatever you like game, it's a story game with a backdrop of a somewhat interactive surrounding. Compared to earlier cityscape story backdrops like e.g. in Deus Ex series games or the endless iterations of Assassins Creeds the backdrop is far more interactive and even a little gamified. But it shouldn't be considered the game, it's a backdrop.
  - rebuilder 6y ago
    Thats why I actually like that Cyberpunk 2077 seems to have a fairly focused mission structure. (I haven't played very far, mind you). It always bothered me in e.g. Bethesda's games that I was supposed to be on some all-important world-saving quest, but it's no problem if I want to just spelunk in ancient dwarves ruins for a few months instead.
- EugeneOZ 6y ago
  I disagree. Maybe don't skip the dialogues :) I have quite a contrary impression - the game is very deep and their world is not so wide as it could be.
- lrem 6y ago
  Interestingly, that despawning does not happen on PC.
  - kmonsen 6y ago
    This was on PC.
extras 6y ago
I really don't mind that. Really npc's are stupid in skyrim, gta, cyberpunk whatever. And it doesn't matter. When you look at Watch Dogs, its getting very repettetive anyway; You look at a few and discover that you actually don't care about it anyway. I play cyberpunk right now for the story they build and they build, so far, a very good story. They can keep the npcs as they are honestly; Finetune perhaps but meh
- mekkkkkk 6y ago
  You are right that NPCs are generally stupid across the board. However, in CP2077 they are outright broken. If you look at an NPC, turn 180 degrees and then look back, the NPC is either gone or replaced with another NPC entirely. There are stuff like that, not related to "stupidity", that breaks the immersion for me. PS. I'm also enjoying the game a lot, but soft locks and brokenness is starting to take it's toll.
  - wruza 6y ago
    GTA 5 does that too, but it may be observed more often when you’re low on RAM/VRAM. When I played GTA 4 on a microwave, it spawned the same car over and over until you get far enough from a current location. Not saying that it is okay for CP2077 in 2020, but this behavior is not unique. Maybe they overestimated where hardware industry will be in 2020Q4.
    - mekkkkkk 6y ago
      I played a lot of GTAV, and I never noticed it. Perhaps it preserved actors within a certain radius of the player? Or maybe the third person view made it less apparent. To dynamically spawn/despawn actors is a necessity I suppose, but I've never seen it handled so poorly and sloppy as in CP2077.
      - detaro 6y ago
        GTA generally is pretty good about keeping things close to you around, e.g. looking backwards won't usually remove traffic in front of you. The most obvious case are NPCs that aren't "relevant" anymore, e.g. people that have places around the city that depend on time of day. If their "active" time ends, they'll start wandering off from their location. If you follow one, you can for a long time, but if you then even look away for a split second they'll be removed, presumably because the game tracks them as something it wants to unload after their useful time has ended, but won't do it while you look. In earlier GTAs like San Andreas there is an explicit difference between "traffic in the distance" and "traffic close by" - the former will be removed if out of sight, doesn't have full-fidelity 3D models, apparently doesn't have physics applied to them, ... Once they get close enough, they get more complete and sticky. (GTA V quite possibly does the same, I just know less about the details there and its a lot less obvious)
therouwboat 6y ago
Its buggy and some parts seem to be missing, like can cops/enemies even track you at all? But at same time it gives more than a well built game would, yesterday I tried to make easy money by running over max-tac cops and taking their lvl 50 stuff. I cant kill them with guns, but hitting them with car seems to do the job. In normal game, high level enemies would kill you instantly, but in cyberpunk, you can just take their stuff, run couple blocks and everybody forgets that you just killed 2 cops, then go back and do it again.
- speeder 6y ago
  That is a great example of an actual bug, that ALL players saw, and many didn't notice at all. The police seemly doesn't have an AI, people actually believed they didn't. But a player happened to see a police car with cops inside (extremely rare to see that), and saved his game near, and ran several tests. He found out if you piss off the cops, using a car (on foot they just exit the car and never climb back on), and then you hit their car with yours (shooting them doesn't work, they just go away following a pre-programmed path), they start chasing your GTA-style. So this means they DID code the cop cars to chase the player car, but a sequence of bugs make the only way to see this content to be go out of your way to do it (you need to see cops in a car spontaneously while you are inside a car too, then run over a pedrestrian, then hit the cop car with your car).
yarcob 6y ago
Reading the Twitter thread I wonder if people just have unrealistic expectations. Self driving cars are a billion dollar industry, and yet you expect a game dev studio to come up with a realistic AI for drivers? It's a game. People know that it's not real. Sure, it's fun to discover the tricks that the devs had to pull off to make it work. But man, don't blame a game dev studio that they haven't come up with an algorithm for self driving cars.
- slg 6y ago
  I don't mean to be a jerk, but I don't think you know what you are talking about here. Driver AI in a video game isn't nearly as complex as self driving cars in the real world. Plenty of games have been able to create a more realistic driver AI. For example take a look at this video[1], specifically the part in which the user shoots at AI driven cars. The AI in GTA 5 responds in a much more realistic fashion. This has a huge impact on immersion and creating a lifelike world. GTA 5 came out 7 years ago. There is no technical reason for Cyberpunk's AI being this bad. CDPR simply didn't want to invest the time in making it better. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9VMTk13wfo&t=390 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9VMTk13wfo&t=390
  - ghosty141 6y ago
    This video really hurts to watch. It looks so dead even compared to The Witcher 3
  - yarcob 6y ago
    You're right, I had no idea how realistic drivers behave in newer games. Would be interesting to see what tricks GTA pulls off to hide the limits of their AI. Obviously they do a better job. (Sidenote: When the guy started beating up pedestrians I just couldn't continue watching that video. Maybe I'm getting old.)
- La1n 6y ago
  Self diving cars are not comparable to a driver AI. The AI exists within a world where it can have full knowledge of everything, and will have significantly less edge cases to worry about. Many racing and open world games do a great job at this, so it's not that it can't be done. edit: Also hitting a pedestrian isn't a huge deal in a videogame.
pelliphant 6y ago
https://nitter.net/jumpovertheage/status/1338929166301990914 https://nitter.net/jumpovertheage/status/1338929166301990914 for those of us that just heard about nitter in some other thread here today.
path411 6y ago
Seems like hacks to make the game run better on consoles. PC def doesn't disappear stuff you aren't looking at.

by slg 6y ago

kmonsen 6y ago

I’m loving the game so far (on a PC with a 3080), but it is certainly wide instead of deep. It feels really really shallow. There is a lot of content but very little feels meaningful. Outside of the missions with the girlfriend there is very little relationship building. Even this come short compared to most other rpg’s. I have also had a few insane bugs, but nothing came breaking. For example for a while my character was standing naked in his bike, and in another instance a lady was standing like the Rio Christ statue for a whole mission. I don’t really mind the examples in the Twitter thread, but I do mind that you really cannot interact with the world in any meaningful way.

esyir 6y ago
Sounds like the eternal issue of open world games though. Olympic size wading pools is how I like to describe them. Many things to do, but with minimal depth and little, if any, impact on the game world. None other than skyrim is one of the best examples of this.
- kmonsen 6y ago
  Sure, but cyberpunk is based on a pen and paper RPG so I really hoped it had a little more. But yeah your description is pretty good. For me it was great on the beginning, the mood and the graphics are pretty good. Some missions are great as well. But now I’m not really sure if I will even finish it. It doesn’t really feel meaningful. Also even though there are some explicit sex scenes (but so few I’m not sure why they are there), it is really not edgy at all. It’s like a corporation designed the game which is everything cyberpunk is not supposed to be. There are a ton of great ideas in there, but then someone realized it would take too long so they half assed everything.
  - aspaviento 6y ago
    > There are a ton of great ideas in there, but then someone realized it would take too long so they half assed everything. Totally agree. Take for example character backgrounds. They are meaningless. You have a custom 5 min introduction for that background and then you are playing the same game as everybody with the addition of just a few dialogs. They could have just focused on one background and make the side quests more relevant to that background.
  - usrusr 6y ago
    If you role-play your character there is zero room for toying around with side missions once the story kicks in. cp77 simply isn't a do whatever you like game, it's a story game with a backdrop of a somewhat interactive surrounding. Compared to earlier cityscape story backdrops like e.g. in Deus Ex series games or the endless iterations of Assassins Creeds the backdrop is far more interactive and even a little gamified. But it shouldn't be considered the game, it's a backdrop.
- rebuilder 6y ago
  Thats why I actually like that Cyberpunk 2077 seems to have a fairly focused mission structure. (I haven't played very far, mind you). It always bothered me in e.g. Bethesda's games that I was supposed to be on some all-important world-saving quest, but it's no problem if I want to just spelunk in ancient dwarves ruins for a few months instead.
EugeneOZ 6y ago
I disagree. Maybe don't skip the dialogues :) I have quite a contrary impression - the game is very deep and their world is not so wide as it could be.
lrem 6y ago
Interestingly, that despawning does not happen on PC.
- kmonsen 6y ago
  This was on PC.

extras 6y ago

I really don't mind that. Really npc's are stupid in skyrim, gta, cyberpunk whatever. And it doesn't matter. When you look at Watch Dogs, its getting very repettetive anyway; You look at a few and discover that you actually don't care about it anyway. I play cyberpunk right now for the story they build and they build, so far, a very good story. They can keep the npcs as they are honestly; Finetune perhaps but meh

mekkkkkk 6y ago
You are right that NPCs are generally stupid across the board. However, in CP2077 they are outright broken. If you look at an NPC, turn 180 degrees and then look back, the NPC is either gone or replaced with another NPC entirely. There are stuff like that, not related to "stupidity", that breaks the immersion for me. PS. I'm also enjoying the game a lot, but soft locks and brokenness is starting to take it's toll.
- wruza 6y ago
  GTA 5 does that too, but it may be observed more often when you’re low on RAM/VRAM. When I played GTA 4 on a microwave, it spawned the same car over and over until you get far enough from a current location. Not saying that it is okay for CP2077 in 2020, but this behavior is not unique. Maybe they overestimated where hardware industry will be in 2020Q4.
  - mekkkkkk 6y ago
    I played a lot of GTAV, and I never noticed it. Perhaps it preserved actors within a certain radius of the player? Or maybe the third person view made it less apparent. To dynamically spawn/despawn actors is a necessity I suppose, but I've never seen it handled so poorly and sloppy as in CP2077.
    - detaro 6y ago
      GTA generally is pretty good about keeping things close to you around, e.g. looking backwards won't usually remove traffic in front of you. The most obvious case are NPCs that aren't "relevant" anymore, e.g. people that have places around the city that depend on time of day. If their "active" time ends, they'll start wandering off from their location. If you follow one, you can for a long time, but if you then even look away for a split second they'll be removed, presumably because the game tracks them as something it wants to unload after their useful time has ended, but won't do it while you look. In earlier GTAs like San Andreas there is an explicit difference between "traffic in the distance" and "traffic close by" - the former will be removed if out of sight, doesn't have full-fidelity 3D models, apparently doesn't have physics applied to them, ... Once they get close enough, they get more complete and sticky. (GTA V quite possibly does the same, I just know less about the details there and its a lot less obvious)

therouwboat 6y ago

Its buggy and some parts seem to be missing, like can cops/enemies even track you at all? But at same time it gives more than a well built game would, yesterday I tried to make easy money by running over max-tac cops and taking their lvl 50 stuff. I cant kill them with guns, but hitting them with car seems to do the job. In normal game, high level enemies would kill you instantly, but in cyberpunk, you can just take their stuff, run couple blocks and everybody forgets that you just killed 2 cops, then go back and do it again.

speeder 6y ago
That is a great example of an actual bug, that ALL players saw, and many didn't notice at all. The police seemly doesn't have an AI, people actually believed they didn't. But a player happened to see a police car with cops inside (extremely rare to see that), and saved his game near, and ran several tests. He found out if you piss off the cops, using a car (on foot they just exit the car and never climb back on), and then you hit their car with yours (shooting them doesn't work, they just go away following a pre-programmed path), they start chasing your GTA-style. So this means they DID code the cop cars to chase the player car, but a sequence of bugs make the only way to see this content to be go out of your way to do it (you need to see cops in a car spontaneously while you are inside a car too, then run over a pedrestrian, then hit the cop car with your car).

yarcob 6y ago

Reading the Twitter thread I wonder if people just have unrealistic expectations. Self driving cars are a billion dollar industry, and yet you expect a game dev studio to come up with a realistic AI for drivers? It's a game. People know that it's not real. Sure, it's fun to discover the tricks that the devs had to pull off to make it work. But man, don't blame a game dev studio that they haven't come up with an algorithm for self driving cars.

slg 6y ago
I don't mean to be a jerk, but I don't think you know what you are talking about here. Driver AI in a video game isn't nearly as complex as self driving cars in the real world. Plenty of games have been able to create a more realistic driver AI. For example take a look at this video[1], specifically the part in which the user shoots at AI driven cars. The AI in GTA 5 responds in a much more realistic fashion. This has a huge impact on immersion and creating a lifelike world. GTA 5 came out 7 years ago. There is no technical reason for Cyberpunk's AI being this bad. CDPR simply didn't want to invest the time in making it better. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9VMTk13wfo&t=390 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9VMTk13wfo&t=390
- ghosty141 6y ago
  This video really hurts to watch. It looks so dead even compared to The Witcher 3
- yarcob 6y ago
  You're right, I had no idea how realistic drivers behave in newer games. Would be interesting to see what tricks GTA pulls off to hide the limits of their AI. Obviously they do a better job. (Sidenote: When the guy started beating up pedestrians I just couldn't continue watching that video. Maybe I'm getting old.)
La1n 6y ago
Self diving cars are not comparable to a driver AI. The AI exists within a world where it can have full knowledge of everything, and will have significantly less edge cases to worry about. Many racing and open world games do a great job at this, so it's not that it can't be done. edit: Also hitting a pedestrian isn't a huge deal in a videogame.

pelliphant 6y ago

https://nitter.net/jumpovertheage/status/1338929166301990914 https://nitter.net/jumpovertheage/status/1338929166301990914 for those of us that just heard about nitter in some other thread here today.

path411 6y ago

Seems like hacks to make the game run better on consoles. PC def doesn't disappear stuff you aren't looking at.