6 ms·

Marketing hype backfired. People are angry not just because the game was released buggy and unoptimized (although maybe standards are higher on consoles in this

by b0rsuk 6y ago

Marketing hype backfired. People are angry not just because the game was released buggy and unoptimized (although maybe standards are higher on consoles in this aspect). People are angry because they were promised a groundbreaking game, a landmark game, and got an unremarkable mix of Deus Ex and GTA. Except for raytracing, there's nothing exceptional about this game. No new mechanics even. I watched the disaster from sidelines, but what makes me angry is that the hype was so strong it made gamers fight each other, blame each other, and make excuses for the company. Gamers are not to blame for the game except for the fact they preordered. The deceptive behavior was rewarded and costs were recouped from preorders alone. Yes, CDPR is taking a reputation hit, but fans will believe what they want to believe.

mattnewton 6y ago
I think the hype was part of the problem, but the developers focus on the game might be the bigger issue. It's hard to me to say from the outside if the hype caused the lack of focus or vice versa, or was just an aggregating factor, but after beating it (and having a blast), I think it would have been better to release only some of the ideas with more polish. The game was extremely well written in my opinion, the gunplay was good, sneaking worked and combat reasonably executed. As a result, the linear parts worked well, but it has a smattering of rough open world mechanics tacked on, just enough to draw comparisons to gta (which are all very unfavorable), and many rough edges around core gameplay things like vehicle driving, enemy ai, and scripted events triggering out of order / not triggering at all. And that's assuming you are playing on pc, and not a console brought to it's knees every hour. My diagnosis is that it feels designed by committee with no one willing to make deep cuts, and as a result suffered from trying to be everything ever marketed to everyone, and ended shipping all the ideas both late and unfinished. They seemingly had no time to polish the core of the game because it was too big.
- pier25 6y ago
  I agree the writing is exceptional. But other than that, all gameplay aspects are mediocre or even poor. Gunplay, stealth, hacking, driving, etc, have been made much better in games even 10 years older than Cyberpunk. And let's not forget about the outright lies in all the marketing videos. CDPR promised many features which are nowhere to be seen, even on videos that were released weeks before the final release date.
  - pbalau 6y ago
    > I agree the writing is exceptional. Can you give some examples? I'm half way through act 2 and I didn't find anything exceptional. What I did find is a lot of gameplay time padding. Wait for this or that to call you (instead of going on with the mission). And you can not actually wait, have to do other missions. Go through this interminable chat with an npc where you are being given options that don't alter at all the end state (that milltech lady for example). Have this unsinkable part where you find out all kinds of crap about a character that you met 20 mins before and most likely not going to meet again. Not to mention he tried to kill the protagonist in 2 of the pre(?)-prologues. Why did the fat fixer have to die? Why doesn't every vet that panhandles have a story about the wars? I would love to stay a while and listen... I didn't play enough Witcher to see if they have the same kind of issues, but I am ready to bet most of the success of that series was caused by the content they had to work with, produced by a real writer. I can't stop to wonder if there wasn't a better idea to not get Keanu involved and use that money to hire a bunch of sf writers. Is like GoT (the tv series), while they had content to rely on, all was good. Then we got Season 8...
    - mattnewton 6y ago
      > What I did find is a lot of gameplay time padding. Wait for this or that to call you You can just wait 24 hours instantly in the menu to get npcs to call you back. It was a narrative technique that I think balanced a sense of urgency while letting the player control which thread they want to pull on next, not meant to pad out the game. But I'd agree that the wait function in the main menu could have been introduced in a tutorial (As could most of the games systems) The padding comes from the random events (Like assaults or robberies) that have no story, you just show up and start shooting (but don't hit any innocents, or the cops will suddenly show up, despite being too busy to show up when the bad guys shoot them). Are you really surprised "the fat fixer" gets what's coming to him? He dies to show you how ruthless the corps are. He was already dead when the heist went south, and he knew it. The character of Alt and the Johnny redemption arc was great for me. If you choose the right dialogue options Johnny basically realizes how being pure concentrated 80's sci fi action hero has made him toxic to everyone around him.
didibus 6y ago
> I watched the disaster from sidelines How can you assert all the things you said if you didn't play the game? I haven't played it either, but it's honestly difficult to get an idea, because I feel there's so many people complaining that didn't even play it.
- b0rsuk 6y ago
  There are forum threads and video reviews contrasting what was promised and what was delivered.
  - hfkldjsjfkdj 6y ago
    That doesn't make the game bad. Even with points being dropped for bugs it has got a 87 on Metacritic. It is clearly a great game and nothing to seem this upset over.
enneff 6y ago
> what makes me angry is that the hype was so strong it made gamers fight each other I mean, that’s really on them, isn’t it? It’s just a game. I don’t understand why people invest so much of themselves in something they have no control over or personal stake in (aside from maybe paying some preorder money?). ((As an aside: who preorders digital products????)) I feel like consumers really need to reassess their relationship with these big companies. We still seem so naive and overly susceptible to marketing strategies. Superficially people seem to be more cynical than ever, but we keep falling for this BS that is sold to us. What’s going on?
- b0rsuk 6y ago
  The word "fan" actually originates from "fanatic"! I think video gamers have accumulated a lot of learned helplessness. We're supposed to believe that matchmaking, clients like Steam, Origin, Galaxy are about convenience for the user. It's actually about control. You can only play the game in the way they want. The system decides who you play with. You can't modify it unless you're explicitly given modding tools or map editor. Even playable demos are long gone. Most publishers don't do that because it cuts away the stream of DLC. In the end video gamers are stuck pleading to the publisher or developer because they have nothing left. With board games, making a mod is as simple as saying "let's make a house rule: (...)". Board gamers own their games. Once copy can be used with all your friends.
  - enneff 6y ago
    I’d agree if steam etc were the only way to get good games, but there is GOG and itch.io that are full of great games that are relatively (and often completely) unencumbered.
    - b0rsuk 6y ago
      I like GOG and Humble Store very much, but they suffer from other issues. It takes many days for a patch to reach these stores. Many developers rely on steam overlay so much they don't implement "show FPS" feature. Modding or level editors can be restricted to Steam.
whatever_dude 6y ago
This makes sense. I've been playing the game on PC (thankfully very few bugs compared to everybody else it seems) and loving it. The difference? I avoided reading or watching anything about the game prior to release. So on fresh eyes, I just think it's a good, fun game that has the average number of bugs.

by b0rsuk 6y ago

mattnewton 6y ago

I think the hype was part of the problem, but the developers focus on the game might be the bigger issue. It's hard to me to say from the outside if the hype caused the lack of focus or vice versa, or was just an aggregating factor, but after beating it (and having a blast), I think it would have been better to release only some of the ideas with more polish. The game was extremely well written in my opinion, the gunplay was good, sneaking worked and combat reasonably executed. As a result, the linear parts worked well, but it has a smattering of rough open world mechanics tacked on, just enough to draw comparisons to gta (which are all very unfavorable), and many rough edges around core gameplay things like vehicle driving, enemy ai, and scripted events triggering out of order / not triggering at all. And that's assuming you are playing on pc, and not a console brought to it's knees every hour. My diagnosis is that it feels designed by committee with no one willing to make deep cuts, and as a result suffered from trying to be everything ever marketed to everyone, and ended shipping all the ideas both late and unfinished. They seemingly had no time to polish the core of the game because it was too big.

pier25 6y ago
I agree the writing is exceptional. But other than that, all gameplay aspects are mediocre or even poor. Gunplay, stealth, hacking, driving, etc, have been made much better in games even 10 years older than Cyberpunk. And let's not forget about the outright lies in all the marketing videos. CDPR promised many features which are nowhere to be seen, even on videos that were released weeks before the final release date.
- pbalau 6y ago
  > I agree the writing is exceptional. Can you give some examples? I'm half way through act 2 and I didn't find anything exceptional. What I did find is a lot of gameplay time padding. Wait for this or that to call you (instead of going on with the mission). And you can not actually wait, have to do other missions. Go through this interminable chat with an npc where you are being given options that don't alter at all the end state (that milltech lady for example). Have this unsinkable part where you find out all kinds of crap about a character that you met 20 mins before and most likely not going to meet again. Not to mention he tried to kill the protagonist in 2 of the pre(?)-prologues. Why did the fat fixer have to die? Why doesn't every vet that panhandles have a story about the wars? I would love to stay a while and listen... I didn't play enough Witcher to see if they have the same kind of issues, but I am ready to bet most of the success of that series was caused by the content they had to work with, produced by a real writer. I can't stop to wonder if there wasn't a better idea to not get Keanu involved and use that money to hire a bunch of sf writers. Is like GoT (the tv series), while they had content to rely on, all was good. Then we got Season 8...
  - mattnewton 6y ago
    > What I did find is a lot of gameplay time padding. Wait for this or that to call you You can just wait 24 hours instantly in the menu to get npcs to call you back. It was a narrative technique that I think balanced a sense of urgency while letting the player control which thread they want to pull on next, not meant to pad out the game. But I'd agree that the wait function in the main menu could have been introduced in a tutorial (As could most of the games systems) The padding comes from the random events (Like assaults or robberies) that have no story, you just show up and start shooting (but don't hit any innocents, or the cops will suddenly show up, despite being too busy to show up when the bad guys shoot them). Are you really surprised "the fat fixer" gets what's coming to him? He dies to show you how ruthless the corps are. He was already dead when the heist went south, and he knew it. The character of Alt and the Johnny redemption arc was great for me. If you choose the right dialogue options Johnny basically realizes how being pure concentrated 80's sci fi action hero has made him toxic to everyone around him.

didibus 6y ago

> I watched the disaster from sidelines How can you assert all the things you said if you didn't play the game? I haven't played it either, but it's honestly difficult to get an idea, because I feel there's so many people complaining that didn't even play it.

b0rsuk 6y ago
There are forum threads and video reviews contrasting what was promised and what was delivered.
- hfkldjsjfkdj 6y ago
  That doesn't make the game bad. Even with points being dropped for bugs it has got a 87 on Metacritic. It is clearly a great game and nothing to seem this upset over.

enneff 6y ago

> what makes me angry is that the hype was so strong it made gamers fight each other I mean, that’s really on them, isn’t it? It’s just a game. I don’t understand why people invest so much of themselves in something they have no control over or personal stake in (aside from maybe paying some preorder money?). ((As an aside: who preorders digital products????)) I feel like consumers really need to reassess their relationship with these big companies. We still seem so naive and overly susceptible to marketing strategies. Superficially people seem to be more cynical than ever, but we keep falling for this BS that is sold to us. What’s going on?

b0rsuk 6y ago
The word "fan" actually originates from "fanatic"! I think video gamers have accumulated a lot of learned helplessness. We're supposed to believe that matchmaking, clients like Steam, Origin, Galaxy are about convenience for the user. It's actually about control. You can only play the game in the way they want. The system decides who you play with. You can't modify it unless you're explicitly given modding tools or map editor. Even playable demos are long gone. Most publishers don't do that because it cuts away the stream of DLC. In the end video gamers are stuck pleading to the publisher or developer because they have nothing left. With board games, making a mod is as simple as saying "let's make a house rule: (...)". Board gamers own their games. Once copy can be used with all your friends.
- enneff 6y ago
  I’d agree if steam etc were the only way to get good games, but there is GOG and itch.io that are full of great games that are relatively (and often completely) unencumbered.
  - b0rsuk 6y ago
    I like GOG and Humble Store very much, but they suffer from other issues. It takes many days for a patch to reach these stores. Many developers rely on steam overlay so much they don't implement "show FPS" feature. Modding or level editors can be restricted to Steam.

whatever_dude 6y ago

This makes sense. I've been playing the game on PC (thankfully very few bugs compared to everybody else it seems) and loving it. The difference? I avoided reading or watching anything about the game prior to release. So on fresh eyes, I just think it's a good, fun game that has the average number of bugs.