Probably cause the experiences differ wildly between people. I'm over 20 hours in, had one relevant bug (couldn't use my weapons anymore, which I found a workaround for), love the story (mainly the side quests so far, since I haven't done much of the main story by now), the world and having a blast with the game.
Oh, the AI is really killing me, especially in Silverhand scenes. You can pretty much aim at an empty space and wait for a head to appear there, because it's obvious they will move there before shooting you :(
Dozens of hours here on Stadia. Only one bug, loading the last checkpoint would instantly crash. My workaround was just to load a minute-earlier auto save.
Based on a few anecdotes, it seems like Stadia is the most reliable version of the game right now. But if people are concerned that digital storefronts mean you're renting games at full price, then Stadia is even worse -- you're renting a game at full price and hoping the hardware sticks around so you can play it in a few years.
I'm close to 60 hours on the Stadia version now, haven't run into any gamebreaking issues. I have had some hilarious ones though, like when NPCs drive me around they miss a turn and plow pedestrians. I'm able to skip the driving sequences so it hasn't been a big deal.
Most of the time these are part of the open-world genre leading to lots of fun, like weird ragdoll physics. Tho they can be kind of a deal-breaker when they happen during scenes that are supposed to have an emotional impact.
Like when a character you are supposed to care for is about to die, and their gun suddenly flies inside their head to get stuck there, while the drama keeps playing out regardless of how absurd it look.
I had to literally lol at that, but it really took me out of the moment/the mood the scene was actually going for.
It's obviously an "Early Access" game at this stage but it was sold for the full price. Pretty disappointing as I usually avoid Early Access to not ruin the experience for me. I want to test out my new GPU so I've been playing it on and off for a bit.
I went ahead and returned my PS4 copy for this exact reason. Also tried on Steam (linux), but couldn't get it started beyond the intro screen and I don't care to debug further.
I only dive into a couple games a year (RDR2 last year), so I'm not going to waste my time until it's stable. I just want to buy the game, take a few days off of work, and immerse myself. If I want to debug things or deal with glitches, I can just go back to work.
> We were looking forward to a great game and were mislead.
Did anyone think it would come out polished? The repeated delays were already hinting that the CDPR was in trouble and couldn't cope with the workload. When they finally committed to a deadline to release in December, it seemed more out of desperation to appease the impatient public than an indication that they were nearly done with finishing the game.
So they released it in, as you said, its buggy alpha state. At least I trust CDPR to do right by its players and see the game to completion.
Then don't preoder. Making such a fuss about wanting the game right now, then making a fuss that the game is rushed and incomplete, that just makes people sound like a petulant child.
There is no reason to pre-order a digital product, so I agree - never pre-order.
Still, since they are taking pre-orders, and since they had an announced date at the time they sold those pre-orders, delaying by more than half a year your part of a contract is not normally acceptable conduct. It's understandable and not at all abnormal that people who did pre-order were asking for their money's worth.
Pre-order, I used to do that all the time. After awhile I got tired of having to go back and get a refund when the game/movie would not come out for at least 1-2 years after the pre-order. Now I just wait, and usually wait for a sale. By the time the price falls the big crazy bugs are usually worked out. The only time it made sense to pre-order is if there was some sort of merch to go with and even then it better be some nice swag. Now I have a box full of useless junk that no one really cares about (even me) and a set of games I forgot about a long time ago.
I think December was more about Christmas sales than appeasement. They didn't want to miss the holiday season and have to wait months more for people to pay off their debts.
The problem is you only get to make a an impression once (as Sovietwomble on Twitch often points out)
They have to fix the game, in 3 months they have to discount the game already, and if they are really unlucky the game is forgotten this time next year.
If they had nailed it, they would be sitting on literal gold, also for their next launch.
I think there are a few reactions that are reading differently to different people.
1) This game is not up to par. It's not as advertised, and for some of the most standardized systems (consoles), it doesn't even work. That's really bad on CDPR. False advertising is unacceptable to some.
2) This surprised nobody. Acting surprised is like being surprised you big mac doesn't look like the marketing materials. That's on the people pre-ordering and buying day of. If I bought it today, having seen all the reception, that's on me. Some people are extending "that's on you" that to pre-orderers.
3) It seems to work as well as any other AAA launch day game for players with certain setups. Some people see their footage or have that experience and think others are just being unrealistic expecting the big mac from the ad.
Personally, I feel like it's a friend complaining about getting scammed on craigslist after ignoring everyone telling them to do due diligence to make sure it's what you expect. Like, that really sucks and fuck scammers, but this was easily preventable, so I'm going to roll my eyes a little.
Cyberpunk has bugs and omissions that are a lot more severe than a typical AAA game launch, and certainly more than a typical CDPR game launch. Witcher 2 was rough, but never this rough, and Witcher 3 was a large improvement.
I played Watch Dogs Legion the other day. They don't even come close to comparing in terms of quality. Legion has functional AI and maybe a glitch every 2-3 hours (but I've had zero of them be game breaking, they're mostly geometry of physics related). Cyberpunk has weird things happening around every corner, sometimes quest breaking, sometimes visually hilarious, always showing the lack of polish.
I'm at some silly number of hours (12? 15?) on PC, and haven't even finished the prologue "mission" for Dexter, since I've been doing side missions and exploring.
I've noticed many faults of the game (crappy driving AI, cowering citizen AI instead of running away, etc), and I agree that this is much more similar to Deus Ex (e.g., mankind divided) or the witcher than GTA.
However, I haven't seen any game breaking bugs. I once saw my weapon glitch and be invisible .... until I changed weapons. I'm sure they exist, but I am having so much fun playing the game (even with potato graphics from a 4 year old card). I have hardly touched the plot, as I haven't even gotten to the events that were completely spoiled by the game's trailers, but I still feel like I'm exploring a living city.
> I'm at some silly number of hours (12? 15?) on PC, and haven't even finished the prologue "mission" for Dexter, since I've been doing side missions and exploring.
I made this mistake with Witcher 3 and got bored. Didn't even see Yennefer or Ciri on my first two attempts, spent most my time looking for a grandma's lost frying pan and shit.
But for CP2077 I remembered that this is a CDPR game. Go on and dive into the main plot, that opens up a ton of new stuff and super-interesting characters.
I’m about 30 hours into the Xbox One X release and it’s a tough love.
The game is unbelievably awesome when it works.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t really work/play well.
I have crashes every 30-45min. Glitches are so commonplace it’s clearly beta quality at best.
I’ve gotten to the point where I know to have the best chance to actually play a mission I need to get to the right location (use waypoints since driving crashes the game), find the NPC for the mission, open dialogue and start a mission, ensure the mission has started (usually when the monologue starts from the NPC), close the game, reopen the game, and start playing the mission. After a mission, expect a crash.
It got old really fast having the game crash during a mission and being forced to play the same mission over and over even if it did help me find better loot.
Over 20 hours in on Xbox One X, three crashes. One of them post 1.04 patch, all happened while driving around town.
Was missing Judy's dialog during the ripperdoc mission, other stuff is mostly just graphical glitches, nothing game breaking.
But as a fan of the "stealth archer" the stealth system is annoying, silenced weapons aren't actually silenced. Any shot will alert EVERYONE and they'll never calm down again, they'll even mysteriously know the gender of my character even if they never saw a glimpse of me :D
This is especially jarring for the few missions which are supposed to be "recon only" or "stealth only", where clearly getting noticed should be a mission failure. You sneak around for a long time and then you get noticed. No way to go back to stealth, so it's just a long sigh and out comes the shotgun ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Yeah thats the thing, when it works it's pretty great. But that all quickly goes away once the game gets stuck in a weird state. Like I wasn't able to run or use my scanner at one point. I thought it was some effect or something.
Those glitches happen to me as well. The first big glitch I thought was me was not being able to switch camera view while driving. Obnoxious bug for me. It’s not possible to drive in this game while looking from inside of the car without lots of NPC death...
On the other hand I'm 20 hours in with a 3080 and all graphics maxed out. The only bugs I've seen are a couple floating guns and one of the fixers had a weird bug where their cell phone on the table was moving with their hand movements.
I was going to wait for it to come down in price a bit before I snagged it as I get motion sickness easily so 60 bucks is a bit of a gamble. Also watching the slipping dates gave a big clue to everyone 'this is not done'. In a year or so after the modders have had their fun with it, it should be interesting.
I just hope CDPR did not bet the farm on this thing. If so GoG will go with it.
This is why the video game consumers are cancerous. They constantly preorder, buy into all of the hype hook/line/sinker, get mad at delays, and yet still get mad when the game is released half-finished/didn't meet the unreachable expectations. This cycle has happened with virtually every troubled AAA game release in the past decade.
Game companies can't win dealing with amnesiac/bipolar consumers.
Some of the blame goes to the consumer though. The community here is really playing up the drama in a childish way. Many games have had far worse launches, and got panned in reviews (both critic and user), and haven't seen this kind of outrage.
The gaming community sucks, full stop. I'm part of several reddit communities for various games and in a majority of the cases those subreddits are a swamp, full of anger and bitterness. The more competitive a game is, or the more the game tries to monetize itself, the uglier the scene. It really is bad.
Years ago I worked close to one of Rockstar's studios. Sometimes I'd overhear RS employees talking over lunch, and more than once that chatting was them complaining about the toxicity they have to deal with.
Most of that is actually the fault of the studios. Few companies are investing in managing their communities and communicating with them, setting standards and so on. Those that do actually see results.
A great case study is Final Fantasy 14 VS World of Warcraft. 2 pretty similar MMOs, vastly different communities. If you dig a little, it's immediately visible that the difference is not coming from game design, but from explicit community management and standards of conduct. The FF14 mods police the community with an iron fist, and are very explicit about what kind of behavior is toxic and off-limits - and the results are visible whether you play the game or look at the reddit.
Most companies though just don't want to invest in that, even to the minimum extent of setting clear guidelines and enforcing them when violations reported.
100% disagree. None of the blame is on the consumers. The studio pitches a game. People get excited. People buy it. None of that is the consumers' fault. It's false advertising, period.
If consumers didn't preorder and waited for games to come out and get reviewed fairly before buying, then this strategy wouldn't work.
False advertising only works because consumers are buying games based on promises made in advertisements instead of based on the quality of the game that is actually released.
Those angry consumers have a responsibility to not be complete and utter babies in their response though. And, as a secondary responsibility, not to expect so much.
Sure CDP hyped the game up. But they're fools for believing it. How often do things ever live up to the hype, especially in business?
Hmm, maybe this backlash is naive kids learning how to be jaded.
I agree with your general point and never pre-order anymore for those reasons.
However: people are getting refunds. In countries with consumer protection laws, it looks like there is little downside to buying in to the hype, if you can get your money back. This may eventually teach companies to rein it in a little.
Ultimately, though, the blame does lie with the consumer. Companies seek profit, that's inevitable. The decisions of consumers is what makes it profitable to release unfinished games, and sell hype instead of a product.
This game is still in alpha.
I don’t know why people are being so defensive. We were looking forward to a great game and were mislead.
I’m personally just gonna hold off on playing anymore until they actually finish the game.