Cyberpunk 2077 - Hotfix 1.21

I think that most of the criticism comes from CDPR overhyping the game and not fulfilling their promises: the verticality of the open world is limited, the braindance was not used outside of the main quest, despite being advertised as a quest starter for other side quests, the repetitive secondary and tertiary quests (which are a complete joke compared with what Witcher 3 offered) and then there is Pacifica, where we are told that not even the bravest of the cops won't enter and yet they appear from thin air (shouldn't Voodoo Boys the ones that would take care of you if you make trouble there?!). And let's not forget the complete lack of quests in Pacifica. Plus, the shallow system of choices and consequences, which gives the illusion of choice and nothing else.

I doubt that they can make a rebound, as there is a lot of money to pour in to bring the game somewhat near of what they've promised. Cyberpunk will remain a mediocre game, sadly.
 
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Mediocre compared to promises as you say. Still, there aren't too many better games of similar type out there, also sadly.
 
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Well I wouldn't go so far as calling it mediocre. Like what was said already it was over-hyped and undelivered on what was advertised. Sad when when you think about it.

At least CDPR learned a valuable lesson. From my news-thread last month.

CD Projekt won't Market New Games Early Anymore - PCGamer
CD Projekt still hasn't said whether or not it'll follow up The Witcher 3 with another big Witcher RPG, but did seem to imply as much this week. In a slide from its latest investor update, the company declared that "parallel AAA development" will start in 2022. The text is set over artwork from The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077's”pretty suggestive!

The future isn't quite as clear as the image makes it seem, though. CD Projekt president and joint CEO Adam Kiciński did say in the latest strategy update video that the company will work on two "AAA" games simultaneously by growing its operations (it bought a Canadian studio, as one step), but he didn't mention any plans for a new Witcher game, and definitely didn't indicate plans for a new Cyberpunk game. In fact, CD Projekt is backing off of designs for a Cyberpunk multiplayer game.

"Previously we hinted that our next triple-A would be a multiplayer Cyberpunk game, but we have decided to reconsider this plan," Kiciński said in the video.

CD Projekt SVP of business development Michał Nowakowski also said that, compared to past marketing campaigns, CD Projekt won't start showing trailers and demos until its games are "much closer" to launch. It may still tease things, but don't expect another years-long series of trailers and demos. If there is a new Witcher RPG in the works, CD Projekt isn't saying for now.
Seriously don't over-hype or announce games to early.
 
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True although I am not sure whether they will learn much. They just have to say so.

One thing to add would be that the perceived complexity by a gamer and developer do not seem to match with this game. "Our most complex game ever" turned "99.9% linear" if you ask gamers...
 
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Agree about the verticality. Of all the things they promised, I think that's the one that disappointed me the most. The majority of buildings you can enter are only 1 or 2 stories tall, and the few really large ones aren't fully explorable anyways. i.e. The elevator only stops at certain floors.

The hacking is also disappointing. There's not enough variety to it, and it's way too easy. Most hacks simply work 100% of the time, and I don't think it should be that way.

I have to diagree about quests being 99% linear though. That's not true in the least. Many quests had multiple ways to approach them.
 
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The game was in a very good state on PC even before this patch, if you own a console, I understand that was not the case. But I've played 100 hours and no bugs so far, to me that is amazing for such a huge and complex game.

It was very playable on the series x....apparently the only console it was...I enjoyed my time with it, definitely issues and waiting for a lot more fixes before playing again.
 
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I have to diagree about quests being 99% linear though. That's not true in the least. Many quests had multiple ways to approach them.

Since I'm the one who wrote that, I'd be interested to hear some examples other than "The Pickup" and the Delamain one, which are the two I had in mind when I wrote than only 2 or 3 aren't 99.9% linear.
 
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Since I'm the one who wrote that, I'd be interested to hear some examples other than "The Pickup" and the Delamain one, which are the two I had in mind when I wrote than only 2 or 3 aren't 99.9% linear.

Define 99.9% linear. Since that description couldn't possibly be more blantantly false, I'm thinking maybe we're just not talking about the same thing.

I'm talking about how missions can be approached not about having multiple endings or narrative threads.
 
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Btw, I finally finished the last bit of my playthrough yesterday after being near the end for the past 3 months and it supplied me with one last example of the lack of attention to detail in the story that CDPR showed. For those who haven't finished it, you get a few short one way conversations with major NPCs alongside the credits, kind of an equivalent to the Fallout style postgame slideshow. A few of them were felt appropriate to the ending I chose and the choices I made, but a couple glaringly did not. I'll hide this under a spoiler tag:

I did the Nomad ending, where you end up with Panam and accompany her and the Aldecaldos into Arizona, leaving Night City behind. One of the postgame vids was from Panam, and another was from Mitch (of those same Nomads) and they were completely inappropriate to that ending. You also get one from Judy, and she tells V to "leave Night City". That's not as egregious, but if they're keeping in touch, you'd think she would know that V already left.
 
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It will never be the game that was promised or shown, and that it should have been because they will never go back into the various quests and rewrite them to have actual choices and varied avenues of completion. They did that for like 2 or 3 quests in the entire game, one of which they used early on to showcase the way the game was supposedly going to be. But instead they just stopped bothering. Every quest, even the good ones, are 99.9% linear.

I enjoyed the game for what it is, but what it is is a shadow of what was discussed and all the bug fixing in the world won't change that.

That's a shame - I hadn't realised it was so very linear. Yes, doesn't seem very likely they'll be sorting that out.

I was thinking that the main problems were bugs, and some systems, like the cops, that could be overhauled. Perhaps it makes more sense then to patch it up and draw a line under it, and move on to some sort of World of Witcher game, which should be a pretty sure bet for putting them back where they want to be.
 
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That's a shame - I hadn't realised it was so very linear.

It's not.

I was thinking that the main problems were bugs, and some systems, like the cops, that could be overhauled. Perhaps it makes more sense then to patch it up and draw a line under it, and move on to some sort of World of Witcher game, which should be a pretty sure bet for putting them back where they want to be.

Well, it's that and the limited scope of certain things. Like the aformentioned verticality. Some things just didn't turn out to be nearly as good as they looked during development.
 
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Define 99.9% linear. Since that description couldn't possibly be more blantantly false, I'm thinking maybe we're just not talking about the same thing.

I'm talking about how missions can be approached not about having multiple endings or narrative threads.

I don't have time to go into this in much detail, but I am talking more about the latter (endings and threads) than the former.

If a different mechanical approach actually changes which parts of a level you see, or how characters react to you, or the ending available to you, that sort of thing, I would certainly count that. But I am not talking about shooting enemies with a gun or hacking them with a sword, or sneaking past them or killing them all, or anything purely mechanical like that.

"The Pick Up" has narrative variations depending on what you do and it's about the only quest that does. I find it blatantly misleading that they showed that quest and talked about how it could go different ways to lead people to think that's how the game works, and the game barely works like that at all outside of that quest.

Ironically, I thought some of the gigs felt more variable to me than a lot of the main/side quests. In most main/side quests I felt like I had to just look for the proper triggers and routes to take me to the next bit of the quest. I felt more freedom in a lot of the gigs to vary how I was approaching the mission without worrying about the mission breaking or not progressing. A bit like RDR2 in that way.
 
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But I am not talking about shooting enemies with a gun or hacking them with a sword, or sneaking past them or killing them all, or anything purely mechanical like that.

I'm not either. I'm talking about having multiple routes from which you can approach the objective and/or having multple ways to discover information. I clearly remember that being possible in many quests. It's at least similar to something like Deus Ex in that way.
 
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I guess the release before any patch and the hype in combination really hurt this game.

But there is also a lot of amazing moments in the game, it is a pity a lot of people are missing them because the negative publicity make them think the game itself is bad and they never try it, it is certainly not even if it does not live up to the hype. But in this case I realize that living up to the hype would be impossible, at least if they did not spend at least another 4-5 years on the game. Probably like someone said they've learned to not generate that amount of hype again.
 
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Yeah, I never really bought into the hype. What they originally discussed was wildly ambitious, and there were clear signs of a troubled production and false starts.

If it's a good Deus Ex-style Cyberpunk game, I expect I'll enjoy it. I was waiting because certain things, like the reportedly awful implementation of cops, seemed like the kind of thing they might sort out. That type of thing can really detract from a game for me, so I'm waiting to see what happens.
 
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The cops were annoying, but tbh, you rarely have to deal with them. Or at least I didn't.

It's going to depend on how you roleplay your character. Unless you're acting like a maniac, you won't actually see any cops except in a few situations.
 
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I was also not bothered by the cops.

I was more bothered by the general inconsistencies of the world itself. For example, I slaughtered gangs left and right and they didn't care.
Nothing is alive in this city.

All that talk about hype and learning is funny. They created the hype, nurtured it, orchestrated it. They developed that game in house, injecting that Reeves guy at 2 third of it and changed the story to accommodate that decision.

They can't do as if they really were not aware the game fell short of what was announced, they just can't. The 'oops' now we have learned is a massive BS.
 
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Well some good news at least.

CD Projekt has no plans to shelve Cyberpunk 2077

Link - https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-04-13-cd-projekt-has-no-plans-to-shelve-cyberpunk-2077
Developer CD Projekt is dedicated to fixing Cyberpunk 2077 so it can continue to sell "for years to come," despite a rocky launch late last year.

That's according to joint chief executive Adam Kicinski, who told Reuters that the studio is committed to rectifying ongoing issues with the game.

"I don't see an option to shelve Cyberpunk 2077. We are convinced that we can bring the game to such a state that we can be proud of it and therefore successfully sell it for years to come," Kicinski told Reuters.
So no it wont be another Andromeda. Also this.

CD Projekt's 2020 sales trounce previous full-year record

Link - https://www.gamesindustry.biz/artic...-2020-sales-trounce-previous-full-year-record
CD Projekt today announced two preliminary numbers from its upcoming annual earnings report to give an idea of just how big its 2020 and the December debut of Cyberpunk 2077 really were.

For the full year, CD Projekt brought in a record PLN 2.14 billion ($562 million) in consolidated sales revenues. That number is more than four times what it reported for 2019, and more than two-and-a-half times the company's previous record of PLN 798 million ($210 million), set in 2015 with the launch of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

The company set a bottom-line record as well, reporting a net profit of PLN 1.15 billion ($303 million). That more than triples the company's previous profit record of PLN 342 million ($89.8 million), also set in 2015.
 
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I told you buying those shares would have been a good idea when the price crashed ;) there will likely be higher dividends this year.
 
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