Cyberpunk 2077

[Sky]

Thus far the main thing bugging me has been the aggressive culling for street traffic/peds. The tech seems to be more Spider-Man or early GTA console versions, but it's a bit jarring to see a cool outfit, turn to check it out and the person has vanished completely. Those little things I feel can be cleaned up and a sequel would likely nail (it took Rockstar a while to get it feeling better, and they still have a long way to go for a lot of that tech and it's basically all they've done for decades). But things like that, the AI driving, police notification and spawning, those need to be put back on the design board (and it's already being done better, so it's not like they have to invent something new).

Nothing that actually bothers me about the game itself, though. The map? It's useless except for setting waypoints, and the path the gps chooses can be...interesting.

Had a mission turn-in, and the drop box thingy it sent me to was in the middle of an enemy gang zone. I go trotting in, ready to call it a night and time slows and music starts pumping...aww, man. Sorry you all had to die so I could turn in that side gig.

[Ashamanchill]

My big beef with the map is the fact that: on PC, to open the map you press M. So far so good. But press M again to close the map, like we have done since, well games with maps, and no that just kida zooms in the map. You have to press Esc, but that still just brings you back to the character menu. WTF?

[Trippy]

Also zooming in on the map zooms in where your cursor is pointing not where the map is centered nor where your character is located so zooming in where your character is is a tedious process of carefully locating where your icon is buried under a sea of other icons (yes I know there’s a non-obvious key for locating your character) carefully pointing the cursor over your character and then zooming in.

[01101010]

The whole loot system is so weird. It doesn't work on the immersion factor, but then it also doesn't work as a real loot system. Like, I'm wearing a flak vest, but then a windbreaker drops with higher armor than it, simply because it is a higher level. So, unlike say, Skyrim, where going from 'normal' armor, to elven, to daedric (roughly speaking, it's been 6 or so years) made sense, here I can't equip a pair of jeans because I need to be 3 levels higher? And that is after we drop the idea that certain baseball caps are better than their peers by being blue or purple. But then, leaving aside immersion, it doesn't work as a normal loot system either. I spend a portion of the evening doing a "very hard" side gig, and the dudes drop level 12 loot. Only I can't equip it, because I am level 4, and by the time I get to level 12 I will have been flooded with enough level 12 crap that this loot will mean nothing. Like, cmon man. Baldurs Gate 2 had me staying up all night to cheeze beat certain encounters, with the loot that dropped being commensurate with the effort I put in. And the game was confident in how I found my fun that it didn't care if I was overpowered after that.

I dunno man.

Yeah I been up against this loot disparity as well. Was wearing a heavy cotton shirt and found a silk pull over shirt with 20 more armor on it.... only it makes me look ridiculous. It's the subligar fiasco from FFXI. What I really started becoming aware of is the exact scenario you've outlined, stomp thru a higher level mission and you get a bunch of blue and purple items at a higher req level but with armor values around what is dropping normally for my level (lvl8 and getting lvl 12-20 items). I was waiting to equip a cool blue item with great stats and armor when I was level 3 and needed req lvl6. Once I hit 6, the grey/green stuff was 5-10 armor points higher so the blue piece was irrelevant. Now, I could upgrade the item, but the cost is so god damn out of whack that finding a piece you want to keep is next to impossible to upgrade as you go with the escalators in crafting mats required. So I guess it sticks to RPGs of old where you look like a fucking hobo until level cap and then you pull the armor sets together.

[Velorath]

Yeah it's kind of a good thing most of the game is in 3rd person because the gear you get throughout the game generally makes you look pretty "special". I don't know why they ran so far with the thrift store aesthetic when it comes to the gear, especially when none of the supporting cast dress anything like that so they can't even write it off as being the style of that setting.

[Trippy]

It's especially weird cause the game has a clothing mod system already. They could've simply had all the armor and other stat bonuses applied via mods so you could dress the way you want.

[Khaldun]

I finally started. I went Nomad.

I was frustrated that I couldn't kill Jackie when he stiffed me on my payment. V's dialogue doesn't feel that right to me a lot of the time.

But it's fine overall. It's not RPG Jesus, but I'm not feeling hatred or anger either. Only glitch so far is Jackie left some chopsticks floating in air while he ate with another pair of chopsticks.

[Chimpy]

Heard on the BBC world service on my way to the grocery store a bit ago "Sony has pulled Cyberpunk 2077 from the Playstation Store due to complaints about bugs."   

[Trippy]

Yeah.

https://mobile.twitter.com/AskPlayStation/status/1339737360184078336

https://www.playstation.com/en-us/cyberpunk-2077-refunds/

[Hawkbit]

Aaaaaand it 404s.

I couldn't even get emails to CDPR; they bounced as server not configd yesterday.

[Riggswolfe]

It's especially weird cause the game has a clothing mod system already. They could've simply had all the armor and other stat bonuses applied via mods so you could dress the way you want.

There's a mod called the armadillo mod that adds tons to your armor. So just get some good looking stuff with mod slots and use those mods and you're good to go. You can find the crafting spec for it (search on Youtube for a guy getting a corpo suit armor set, goes by ESO, he mentions where to find the crafting spec)

[Trippy]

Saved game possible file corruption at >= 8MB:

https://old.reddit.com/r/cyberpunkgame/comments/kg47yz/psa_your_save_file_is_capped_at_8mb_on_all/

On PC saved games are located in: %userprofile%\Saved Games\CD Projekt Red\Cyberpunk 2077

[Riggswolfe]

Saved game possible file corruption at >= 8MB:

https://old.reddit.com/r/cyberpunkgame/comments/kg47yz/psa_your_save_file_is_capped_at_8mb_on_all/

On PC saved games are located in: %userprofile%\Saved Games\CD Projekt Red\Cyberpunk 2077

It should only be a problem for dupers. I have tons of crafting mats and stuff and am just fine. But dupers are making hundreds or thousands of items and its swelling their save files.

[Sky]

Still amazed at how good this game is at 720p, especially given how large my 4k monitor is (83). Screenshots look ok, but don't really capture how good it is in motion. I feel bad for base console owners, but lol pc masterrace coming back from the distant past (11 yr old pc, 6 yr old gpu) to kick some tail.

My main graphical gripe is actually SSR aberrations  Normally I don't really notice, but the graphical fidelity is so high on ultra that it kinda sticks out.

[Khaldun]

I'm enjoying it a lot. The art design is great.

Yes, it feels very stupid to have a shirt in my inventory that I have to be level 12 to wear, but I assume the basic idea is "you're not cool enough yet to wear that without having random pedestrians shoot you in the face".

[Riggswolfe]

I'm enjoying it a lot. The art design is great.

Yes, it feels very stupid to have a shirt in my inventory that I have to be level 12 to wear, but I assume the basic idea is "you're not cool enough yet to wear that without having random pedestrians shoot you in the face".

FYI, a big hint. Well, two of them.

Save scum when you see armor you like to max out its mod slots.

Mods matter more than the base armor. I haven't upgraded my armor at all but have around 5k armor on my current playthrough. Once you know this, you can usually find armor you like the look of and just craft mods for it or buy them.

[Rendakor]

Are there crafting recipes for mods? I haven't seen any for weapons or armor.

[Velorath]

There are. I found a couple rarities of the armadillo mod.

[Riggswolfe]

Are there crafting recipes for mods? I haven't seen any for weapons or armor.

There are. They always spawn in the same place too so if you want to find one, take to Youtube.

[Khaldun]

I need a refresher. Why are people screaming about this being bad, except for it not working well on PS4/Xbone?

I feel like it's pretty amazing.

[Velorath]

Because it tries to do a ton of things and doesn't do any of them particularly well.

Edit: I mean, I don't want to try to talk you out of liking the game or anything, but even beyond the bugs do you really not see all the broken or poorly implemented things that other people have issues with? I listed some of my issues a page back and didn't even get into the broken tooltips on some perks/cyberware (hope you don't buy Gorilla Arms because the description mentioned being able to open locked doors), how bad the AI is in many situations, the police who spawn out of nowhere when you get a crime rating (a system that adds nothing to the game), the number of places you can fall through the environment because they provided double jumping through cyberware but didn't seem to always design the world with that in mind, and on and on.

[Chimpy]

I had tons of fun for the first couple of hours playing E.T. on the Atari 2600 when I was 7.

[Ashamanchill]

I need a refresher. Why are people screaming about this being bad, except for it not working well on PS4/Xbone?

I feel like it's pretty amazing.

Cuz it's boring. It's a mile wide but an inch deep. Every side gig/criminal activity/??? is the same. Go here, kill the dudes. We will give you 5% more eddies if you stealth some of them. The loot system is complete ass. It's only point is to hover your inventory and equip the green arrows. No point in challenging yourself to kill higher level stuff, it will level lock you for loot anyways, so the thing may as well just upgrade your stats any which ways. The world is cool but has no depth whatsoever. Nothing you do has any impact on it. The combat system and perks are meh. Does the job but nothing to write home about. The cars suck wank to drive. A complete after thought. Good thing then that the cops are so horrendously programed that you can outrun them after driving 100m in a straight line. Assuming they didn't just magically spawn behind you that is. There is no meaningful dialogue choices at all. The "lifepath" you take is a complete joke which all lead you to the exact same place 20 minutes in. The "conversation options" they open are laughably meaningless. The UI is gob shiite from 10 plus years ago, and basic things like button remapping is not possible. And the bugs and critical glitches are by no means limited to the console versions. Currently the game's last advocate in my friend group cannot play the game after their latest patch, as it crashes every minute, to cite a random example.

The story seems cool. I don't really like it, but others do. And the characters, aside from Keanu's, are actually pretty good.

That's cool that you like the game, many people do, but those that don't can't help but feel how last gen, or even two gens ago everything is. Saint's Row 2 of like 11 years ago had more creative and fun shit to do in the city. GTA had more depth to it's AI civiliians, cops, and baddies. Deux Ex has has better world affecting impact. Red Dead Redemption 1 more depth. And I can go on. Is Night City gorgeous and immersive to tool around in? Hell yeah, when a Bethesda level bug doesn't intrude on that. But it's just a painting, and nothing you do changes it in anyway at all, right down to your character's dialogue only giving you 3 different ways to say "yes please!" to being kicked in the dick. Yeah, there are one or two times where they let you think it's not that way, but that is a complete facade.

[Rasix]

I had tons of fun for the first couple of hours playing E.T. on the Atari 2600 when I was 7.

Really? I think playing that game taught me to know despair. I thought all games had redeeming qualities before stepping into that turd.

Oh, yah, Cyberpunk. 40ish hours in, and I think I'm at the last mission, but there's a lot of side content still available. Game's fine, IMO. Probably could have used another year in development, but I've got my money's worth. The bugs I'm hitting are mostly cosmetic and ignore-able, although some have made me reload an earlier autosave/quicksave. The Delamain quest bug was pretty annoying, but apparently they fixed it in 1.05, but by then I was already done with it. Writing and story are my favorite parts. Cruising around town listening to the rap or cholo station can be worth it. The combat, character progression, and gearing are pretty forgettable, and I'm not sure they can be "fixed". At least it's not a Witcher 2 situation where the game is just too fucking hard on top of being clunky (and buggy as fuck).

I'll likely finish it, then do another play through once some of the bigger patches hit. There's usually 12 month "we're sorry our game was a buggy fucking mess" patch for every CD Projekt game. That should be when it's mostly done and ready for consumption.

edit:
It's not a completely fair comparison, but this game is kind of like Elex for me. I'm here for the whole package, jank and all.

[Chimpy]

I had tons of fun for the first couple of hours playing E.T. on the Atari 2600 when I was 7.

Really? I think playing that game taught me to know despair. I thought all games had redeeming qualities before stepping into that turd.

After that two hours I went into a homicidal rage because I realized it was literally impossible to get out of the pit. I never played it (or really enjoyed the movie that much) again.

[Rendakor]

I need a refresher. Why are people screaming about this being bad, except for it not working well on PS4/Xbone?

I feel like it's pretty amazing.

I'm having fun with it, but Velorath has it right.

My biggest specific complaint is that I wanted an RPG similar to Fallout: New Vegas and what I got was an open world game that feels closer to an Ubisoft title or Grand Theft Auto. The combat is fine, and probably the best thing about the game. The graphics look great on my 3070, when they work, but they are undercut by the near-constant visual glitches. The stealth is bad like most games of this type, worse than Assassin's Creed and about on par with Skyrim. None of the sidequests have presented any interesting choices in terms of completion, and there don't appear to be any factions you can choose to side with or eliminate. I also dislike the way your Skills and Perks are both gated by your Attributes, but that might just be a personal thing; if you're going to have use-based Skill progression, just do that. The loot is very shitty, and I think I've only found one item that made me go "Wow this is cool!" in the ~40 hours I have logged; it's better loot than GTA but worse than in a real RPG. Speaking of loot, the UI for dealing with items is a mess. You should be able to sort weapons by type (Pistol, SMG, Sniper Rifle, etc.), as well as by raw damage (instead of just DPS). The UI can't even remember whatever sorting option I pick, and goes back to Default every time. Oh, and not to be that guy, but for a game where I had to choose my dick size and with porn ads all over Night City there is surprisingly little sex.

Right now I'd probably give the game a 6 out of 10; after a year of patches I can see them polishing it to an 8/10, at best.

[Khaldun]

I hear a lot of this, but I feel like there's quite a few side quests with actual stories attached and a lot of them are good. I expect every open world RPG to have some number of side quests that are "kill a bunch of guys at this POI" and for that matter to just have POIs where if you stop to check it out, you're going to be in a fight with NPCs who hang out there--Skyrim had plenty of those. Every open-world RPG I can think of has them--Breath of the Wild, RDR 1 & 2, Fallout, AC.

I do wish there were more interior spaces that just existed as interesting and atmospheric locations rather than quest locations.

I have really only run into a relatively few minor glitches.

The driving is terrible. The loot system is pretty annoying, yes. The game very very much needs transmog or it needs to decouple clothes from armor effects.

The cop behavior is definitely weird and annoying at times.

I definitely wish there was some kind of faction system, which might incentivize you to stealth play/nonlethal engage more often (e.g., deaths of particular faction members would make them hate you/hunt you). The Tyger Claws should definitely have a bounty on my head.

I wish junk was more meaningful--like you could decorate your apartment with it the way you could decorate a house in Skyrim.

But I honestly am enjoying it and think it's a pretty well-designed open world on the whole with considerable immersiveness. I guess I've always been able to shrug off UI annoyances if the world is good enough (I'm not actually remembering an open-world RPG where I loved the UI enough to have that be part of what I liked about the game).

[Rendakor]

The only gameplay-related bug I've had was a certain model of Sniper Rifle (the ones you can charge up) would sometimes become unable to fire. Clicking did nothing, and you had to throw it onto the ground from your inventory then pick it up and reequip it to get it to work. But I see weird clipping issues all the time, NPCs walking down the streets just like stop and spin 90 degrees with no animation, cars visible in the distance popping-out when they get close, cars hovering a foot or so off the ground until you get into them, and so on. None of them are bad, but they all scream a lack of polish and prevent me from becoming immersed.

I only mentioned the UI here because it seems to be actively fighting me. If the loot was better and incremental upgrades didn't drop constantly it would be less annoying (or if you could just auto-dismantle white guns), but every time I clear out an area I have to remember to re-sort the listed guns to figure out which one is the best. The number of times I've put on an upgrade and applied scopes/mods, only to scroll down and see a purple hiding at the bottom of the list is too high to count.

While we're at it, here's another thing that really let me down (spoilers for Act I):

[Khaldun]

I have had the "sniper rifle won't fire for no reason" bug a few times, yeah. And yes, I've seen some pedestrian and pop-in glitches. In NPC scenes, if they're holding something like a cigarette etc., it's a near-guarantee that it will be left hovering in air while they make hand gestures.

I agree on the backstory not doing anything besides dialog options (that don't seem to make a difference). In general, the dialogue trees need to sometimes create branching outcomes and as far as I can tell they really don't ever--you almost always end up being forced to say all the dialogue options you're offered and the order in which you say them doesn't matter at all. That's a design flaw that's fairly substantial and it undercuts the whole game. I wish there were consequences sometimes in the way you resolve fixer quests--I let the guy out of the Russian dude's car trunk and Wakako let me know she was very displeased but that's all I've heard of it since--it would have been great if the fixers were rivals and you had to decide which ones to favor and disfavor and your choices opened or closed certain questlines and changed your relationship to factions. If they end up making a sequel eventually that would be a major subsystem they should add.

[Velorath]

Trying to think of the gameplay bugs I've had:

- Loot I can't pick up for whatever reason. I assume it's because it has clipped into the environment somehow. Also not a bug, but it's annoying that sometimes I have to move a body to be able to pick up a dropped weapon.

- Getting trapped in parts of the environment. Once it was because I clipped through a wall after hitting it while on a motorcycle. Other times like I mentioned was because I double jumped up somewhere. Like when I was trying to figure out a way into the Delamain building I went all the way to the back side of the building and jumped up and fell through the roof. Thought maybe it was a random bug, but I tried a couple more times and it happened each time. I could actually see the outside of the area the end of that quest takes place in. Sometimes I was able to clip through the wall to get back out on the street, but at least once I ended up falling through the world.

- I had one side quest where I couldn't interact with an access point. Wasn't sure exactly what I was supposed to be doing so I was looking around this open lot for around 15 minutes. Had to look at a video to see what I was supposed to be doing, and realized I wasn't getting the button prompt for the access point. Had to reload a previous save and then it worked.

- I've completed parts of quests that then didn't check off the objective list. Fortunately the next step would end up listed each time so I'd have to go into the quest log and manually set the tracker to the next part of the quest each time it hit a new step (otherwise it would default back to the step that was already cleared).

- Enemies have gotten stuck in place or just stopped doing anything. Most notably one of the Cyberpsychos literally just stood there while I headshotted her a bunch of times.

- Have had random enemies become completely invincible. Damage numbers don't appear for them, they don't die no matter what I do to them, and they'll still attack.

- Dead enemies who continue to repeat their one line of dialogue over and over.

[Goumindong]

My big beef with the map is the fact that: on PC, to open the map you press M. So far so good. But press M again to close the map, like we have done since, well games with maps, and no that just kida zooms in the map. You have to press Esc, but that still just brings you back to the character menu. WTF?

And trying to open the map from the character menu or quest menu doesn't do anything. And vice versa.

My main gripes are

1) Fixers do not remember what you have or have not done for them. You kill a dude you're not supposed to kill and they're displeased but then they call you up five minutes later "V, Baby, the only one i trust for this stealth mission!" and I am like "yea, i stealth-ed the last mission with about 50 grenades but sure i will totally try on this one"

2) Jobs are on the map. This one really brings me out of the world, instead of calling my fixer, getting a job, and then going and doing it. Or getting a call randomly (wherein i then can decide to do the job right then and there if its time sensitive) i go to the job on the map because I am psychic and then once i am there my fixer calls me and is all "yo i got a job for you"

[Velorath]

My big beef with the map is the fact that: on PC, to open the map you press M. So far so good. But press M again to close the map, like we have done since, well games with maps, and no that just kida zooms in the map. You have to press Esc, but that still just brings you back to the character menu. WTF?

And trying to open the map from the character menu or quest menu doesn't do anything. And vice versa.

My main gripes are

1) Fixers do not remember what you have or have not done for them. You kill a dude you're not supposed to kill and they're displeased but then they call you up five minutes later "V, Baby, the only one i trust for this stealth mission!" and I am like "yea, i stealth-ed the last mission with about 50 grenades but sure i will totally try on this one"

2) Jobs are on the map. This one really brings me out of the world, instead of calling my fixer, getting a job, and then going and doing it. Or getting a call randomly (wherein i then can decide to do the job right then and there if its time sensitive) i go to the job on the map because I am psychic and then once i am there my fixer calls me and is all "yo i got a job for you"

I'm mostly fine with that stuff. Certainly it's better than how every Fixer apparently has a side-hustle working at a car dealership and loves nothing more than to call you up to tell you about this ride they want to sell you. Because why spend your cash on something like Cyberware when you can buy another shitty handling car that presumably is only cosmetically different from the stuff you get for free, which you'll also avoid using as you unlock more and more fast travel stations?

[Ashamanchill]

The game needed to have the balls to let players failures cost them. I did a mission where I was supposed to stealth into a temple and plant a bug, but, being more Ellen Ripley than James Bonds, I went in like Donald Rumsfeld's "Shock and Awe" was on my family crest. There is no fuckin' way anyone in their right mind would have a sensative conversation in there anytime soon. But I encountered the icon and clicked F, so I completed the mission without anything worse than a light admonition from my fixer, like I turned in my homework a day late. Then, as Goum mentions, they phoned me right up the next time I passed a (!) like I hadn't left a temple a smoldering ruin (well not really, you literally cannot even shoot out TV screens with an end game shotgun). If my fixer had of told me to fuck off, and closed off several missions in the region, I coulda dug that. Or if two fixers hated each other, and you had to pick one, I coulda gotten behind that too. You wouldn't be missing out on too much by having some of your (!) missions turned off in an area, and it could have been a bit of world building.

--Skyrim had plenty of those.

It's funny you mention Skyrim, because I've said since about day 2 of playing it that this is the closest comparison. Pre mod Skyrim, to be clear. Gorgeous, immersive, expansive, varied, but also buggy, samey quests you run into (towers with mages at the bottom were identical in Riften, as in Solitude), and lacking any depth in character reaction, or effect upon the world. And that might have seemed like an awesome comparison 9 years ago. But we have moved on, and even the lazy Ubisoft conveyor belt of open world games have evolved. And this is not what we were told to expect from the very game's developers themselves.

Which leads me to my next point. Khaldun I recall you saying that you hadn't observed any of the hype this game put out, correct? If so, it makes sense. You went out to the store and bought a pepperoni pizza, and a decent one at that. But for those of us who did follow the hype went out to buy a gourmet 4 course meal, but we given the same pepperoni pizza as you. Yeah we can eat it and be full, but that is not what we were told to expect.

And yes, this is the part where you guys get to chastise me for believing in hype. Oh trust me, no one is kicking me harder than I am myself at the minute. At least half of my disdain for this game is transferred from anger at my own self. Anger for falling for hype from a company I thought was different than EA, Acti-Blizz, Bethesda, Bioware, etc. What a fucking chump. I wasn't expecting robot jesus/nixon to save us all, but I was expecting things a little more advanced than ten years old games.

This board is largely smart, so I am not sure I even need to add the part of "don't let me take away your enjoyment". If you dig the game, the funnest part is going to be in the world, and some cranky whiners on an anachronistic forums are not going to change your mind. But you did ask why people were upset with the game.

[Sky]

You can definitely see where stuff was cut or just published as-is, for sure. Nobody is going to make excuses for a lot of this stuff. None of it is a deal breaker, but just a constant little irritant, losing a car when the aggressive culling gets a little too happy is probably my main complaint from a gameplay standpoint.

It's still a fun game. I'm having a great time messing around in it. Sure, it's repetitive but what isn't these days? It's the same deal as TLOU or Days Gone or AC, where a lot of the content is just using your toolbox to mess around in POIs.

But at the end of the day, I don't think they can patch in the rest of the game, I think it's just fundamentally flawed. Which sucks, because if they had gotten the basics right, it would've been legendary and possibly the best rpg of all time.

Which, again, doesn't make it a bad game in my book.

[Khaldun]

So yeah. I did just have one mission get stuck because I did the things (predictably!) out of order from how the devs imagined it ("Dream On"). That is something that is absolutely a QA failure.

I really do wish there were consequences for not doing certain missions the right way up to fixers refusing to call you when you're at their POIs. It would be nice if there were fixers who were not geographic but specialized in certain kinds of mission types and if you fucked up on something they ghost you out for a while or forever if it's bad enough. That might create a tighter fit between playstyles and content--and make a replay make sense. That's just basic good game design and it's completely within reach of this design on a basic level. I agree this isn't something they can just patch in--it's a missed opportunity.

I understand why the disappointment from you all. I guess I just never assumed it would be RPG Jesus because I worked to ignore the hype (and waited a week to start) and because I don't know that I've actually HAD a four course meal yet. E.g., I don't see the "things have moved on" in open world games. RDR 2 maybe is close but the difference between RDR 2 and this is polish, an even richer range of character work and narrative writing, and somewhat better POI design and AI, etc. I don't know that I can think of an open-world game that otherwise establishes a post-Skyrim standard that is still genuinely open-world, e.g., go anywhere and do anything and mostly don't get stuck playing the character that's been pre-written for you.

I'd be curious about what RPGs you all think move the needle past Skyrim that have feature sets or designs that this game ought to have while having all of the level of art design detail etc that this game has. RDR 2 and Breath of the Wild would be the only two I could even slightly think of. If you have others in mind and I haven't played them, I need to play them yesterday.