I played it on a dated PC (980ti) a few days after release, maybe a week. I didn't understand the problem either. The gaming community is extremely fickle and loves to hive mind dump on things.

[–] theragu40 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The issue was that there were multiple huge problems with the game spread across various platforms that created a big shit storm of negativity.

It was straight up broken for many console players.
Some PC players had performance issues.
For those who had no issues actually running it (like me), the game still had floaty controls and weightless guns. NPCs and vehicles that popped in and out at odd times. Dialog that clipped or played over each other. Completely broken police/wanted system. Confusing and largely ineffectual skill tree.
Once you got beyond those issues with game polish, then you were dealing with it not really being the deep scifi RPG they promised, but more of a shooter with RPG elements.

So you've got potential issues from multiple angles, and it just all compounded on itself. For me, I just got bored of dealing with it after like 10 hours. It was janky and that combined with it being nothing like what they hyped it up as just sorta killed it for me even though it ran with no issues.

With that said, I played for an hour or two after the update and my first impressions are a ton better and it seems like they have really fixed a lot of things. I'm excited to come back to it.

[–] vanontom 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Very nice summary, thanks. I just recently started CP77, about 30 hours in now. I will stick with 1.63 for this playthrough.

My notes: The story and writing seems mostly excellent and unique (but not near the magic and masterpiece of Witcher 3.) Feeling that development was chaotic (pieces cut, rearranged, "montage" with Jackie was jarring.). World seems quite empty, few "layers" (soulless, unpolished). Car controls are not great, very "floaty" and strange. Literally zero encounters with NCPD yet (lol?). Reminds of Deus Ex, but leaning more action FPS. Bugs still apparent (floating cars, missing items), but nothing game-breaking. Graphics underwhelming (city environment especially, characters better, mostly "very high" settings, but admittedly no HDR or ray-tracing).

Would rate 4 out of 5 for now, but a 3 is possible (hopefully not).

[–] theragu40 3 points 1 year ago

That's an interesting comparison to Deus Ex. I hadn't thought of that but I agree. It's definitely got that feel, it's just much more shallow. Good call.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

the issue was that they marketed it like a RPG (where the source material comes from), which it simply isn't - it's GTA with a skill system and limited choices. I admit that i was disappointed, but the game itself is good and got a lot better with this patch.

[–] secondaccountlemmy 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I mean it WAS actually a broken mess from what I saw.

Im saying I always buy games on a deep sale well after it has been released so Im not particularly impacted.

[+] Wrench -6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yeah, my point was it wasn't a broken mess (except on last Gen consoles), but the gaming community blew its flaws out of proportion.

The game you're playing as a patient gamer is close to the original with some polish.

[–] ABCDE 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Or... your experience was different from that of others. I had some weird glitches in a boss fight early on which made it difficult or impossible to progress. The person you responded to said it was a mess for them, yet it wasn't for you. We all saw different things.

[–] Wrench 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And yet, any Bethseda game has the same or worse kind of "game breaking" bugs, and gets away with it from a community backlash perspective.

I never had a bug in CP77 that broke progression. I had one boss get stuck in an elevator that made him trivial to kill.

In skyrim, I had to search up console commands to reset main quest lines that were otherwise completely broken, and commands to restore companions forever lost. And those were common experiences.

My point is that the community reaction was completely overblown when compared to other, very comparable, open world games. CP77 certainly had bugs and areas of improvement. But listening to the community, you'd think the whole thing was a dumpster fire, which it simply wasn't. And my response was to someone who didn't play it at release, saying that their opinion of the game being a dumsterfire was "correct", without any frame of reference besides the community backlash.

[–] ABCDE 1 points 1 year ago

I did play it at release. CP77 isn't very openworld, yet I had very few bugs in Skyrim on 360.

[–] Couldbealeotard 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It was such a mess that Sony removed it from the PlayStation store and gave out refunds.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Sony did that bacuse they've skirted laws about refunds in some parts of the world for years and CDPR inadvertently highlighted that. MS, Valve and GOG left the game up and issued refunds when requested as that should be a normal part of doing business.

[–] Wrench 1 points 1 year ago

Yes, I explicitly acknowledged that the last Gen console criticism was warranted.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I played it on Seriex X at launch and it was fine. Few graphical or animation issues here and there you expect in a big open world game but perfectky playable.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Lot of missing features and loads of bugs. It just wasn't what they hyped it up to be