Just get it finished. They're not improving it this year, they're fixing it.
I'm not a developer but could they not be done in tandem? With the programmers fixing bugs and the game designers revising gameplay rules which could be incorporated in the patches.
imbusydoctorwho wrote:Glad to see they've made a video and admitted they're buggered up, but I still can't believe they never notice any of these issues on base consoles.
Adrian Jakubiak, a former audio programmer for CD Projekt, said one of his colleagues asked during a meeting how the company thought it would be able to pull off a technically more challenging project in the same timeframe as The Witcher. “Someone answered: ‘We'll figure it out along the way,’” he said.
For years, CD Projekt had thrived on that mentality. But this time, the company wasn’t able to pull it off. “I knew it wasn't going to go well,” said Jakubiak. “I just didn't know how disastrous it would be.”
Part of the fans’ disappointment is proportional to the amount of time they spent waiting for the game. Although Cyberpunk was announced in 2012, the company was then still mainly focused on its last title and full development didn’t start until late 2016, employees said. That was when CD Projekt essentially hit the reset button, according to people familiar with the project.
“There were times when I would crunch up to 13 hours a day — a little bit over that was my record probably — and I would do five days a week working like that,” said Jakubiak, the former audio programmer, adding that he quit the company after getting married. “I have some friends who lost their families because of these sort of shenanigans.”
The overtime didn’t make development of the game any faster. At E3 in June 2019, CD Projekt announced that the game would come out on April 16, 2020. Fans were elated, but internally, some members of the team could only scratch their heads, wondering how they could possibly finish the game by then. One person said they thought the date was a joke. Based on the team’s progress, they expected the game to be ready in 2022. Developers created memes about the game getting delayed, making bets on when it would happen.
There were also cultural barriers brought about by hiring expats from the U.S. and Western Europe. The studio mandated everyone speak English during meetings with non-Polish speakers, but not everyone followed the rules.
Even as the timeline looked increasingly unrealistic, management said delaying wasn’t an option. Their goal was to release Cyberpunk 2077 before new consoles from Microsoft and Sony, expected in the fall of 2020, were even announced. That way, the company could launch the game on existing PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, then “double dip” by releasing versions down the road for the next generation consoles. People who bought the old console versions would receive free upgrades when the new ones were available. Some engineers realized that Cyberpunk was too complex of a game to run well on the seven-year-old consoles, with its city full of bustling crowds and hulking buildings. They said management dismissed their concerns, however, citing their success in pulling off The Witcher 3.
But by the end of 2019, management finally acknowledged that Cyberpunk needed to be delayed. Last January, the company pushed the game’s release to September. In March, as the pandemic began ravaging the globe and forcing people to stay inside, CD Projekt staff had to complete the game from their homes. Without access to the office’s console development kits, most developers would play builds of the game on their home computers, so it wasn’t clear to everyone how Cyberpunk might run on PS4 and Xbox One. External tests, however, showed clear performance issues.
As the launch date drew closer, everyone at the studio knew the game was in rough shape and needed more time, according to several people familiar with the development. Chunks of dialogue were missing. Some actions didn’t work properly. When management announced in October that the game had “gone gold” — that it was ready to be pressed to discs — there were still major bugs being discovered. The game was delayed another three weeks as exhausted programmers scrambled to fix as much as they could.
Adrian Jakubiak, a former audio programmer for CD Projekt, said one of his colleagues asked during a meeting how the company thought it would be able to pull off a technically more challenging project in the same timeframe as The Witcher. “Someone answered: ‘We'll figure it out along the way,’” he said.
For years, CD Projekt had thrived on that mentality. But this time, the company wasn’t able to pull it off. “I knew it wasn't going to go well,” said Jakubiak. “I just didn't know how disastrous it would be.”
Part of the fans’ disappointment is proportional to the amount of time they spent waiting for the game. Although Cyberpunk was announced in 2012, the company was then still mainly focused on its last title and full development didn’t start until late 2016, employees said. That was when CD Projekt essentially hit the reset button, according to people familiar with the project.
“There were times when I would crunch up to 13 hours a day — a little bit over that was my record probably — and I would do five days a week working like that,” said Jakubiak, the former audio programmer, adding that he quit the company after getting married. “I have some friends who lost their families because of these sort of shenanigans.”
The overtime didn’t make development of the game any faster. At E3 in June 2019, CD Projekt announced that the game would come out on April 16, 2020. Fans were elated, but internally, some members of the team could only scratch their heads, wondering how they could possibly finish the game by then. One person said they thought the date was a joke. Based on the team’s progress, they expected the game to be ready in 2022. Developers created memes about the game getting delayed, making bets on when it would happen.
There were also cultural barriers brought about by hiring expats from the U.S. and Western Europe. The studio mandated everyone speak English during meetings with non-Polish speakers, but not everyone followed the rules.
Even as the timeline looked increasingly unrealistic, management said delaying wasn’t an option. Their goal was to release Cyberpunk 2077 before new consoles from Microsoft and Sony, expected in the fall of 2020, were even announced. That way, the company could launch the game on existing PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, then “double dip” by releasing versions down the road for the next generation consoles. People who bought the old console versions would receive free upgrades when the new ones were available. Some engineers realized that Cyberpunk was too complex of a game to run well on the seven-year-old consoles, with its city full of bustling crowds and hulking buildings. They said management dismissed their concerns, however, citing their success in pulling off The Witcher 3.
But by the end of 2019, management finally acknowledged that Cyberpunk needed to be delayed. Last January, the company pushed the game’s release to September. In March, as the pandemic began ravaging the globe and forcing people to stay inside, CD Projekt staff had to complete the game from their homes. Without access to the office’s console development kits, most developers would play builds of the game on their home computers, so it wasn’t clear to everyone how Cyberpunk might run on PS4 and Xbox One. External tests, however, showed clear performance issues.
As the launch date drew closer, everyone at the studio knew the game was in rough shape and needed more time, according to several people familiar with the development. Chunks of dialogue were missing. Some actions didn’t work properly. When management announced in October that the game had “gone gold” — that it was ready to be pressed to discs — there were still major bugs being discovered. The game was delayed another three weeks as exhausted programmers scrambled to fix as much as they could.
The major takeaways from this are that the devs had an internal ready-date of 2022, that it was a third-person game up until 2016 (after which the development saw a hard reset) and that the 2018 demo was Killzone 2 levels of faked. The rest was, more or less, in the public eye already.
In this update we focused on various stability improvements, which you can find outlined in the patch notes below. We will continue this work in patch 1.2 and other upcoming updates. At the same time we will keep fixing the bugs you encounter and listening to your feedback on how to improve the overall game experience.
Stability Various stability improvements including: Memory usage improvements in various systems within the game: characters, interactions, navigation, in-game videos (news, tv, etc.), foliage, laser effects, minimap, devices, AI, street traffic, environmental damage system, GPU-related, and more. Various crash fixes (related to, among others, loading saves, game opening/closing and Point of No Return).
Quests/Open World Fixed an issue where calls from Delamain would end immediately and seem like they cannot be picked up in Epistrophy. Fixed an issue where players would not receive calls from Delamain when approaching relevant vehicles in Epistrophy. Fixed an issue where the objective could get stuck on "Answer the call from Mr. Hands" in M'ap Tann Pèlen. Fixed an issue where Judy could teleport underground in Pyramid Song. Fixed an issue where it would be impossible to talk to Zen Master in Poem of The Atoms. Fixed an issue where Takemura wouldn't call in Down on the Street. Fixed an issue where Jackie could disappear in The Pickup. Fixed an issue where it could be impossible to get out of the car in The Beast in Me: The Big Race. Fixed an issue where players could stop receiving calls and messages after moving too far away from A Day In The Life area. Fixed an issue where opening the package wouldn't update Space Oddity. Retro-fixed the saves affected by a rare issue where speaking to Judy in Automatic Love would be impossible due to an invisible wall. The underlying issue is under investigation. Fixed an issue that prevented players from collecting the reward in Gig: Freedom of the Press. The quest will auto-complete for those who could not collect the reward previously, and the reward will be provided automatically. Fixed an issue where Delamain would remain silent throughout Epistrophy if the player initially refused to help him.
UI Fixed an issue where prompt for exiting braindance could be missing. Removed an invalid item from loot.
Visual Fixed an issue where a grenade's trajectory could be displayed in photo mode. Fixed particles' hue appearing pink when viewed close up. Fixed cars spawning incorrectly in Reported Crime: Welcome to Night City.
Achievements Fixed an issue where completing one of the assaults in progress in Santo Domingo would sometimes not contribute towards progression for The Jungle achievement, preventing its completion.
Miscellaneous Addressed the issue responsible for saves getting oversized (related to the modifier indicating if the item is crafted), and trimmed the excess size from already existing saves (note: this won’t fix PC save files corrupted before 1.06 update). Fixed an issue where input could stop registering upon opening the weapon wheel and performing an action. Fixed an issue where the "Continue" button in the Main Menu could load an end game save.
PC-specific It will now be possible to obtain achievements while in Steam offline mode. Note: Offline mode needs to be enabled before starting the game. This change does not work retroactively. Addressed the game startup crashes related to loading cache on NVIDIA graphics cards.
Cyberpunk 2077 had the biggest game launch of all time based on digital revenue and digital units sold (10.2M)*. A successful marketing campaign and the reputation of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt provided the hype necessary for the CD Projekt Red title to break records despite issues including performance problems on consoles, widespread glitches and the indefinite removal of the game from the PlayStation Store. An extremely high share of digital sales (80%) were on PC, likely due to the delisting on PlayStation and overall state of the console versions. Regardless of the short-term financial success, the critical backlash means the developer will now have to invest significant resources fixing the game in order to rehabilitate its image before the launch of its next title.
* These estimates do include digital copies that have been refunded, but our data shows that refunds did not substantially affect the game's aggregate sales.
In this update we focused on various stability improvements, which you can find outlined in the patch notes below. We will continue this work in patch 1.2 and other upcoming updates. At the same time we will keep fixing the bugs you encounter and listening to your feedback on how to improve the overall game experience.
Stability Various stability improvements including: Memory usage improvements in various systems within the game: characters, interactions, navigation, in-game videos (news, tv, etc.), foliage, laser effects, minimap, devices, AI, street traffic, environmental damage system, GPU-related, and more. Various crash fixes (related to, among others, loading saves, game opening/closing and Point of No Return).
Quests/Open World Fixed an issue where calls from Delamain would end immediately and seem like they cannot be picked up in Epistrophy. Fixed an issue where players would not receive calls from Delamain when approaching relevant vehicles in Epistrophy. Fixed an issue where the objective could get stuck on "Answer the call from Mr. Hands" in M'ap Tann Pèlen. Fixed an issue where Judy could teleport underground in Pyramid Song. Fixed an issue where it would be impossible to talk to Zen Master in Poem of The Atoms. Fixed an issue where Takemura wouldn't call in Down on the Street. Fixed an issue where Jackie could disappear in The Pickup. Fixed an issue where it could be impossible to get out of the car in The Beast in Me: The Big Race. Fixed an issue where players could stop receiving calls and messages after moving too far away from A Day In The Life area. Fixed an issue where opening the package wouldn't update Space Oddity. Retro-fixed the saves affected by a rare issue where speaking to Judy in Automatic Love would be impossible due to an invisible wall. The underlying issue is under investigation. Fixed an issue that prevented players from collecting the reward in Gig: Freedom of the Press. The quest will auto-complete for those who could not collect the reward previously, and the reward will be provided automatically. Fixed an issue where Delamain would remain silent throughout Epistrophy if the player initially refused to help him.
UI Fixed an issue where prompt for exiting braindance could be missing. Removed an invalid item from loot.
Visual Fixed an issue where a grenade's trajectory could be displayed in photo mode. Fixed particles' hue appearing pink when viewed close up. Fixed cars spawning incorrectly in Reported Crime: Welcome to Night City.
Achievements Fixed an issue where completing one of the assaults in progress in Santo Domingo would sometimes not contribute towards progression for The Jungle achievement, preventing its completion.
Miscellaneous Addressed the issue responsible for saves getting oversized (related to the modifier indicating if the item is crafted), and trimmed the excess size from already existing saves (note: this won’t fix PC save files corrupted before 1.06 update). Fixed an issue where input could stop registering upon opening the weapon wheel and performing an action. Fixed an issue where the "Continue" button in the Main Menu could load an end game save.
PC-specific It will now be possible to obtain achievements while in Steam offline mode. Note: Offline mode needs to be enabled before starting the game. This change does not work retroactively. Addressed the game startup crashes related to loading cache on NVIDIA graphics cards.
Patch has completely strawberry floated up my second playthrough. Now get a call from Takemura who proceeds to say nothing and doesn't let me do other objectives.
Only way to sort it is to load a save from over 6 hours before.
Jam-Master Jay wrote:Patch has completely strawberry floated up my second playthrough. Now get a call from Takemura who proceeds to say nothing and doesn't let me do other objectives.
Only way to sort it is to load a save from over 6 hours before.
Yep, this is apparently affecting loads of people. There's a workaround here, but it's very specific
I've got one side mission left before starting the final mission. I can't finish it because it's the Sandra quest. Think I might just put it away for a week or so and see if the Feb patch changes anything.
I've now got a story quest that can't be completed. I was having the issue with Takemura never phoning you which they have in the patch notes. As soon as I load my game he does now call me, but after I answer (Or it auto-answers) his image appears and he never speaks, the call just hangs forever. I can't interact with fast travel points then, can't choose conversation options, nothing. So the game has basically become unplayable, even doing other side missions until the bug with that story mission is fixed.
I'll try an older save, but I may have to actually restart altogether because the bug fix is attempting to immediately trigger the call, but then not actually progressing it because of how late it is.
Finiarél wrote:I've got one side mission left before starting the final mission. I can't finish it because it's the Sandra quest. Think I might just put it away for a week or so and see if the Feb patch changes anything.
I haven't touched it since December, waiting for the Jan patch lol. I reckon we might get something approaching a finished game by the end of the year, if at all.
There are quite a few elements of the game that, taken in isolation, are genuinely excellent. It's just that there are too many failures and deficiencies that when you add it all back together the whole just doesn't work