| mZuzek said: I'd hardly call it my favorite game, but okay. Agreed with most of your post, so I just wanna focus on these. Don't really see how the game's quality is based on "lies". Quality is subjective. Critics think it's a 9/10 game. I probably think the same and so do the people I know who are playing it. Maybe there are some paid reviews and certainly paid influencers hyping it up, that's the case with everything these days, it doesn't make everyone's positive opinions a lie. If you mean CDPR lied in their marketing campaign, hyping up stuff that wasn't in the final product, well, I don't know about that, because I wasn't paying attention to all that stuff. I wasn't in the hype bubble at all, maybe that's one reason I like the game. If they lied like that, well it is unacceptable, yeah. But personally, I pay a lot more attention to the product I'm actually playing than the marketing that comes before it. I don't think the "average consumer" could possibly know about that stuff day one, no, but I also don't think the "average consumer" buys the game day one. By "average consumer" here I mean like, when people say "think of the casual gamer who bought the game without knowing it was buggy" and stuff like that. Sorry, casual gamer, I don't think of you. You should look up your stuff. If you buy a game day 1 and it's buggy, yeah, not much you could've done there. But even if casual gamers would buy it day 1, that's not the context of what I was talking about then - I was referring to the game's removal from the PSN store and how that affects people who'd want to buy it now. These people who can't buy the game already have access to all the information they need. I know you can still play it on PS4, of course you can. Digital copies work too. It's just, a lot of people buy games digitally nowadays (I know I wouldn't want to go out to a game store in 2020, in fact I haven't), and for many people that's the best, if not the only option. There are places in the world where it is the only option - here in Brazil for example, physical copies for a lot of games tend to take a long time to arrive, if ever. Only very mainstream games get here fast, which I suppose applies to Cyberpunk, but it's not always the case. |
The direct lies are mostly hiding the quality on base consoles while shutting down any rumors of it having trouble on the base consoles. Both by suppressing any leaked footage / proving approved footage (and stating they're doing it to avoid spoilers) and promising that the day one patch will turn it into a completely different (acceptable) game.
The indirect lies are the same as with most games, promising more through generated hype and launching with downgrades and cut / incomplete features. However in this case some things are really basic like the AI. They apparently promised a lot about the dynamic immersive behavior of the inhabitants of Night city.
I wasn't paying attention to that either, but I could see why people would complain about cop and NPC behavior as rudimentary as it is in Cyberpunk (for now) for an open world game. That was dwarfed by the performance issues though, but got more traction when the game got further placed under a magnifying glass. It is indeed also what always happens with hyped up games.
When I played No Man's Sky at launch I found a solid entertaining game. I had not followed any of the hype, just expected a game in space with procedural planets. The flight mechanics were the usual nonsense and I was a bit disappointed that the planetary systems paled in scale to Elite Dangerous, but the game loop was satisfying and the variation in planets kept me going for a while. The backlash was quite surprising to me at the start, yet then I read some of the previews and yep, it was not the game people expected it to be. Did it deserve all the hate for delivering a functional game? (can't remember if it was broken on launch on PC) Not for me.
Another example is DriveClub. Again I had not followed the hype and found a solid single player arcade racing game with great track design and pretty visuals. The servers didn't work at launch, was pretty common back then that the servers couldn't handle launch week. But true, pretty shitty if you're expecting multiplayer. And although I didn't care for it much, clubs were indeed not working on release, which is in the name! Then people started complaining about the small car roster, short campaign and everything that it was not. It felt like it got docked for not being open world. Personally it was great, finally a racer focusing on track design instead of joining the open world band wagon.
Both turned out great later, sadly Evolution studios did not. Yet those are clear examples for the industry to manage expectations to avoid backlash. Plus CDPR already had experience with backlash when TW3 launched. It didn't look like the trailer and had questionable performance at launch. They turned it around and promised to do better, both to the developers and player base. Everyone fed up with broken games at launch was looking to CDPR as the savior of gaming showing the big studios how it should be done. (Forgetting about TW3 launch, just focusing on the support after launch)
Anyway maybe the removal will help. A clear signal to the industry that it has gone too far. When KZ: SF got sued for what is now the accepted standard (checkboarding, TAA, DLSS) it rightly was ridiculed as an over reaction. Not true 1080p in multiplayer (reconstructed from two 960x1080 frames, basically 1080p30, precursor to checkerboarding) was the single complaint, false advertising. Where are we now, unfinished game, lots of crashes, worst performance on base consoles seen yet, withholding review copies and suppressing any non sanctioned footage. No DRM and no MT aren't going to save all that. And yep, we've seen all the components before, yet never combined like this, from the most trusted developer no less, promising far more than was delivered.
As for not being able to buy the digital version currently, it will be back when the game is ready. I don't see the problem with that. In the end it's nothing more than another desperately needed delay. It will come back in a much better state, no need to play the current version.
