Question for those of you commenting on minimum system specs for running the game: My desktop PC has an i7-5930K CPU and the GTX-980 video card. Not enough?
Question for those of you commenting on minimum system specs for running the game: My desktop PC has an i7-5930K CPU and the GTX-980 video card. Not enough?
I have an I5-6600 (3.3 ghz, 4 core)
16 gb RAM
GTX 970 (not overclocked)
and just walking around the city I get a bit above 30 frames per second (maybe 32-33) using a mix of medium and low settings (its roughly the default "medium" setting but I think there are a few things related to shadows that I've turned down to low).
Occasionally I do see more noticeable slowdowns happening. But not very often. If you are more used to playing 60 frames a second you'll definitely notice it. But I grew up playing on older hardware so I guess I'm just used to 30 FPS.
The game looks like this for me.
You can definitely play the game with what you've got. It won't be as smooth of an experience as what others have and you can also expect longer load times when you are reloading saves.
Edit: With exactly the default medium settings I get between 28-33 frames per second just walking around in the city and while shooting at people randomly.
Thanks, @elminster. Those screenshots look fantastic. I have a large 4K display so I like having some nice graphical fidelity. But I can totally live with medium settings and 30 FPS, give or take. And I also have 16 GB RAM, 4 GB more with the video card, and 3.50 GHz on the CPU. So I would guess I should be able to get a decent experience playing this game on my machine.
This game should really raise the question as to whether the open-world RPG genre has simply gotten too ambitious for it's own good. This isn't unique to Cyberpunk 2077. Every Elder Scrolls and Fallout game has to be fixed by the community. The Witcher 3 wasn't exactly stable out of the gate. The question is, is there really ANY way to properly playtest and do QA on games with this much content and land mass without millions of people playing them?? Evidence suggests the answer is no.
This game should really raise the question as to whether the open-world RPG genre has simply gotten too ambitious for it's own good. This isn't unique to Cyberpunk 2077. Every Elder Scrolls and Fallout game has to be fixed by the community. The Witcher 3 wasn't exactly stable out of the gate. The question is, is there really ANY way to properly playtest and do QA on games with this much content and land mass without millions of people playing them?? Evidence suggests the answer is no.
When it comes to PC games, the answer is and will always be no, regardless of the type of game. I think I said it earlier in this thread too before the game was released:
But unlike building a house, there are a lot of unforeseen issues when it comes to creating a game. From balance issues to graphical glitches while attempting to create a game that will run on a infinite amount of unique machines. A lot of things can create a costly delay.
Now that doesn’t mean mismanagement of resources don’t happen. Just look at what BioWare has become but IMO there is always a crunch time regardless of a project.
And there it is. I think this is why a lot of studios are moving towards early access releases. They can iron out these bugs before the game is actually 'released' and can hide behind the 'It's in Early Access' excuse.
When it's a console release, I believe there is less excuses for being bug ridden or performing poorly, except during a time like this when a game is being released for both current and next gen consoles. Quality has to give somewhere and its a subtle balancing act developers have to make.
I am standing by the statement that this game should have never been released on the last-gen systems. They had to have known the game's technical demands had outpaced the hardware to the point where this was the result. You can't release a game where you are getting 20 fps average on the high-end and the objects can't even render in real-time. The fact that it's running basically fine (albeit with bugs) on Series X and PC says it's entirely a hardware issue
I haven't really been following this game closely. It's come up in trans communities because of the character customization options, but folks have also complained that trans critters are apparently commoditized and fetishized in-universe by the game lore.
I am standing by the statement that this game should have never been released on the last-gen systems. They had to have known the game's technical demands had outpaced the hardware to the point where this was the result. You can't release a game where you are getting 20 fps average on the high-end and the objects can't even render in real-time. The fact that it's running basically fine (albeit with bugs) on Series X and PC says it's entirely a hardware issue
I would have agree with you on this, if I didn't play the games such Red Dead Redemption 2 or The Ghost of Tsushima on PS4 (ok, I admit it's Pro version, but still).Both games are looking stunning on current gen console with stable 30fps. So, both Rockstar and Sucker Punch proved it can be done. Hell, even Ubisoft pulled it off with Assassin's Creed: Valhalla (it's not that beautiful as other two games I mentioned, but still looking great).
So no, the problem is different in my opinion. CDPR never should have set up the initial release date for April. Seeing the current state of the game I can't imagine how on earth CDPR executives thought the game could be ready for release on April. All problems started there because: a) There is a limit how many times company can postpone their product and they have really pushed this limit to the maximum, b) They have started to pump up the hype too early, no one would even complain if they start to promote the game aggresively much later (even in 2021), when it enters a really stable phase on all platforms. People waited for this game 8 years, they could wait 1 more: c) All of this would allow them to skip current gen console altogether and many PS4/Xbox fans would probably update to the next gen by then (or if the game performed really great on next game, this could easily by the systemseller). It's just they have realized they couldn't skip such a huge player base, that's why they were so eager to release it in 2020. Which was a mistake. Probably investors were getting impatient as hell.
I think CDPR was skating by on reputation because of Witcher 3. This was a game whose modestly priced DLCs were, in and of themselves, basically 30 hour games. They made THE game of the last generation, and supported it beyond any reasonable expectations. Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine remain the gold standard in an industry awash in questionable season passes, and people trusted them because of it.
Minus ray tracing, the game's graphical demands shouldn't be as high as they are (Hell ray tracing included, since I still don't think it's really worth the performance cost, but that's another thing). I think they can probably do some optimization and on the PC driver updates may help, so I'm optimistic performance will improve. It seems to run well at 1080p on my friend's rig with my old 1080GTX I gave him for his birthday. They probably should've delayed the last gen console release until they got the performance up to par, but people would have been screaming about that if they did. Plus with all the next gen consoles being extremely hard to buy, it would have really pissed people off. If you're on a last gen console, ya you probably should hold off a bit on this one. PC release seems decent, though.
I'm still pretty happy with the game bug wise, at least on PC for me, it's not any worse than any other open world game at release. Think about how bad Fallout New Vegas/4 or Skyrim were when they first came out. Skyrim used to crash during all the big army battles in the early versions. At least the game's fairly stable and I haven't had a single crash. Definitely hit some minor glitches and there are some visual bugs that crop up, but I haven't really hit anything game breaking. At worst I save and reload and things work. Nothing's cost me more than a minute or 2 of progress.
I've been surprised how good the load and save times are for this game. That's definitely something I can give a thumbs up on and they nailed.
I think CDPR was skating by on reputation because of Witcher 3. This was a game whose modestly priced DLCs were, in and of themselves, basically 30 hour games. They made THE game of the last generation, and supported it beyond any reasonable expectations. Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine remain the gold standard in an industry awash in questionable season passes, and people trusted them because of it.
I agree. And to be honest they have only one option here to make amend for a bad release. Have at least the same level of support regarding DLCs (both free and paid) as they've had for W3. And they really should invest in a proper modding tool this time.
I started playing it yesterday and I'm really enjoying myself. I really like the pacing of the game so far (there's a lot of dialogue that feels long and meaningful. I'm sure plenty of my choices arent making a huge impact necessarily, but it feels good.
I'm generally enjoying the gunplay within the game as well. It feels like a good shooter-into-RPG.
Technically - I've had very few glitches. Yeah, occasionally the textures start vibrating, and I did see one momentary T-pose... but in several hours of gaming, I would say this game hasnt been any glitchier than a Bethesda release. Maybe even a little bit better. No crashes, either.
Optimization wise - I did have to turn some settings down. For whatever reason, the game thought I could run it at Ray Tracing Ultra, and that was... not a good idea. I tried to see if I could keep Ray Tracing on, but it just wasnt worth the consistent performance hit. Next time I get into the game, I play to see if I can increment the graphics options above Medium and keep a stable high FPS.
All in all, I really like this game. Maybe I've just been lucky, but it doesnt feel like a beta to me.
I think CDPR was skating by on reputation because of Witcher 3. This was a game whose modestly priced DLCs were, in and of themselves, basically 30 hour games. They made THE game of the last generation, and supported it beyond any reasonable expectations. Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine remain the gold standard in an industry awash in questionable season passes, and people trusted them because of it.
I agree. And to be honest they have only one option here to make amend for a bad release. Have at least the same level of support regarding DLCs (both free and paid) as they've had for W3. And they really should invest in a proper modding tool this time.
Calling it a bad release is an exaggeration. Both pro and commoner reviews are solidly positive. 8 million pre-orders and there's no sign of any significant demands for refunds. They could've gone the route of "early access" like so many other studios. I am completely on their side for having not chosen that route, as I see the increasing abuse of EA as being rather shameful. @jjstraka34's point about current-gen consoles is valid criticism. Beyond that, both the game itself as well as the point at which they've chosen to release it look to be pretty reasonable to me.
I think CDPR was skating by on reputation because of Witcher 3. This was a game whose modestly priced DLCs were, in and of themselves, basically 30 hour games. They made THE game of the last generation, and supported it beyond any reasonable expectations. Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine remain the gold standard in an industry awash in questionable season passes, and people trusted them because of it.
I agree. And to be honest they have only one option here to make amend for a bad release. Have at least the same level of support regarding DLCs (both free and paid) as they've had for W3. And they really should invest in a proper modding tool this time.
Calling it a bad release is an exaggeration. Both pro and commoner reviews are solidly positive. 8 million pre-orders and there's no sign of any significant demands for refunds. They could've gone the route of "early access" like so many other studios. I am completely on their side for having not chosen that route, as I see the increasing abuse of EA as being rather shameful. @jjstraka34's point about current-gen consoles is valid criticism. Beyond that, both the game itself as well as the point at which they've chosen to release it look to be pretty reasonable to me.
Ok, let's say I'm calling it a bad release on current gen consoles and that is coming from my own experience. If they were not able to get it work on current gen consoles, they should target only next gen and PC. Simple as that. It's extremely hard to erase the bad first impression. It's possible, but hard. I chose a comort over performance and I regret it deeply. Should have buy PC version. And I'm angry at CDPR that they've made me angry at myself.
I think CDPR was skating by on reputation because of Witcher 3. This was a game whose modestly priced DLCs were, in and of themselves, basically 30 hour games. They made THE game of the last generation, and supported it beyond any reasonable expectations. Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine remain the gold standard in an industry awash in questionable season passes, and people trusted them because of it.
I agree. And to be honest they have only one option here to make amend for a bad release. Have at least the same level of support regarding DLCs (both free and paid) as they've had for W3. And they really should invest in a proper modding tool this time.
Calling it a bad release is an exaggeration. Both pro and commoner reviews are solidly positive. 8 million pre-orders and there's no sign of any significant demands for refunds. They could've gone the route of "early access" like so many other studios. I am completely on their side for having not chosen that route, as I see the increasing abuse of EA as being rather shameful. @jjstraka34's point about current-gen consoles is valid criticism. Beyond that, both the game itself as well as the point at which they've chosen to release it look to be pretty reasonable to me.
I just don't see much excuse for letting the game run away from the only tech that was available when the game went into production. The development of this game is almost EXACTLY the life-cycle of the 8th generation. Yet they ended up making a game that basically requires the 9th gen.
I just got a 2070 laptop myself, and this whole ray-tracing thing has got to be the least impressive selling point I've seen in awhile. Sorta like how having something called "hairworks" on in The Witcher 3 would legitimately cost you 10 fps. Whatever it does graphically is simply not worth the performance trade-off, unless you have a card that pushes past them. Though it can still run on a potato compared to stuff like Cyperpunk, the new WoW expansion does have some significant graphical upgrades. Ray-tracing costs me 20 fps in intense areas, and I literally can't see anything that it does on the screen.
Played it a bit more today. I am now use to the fps and am finding few issues with it on the PS4. Still some stuttering when I am driving, but it is manageable. I guess playing online multiplayer games on dialup helped me with that.
The story itself is still a slow burn and I wish it'd pick up the pace slightly. Spoiler free, I just finished talking to Evelyn is where I am currently at in the main quest and have done a couple of side missions as I roamed around the city. Nothing has wowed me though.
I am kinda bummed that there doesn't seem to be a way to collect vehicles but it isn't a huge loss. I also don't like some of the dialog time options. They are missable as one's eyes attempt to take the scene playing out in. Having the controller vibrate when they are up might prevent this, but it doesn't seem like one misses much.
First paragraph is kind of weird. Like how many PS5's have been sold so far? They've had production issues and its only been out for a month. Lets say 3 million. Maybe its more I don't know. But not like a lot more.
Meanwhile there are like 100 million PS4's out there.
I'm assuming its a similar situation with Xbox, though they had less sold.
Like they didn't test it enough on the machines that were overwhelmingly more likely to be running it?
This video shows how much the game improved over 2 years (after the E3 presentation). It doesn't take the blame from their leadership team but it might explain why this game is more demanding than people expected.
This game is a crashing trainwreck with bugs rivaling that of Bethesda. No other way of putting it I'm afraid.
Proton/Steam Play gamers are especially hit hard with abyssmal performance levels. I have a GTX 1080, 32GB RAM with a AMD Ryzen 5 3600: lowest graphic settings only grant me about 15 FPS. It is sheer maddening that Linux gamers with a Nvidia graphic card only reach half the framerate of Windows users when playing Cyberpunk 2077 in its current state. Radeon card users are slightly better off with 20+ FPS, from what I have heard. Still not a stellar performance by any means.
Conclusion: I had no other choice but to refund the game within the first hour of "playing" (readed as troubleshooting). CD Project Red requires at least another year in developement to fix this mess.
I still haven't played the game yet (and may not for a few months. The reason why was detailed in my previous post), but from what I've seen so far, the problems seems to all come down to two things:
1. "It's not ready yet." This was what I most feared after the multiple release date pushbacks. It seems that even with the extra 6 months, CP2077 still didn't manage to receive a proper "polish", with various bugs, glitches and a generally "unfinished" feel spread throughout the game. Tycho of Penny-Arcade remarked that this is not the kind of thing that you can patch out with a Day 1 patch. The problems run deeper than that (and again, the multiple push-backs of the release date were big warning signs about it). Granted, we don't know how much these problems were created or compounded by the COVID lockdowns and general societal upheaval, but the bottom line is that it seems CP2077 was still released too early. It needed maybe until next year for it to have really been ready.
2. "This is NOT a game for Gen 4 consoles." The amount of players complaining about CP2077 running terribly on their PS4 or XBone is far too widespread for it to be blamed on technical faults. Higher-end consoles or PCs seem to run it just fine, but a lot of players were sold the game under the belief it would run on their PS4/XBone and that's just not true at this point. As Julius says above, part of it could be due to resource/performance creep that got introduced between 2018 and now, but again, the bottom line is that now there are a lot of unhappy players who have a product that is in no way, shape or form appealing. It's good that CDPR has come out on the front foot and offered refunds to whoever wants it, but I'm still aghast that it got into this situation in the first place. Given the demands of the game, I'm not sure CDPR will ever be able to get the game into a state that can run on older hardware AND still match the expectations of what players were expecting.
All in all, this feels like a MASSIVE wasted opportunity for a game that had the chance to really go down in gaming history as one of those cultural zeitgeists that defines a generation, like Doom 1 did for shooters, or WoW did for MMOs. I still think that CP2077, with time and patches, can still become a great game, but it will forever have missed out on "what could have been." Another great tragedy of 2020, I suppose. :P
All in all, this feels like a MASSIVE wasted opportunity for a game that had the chance to really go down in gaming history as one of those cultural zeitgeists that defines a generation, like Doom 1 did for shooters, or WoW did for MMOs. I still think that CP2077, with time and patches, can still become a great game, but it will forever have missed out on "what could have been." Another great tragedy of 2020, I suppose. :P
I disagree with this, and in my opinion, where a good chunk of the problem lies.
This statement is the hype talking. This game take homage from the last cultural zeitgeists to come out: GTA5. The difference is that Rockstar has been making these type of games for decades and had 4 previous titles to build upon and polish to get it that state.
This is CDPR first crack at it and only second major IP. I think the expectations of consumers were too high, especially those playing on last gen consoles expecting it to look like the high tech masterpiece shown off.
As I said, I bought it because I am promised a free upgrade when I do finally get a PS5. I can enjoy the story and game play (imo, it plays fine after the 1.04 patch) and then enjoy all the other bell and whistles at a later date.
Was it sleazy of them to not show last gen game play? Sure. But I also expect that they thought there would be more newer gen consoles on the market than there are. It’s hopefully a lesson learnt for everyone involved, but gamers tend to fall to hype way too often for me to actually believe that.
1. "It's not ready yet." This was what I most feared after the multiple release date pushbacks. It seems that even with the extra 6 months, CP2077 still didn't manage to receive a proper "polish", with various bugs, glitches and a generally "unfinished" feel spread throughout the game. Tycho of Penny-Arcade remarked that this is not the kind of thing that you can patch out with a Day 1 patch. The problems run deeper than that (and again, the multiple push-backs of the release date were big warning signs about it). Granted, we don't know how much these problems were created or compounded by the COVID lockdowns and general societal upheaval, but the bottom line is that it seems CP2077 was still released too early. It needed maybe until next year for it to have really been ready.
I'm no expert on this, but my understanding is that the way CDPR is set up relative to whoever finances their games is that they have a contract to release the game by a certain timeframe, and they MUST do so or they suffer some sort of really bad outcome. I know all games have release deadlines, especially those under contract with publishers, but my understanding is that CDPR's contract obligations are in a category all its own with respect to how strictly they have to observe their deadlines.
Just give things some time if it's not working well for you. Come back in a month or 2. Companies like Rockstar have nearly 2 decades of experience making games like this and this is CD Projekts first big city open world game and it's very complex. They were bound to get things wrong and need more work post release. I'm sure they'll get it running better on last gen consoles and on proton/wine, plus a general performance lift on PC hardware.
BTW, has anybody else seen the AMD Ryzen fan patch for the game? Apparently the game doesn't pick up that the chips have SMT, so on the lower core count systems (read 8 or less) it can give a decent amount of a performance boost. I haven't tried it myself, since the impact on 12 cores is pretty minor.
I have had some minor bugs, most of the quest bugs I've been able to reload and it worked on another try. One thing I've found is you want to make sure all the notifications for picking up crap have completed when looting an area before you move on with a quest. When a new scene picks up, it seems like the notificiatons can stall things and characters don't start talking when they're supposed and just stand there. I've got one with the psycho killers that I can't seem to finish, apparently something I need to scan is stuck under car and can't be reached. I loaded a save from before I went there and continued from there, so hopefully a patch fixes it and I can try again.
I'm already looking forward to a second playthrough. I kind of want to play as a selfish corpo bastard whose completely ruthless.
Cyberpunk 2077 Refunds
SIE strives to ensure a high level of customer satisfaction, therefore we will begin to offer a full refund for all gamers who have purchased Cyberpunk 2077 via PlayStation Store. SIE will also be removing Cyberpunk 2077 from PlayStation Store until further notice.
Once we have confirmed that you purchased Cyberpunk 2077 via PlayStation Store, we will begin processing your refund. Please note that completion of the refund may vary based on your payment method and financial institution.
Goods news for PS4 players who want to get their digital copy refunded. Downright horrible news for CD Project Red. Getting their new flagship title removed from one of the major console platforms is no small feat.
I definitely feel bad for the people who got it on the consoles. It's very playable on PC and I'm still enjoying the hell out of it. It's pretty much like a mix of Deus Ex, Fallout and GTA. The most annoying thing I see regularly is the T pose of your character over the vehicle, but it flickers for only a second or 2 and generally goes away. The vehicles controls just aren't as good as GTA, at least with a keyboard, though.
@Kamigoroshi I don't know the CPU you have, but if it's an AMD chip, have you tried the Reddit ryzen patch for the game? It might help a lot running it through proton since proton/wine taxes the CPU more. I'm pretty sure the patch will wind up in the base game in the next update, though.
I can't find the site I read it on, but CD Projekt did work with Sony to get it pulled from the store for now.
Gotta disagree with that. Very much so in fact. It is "playable" on certain dektop hardware specs on Windows. But it is an suboptimal mess on pretty much everything else. Be it consoles or Linux.
@Kamigoroshi I don't know the CPU you have, but if it's an AMD chip, have you tried the Reddit ryzen patch for the game? It might help a lot running it through proton since proton/wine taxes the CPU more.
Yes I did. And no it didn't help. The majority of the perfomance hits and proton instability of Cyberpunk 2077 stems from an incompatibility with nvidia GPU's in tandem with AMD processors. The reason as to why Valve was able to tackle it for radeon cards is because their driver is open source, while nvidia's is closed source. It takes simply more time until nvidia publishes official drivers with the required flags. After that nvidia cards on proton will likely enjoy the same optimization.
I can't find the site I read it on, but CD Projekt did work with Sony to get it pulled from the store for now.
That is certainly a new take on the current situation than what I perceive here. But fair enough. I for one have lost any kind of goodwill I had for CD Project Red and GOG.
In other news: XBox followed suit with Sony and grants unconditional refunds for Cyberpunk 2077 as well.
Comments
I have an I5-6600 (3.3 ghz, 4 core)
16 gb RAM
GTX 970 (not overclocked)
and just walking around the city I get a bit above 30 frames per second (maybe 32-33) using a mix of medium and low settings (its roughly the default "medium" setting but I think there are a few things related to shadows that I've turned down to low).
Occasionally I do see more noticeable slowdowns happening. But not very often. If you are more used to playing 60 frames a second you'll definitely notice it. But I grew up playing on older hardware so I guess I'm just used to 30 FPS.
The game looks like this for me.
You can definitely play the game with what you've got. It won't be as smooth of an experience as what others have and you can also expect longer load times when you are reloading saves.
Edit: With exactly the default medium settings I get between 28-33 frames per second just walking around in the city and while shooting at people randomly.
Edit: Having said this be sure to get the latest Nvidia driver.
When it comes to PC games, the answer is and will always be no, regardless of the type of game. I think I said it earlier in this thread too before the game was released:
And there it is. I think this is why a lot of studios are moving towards early access releases. They can iron out these bugs before the game is actually 'released' and can hide behind the 'It's in Early Access' excuse.
When it's a console release, I believe there is less excuses for being bug ridden or performing poorly, except during a time like this when a game is being released for both current and next gen consoles. Quality has to give somewhere and its a subtle balancing act developers have to make.
I would have agree with you on this, if I didn't play the games such Red Dead Redemption 2 or The Ghost of Tsushima on PS4 (ok, I admit it's Pro version, but still).Both games are looking stunning on current gen console with stable 30fps. So, both Rockstar and Sucker Punch proved it can be done. Hell, even Ubisoft pulled it off with Assassin's Creed: Valhalla (it's not that beautiful as other two games I mentioned, but still looking great).
So no, the problem is different in my opinion. CDPR never should have set up the initial release date for April. Seeing the current state of the game I can't imagine how on earth CDPR executives thought the game could be ready for release on April. All problems started there because: a) There is a limit how many times company can postpone their product and they have really pushed this limit to the maximum, b) They have started to pump up the hype too early, no one would even complain if they start to promote the game aggresively much later (even in 2021), when it enters a really stable phase on all platforms. People waited for this game 8 years, they could wait 1 more: c) All of this would allow them to skip current gen console altogether and many PS4/Xbox fans would probably update to the next gen by then (or if the game performed really great on next game, this could easily by the systemseller). It's just they have realized they couldn't skip such a huge player base, that's why they were so eager to release it in 2020. Which was a mistake. Probably investors were getting impatient as hell.
I'm still pretty happy with the game bug wise, at least on PC for me, it's not any worse than any other open world game at release. Think about how bad Fallout New Vegas/4 or Skyrim were when they first came out. Skyrim used to crash during all the big army battles in the early versions. At least the game's fairly stable and I haven't had a single crash. Definitely hit some minor glitches and there are some visual bugs that crop up, but I haven't really hit anything game breaking. At worst I save and reload and things work. Nothing's cost me more than a minute or 2 of progress.
I've been surprised how good the load and save times are for this game. That's definitely something I can give a thumbs up on and they nailed.
I agree. And to be honest they have only one option here to make amend for a bad release. Have at least the same level of support regarding DLCs (both free and paid) as they've had for W3. And they really should invest in a proper modding tool this time.
I'm generally enjoying the gunplay within the game as well. It feels like a good shooter-into-RPG.
Technically - I've had very few glitches. Yeah, occasionally the textures start vibrating, and I did see one momentary T-pose... but in several hours of gaming, I would say this game hasnt been any glitchier than a Bethesda release. Maybe even a little bit better. No crashes, either.
Optimization wise - I did have to turn some settings down. For whatever reason, the game thought I could run it at Ray Tracing Ultra, and that was... not a good idea. I tried to see if I could keep Ray Tracing on, but it just wasnt worth the consistent performance hit. Next time I get into the game, I play to see if I can increment the graphics options above Medium and keep a stable high FPS.
All in all, I really like this game. Maybe I've just been lucky, but it doesnt feel like a beta to me.
Ok, let's say I'm calling it a bad release on current gen consoles and that is coming from my own experience. If they were not able to get it work on current gen consoles, they should target only next gen and PC. Simple as that. It's extremely hard to erase the bad first impression. It's possible, but hard. I chose a comort over performance and I regret it deeply. Should have buy PC version. And I'm angry at CDPR that they've made me angry at myself.
I just don't see much excuse for letting the game run away from the only tech that was available when the game went into production. The development of this game is almost EXACTLY the life-cycle of the 8th generation. Yet they ended up making a game that basically requires the 9th gen.
I just got a 2070 laptop myself, and this whole ray-tracing thing has got to be the least impressive selling point I've seen in awhile. Sorta like how having something called "hairworks" on in The Witcher 3 would legitimately cost you 10 fps. Whatever it does graphically is simply not worth the performance trade-off, unless you have a card that pushes past them. Though it can still run on a potato compared to stuff like Cyperpunk, the new WoW expansion does have some significant graphical upgrades. Ray-tracing costs me 20 fps in intense areas, and I literally can't see anything that it does on the screen.
The story itself is still a slow burn and I wish it'd pick up the pace slightly. Spoiler free, I just finished talking to Evelyn is where I am currently at in the main quest and have done a couple of side missions as I roamed around the city. Nothing has wowed me though.
I am kinda bummed that there doesn't seem to be a way to collect vehicles but it isn't a huge loss. I also don't like some of the dialog time options. They are missable as one's eyes attempt to take the scene playing out in. Having the controller vibrate when they are up might prevent this, but it doesn't seem like one misses much.
https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2020/12/cd_projekt_red_apologises_for_hiding_cyberpunk_2077_on_base_ps4_makes_refunds_widely_available
Meanwhile there are like 100 million PS4's out there.
I'm assuming its a similar situation with Xbox, though they had less sold.
Like they didn't test it enough on the machines that were overwhelmingly more likely to be running it?
Proton/Steam Play gamers are especially hit hard with abyssmal performance levels. I have a GTX 1080, 32GB RAM with a AMD Ryzen 5 3600: lowest graphic settings only grant me about 15 FPS. It is sheer maddening that Linux gamers with a Nvidia graphic card only reach half the framerate of Windows users when playing Cyberpunk 2077 in its current state. Radeon card users are slightly better off with 20+ FPS, from what I have heard. Still not a stellar performance by any means.
Conclusion: I had no other choice but to refund the game within the first hour of "playing" (readed as troubleshooting). CD Project Red requires at least another year in developement to fix this mess.
1. "It's not ready yet." This was what I most feared after the multiple release date pushbacks. It seems that even with the extra 6 months, CP2077 still didn't manage to receive a proper "polish", with various bugs, glitches and a generally "unfinished" feel spread throughout the game. Tycho of Penny-Arcade remarked that this is not the kind of thing that you can patch out with a Day 1 patch. The problems run deeper than that (and again, the multiple push-backs of the release date were big warning signs about it). Granted, we don't know how much these problems were created or compounded by the COVID lockdowns and general societal upheaval, but the bottom line is that it seems CP2077 was still released too early. It needed maybe until next year for it to have really been ready.
2. "This is NOT a game for Gen 4 consoles." The amount of players complaining about CP2077 running terribly on their PS4 or XBone is far too widespread for it to be blamed on technical faults. Higher-end consoles or PCs seem to run it just fine, but a lot of players were sold the game under the belief it would run on their PS4/XBone and that's just not true at this point. As Julius says above, part of it could be due to resource/performance creep that got introduced between 2018 and now, but again, the bottom line is that now there are a lot of unhappy players who have a product that is in no way, shape or form appealing. It's good that CDPR has come out on the front foot and offered refunds to whoever wants it, but I'm still aghast that it got into this situation in the first place. Given the demands of the game, I'm not sure CDPR will ever be able to get the game into a state that can run on older hardware AND still match the expectations of what players were expecting.
All in all, this feels like a MASSIVE wasted opportunity for a game that had the chance to really go down in gaming history as one of those cultural zeitgeists that defines a generation, like Doom 1 did for shooters, or WoW did for MMOs. I still think that CP2077, with time and patches, can still become a great game, but it will forever have missed out on "what could have been." Another great tragedy of 2020, I suppose. :P
I disagree with this, and in my opinion, where a good chunk of the problem lies.
This statement is the hype talking. This game take homage from the last cultural zeitgeists to come out: GTA5. The difference is that Rockstar has been making these type of games for decades and had 4 previous titles to build upon and polish to get it that state.
This is CDPR first crack at it and only second major IP. I think the expectations of consumers were too high, especially those playing on last gen consoles expecting it to look like the high tech masterpiece shown off.
As I said, I bought it because I am promised a free upgrade when I do finally get a PS5. I can enjoy the story and game play (imo, it plays fine after the 1.04 patch) and then enjoy all the other bell and whistles at a later date.
Was it sleazy of them to not show last gen game play? Sure. But I also expect that they thought there would be more newer gen consoles on the market than there are. It’s hopefully a lesson learnt for everyone involved, but gamers tend to fall to hype way too often for me to actually believe that.
BTW, has anybody else seen the AMD Ryzen fan patch for the game? Apparently the game doesn't pick up that the chips have SMT, so on the lower core count systems (read 8 or less) it can give a decent amount of a performance boost. I haven't tried it myself, since the impact on 12 cores is pretty minor.
I have had some minor bugs, most of the quest bugs I've been able to reload and it worked on another try. One thing I've found is you want to make sure all the notifications for picking up crap have completed when looting an area before you move on with a quest. When a new scene picks up, it seems like the notificiatons can stall things and characters don't start talking when they're supposed and just stand there. I've got one with the psycho killers that I can't seem to finish, apparently something I need to scan is stuck under car and can't be reached. I loaded a save from before I went there and continued from there, so hopefully a patch fixes it and I can try again.
I'm already looking forward to a second playthrough. I kind of want to play as a selfish corpo bastard whose completely ruthless.
*ouch*
@Kamigoroshi I don't know the CPU you have, but if it's an AMD chip, have you tried the Reddit ryzen patch for the game? It might help a lot running it through proton since proton/wine taxes the CPU more. I'm pretty sure the patch will wind up in the base game in the next update, though.
I can't find the site I read it on, but CD Projekt did work with Sony to get it pulled from the store for now.
Yes I did. And no it didn't help. The majority of the perfomance hits and proton instability of Cyberpunk 2077 stems from an incompatibility with nvidia GPU's in tandem with AMD processors. The reason as to why Valve was able to tackle it for radeon cards is because their driver is open source, while nvidia's is closed source. It takes simply more time until nvidia publishes official drivers with the required flags. After that nvidia cards on proton will likely enjoy the same optimization.
That is certainly a new take on the current situation than what I perceive here. But fair enough. I for one have lost any kind of goodwill I had for CD Project Red and GOG.
In other news: XBox followed suit with Sony and grants unconditional refunds for Cyberpunk 2077 as well.