I recently played a truly broken game, and I must say it puts things in perspective.

[Defective Dopamine Pez Dispenser]

Recently I played a game - the first such modern, contemporary game in my experience, in fact - that was truly broken. By which I mean, a game that actually lived up to the hyperbolized technical critiques leveled against this and other "worst launches ever," that became relentlessly hate-trained upon their release. And I have to say, that while this game definitely had its issues... on PC at least, the difference is night and day.

The game in question had both design and stability issues in every single system and mode it offered. Said issues were systemic, continuous, and completely independent of hardware and software environment. To the extent that there is literally nothing that can be done on the user side to even begin to ameliorate them.

This includes issues with memory subsystem, file structure, soft limits on system utilization before things simply begin disappearing from saves - with no warning of this limit anywhere - completely broken logic, and complete save wipes upon reinstallation. Just... it was a gift that kept on giving. Every single thing I attempted to do in the game was marred by one issue or another. Literally, without hyperbole. And that's before even mentioning the performance.

I contrast this with other high profile "worst game launches ever," such as this game, No Man's Sky, and others, and am forced to concede that these games are (rhetorical - exaggerating for effect) damn masterworks in contrast to it. That's hyperbolic too, of course. Cyberpunk obviously had - and still has - technical issues. But sheesh.

I had two crashes total in Cyberpunk (over years,) there's TAA ghosting, there were issues with some perks not functioning correctly, and performance was never great. I never personally encountered any game breaking issues (yes, I know others did, but I'm comparing this to the completely fundamental, unavoidable issues in a truly broken game I've been playing of late, irrespective of system.)

And in the case of NMS, the only technical issue I ever had was a lack of instruction set support on my own hardware end - which Hello Games promptly patched out for those of us on those older procs back then - and some broken progression bugs. But the overall experience was functional, enjoyable (for me,) and most of the critiques, as with Cyberpunk, had to do with expectations vs realities.

Compared to things like annualized sports titles which continue to make only iterative improvements year after year after year, and in the particular case of the game I'm referring to, are sometimes even completely broken outside of the most basic functionality, at least Cyberpunk is a complete, functioning, meaty product that I can just sink my teeth into, play, and reach the conclusion of.

It's amazing to me that games can get absolutely dragged through the mud on a technical front, when there are far more broken games released annually that get praised. And this recent experience really brought that home for me.

Disappointment in the game itself, its marketing, etc. is a separate issue, of course. And I'm excluding last gen console versions of this game from the comparison. But I just had to get that off my chest. Because good lord the other game in question is a mess.

[The Pollie]

Was it Anthem?

[n0mad23]

I think there's an active population that really wants to see CDPR fail. I keep having flashbacks of early Witcher 3 hatred.

[Tanoomba]

Why the tease?

[Bogmore]

The OP seems to come in, post negatively about a game then leave.

Are you allowed to say TLDR here?

[Defective Dopamine Pez Dispenser]

Originally posted by Bogmore:

The OP seems to come in, post negatively about a game then leave.

Are you allowed to say TLDR here?

You're allowed to say whatever you wish. If that includes TLDR, knock yourself out. It's not against the user guidelines to say that, and is of no consequence or bother to me.

But no. I'm making a direct comparison between the technical stability and functionality of two games, one of which is this one. And expressing why it places some of the outrage directed against this game's technical state, for me, into perspective.

[SotiCoto]

So what was this hypothetical game?

Not that I disagree or anything.
I played No Man's Sky at release by pure coincidence, having stumbled across it at random and with no prior knowledge, and thought it wonderful. I had no idea at first why it got hate... then eventually learnt that it was nothing to do with what the game was and everything to do with what was expected.
Was the same with Dynasty Warriors 9. Genuinely awesome game. Was not what people expected though, so they hated it. That one never recovered from it either.

I never even heard of this game before I noticed all the complaints.
I decided to try it precisely because people hated it. If they'd gushed over it like they did over the festering garbage that was the Witcher trilogy then I wouldn't have touched it... but the fact that people actually hated it meant that CDPR had to have finally done something right in their otherwise worthless lives.
Nothing is as tempting a sign of potential quality as people claiming the complete opposite.

[peon]

Diablo 3, Simcity are just a couple games I can think of with busted servers on launch day.

In both cases it was at least a week after "launch" before issues were fixed.

I just think people are really entitled these days.

[GunofBrixton]

MFW The game ran fine for me on launch.

[P1nkLem0n4d3]

Cyberpunk 2077 was beyond broken at launch to such levels that weren't really seen before nor have been seen since, especially for a game as large as Cyberpunk 2077, even when compared to other releases. No Man's Sky was primarily a bad launch mainly because of the lack of content. Both had issues with marketing, but their primary reasons for a bad launch are different.

Originally posted by n0mad23:

I think there's an active population that really wants to see CDPR fail. I keep having flashbacks of early Witcher 3 hatred.

I think that because people care so much and really like what it is that CDPR are doing, I think it makes for more passion that goes into something if it turns out to be either good or bad. If people really like the game, then they absolutely love the game, and if they don't like the game, then they absolutely hate the game.

Originally posted by peon:

Diablo 3, Simcity are just a couple games I can think of with busted servers on launch day.

In both cases it was at least a week after "launch" before issues were fixed.

I just think people are really entitled these days.

Quite a low standard to have. Furthermore, it took over a year for Cyberpunk 2077 to be playable for some people and to fix certain issues that those players were still experiencing, which is much longer compared to a week. A good standard to have is for a video game to work at launch first, and to be in a good technical state. That should be the minimum.

[Tanoomba]

Originally posted by P1nkLem0n4d3:

Cyberpunk 2077 was beyond broken at launch to such levels that weren't really seen before nor have been seen since, especially for a game as large as Cyberpunk 2077, even when compared to other releases.

I often see claims like this, and I always feel they ring hollow. I've played Sonic '06 on PS3, years after it was released, knowing it was a garbage fire, and I was still offended at how fundamentally broken the game was. CP77, on the other hand, was playable from beginning to end at launch. It had a lot of bugs but they generally didn't interfere with my ability to enjoy the game. Perhaps more importantly, the things CP77 does right were still able to shine through and keep me engaged and entertained. At its worst, it was a flawed but highly enjoyable game, and it's only gotten better since. There are many, many games that never came close to reaching that bar.

Originally posted by P1nkLem0n4d3:

A good standard to have is for a video game to work at launch first, and to be in a good technical state. That should be the minimum.

It absolutely did for most. And if the game literally didn't work at all for some, they were able to get a refund.

[ERASERhead]

Interesting read, although knowing what modern contemporary game you are referring to would have given a frame of reference and better context.

What very little of this game which I got stuck with that I played I drove a car and it felt like steering a boat, a much lower density NPC population from the trailers, which seemed to have little to no AI, two T poses, and despawns when turning around. And I tried to start some mischief to have the police just... appear, on top of their AI issues. Not a good start, especially with all of the background noise at that time detailing a laundry list of other issues. Sorry but I don't see how having the expectation of not seeing blatant issues like this on launch is being entitled as another poster suggested.

So I asked for a refund. Steam rejected it because of play time. Turns out the launcher had (still has?) a bug that counts just the launcher being open as in game time, because there's no way I played more than 10hrs as the policy states (says I have 14hrs currently).

So breaking my cardinal rule of never buying day one for a CD Projekt Red game to have that experience was disappointing. Not being refunded was salt in the wound. So yea, the game ran for me on launch, but I also have a beefy pc. But let's call a spade a spade here - the state of the game on older gen systems was criminal, which is why you even said you excluded it from your comparison. But again you didn't tell us what you were comparing it to!

Anyway, sounds like in your 'could be worse' logic you got some fun out of it, and I hope to one day play it and get my money's worth as well. Patch 1.5 left a little to be desired but it looks like they have fixed a lot since launch, there's some dlc on the horizon, and the cyperpunk genre has always been a personal favorite. I'm glad that you and others had a net positive experience and that there seems to be a fairly decent modding scene.

TLDR - a lot of the reason for the active population that really wants to see CDPR fail is self-inflicted, but trust me there's a vocal minority out there still silently cheering this game on. Also knowing what game op was comparing this to would have been good to know for sure.

[Heretic]

Originally posted by ERASERhead:

TLDR - a lot of the reason for the active population that really wants to see CDPR fail is self-inflicted, but trust me there's a vocal minority out there still silently cheering this game on. Also knowing what game op was comparing this to would have been good to know for sure.

That would be the Intel, AMD and Nvidia CEOs.

[Haruchai]

I have just started playing CP from the beginning again, had one crash but the pop up started verifying the local files and 2 were corrupt, it d/loaded them and it seems fine now apart from the occasional teleporting of the bad guys but that's rare.

For a game the size and complexity of CP, I think its fine. It's pretty much GTA in the future but on steroids, its bigger, more alive, more interesting. The only real issue I have with it is that the protagonist get too OP too early, takes the challenge out. You get to a point that you can kill anything and nothing can kill you.

I think there are a lot of people, not players, people, that like to be negative about everything, it gets them noticed where they have no other means or wherewithal to get noticed any other way. Real players play, fake players complain and whine.

[Defective Dopamine Pez Dispenser]

Originally posted by peon:

Diablo 3, Simcity are just a couple games I can think of with busted servers on launch day.

In both cases it was at least a week after "launch" before issues were fixed.

This too, honestly. And lest we forget, Half Life 2 at launch. The first game to require Steam even for a boxed retail copy. The servers were horrendous initially, causing massive disruption at launch.

I would also single out games like Daggerfall, and to a lesser extent, even later Bethesda titles, as being far buggier than this game ever was even at launch, at least on PC. But some games, some games are just beyond the pale in terms of how unstable and broken they are at launch. To a shocking degree.

And I suppose my point is that Cyberpunk simply wasn't one of those games. Or if it was, it must have been hardware dependent, unlike the game I'm comparing it to, because I never encountered many issues.

Originally posted by Tanoomba:

I often see claims like this, and I always feel they ring hollow. I've played Sonic '06 on PS3, years after it was released, knowing it was a garbage fire, and I was still offended at how fundamentally broken the game was. CP77, on the other hand, was playable from beginning to end at launch. It had a lot of bugs but they generally didn't interfere with my ability to enjoy the game. Perhaps more importantly, the things CP77 does right were still able to shine through and keep me engaged and entertained. At its worst, it was a flawed but highly enjoyable game, and it's only gotten better since. There are many, many games that never came close to reaching that bar.

I concur. And I'd just like to make the distinction, again, that the issues I'm talking about in said other game, are problems that have existed for years on end in an annualized sports IP, and are completely independent of hardware or software configurations on the user end.

They're issues that are legacy file system and memory management (and design, frankly) problems that were simply never addressed - and that it's possible can't be addressed without throwing out a decade plus of technical foundation for certain features - because publisher won't ever fund a complete rebuild, despite claims of a "new engine." (Though sometimes they waffle on this point and instead call it a "redesigned engine," depending upon the storefront.)

That's the real source of my comparative shock and frustration at just how bad it was: how neglected serious, obvious, longstanding issues seemed to have been. It makes much more maligned games like Cyberpunk, which I too had minimal issues with even at launch, look like models of efficiency and design prowess by comparison.

Which is saying a lot, because I've always said Cyberpunk is a rough edged game to say the least. I've never claimed it doesn't have its problems, some of them more significant than others. (And, as I acknowledged in my opening post, Cyberpunk was far more stable and performant on PC than on last gen consoles, and I exclude those versions from the comparison. Those users had every right to feel done poorly by imo.)

[Heu, Iterum Id Feci]

Thank you for your very interesting post.
It is something I have been saying for a very long time.
Yes, there are a lot of titles that are/were in much, much worse shape then CP.
I som ewhere did share a list of games, that never got patched properly, but still are widely regarded as some of the best games in their genres. This includes ie KOTOR2, which is one of the best rpgs for many, many people, yet not a single person back in the day argued that it wasn't an unfinished mess, which suffered greatly from a rushed release.
Many other titles that are regarded as some of the best games have community patches, and often those community patches are the only thing that makes games playable for their fans....in some cases even literally.
Ie. many people can't play Fallout 3 from the original installation anymore on their modern systems, but have to use Tales of two wastelands, to include the fallout 3 content in new vegas.
In many other cases it's just that people just don't want to play the game without the community patches. This includes games like Vampire the masquerade, Borderlands 2, Skyrim, Oblivion, Morrowind, Fallout 1, 2, 3, new vegas and 4.
These obviously are only a few examples, and I am at work atm, but at home I have a folder with a bunch of archived fan patches, because some of them are getting difficult or even impossible to get a hand on anymore.
And that's also one of the good thing about gog. They usually include these patches in their versions, so that you have a properly patched game that you can enjoy.

But I'm rambling again. ;)
Yes, CP was flawed, no question about that. And I'm pretty sure, on a lot of the detailed points we would disagree. However in the bigger Picture CP on PC always has been a "good" game for the majority.
One of the bigger problems this game had and has are people absolutely unwilling to even check their system for problems, because "it has to be ♥♥♥♥♥♥ CDPR", despite reports of other players being able to fix or at least lessen those problems by fixing things on their end.
Because it is just much easier to just ride the hatetrain and blame CDPR, and you can collect some steam points while you are at it.
This doesn't mean there aren't any people who have legitimate problems. I am not doubting that. But those aren't the people this was directed at.

In any case. Have a good one, and again thx for the read. However I would also second the request to know which game you were talking about, just out of curiosity. By the description you give it is highly unlikely I will be even tempted to look at it, but still. :)