Videogames Thread: Steaming Ahead

[Fez]

11 hours ago, Slurktan said:

It hasn't been delisted on the PSN yet so don't be an idiot just because it happens to be a game you love.

Cyberpunk 2077 wasn't delisted because of bugs. There's far buggier games out there on the PSN store. It was delisted because CDPR told consumers to contact Sony if they wanted a refund.

[IlyaP]

1 hour ago, Fez said:

Cyberpunk 2077 wasn't delisted because of bugs. There's far buggier games out there on the PSN store. It was delisted because CDPR told consumers to contact Sony if they wanted a refund.

So basically, you'd say what's written here is an accurate depiction of the timeline of events?

https://screenrant.com/cd-projekt-red-investor-call-sony-pull-cyberpunk-2077-playstation-store/

[Kalbear]

So this is something I can talk to with very accurate information.

Cyberpunk 2077 was delisted by Sony because ultimately they were getting an absolute flood of refund requests. Every refund request costs Sony - not CDPR, not anyone else, but Sony - about $5-10 in support costs. Possibly more. This is because Sony does not have a dedicated refund service (or didn't at the time), has to go through general customer support, and has a fairly restrictive refund policy - meaning that basically everything that they do refund has to be escalated to a higher tier of support that can deal with it. 

This wasn't helped when CDPR announced that everyone should reach out to their platform to ask for refunds without telling those platforms they were going to do that. That created a lot of ill-will. 

Another thing that wasn't ideal was the nature of how games ship in general. Every game on a major platform goes through what's called certification - where it is run through a gauntlet of tests to ensure a general level of quality, compatibility, monitoring, etc. That cert often happens much earlier than a game going gold, because it can take a while. It is very common for AAA titles to fail cert with promises that the issues will be fixed via day 1 patches - and that usually happens. The problem here is that it didn't happen for CDPR, which again led to a fairly big broken promise.

I appreciated that CDPR said that the absolute low point was being delisted from PSN. Now, here's an open question you might be wondering - why didn't Xbox also delist CP2077?

The reason would be my team and several other teams. 

I was the lead of a team that was doing the refund service for Xbox. This had a lot of cool features and other things, but one of the coolest was the ability to add to it new policy changes depending on emergency issues. Our team identified that CP2077 was likely going to be an emergency issue and wrote the policy change before it was requested. We even started doing daily status of refund requests of CP2077 the day after launch (because it was a much higher value than we were used to). We proposed the solution - pushing out this policy change and making sure that regardless of any other criteria you could get CP2077 refunded, no matter what. And the day after Sony delisted it we put this into place, where it ran until July the next year. We had a bunch of things to do - we had to send out official communications saying that we were going to do this to everyone (so tweets and blogs and whatnot), we had a big warning banner on the store page for CP2077, we had a warning banner on our support website, and we sent out comms to people who had previously requested a refund for CP2077 that were denied that they could try again and get approved. And starting at 9AM on Friday the 18th, we turned it on, told everyone the policy, and away we went.

The end result was that Xbox had an amusing GamePass like thing for almost 8 months where CP2077 was effectively an exclusive game on Xbox that you could play as much as you want and then get your money back. 

So yeah, without my team's work and solution it would not have been on the store, just like PSN. You're welcome, CDPR :p

 

[Werthead]

18 hours ago, Slurktan said:

It hasn't been delisted on the PSN yet so don't be an idiot just because it happens to be a game you love.

Act 3's performance was so abysmal it reduced frame rates by 50-70%, and sprouted multiple memory leaks that caused the game to build up additional lag and stuttering to the point it became unplayable or just flat-out crashed. That never happened to CP77 on PC. On hardware that can actually handle the game, CP77's launch performance was generally fine, whilst BG3's launch performance was dogshit. It just wasn't an issue because they had spent three years polishing the hell out of the first half of the game and it took people so long to reach the latter part of the game, goodwill was willing to make them push through it, and Larian were initially rapid in laying down hotfixes to solve some of the problems before the overwhelming majority of players reached that point in the game (also helped by the shitty optimisation issue afflicting most recent PC games, where the problems can actually cascade upwards the better hardware you have, so you are punished for spending more on better hardware).

A much bigger problem subsequently has been poor code, so every time Larian try to fix something they fuck something else up. So for people who managed to dodge some of the earlier technical problems, they're now running headfirst into bugs introduced in later patches and hotfixes whilst a few weeks back they were fine.  Bethesda have just started doing the same thing with Starfield, their first patch actually screwed some other things that have caused repeated crashes on higher-end nVidias, which they're now scrambling to fix.

CP77's main issue was launching on hardware that could not, in any way, shape or form, support the game and basically filching people on inferior hardware of their money by lying about it, which from a moral POV is certainly worse. They also had a big problem with un-repeatable bugs, sometimes finding two people running identical specs with completely different experiences, one with crashes galore and every third person T-posing their way through the game, and the other person 100% fine without a problem. They did get on top of that quickly, but I don't think they've ever explained how that was even possible.

Edited September 27, 2023 by Werthead

[Arakasi]

It somewhat surprises me (but then it doesn’t) coming from someone who works at a big developer that Larian is getting multiple passes on things we’d get roasted for. If we released the exact same game I doubt it’s anywhere near as well received. That’s life I guess.

[Kalbear]

36 minutes ago, Arakasi said:

It somewhat surprises me (but then it doesn’t) coming from someone who works at a big developer that Larian is getting multiple passes on things we’d get roasted for. If we released the exact same game I doubt it’s anywhere near as well received. That’s life I guess.

I don't think that's entirely true, and I also think that the things that they're getting dinged on are (often) not the absolute end of the world as far as enjoyment goes. 

It also helps that people can spend hundreds of hours on the game and have a great time. It's not like they log in and boom, it doesn't work (like CP2077). The biggest problem that people are having right now, at least, is that they really want to play the game and it keeps crashing or performing badly later in the game. That sucks, and it's a massive bummer, but it's not at all in the same class as can't log in or losing all the saves and whatnot.

That the creators are also really good with community engagement AND the actual actors are really great with it too helps tremendously too. The game isn't just about the game; it's about the community involvement, the memes, the hilarious ways people are able to do various things, the creativity...all of that is a lot more than releasing the exact same game.

[Fez]

47 minutes ago, Arakasi said:

It somewhat surprises me (but then it doesn’t) coming from someone who works at a big developer that Larian is getting multiple passes on things we’d get roasted for. If we released the exact same game I doubt it’s anywhere near as well received. That’s life I guess.

I agree with the sentiment that Larian's been shielded by the fact that Act I is so polished. Which means that people get 30+ hours before they see any issues and 50+ hours (Act III) before things get really bad. So there were multiple weeks where all the discourse about the game was purely positive. And then, since players hit Act III at different times, there was never a critical mass of people all at once complaining about the problems. Also, many of those players were predisposed to give Larian every possible benefit of the doubt because they had enjoyed the game so much up until then.

It's a very different experience from a game that has issues right from the start of playing it.

[Arakasi]

See I don’t have the time (or tbh rhe interest) to engage with Larian or their actors on this stuff so I look at the game on it’s own merits. That added stuff to me doesn’t make it a better game. I do agree having act one be the best has a lot of positives.

[Kalbear]

2 minutes ago, Arakasi said:

See I don’t have the time (or tbh rhe interest) to engage with Larian or their actors on this stuff so I look at the game on it’s own merits. That added stuff to me doesn’t make it a better game. I do agree having act one be the best has a lot of positives.

I guess...but these days that's a big part of it. CP2077 got a lot of goodwill back because of that community outreach - and things like Edgerunners. Skyrim famously has a ton of community support. Minecraft is all about it. Heck, even if you don't engage with those sorts of things I guarantee you you're engaging with things like FAQs and forums and help resources and strategy guides - and those are all part of the community too. 

Larian's response time has also been exemplary here. It absolutely does suck that act 3 is now hugely unplayable for a whole bunch of folks (especially after they had mostly fixed it), but it's also not unreasonable to think that it'll get fixed or mitigated somewhat quickly. 

[Phylum of Alexandria]

I'm just getting around to hearing Christopher Larkin's advance tracks for Hollow Knight: Silksong. Lovely stuff!

This one kind of reminds me of the Montreal group A Silver Mt Zion:

Gettin hype...while remaining patient. Thanks to GRRM for giving me that skill.

Edited September 27, 2023 by Phylum of Alexandria

[Arakasi]

I do expect them to fix the bugs and fix the modding and fix performance so it doesn’t fry my steam deck but I don’t expect them to fix the repetitiveness of combat or the lack of character customization options. Modding can ofc help but even early on I’m seeing the same thing I saw in Divinity Original Sin 2 where the battles got very samey and such. That game was a struggle for me to finish as I just got bored.

[Arakasi]

https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/28/fortnite-maker-epic-games-is-laying-off-16-of-its-workforce/
 

Pretty big hit for a company that has in recent years hired away a bunch of our people.

[Ser Not Appearing]

1 hour ago, Arakasi said:

https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/28/fortnite-maker-epic-games-is-laying-off-16-of-its-workforce/
 

Pretty big hit for a company that has in recent years hired away a bunch of our people.

Are you allowed to say where you work?

[Arakasi]

34 minutes ago, Ser Not Appearing said:

Are you allowed to say where you work?

Sure I think I’ve said before I work at EA. Anyway layoffs sucks and I hope the people affected find new jobs. I’m trying to find out if friends were affected.

Edited September 28, 2023 by Arakasi

[Corvinus85]

Creative Assembly will be laying off people, too, as they've announced the cancellation of Hyenas, an Overwatch-like game. Here's hoping they can keep most of the devs and expand their Total War teams.

[Werthead]

It sounds like an unannounced Total War game might be on the chopping block, so maybe not. I'm hoping it's not Medieval II Remastered, the only and probably the last thing I want out of CA barring some kind of phoenix-like resurrection of them back to top form (very improbable).

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

7 hours ago, Werthead said:

It sounds like an unannounced Total War game might be on the chopping block, so maybe not. I'm hoping it's not Medieval II Remastered, the only and probably the last thing I want out of CA barring some kind of phoenix-like resurrection of them back to top form (very improbable).

If they just go back to making actual historical games again, instead of that fantasy crap, I’ll be very happy. 

[IlyaP]

55 minutes ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

If they just go back to making actual historical games again, instead of that fantasy crap, I’ll be very happy. 

What did they make that had a poor reception?

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

6 hours ago, IlyaP said:

What did they make that had a poor reception?

Just my personal taste , I’m not into fantasy style TW games 

[Jace, Extat]

I bought the Balder's Gate 3 game yesterday but discovered my hard drive is too small for the game. Is it worth upgrading to a bigger hard drive or should I just get a refund?