Eh, I haven't felt much motivation to dig deep into Cyberpunk. After putting about 30-40 hours into it with a release day purchase, I got super bored and started playing something else. I haven't felt like going back since.
I could spend dozens of hours just exploring Night City like a tourist.
I have spent dozens of hours exploring Night City like a tourist, I mean, but I could spend dozens more (and almost certainly will, if I ever get a graphics card that can run it decently with ray casting).
And then there's actually playing the game, of course, which for me has been fun from day one, but then again the PC version seems to have been spared most of the bugs.
The strangest thing.. I have to agree. But what's weird to me is that I can see all the issues with the game and don't even necessarily disagree when people list all their gripes with it. The world feels empty, sure. The inventory clutter/management sucks. True. The quests aren't even that good and a lot of the map is filled with the same police scanner shit. And yes, The Witcher had way better quests and practically no filler bullshit, and I had wished that CP2077 was the same..
All true. It's simply that it.. doesn't seem to affect my enjoyment of the game at all. I love it.
It is also the only game I've ever played where I actually enjoy driving. I hate racing/car games and pretty much any other game that has driving.. I will always prefer walking to driving. I don't even drive IRL.
But in CP2077.. damn, I love the driving. Fast travel might as well not exist! I purposefully pick quests that are on the other side of the map, just so I can drive there. It's so damn relaxing, cruising around, radio on, Night City is so beautifully built.
It's perfectly normal that not everyone likes every game and it's not even a fault of the games. On the contrary I believe games shouldn't even try to cater to everyone but rather be targeted at a specific crowd.
You might want to have a look at character builds people are doing, you can get a lot of playstyles out of the game and the somewhat default "Well this is how I played FO3 and NV" build that I naturally gravitated to was indeed meh. Choosing corpo vs. streetkid vs. nomad has basically zero influence on gameplay and whether you like it it's just some roleplay flavour, but a netrunner vs. ninja vs. beserk build? The game changes completely.
It's still the same story / theme so even though it's mostly bug free now it won't be anything new to you if you've already put 30 hours into it. They did revamp the RPG mechanics though.
I loved it personally, Night City just gave off a certain vibe that had me wandering around like a tourist. However, after playing it to 100% and putting it down for a year or so, I tried to start a new save in prep for the expansion and I lost interest in replaying the story.
Project Red had a chance to follow the path that No Man's Sky used (is using) to bring back players, they chose to recoup some of their losses with paid DLC. You guys have fun finding Easter eggs inside the turd pile, they won't fool me again and I'm not getting my hopes up for the future Witcher franchise.
Mate, they released all of the big fixes and system reworks without the dlc. You only get the newest perk tree and the actual storyline for purchasing the dlc. It's the same MO as Witcher 3, and quite similar to NMS, with several fewer years to simmer.
I get being upset with the launch state. I do. But to say they haven't addressed any of the concerns, or they aren't actively trying to work on the most damning issues is just wrong. Criticisms work best when they're accurate.
I get your point too, bud, and for accuracy: I was not saying they haven't "addressed any of the concerns", my problem is with the latest paid 'expansion' and the definition of the word DLC. I do sincerely hope that given the time they can reach No Man's sky redemption level, but I'm not holding my breath. I also believe that there has been a semantics shift in how AAA is spinning a lot of rushed games these days which is getting a pass by many gamers and it really sucks for the future of the industry. To me bug fixes are not DLC, those are patches or hotfixes not downloadable content. I know that you understand that; however, the problem I have is that Marcin promised it to be free (and I can't arsed to find the quote, so this was maybe my own mishearing at the time so you can get me there if that was the case), and you can argue that "no, he just meant the patches or some minor additions" but to myself at the time -and I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one- though the DLC (i.e Expansions) were going to be free by way of apology and regain some of the trust back. You can say that's naive or unrealistic, but this release has cured me of the preorder hype bus forever and given me a healthy dose of skepticism for all AAA releases, particularly from CDPR from now on. There are better games to spend my time looking for Easter eggs and that's just my opinion.
While I never ended up getting into cyber punk after feeling burned by the original release version. The portion of the dlc with all the fixes and core gameplay changes was free. The only paid portion of the dlc was story / new content.