this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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No other game takes that long to compile shaders, so that could have been a red flag for a refund on its own. And you can pay attention to forums and games press in the meantime to find out when it's in a playable state before you repurchase it. But on launch day, you could have it preloaded and smoke test it with no risk.
The shader compilation time varied greatly between users. Mine were 40 minutes tops and later I think around 20 minutes. But you'd have to redo them on every update, just to try and see whether the latest patch fixed any of the issues you had. For me it basically became worse before it got better. It's particularly sad because the game itself is great. I watched countless of let's plays of both Part 1 and 2. So it's a real shame that their entry onto the PC market started with such a terrible port. It left such a sour taste that I still haven't played through it.
It's certainly not the only one though. Horizon Zero Dawn had similar long shader compilation times for me. Social media is unfortunately useless, because there's just too many fanboys that will tell you everything is great, burying any sort of valid criticism (Cyberpunk 1.5 for example).
There are also Steam reviews, reddit forums, etc. One person saying it's still a problem is more valuable than two saying it isn't. I've got Mortal Kombat 1 pre-ordered, and that series has a history of shaky PC ports, with enough cause for me to believe it could happen again. If all's well, I'll know before I finish work for the day from reviews, forums, etc., and I'll get Shang Tsung for no additional cost. If not, I get my money back, and they can earn my money from me some other time.
What do you think I was referencing there in my previous comment? /r/Diablo for example literally permabanned me for speaking out against the predatory FOMO tactics in D4, after I was attacked & insulted for it by several users that also downvoted me into oblivion. And now they can eat their own sock, now that post release the hivemind opinion swapped. Everyone on Reddit and the reviews also said how great of a game CP2077 now was after those updates. Well shit, it isn't, it just got rid of a whole bunch of launch issues, while the core issues were still the same and the game still had a massive performance bug until the next major patch. You simply cannot trust those communities anymore because everyone identifies so much with their product that they see any sort of critique as a personal insult.
But that's why I said one person saying it's still a problem is more valuable than two saying that it isn't. There are more resources beyond those. Quick looks, Digital Foundry, SkillUp, Let's Plays...and as you said, games can still have these issues beyond day 1, so at that point not pre-ordering wouldn't have saved you from it either. But two hours is certainly usually enough to find the obvious deal-breakers if the other resources fail you. Cyberpunk 2077 worked pretty damn well for me even right at launch; I didn't pre-order it, but even if I did, I probably would have been able to tell in two hours if it was horrifically broken like all of the video evidence from other players showed it was, in general. I also really enjoyed it, so that's just a difference in taste between you and I.
You seem to ignore what I am saying / the point I'm trying to make. People who say it is still a problem aren't getting heard by those who should read it, because the people who say the opposite will do everything they can to bury them. This results in you looking for opinions and just getting positive ones / yay sayers. Content creators suffer from similar issues. For starters, most of them are just clickbait bullshit deliverers and blocked immediately anyway. A lot of them tend to also fall in line with the devs though, because they often are in some sort of sponsored partner program or don't want to risk losing benefits from those game companies by being "too critical". And with how YT algorithms work, most smaller channels don't even have a chance to appear on your search.
So if those people aren't seeing the information they need, they should not pre-order. I'm confident that if you know these other avenues to find out this information, it's easy to avoid getting burned.