CD Projekt's Cyberpunk 2077 Update 2.0 + Phantom Liberty Expansion Thread

[Jason Liang]

I am a fair bit through Phantom Liberty (finally) and honestly the game is even less of an RPG than it was before. It's just a very, very competent open world story-driven FPS.

Remember years ago when I was excited at the possibility of being a Netrunner/Techie/Media/Cop since those were archetypes in the books...

The game really should support some sort of social influencer class

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I am a fair bit through Phantom Liberty (finally) and honestly the game is even less of an RPG than it was before. It's just a very, very competent open world story-driven FPS.

Remember years ago when I was excited at the possibility of being a Netrunner/Techie/Media/Cop since those were archetypes in the books...

The game really should support some sort of social influencer class

It does. They're called YouTubers.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Infinitron]

You asked for more #REDstreams with voice actors, so we used our connections in Night City to bring Minji Chang, who voiced Songbird in #Cyberpunk2077 #PhantomLiberty, along with Borys Pugacz-Muraszkiewicz, our English Adaptation Director.

Hosted, as always, by our Senior Community Managers: Amelia Kołat and Alicja Kozera!

 

[Perkel]

So... i decided to drop it. Did everything up to Phantom Liberty start and I realized new system is just so shit that it completely removes any fun from game.

1. Level scaling introduced in 2.0 completely kills any sense of progression. I realized something missing hard when i visited badlands and i realized that sites previously reserved for high level character could be done now easy. Moreover due to level scaling there is no challange anywhere in game. Previously you could as low level character attack badlands gangs and do those missions but now they are easy as rest of game.

2. "new skill" tree that was supposed fix skills is just worse than original. It is incredibly cut down into few very narrow paths. It is simply plain not fun to interact and everytime you get new perk point i just sit there thinking that i can't build anything of my own because there are no skills to choose. As much as old skill system had small nodes with minor stuff it also contained huge nodes like spreading quickhacks, additional charges to tech weapons etc. Now you get same shit both small and big nodes but like half of them or less. Moreover specializations are out of window as there aren't that many nodes in them.

3. Not only enemies scale to your level but also weapons and cyberware. So if you thought about working your way to get good gear upgrade it or something then you should drop it and wait for magical lvl up where suddenly out of nowhere ripperdocks have Tier2 cyberware and you can't even buy tier 1 anymore... Same with weapons. You level up few times and suddenly enemies almost never drop lower gear. And that doesn't even take into account that you are showered with money. Each weapon from lvl 1 sells for like 500-1000 so with 2-3 fights you stack 15k-20k easily. So loot is effectively meaningless.

As much as pre 2.0 game system had issues at least you could make your own build and work toward building it, here you have few playstyles and you can't effectively go outside of them, moreover with how things changed there is literally no reason to do any build in first place as game is easy now as hell and there is 0 challange as everything is scaled to your level.

Cyberware limit kind of got away from my initial impressions because you find capacity shards very commonly that increase it by 2-3 each so quickly you rise it.

I honestly am baffled by decisions made to gameplay. It really feels like they just said fuck it and went into full this is action adventure game not rpg. I have to sleep on it because i am tired today already. I wanted to at least do PL but game is just plainly not enjoyable to play. It plays like Assasing Creed/GTA rather than rpg.

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Another thing that was weird was how they standardized all ripperdocks. Previously each ripperdock had their specialities and prices varried. Stuff was expensive due to how money was hard to get by. There is no point now to visit any other ripper doc, same for other shit. While this is not huge issue gameplay or story wise it is for me huge issue because it removes uniquenes from the world which is something i appreciate.

 

[Gargaune]

2. "new skill" tree that was supposed fix skills is just worse than original. It is incredibly cut down into few very narrow paths. It is simply plain not fun to interact and everytime you get new perk point i just sit there thinking that i can't build anything of my own because there are no skills to choose. As much as old skill system had small nodes with minor stuff it also contained huge nodes like spreading quickhacks, additional charges to tech weapons etc. Now you get same shit both small and big nodes but like half of them or less. Moreover specializations are out of window as there aren't that many nodes in them.

This is curious to me because the very little I've played of 2.0/PL left me with the opposite impression, that the skills progression overhaul is better than before, albeit still not good. I think it's better because it cuts down and consolidates the perks into fewer, vaguely more meaningful choices, but it's not good enough because there's still too many of them and they're still too granular and circumstantial.

CDPR were off to a bad start with this "50/60 levels" bloat, they should've cut that in half and built a perk tree with fewer, more significant and more widely applicable upgrades. I never enjoyed leveling in CBP, rather than get excited that I can pick up a cool new ability, it felt like a chore where I had to skim all these arbitrary, gimmicky little increments and pick the least insignificant one. In fact, I'd typically ignore several level-ups at a time and only bother once the enemy scaling curve caught up with me. In contrast, 3.5E D&D always has me clawing for a new level until around 15 or so, and even after that and into epic levels I can still get stuff that makes me think "okay, this is a clear step up." I could also bring up Deus Ex, which is even tighter on progression, but what would be the point? Even against other games with similarly high level counts, CBP's progression measures up poorly - Fo4 falls apart after level 50 (it really should've been capped), but up to around the 30-40 mark, you've always got something you wanna get, not to mention that stat upgrades also draw from the same pool.

Really, it feels like all the progression systems were an afterthought. Like one of the devs woke up in 2019 and went "Guys, hold on, it says here we're making an RPG! Quick, add numbers! And add numbers to the numbers!" How else do you end up with point-buy perks that read like a fiscal optimisation guide and skill trees that have their own training levels? Let's not forget the game shipped with a swimming perk originally...

 

[Perkel]

2. "new skill" tree that was supposed fix skills is just worse than original. It is incredibly cut down into few very narrow paths. It is simply plain not fun to interact and everytime you get new perk point i just sit there thinking that i can't build anything of my own because there are no skills to choose. As much as old skill system had small nodes with minor stuff it also contained huge nodes like spreading quickhacks, additional charges to tech weapons etc. Now you get same shit both small and big nodes but like half of them or less. Moreover specializations are out of window as there aren't that many nodes in them.

This is curious to me because the very little I've played of 2.0/PL left me with the opposite impression, that the skills progression overhaul is better than before, albeit still not good. I think it's better because it cuts down and consolidates the perks into fewer, vaguely more meaningful choices, but it's not good enough because there's still too many of them and they're still too granular and circumstantial.

I absolutely thought new skill system is better when i first seen it. But when i actually started to play I quickly realized this is just 25% of what used to be before. Sure the first few nodes of each tree in old system used to be shitty +5% damage or stuff like that but the higher your base stat was the more impacting skills you unlocked with best ones at 20.

And even if you didn't like some of skills, there were so many of them that you could find something for yourself either way.

The point is that with old system if i had park point to spend i had too many skills to choose, sure a lot of them were trash but good amount of them did something toward my build.

Now this is reversed. If i have perk point i am just wondering if i should just skip spending it and just play either way as it won't change much in my build.

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Another huge issue is with breakpoints. 4, 9, 15, 20. On all trees there is barely anything at 4 breakpoit with most of trees having like one group instead of 3 or 2. Which means you need a minimum 9 into some state which is almost half to get anything noticeable.

Here is good example of how this new amazing skill tree looks in practice. On my run i tried to play as "musclehead" with shotguns and lmgs. This is what my Body guy gets:

at 4. Health regen in combat. Combat like i said before is easy so it doesn't do shit enough for me to notice in first place. And either way you have stimpacks...

at 9. middle of tree is nowhere to be seen, right side of tree is melee which i am not interested. which leaves me with left one. Finally !!!! something for me no ? with 2 levels in that "main" skill i get wait for it. 12% increased at low stamina and faster shooting speed at low stamina and improved weapon handling. Such change that i didn't even notice... Along that "main" skill you have -33% to bullet spread..., 15% mitigation chance and... no penalty to movement when using shotguns or lmgs.

So shite.

Only at lvl 15 body you get anything worthwile. And what do we get at lvl 15 ? We get effectively improved healing more (adrenaline rush), and obliterate aka random chance for guy to dead the less health he has obviously it doesn't work on bosses. and obviously since i am not into hammers at right something that does not interest me.

Small nodes mostly enchance either obliterate or adrenaline.
Then level 20 you get further enchancement to either obliterate or adrenaline.

To sum it up whole body tree literally mostly consists of random chance to die, healing or hammertime.
Like i want to play LMG guy that's tough but i don't want to relly on shitty random chance for someone to die.


It is like they saw cold blood in previous iteration and thought "I KNOW ! WE NEED TO GIVE COLD BLOOD TO EVERYTHING"

 

[Perkel]

Old system had many skills per tab and each tab was focused on specific thing similar way to new tree (but with many more skills) but there was another division where left and right side of tree focused on some different aspect.
Like left side of quickhack focused on agreesive use while right side on utility.

Moreover those skills had usually more than 1 points to invest in it. So while lvl 1 of some skills was usually to small to notice then lvl 3 was something that was noticeable.

Old system was not perfect, it was even flawed but you could use it to build varied builds. In new system i have cookie cutter build CDPR prepared and outside of that is nothing.

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And like I said. The most important thing is killed by level scaling. So even if you get shiny new "ADRENALINE" what is the point of it when everything is scaled to your level ? In previous system with unscalled enemies i could attack much higher level threats and play it against my build. In new system build doesn't matter, you will always win. Not only they fucked up skills they also broke C77 back too.

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Another thing about old skill system is that it get too much shit for "just % increases" there were shitload of skills that did change a lot things. Tech tree was filled with skills that would outright enable you to do shit like overriding turrets, crafting better gear, nearly doubling charge on tech weapons and so on, charge without instant discharge, Much better than stacks of something which is new tree way.

 

[Wesp5]

When I played the DLC I didn't even notice that all my skill points were reset until after I saved the president which basically was the hardest battle in the whole game because the change in weapon assets had removed the scope from the sniper rifle I used at the time. Afterwards I raised skills only to get the full number of implants and didn't really recognize any of the other advantages in the game. But I didn't with the old system either, too many numbers and too little actual new features...

 

[Gargaune]

Perkel, I guess we just have different preferences for Action-RPGs. My reaction while respeccing was that the skills were still rather unappealing in the same way they were before, but at least now I had to deal with fewer of them.

I do agree the stat thresholds are odd, though, they're very backloaded. I'm guessing it was the devs' intent to "funnel" the player into specialisation that way, make you commit to particular stats, but I'm not sold on it. I think it'd have been better to spread perks (in general, not these ones, obviously) more evenly in the low and mid-range, and save a smaller number of much more powerful ones for the tail-end of a stat tree.

As for level scaling, yeah, the thing is that these kinds of systems - player progression, challenge progression, itemisation - are meant to work in concert, and CBP did not have solid ground to build on.


Wesp5, my experience was quite different, I spent a little while doing other shit around NC before respeccing and I definitely felt like I was getting pummeled running around unskilled and unchromed. It was the opposite of CDPR's last overhaul for 1.5 (?), when I'd barely notice my skill reset, this time I got it immediately. And I also found the combat more challenging after I reconfigured my character, in a good way, but maybe I just suck at the game, wouldn't be a shocker given how much I care for its progression system.

 

[frajaq]

Finished both ways that PL could play out, did the new ending, gotta say, Cyberpunk base game is like a 8/10 but damn, everything about PL was 10/10 for me, really good stuff

Here's hoping CDPR can BUILD upon all the good aspects of Phantom Liberty for their next games... and fix the crappy aspects that the base game still has

 

[Justicar]

 

[Perkel]

tried mod that gives RTX 2x and 3x card DLSS3 via AMD implementation. And it fucking works !

Thanks amd.

https://www.nexusmods.com/site/mods/738?tab=files&file_id=2628

1440p plus full raytracing overdrive withotu framegen on my 3090:

same this with framegen:

No issues either with ghosting, framepacing, on/off while movement etc.

 

[Ryzer]

Your GPU and CPU are getting close to high temperature.

 

[Gargaune]

Your GPU and CPU are getting close to high temperature.

I've had worse...


On a different note, anyone know of a mod that reduces the range of Eye Adaptation? I know there's a mod that speeds it up to instant and there was a mod that manually adjusted the feature (though it's been abandoned since 1.63 and was incompatible with weather changes), but anything current to just tighten the range on the bloody thing? I've kinda gotten an LUT/ENV setup that looks pretty good, but the constant dimming/brightening is annoying. On top of that, night time in unlit areas is darker than Satan's asshole and gets borderline unusable if you throw some local light sources, like burning trashcans, into the image - Pacifica at night is night vision territory, no way around it.

 

[Perkel]

It is not abandoned dude works on it. And yeah eye adaptation is cancer. Especially on HDR screen like mine as it doesn't make much sense. It is especially dire in some cars.

That being said the one about speeding up transition helps a ton.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[jackofshadows]

Man just imagine with these kinds of mods, proper progression system/mq design/less cinematikk rails, more importantly, less soy and woke themes and instead more over the top edgy shit, vulgarity... this would be like best game ever.

 

[Krivol]

best game ever

You mean by photorealistic graphics? Just go outside... this game lacks the most important thing in gaming - good gameplay (I still like it, but it's so far from BEST GAM EVAH!)

 

[tritosine2k]

Mods won't fix enviro and prefabs+ weather interaction and it's already a sore thumb without (...) tracing. "Realtime" tracing depends on largely unchanging weather making it the same as bake. Except you can bake better.

gameplay

+ semi exterior enviro

 

[jackofshadows]

best game ever

You mean by photorealistic graphics? Just go outside... this game lacks the most important thing in gaming - good gameplay (I still like it, but it's so far from BEST GAM EVAH!)

Did you like... read the entire post?

 

[Itoh]

I never enjoyed leveling in CBP, rather than get excited that I can pick up a cool new ability, it felt like a chore where I had to skim all these arbitrary, gimmicky little increments and pick the least insignificant one. In fact, I'd typically ignore several level-ups at a time and only bother once the enemy scaling curve caught up with me.

I felt that this was the intended use of the system - accumulate a few perk points as you play through missions, then by the time you encounter a roadblock you have enough to max the basic perk tree and a couple of the ancillary ones. At least that's how I used it and I was satisfied with getting full functionality of tech/smart weapons/shotguns as soon as I decided I wanted them.

 

[Inhabitants of Khorinis]

I've noticed a lot of videos comparing this junk to another junk (Starfield). Finally, after four years, there's a game that fans can compare Soybercuck to and have it come out looking better.

 

[Gargaune]

I never enjoyed leveling in CBP, rather than get excited that I can pick up a cool new ability, it felt like a chore where I had to skim all these arbitrary, gimmicky little increments and pick the least insignificant one. In fact, I'd typically ignore several level-ups at a time and only bother once the enemy scaling curve caught up with me.

I felt that this was the intended use of the system - accumulate a few perk points as you play through missions, then by the time you encounter a roadblock you have enough to max the basic perk tree and a couple of the ancillary ones. At least that's how I used it and I was satisfied with getting full functionality of tech/smart weapons/shotguns as soon as I decided I wanted them.

I don't think that's too likely, or it would be a pretty "novel" approach to RPG progression at least. 3E D&D will let you "bank" some skill points for subsequent level-ups, but there's a rationale there in the doubled cost for off-class skills. Deus Ex lets you spend XP when you feel like it, but that game has no levels and skill tier costs are independent of one another. If CDPR had meant for the player to unlock "chunks" of functionality at a time, it'd have made more sense to just consolidate the system into fewer levels with more impactful perks (which they should've done, but didn't).

 

[DJOGamer PT]

https://www.cyberpunk.net/en/news/49831/patch-2-11

So is this the last update, is CDPR done working on this game for good?

I would like to finally try a stabilized post 2.0 game

this game lacks the most important thing in gaming - good gameplay

Honestly this complaint feels overblown and dishonest
Even back in the early days of the game, the mechanical moment-to-moment gameplay was fine (better than any classic GTA imo, unless you mean to tell me those games also aren't good)

Is it an RPG? No
Is the gameplay garbage because of that? No