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

[T.Ashpool]

Yeah but my point is that Sasko's question about the players favorite quests wouldn't help with changes needed for the vanilla game, so it's probably for the expansions they're openly planning to release.

does this retard not play his own game? just play the fucking game it's not hard to figure out what's wrong with it and what needs to be better

 

[Justicar]

does this retard not play his own game? just play the fucking game it's not hard to figure out what's wrong with it and what needs to be better

 

[ferratilis]

He does play his own game, quite often actually, on his Twitch stream, but the problem is that his head is so high up his ass that he can't take any form of criticism. When someone provides constructive criticism, they are either: a) banned by his fanboys b) completely ignored c) provided some asinine explanation of how they are wrong and don't understand how to design an immersive quest. The guy is a complete tool, so you can't expect him to know what's wrong with the game.

This is just one example from a few days ago, you can go through the clip archive and find many more. He always has these "whataboutism" explanations to deal with any form of criticism.
https://www.twitch.tv/pawesasko/clip/SmallVainChoughBudStar-GxbaG2ykE72JWlVK

 

[Perkel]

Seems like some modders overhauled gameplay.

FGR - Full Gameplay Rebalance

List:

• Removed scaling (not for immersion, this enables me to fix many bugs)
• Lowered crit chances
• Removed immunities (mostly) and replaced them with resistances
• AI Improvements and Enemy Balancing
• Armor and Armor Mods
• Cyberware
• Explosives
• Food Drink and Alcohol
• Gameplay Mechanics
• Healing and Drugs
• Melee
• Perks
• Loot
• Upgrading
• Player Stats
• Ranged Weapons
• Quickhacks
• Skillbooks
• Vendors and Pricing
• Weapon Mods
• XP and Gigs

For example one of those:

Removed Scaling

In the base game, both you and the enemies gain stats as you level up. Here's the base stats for V and enemies at level 1 and level 50 on Very Hard:

Level 1 V: 100 hp, 65-100 dps
Level 1 enemy: ~200 hp, 50 dps

Level 50 V: 345 hp, >5k dps
Level 50 enemy: >10k hp, 850 dps

As you can see, without any upgrades, V is much weaker than enemies at level 50 than they are at level 1.

This causes a number of issues, so I have removed this entirely. This is by far the largest change, and required a fair bit of reduction in perks, items, etc. that just flat out increased stats like damage, health, crit chance, etc.

But before that puts you off, here's the list of things I can fix when scaling is removed:

• NPC to NPC damage. Enemies do the same damage to V as they do to each other. But by the end of the game, the enemies have 30x health as V, so they don't do much damage to each other. This is the reason why your sidekick was always useless in fights, or why the cyberpsychosis quickhack was losing effectiveness, and a few other things.
• Explosive damage to V. The explosive barrels are designed to do damage to enemies, which, as stated above, have 30x hp as V. Hence why you would always get one shot by these things.
• V's damage to self. V's grenades did the same damage to enemies as they did to V, which is much more than V's health.
• Allows items and effects with constant stats to be useful: Despite much of the game being based around this scaling, many things weren't. Berserk's superhero landing damage for instance is a constant value. In the base game, it's ~500, which is nothing to an enemy with 10k hp. So were some iconic weapon effects, perks, and more than a few other things.
• More consistent gameplay. The game can't account for whether you know you can get a full set of legendary armor and armor mods before your first gig, or whether you're still running around with Yorinobu's clothing and pistol at level 20. The reason why there's so many big damage bonuses in the game like +100% melee damage here, +25% ranged damage there, is because these upgrades are all supposed to get washed out as you level up and the enemies just get more hp and damage. Hence the reason why these big bonuses had to be brought down. The end result is that the immediate bonus of a stat-increasing effect won't feel as powerful, but by the end of the game it'll feel the same.
• Fixes random non-scaled items and enemies. There's a bunch of enemies and items scattered around Night City that didn't have scaling applied to them. Now, it doesn't matter, and these won't feel any different than regular enemies and items.
• Allows me to implement enemy armor. Enemies don't really have armor. The only armor I could find in game was 10 for the exo-suits. Only 2-3 enemies in the game are in exo-suits. Armor reduction is by a constant value, so there's really no way to implement armor in a scaling-based game. Now, enemies have armor, and armor-related perks and effects should actually be useful.
• Consistent damages. Grenades, status effects, weakspots, enemy dps, quickhack damage, etc. These damage values were all over the place, and could change pretty drastically as you levelled up.
• Fix xp scaling. The level xp you get increases with the amount of health the enemy has. In the beginning of the game this was fine, but by the end, throwing some grenades at a group of Valentinos would get you 3x as much xp as a whole gig!

 

[Justicar]

He does play his own game, quite often actually, on his Twitch stream, but the problem is that his head is so high up his ass that he can't take any form of criticism. When someone provides constructive criticism, they are either: a) banned by his fanboys b) completely ignored c) provided some asinine explanation of how they are wrong and don't understand how to design an immersive quest. The guy is a complete tool, so you can't expect him to know what's wrong with the game.

This is just one example from a few days ago, you can go through the clip archive and find many more. He always has these "whataboutism" explanations to deal with any form of criticism.
https://www.twitch.tv/pawesasko/clip/SmallVainChoughBudStar-GxbaG2ykE72JWlVK

Quests he did are good because he was responsible for making the side jobs and main quests, gigs were made by different team. He also designed the pickup quest which was the best one in the game in terms of short term and long term consequences if the game had at least 3 or 4 more elaborate quest like the pickup one it would be much better.

 

[Gargaune]

You don't meet a single NPC asking for help, you don't interact with anyone but fixers, and you don't get to explore places to receive new quests.

Absolutely, this is something that often gets overlooked when we whine about CBP's quest design, but it's also a significant factor. At an abstract level, both TW3 and CBP 2077 play out the same routine - go to place, receive quest, do quest, get reward. But that TW3 dispenses said quest through a unique, on-site NPC, written to have their own stake in the affair, is a massive difference to CBP's cold-calling fixers. It makes the world feel more alive, populated by characters with their own affairs, rather than an automatron-ridden themepark. Sure, some of the NPCs in CBP's quests have their own stuff to say, but you can't escape the formulaic pattern that's been branded into your mind. And the kicker, all those logorrheic fixers clam up all of a sudden if you pay 'em a visit.

Side quests in TW3 always had some dialogue and interaction with the interested party. You either know about the quest through one of the many notice boards or by talking to people spread around the game world. You then proceed through the quest, which, unlike CP2077, doesn't necessarily mean having to engage in combat all the time.

Gotta disagree with you on this bit, though, there's a fair few quests in CBP that involve either no or very little combat, both gigs and sidejobs. Examples just of the top of my head, Kerry's sidejob to confront Us Cracks or the Coyote bartender's gig to play with his wife's privates play private eye with his wife. Or, hell, I'm still gobsmacked at what the Corpo "lifepath" follow-up quest turned out to be. And they actually paid Keanu Reeves to record lines for that thirty-second encounter.

Bottom line, that's actually a pervasive problem with CBP's quest structure, that so many of them are so barren in gameplay - most gigs are micromissions that you can only stretch past five minutes if you wanna ghost 'em, and then you've got so many other quests that boil down to "roleplaying" a sequence of canned dramatic scenes with little-to-no agency or involvement, not even pew-pew.

I'm all the more peeved to be thinking through this right now because I just completed Thief 2's final mission half an hour ago. Okay, it's not a fair comparison, I know they're altogether different beasts, but you can imagine my frustration at contrasting the gameplay-to-chatter ratio between these two.

 

[gurugeorge]

Seems like some modders overhauled gameplay.

FGR - Full Gameplay Rebalance

List:

• Removed scaling (not for immersion, this enables me to fix many bugs)
• Lowered crit chances
• Removed immunities (mostly) and replaced them with resistances
• AI Improvements and Enemy Balancing
• Armor and Armor Mods
• Cyberware
• Explosives
• Food Drink and Alcohol
• Gameplay Mechanics
• Healing and Drugs
• Melee
• Perks
• Loot
• Upgrading
• Player Stats
• Ranged Weapons
• Quickhacks
• Skillbooks
• Vendors and Pricing
• Weapon Mods
• XP and Gigs

For example one of those:

Removed Scaling

In the base game, both you and the enemies gain stats as you level up. Here's the base stats for V and enemies at level 1 and level 50 on Very Hard:

Level 1 V: 100 hp, 65-100 dps
Level 1 enemy: ~200 hp, 50 dps

Level 50 V: 345 hp, >5k dps
Level 50 enemy: >10k hp, 850 dps

As you can see, without any upgrades, V is much weaker than enemies at level 50 than they are at level 1.

This causes a number of issues, so I have removed this entirely. This is by far the largest change, and required a fair bit of reduction in perks, items, etc. that just flat out increased stats like damage, health, crit chance, etc.

But before that puts you off, here's the list of things I can fix when scaling is removed:

• NPC to NPC damage. Enemies do the same damage to V as they do to each other. But by the end of the game, the enemies have 30x health as V, so they don't do much damage to each other. This is the reason why your sidekick was always useless in fights, or why the cyberpsychosis quickhack was losing effectiveness, and a few other things.
• Explosive damage to V. The explosive barrels are designed to do damage to enemies, which, as stated above, have 30x hp as V. Hence why you would always get one shot by these things.
• V's damage to self. V's grenades did the same damage to enemies as they did to V, which is much more than V's health.
• Allows items and effects with constant stats to be useful: Despite much of the game being based around this scaling, many things weren't. Berserk's superhero landing damage for instance is a constant value. In the base game, it's ~500, which is nothing to an enemy with 10k hp. So were some iconic weapon effects, perks, and more than a few other things.
• More consistent gameplay. The game can't account for whether you know you can get a full set of legendary armor and armor mods before your first gig, or whether you're still running around with Yorinobu's clothing and pistol at level 20. The reason why there's so many big damage bonuses in the game like +100% melee damage here, +25% ranged damage there, is because these upgrades are all supposed to get washed out as you level up and the enemies just get more hp and damage. Hence the reason why these big bonuses had to be brought down. The end result is that the immediate bonus of a stat-increasing effect won't feel as powerful, but by the end of the game it'll feel the same.
• Fixes random non-scaled items and enemies. There's a bunch of enemies and items scattered around Night City that didn't have scaling applied to them. Now, it doesn't matter, and these won't feel any different than regular enemies and items.
• Allows me to implement enemy armor. Enemies don't really have armor. The only armor I could find in game was 10 for the exo-suits. Only 2-3 enemies in the game are in exo-suits. Armor reduction is by a constant value, so there's really no way to implement armor in a scaling-based game. Now, enemies have armor, and armor-related perks and effects should actually be useful.
• Consistent damages. Grenades, status effects, weakspots, enemy dps, quickhack damage, etc. These damage values were all over the place, and could change pretty drastically as you levelled up.
• Fix xp scaling. The level xp you get increases with the amount of health the enemy has. In the beginning of the game this was fine, but by the end, throwing some grenades at a group of Valentinos would get you 3x as much xp as a whole gig!

Goddammit that's the second time today that I've been pipped to the post by someone else posting about something I was going to post about.

I've been using this mod in my current playthrough and I think it's actually quite good. It's consistently as hard as you set it (which preset you choose) now, all sorts of things like armor make more sense and make a difference. Just generally less crappy and slapdash, more "proper." Married with the impactful fx, which were already great, it makes the combat quite a bit more enjoyable, and tweaks a lot of things throughout the game in a pretty sensible way (and if you don't think some particular change is sensible you can tweak it yourself). Even the itemization is less irritating.

Definitely recommend it. If the game had played like this on launch, there would have been less bellyaching about it.

I'm using it along with AI Netrunners Enhanced, which makes enemy netrunners actually function and be something you have to worry about (not to the point of irritation, but just enough to keep you on your toes), which in turn makes the game feel more "cyberpunky."

 

[AwesomeButton]

He does play his own game, quite often actually, on his Twitch stream, but the problem is that his head is so high up his ass that he can't take any form of criticism. When someone provides constructive criticism, they are either: a) banned by his fanboys b) completely ignored c) provided some asinine explanation of how they are wrong and don't understand how to design an immersive quest. The guy is a complete tool, so you can't expect him to know what's wrong with the game.

This is just one example from a few days ago, you can go through the clip archive and find many more. He always has these "whataboutism" explanations to deal with any form of criticism.
https://www.twitch.tv/pawesasko/clip/SmallVainChoughBudStar-GxbaG2ykE72JWlVK

Absolutely, this is something that often gets overlooked when we whine about CBP's quest design, but it's also a significant factor. At an abstract level, both TW3 and CBP 2077 play out the same routine - go to place, receive quest, do quest, get reward. But that TW3 dispenses said quest through a unique, on-site NPC, written to have their own stake in the affair, is a massive difference to CBP's cold-calling fixers. It makes the world feel more alive, populated by characters with their own affairs, rather than an automatron-ridden themepark. Sure, some of the NPCs in CBP's quests have their own stuff to say, but you can't escape the formulaic pattern that's been branded into your mind. And the kicker, all those logorrheic fixers clam up all of a sudden if you pay 'em a visit.

Bottom line, that's actually a pervasive problem with CBP's quest structure, that so many of them are so barren in gameplay - most gigs are micromissions that you can only stretch past five minutes if you wanna ghost 'em, and then you've got so many other quests that boil down to "roleplaying" a sequence of canned dramatic scenes with little-to-no agency or involvement, not even pew-pew.

I've written about these things but it was months ago.

The Witcher 3 sidequests (monster hunts, secondary quests) work the following way, and I think this has even been openly explained by developers at some point - the designer knows what systems are implemented in the game. Those are, let's see, combat, signs, dialogue, witcher senses, swimming, boxing, crafting, riding, riding-racing mode, etc. These systems are his toolset. He has to come up with a story from start to finish, which has to be finish-able in say 30 minutes, has to tie in with the setting and bigger story - whether it's happening in Novigrad, Beauclaire, or No Man's Land - and utilizes as many of these systems as would make sense. This is how Witcher 3 - The RPG Interactive Movie works.

The quest starts with some dialogue, then you ride somewhere, follow a scent, fight something, examine something, go somewhere else, have more dialogue, the NPC gets mad, you do boxing, more dialogue, more riding, final fight. The quest "A princess in distress" is a prime example.

It's a roller coaster or a theme park design, where the designer switches between various distractions on regular basis, so the player is always curios about the next thing, without getting him bored. There never is a real threat gameplay-wise, in the sense that you would die or fail the quest - at least on Normal difficulty.

CP77 is sorely missing this kind of design, which, retarded as it sounds when you analyze it, provided for hundreds of hours of casual fun. Combined with the writing and acting of characters, it is what made Witcher 3 everyone's favorite western-made Japanese-style popamole.

In CP77 you either have completely lifeless gigs which you described. They may incoprporate combat and hacking or lockpicking, but everything else feels like attacking a raider outpost in Fallout 3/4. On the other hand you have the multiple-stages secondary quests like "I fought the Law" or "Sinnerman", which feel frustraitingly on rails. In fact playing through these felt like playing an earlier game than Witcher 3, where the Witcher 3 approach was still experimented with and was in the early stages of perfecting. So that's what they need to bring back to breathe some life into Cyberpunk 77. I doubt it's possible, but we'll see I guess.

 

[Gargaune]

In CP77 you either have completely lifeless gigs which you described. They may incoprporate combat and hacking or lockpicking, but everything else feels like attacking a raider outpost in Fallout 3/4. On the other hand you have the multiple-stages secondary quests like "I fought the Law" or "Sinnerman", which feel frustraitingly on rails. In fact playing through these felt like playing an earlier game than Witcher 3, where the Witcher 3 approach was still experimented with and was in the early stages of perfecting. So that's what they need to bring back to breathe some life into Cyberpunk 77. I doubt it's possible, but we'll see I guess.

Agreed, and this is why I've argued that the only way to "save" Cyberpunk 2077 is with a quality expansion, preferably a self-contained one which can appropriately tackle mission and level design from the ground up in a very different manner from the base game. Patches can improve some features and fix interfaces, but they won't fundamentally change the disappointing nature of the core experience.

 

[racofer]

but everything else feels like attacking a raider outpost in Fallout 3/4

Patches can improve some features and fix interfaces, but they won't fundamentally change the disappointing nature of the core experience.

Only LoversLab has the perseverance, manpower, expertise, and the creativity to transform Cyberpunk 2077 into a game that will stand the test of time and transcend its limitations.

I do not believe they are willing to do it, though.

 

[blessed king of longing]

It's now confirmed, they have no idea what they're doing with this game. At least they admit it, so something can still be salvaged, maybe.

https://www.gamebyte.com/cyberpunk-2077-wants-your-feedback-on-its-quests/

All the feedback already exists, all they have to do is go through this thread or any other thread where people discussed what pissed them off and what they liked. Asking people 1 year after they played the game is kind of retarded.
If I was a dev I would be pouring over it every single day and see what I could have done better

 

[Trans-Financial-Man]

It's now confirmed, they have no idea what they're doing with this game. At least they admit it, so something can still be salvaged, maybe.

https://www.gamebyte.com/cyberpunk-2077-wants-your-feedback-on-its-quests/

All the feedback already exists, all they have to do is go through this thread or any other thread where people discussed what pissed them off and what they liked. Asking people 1 year after they played the game is kind of retarded.
If I was a dev I would be pouring over it every single day and see what I could have done better

Having had personal dealings with former CDPR devs I think the main issue was they kept hiring amateurs who didn't know what they were doing and thus couldn't even understand any criticism. Which is why Pawel here is so clueless. He doesn't have the experience to actually deal with criticism properly. In a well run dev that man wouldn't be in charge of anything due to his clear lack of experience but after the first few great migrations of CDPR staff they were left with shit and decided to raise up whoever was left. Then hire the diversity hires.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Agreed, and this is why I've argued that the only way to "save" Cyberpunk 2077 is with a quality expansion, preferably a self-contained one which can appropriately tackle mission and level design from the ground up in a very different manner from the base game. Patches can improve some features and fix interfaces, but they won't fundamentally change the disappointing nature of the core experience.

There is another fundamental disadvantage that CP77 suffers from, and that can't be compesanted. The player can't ever develop the same kind of attachment to V as he could to Geralt, because the game is first-person and the character himself is a blank slate. This is so huge that I can't understand how CDPR have overlooked it when they decided to make Cyberpunk first person.

Witcher 3 was after all the functional assassin's creed formula, with the important addition of well developed characters that grew on the player after a while. CDPR removed this part with CP77 and expected the attachment to the main character to somehow still happen.

 

[racofer]

Agreed, and this is why I've argued that the only way to "save" Cyberpunk 2077 is with a quality expansion, preferably a self-contained one which can appropriately tackle mission and level design from the ground up in a very different manner from the base game. Patches can improve some features and fix interfaces, but they won't fundamentally change the disappointing nature of the core experience.

There is another fundamental disadvantage that CP77 suffers from, and that can't be compesanted. The player can't ever develop the same kind of attachment to V as he could to Geralt, because the game is first-person and the character himself is a blank slate. This is so huge that I can't understand how CDPR have overlooked it when they decided to make Cyberpunk first person.

Witcher 3 was after all the functional assassin's creed formula, with the important addition of well developed characters that grew on the player after a while. CDPR removed this part with CP77 and expected the attachment to the main character to somehow still happen.

And don't forget: the first batch of DLC is bunch of cosmetics for a strictly first person game.

 

[gurugeorge]

but everything else feels like attacking a raider outpost in Fallout 3/4

Patches can improve some features and fix interfaces, but they won't fundamentally change the disappointing nature of the core experience.

Only LoversLab has the perseverance, manpower, expertise, and the creativity to transform Cyberpunk 2077 into a game that will stand the test of time and transcend its limitations.

I do not believe they are willing to do it, though.

lol, last I checked in, they were sitting around polishing their nails re. CP2077, because it doesn't yet have the necessary tools. That looks like it's changing slowly, but it will probably take some time yet. The closest you can get to anything, ahem, interesting, is using the still-janky (but always slowly improving) third person mod and this decent but fiddly to install (unless you're using MO2, which now supports the game, plus the mod's FOMOD) body mod. There are also mods that restore the uncensored versions of the ads and the NPC clothing (not really all that different). Spawn0 also has a mod that makes the kinkier clothing some of the NPCs have available to the player.

I offer the fruit of my forensic investigations purely in the interests of science, of course

 

[Gargaune]

There is another fundamental disadvantage that CP77 suffers from, and that can't be compesanted. The player can't ever develop the same kind of attachment to V as he could to Geralt, because the game is first-person and the character himself is a blank slate. This is so huge that I can't understand how CDPR have overlooked it when they decided to make Cyberpunk first person.

I don't believe that's the main thing here, I think there's a subtler but more serious conflict. Sure, the cinematic presentation of third-person can help in some respects, and you've got Deus Ex as a good example of striking a balance, but then you've also got titles like Thief, exclusively first-person with no plot agency, and yet Garret's still a more engaging protagonist. The rub, I think, is in the writing...

Consider this - what do Geralt of Rivia, JC Denton, Adam Jensen and even Garret all have in common? No, really, take a moment to think about it before you read on. Okay? Right, well if you answered "they're all stoic types", you're right on the money. The way these characters speak, what they say and how they say it, presents them as reserved, calculated, even-tempered individuals, which creates a fictional space between what they're saying and why they're saying it, a space for the player to insert themselves into. So even as Geralt has far more backstory and established relationships, his measured, often laconic mannerisms allow the player to put their own spin on interpreting the character's inner processes, on "what he's actually thinking."

This is not the case with Cyberpunk's protagonist, who is consistently impulsive and extroverted. While lacking much of a personal history, V's character is right there on the page - Stupid Asshole™. And if you can't relate to that, well, tough luck, there's no room for you to read things differently. And while I can understand that this sort of scumbag archetype goes well with a cyberpunk story in general, it can be a really bad fit for a videogame promising character agency. So even though V's role is well performed, plenty of players will have trouble investing themselves into that role.

To sum up, if you're gonna have a fully-acted protagonist in the context of an RPG, you're best off making them the strong, silent type, because with a stoic PC, less is literally more. Have I already made this argument? I forget. It's a big thread. I'll probably make it again at some point.

 

[gurugeorge]

There is another fundamental disadvantage that CP77 suffers from, and that can't be compesanted. The player can't ever develop the same kind of attachment to V as he could to Geralt, because the game is first-person and the character himself is a blank slate. This is so huge that I can't understand how CDPR have overlooked it when they decided to make Cyberpunk first person.

I don't believe that's the main thing here, I think there's a subtler but more serious conflict. Sure, the cinematic presentation of third-person can help in some respects, and you've got Deus Ex as a good example of striking a balance, but then you've also got titles like Thief, exclusively first-person with no plot agency, and yet Garret's still a more engaging protagonist. The rub, I think, is in the writing...

Consider this - what do Geralt of Rivia, JC Denton, Adam Jensen and even Garret all have in common? No, really, take a moment to think about it before you read on. Okay? Right, well if you answered "they're all stoic types", you're right on the money. The way these characters speak, what they say and how they say it, presents them as reserved, calculated, even-tempered individuals, which creates a fictional space between what they're saying and why they're saying it, a space for the player to insert themselves into. So even as Geralt has far more backstory and established relationships, his measured, often laconic mannerisms allow the player to put their own spin on interpreting the character's inner processes, on "what he's actually thinking."

This is not the case with Cyberpunk's protagonist, who is consistently impulsive and extroverted. While lacking much of a personal history, V's character is right there on the page - Stupid Asshole™. And if you can't relate to that, well, tough luck, there's no room for you to read things differently. And while I can understand that this sort of scumbag archetype goes well with a cyberpunk story in general, it can be a really bad fit for a videogame promising character agency. So even though V's role is well performed, plenty of players will have trouble investing themselves into that role.

To sum up, if you're gonna have a fully-acted protagonist in the context of an RPG, you're best off making them the strong, silent type, because with a stoic PC, less is literally more. Have I already made this argument? I forget. It's a big thread. I'll probably make it again at some point.

Excellent observation.

The problem with V is that the character is far too defined by the voice actors' interpretation of some very detailed and specific dialogue text, so you basically can really only create 2 Vs, male and female, each in a slightly more bolshy or less bolshy flavour (depending on whether you pick mild-mannered or bolshy responses - but often the response you think is going to be mild-mannered is also pretty bolshy ).

As a player, one feels quite railroaded into being a pretty specific V in only those 4 flavours, whereas, as you say, with laconic/stoic character writing and voice acting, it's much more open to interpretation and subtlety.

 

[ADL]

You can see the Full Game Rebalance in this video and I highly suggest his mod list. Mods like FGR and Immersive Roleplay show that there is absolutely something worth salvaging here.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LSlbfonhlGqt0tCg9O5ieuzTw_HHVVOs8gEJ1Q4T6mk/edit?usp=sharing

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

I think the game is actually more broken after all the updates. Seems slower and has more errors for me compared to release.

 

[gurugeorge]

You can see the Full Game Rebalance in this video and I highly suggest his mod list. Mods like FGR and Immersive Roleplay show that there is absolutely something worth salvaging here.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LSlbfonhlGqt0tCg9O5ieuzTw_HHVVOs8gEJ1Q4T6mk/edit?usp=sharing

Yep, after a bit of experimentation in the past week, I settled on virtually the same modlist myself. It's good - well, actually it's the only collection of mods that does anything similar. It's the first true modding setup that improves the game as a whole.

Anybody out there who likes the setting and scenario but was disappointed by the gameplay should give this modlist a try, or at the very least install the FGR and crack open an old save to see what's what.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Right, well if you answered "they're all stoic types", you're right on the money.

I get what you mean, but I was going to answer "they're all someone's take on Batman, who is someone's take on the Man with No Name, who goes back to american folklore about the lone hero, and ultmately to the archetype of the knight-errant".

Personally, I've always felt a connection to "the cynical master thief", probably because I played the game in my teenage years and never tried to add my interpretation to his character as I played, if anything I was trying to roleplay to fit what I knew about his character.

Also, if comparing to Garrett specifically, don't overlook his expositions which reveal much about his character (I'm only talking about the first two games). He is way more developed than V. I don't know if the same can be said about JC. I don't remember anyone ever being particularly excited about JC as a character.

 

[Gargaune]

I get what you mean, but I was going to answer "they're all someone's take on Batman, who is someone's take on the Man with No Name, who goes back to american folklore about the lone hero, and ultmately to the archetype of the knight-errant".

Beats "they all speak in a gravelly tone", which is the first commonality I expect along that line of enquiry.

Also, if comparing to Garrett specifically, don't overlook his expositions which reveal much about his character (I'm only talking about the first two games). He is way more developed than V. I don't know if the same can be said about JC. I don't remember anyone ever being particularly excited about JC as a character.

And that's it, JC's not a particularly exciting character, but he's a great Player Character. He gives you that room to squeeze in behind his "too self-sufficient" facade and achieve a workable sense of identity in spite of being fully voice-acted. As for Garret, he's more of a stretch in my argument (which is why I prefaced him with "even"), but he does carry the point that the stoic character is more inviting for the player to project their own interpretations onto. In contrast to V, all heart-on-sleeve and whose behaviour can easily conflict with how the player's comfortable reading a given situation.

 

[tritosine2k]

https://www.gamesradar.com/ride-4-developers-viral-video/

<-- C2077 team sure saw this by now . Now the interesting question becomes if other weather states don't work this well (apparently not), yet this is working well, because overcast day has certain brightness/luminance profile (compressed?) that fits current crop of flatscreens better . Then next crop can do this with other weather (not to mention , the head movement stuff can be offset by other means).

In any case ,wouldn't hurt the '2077 franchise if it would be less of a "muh pampered car" thing than <insert preference> 'bike thing



...

 

[ADL]

Speaking of weather states I downloaded this weather probability rebalance mod today and in one hour of play with a couple time skips, I'm already seeing weather conditions that I never saw in my original 75 hour playthrough. Also I've already encountered three netrunners in the open world as a result of the AI Netrunners Enhanced mod. That's more netrunners than the entirety of my original playthrough where I only encountered two of them in the Maelstrom meat packing plant during the E3 playthrough quest at the start of the game with Jackie. That issue is particularly annoying because I spent a perk point on being able to see netrunners hacking into my cyberware in a game with no respec functionality and it was only used in one quest throughout the entire game. Now that perk is extremely valuable.
https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077/mods/3196?tab=description
https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077/mods/2468?tab=description

Something about this game is really fucked and calling it now there's one line of code that needs to be fixed and it'll fix the game Aliens Colonial Marines style.
https://archive.is/v5YNu

 

[AwesomeButton]

And that's it, JC's not a particularly exciting character, but he's a great Player Character. He gives you that room to squeeze in behind his "too self-sufficient" facade and achieve a workable sense of identity in spite of being fully voice-acted. As for Garret, he's more of a stretch in my argument (which is why I prefaced him with "even"), but he does carry the point that the stoic character is more inviting for the player to project their own interpretations onto. In contrast to V, all heart-on-sleeve and whose behaviour can easily conflict with how the player's comfortable reading a given situation.

Yeah, it's indisputable that a character who is predicated on being less emotional would serve best as a player character, as opposed to a character whose emotional response to situations the player would have to observe. This somewhat locks game writers into specific main characters and as a consequence specific plot lines that fit those main characters.

BTW, this is something I've been making fun of in Geralt's characterisation, usually in conversations I'm having with my wife, who is my main gaming buddy IRL. I was telling her, notice how traditional masculine values are taught through videogame characters - the protagonist is always as stoic as it gets. This is either as a feature of his character, or as a result of a surgical/"genetic"/"magical" intervention - Geralt "doesn't have emotions" because of the mutations, JC Denton cannot smile, because of the nanoaugmentations. Being a superhero is associated with controlling your emotions, when it comes to men. "Boys don't cry". Sometimes you have to explain these things to women.

Edit: Actually, I remember we were discussing specifically the similarities in the structure and the main characters in Witcher 3 and "The Mandalorian". Sidequests structured like a tv show episodes, but also the main plot being about tracking down a person. My point was that this isn't a case of the show copying from games (like Westworld was openly doing), but both the game and show are coming fom a common root.

One more difficulty for Cyberpunk to struggle with - you have to have a strong silent type male character and a somewhat more emotional female main character, both going through the same main story. I'd say this is a great opportunity, if the developer had the resources to spend on making them different.