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

[TheDiceMustRoll]

Use smart weapons. They are the equivalent of "Win button". It's the only thing that made the combat bearable.

Hacking can allow you evade almost all armed combat, but it requires you to upgrade your cyberware and quickhacks, in addition to increasing your intelligence ability score and selecting useful perks in the subsidiary breach protocol and quickhacking skill trees.

CDPR stole the backstory for Cyberpunk 2077 from the Cyberpunk 2013 Welcome to Night City sourcebook, but they couldn't be bothered to implement anything from the RPG ruleset.

Lengthy text and spoilers below the fold.

Cyberpunk 2013: Welcome to Night City

unironically most, if not all of the main abilities are pure win button. hacking literally has a "make enemy commit suicide button" and I just fought Oda on the hardest difficulty by setting him on fire and doing reboot synapse until he died. its very very easy to dodge shit in this game lol

my melee build was the same, I think Oda was the first enemy in the game I fought that I didnt get the "insta kill" for my strong attack. The only time I tended to die was usually from a really strong grenade or, if I'm very lucky, one of those snipers shooting me through cover while I sucked back a heal. Once I got stamina + health back per kill I basically didnt need to stop moving.

Which is good! If you go "all-in" on hacking, or reflex, or body, you're going to become hilariously, stupidly overpowered and that's a good thing. Trying to make a balanced build will guaranteed fuck up your good time. There's also a shitload of terrible, terrible perks that seem to be in there just to fuck with you

 

[AwesomeButton]

Post yo Vees

 

[markec]

 

[Mefi]

Bugs aside, how the game actually is? Especially story-wise?

Variable. Overall I think it's a 6 or 7 out of 10 game buried beneath a lot of jankiness and rushed 'it'll do' systems and mechanics. I've found some of the writing in the side quests to be pretty compelling and interesting at times, and those quests are far superior to a large number of those in the main quest line.

The actual main story is as variable in quality as the game itself, it kind of works so long as you don't pick too hard at some of the details and can see the contrasts it's trying to play with. The characters are generally done alright - there's nice touches in how they acknowledge V's presence with their head movement etc. although even romance interests haven't been particularly memorable. Silverhands is more interesting but Reeves reading of his script is as all over the place as everything else. At times Reeves can really sell the character, and there's others where it sounds like he's just tired of reading the crap in front of him. When the writing and technical side and voice acting are on point, it really works well. It just isn't frequent enough to really lift the game as a whole.

I've only seen two of the endings so far and both were alright as epilogues although both left a fair amount hanging with a little hint of dragging just that little bit too much. The little vignettes of past characters at the end are also a nice touch which are well done. I don't think the game handles some of its themes particularly well, or explores in them any meaningful way - gets a bit 'when they're dead they're just hookers' with the amount of snuff movies and dead joytoys, but there are a couple of more interesting themes related to cyberpunk it tries to pick at and I thought were much better written than the endless body count quests. Did eventually come to appreciate trying to write cyberpunk stories about the influence of aspects of the soceity on the individual level, and playing with ideas around agency and complicity.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Ok, so apparently this little brain fart's snuck its way into the 1.05 patch:
This really is one of the absolute stupidest things CDPR could do. Ostensibly, it's to protect players from fucking up their own game (and then presumably go shrieking for a refund), but it will double up as removing one of the main avenues for the modding community to provide easy fixes and workarounds for common bugs on PC. Imagine playing a Bethesda game without a debug console...

I haven't had many bugs in my twenty hours of play and I've never even tried the debug console, but knowing it was there meant that, eventually, you'd be able to fall back onto it if you needed to. Removing it is like enabling Ironman mode for bugs.

I've tried to keep a level head when discussing CDPR's Cyberpunk screwups, but there comes a point where you have to wonder what the fuck their cafeteria's lacing those vegan meals with.

This makes me wonder if there isn't a high rate of refunds on PC as well. Otherwise it makes no sense to go so paranoid as to disable the console which is only used on PC. I'm sorry mostly because it would slow down modders, though I guess there are still workarounds like modding on an unupdated version or switching the exe file with an older one.

P.S. Paging AwesomeButton:

Well, I was pretty sure that was the case, both from having witnessed Bethesda's ini files full of unused properties, from the comment inside that csv that was explicitly saying that "-1" means the above lines are ignored, and from the "discoverer" of the csv file who apparently believed that increasing the pagefile can make your gpu go faster. It's hilarious how many dunces took the placebo and believed it.

Bought the official game guide of Amazon. It's thicker than the one for The Witcher 3. It seems there is a lot of hand placed loot around NC. On the map there are also a few metro stations not present in the game (while other have been converted to fast travel points). Another removed feature, possibly late in development.

I find the layout of the city general quite confusing. There are too many levels one on top of the others. The map is useless. However, there's no denying that the art team did a good job, something I cannot say for other areas of this gmae. It may be explained by the fact that while managers constantly meddled into the game direction, gameplay and scope, the 3D artist simply continued to do their humble job unmolested.

I was considering getting it but knowing how much of the game is subject to change dissuaded me. I got a coupon for a Witcher 3 prima e-guide and I can say I liked that a lot more, though their web app is pretty bad.

 

[wyes gull]

Obligatory GAMERS IN 1998- Fallout 2 ctds every single time you meet Horrigan in an unskippable encounter in the first 2 hours and you don't download a patch bc they're not a thing as far as you know. And the internet is slower than your retarded cousin. And you don't remember how many minutes you have left before they cut you off. And gozilla isn't a thing either. So you find a different PC to play the goat on.

Yeah yeah, old man yells at clouds. Millenials can suck a dick tho.
Ed- Inb4 chess by mail in 1850.

 

[mondblut]

And yes, replacing genitals at will with whatever fits the mood tonight is as transhumanist as replacing hands. It does fit the setting.

No, setting is not about this. Replacing genitals only has somehtig common with asylums, not transhumanis and implants and future.
Being able to do something doesn't mean you have to do it.
The sooner you will understand that, the sooner you realize the hoax.

I am gonna get a second pair of hands, military grade rollerblades for feet and the gulls for underwater breathing, but do not ever touch muh short fleshy dik, the centerpiece of muh identity! When I'm gonna get digitized and uploaded into the virtual afterlife, this dik is coming with me!11

I could admire your dedication to some specific fleshy bits, but I expect most of humanity will take a more pragmatic approach, given time.

 

[S.H.O.D.A.N.]

I just found a smashed up car in the middle of nowhere, with a dead body beside it, and a Militech drone patrolling the area. In the car, I found a perk shard - the single most valuable piece of gear you can find in the game, beside the iconic weapons I guess.

The location was not marked. It wasn't a crime spot, it wasn't a fixer job. It was just there, waiting for the player to come wandering.

So I guess CDPR know they can have content that the player is expected to find, they just... refuse to utilize it?

 

[AwesomeButton]

Gargaune take a look at this "specialized benchmark site": https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/new-mod-for-cyberpunk-2077-optimizes-ram-buffer-pools.html

The raytracing effects in the game look pretty cool, the game performance overall however remains to be a mystery. In that mindset a mod has been released, as it turns out, the PC version of the game has the same CPU and GPU memory pool as on the console.

With the "RAM Pool Optimizer" developer Darktear presents a free mod for Cyberpunk 2077 that will remove the limits of the game in terms of RAM and VRAM. The current and next-gen game consoles are currently responsible for the action game's limited memory usage. The developer provides numerous preconfigured versions of his tool, which range from configurations with 8 GB RAM and 1 GB VRAM to 64 GB RAM and 24 GB VRAM and thus also "high-end" graphics accelerators such as the GeForce RTX 3090 can be re-configured better matching your PC specs.

Seems the CPU and GPU pool is right from the Consoles, yet most PC have way more RAM. Try this, it can improve performance.

Darktear, RAM pool optimizer

A configurable version is available, which gives experienced users the opportunity to make appropriate settings themselves and to adapt them individually to the main memory and the graphics card of their own system.

• The mod is simple to apply" Download, (requires a free user account).
• Then the modified file "memory_pool_budgets.csv" only needs to be copied into the folder "cyberpunk 2077 \ engine \ config" and the original file replaced.
• Making a backup of the original file is recommended.

It has to be stated that many people already tried this mod, however with little performance increases.

 

[TheDiceMustRoll]

Steam says I'm at 92 hours.

Good
Story is alright, the animations for the characters is on a whole other level, lots of very subtle things in the facial animations, excited/impatient characters bobbing their knees, etc
the bandit camps and side gigs are great, each of them is a small little morsel of gameplay and most of them are deus-exy in that they allow you to do shit like approach from different angles. i cannot state enough how much fun it is to discover alternate routes for what is presented as a "walk in the front door" scenario.
once you get the double jump cyberware the game is basically a different game. you need to sneak into arasaka's warehouse at one point. tense stealth one playthrough 1, hilarious "leap over all the rooftops" game in the other two playthroughs. I have a cyberware mod in my current playthrough that blinds anyone who detects me in stealth for 40 seconds.
There's so many broken skills and abilities in this game and CDPR just kind of lets you break the game, they really don't seem to mind.
it's great that basically every build is viable

Bad
Phonecalls. make it so you can't sprint, jump as high, use your double jump, etc. They happen constnatly and I am STILL getting called 44.5 hours into this run. Just. Fucking. Enough.
Story mode is full of boring console sequences, include two unskippable moments where you play as Johnny with a 'one-shot kill' gun. Replays aren't good either, lots and lots of turret sequences, "shoot the car as it drives after you" and hammering the "skip ahead" button since dialogue options barely matter
No rocket/grenade launchers (whyyyyyyyyy)
vehicles are floaty and terrible, driving around night city is a pain in the ass sometimes, requiring long pointless detours to get to something 100m away.
lack of reactivity annoying as hell, can run around pacifica killing voodoo boys and then take quests from them with zero reactivity

overall the storymode stuff is basically any generic console AAA game - fun to play and interesting ONCE, but the real meat of the game is all of the smaller quests scattered around the map that are built with multiple entrances and exits (this is not present in the story quests)

 

[TheDiceMustRoll]

I just found a smashed up car in the middle of nowhere, with a dead body beside it, and a Militech drone patrolling the area. In the car, I found a perk shard - the single most valuable piece of gear you can find in the game, beside the iconic weapons I guess.

The location was not marked. It wasn't a crime spot, it wasn't a fixer job. It was just there, waiting for the player to come wandering.

So I guess CDPR know they can have content that the player is expected to find, they just... refuse to utilize it?

that one's near the minefield, yes?

 

[S.H.O.D.A.N.]

that one's near the minefield, yes?

Fuck if I know. There were cacti around, so out of city limits. The shard was in the trunk.

Found it. A marsh like area halfway between Sunset Motel and some sort of refinery on Edgewood Lane, to the right of the road.

No cacti tho.

 

[mondblut]

The business model is now just letting the world beta test your game for "free."

 

[orcinator]

Which is good! If you go "all-in" on hacking, or reflex, or body, you're going to become hilariously, stupidly overpowered and that's a good thing. Trying to make a balanced build will guaranteed fuck up your good time.

Making the already easy gameplay even more braindead isn't really a plus. This isn't a game with builds, this is a game with preferences.


Also a "balanced" build becomes plenty OP as soon as you start outscaling the enemies, things just die somewhat slower.

 

[kangaxx]

I just found a smashed up car in the middle of nowhere, with a dead body beside it, and a Militech drone patrolling the area. In the car, I found a perk shard - the single most valuable piece of gear you can find in the game, beside the iconic weapons I guess.

The location was not marked. It wasn't a crime spot, it wasn't a fixer job. It was just there, waiting for the player to come wandering.

So I guess CDPR know they can have content that the player is expected to find, they just... refuse to utilize it?

I've also found a few random sites in the badlands with dead bodies, data shard with a conversation, nice items etc. Quite a nice touch, probably better they didn't overdo it though.

 

[ChildInTime]

 

[AwesomeButton]

OMG you can't make this shit up:
Bonus points for his nickname.

 

[mondblut]

Some people say that with patch 1.04 some NPCs have been censored. It also looks like censoring the game further *might* be a consideration at CDPR HQ judging by the admission that first-person censorship is not a bug and this from the 1.05 changelog:

• V appears more modest in the inventory preview after the half year montage

Ofc that last one might mean something else entirely, but if true, it looks like CDPR might be walking back on one of the few things from marketting that remained in the game, namely the T&A.

Maybe his dick is no longer sticking through his pants? There goes the value of the game...

 

[ChildInTime]

OMG you can't make this shit up:
Bonus points for his nickname.

Were people really expecting some real life level simulator of dark future with metal hands and waifus galore?

 

[Turjan]

Also a "balanced" build becomes plenty OP as soon as you start outscaling the enemies, things just die somewhat slower.

At which level would this be? While Watson ranges more or less between "very low" and "moderate" for me now, City Center and Heywood are pretty much at "very high" throughout, Biotechnica Flats at "high". At what level do you surpass the more difficult areas?

 

[S.H.O.D.A.N.]

Quite a nice touch, probably better they didn't overdo it though.

But now I have to wonder, are those things in the city too? You know, like, NEXT TO all the question marks?

Fuck, have I been conditioned not to look for the truth by all the question marks? Have I become complicit to the question mark?

 

[Robber Baron]

OMG you can't make this shit up:
Bonus points for his nickname.

Yep, still can't use those gorilla arms in any sex encounters wtf

 

[AwesomeButton]

Were people really expecting some real life level simulator of dark future with metal hands and waifus galore?

My favorite subset of "darkusers" are those who pretend to be fighting the decline of the West while taking nude pics of their V in photomode: "Please CDPR, don't you dare make panties obligatory in photomode! The fate of Western Civilization is no laughing matter!"

 

[Sigourn]

Were people really expecting some real life level simulator of dark future with metal hands and waifus galore?

Many people were expecting GTA VI and Second Life rolled up into one.

 

[orcinator]

Also a "balanced" build becomes plenty OP as soon as you start outscaling the enemies, things just die somewhat slower.

At which level would this be? While Watson ranges more or less between "very low" and "moderate" for me now, City Center and Heywood are pretty much at "very high" throughout, Biotechnica Flats at "high". At what level do you surpass the more difficult areas?

The highest level mooks I saw were like lv38 or something, probably goes up to 40 and some stuff scales with you. For me the decline in difficulty started around level 18.