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

[Fenix]

Czech man like Vavra would have no problem shitting on a polish product if he really wanted to, they make shit like this

I didn't get first one at all, but second one is pretty understandable ahah.

 

[Yosharian]

Yeah it is dumb that the game signals that you're dying while simultaneously giving you infinite time to do side quests, I remember wondering about that myself, like well am I on a time limit or not FFS

 

[AwesomeButton]

The one thing the game does brilliantly, even innovatively, is the first person cinematics and immersion. If it were to break that, it would seem jarring and cheap. It would also hurt the game's central theme of Johnny Silverhand's being inside V's head to disorienting degrees.

Lol. Play Far Cry 2 please. For me CP77's first person animations get old eventually. The game could have been made to work with switching to 3rd person dialogues for the more dramatic story moments, where some expression of emotion from the main character would have helped. Instead we have overacting from the voice actors.

Well, that's the thing - a voiced protag's way of speech will invariably be more suited to certain kinds of characters. Which is all fine and dandy in cases of premade protagonists such as Geralt or Shepherd in which dialogue choices amount to you choosing the protagonist's thoughts at a given moment (which serve to reinforce the premade personality and not to rewrite it) rather than fundamentally deciding on *your* character's outlook, but it is very limiting for blank slate characters and leads to restrictive dialogue choices to fit with the overall 'vibe' of the voice actor which in turn have to be as neutral as possible in order not to break immersion due to the flow of the lines that you've chosen (e.g. it is less immersive to pick and choose options which aren't of the same 'mood' during a conversation in Dragon Age 2 since witty, aggressive and diplomatic options usually are quite distinct in speech style and do not mesh together well).

V is never really "your character" any more than Geralt was. That has been my whole point - the compromises on C&C and on the characterisation of the main character lead us to an outcome that has all the disadvantages and none of the advantages of either of the two decisions.

with a game like Cyberpunk, where there is a great rift between its main story and side quests

I'm able to compartmentalize the main story from the side quests and suspend disbelief.

I will have fun as much as possible playing the side gigs, and then, when I get bored, I'll think "OK, time for more story," and go play the story like I haven't been just slaughtering 1,000 people at the behest of some random fixer that calls me constantly to do menial jobs.

I know this argument, I have made it myself and I agree with it - in an open world game the player is partly the director of his own interactive movie. I've said this for KCD, for RDR2 and for Witcher 3. And if the movie feels boring and disjointed and disproportionately leaning in some direction - this is at least partly the "director-player"'s fault.

What I am regretting here, however, is exactly that CDPR tried to fit two games of different genres into one and in the end neither of the two games is anything remarkable, even if they functionally "work". Far Cry/Fallout 4 has never been remarkable in the first place, it's a time waster, consisting of repetitive activities which are only good as long as they give the player an emotional high, without challenging his thinking. As for the interactive movie part - Witcher 3 is a vastly superior interactive movie for reasons I've described above.

I'm not arguing that making an interactive movie isn't a monumental task, much more complex than making an actual movie. But the final verdict I have on CP77 is that the great ambitions were not fulfilled due to a mismanaged project, lack of creative direction and meddling from the high-level management.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Yeah it is dumb that the game signals that you're dying while simultaneously giving you infinite time to do side quests, I remember wondering about that myself, like well am I on a time limit or not FFS

Why does it always have to be dying though? It feels like the more fake the urgency in a game, the more urgent the premise

Becoming progressively more powerful while "dying", due to the nonexistent balance, is another mindfuck that the player is graciously expected to cope with.

 

[gurugeorge]

Yeah it is dumb that the game signals that you're dying while simultaneously giving you infinite time to do side quests, I remember wondering about that myself, like well am I on a time limit or not FFS

It's quite funny actually, on my first character I was so into the presentation of the main story that I really took Vik's phrase of "two weeks tops" seriously.

TWO WEEKS TOPS??? OMG I BETTER GET MY FINGER OUT OF MY ARSE AND FIGURE OUT THIS CHIP PROBLEM!!! And on that first character I did absolutely zero open world stuff, and only a few side-quests, only focusing on the 3 MQ parts, getting as far as finishing the first phases of the 3 main branches. In fact, I had almost no cognizance that there was an open world aspect to the game at all up to that point. I assiduously met Takemura on the very evening I got his message to meet, etc., etc.

And I think in some ways that first playthrough was actually a pristine, innocent experience with a high level of engagement and immersion - as some have said, you could have easily made the whole game like that, without any open world aspect, without much in the way of side-levelling reqs, and it would have been a fine cinematic action adventure experience.

But then I discovered the open world, and realized there's no actual time limitations - and that spoiled the experience somewhat (although there was compensating fun in doing the open world stuff).

 

[Yosharian]

Yeah that's the whole game in a nutshell, starting out innocently believing that this is an actual world that one can get immersed in, and then having that immersion destroyed by bugs, inconsistent storytelling, shitty AI, game-ruining balance issues, nonsensical characters, stupid Easter eggs, hilarious 'physics', etc

 

[raz3r]

Gonna post my opinion on this game after 53.4 hours. No, I haven't finished the game, I just barely completed Act 1 and have been doing a shitload of side quests.

I like it so far, I love the world, I love to get lost in Night City and just wander around with no real goal. Bear in mind I have a big thing for immersive sims, Deus Ex is my favorite game and believe it or not sometimes around Night City I managed to get the same vibes. First person camera helps A LOT, sure they could have used a hybrid solution with third person during some cutscenes but personally I don't really mind.

Gameplay wise there are so many different builds to try, so to answer the question people asked in the other thread yes, I do believe this is an RPG. Mechanics are there, sure maybe the implementation ain't great but the world building is fine and allows for multiple solutions at any time. What really needs some love in the upcoming patches is the AI. I've been playing a full stealth character so that doesn't really impact my experience that much, but whenever I try something different or out of the ordinary the AI reacts so weirdly that in comparison NSF guards in Deus Ex are super smart.

Graphically speaking the game is simply amazing, sure I have an RX6800 so that helps a lot, I even played a while on GeForce Now with RTX and my oh my some parts of Night City are gorgeous.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

V is never really "your character" any more than Geralt was.

V is more akin to the Warden in DAO - lifepaths instead of origins, but otherwise a blank slate. Although since someone has previously mentioned DAI ITT, I guess that the latter would be a more apt comparison since the protagonist of that game is not only a blank slate with different origins depending on one's choice of race, but also voice acted. And while I do think that voice acting is generally a bad fit for a blank slate character, it can also synergize with it (particularly when taking into account the whole 'cinematic experience' shtick of the game).

That has been my whole point - the compromises on C&C and on the characterisation of the main character lead us to an outcome that has all the disadvantages and none of the advantages of either of the two decisions.

I don't think that CDPR compromised by balancing between these two. The game was simply rushed ergo the barebones implementation of lifepaths and the general lack of narrative interweaving between side quests both between themselves and with the main quest(s).

 

[GrainWetski]

First we praised Fallout 4, now Dragon Age: Inquisition looks more advanced and actual role-playing game in front of Cyberpunk 2077. So what's going on inside CDPR?

Same thing that happened to every other developer that became too popular for its own good. Gotta appeal to more and more people which means stripping the games of any modicum of depth, not that their games were ever deep to begin with but now they're just generic action games. Story as old as the gaming industry.

They're also slowly being taken over by danger hairs/Americunts.

 

[Terenty]

People discussing builds in this game


You don't need to build anything here. I speced into assault and started steamrolling everything at level 10. Then just to inject any kind of fun in the experience i decided to switch to stealth with the same character and without spending any points it was still easy as fuck, because the AI and their patrol routes are fucking retarded.

And about the first person view:

they still shit the bed here too, because their animation work is so far removed from Red Dead Redemption 2 it's almost pathetic in some cases. Especially when they try to sell you some dramatic moment and all of a sudden characters reset to their default animations as if saying "well i played my part, now a can relax".

Pure cringe

 

[raz3r]

People discussing builds in this game


You don't need to build anything here. I speced into assault and started steamrolling everything at level 10. Then just to inject any kind of fun in the experience i decided to switch to stealth with the same character and without spending any points it was still easy as fuck, because the AI and their patrol routes are fucking retarded.

And about the first person view:

they still shit the bed here too, because their animation work is so far removed from Red Dead Redemption 2 it's almost pathetic in some cases. Especially when they try to sell you some dramatic moment and all of a sudden characters reset to their default animations as if saying "well i played my part, now a can relax".

Pure cringe

What difficulty are you using? I am on very hard, currently level 18, I have a stealth/handgun build and in combat I am the one who get steamrolled by everything. The only way I can steamroll is if I go full stealth.

 

[Perkel]

People discussing builds in this game
Pure cringe

How is your F5 and F9 ? Some of us like to actually not cheat if they can.
On Hard i easily died 50-60 times and i did use f5-f9 a lot (and i was annoyed by that)

Is this "STALKER IS EASY !! F5 every 5 seconds and F9 every 15 easy ?"

As your build improves game gets easier but never as easy to point where you can just play without saving.

 

[Correct_Carlo]

People discussing builds in this game


You don't need to build anything here. I speced into assault and started steamrolling everything at level 10. Then just to inject any kind of fun in the experience i decided to switch to stealth with the same character and without spending any points it was still easy as fuck, because the AI and their patrol routes are fucking retarded.

And about the first person view:

they still shit the bed here too, because their animation work is so far removed from Red Dead Redemption 2 it's almost pathetic in some cases. Especially when they try to sell you some dramatic moment and all of a sudden characters reset to their default animations as if saying "well i played my part, now a can relax".

Pure cringe

What difficulty are you using? I am on very hard, currently level 18, I have a stealth/handgun build and in combat I am the one who get steamrolled by everything. The only way I can steamroll is if I go full stealth.

Difficulty depends hugely on area. If you go south and try doing side missions while still under level 20 or so, you'll get destroyed. Honestly, I don't know how the game handles this, though, as I haven't gotten far enough yet. It'd be cool if you have to invest skill points to be able to easily beat the later enemies. However, it's also possible they are just scaling to your level differently. So, once you are level 40, suddenly a bunch of enemies will become easy, even if you don't bother investing skill points.

I say this because I have about 8 unallocated perk points I haven't bothered spending because I haven't run into a real challenge yet (although, I do actually die frequently when I fuck up). I have run into sudden difficulty spikes when I leave the areas of the game that are outside of where the main storyline currently is, but these missions have been so impossible to beat I just gave up on them and went back to the areas the game seemed to be railroading me into.

 

[Turjan]

The Cyberpsycho missions were fun. They made me feel like Bladerunner and challenged me to do them non-lethal until I realized there is literally just an implant that you can buy that changes all of your weapons to non-lethal. Even fucking blades.

Oh, you don't even need that chip. Just make sure that you don't apply a second lethal blow after you downed your target. Yes, it's that anti-climactic.

It depends on the weapon. If you use blades you can cut people's heads and arms off. I also think headshots will fatally kill most people, if it's the killing blow. I agree, though, that many people end up on the floor not dead, even if you shoot them 100 times.

I specifically meant the cyberpsychos. The last one, I downed with a sniper rifle after a longer fight, and the damage said something like 17,000 (was from relatively close). He still lived.

I can see the point with bladed weapons, although there, the blunt types seem to do more damage on average, anyway.

I don't know about that. Regina specifically complained to me that I killed a couple of them when I finished the mission, even though I never did a kill shot on them after they fell. I think it depends on what weapon you are using and where specifically on their body the killshot is, but this game is so buggy, it's hard to tell what are real mechanics and what aren't. I've had people I used non-lethal stealth take downs on just randomly start pooling blood on the ground a few minutes later. And the game doesn't seem to have any indicator, like Deus Ex does, for whether bodies are dead or alive beyond that the alive ones tend to move slightly, but not always.

I think the easiest mistake to make is to apply a second blow while the victim is already in the process of keeling over. Some of the blunt weapons have 4 attacks per second, and for whatever reason, they aren't really non-lethal. I don't remember how often I tried not to kill Maiko with that 1000+ dps hammer (allegedly non-lethal). But yes, bugs are always an option in this game.

 

[Quillon]

V is more akin to the Warden in DAO - lifepaths instead of origins

Technically it might seem that way but lifepaths are a joke and V is even more defined than Geralt...or Shepard, certainly more than the Warden.

 

[Zer0wing]

I just played through a miniquest called "A Day in the life". How it goes - you overhear a conversation between a client and a food vendor at a market in Arroyo.

So there IS actually quest(s) if you listen carefully.
Probbaly it's the only quest of such kind.

There are a fuckton of secret stuff buried under retarded activation conditions and blatant ties to cut content everywhere around and deep inside Night City. Yeah, even the former cyberpsycho from 2013 teaser left as an easter egg inside one of those secret events, for example.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

V is more akin to the Warden in DAO - lifepaths instead of origins

Technically it might seem that way but lifepaths are a joke and V is even more defined than Geralt...or Shepard, certainly more than the Warden.

Lifepaths are indeed barebones, but that makes V more of a poorly done blank slate rather than a predefined character.

I do agree that some of V's dialogue somewhat defines him (e.g. his talks with Misty and some of his interactions with Johnny), but otherwise I'd say that he's a blank slate throughout the whole game which gives one the illusion of it being done on purpose (ergo your comment of him being more defined which amounts to him being a bland person with no defining traits).

Ultimately this discussion seems to be a case of one side arguing that the glass is half empty and the other that it's actually half full, so yeah. I guess that there's common ground to be found in the fact that both sides would've wanted a full drink rather than just half of it.

 

[Quillon]

I just played through a miniquest called "A Day in the life". How it goes - you overhear a conversation between a client and a food vendor at a market in Arroyo.

So there IS actually quest(s) if you listen carefully.
Probbaly it's the only quest of such kind.

That quest is clearly marked as a side thing on the map tho.

So far the secret-est quest for me was; that I missed on my first run is that brendan the vending machine, whose quest mark only appears when you are near, like Cohh's character but that is too on the way not to miss.

 

[Quillon]

V is more akin to the Warden in DAO - lifepaths instead of origins

Technically it might seem that way but lifepaths are a joke and V is even more defined than Geralt...or Shepard, certainly more than the Warden.

Lifepaths are indeed barebones, but that makes V more of a poorly done blank slate rather than a predefined character.

I do agree that some of V's dialogue somewhat defines him (e.g. his talks with Misty and some of his interactions with Johnny), but otherwise I'd say that he's a blank slate throughout the whole game which gives one the illusion of it being done on purpose (ergo your comment of him being more defined which amounts to him being a bland person with no defining traits).

Ultimately this discussion seems to be a case of one side arguing that the glass is half empty and the other that it's actually half full, so yeah. I guess that there's common ground to be found in the fact that both sides would've wanted a full drink rather than just half of it.

Wut? More defined doesn't mean no defining traits; it means he has too much shit about him defined. Not necessarily resulting in a bland character; he's certainly way more interesting than say... KCD's Henry

 

[Heroic Liberator]

he has to much shit about him defined.

Such as...?

 

[Terenty]

What difficulty are you using? I am on very hard, currently level 18, I have a stealth/handgun build and in combat I am the one who get steamrolled by everything. The only way I can steamroll is if I go full stealth.

Very hard difficulty. Stealth is piss easy for the reasons i mentioned, the only thing you need to put one point into is a quickhack to disable cameras. That's it.

And about handguns, i'm pretty sure you can equip a sniper rifle or a tech rifle that shoots through walls without even specing into rifles and start steamrolling.

How is your F5 and F9 ? Some of us like to actually not cheat if they can.
On Hard i easily died 50-60 times and i did use f5-f9 a lot (and i was annoyed by that)

You don't need to abuse quicksafe at all, wtf are you doing dying so many times? Really, what makes stealth difficult for you?

 

[Gargaune]

someone further up complained about the copious use of text and phone messages to convey information and quests.

The characters live and breath as you see them talk and their movements and mannerisms. The best part of CP2077 is the prologue, because you get this with Jackie and other

That was me. One other big problem that emerges in CP77's presentation is that they made dialogue in this free form, instead of scripting it with different camera angles as in Witcher 3. I remember the developers gushing over this decision like it's the most innovative, most unique, and most immersive feature in the history of game development. It sounded like trash and "let's save ourselves some work" from the beginning.

What was described was "the player is always in full control of the character" which we know went out the window. What was described was "NPCs will have a reaction if you cut the conversation in the middle of dialogue and leave", "You can pull out a weapon in any moment". None of this actually matters. What stays though is the amount of scripting work and camera placement, which the developers were saved from having to do, like they had to do in Witcher 3 which prompted them to develop a tool to partially automate it because it was so much work.

The tradeoff to all those non-existent advantages of first person dialogue which nevertheless has to be paid is that the player becomes essentially blind to one major channel for the characterisation of the main character - you can't watch your character's acting and gestures. Instead everything falls on the voice actor. First person in conversations was a bad decision, sold to players under the pretext of more immersion but really resulting in less characterisation, and that for a blank slate main character who desperately needs means of characterisation.

I agree, I don't think it was the right call in an artistic sense, but not just relative to The Witcher 3 and its spectacular camera work... It even feels less compelling than Deus Ex, and I'm talking about the original this time. JC's repertoire is comprised of 5% nodding his head or spreading his arms and 95% thousand-yard-staring his interlocutor, and DX's cinematic conversations still feel more compelling than CBP's 1st-person equivalent, despite the latter featuring some impressive mocap for NPCs.

What's interesting is that you see a similar story with other embodiment-heavy games, like Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Warhorse went so far as to include helmet visor overlays and 1st-person horse riding for the sake of putting you in Henry's shoes, but they still popped the camera to 3rd-person angles for conversations. Even Fallout 4, which otherwise lets you choose between 1st and 3rd person entirely in gameplay, threw you into an automated cinematic camera for conversations, breaking form with previous Bethesda Game™ design.

My impression is that 1st-person conversations can provide benefits with blank-slate silent protagonists, but once you start part-defining the player character (and V is very much that) and voicing them, the consistency gains start to wane in contrast to the dramatic assets of cinematic conversations. When you factor in Cyberpunk's character customisation and equipment options, it's an even bigger loss.

What I'm not too sure of in Cyberpunk's case, however, is the extent of the savings in the animation budget since even in 1st person, some work has still gone into this department - V leans over tables, crosses their legs, occasionally gesticulates etc. Clearly, none of these body animations are on the level of what's required for a third person perspective and facial animations are gone altogether, but especially for a studio like CDPR, with TW3 and all those dedicated tools under their belt, I'm not entirely convinced whether the primary rationale was cost-cutting or an unfortunate artistic choice.

I disagree strongly with this. The one thing the game does brilliantly, even innovatively, is the first person cinematics and immersion. If it were to break that, it would seem jarring and cheap. It would also hurt the game's central theme of Johnny Silverhand's being inside V's head to disorienting degrees.

It may have been technically easier for them to create first person dialog/cinematics, because there's less editing involved, but it's much harder to conceive of good first person cinematics because so much of video game cinematics owe a huge debt to the shot/reverse shot structure of traditional filmmaking. CDPR actually thought through mise-en-scene very well, better than I've seen in any other FPS video game I can think of, doing some shit that even movies haven't done (although, there was a HUGE amount they ripped off from Gasper Noe's Enter the Void, which is also shot in the first person, especially in the Johnny Silverhands intro scene with the floating camera entering the club and the pulse of the music getting louder).

I just replayed the heist and playing it a second time made me realize how brilliantly everything was done:

Spoiler

-The scene where the Japanese dude kills his father is done perfectly, with the conceit of standing behind the scrim watching it unfold. It's like something from a Hitchcock film and the music and sudden shift in tone work well. I was kind of bored with the game the first time I played it, but that scene took me by surprise and made me realize the game was suddenly working on another level, at least cinematically, if not in terms of gameplay.
-Jackie's death, where he basically dies looking into your eyes, worked incredibly well. I've never seen anything done like that in a movie before. That entire sequence in the cab, while basically a cut-scene, would not have worked as well in the third person. And the small details like telling the cab where to take his remains sell it.
-Same thing with the scene where V is shot by Dex after looking in the mirror. That scene was staged as effectively, and is as memorable for me, as some movie scenes that come to mind (it recalls, for example, the Bride's execution at the start of Kill Bill, especially given the smash cut to the title immediately after).
-The entire Johnny Silverhand introduction is great. It's disorienting in a way that it couldn't be if it weren't in the first person, revealing its information in pieces, as you really have no idea what just happened or even who you are. I didn't follow the game's development, so I had zero idea who Johnny Silverhands was before that sequence happened, and it blew me away. If you were looking at Johnny from a 3rd person perspective it wouldn't have the same effect.
-The shot where V is being wheeled into his apartment by Misty is also incredibly well done. It breaks the typical bobbing movement of the FPS camera, and seems like it's one long panning shot, which throws you as nothing like that has been done in the game up to that point, until you realize, half way through, that it's V's perspective from being wheeled in via wheelchair....even before you see the wheelchair. Again, small details like that just wouldn't be as effective in the 3rd person.
-Even basic scenes like the Dinner meeting or the first time V tries BD with the Japanese dude are incredibly well done.

To me, the game's first person immersion is the one thing the developers totally kept their promise on. The problem that gives people the right to complain, though, is that these sequences are few and far between, mostly being reserved for main story missions and just a few side missions. The vast majority of the game's "story" content is delivered via phone calls and text messages......which is the game's real lazy, corner, cutting.

Good points, your examples. Some of those scenes, particularly those with Yorinobou, Jackie and Dex probably are more impressive and memorable the way they executed them in first person than if they'd been done in third. I would say, however, that these stick out as exceptions rather than the rule in my memory, as I can think of plenty more mundane interactions which would've been better served by a 3rd-person camera, as in TW3, particularly those where you're meant to be having intense but otherwise largely static conversations with characters, such as when you wake up in Viktor's clinic. While it's excellent in some cases, I think that the majority of these scenes don't really feature content of a nature to better capitalise on 1st-person than on 3rd-person shot-reverse-shot.

But, in either case, the strong execution of these 1st-person cinematics does suggest that they were a decision taken well in advance of development proper, which further makes me believe it was driven by artistic direction rather than just budgeting.

 

[Turjan]

Another compromise is the attempt to have a complex and branching main story in an open world setting. The compromises made in order to "sort of" have this are - abdication from any attempts to balance the player's power level vs enemies' level, and the most banal by now case of forced urgency of the main quest. Congratulations, GOTY! Now ask yourself - is having the open world worth it if you are losing the balanced power levels and turning the urgency fake?

I can not overstate how much I fucking hate this fake forced urgency. If you really have to go with urgency in the main quest line, then fucking enforce it. Otherwise, don't fucking do it. Is not doing something that fucking hard?

Spoiler

First, why does a street doctor know exactly what a piece of tech he has never seen before is doing to you? Why not instead have the player gradually figure out what is going on over the course of the game? And if that's too much work, at least don't have him right away tell the player exactly how little time he has left. And for fucks sake, ease up on the whole coughing up blood cliche. Yes, we get it, the PC is dying, he does not have fucking tuberculosis. Don't push the player with this fake urgency when the rest of your game is not made with any time limit in mind. What's that, Panam? You want me to waste a whole day with you and your buddies over a campfire while we wait for a convoy? Sign me up, it's not like I have anything better I should be doing. No, no, don't mind me coughing up blood.

Idiots. You'd think they would have learned something from the same problem in Witcher 3, but no, instead they made this aspect of it even worse.

Especially during Act 1, I fell for this. I didn't do any side missions there at all, and as a result, I discovered that I was underleveled for "The Heist". Yes, that can happen. Gear was shitty and level very low, which meant I had to replay one of those sequences several times, including a conversation and an elevator ride.
Despite that fake urgency, the story somehow expected me to know a few people at the beginning of Act2, people who I never met because you have to go outside of the main missions to actually interact with them. It's probably also the reason why I have that free gun from Wilson stuck in my inventory, because the associated quest doesn't close properly in Act 2.

And then, in Act2, I'm doing the opposite and am still somewhere at two thirds of the main quest. It's funny how more or less the whole world of the "main story" goes quiet on you while you do this.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

s your build improves game gets easier but never as easy to point where you can just play without saving.

only because of the constant crashes. a level 14 hacker is immortal, no way he'll ever even enter combat.

 

[Turjan]

What difficulty are you using? I am on very hard, currently level 18, I have a stealth/handgun build and in combat I am the one who get steamrolled by everything. The only way I can steamroll is if I go full stealth.

Very hard difficulty. Stealth is piss easy for the reasons i mentioned, the only thing you need to put one point into is a quickhack to disable cameras. That's it.

And about handguns, i'm pretty sure you can equip a sniper rifle or a tech rifle that shoots through walls without even specing into rifles and start steamrolling.

How is your F5 and F9 ? Some of us like to actually not cheat if they can.
On Hard i easily died 50-60 times and i did use f5-f9 a lot (and i was annoyed by that)

You don't need to abuse quicksafe at all, wtf are you doing dying so many times? Really, what makes stealth difficult for you?

Sniper rifles usually either don't come with silencers and give away your position, or you use the one sniper rifle with silencer and can't shoot through walls. Of course in some locations, you may cheese it from outside of the location. Anyway, here's where the superiority of handguns comes in, as they can do both with some perk investment.

However, given how slow the AI is reacting, you can often fool it by sneaking as fast as possible. Enemies often don't discover the fast movement, so you can get to the next cover easily. Sometimes it feels to me like an ostrich game. They won't see you if you don't look.