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

[orcinator]

As much as I hate level scaling, it's impossible to balance a open world game like this without it.

No levels, no need for scaling.

 

[Tyrr]

As much as I hate level scaling, it's impossible to balance a open world game like this without it.

No levels, no need for scaling.

Levels are just an abstract number to measure the power of a character. As long as doing side stuff increases the power of the player (even just by getting better equipment), you can't balance the game for both types of players who do everything vs. just the main quest.
You can balance it for one type of player, but then the other type will call it too easy (like Cyberpunk) or too grindy (like Assassin's Creed Valhalla).

 

[copebot]

So I'm right before the point of no return ending quest and I'm running around finishing all the yellow gigs and side jobs first. I've played the entire game using stealth and pistols, and yet my stealth and pistols levels are around 17 each. Considering how close I am to the end, I guess you'd have to do all the blue police shit too in order to max them out for the endgame, which really makes those level 20 only perks pointless. Note I'm not talking about a reflexes level 20, but the handgun "level up when you use it" level. Anyway... those level 20 perks seem awesome but they also seem pointless given what it takes to get to them. You'll be at the end and an indestructible god by the time you use them.

Yes by the end you are an indestructible god, the game ending was extremely easy since all the gear and every usefull skills are maxed. Still was a good game with a great story.

The final quest seems to be balanced around only doing the main quest & important side missions. In my first run I only did very few fixer stuff and it still went grey.
As much as I hate level scaling, it's impossible to balance a open world game like this without it.

It seems like the game was developed around the assumption that there would be a Witcher 3 style heavy scaling feature. It wouldn't be surprising if that were the case, and that they just never implemented it. Level scaling is necessary if your game system and encounter design has no actual progression. In this game, all of the encounters are the same with the same enemy types from level 1 through 50. There is even a (good) side quest in which you go through the tutorial apartment 'dungeon' again with the same enemy types, but with more of them and in a more challenging scenario because you start with no equipment. Games like this should not have leveling systems, but they probably put them in anyway so there is a 'reason' to explore the map and consoom the content. None of the DX games have level systems even though they have character progression. As it is, there's level scaling, but it stops pretty early. The opening areas scale to whatever level a ~400ish dps weapon is, and don't scale past that. At max level, your gear will generally do 2-3k+ dps on the tooltip, but you will headshot crit for 10s of 10000s of damage. Even the toughest enemies are likely to have mid to high hundreds of HP.

It's like a D&Dlike in which you can level to 16-20, but all the enemies are goblins, forever. Even the enemies that are supposed to be legendary elite cyborgs can be killed by you in the equivalent of one round. There is no way that they did not know about these issues but obviously just getting the game functional enough to ship was the only thing that mattered. The cutscene part of the game was the priority and the game part was an afterthought that was probably in some kind of weird 'agile' hell of constant redevelopment for no reason.

There's a lot that's cool that could be done with an RPG in this setting, but I think making it an GTA-Asscreed was just setting itself up for disappointment. Something like a Cyberpunk Battle Brothers would be awesome, or a (2D) Cyberpunk Fallout for something more story based. Even Invisible Inc. has more compelling and balanced tactical gameplay in a Cyberpunk style setting. This type of title just does not play into the strengths of gaming as a medium. If you wanted to watch a movie or read a novel, real movies and real novels of even average quality are way better than the best storyfag game ever made. Game-movies are just really slow assed movies with bad games attached to them.

 

[blessed king of longing]

FEAR's AI is better than every FPS I've played since. I don't understand why they don't just outsource that AI. Lazy devs can buy it and modify it slightly.

I don't know how game AI works, so it was probably heavily scripted to only work in the limited and confined spaces of FEAR's level design, but it's still really impressive.

Why do people parrot FEAR AI being good? They'll enter the room together but once you start blasting them from cover all they do is fart lines about enemy locations while dying one after another like lemmings.

 

[orcinator]

As much as I hate level scaling, it's impossible to balance a open world game like this without it.

No levels, no need for scaling.

Levels are just an abstract number to measure the power of a character. As long as doing side stuff increases the power of the player (even just by getting better equipment), you can't balance the game for both types of players who do everything vs. just the main quest.
You can balance it for one type of player, but then the other type will call it too easy (like Cyberpunk) or too grindy (like Assassin's Creed Valhalla).

You know older ubigames like Far Cry didn't always have arbitrary levels right?

 

[Tyrr]

As much as I hate level scaling, it's impossible to balance a open world game like this without it.

No levels, no need for scaling.

Levels are just an abstract number to measure the power of a character. As long as doing side stuff increases the power of the player (even just by getting better equipment), you can't balance the game for both types of players who do everything vs. just the main quest.
You can balance it for one type of player, but then the other type will call it too easy (like Cyberpunk) or too grindy (like Assassin's Creed Valhalla).

You know older ubigames like Far Cry didn't always have arbitrary levels right?

It's different in a pure skill based game without any RPG elements. But if your game has tons of (optional !) side stuff, that makes the player character stronger, you have to find a way to scale the games difficulty to the player characters power.

 

[blessed king of longing]

Sadly, it's a straight toggle for the minimap. I leave job location turned on though because you can still track via the main map and it gives a direction, distance, and height indicator.

Cheers for advice on Mankind Divided. In lockdown again so have time to play slowly. Might even try Human Revolutions again as a warm up if I can find a way to rid it of that foul yellow filter the director's cut got stuck with.

The "yellow piss filter" is actually better and works better because the game was made with it in mind. Don't forget DX has a blue-gray piss filter also

 

[orcinator]

As much as I hate level scaling, it's impossible to balance a open world game like this without it.

No levels, no need for scaling.

Levels are just an abstract number to measure the power of a character. As long as doing side stuff increases the power of the player (even just by getting better equipment), you can't balance the game for both types of players who do everything vs. just the main quest.
You can balance it for one type of player, but then the other type will call it too easy (like Cyberpunk) or too grindy (like Assassin's Creed Valhalla).

You know older ubigames like Far Cry didn't always have arbitrary levels right?

It's different in a pure skill based game without any RPG elements. But if your game has tons of (optional !) side stuff, that makes the player character stronger, you have to find a way to scale the games difficulty to the player characters power.

Every Far Cry has 3 million optional outposts and a perk tree with a bunch of OP shit scattered throughout.
You gotta lay off that cargo cult mindset.

 

[Yosharian]

CDPR want to tap into that Borderlands-esque shoot-kill-upgrade-shoot-kill-upgrade gameplay loop. That's why level scaling, for both items and enemies, is used. It has NOTHING to do with creating a good open world, and everything to do with trapping the player in a simple skinner box in order to maintain engagement.

 

[DalekFlay]

Wish the choice of an ending was more obscure instead of "pick your own poison" list.

• Arasaka ending - if you use corpo lines more often than other
• Panam ending - if you use nomad lines
• Casino heist ending - if you use streetkid/anti-corp lines

Only the secret ending is actually buried in your choices. Who doesn't want to play through quests with Panam or any side-quests when they are better quality than fixer contracts?

This wouldn't work because you'd be railroaded based on your chosen origin. It's perfectly reasonable for a betrayed corpo to want to burn it all down, for example. I do agree in general though that ALL games of this type should make the ending "choice" automatic based on your decisions and who you sided with/against. Would make those choices have SO much more weight. When games let you be an anarchist asshole the whole game and then choose to save the world and democracy at the end it's just so fucking stupid. New Vegas, as with all things, leads the way.

 

[Tyrr]

CDPR want to tap into that Borderlands-esque shoot-kill-upgrade-shoot-kill-upgrade gameplay loop. That's why level scaling, for both items and enemies, is used. It has NOTHING to do with creating a good open world, and everything to do with trapping the player in a simple skinner box in order to maintain engagement.

There is no lvl-scaling for enemies/quests. That's the problem.
Also, you don't need lvl-scaling in every open world game, just in open world games like Witcher 3, the new Assassin's Creed games or this one. I don't argue in favor of lvl-scaling (I prefer games that don't need it). But IF you design your game like Cyberpunk, you can't skip the lvl-scaling.

 

[Zer0wing]

CDPR want to tap into that Borderlands-esque shoot-kill-upgrade-shoot-kill-upgrade gameplay loop. That's why level scaling, for both items and enemies, is used. It has NOTHING to do with creating a good open world, and everything to do with trapping the player in a simple skinner box in order to maintain engagement.

It hurts the single player part more than it does benefit the presumable Cyberpunk Online.

 

[potatojohn]

Wish the choice of an ending was more obscure instead of "pick your own poison" list.

• Arasaka ending - if you use corpo lines more often than other
• Panam ending - if you use nomad lines
• Casino heist ending - if you use streetkid/anti-corp lines

Only the secret ending is actually buried in your choices. Who doesn't want to play through quests with Panam or any side-quests when they are better quality than fixer contracts?

This wouldn't work because you'd be railroaded based on your chosen origin. It's perfectly reasonable for a betrayed corpo to want to burn it all down, for example. I do agree in general though that ALL games of this type should make the ending "choice" automatic based on your decisions and who you sided with/against. Would make those choices have SO much more weight. When games let you be an anarchist asshole the whole game and then choose to save the world and democracy at the end it's just so fucking stupid. New Vegas, as with all things, leads the way.

No, that's stupid. The game should allow the player to be a hypocrite or to change their mind when they're making personal choices.

There is no lvl-scaling for enemies/quests. That's the problem.

Also, you don't need lvl-scaling in every open world game, just in open world games like Witcher 3, the new Assassin's Creed games or this one. I don't argue in favor of lvl-scaling (I prefer games that don't need it). But IF you design your game like Cyberpunk, you can't skip the lvl-scaling.

 

[KK1001]

Making an ideal C&C game is hard. There should essentially be two sets of choices:

1) Moment-to-moment gameplay, character: Basically, how you spec your character, the perks you use, the weapons you use, and your playstyle. Encounters should, to some extent, be able to compensate for most styles, but not every level needs to make every playstyle easy. This should SOMETIMES have a bearing on mission outcome (mostly when it comes to lethality, alarms, or peaceful resolution via charisma or persuasion stats).

• Pure hackers should be glass cannons pretty useless with most weapons, inaccurate with grenades, and should rely heavily on environmental deception, stealth.
• Heavy melee characters should be powerful up close, with either lots of health and armor or reliant on stealth kills, hacking to get away (why isn't there a mod to release smoke? missed opportunity).
• Various gun characters should exceed generally best at the range of the weapon, realism be damned: pistols very close, smgs, shotguns farther away (with appropriate damage falloff), rifles and sniper rifles further away.
• Tech characters should be the only ones capable of using using grenades, and the more OP tech shit should be gated at a higher level. Nix the crafting bonuses; no one cares about that shit. If you are going to keep it in, at the VERY least the tech characters should be the only ones capable of crafting interesting weapon mods.

The game does an OK job at this, but compromises its only difficulty though often lazy encounter design, an overabundance of ammunition and medkits, and a baseline default that makes hacking/shooting/nading still USEFUL beyond the early stages of the game even if you aren't specced for that.

2) Quest, story, characters. Basically dealing with any sort of scripts here.

• Micro/Dialogue: Assign values to dialogue choices; within a certain band the "default" outcome happens, but if you're a dick or really nice or whatever you get some "alternative" response; maybe they off you a hidden reward, or tell you to fuck off and you can't deal with that person again. Don't think anything like this exists. Even if this ends in failure states sometimes, the choice alone gives players agency. Many of the non-essential fixers should have this sort of option. If you weren't willing to gate the content entirely, after the final mission a fixer offer you involve some sort of twist or set up if you didn't listen to them or fucked them over. Sometimes this should feed directly into mission outcome.
• Reputational: Negative actions against the gang should accrue penalities (more expensive items, sending mercenaries after you, attacking you on sight) and positive actions should accrue bonuses. Could just be an environmental change of who owns the territory, or maybe one of their shops offers you a little item. Fucking something.
• Quest: Choosing X or Y at the end OR alternative how you want to start a mission. The player should always be presented with a couple of choices, but there should be 4-5 "invisible" choices and depending on you played (guns playing, sneaky, non-lethal, hacking, what stats you have in X or Y). Doesn't need to necessarily have huge ramifications but should be rewarding in its own right.
• Endings: As with before, you should always be given a final choice, but just as in real life your choices are always constrained by your past actions. We should get a sense of what happened to our companions, who controls what, and what happened to our player character.

The game does a REALLY bad job at this. I get that it is hard, but games like New Vegas exist to rip off of, and TW3 has way more C&C than Cyberpunk.

 

[gurugeorge]

Isn't the only real problem with the build/progression system that it's a whole mess of multiplicative percentages? Maybe if they mixed it up with some additive that would tone it down enough for it to not make you so ridiculously 800k per shot OP?

I can't help but think it's actually a genuine mistake somewhere.

 

[AwesomeButton]

The whole itemization system is a mistake. The scaling is just part of that MMO system. It was either used in a pinch or was deliberately decided to use the same itemization for the single player title and the MMO title.

Most likely the decision to use this system in CP77 preceded the decision to ship the MMO as a separate game at a later time.

 

[Yoomazir]

More than anything else it's the lack of body customization. I really wish V had access to the gang cybernetic upgrades, the Valentinos golden implants, the Animals beefed muscles or even the most radical ones from Maelstorm. Instead we have the lamest body ever created, penis 2 included.

 

[typical user]

Wish the choice of an ending was more obscure instead of "pick your own poison" list.

• Arasaka ending - if you use corpo lines more often than other
• Panam ending - if you use nomad lines
• Casino heist ending - if you use streetkid/anti-corp lines

Only the secret ending is actually buried in your choices. Who doesn't want to play through quests with Panam or any side-quests when they are better quality than fixer contracts?

This wouldn't work because you'd be railroaded based on your chosen origin. It's perfectly reasonable for a betrayed corpo to want to burn it all down, for example. I do agree in general though that ALL games of this type should make the ending "choice" automatic based on your decisions and who you sided with/against. Would make those choices have SO much more weight. When games let you be an anarchist asshole the whole game and then choose to save the world and democracy at the end it's just so fucking stupid. New Vegas, as with all things, leads the way.

No, that's stupid. The game should allow the player to be a hypocrite or to change their mind when they're making personal choices.

I wasn't precise with my previous post. I've meant the game should determine available endings based on your choices in dialogs. Planescape: Torment does this to a degree. If you make vows you turn more lawful, if you brake those vows or lie you become more chaotic. If you do good/bad things you shift your alignement to good/evil. CP2077 could've used that by making lifepath lines available to all and have characters start on different spectrum of corp/streetkid/nomad. Becoming vengeful ex-corp would be more natural.

 

[Turjan]

Went back to the Wraith camp (the one where you freed Saul) today, just to see how things are there. I'm at level 38 at the moment, and the fight was surprisingly nice. Of course, you could cheese it by camping on a mountain ledge the AI couldn't scale. In most other places, they really swarm you, even outside of the camp. Took ages to loot the place afterwards. I noticed I really need to upgrade my armor and weapons again.

That was all outside. Inside of the building, you still had the corpses from when you did Panam's quest. No idea how this looks if you kill everyone during the quest already.

 

[gurugeorge]

More than anything else it's the lack of body customization. I really wish V had access to the gang cybernetic upgrades, the Valentinos golden implants, the Animals beefed muscles or even the most radical ones from Maelstorm. Instead we have the lamest body ever created, penis 2 included.

I wouldn't say that's the worst thing about the game, but it would definitely improve matters if you could customize abilities and looks in sync more with the cyberware. It's exceedingly lame that it's only icons and just a few metal lines and bits and bobs here and there on your face and hands.

(In fact right from the start, the fact that you have cyberware metal spiders on your face that don't seem to have any function is quite lame.)

Again, the stats should come from the cyberware not from clothing (or only minimally from clothing, maybe like a bulletproof vest here and there or something).

What with all the improvements in graphics in recent years, you'd think developers would make more of an effort to have a 1-1 match between the icons of stuff you buy to enhance yourself, or your equipment, and how you actually look.

 

[KK1001]

In order of worst offender to least: bugs and general polish, challenge/balance, perk system, loot table/itemization, open world reactivity and interactivity, C&C, lack of customization/mini games, stripped features like the train

 

[AwesomeButton]

More than anything else it's the lack of body customization. I really wish V had access to the gang cybernetic upgrades, the Valentinos golden implants, the Animals beefed muscles or even the most radical ones from Maelstorm. Instead we have the lamest body ever created, penis 2 included.

Someone recently wrote about things CDPR should/would eventually patch back into the game after they had been cut.

I said the most realistic things to expect patched in as new functionality are the police system and other elements enriching the Cyber-GTA part of CP77.

Take a look at this article, I think it presents the mainstream opinion vey well. In a nutshell, without the journo fluff:

• More character customization
• Police
• More types of map icons
• Enhanced vehicle and weapon modification
• New Game Plus

I imagine CDPR will take cues partly from player feedback and from player/media reviews on what the public is missing most. It doesn't seem at all likely missing quest reactivity will be scripted retroactively into the missions, or if the gigs were interdependent, or fixer relations and relationships functioned as a system, that these things will be retroactively patched in.

I would be immensely happy if at least street cred is rebalanced and inserted as a blocking requirement so that gigs become available gradually instead of all at once. If we get a number of UI improvements like the ability to turn off undiscovered map icons like in Witcher 3, that would also be a big help and will genuinely improve gameplay. Currently many people just can't stop themselves chasing after exclamation mark icons and burn themselves out. The fact that you have to be on foot to get the call from the fixer is a good idea, though it makes little in-game sense, it can be utilized to the effect that the player would only be offered these side missions if he is exploring on foot, which suggests more leisurely.

 

[gurugeorge]

In order of worst offender to least: bugs and general polish, challenge/balance, perk system, loot table/itemization, open world reactivity and interactivity, C&C, lack of customization/mini games, stripped features like the train

So seeing as how the esteemed assembly is coming to a sort of consensus on the problems, what do we think is actually solvable in about a year's time by patching, what's baked into the game and fucked forever, and what's moddable?

IOW, clearly the game's not all bad, and has some promise and potential - so is it actually possible to bring it up to what it ought to be, if not a great RPG at least a game as good as TW3?

(Note: I see AwesomeButton's made a stab at this just above - anyone else got any summing up thoughts along these lines?)

 

[AwesomeButton]

In order of worst offender to least: bugs and general polish, challenge/balance, perk system, loot table/itemization, open world reactivity and interactivity, C&C, lack of customization/mini games, stripped features like the train

So seeing as how the esteemed assembly is coming to a sort of consensus on the problems, what do we think is actually solvable in about a year's time by patching, what's baked into the game and fucked forever, and what's moddable?

The balancing is moddable thankfully. Provided there are enthusiastic enough people to mod it, but with a playerbase of so many millions, I'm pretty sure there will be rebalancing mods out soon.

The cut reactivity will probably remain cut forever, unless there are literally unused assets sitting in the game's .archive files and commented out scripts, but I personally doubt that.

On what will probably be patched in, see my post above.

 

[Agame]

Several pages ago someone mentioned that you can walk in and around Arasaka compound while wearing Arasaka environmental suit. Well this is not the case for me, they shoot me on sight.

Pretty sure this is just bugged. I went in wearing my usual random hobo ensemble clothes and all guards were green (friendly) for the mission.