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

[Bliblablubb]

I've heard some speculation that some of the shards were never meant to be shards. They are parts of the script that were meant to be voiced, but since they were told to release the game they just threw half the script onto shards and called it a day.

Usually the voice recording happens waaaay early in the development to have time for necessary reshoots.
Or to put it in a other way: if it's not voiced, it was not finished, ready or simply an afterthought at that internal deadline.
Like all those text messages, just extra fluff.
Fixer calls are kept vague, "detes attached". Wasn't more than a general idea at the time of recording.

All those encounters with only a text shard however are the result of the world designers having finished placing dildos everywhere.
They had free time, so they added some quick fluff. Nothing more.

While the codemonkeys were being whipped in the basement.
Sad.

 

[Haplo]

Anyway, I get the argument that staff changed and the game was rebooted and all that, but as I've said before Cyberpunk's problems (on PC anyway) are very similar to Witcher 3's problems. The main difference is the side missions have less story content. If you got all the side missions from the fixers themselves with maybe the client there and some dialog and mild decisions, people would see a lot more clearly that it's the same fucking structure. Follow the map marker, get random loot shit, go to next marker. The real fall of CDPR was after Witcher 2.

Yeah, the gigs sure could use some more introduction/personality.

There is one important distinction, when comparing following the map marker in TW3 and CP2077. In TW3 you follow the marker, suffer trough a fight... and are rewarded with some trash, maybe some crafting components or a recipe - which you are probably never gonna use - unless its your Witcher gear of choice or high end pot.

In CP2077 I follow a marker - and am rewarded by the chance to blow the brains out of my enemies with impressive high tech guns. If there's some loot to be found - gravy, but its not the reason I've come. The fun, visceral (if a bit easy) combat is. Well that and the eddies, of course.

 

[passerby]

It's just so obvious that this is the kind of build you would see as an internal tester, only for god knows what reason they decided to throw it into the public and call it a finished game.

The reason was a covid induced market opportunity, people are sitting in homes with nothing better to do but play games and there was zero competing AAA open world releases.
So decision was made a half year ago to slice, dice and put together with a duct tape a release build for this christmass season at all costs.

 

[Yosharian]

Anyway, I get the argument that staff changed and the game was rebooted and all that, but as I've said before Cyberpunk's problems (on PC anyway) are very similar to Witcher 3's problems. The main difference is the side missions have less story content. If you got all the side missions from the fixers themselves with maybe the client there and some dialog and mild decisions, people would see a lot more clearly that it's the same fucking structure. Follow the map marker, get random loot shit, go to next marker. The real fall of CDPR was after Witcher 2.

Yeah, the gigs sure could use some more introduction/personality.

There is one important distinction, when comparing following the map marker in TW3 and CP2077. In TW3 you follow the marker, suffer trough a fight... and are rewarded with some trash, maybe some crafting components or a recipe - which you are probably never gonna use - unless its your Witcher gear of choice or high end pot.

In CP2077 I follow a marker - and am rewarded by the chance to blow the brains out of my enemies with impressive high tech guns. If there's some loot to be found - gravy, but its not the reason I've come. The fun, visceral (if a bit easy) combat is. Well that and the eddies, of course.

But the game balance is all over the place, it's not satisfying if all you have to do to destroy any enemy in the game is turn up with a gun and half a brain cell

 

[Bliblablubb]

And since bugs and instability appear to be performance-related, it is quite possible they just didn't see the worst of 'em and there's a reason CDPR didn't hand out console review codes.

Seems about right.
I played on a Ryzon 1600 with a Radeon 580 something and a... HDD. Sad.
Which is a pretty sad toaster indeed, the HDD being the weakest link there.
But, aside from looking like a slighty improved Xbawx game, it doesn't suffer from CTDs ingame.
Sure, sometimes it takes 3 attempts to start the game for some reason, and after driving around a lot I get a memory leak from hell requiring restart, but that's nothing to rant about.

What did create CTDs is putting settings too high tho. Aaaand TAA in mirrors crash my game every time. Had to change the config to get by mandatory mirror moments in cutscenes. Since mods to switch it of in the menu popped up pretty quick, it seems to be a widespread fuckup.
Hillariously you barely notice the lack of TAA during those interactive cutscenes because it is generally shitty AA. But in the outside world, well, the horizon gets pretty jagged... not really a permanent option. Sad.
But hey, FPS went up by a looooot.


TLDR: The bugstravaganza seems to come from fancy high settings if your toaster can't take it. Or the classic internal AA problem, even Bethesda fucked that up.
I hesitate blaming pc players for blowing it up, but.... knowing those entitled shits today they probably tried to run it on super ultra deluxe on their 5 yo notebook and whine on twitter because they saw a bluescreen for the first time in their life.

 

[Haplo]

Anyway, I get the argument that staff changed and the game was rebooted and all that, but as I've said before Cyberpunk's problems (on PC anyway) are very similar to Witcher 3's problems. The main difference is the side missions have less story content. If you got all the side missions from the fixers themselves with maybe the client there and some dialog and mild decisions, people would see a lot more clearly that it's the same fucking structure. Follow the map marker, get random loot shit, go to next marker. The real fall of CDPR was after Witcher 2.

Yeah, the gigs sure could use some more introduction/personality.

There is one important distinction, when comparing following the map marker in TW3 and CP2077. In TW3 you follow the marker, suffer trough a fight... and are rewarded with some trash, maybe some crafting components or a recipe - which you are probably never gonna use - unless its your Witcher gear of choice or high end pot.

In CP2077 I follow a marker - and am rewarded by the chance to blow the brains out of my enemies with impressive high tech guns. If there's some loot to be found - gravy, but its not the reason I've come. The fun, visceral (if a bit easy) combat is. Well that and the eddies, of course.

But the game balance is all over the place, it's not satisfying if all you have to do to destroy any enemy in the game is turn up with a gun and half a brain cell

If you're looking for challenge that will keep you on the edge, then I suppose not.
However if you'd like to de-stress a little, blow the heads of a few enemies, enjoy your OP "build", while enjoying the dystopia metropolis' atmosphere - it works for me.

Of course, if overdosed, it could become tedious - since it IS pretty repetitive.

 

[Yosharian]

OP build = pick literally any perk

k

 

[Bliblablubb]

OP build = pick literally any perk

k

You should make a youtube video sharing your awsome build ASAP. You will make yuge money from all those views.

 

[Haplo]

OP build = pick literally any perk

k

If you pick a perk that adds 3% to your damage 3 times, that'll hardly make you feel OP.
But I kinda get your point, there's plenty of strong combinations and it doesn't require a genius to discover them.

Still, its kinda nice when the different parts of the puzzle come together - mainly perks + supporting cyberware (particularly stuff like Synaptic Accelerator, Kerenzikov, Sandevistan - different sets for different playstyles), potentially also quickhacks.

 

[Bliblablubb]

Yeah, the gigs sure could use some more introduction/personality.

It would of have already been a massive incline to remove all the markers from the map and having to call/visit fixers to get gigs. Why are they even visitable?
But the fact that there are fast travel points every 50 meters shows they were aiming for the "mom gave me 30 mins playtime, I need action rite nao!" crowd. Sad.

 

[Yosharian]

But it literally does, that's how balanced the game is. Pick a couple of damage perks and grab a semidecent gun and you'll start destroying people.

I went a tech/cool/hacking build that was meant to be lacking in damage and I STILL annihilated enemies past a certain point just by virtue of turning up.

This is without addressing the issue of effectively infinite hp regen from stimpacks

Game is trash dude

 

[Zeriel]

It's just so obvious that this is the kind of build you would see as an internal tester, only for god knows what reason they decided to throw it into the public and call it a finished game.

The reason was a covid induced market opportunity, people are sitting in homes with nothing better to do but play games and there was zero competeing AAA open world releases.
So decision was made a half year ago to slice, dice and put together with a duct tape a release build for this christmass season at all costs.

Yeah I can kind of see why a really dumb person would do this, but what I mean by "god knows what reason" is that it's just a really bad decision. They wiped out more money in stock price than they gained from sales BEFORE refunds started to hit, and the long-term damage to their brand is incalculable. Not to even mention the lawsuits...

 

[Bliblablubb]

Talking about fixers reminds me of the awsome writing in this game:

When you enter Arroyo smth for the first time, El Capitano will call you: "I live biz, I breath biz, I am biz!"
But when you visit him and ask: "How's biz?" He says:
"I don't call it 'biz', I call it work."

 

[Bliblablubb]

But it literally does, that's how balanced the game is. Pick a couple of damage perks and grab a semidecent gun and you'll start destroying people.

There are so many +crit% perks across the skills pretty early you wonder if they even assumed people would spread their point across the trees.
Each point of reflex, for pistols, from stealth, when entering combat, from passive perks... and that's not even taking in account the +15% clothing mod that drops like candy.
I had so much crit chance so fast, I was convinced it bugged out into negative values. Because I surely didn't crit on every hit.
That said, if anything it is hard to fuck up your "build" in this game actually.

 

[Haplo]

But it literally does, that's how balanced the game is. Pick a couple of damage perks and grab a semidecent gun and you'll start destroying people.

There are so many +crit% perks across the skills pretty early you wonder if they even assumed people would spread their point across the trees.
Each point of reflex, for pistols, from stealth, when entering combat, from passive perks... and that's not even taking in account the +15% clothing mod that drops like candy.

I've found only one visor with +15% crit rate so far
TBH most "Legendary" guns seem to boast +30-55% crit chance mods....

I had so much crit chance so fast, I was convinced it bugged out into negative values. Because I surely didn't crit on every hit.
That said, if anything it is hard to fuck up your "build" in this game actually.

 

[Cyberarmy]

OP build = pick literally any perk

k

You don't even have to pick any perks. I only upgraded my techie and int but still was killing pretty quick with guns.

 

[Kev Inkline]

But it literally does, that's how balanced the game is. Pick a couple of damage perks and grab a semidecent gun and you'll start destroying people.

There are so many +crit% perks across the skills pretty early you wonder if they even assumed people would spread their point across the trees.
Each point of reflex, for pistols, from stealth, when entering combat, from passive perks... and that's not even taking in account the +15% clothing mod that drops like candy.

I've found only one visor with +15% crit rate so far
TBH most "Legendary" guns seem to boast +30-55% crit chance mods....

I had so much crit chance so fast, I was convinced it bugged out into negative values. Because I surely didn't crit on every hit.
That said, if anything it is hard to fuck up your "build" in this game actually.

The stores reset upon loading saves, just like npc looks. Thus you can farm the best mods if you're so inclined. I found this by accident, I haven't read any discussions about the game nor watched tewb gameplay videos.
But it so happened I got 'deadeye' or whatever it is called mod, +15% crit chance +30% crit damage in a single slot upon a new load.
So basically you could cheese out all the best mods, I'd guess, if you have enough of patience.

 

[AwesomeButton]

There was some influx of third worlders misled about purchasing power of potato wages and "super cheap" living costs in Warsaw, which in reality are on the level of a provincial western town.

Sorry to derail but I'd much rather live in Krakow than in London, although I can't speak about, for example, Toronto.

People should note down the names of all the Youtube channels involved. All of them were enablers and failed at their jobs the moment CDProjekt gave them the statues and the jackets.

The one that will stay with me as the worst hypocrite is Alanah Pearce. The same ex-IGN journo who discovered her "love" for Cyberpunk 2077 some months before release, got the gaming chair and the ingame cameo, and completely chickened out of the discussion of the game post-release. What does she care anymore right, she got her junior writer job at Sony, such a crowning life achievement hahahah

I've heard some speculation that some of the shards were never meant to be shards. They are parts of the script that were meant to be voiced, but since they were told to release the game they just threw half the script onto shards and called it a day. Wouldn't surprise me since it fits what I've seen of the rest of the game. And we have the comments from employees that they needed until 2022 to finish it.

That was me, and I think there is good circumstantial evidence for there having been more interaction planned for fixers than what made it in the game, but no one has asked a developer for that specifically so it's not confirmed.

And there's... god I wish I had saved the image, there's a hilarious shard that is a devnote telling someone to write up story on Takemura's background. It's just so obvious that this is the kind of build you would see as an internal tester, only for god knows what reason they decided to throw it into the public and call it a finished game.

I found that but I already had read that it exists. It's on that market in Japantown where you meet with Takemura.

Usually the voice recording happens waaaay early in the development to have time for necessary reshoots.
Or to put it in a other way: if it's not voiced, it was not finished, ready or simply an afterthought at that internal deadline.
Like all those text messages, just extra fluff.
Fixer calls are kept vague, "detes attached". Wasn't more than a general idea at the time of recording.

"Detes attached" replacing the exposition which comes in text from the fixer may have been a stopgap solution. I just can't rationalize spending the effort on having different fixers and their physical locations, if all they would be used for is they are used for in the game right now.

 

[Haplo]

But it literally does, that's how balanced the game is. Pick a couple of damage perks and grab a semidecent gun and you'll start destroying people.

I went a tech/cool/hacking build

Tech - crafting the best in the game guns, armors and mods & making the "Tech" guns (already pretty much best - without those perks) even more OP
Cool - crazy damage bonuses from stealth and/or with silencers that put everything under Reflex to shame & +50% headshot damage plus strong assorted bonuses after enemy kill/crit/45% HP. Also boosts Crit Damage with each point.
Hacking - other then killing enemies without them even noticing, Frontal Cortex cyberware (that requires high Int), boosts your Crit chance by up to 25% and Crit Damage by up to 45%.

that was meant to be lacking in damage [...]

Oh?

Game is trash dude

Perhaps we need to agree to disagree.

 

[Bliblablubb]

I've found only one visor with +15% crit rate so far
TBH most "Legendary" guns seem to boast +30-55% crit chance mods....

Even crappy blue guns can come with hillarious +30+ % crit chance.
The random gen for loot is soooo broken and incoherent.
Oh look, iconic legandary pants with... no mod slot? Ookay.
A gun with "ricochet engine" bonus? Sure, why not.
A muzzle that gives +0% to dmg and crit (the normally invisble placeholder if you have no silencer attached)? Okiedokes.
Burya with reduced charge time? Sounds great!

It's such a massive fuckup. Why even randomize slot count. Who came up with those ideas?

Probably the guy who made the GPS. Makes sense to drive zigzag around the block instead of a straight line amirite?
In a car with worse brakes than 'murican cars in the 60s had.

 

[Haplo]

I've found only one visor with +15% crit rate so far
TBH most "Legendary" guns seem to boast +30-55% crit chance mods....

Even crappy blue guns can come with hillarious +30+ % crit chance.
The random gen for loot is soooo broken and incoherent.
Oh look, iconic legandary pants with... no mod slot? Ookay.
A gun with "ricochet engine" bonus? Sure, why not.
A muzzle that gives +0% to dmg and crit (the normally invisble placeholder if you have no silencer attached)? Okiedokes.
Burya with reduced charge time? Sounds great!

It's such a massive fuckup. Why even randomize slot count. Who came up with those ideas?

Probably the guy who made the GPS. Makes sense to drive zigzag around the block instead of a straight line amirite?
In a car with worse brakes than 'murican cars in the 60s had.

Some of the mods are indeed weird.
But as for the number of slots... I don't think I've ever seen a "Legendary" with no mod slots. In fact all seem to boast 3+.
"Epic" usually comes with 1, I think. "Rare" ones are probably outta luck, though.

And on topic of GPS, the scaling is the real downer when you're driving a car/bike. When driving with any reasonable speed, you only notice a turn once you should basically start turning...

 

[Yosharian]

But it literally does, that's how balanced the game is. Pick a couple of damage perks and grab a semidecent gun and you'll start destroying people.

I went a tech/cool/hacking build

Tech - crafting the best in the game guns, armors and mods & making the "Tech" guns (already pretty much best - without those perks) even more OP
Cool - crazy damage bonuses from stealth and/or with silencers that put everything under Reflex to shame & +50% headshot damage plus strong assorted bonuses after enemy kill/crit/45% HP. Also boosts Crit Damage with each point.
Hacking - other then killing enemies without them even noticing, Frontal Cortex cyberware (that requires high Int), boosts your Crit chance by up to 25% and Crit Damage by up to 45%.

that was meant to be lacking in damage [...]

Oh?

Game is trash dude

Perhaps we need to agree to disagree.

I didn't craft any guns though, I just used crafting to break the economy

I never really bothered attacking from Stealth

My hacking wasn't high enough to kill enemies like that

Game was still utterly trivial on the hardest difficulty

 

[Bliblablubb]

Hacking - other then killing enemies without them even noticing, Frontal Cortex Cyberware (that requires Int), boosts your Crit chance by up to 25% and Crit Damage by up to 45%.

Hacking isn't even a build, you can do it with 3 int, since cyberware has no stat req. Buy the Netwatch one for 45k or so and get +40% dmg on quickhacks. Which scale with you btw, higher rarity just means spreading to more targets and stuff.
My V was dumber than a bag of hammers and still h@X0000rz so superior, I wondered why I even bring guns.
Or why netrunners are confined to chairs. Lol noobs lol amirite?
And if you do the Kold Mirage sidequest, you get a purple system reset for frees that can conviniently upgraded to legendary with the next quest. Of course it is buggy, so you get the 2nd quest before the first one triggers...

"Builds".... *snort*

 

[Haplo]

Guess that's why I avoid damaging quickhacks.


Sure sad about those netrunner chairs, monowire, subnet access points...

 

[Bliblablubb]

But as for the number of slots... I don't think I've ever seen a "Legendary" with no mod slots. In fact all seem to boast 3+.

They are supposed to be:
Green 1
Blue 2
Purple 3
Gold 4

In reality it's "between zero and X slots", I've wasted at least an hour reloading quicksaves to fix loot. And even then it's ALWAYS one less mod than they should have for drops.
Dunno if crafted versions require you to savescum as well or work as they should. Could't be arsed to click on craft at least 700 times to level the skill. Seriously CDPR? No "craft X amount" button?