I need to actually play around with the inventory and other interfaces in CP2077 more to do a full critique of them, but I think there are two root problems from which most other UI/UX issues stem:
1) Inconsistent and/or unexpected control mapping for keyboard and mouse, which feels like a consequence of designing and playing with controllers exclusively/dominantly until late in development. M3 and keystrokes are not the same as 3rd and 4th face buttons on a controller, but controls have to go somewhere.
2) Overloaded controls. Sometimes designers develop controls to give equal access to every interaction at a given point. That’s usually not good, because every interaction doesn’t have equal importance, frequency, or even similar use cases. When you force the controls to support every interaction you could possibly want to do at a single point, the mapping gets complicated, crowded, and unwieldy.
I need to play more with the RPG systems as well, but I don’t like sifting through half a dozen variants of the same pistol or scope mod that differ in DPS or ADS time by single digit percentages or literally hundredths of a second, respectively. It’s inconsequential noise. If it doesn’t make any perceptible difference to the action economy or the utility of how I use the gear, it doesn’t matter to me and the process is just tedious.
Yes, I understand this is how many looter shooters work and also how The Outer Worlds works. It’s not gameplay I personally find enjoyable or interesting.
It looks like the perks get more useful / interesting later on, but when base level perks are giving things like 3% increases to damage, it falls into the same pit of “this makes no difference in gameplay”. This is exacerbated by the fact that the pace at which you will upgrade or swap out weapons is much faster than the pace at which you gain perks.
You have a rifle that does 100 DPS. You take a perk that increases damage from cover by 10%, so that goes up to 110 DPS. Unless the per-shot damage increase from the perk results in fewer bullets to take out an enemy, that is completely imperceptible. Then, after taking that perk, you upgrade to a different weapon, which becomes your new baseline inclusive with the perk. So if you take another perk that increases damage by 10 or 15% under certain circumstances, you’re not comparing its efficacy to the old rifle, before you took the first perk. The delta will feel the same, i.e. inconsequential, especially if enemies gain HP at a rate that matches your progression.
All of this amounts to a linear “ramp” incline where your numbers go up but the feeling of efficacy/”time to kill” is largely the same and you’re not usually gaining any new mechanics or different ways to engage with the content. I prefer less frequent, more impactful upgrades that do not directly overlap with how content (i.e., enemies) progresses.
Visually, it’s like two staircases going up, one for your stats/abilities, one for the monsters. The monsters’ steps don’t overlap with your steps, so there will be points where you upgrade and just clobber the hell out of enemies for a while until you hit the next monster step. Then you struggle for a while before you step up, repeating the cycle.
Classic AD&D has this feeling, as does Fallout 1. There are a lot of things I wouldn’t want to emulate from those classic games, but I still really feel they have a better sense of progression, especially in the 4-12 level range.
That said, I’m only 7ish hours in and I need to play a lot more to do a fair and thorough critique of everything.
I feel sorry for the devs butchering their own work.
