Cyberpunk Catch-All

Rezzy wrote:
ccoates wrote:

Not that it changes the results much, I'm just curious. It ends up so that the only way you can complete those extra objectives is the sneak attack non-lethal takedown. Although I stuck a guy in a box and that killed him anyway.

Is the arm cannon with tranq ammo still a one-hit knockout for most baddies?

I'm not sure! On this run I haven't gotten any cyberarms.

One small thing that annoys me is there's zero ability to tweak your appearance in a pragmatic way. Like they have this detailed character creation process, and you never get to see it because you can't, let's say, hide your hat.

And since you're always wearing a hat for the bonuses... why?

So one thing that I like about my character is the checkerboard fingernails. And once you get cyberarms you don't keep those. Sad face. Whenever I see them I think, hey, that's my character.

I do think switching the game to first person was a good move overall. I just wish they had some basic quality of life improvements so you can actually appreciate your character's look.

Is it a bug, or are the characters all butt ugly? I tried to make my hacker chick a red-headed street biker, and whenever I make her smile in a bathroom mirror she sorta... smirks? Maybe? It's really hard to tell, and there's no life or emotion behind it. There's next to no muscle movement.

Why even have the option to make silly faces in the mirror if they do nothing?

lol, yeah, no idea. Probably a cutting room feature to have your character do more facial expressions in conversations, cutscenes and the like.

They really shot for the moon with the game and ended with a Richard Branson-like trip to outer space.

‘Cyberpunk 2077’ Is Topping PS4 Downloads Charts, With No Help From Sony

Cyberpunk’s return has made it the most-downloaded game on the PS4 store in the US, Canada and Europe last month, topping mainstays like GTA 5, FIFA 21 and Minecraft.
farley3k wrote:

‘Cyberpunk 2077’ Is Topping PS4 Downloads Charts, With No Help From Sony

Cyberpunk’s return has made it the most-downloaded game on the PS4 store in the US, Canada and Europe last month, topping mainstays like GTA 5, FIFA 21 and Minecraft.

And thus, no lessons will be learned.

Before it came out I was sure I would be getting this on the strength of The Witcher and CD projekts track record.

Now I'll happily wait until the ultimate edition with all dlc comes out on sale however long that may be.

strangederby wrote:

Before it came out I was sure I would be getting this on the strength of The Witcher and CD projekts track record.

Now I'll happily wait until the ultimate edition with all dlc comes out on sale however long that may be.

I'm still not sure I'll even bother with that. I've got plenty of other stuff to play. I am super disappointed in the way this all turned out. It's all very Star Wars IMAGE(https://media4.giphy.com/media/3o84szW0PrWZyUv0mA/giphy.gif)

imbiginjapan wrote:

I'm still not sure I'll even bother with that. I've got plenty of other stuff to play. I am super disappointed in the way this all turned out. It's all very Star Wars

I think this is where I am, sadly. I preordered it, and then set it aside to wait.

If it were just bugs, I thought I'd just wait it out. but the more I see of this, the more I think there are too many major gameplay deficiencies that aren't something that will be improved.

I'm in the same boat (preordered then set it aside). I should know better than to preorder things by now, but this one seemed like a winner and I had shalalmed a few too many baskurs at the time.

I think it depends what you expect. I'd say play a few hours to get a basic grasp of the in-game systems, then tackle the first main quest "The Heist". If it's still not doing it for you after that, you can probably give it a pass.

Despite it's flaws I've been playing it non-stop for the past two weeks. I keep restarting to try different builds, which is fun for me, but I can see how if people expected GTA but sci-fi, or Deus Ex but open world, they'd be disappointed. Currently I'd rate it a C+/B-, which you can grade up or down on a curve if you're a really big fan (or inversely, not a fan) of the setting and genre, but I don't regret playing it.

Stability is okay now. I crash pretty regularly, but performance is overall good. The most frustrating crashes for me are right after I've done a lot of inventory management. That makes me want to cry face. Save frequently.

It is kind of tragic how you constantly see the bones of a better game as you play.

The in-game world itself has a lot of details that can be really interesting. My first couple plays I ignored the bulk of in-game transcripts that you pickup. But once you start reading them there's a lot of twists and callbacks. It's a pretty grim/ironic world. Like one character you can choose to save early on is implied to have tracked down and murdered the people who betrayed them, since you can stumble across those bodies later in the game.

To be clear, none of this affects the gameplay, but it does add flavor, I think. This isn't a game with deep roleplaying or decision making consequences.

Some of the quests are actually pretty touching. One about a damn talking vending machine really got to me, haha. The majority are pretty standard, however.

I hope eventually they add more quality of life stuff. Things I think they could fix without a huge investment that currently annoy me the most:

You can't fast forward phone calls (except, weirdly, main story related ones). Phone calls are immensely frustrating because they interrupt whatever you're doing and they disable a lot of in-game actions. Got cyber legs? Suddenly you can't use them until the call is over. This can be frustratingly comical when you're, let's say, running from the police and suddenly you just HAVE TO TAKE THIS CALL, hindering your escape because you can't jump over a fence.

Driving sucks. One video I was watching described it as if you're constantly driving in snow. That's accurate. It should be a lot harder to flip a car and they should really tone down the near constant state of hydroplaning. HOWEVER, fairly early on you can get an "Akira" motorcycle, which is pretty affordable, and is really fun to drive. It handles well and you can even do skid turns and stops like in the anime.

Auto-drive would be fantastic. Missions where you're a passenger are nice because you can look at the city and not worry about accidentally killing three pedestrians just making a simple turn. Being able to just let the car do the driving or even take one of the in-game cabs would really help with immersion in the world.

AI is pretty bad. But small tweaks would go a long way for immersion. Pedestrians duck and cower when a gunfight starts, which makes sense! But... then they never stop. You can come back hours later and there's still like 12 people all hunched down. In games where they just go back to normal it IS kind of silly, but after playing Cyberpunk I'd say the opposite is even sillier. It's also in contrast to how if police survive a gunfight with gang members, once the combat ends they'll go kneel down and check on their fallen buddies. The game does have a lot of nice touches like that, which makes some of the jankier stuff stand out even more by contrast.

Being able to hide armor/clothes would be nice. You can tweak your character's look a lot, but then it's covered by armor for most of the game, rendering it kinda pointless. Fine, they can't model infinite hairstyles under hats but... just let us hide outfits if we want. I'm baffled so many games refuse to do this.

You can bulk sell "junk" items, but you can't bulk sell food items. And you'll end up picking up a LOT of those items. I think they disabled the ability to dismantle food items because people were exploiting it for infinite parts/money (you could break down like 100 sodas and sell the parts for a profit, apparently). But trying to clear your inventory of them takes forever now.

The notes you pickup through the game are in the literal hundreds, and by default they're all EXPANDED in the menu. Which makes scrolling to a new one take forever. You should be able to have them collapsed by default. Or maybe have a toggle to hide ones that you've already read.

In-game explanations could be a lot better. The systems have a lot of moving parts, and they're so poorly explained you can literally finish the game without realizing something simple is possible. I only just realized today you can filter map icons. I only found out that cars have an emergency brake that helps with fast turns from a YouTube video. It's never mentioned in the driving tutorial. There's only like four buttons involved in driving. I have no idea why you'd leave that detail out.

Excellent post.

tldr Lots of neat details if you look, but bad design is forever.

ccoates wrote:

I hope eventually they add more quality of life stuff. Things I think they could fix without a huge investment that currently annoy me the most:

I'm very much a newbie, hobbyist coder, in the early stages of my game-making journey, so I know only enough to be dangerous and wrong. However, I think it would require more investment than might first appear.

The crouching NPCs is a good example (this design decision really annoyed me too). Each NPC has a script object attached to it that, among other things, tells it how to react to gunfire by the player. Currently, the only response is 'crouch and cower'. However, CDPR could probably create at least two options (such as, to run away, or to attack the player).

But then CDPR would need to create code to determine how many NPCs chose which option. And then they'd need to create code to specify how NPCs would run away and how NPCs would attack the player. That's actually a fair amount of extra work in terms of design, coding and testing.

Multiply that by all the items in your list of quality of life improvements, and the overall investment is considerable...

C+ or B- is also what I would grade the game.

Another gripe I have with the calls is that I would frequently get 2 or 3 consecutively. I would be nice if they would at least have a 5 minute break or something.

Along the lines of the calls I think you should meet almost every fixer in person and have a semi-interesting starter quest before they hand out the formulaic quests. Many just call you and start giving directions.

I expected Witcher 3 but sci-fi, but didn’t get it. I made it through the heist mission before I set it aside due to bugs.

detroit20 wrote:

The crouching NPCs is a good example (this design decision really annoyed me too). Each NPC has a script object attached to it that, among other things, tells it how to react to gunfire by the player. Currently, the only response is 'crouch and cower'. However, CDPR could probably create at least two options (such as, to run away, or to attack the player).

Good points, but I mostly meant compared to some of the suggestions people have that involve inherently changing the game's core design.

Weirdly, NPC pedestrians already have those options you mention. They CAN run away. I've even had some funny moments where they ran in front of my sniper shots. Which was frustrating but also, you know, makes a certain amount of sense. So it's not even like they'd be adding new animations. And tweaks like that would be great for immersion, I think.

Orphu wrote:

I expected Witcher 3 but sci-fi, but didn’t get it. I made it through the heist mission before I set it aside due to bugs.

Recently? Or are we talking during the launch state. If it wasn't recent it might be worth giving a second chance.

I'm playing on a "last gen" Xbox One X and I've encountered very few game breaking bugs. Like I managed to get my character stuck a few times trying to do weird stuff.

One thing I get a particular joy out of is tricking NPCs into opening doors that I don't have the skills to open. In some cases the game seems designed with that flexibility, like you can make a TV start to fritz through a window, and an NPC walks over and opens the door and you sneak in behind them.

Other times when you pull it off it's obviously not meant to work that way. I kind of hilariously locked myself in a closet by accident during a mission in Kabuki because while an NPC was patrolling he opened it, I ran over and whacked him, then... the door shut.

Sometimes quest scripting can break, but most quests can ultimately either be solved by A) killing everyone or B) saving and reloading fixes a lot of that. Not like loading an earlier save, but just saving where you're standing.

For example, there's a mission where the NPC I was trying to save would NOT get in the car, and save/reload fixed it. I admit I was tempted to make them walk behind the car for 2 kilometers but I was worried they'd step on a landmine or get hit by a car.

The game has a lot of bugs! No lie. But if you don't consider disagreeing with the design itself a bug at this point, it's mostly a lot of annoyances and papercuts (which I admit isn't a selling point). Yet there's a game worth playing in there I think, even as-is.

Random sidenote: Thank god they added a color blind mode for the UI. I'm so glad that's becoming more standard, because by default is NOT color blind friendly. Recently I decided to try the regular mode and for me a lot of the stuff is borderline indistinguishable. Like legendaries and uncommons look almost exactly the same unless I stare really close. So the modes they added still aren't perfect, but without them the game would be borderline unplayable for me.

PoderOmega wrote:

C+ or B- is also what I would grade the game.

Another gripe I have with the calls is that I would frequently get 2 or 3 consecutively. I would be nice if they would at least have a 5 minute break or something.

Along the lines of the calls I think you should meet almost every fixer in person and have a semi-interesting starter quest before they hand out the formulaic quests. Many just call you and start giving directions.

That would be really cool! I never thought about that. I visited Regina in person, but there's not really a point to doing so beyond flavor, so I didn't bother with any of the others. Even if the first mission was just "come meet me at my office" that'd add a certain amount of immersion.

Rezzy wrote:
ccoates wrote:

Not that it changes the results much, I'm just curious. It ends up so that the only way you can complete those extra objectives is the sneak attack non-lethal takedown. Although I stuck a guy in a box and that killed him anyway.

Is the arm cannon with tranq ammo still a one-hit knockout for most baddies?

I just tried out the other cyberarms for the first time.

The gorilla arms are the only ones that remove your fingernails. BUT! Once you're done with the Beat on the Brat boxing quests you can install one of the other cyberarms and you GET THEM BACK.

I really wish I had tried that earlier, haha. Those quests are so hard without the gorilla arms.

Still haven't tried the tranq dart yet though.

I played the heck outta this game when it first came out. Luckily, I had a really good rig so I didn't see most of the bugs other folks had. I agree with the game systems being kinda wonky a pain to deal with at times. That said, the story really had me hooked. The ambitious direction they went with the story, the set pieces, were all top-notch in my opinion. It's like they said at some point, "oh yeah, we also need to cram a game into this story".

Data mined info showing potential dlc. How much ends up still being planned is guesswork, but I'm seeing new gigs, weapons and New Game Plus. Potential expansion of Pacifica is a good one.

New skins of not so great things (guns, cars, costumes) will not make me play this again. But a hardcore/NG plus mode might. That plus working on the open world aspect: apartments, food has real meaning, cops don't have teleportation skills but crime has real consequences. I just want to live in Night city.

dlc8_mirror

I'm hoping that means transmog. The lack of character customization after the beginning is really weird in a cyberpunk game. The fact they didn't come up with a mission where you inject your face to look like someone else also seems like a weird oversight. Perhaps they discussed it and it never came to fruition, but there seems to be so much more they could play with in this setting.

I can replace my eyeballs but can't get a haircut.

Budo wrote:

I can replace my eyeballs but can't get a haircut.

Still stuck in Coronavirus lockdown?

if only you could see what I've seen with your eyes.

Brownypoints wrote:

New skins of not so great things (guns, cars, costumes) will not make me play this again. But a hardcore/NG plus mode might. That plus working on the open world aspect: apartments, food has real meaning, cops don't have teleportation skills but crime has real consequences. I just want to live in Night city.

Not much info yet but I have high hopes for this game:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/...

NathanialG wrote:

Not much info yet but I have high hopes for this game:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/...

I think this is just going to be Cloudpunk with a few extra bells and whistles. It will probably be cool, but not really remotely comparable to what people expected out of Cyberpunk.

Yeah, I need to live in Night City....as a bounty hunter!

ruhk wrote:
NathanialG wrote:

Not much info yet but I have high hopes for this game:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/...

I think this is just going to be Cloudpunk with a few extra bells and whistles. It will probably be cool, but not really remotely comparable to what people expected out of Cyberpunk.

Different vibe as well. Cloudpunk (for me at least) is a very "chill and enjoy the ride" type of game. At least in the current state. Regardless, Cloudpunk is enjoyable and recommended.

My dreams are smaller now!

In all seriousness, our dreams for our real life should always be as great as possible. When we fail to achieve our dream we will still have exceeded if we had set them lower.

However, for gaming, at this stage, it's best to set your dreams as small as possible. And then be pleasantly surprised when they're met or exceeded.