Cyberpunk 2077

[01101010]

One question: is there a light? Lots of dark scenes where I literally can't see where I'm going. Not sure if that's intended or just my tv crushing the darks (or both), but coming from janky ol Empyrion where I have both a helmet lamp and nightvision...weird to be a cyborg that can't even see in a dimly lit corner...

That gamma slider is your best bet. One thing I noticed, it has the usual "adjust until the image on the left is barely visible." By default, the image on the left is completely hidden from view so the game defaults to darker than what the gamma slider suggests. Trust me, you're gonna want to fix it. There are a few missions where you'll just be stumbling around in the dark if you don't.

Actually had an odd bug with this yesterday. I paused the game right before the first mandatory mission right after you do your little backstory intro. I helped the wife with something for 30-45m and came back and hit resume and the screen just got progressively darker and darker until it was back to default setting for contrast. Very strange...

[Sky]

It seems a bit weird to play a character with ocular implants and have to turn up gamma rather than install something into V's eye...or get a simple flashlight for when I need it so I'm not blinded by the daylight to see in the dark...

[Riggswolfe]

It seems a bit weird to play a character with ocular implants and have to turn up gamma rather than install something into V's eye...or get a simple flashlight for when I need it so I'm not blinded by the daylight to see in the dark...

I had the same thought. "When can I get night vision for my cybereyes."

I really like the game but there are some places where it is obvious corners were cut to meet the release date and this is an example.

[Trippy]

PC graphics settings guide from Digital Foundry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pC25ambD8vs

[Trippy]

It seems a bit weird to play a character with ocular implants and have to turn up gamma rather than install something into V's eye...or get a simple flashlight for when I need it so I'm not blinded by the daylight to see in the dark...

There's a lot about the game and setting that makes it not feel like you are actually 50 or so years in the future.

[schild]

Better this than a bugless borefest.

I mean yeah, shouldn't have played Outer Worlds either.

[Count Nerfedalot]

um, what are these bugless borefest options again?   I'm sick and tired of buggy crap. I might actually be interested in a boring game that doesn't have a habit of crashing on me mid-flight, getting me stuck in geometry, causing me to die due to sudden lag spikes, bad pathfinding or simply crappy UI, losing my items, filled with broken quests, having multiple crafting systems or component sets obviously designed by different teams/individuals that couldn't be arsed to communicate or coordinate and thus don't interact well with each other, corrupting its saves, using a consoleified UI that takes 16 clicks to get to what should be a simple maybe two step selection and which can't even be arsed to go where the crosshairs point (or more accurately, put the crosshairs over the actual spot you are pointing at/heading towards), and all the other symptoms of sloppy code written by underpaid and inexperienced cheapest available labor with clueless management, using poorly understood tools or engines, and producing products rushed prematurely to release because all the development funds got spent on flashy artwork, marketing and parqour animations while the engine and content development tools are still buggy POSs held together with chewing gum and promises and the engineers who might possibly be able to fix them are deemed too expensive, and the game designers were only halfway through reinventing all the triangular wheels that have been tried and proven failures by every designer before them.

(note I'm not saying Cyberpunk 2077 has any of these characteristics, I've never even seen the actual game, I have no idea other than what I've read on the intarwebs of what all corners were cut and flaws were ignored in the rush to release before the whole company cratered. I'm just super leery given CDPR's and the industy in general's history.)

[eldaec]

It seems a bit weird to play a character with ocular implants and have to turn up gamma rather than install something into V's eye...or get a simple flashlight for when I need it so I'm not blinded by the daylight to see in the dark...

There's a lot about the game and setting that makes it not feel like you are actually 50 or so years in the future.

Game feels like you are playing in what people thought it might be like 50 years in the future, 30 years ago.

Which is fine.

Edit : or more specifically, what they thought the designers of Deus Ex and the fifth element would think 2077 might look like.

[Riggswolfe]

Game feels like you are playing in what people thought it might be like 50 years in the future, 30 years ago.

Which is fine.

Edit : or more specifically, what they thought the designers of Deus Ex and the fifth element would think 2077 might look like.

Or, ya know, what the creator of Cyberpunk 2020 thought the future of that setting might look like.

[Sky]

I'm near skill tree paralysis already. Not a huge fan of no respec in games like this. The trees seem pretty oddly broken up, and with a cap on it I'm finding it pretty difficult to put together two builds (one for my current run, one for a future run) that stand alone without stepping on the other build. Only being able to max 2 (maybe 3 if you really minimize 2) reduces options quite a bit. Seems the perks have some natural overlap that one work in a few ways, and unless you want to go noncombat, you are required to get either body or agility.

I dunno, I've pored over this for quite a bit and can't find anything that really fits the two ways I want to run through the game. First is my current, ex-military biker. I could probably make a decent one, though I'd have to cross over a bunch of stuff with my other (stealthy ninja hacker). Having stealth, blades, and hacking on 3 trees seems odd.

I'm leaning towards Body and Tech, because Deke did alot of crafting in Days Gone, and I used a lot of shotguns/LMG and baseball bats. But then that gives me tech weapon advantage, which seems to pair better with sniper rifles, so I'd lean toward giving tech to my ninja guy except he won't have enough points to spec into it.

I guess it's considered a good thing to have to make these choices? It's just been pretty frustrating whenever I get a point it means I spend another fifteen minutes trying to figure something out before saying 'fuck it' just dropping points and moving on. Which seems like not a good system.

[01101010]

I'm near skill tree paralysis already. Not a huge fan of no respec in games like this. The trees seem pretty oddly broken up, and with a cap on it I'm finding it pretty difficult to put together two builds (one for my current run, one for a future run) that stand alone without stepping on the other build. Only being able to max 2 (maybe 3 if you really minimize 2) reduces options quite a bit. Seems the perks have some natural overlap that one work in a few ways, and unless you want to go noncombat, you are required to get either body or agility.

I dunno, I've pored over this for quite a bit and can't find anything that really fits the two ways I want to run through the game. First is my current, ex-military biker. I could probably make a decent one, though I'd have to cross over a bunch of stuff with my other (stealthy ninja hacker). Having stealth, blades, and hacking on 3 trees seems odd.

I'm leaning towards Body and Tech, because Deke did alot of crafting in Days Gone, and I used a lot of shotguns/LMG and baseball bats. But then that gives me tech weapon advantage, which seems to pair better with sniper rifles, so I'd lean toward giving tech to my ninja guy except he won't have enough points to spec into it.

I guess it's considered a good thing to have to make these choices? It's just been pretty frustrating whenever I get a point it means I spend another fifteen minutes trying to figure something out before saying 'fuck it' just dropping points and moving on. Which seems like not a good system.

You can respec perks at specific ripperdocs with Tabula E-Rasa @100k... so it can be done but not sure it is worth it in early game at that pricepoint. Attribute points aren't spec eligible.

[Sky]

Right, I was talking about the skill points. And I agree about the cost of respec, coming from AC Odyssey a couple weeks ago where I've respecced just because I got a new epic bow or whatever. It's a money sink, but not so much that it's ever untenable throughout the game (scales with level).

Boggles my mind whenever stuff like this happens in a single player game. At the very least, a simple console would be nice.

[Riggswolfe]

Right, I was talking about the skill points. And I agree about the cost of respec, coming from AC Odyssey a couple weeks ago where I've respecced just because I got a new epic bow or whatever. It's a money sink, but not so much that it's ever untenable throughout the game (scales with level).

Boggles my mind whenever stuff like this happens in a single player game. At the very least, a simple console would be nice.

I'm a bit confused by your reply here. Skills aren't limited by other skills. They go up purely through use. Do you mean attributes? Cause, yeah, you have to make some choices there.

[Falconeer]

Perks.

[Riggswolfe]

Perks.

Perks can be reset at Ripperdocs as noted.

[Sky]

You're being willfully confused, I'm clearly saying the one that cannot be respecced sucks. Sorry I forgot whatever random term this dev used.

Midichlorians should be able to be respecced. And the cost of respeccing Dilithium Crystals is way too high and should scale with level.

 

edited to add: and my main point is on allocations of Dilithium Crystals that is making it hard to choose a single build that I like, I don't really understand how they're supposed to work together to make a loose 'class'. Lacking the ability to easily try things out and then respec if it's not as listed on the tin...two sides of a problem.

[Riggswolfe]

The game has 3 things:

Attributes: Body, Tech, Reflexes, etc. They give bonuses and are required to unlock some of the higher tiered perks. Limited to 50 total I believe. These cannot be respecced as far as I know. No idea why not.
Skills: Handguns, Crafting, Breach, etc. These also give bonuses and sometimes free perk points. These raise simply by doing them and cap out at 20. They are also independent of each other and your level, purely using them is all that matters.
Perks: Gained on level ups and from leveling skills from time to time. I'm not sure what the maximum here is as I'd have to look over each skills. 50+however many you get from skill levelups. These can be respecced at a Ripperdoc.

You mention skill trees in your post but I think you mean attributes. I'm not sure why they can't be respecced other than they have some specific uses and they don't want you playing the system? For example Intelligence and Cool come up a lot in conversations. Tech is used to lock pick doors. Strength can tear open some other doors. Reflexes, well, I haven't seen a special use for it yet besides shooting stuff in the face.

[carnifex27]

Skills: Handguns, Crafting, Breach, etc. These also give bonuses and sometimes free perk points. These raise simply by doing them and cap out at 20. They are also independent of each other and your level, purely using them is all that matters.

They are independent of each other, but they are not really independent of your level. A skill can never be higher than it's related attribute. As an example, if you leave your intelligence at 3 then your breaching skill can not progress past 3.

[Sky]

Skills: Handguns, Crafting, Breach, etc. These also give bonuses and sometimes free perk points. These raise simply by doing them and cap out at 20. They are also independent of each other and your level, purely using them is all that matters.

They are independent of each other, but they are not really independent of your level. A skill can never be higher than it's related attribute. As an example, if you leave your intelligence at 3 then your breaching skill can not progress past 3.

This is the core of why the non-respeccable numbers are bad. Who cares if some kids want to ruin their own game by constantly respeccing to overcome attribute checks? Good for them, it's a goddamned single player game. Now I'M looking for a cheat to refund my attribute/skill/perk/dildo points so I don't get stuck with a build that sounded good but doesn't work for me.

Honestly, if the game just had a simple console so I could /respec, I would be fine with that.

[Rendakor]

I hate respecs in games, even single player, so this is a different strokes for different folks thing. Respecs trivialize build planning and careful choice of perks/skills/whatever, which is something I enjoy a lot. If you can respec easily, you just pick whatever and make a new build every 5 levels.

[Trippy]

I hate respecs in games, even single player, so this is a different strokes for different folks thing. Respecs trivialize build planning and careful choice of perks/skills/whatever, which is something I enjoy a lot. If you can respec easily, you just pick whatever and make a new build every 5 levels.

I sort of understand this perspective from a CRPG perspective (you made a choice and should have to live with it), but on the other hand these attributes/skills/perks are way out of balance. E.g. The Spiffing Brit has a video up showing how broken pistols are and SkillUp complained in his review that Crafting was useless cause he was finding better items than he could ever craft at any given time. It would really suck to spend points on attributes/perks and then find out later they are basically useless with no way / easy way to redo the allocation.

[Riggswolfe]

Skills: Handguns, Crafting, Breach, etc. These also give bonuses and sometimes free perk points. These raise simply by doing them and cap out at 20. They are also independent of each other and your level, purely using them is all that matters.

They are independent of each other, but they are not really independent of your level. A skill can never be higher than it's related attribute. As an example, if you leave your intelligence at 3 then your breaching skill can not progress past 3.

I didn't know that! Learn something new everyday.

[Count Nerfedalot]

It's true there are two (at least) different playstyles competing here, "hardcore", "choices matter - even if you aren't given enough information to make an intelligent choice" vs "easygoing", "experimental/experiential - if it looks interesting, try it and switch if you don't like it".  The problem with a game without respec is, it absolutely prevents the latter style of play. Period. Can't be done. Game is not for you, go home. A game *with* respec, on the other hand, still also supports people who don't want to respec.  Unless it's some bizzare Hideo Kojima design that somehow forces you to respec as part of it's mind fucking, but that's not the case here. It's the exact same problem as permadeath vs respawn, or pvp vs pve and other competing play styles. And it has the exact same, easy, low-cost solution: game modes/difficulties/options. I mean, we're not talking hard stuff like balancing systems for both pvp and pve, or making NPC AI smarter or dumber.  It's a simple reset your character's scores and let you respend them, in a single-player game where the only way other people are impacted is if their epeen is somehow measured by comparing their willingness and cleverness at putting up with bullshit and having to research out of game or replay the game repeatedly to find out what actually works for them.  Smarter developers let the player choose which style or what difficulty they prefer, be it through options settings or game difficulty levels or hardcore vs easy modes. Asshole "my way or the highway" DvP (Deveoper vs Player) developers don't.  It seems to me the assholes are leaving money on the table by not catering to a big share of their potential market with something that is truly easy to the point of trivial to implement, so I guess the joke's on them?

[Sky]

I'm just tripling down on Body and going full Ahnald.

This might sound crazy, but on a whim I tried running the game at 720p. I had been running at 1080p on my 970. Ran well, so I bumped the preset up and up and, well, Ultra 720p might be a better experience than Medium/Low 1080p, at least on my 4k qled.

Downsides mostly aliasing, smallest text loses sharpness but is legible. Upside is image quality is dramatically better while still running smoother. I'm sure I'll run into some issues with it (my guess is textures given the vram) but I played for around an hour after changing the settings and mostly forgot I was in 720p. And that was mostly run-n-gun, so a decent test run.

[Ashamanchill]

Better this than a bugless borefest.

I'm actually having a lot of fun with this game, but this game design is not at pushing any boundaries. The world is super cool, but the missions design is, well, a borefest. I've done a shit ton of side quests and other various minutiae, and it is all really just MMO variety quest design. I was expecting a bit more than what we got on this front. The perk system is nothing special either. It's a good thing killing people with blades is fun as fuck.

By far my biggest disappointment though is the cops. Holy shit they are a badly designed mess. Kill one hobo in the dark, in an alley you have ensured no one saw and there are no cameras? boom instant cop attention. And that could be tolerated, if the mother fuckers didn't just spawn at your location no matter what. In elevators you have just gotten out of, in alleys they werent in seconds ago, or my favorite, in V's own apartment (even though they dont actually aggro you there). I had a case where I had a corner behind me, but like about 10 feet to the back of it, and they fucking spawned there. Like, I can take cops being more powerful and crime being punished severely, but honestly cops in GTA 1 had more organic ways of showing up and confronting you.

[Trippy]

By far my biggest disappointment though is the cops. Holy shit they are a badly designed mess. Kill one hobo in the dark, in an alley you have ensured no one saw and there are no cameras? boom instant cop attention.

You don't even have to kill somebody for that to happen. If you have your weapon out at the wrong time you'll get the same response. And there's no easy way to switch to unarmed mode, at least that I've found. Meanwhile there's random acts of violence all over the city that the NCPD ignore (and actually pay you to clean up) but if you walk around armed it's instant multiple hunter seeker death drones.

[01101010]

By far my biggest disappointment though is the cops. Holy shit they are a badly designed mess. Kill one hobo in the dark, in an alley you have ensured no one saw and there are no cameras? boom instant cop attention.

You don't even have to kill somebody for that to happen. If you have your weapon out at the wrong time you'll get the same response. And there's no easy way to switch to unarmed mode, at least that I've found. Meanwhile there's random acts of violence all over the city that the NCPD ignore (and actually pay you to clean up) but if you walk around armed it's instant multiple hunter seeker death drones.

On PS4, double tap the Triangle puts weapons away where single tap brings out the weapons. Should work the same on PC but not sure.

[Rendakor]

Double-tapping Alt puts the weapon away on PC, but I'm not sure if that counts as "unarmed" or not.

[Velorath]

Finished up the game, having done most of the side quests.

Game is quantity over quality in every regard, from quests to game systems. If they had learned when to cut some things so they could put focus more on others this game could have been something. I went in expecting a technical mess and it was much better than I expected in that regard (though still shouldn't have been released in this state). Instead it ended up being a mess of design and gameplay. It's overly-ambitious in that it tries a lot of things that don't play to CDPR's established strengths while also not being ambitious at all in the way it cobbles together worse implementations of things from other games like GTA and Deus Ex.  It's a solid 6-7 out of 10 game but I'm past thinking that 6 months to a year of bug fixes will make it amazing. The problems here are foundational.

[01101010]

Finished up the game, having done most of the side quests.

Game is quantity over quality in every regard, from quests to game systems. If they had learned when to cut some things so they could put focus more on others this game could have been something. I went in expecting a technical mess and it was much better than I expected in that regard (though still shouldn't have been released in this state). Instead it ended up being a mess of design and gameplay. It's overly-ambitious in that it tries a lot of things that don't play to CDPR's established strengths while also not being ambitious at all in the way it cobbles together worse implementations of things from other games like GTA and Deus Ex.  It's a solid 6-7 out of 10 game but I'm past thinking that 6 months to a year of bug fixes will make it amazing. The problems here are foundational.

Yeah, fuck GTA5.... that game is my yardstick for what a game should look like and how it should be supported by the company. They are still coming out with new heists and DLCs and vehicles. It is maddening.

[Khaldun]

So I'm just starting, but here's the thing that I think is going unremembered about Witcher 3. Witcher 3 was as good as it was because:

a) Geralt finally became a genuinely iconic character (worthy of his book inspiration) and his story finally became really compelling.
b) The setting finally fully gelled.
c) The POI quests were great up to Skellige, at which point they became fine.
d) The Bloody Baron arc plus the witches was so good that it kind of overrode every other so-so experience you might have had.
e) The combat and other systems (like Geralt's Witcher vision) became at least kind of fun and made coherent sense and meshed with the questing.
f) The grand arc of the plot was epic.
g) The minigames like Gwent were fun.

But in the end, it was not an Elder Scrolls open world, it was more like the absolutely best Assassin's Creed game ever. It was POIs, side quests, minigames, cut scenes.

So I think everyone who is like "This is not a genuine open world" or "oh it's just POIs and quest hubs" is definitely someone who imagined they were getting a different game than what they were always going to get. I will wait to see whether it's a game where the writing is not very good or the world is not very interesting, which would be disappointing, but I never thought this was going to be "Cyberpunk Skyrim" because this isn't what this company has done when they've done their best work.

[Ashamanchill]

So I think everyone who is like "This is not a genuine open world" or "oh it's just POIs and quest hubs" is definitely someone who imagined they were getting a different game than what they were always going to get. I will wait to see whether it's a game where the writing is not very good or the world is not very interesting, which would be disappointing, but I never thought this was going to be "Cyberpunk Skyrim" because this isn't what this company has done when they've done their best work.

I mean, look at CDPR's substantial catalogue of hype material for the game. The phrase "next gen of rpgs" was even used at one point. By them. There was specific claims about many different facets of the world and gameplay that just are just not there. I enjoy this game, but it is a whole gen behind, in some places two.

[Velorath]

Are people saying  "This is not a genuine open world" or "oh it's just POIs and quest hubs"? Because I think the opposite. It is an open world and it's not really quest hubs Each district has a fixer that offers "gigs" but those are the slightest bits of content aside from the crimes you pass by when you're going down the street. Beyond being restricted on where you can go in the first act, you aren't going to want to stay in one district and clear out all the content there or anything.

As to everything else, I can only speak for myself but I had very little in the way of expectations for this game. I did not watch any gameplay videos, and Witcher 3 is the only CDPR game I've played more than an hour or two of let alone finished. I also recognize that it's the product of them refining the series across 3 games. Cyberpunk is their first attempt at shooing. As far as I know it's their first attempt at stealth gameplay. The cyberdeck stuff is more extensive than their previous magic systems. Witcher 3 had a horse but this is their first attempt at having driving in a game (and things that entail like having traffic and pedestrians working in a believable way). Like I said previously, there's a lot here that's not in their usual wheelhouse and boy did they not nail it.

Even the things they're known for, like the writing and dialogue options seem a bit off. There's a ton of superfluous dialogue options that don't have any substantial differences. Pretty much all the dialogue options that are gated by having high enough attributes are just flavor text and don't unlock any sort of extra options or paths for you. There's an odd, poorly defined stat/mechanic that gates off some of the endings. Some of the writing is bad, particularly for Keanu's character. Some story sequences could have been heavily edited down as they just run on too long. Without going into spoilers, there's a character who can die midway through the game but can also apparently be saved but it's very much not apparent (and that seems to be the common consensus from what I can see, not just me).

There's bits of gameplay that I still can't tell if they're broken or working as intended. Tech sniper rifles are supposed to be able to shoot through cover (if you see enemies red outlines from pinging them or marking them). However they'll literally shoot through any or all layers of cover. Multiple layers, from across the map. Like as long as you can see their outline, you can shoot them. I realize it's not entirely different from being able to pop into a camera system and start hacking people with dots and instakills, but it's so much faster and doesn't even require you to find a camera or manage your mana RAM.

It borrows the Bethesda model of having tons of useless junk around the world to pick up for no reason. You can break stuff down into crafting materials but aside from spells daemons you can never really craft any weapons and armor that are going to be better than the stuff you're already finding and aren't going to swap out in a few levels anyway. So what's really the purpose of having all this useless trash around that makes it harder to pickup stuff you actually want? I don't know, other than it's one more thing to extend gameplay out as all the loot will have you poking around through every room incase some actually useful might be in there. Or maybe it's just in there because that's what Bethesda does. All the consumables other than the health packs are mostly pointless. The health packs you get so many of, I don't even know why they're there really. I think I finished up with over 100 of one kind and like 290 of the better kind.

I could go on and on with stuff like this. Like why, in a game where you can snipe people through walls or using hacking to get them to shoot themselves with their own guns would you want to spec into a melee or grenade-focused build (obviously some people will just feel like doing it, and you're all crazy but have fun). If they were going to borrow from Deus Ex, why didn't they learn from the director's cut of Human Revolution where the developers realized that maybe they could tweak the boss fights a little to give more options for people who didn't build their character for pure combat?

I'll stop now but I could literally keep going on this for about 20 more paragraphs and I don't even hate the game or anything.

[Trippy]

Double-tapping Alt puts the weapon away on PC, but I'm not sure if that counts as "unarmed" or not.

Yeah it does. Thanks!

[Ashamanchill]

It borrows the Bethesda model of having tons of useless junk around the world to pick up for no reason. You can break stuff down into crafting materials but aside from spells daemons you can never really craft any weapons and armor that are going to be better than the stuff you're already finding and aren't going to swap out in a few levels anyway. So what's really the purpose of having all this useless trash around that makes it harder to pickup stuff you actually want? I don't know, other than it's one more thing to extend gameplay out as all the loot will have you poking around through every room incase some actually useful might be in there. Or maybe it's just in there because that's what Bethesda does. All the consumables other than the health packs are mostly pointless. The health packs you get so many of, I don't even know why they're there really. I think I finished up with over 100 of one kind and like 290 of the better kind.

I'll stop now but I could literally keep going on this for about 20 more paragraphs and I don't even hate the game or anything.

The whole loot system is so weird. It doesn't work on the immersion factor, but then it also doesn't work as a real loot system. Like, I'm wearing a flak vest, but then a windbreaker drops with higher armor than it, simply because it is a higher level. So, unlike say, Skyrim, where going from 'normal' armor, to elven, to daedric (roughly speaking, it's been 6 or so years) made sense, here I can't equip a pair of jeans because I need to be 3 levels higher? And that is after we drop the idea that certain baseball caps are better than their peers by being blue or purple. But then, leaving aside immersion, it doesn't work as a normal loot system either. I spend a portion of the evening doing a "very hard" side gig, and the dudes drop level 12 loot. Only I can't equip it, because I am level 4, and by the time I get to level 12 I will have been flooded with enough level 12 crap that this loot will mean nothing. Like, cmon man. Baldurs Gate 2 had me staying up all night to cheeze beat certain encounters, with the loot that dropped being commensurate with the effort I put in. And the game was confident in how I found my fun that it didn't care if I was overpowered after that.

I dunno man.