Gameplay Demo - Your Suggestion/Feedback Thread

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I want enemies that you have injured to come back to life. Like in the Shadow of War Game, you could injure enemies than they would come back to life with new swords for limbs. I want that same thing for CyberPunk, not necessarily for bosses but for the goons. For example in the 2077 gameplay V shoots a guy in the legs with a shotgun and his legs come clean off, than she shoots him in the head. However, if you didn't kill him next time he may come back with bionic legs.
 
I'll keep this brief, to not repeat some of what was already mentioned or what is obviously work in progress:

1. Sliding animation doesn't feel right. The camera and player's arms simply transition diagonally to lower angle, there is no sense of weight or momentum. Arms also could be adjusted to aim from a different angle( like when inspecting a gun)

2. Bit letdown on enemy AI/types. You are in a warehouse filled with these bad ass cyborgs. They are more augmented, with more implants than you have. What do they do? They hide behind cover and simply shoot at you.
Where are their superhuman capabilities? I fear this will be similar to Deus Ex, MC only one in the game who actually uses tech and implants to his advantage.
I would rather see less, but well thought out encounters with enemy skills/builds and environment creating a huge range of different scenarios.
So you first observe the layout of the room, what you can interact with/use to your advantage, then you observe enemies: their position, distance from one another, skills, weapons and augs. Then you plan, and finally execute. ( if you go for combat route)
No matter how good gameplay is, it will get repetitive if enemies, encounter and environment design are not varied enough and challenge the player to rethink his/her approach.
This is one advantage that Cyberpunk has over other settings: Everyone has access to "magic".
Use this.
 
The car chase encounter in the demo kinda puzzled me. Why are V and Jackie chasing the attacker?

Are those encounters scripted to work in a specific way?
 
I'm curious about the UI. The font and placement reminds me of Fallout 4, but I was surprised by the subtlety of the simple letters and boxes. It doesn't feel quite like monospaced console text that you might see if you consider the screen your eye hooked into a computer, but it also didn't feel as flashy as the world, since it had no effects or layering like say other displays in the world or the logo did. It currently feels like it supports the mature atmosphere with its red on black palette and doesn't get in the way, but I'm not sure that it's as good as it can be currently. I think leaning into the whole digital readout as UI or making it more flashy would be better than it is now, where it doesn't have impact compared to everything else in the demo.
 
Some suggestions:
  • Adding a stronger cover system (e.g, actually having your back to a wall and then leaning out and aiming).
  • More realistic interactions with objects (picking up a jacket and physically putting it on, actually drinking a can of pop etc)
  • Time-based dialogue (like when V talked with Meredith and she started to get impatient when V didn't answer) without actual on-screen countdowns before you can choose an option.
  • A variety of boss dialogue so that the boss doesn't repeat some things twice like with Royce when he said: "things aren't going your way?" (maybe they can say things in reaction to how the fight plays out or the things you did before the fight.)
  • Making your A.I teammate more noticeable/helpful during battles and having them even get injured sometimes so that you would need to revive them (besides the boss battle I didn't really notice Jackie that much)
One thing I heard from online is about making the mantis arms quieter when scaling walls to make it more reasonable for enemies to not hear you sneaking above them.

Altogether gameplay looked phenomenal, and on a side note I actually really enjoyed the driving though the HUD for it was distracting.
 
Okay, let's see if I can put things into words properly.

First off, I like what I see in general. The game looks like it will be fun. The graphics are nice. The sound is alright.

My issues:

1) It's a shooter.

That's not a terrible thing. It's just that the game was being promoted as an RPG. And it doesn't really feel like it. It feels like a shooter with RPG elements, like what Mass Effect turned into. A game that's all about player reflexes, and running around putting tons of bullets into enemies (which is another issue I'll get into in a second). Where your character isn't really a character full of skills like in a PnP, but rather just a gathering of various combat abilities to spam in battle and make fights easier.

We saw that there was some non-combat skills (the hacking/engineering). But they didn't really have much depth to them. Open a door or reroute power, and, okay. The player has little interaction in the process as well. It's just like flipping a light switch if you have the skill points in there or not. That feels a little... simplistic. But that's something else I will go into.

Basically, the game looks like a decently fun shooter, like Mass Effect or Dishonored, but doesn't really strike that RPG chord.

2) Bullet sponges.

I find this to be incredibly disappointing. I was expecting combat to be quick and lethal (as would be with the PnP). Where a couple of well placed shots takes down an enemy, or the player. A game where defense and evasion is key to survival. Instead, we just have massively inflated health pools that just soak up damage until someone falls over. And that's... very lame. And just feels completely against the system this is supposed to be based on.

You shouldn't be able to put 10 rounds into random enemies. 2-3 shots should incapacitate or kill most enemies. A single headshot should be an instant kill. And this should apply to the player too. It should keep the life or death feel of combat that the PnP tries to capture. Instead we just have more spongy enemies like in any Doom or Wolfenstein game.

A player's weapon skill should affect their accuracy and the damage they can do (better skill means better aim, meaning you're more likely to hit a critical area). Gunfights should be fast, hectic and very very lethal.

While a system similar to the VATS system from Fallout would be nice, to capture the RPG nature of the combat (basing hit chances on skill and not just reflexes), SOMETHING needs to be done to bring the combat around to something more RPG-like. And the massive damage enemies (and player) take just spits in the eye of that.

3) Boss fights

I'm not opposed to boss fights. In fact I like the idea of facing off against a really tough opponent. But they should be tough because they're lethal, or have abilities above what you do. Not simply because they have a hundred times the health of the normal bullet sponges.

Giving the boss a weak spot to shoot is also kind of out of place. This isn't Zelda or Metroid. I can kind of give it a pass if you're saying there's some energy shield around an enemy and you need to hit device to bring it down. That's... alright, though the amount of bullets that had to be pumped into the thing is ridiculous. As is the damage he could take after it went down. The boss was in a power suit that didn't cover his cheat or head, so a single headshot should have instantly ended the fight.

Rather than the boss simply being even more of a sponge, you should make him harder to hit. And give him attacks that are difficult to deal with and force you to keep moving (and thus making it harder to get a clean shot off). Again, this just feels like it's completely counter to the base material. You want to make the boss tough? Give him combat armor, dermal plating, make him hard to get a shot into. And hell, give HIM a smartgun, so that you're forced to keep moving otherwise you'll get shredded. THAT is a boss fight. A slow moving sponge that you just sit there emptying clips into until he falls over is just pathetic.

4) Either the player's a god or enemies are pathetic.

So you go into warehouse full of guys who have taken cyber enhancing to crazy levels. Well, they should all be incredibly dangerous then, right? Nope. They're all just moving targets with tons of health that you take down one after another. Don't see anyone with massive armor that your bullets practically bounce off of. Don't see anyone moving at super speeds like the player can. Don't see anyone using any sort of special abilities or tactics. They're just standing around, occasionally ducking behind cover, and mostly just serving as a waste of time.

Even before the player is given all the high end abilities to show off, they flat out slaughter the first batch of enemies they come across without effort. Just a lot of bullets because of the aforementioned bullet sponge problem.

And the one enemy standing next to the smartgun. Why the hell didn't he just pick it up and use it? If there's something in the area an enemy can use against you, they should be doing it. That would make sense. And it would give some sort of stealth gameplay more purpose other than "I don't want to waste time shooting all these grunts". You could sneak through, take the better gear, disable weapons, and do useful things, and then decide to shoot up the place once they're crippled.

5) The skills seem too simplistic.

I'm not saying that everything needs a minigame like most games do. Sure, lockpicking or Fallout's hacking minigame is entertaining. But it's not a requirement. But just a straight number check to see if something is possible or not seems far too simplistic. You're emulating a PnP with dice rolls and such. So that take into account.

Instead of just "Do you have X amount of points?" to determine if something works, make it percentage based. So a lock has X difficulty, and the player has Y skill. That would determine the percentage chance of success. The game would then make a random roll to find the result. The better the player is, the easier the roll (to the point where a maxed out skill makes many checks pretty much guaranteed). And there could be risks involved. Failed rolls could just make the player have to take the time to try again (which when chasing a target or trying to escape can lead to varying outcomes). Or possibly have very bad rolls lead to panels shorting out, locks getting jammed, etc. Maybe even feedback from electrical devices.

Give the skills more of an RPG feel where the character is doing something, rather than simply being a skeleton key that unlocks all related interactions.

6) The brain hacking looked unwieldly.

We weren't shown too much about how the system works, but just from what we saw, that interface looked like a horrific mess. Maybe it's a lot simpler than it seems, but it looked like there were tons of options in there, with different layers, and abilities in layers, and selections all over the place. The demo guy just kind of jumped right to something specific and didn't really show off much. But hopefully that system is made a lot more user friendly than it looks.

7) The dialogue options were weak.

Sorry, but why were most dialogue choices either "Yes" or "Question"? It looked like most things were basically "skip all story and just accept whatever" or "ask a question for lore". I was expecting far better. I was expecting to see a whole lot of choices for every conversation. Not just in whether to blindly accept things or ask stuff, but in HOW to respond. Where's the "Yes", "Yes, but I want more pay", "Yes, but I don't trust you", "Give me details first", "Frag off slot face" options? Where is the supposed choice the player is supposed to have in how to approach any situation?

And hell, when they went in to talk to the gang, where was the option to say that Militech was waiting outside to screw them over? Where's our option to work with the gang and stick it to the corp instead of just dealing with what was obviously a scripted boss fight?

8) We're forced to cyber up.

That was very disappointing to see. The player is forced to get various cyber upgrades, whether they want to or not. So nobody gets to have the "purist" route where they keep their body clear of tech.

9) Damage popup as we're fighting.

More of a minor nitpick, but I don't like seeing the damage numbers popping up as we shove endless bullets down a target's throat. Just one of those immersion killing things.

10) A lot of the text seems hard to read.

There's a number of scenes where info is flashing around the screen quickly, and then disappears (like when scanning the woman at the start). It's kind of annoying to have tons of text appearing and not having a chance to really see what it's all saying. Admittedly a lot of it isn't really useful text, but still, some people like to get all those little details in.

11) Random floaty text seems odd.

The odd enemy or NPC would say something now and then that got floating text over their head. For one, the colour seemed super bright (that neon cyan colour), though I would hope that could be adjusted.

But it just seems out of place with the whole immersion thing. I think it would be far better if speech you pick up was just shown at the bottom of the screen like other stuff.
 
First off all I did not watch the entire demo just bits and pieces to see what gameplay was like (Don't like spoilers)

What I saw made me worry about this game,
When I first heared the game was going to be first person I was shocked. as most fps games give you the
floating head syndrome, and I get the same feeling from this game, now I did not watch entire demo so I hope I am wrong.
But will you see your body when you look down. or will it be air. this for me will make or break a game.

If you are going to make a fps game make one like never before. make it so imersive then all the nay sayers can only say whoa that is way better then I ever expected....
I really hope I am wrong about the main character bieng a floating head, and that the camara position and hand positions will be placed in a way that is from the point of view of V. and not infront of him-her.

I will say the grapics looked good amazing even the hud good use some work but I already heard enough pll complain about that.

overall I wish this game to become an epic one, so prove to us all that you can make a game better then the witcher series.

Good luck. and sry for my crude english
 
Very hyped. I'll probably do a better organized and thought out critique later but at the moment the first thing that comes to mind is to chill out on the waypoints. A well designed and immersive game is one that doesn't rely on waypoints to get where you need to go. I love the Witcher 3 but that suffered from relying too much on waypoints (pretty much had to look at the map all the time). One of my favorite moments was when a character literally said something like "alright go down the path and make a left at the fork etc". That was much more immersive than following a waypoint.

For example do we really need a waypoint on the chair when the ripperdoc tell us to sit lol
Capture.JPG
 
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Okay, let's see if I can put things into words properly.

First off, I like what I see in general. The game looks like it will be fun. The graphics are nice. The sound is alright.

My issues:

1) It's a shooter.

That's not a terrible thing. It's just that the game was being promoted as an RPG. And it doesn't really feel like it. It feels like a shooter with RPG elements, like what Mass Effect turned into. A game that's all about player reflexes, and running around putting tons of bullets into enemies (which is another issue I'll get into in a second). Where your character isn't really a character full of skills like in a PnP, but rather just a gathering of various combat abilities to spam in battle and make fights easier.

We saw that there was some non-combat skills (the hacking/engineering). But they didn't really have much depth to them. Open a door or reroute power, and, okay. The player has little interaction in the process as well. It's just like flipping a light switch if you have the skill points in there or not. That feels a little... simplistic. But that's something else I will go into.

Basically, the game looks like a decently fun shooter, like Mass Effect or Dishonored, but doesn't really strike that RPG chord.

2) Bullet sponges.

I find this to be incredibly disappointing. I was expecting combat to be quick and lethal (as would be with the PnP). Where a couple of well placed shots takes down an enemy, or the player. A game where defense and evasion is key to survival. Instead, we just have massively inflated health pools that just soak up damage until someone falls over. And that's... very lame. And just feels completely against the system this is supposed to be based on.

You shouldn't be able to put 10 rounds into random enemies. 2-3 shots should incapacitate or kill most enemies. A single headshot should be an instant kill. And this should apply to the player too. It should keep the life or death feel of combat that the PnP tries to capture. Instead we just have more spongy enemies like in any Doom or Wolfenstein game.

A player's weapon skill should affect their accuracy and the damage they can do (better skill means better aim, meaning you're more likely to hit a critical area). Gunfights should be fast, hectic and very very lethal.

While a system similar to the VATS system from Fallout would be nice, to capture the RPG nature of the combat (basing hit chances on skill and not just reflexes), SOMETHING needs to be done to bring the combat around to something more RPG-like. And the massive damage enemies (and player) take just spits in the eye of that.

3) Boss fights

I'm not opposed to boss fights. In fact I like the idea of facing off against a really tough opponent. But they should be tough because they're lethal, or have abilities above what you do. Not simply because they have a hundred times the health of the normal bullet sponges.

Giving the boss a weak spot to shoot is also kind of out of place. This isn't Zelda or Metroid. I can kind of give it a pass if you're saying there's some energy shield around an enemy and you need to hit device to bring it down. That's... alright, though the amount of bullets that had to be pumped into the thing is ridiculous. As is the damage he could take after it went down. The boss was in a power suit that didn't cover his cheat or head, so a single headshot should have instantly ended the fight.

Rather than the boss simply being even more of a sponge, you should make him harder to hit. And give him attacks that are difficult to deal with and force you to keep moving (and thus making it harder to get a clean shot off). Again, this just feels like it's completely counter to the base material. You want to make the boss tough? Give him combat armor, dermal plating, make him hard to get a shot into. And hell, give HIM a smartgun, so that you're forced to keep moving otherwise you'll get shredded. THAT is a boss fight. A slow moving sponge that you just sit there emptying clips into until he falls over is just pathetic.

4) Either the player's a god or enemies are pathetic.

So you go into warehouse full of guys who have taken cyber enhancing to crazy levels. Well, they should all be incredibly dangerous then, right? Nope. They're all just moving targets with tons of health that you take down one after another. Don't see anyone with massive armor that your bullets practically bounce off of. Don't see anyone moving at super speeds like the player can. Don't see anyone using any sort of special abilities or tactics. They're just standing around, occasionally ducking behind cover, and mostly just serving as a waste of time.

Even before the player is given all the high end abilities to show off, they flat out slaughter the first batch of enemies they come across without effort. Just a lot of bullets because of the aforementioned bullet sponge problem.

And the one enemy standing next to the smartgun. Why the hell didn't he just pick it up and use it? If there's something in the area an enemy can use against you, they should be doing it. That would make sense. And it would give some sort of stealth gameplay more purpose other than "I don't want to waste time shooting all these grunts". You could sneak through, take the better gear, disable weapons, and do useful things, and then decide to shoot up the place once they're crippled.

5) The skills seem too simplistic.

I'm not saying that everything needs a minigame like most games do. Sure, lockpicking or Fallout's hacking minigame is entertaining. But it's not a requirement. But just a straight number check to see if something is possible or not seems far too simplistic. You're emulating a PnP with dice rolls and such. So that take into account.

Instead of just "Do you have X amount of points?" to determine if something works, make it percentage based. So a lock has X difficulty, and the player has Y skill. That would determine the percentage chance of success. The game would then make a random roll to find the result. The better the player is, the easier the roll (to the point where a maxed out skill makes many checks pretty much guaranteed). And there could be risks involved. Failed rolls could just make the player have to take the time to try again (which when chasing a target or trying to escape can lead to varying outcomes). Or possibly have very bad rolls lead to panels shorting out, locks getting jammed, etc. Maybe even feedback from electrical devices.

Give the skills more of an RPG feel where the character is doing something, rather than simply being a skeleton key that unlocks all related interactions.

6) The brain hacking looked unwieldly.

We weren't shown too much about how the system works, but just from what we saw, that interface looked like a horrific mess. Maybe it's a lot simpler than it seems, but it looked like there were tons of options in there, with different layers, and abilities in layers, and selections all over the place. The demo guy just kind of jumped right to something specific and didn't really show off much. But hopefully that system is made a lot more user friendly than it looks.

7) The dialogue options were weak.

Sorry, but why were most dialogue choices either "Yes" or "Question"? It looked like most things were basically "skip all story and just accept whatever" or "ask a question for lore". I was expecting far better. I was expecting to see a whole lot of choices for every conversation. Not just in whether to blindly accept things or ask stuff, but in HOW to respond. Where's the "Yes", "Yes, but I want more pay", "Yes, but I don't trust you", "Give me details first", "Frag off slot face" options? Where is the supposed choice the player is supposed to have in how to approach any situation?

And hell, when they went in to talk to the gang, where was the option to say that Militech was waiting outside to screw them over? Where's our option to work with the gang and stick it to the corp instead of just dealing with what was obviously a scripted boss fight?

8) We're forced to cyber up.

That was very disappointing to see. The player is forced to get various cyber upgrades, whether they want to or not. So nobody gets to have the "purist" route where they keep their body clear of tech.

9) Damage popup as we're fighting.

More of a minor nitpick, but I don't like seeing the damage numbers popping up as we shove endless bullets down a target's throat. Just one of those immersion killing things.

10) A lot of the text seems hard to read.

There's a number of scenes where info is flashing around the screen quickly, and then disappears (like when scanning the woman at the start). It's kind of annoying to have tons of text appearing and not having a chance to really see what it's all saying. Admittedly a lot of it isn't really useful text, but still, some people like to get all those little details in.

11) Random floaty text seems odd.

The odd enemy or NPC would say something now and then that got floating text over their head. For one, the colour seemed super bright (that neon cyan colour), though I would hope that could be adjusted.

But it just seems out of place with the whole immersion thing. I think it would be far better if speech you pick up was just shown at the bottom of the screen like other stuff.

Good post. For a while I wondered "When did I write this?" but then I remembered, that fuck, I didn't, it was you.

Agreed about 90% of it. The nitpicks at the bottom are negligable, I seem to recall that the Maelstrom mission is described to have plenty of options (including siding with them - there's a dialog option kinda warning them) and some of the details I have a bit different opinion on, but most of it... Agreed.

It really does seem like the game is still trying to find its place as far as RPG mechanics, combat and dialog goes. Work in progress, and hopefully progressing into a more RPG direction.
 
Want to add.

While I do not like VO because of the limitations it brings, I did like female V's voice, it was just right. I do think her personality is questionable though. I am worried about the male VO, if that was him in the original trailer I do not think I will like it. Probably too much to ask, but would be nice to have alternative male and female VO's. All the NPC's we met so far were great and memorable. I already mentioned misty would be cool to be with, but I also think dum dum was a cool NPC and wish we did not have to kill him, he was full of life and excellent sales man. Would have been cool as a seller you could go too and maybe become friends you could possibly hang out with.

1) It's a shooter.

That's not a terrible thing. It's just that the game was being promoted as an RPG. And it doesn't really feel like it. It feels like a shooter with RPG elements, like what Mass Effect turned into. A game that's all about player reflexes, and running around putting tons of bullets into enemies (which is another issue I'll get into in a second). Where your character isn't really a character full of skills like in a PnP, but rather just a gathering of various combat abilities to spam in battle and make fights easier.

We saw that there was some non-combat skills (the hacking/engineering). But they didn't really have much depth to them. Open a door or reroute power, and, okay. The player has little interaction in the process as well.

I agree with this, feels like the standard, we are making an PRG...get the game and its an shooter with some RPG elements. Just from the demo at least, it feels way to combat focused and missing the other things that makes an RPG great.

7) The dialogue options were weak.

Sorry, but why were most dialogue choices either "Yes" or "Question"? It looked like most things were basically "skip all story and just accept whatever" or "ask a question for lore". I was expecting far better. I was expecting to see a whole lot of choices for every conversation. Not just in whether to blindly accept things or ask stuff, but in HOW to respond. Where's the "Yes", "Yes, but I want more pay", "Yes, but I don't trust you", "Give me details first", "Frag off slot face" options? Where is the supposed choice the player is supposed to have in how to approach any situation?

And hell, when they went in to talk to the gang, where was the option to say that Militech was waiting outside to screw them over? Where's our option to work with the gang and stick it to the corp instead of just dealing with what was obviously a scripted boss fight?

This so much. The lack of dialog and dialog options were disappointing.
 
Adding a quick note concerning unrealistic feats, such as the double jump:

I believe most games need to have its share of unrealistic elements, but that it's important to handle it in a believable way!

Let's take The Witcher 3 for example: I heard a few times that Geralt's sword moves wouldn't be good for an actual fight; however, they look freaking good and I only discovered that because I watched a few youtube videos about fantasy weapons.
(Welp, a few weeks ago and I still believed that it was possible to draw long swords from the back...)
-
Nevertheless, I agree with this:
[...]
8) We're forced to cyber up.

That was very disappointing to see. The player is forced to get various cyber upgrades, whether they want to or not. So nobody gets to have the "purist" route where they keep their body clear of tech. [...]
Along with some other points.
 
And just to add a couple more...

12) No real interactions with NPCs.

Maybe it's just because the demo didn't bother, but it didn't look like there was much to do with any of the NPC's. No talking, no stealing, no murdering some schmuck in an alley. The world looks like it's got lots of people wandering around, yet somehow feels all the more empty for the lack of interaction.

13) How unique are NPCs?

The demo mentions how all the NPC's have a day to day life and routine. That sounds good on paper. But how well do they actually follow that routine? How much can a player interact with it? Is it simply there to keep NPC's pathing about in an attempt to give a fake sense of life to the world? Or does it actually have a gameplay impact?

Are some characters thieves who will actually steal things? Will NPC's respond to having their things stolen?
Are all the NPC's actually unique or finite? If a killing spreed takes place, will an area simply forever have less people in it? Or will they just be replaced with more faceless NPC's to fill up the streets?
 
Hi,

I have seen a small part of the gameplay and saw in this time stamp that there is a woman that is shouting.
It looks like she when she talks it looks the same as she shouts.
It doesn't feel right.

Can the graphic technology of today can make it more real or WYSIWYG?

 
No real interactions with NPCs.

It seems the interactions with NPC's are pretty on point, with little to no mundanities and extras. The NPC's on the streets are just bots you can bump into and who run if you start shooting, and there were no prompts for stealing nor were there too many indications of any dialog options outside what's necessary (quest dialogs and infodumps).

It seems pretty plain in that regard.

I don't know what good the day to day routines will actually do since the interactivity seems pretty narrow.
 
Since it's not a sandbox akin to Elder Scrolls or Fallout, and more like a narrative-driven cinematic action-adventure with RPG elements, NPCs are just there for immersion's sake. If not associated with a quest, I doubt they provide any interactivity and most likely won't in the final game.

Can you kill schmucks in the middle of the downtown in broad daylight and what will happen after that? You will be killed? Chased? Arrested? Or you can kill only in some danger zones and can't even ride over peaceful folk?
 
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From the demo I say I LOVED it, this feels like a game made by paper and dice gamers wanting to bring that experience to a video game. I only have one concern a a question.
My concern, don't let people talk you into watering anything down. Even though you covered the models in the beginning you didn't shy away in rest of the game so hopefully I'm worried about nothing. I happy someone is finally making an adult game for adult games. Thank you.
My question, what level of clothing options are we going to have for our characters? I hope it is as or more in depth than the character creation, that we can make our characters our own as much as is possible in a video game.
Thank for sharing your awesome game and keep up the great work.
 
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