I'm a bit disappointed CDPR decided to stick with "levels".

+
It makes no sense to have a "Level 1" thru "Level 100" bandit. They're all bandits, some are just more skilled and better equipped then others.

That reminds me of the level scaling in Skyrim and how awful that was. Ironically, that wasn't the thing that broke the immersion, though. No...

Random bandit: Hmm, we need to rob someone. Wait, let's rob that guy in full legendary armor who just slew a dragon. He seems like an easy mark, right? #famouslastwords :facepalm:
 
I don't know if it's right soultion for CP, but instead of upscaling or adding enormous amontus of HP and DMG, there sould be another method to increase difficulty of enemies. Like they have better AI, reaction time, accuracy, "faster" animation ( like heavy attacks become quicker and are not that slow anymore). Better gear is also an option, but it shouldn't be only difference.
Better AI is VERY difficult to implement (AIs as a whole are more an art form then a programming task). "Faster" animations would also be a nightmare.

But increased stats/skills is fairly easy. A "low level" street thug has a base 25% chance to hit, a "high level" one has 75%.
 
Better AI is VERY difficult to implement. "Faster" animations would also be a nightmare.

I don't know what algorithms are used in CP, but it would not be that hard. If the algorithms use some kind of numeral parameters for like time needed to see character or time needed to take some action, then it would be just manipulating that number depending on difficulty set by player. The same goes for speeding up animations.

For example in unreal engine it's typically used a timeline to smoothly transition from one pose to another, to speed up the animation you just need to adjust how long the timeline is.
 
I don't know what algorithms are used in CP, but it would not be that hard. If the algorithms use some kind of numeral parameters for like time needed to see character or time needed to take some action, then it would be just manipulating that number depending on difficulty set by player. The same goes for speeding up animations.

For example in unreal engine it's typically used a timeline to smoothly transition from one pose to another, to speed up the animation you just need to adjust how long the timeline is.
As a former programmer I assure you it's not that easy.

EVERYTHING about programming is numbers, 0 and 1, it's what a specific combination of 0's and 1's mean, and how that combination manipulates the data that matters. To "speed up" animations you need to reduce the length of the animations graphics, by cutting a frame out of the animation here and there, hopefully without making the entire animation look janky or stupid. Graphics render as fast as they render, based on the CPU and GPU, you can't make them render faster.
 
As a former programmer I assure you it's not that easy.

EVERYTHING about programming is numbers, 0 and 1, it's what a specific combination of 0's and 1's mean, and how that combination manipulates the data that matters. To "speed up" animations you need to reduce the length of the animations graphics, by cutting a frame out of the animation here and there, hopefully without making the entire animation look janky or stupid. Graphics render as fast as they render, based on the CPU and GPU, you can't make them render faster.

Well I'm not talking about enhancing pathways of AI for higher levels, just decreasing time, that NPC "takes" to mak a decision.

A for animations, I don't know how well you understand how 3D works, but to shorten it, you don't "cut out" frames like you said. Basicly generic 3d animations consists of key frames. It's like points on the timeline where every element is in cetain position. Every movement between key fremes are symulated mostly by Inverted Kinetics, but that's not important. The thing is that imported animation is normalized, beginning starts on 0 and ending is on 1. To speed up animation you need to decrease time it takes engine to move from 0 to 1. What you see on screen is just output of state that game was at given moment when draw function was called. The jakyness you mentioned depend on how much time CPU/GPU takes to calculate all steps between each draw call, that has nothing to do with animation.
 
That reminds me of the level scaling in Skyrim and how awful that was. Ironically, that wasn't the thing that broke the immersion, though. No...

Random bandit: Hmm, we need to rob someone. Wait, let's rob that guy in full legendary armor who just slew a dragon. He seems like an easy mark, right? #famouslastwords :facepalm:
 
what is the disadvantage of skill based then? i can not think of one.
Probably should have specified slightly better, cause I don't mean skill based like shooters, I mean skill based like skill points and whatever cap it would be.

And I guess it depends on how you look at it, but the major one, imo, is that it can be hard to balance around it. You need to consider the amount of time it takes to go from, say, 1-100, and then how it affects the combat. The problem is most often the player, and open world games would be worse, because you're given the freedom to do what you want, which includes leveling your skills. At some point, you might just level so high that everything is just too easy. If the process is too long, people will just get bored, or feel like they're not accomplishing anything. A good rpg balances gratification and difficulty, you need to feel like you're getting stronger and see how it affects the gameplay, and level based just tends to do that better for my taste. Even a combination of the two, such as Morrowind, is a better option than purely skill based. That might actually be what Cyberpunk does, since I noticed some popups like that.

On the flip side of that, btw, I don't think Oblivion did nearly as well in Morrowind, mostly because they tried to balance it around scaling, which is a terrible way to do it. In that case, you always feel challenged and never like you're getting stronger because everything scales with your progress. Another example might be Titan Quest, which I think had skill based, and the problem there is... well, what if you get bored and want to do something different? You can't really, because you're locked in to how long you used your abilities, which makes choosing something else instead a huge pain. Ultimately though, you can just be good at everything given enough time, and I think that defeats the overall purpose of the game. Being good at everything can be fun, but it can also be extremely boring and limit replayability.

Obviously though this will depend on how you like to play. Some people may like this, and that's cool. Whether you think it's an advantage or disadvantage is really up to the player.
 
Last edited:
Now that it's clear it's a kinda leveled story aimed RPG (ie: not as open as a Fallout one), they probably made it so the red skull enemies still looks impressive and above you.

If you could kill the Alien in Alien Isolation, I guess the game would be waaayyy less scarier...

Same here, probably no way to shoot and kill Adam Smasher from the get go after one hour of game.

The original Pnp RPG would've allowed that tho... But from a story telling point of view, the player kinda comes around and break your toy.

So... I guess CDPR came with the level so upper enemies still look impressive and undefeatable (so no GTA like where you find the right covered spot to headshot every Psychosquad member coming at you and wipe out an entire city), you'll have to push the story so your character goes forward and feel "able" to fight back such enemies, or is "finally able" to grab a previously unaviable piece of equipment.


Yet to see the final build of the game, but I guess they leveled the game so you mostly have to follow the story, instead of a free-for-all RPG like Fallout (exemple), where you can straight up go suicide yourself against a Supermutant...

It's just a guess, but it'll probably also avoid the problem of having a gang/ set of enemies way above your level, against you.

Imagine, you just start the game, you mistakely go, by pure luck in a secret Arasaka bunker, and start having +15lvl above you, Arasaka's solos, against you.

Now imagine they'd keep stalking you (like the gang in the 2018gameplay), that would be boring really quick getting bullied like that.

I'm not really found of level either, but it makes sense if it's used to keeps the game on rails.
 
I wonder will they keep this "amazing" feature from W3, where our 9lvl Geralt could not use 10lvl sword. This mechanic was so extremely stupid.
 
The problem isn't level gating, it's that levels don't make sense. They feel too gamey. Too MMO.

Like in The Witcher 3, where there are level 3 drowners and level 14 drowners despite the fact that they are just simple drowners. It didn't make sense. In Cyberpunk, NPCs strenght should be defined by the experience and hardware improvements they have, not by generic levels.

This right here is the problem. You've nailed it.

That being said, I hope in Cyberpunk 2077 they go for a - for a lack of better words - lore-friendly leveling system, where low level thugs really do have only rudimentary augmentations, and high level enemies have fancier stuff like titanium plating or such, and are more experienced veterans. This way an enemy's level reflects not an arbitrary number stuck on by devs, but their actual strength measured by lore.

In Cyberpunk it is easier to design this lore-friendly level system, because people's strength really can vary enormously due to the variety of augmentations. It also helps that V starts out as a weak character and has to grow stronger. In TW3 levels make much less sense because Geralt is already supposed to be a master swordsman at the beginning of the game so there is no way he can't defeat some bandits because "levels," but in Cyberpunk levels can be done in such a way to make sense.

The real question is, are levels isolated from lore, or are they connected to the lore?
 
Better AI is VERY difficult to implement (AIs as a whole are more an art form then a programming task). "Faster" animations would also be a nightmare.

But increased stats/skills is fairly easy. A "low level" street thug has a base 25% chance to hit, a "high level" one has 75%.
But then every enemy turns into an RNG nightmare, and RNG is like the house. The house always wins, player always loses. Every game with RNG in it, gave me severe stress and frustration, until I quit and never came back. Just saying. RNG = R.eally N.ever G.unna (have fun)
Post automatically merged:

As a former programmer I assure you it's not that easy.

EVERYTHING about programming is numbers, 0 and 1, it's what a specific combination of 0's and 1's mean, and how that combination manipulates the data that matters. To "speed up" animations you need to reduce the length of the animations graphics, by cutting a frame out of the animation here and there, hopefully without making the entire animation look janky or stupid. Graphics render as fast as they render, based on the CPU and GPU, you can't make them render faster.
but then how is this speed hacker in counter strike possible? (WARNING: NEVER HACK GAMES, IT'S ILLEGAL)
 
but then how is this speed hacker in counter strike possible? (WARNING: NEVER HACK GAMES, IT'S ILLEGAL)
EZ
Actions and their associated animations are designed to run more-or-less simultaneously. That way the action is completed when the animation is done and vice versa. A simple speed hack reduces the "wait time" of the action so it completes faster then you can force the animation to end or (depending on exactly how the animation is coded) skip say every other frame of the animation.
Many years ago I bought a MechWarrior game that was poorly designed and ran just fine till I upgraded my PC then it became rather obvious they'd based the combat speed (and animations) on the CPU speed because on my new, faster, PC the combat was so fast you really couldn't (re)act. That sort of mistake is never made by modern AAA developers.
 
EZ
Actions and their associated animations are designed to run more-or-less simultaneously. That way the action is completed when the animation is done and vice versa. A simple speed hack reduces the "wait time" of the action so it completes faster then you can force the animation to end or (depending on exactly how the animation is coded) skip say every other frame of the animation.
Many years ago I bought a MechWarrior game that was poorly designed and ran just fine till I upgraded my PC then it became rather obvious they'd based the combat speed (and animations) on the CPU speed because on my new, faster, PC the combat was so fast you really couldn't (re)act. That sort of mistake is never made by modern AAA developers.

Old games were tied to frames, so there was this thing, that when game was locked in 30 fps, everything were fine, but once it hit more than that, every action was speed up by how many times 30 fps was topped. Now games are tied to ticks of miliseconds.

As for animations, check out my earlier post.
 
It's definitely a challenge because of all the balancing issues between gameplay and narrative.

I think the quest design structure as done in TW3 is probably still my favorite I've ever seen. I'm totally on board with having sidequests with increased challenge pop-up based on where you are in the main quest. Which is the basic concept in RDR2 as well. I just didn't like how in RDR2, the side quests were basically part of the main quest, where you had to complete a bunch of them before the next main quest would trigger. So it was really all pretty much main quests, with a few exceptions here or there.

But that basic idea is fine. So long as the side quests are truly sidequests.

The question becomes, how to balance that narrative structure with consistently competitive gameplay that allows for character progression?

CDPR has settled on leveling. Which is based on the basic concept that as a character progresses they become more powerful ... and then creating a uniform measurement of how powerful everything is, so the player has some concept of how powerful things are relative to one another.

Based on what we already know, the simplest answer is just take out or hide the numbers right?

Do everything through skill progression as you use the skills, and perk points/attribute points which you receive as main-quest rewards instead of level rewards. You could control encountering really hard enemies to some degree by keeping the toughest outside-of-main-quest fights strictly tied to side quest-lines and not open world content, and then only having those questlines become available in the mainquest once the player is likely to have progressed far enough in the main story. In CP2077, since V has an optical scanner, it could be used to measure threat levels of enemies in-game. So you could still make some areas tougher than others ... and just have V rely on her in-head-HUD to know "no threat-moderate threat-high threat-suicidal" basic range, without knowing a specific level. This would give the player a crutch to rely on with an in-world explanation, without the strict reliance on leveling. That's the game telling V where those NPCs appear to be relative to her in power-fulness. This would probably be my ideal solution based on what we already know about this game.

No game has really done it that way before to my knowledge ... but I think it could work. It's honestly not that different than what CDPR already has planned, it just obscures the numbers a bit, and ties increasing power more directly to the main quest.

...

The other more radical alternative requires rethinking what progression is in the first place. More about the variety of possible actions rather than the power of those actions, right? Therefore you make enemies and V everywhere roughly within a reasonably similar range in HP, damage output, and etc for the entirety of the game. But increase enemies challenges based the number of things they can do within the locations where they are placed. So the progression would be through the number of options the player has, not how powerful they are.

The problem isn't seeing enemy levels, it's making levels making things illogical.
If a head becomes impervious to rocket because of the difference in level between the one who launch the rocket and the level of the head the gets hit by it, then there is a problem.

For matters of immersion, the game needs some consistency.
Post automatically merged:

Just hope the damage formula of the game will be easely moddable so one can erase the part about levels.
 
If a head becomes impervious to rocket because of the difference in level between the one who launch the rocket and the level of the head the gets hit by it, then there is a problem.
Well I think the level isn't what creates the resistance, but rather the toughness of the character. The levels are just the method of helping determine the toughness of the character (among other things).
 
Well I think the level isn't what creates the resistance, but rather the toughness of the character. The levels are just the method of helping determine the toughness of the character (among other things).
But it's not like the developers just randomly find characters out there in there game like "whoa...!? what's this!? We have never seen this creature before? Who programmed this in? Anybody? Nobody? Weird.... Hmmm well it seems really tough so we will label it as level 100. Okay great, see you all tomorrow have a good night" Because every character that is in the game, was created and put there and coded by the developers, meaning that the level isn't a measuring device used to find out what kind of pokemon a character or creature is, but it most often is the thing that determines the strength of that person or creature. There are lots of games where if a person is a very high level, they become almost invincible. If there is ever a cheat code system built in (some games I played a very long time ago built in cheats for the player) people could change their level, and their health bar and strength would change as a direct result of changing their level. Just saying. Peace.
 
Well I think the level isn't what creates the resistance, but rather the toughness of the character. The levels are just the method of helping determine the toughness of the character (among other things).

Toughness normally doesn't makes you supernaturally almost invulnerable.
Actually I doesn't have much problems if they makes relative level add damages (it would just makes some build far better than others, but that's about it), but damage sponge are immersion breakers 99,99% of the time (the other 0.01% are ennemies which do looks invulnerable considering the weapon you are using).
 
Top Bottom