To CDPR: The importance of Combat

+
It's nice to see another thread giving light to the gameplay aspect of Cyberpunk. There are very little of these.

P.s.: At least I may be able to mod it for the community if combat doesn't meets player's expectations once again.

PLEASE DO !!, I'd love a FPP game where the player character doesn't always hold out his weapons and hands in front on his face, in a generic FPS fashion, like a weirdo. Just imagine that pose in TPP (thats why i fear i wouldn't enjoy cyberpunk's TPP mod). The mantis blade pose would look especially atrocious in TPP.

It would've been immersive AF, if we just hold our drawn out weapons in a casual hanging arm pose. And only lift the arm, bringing the weapon into the screen when we aim or shoot. It would look cool and immersive AF to just look down at full FOV. (Mirror's Edge's FPP combat does this beautifully)

People loved Skyrim. They still love. I still enjoy it.

Bethesda Softworks are the laziest AAA developers, literally, the only reason we enjoy and play their games till now is purely because of its thriving modding community. I'd rather die than playing vanilla Skyrim again. (repeatedly playing bleak falls barrow quest has deeply traumatized me.)

And you really must try exceptionaly hard to even get close to how bad the combat is in that game, and probably fail. So, I won't worry about combat.

Did you see the 20 seconds of Katana gameplay footage yet? it looks and feels exactly like Skyrim. Looking and feeling the same way as a 10 year old game with bad combat, I'd definitely consider that as a bad thing.

I hope that as our combat skills improves, it add diversity to the fights, a reviewer said they were very "down to earth" which isn't bad per say, but after 20hours, if we have to use the same tactics over and over again, it may feel boring/redundant.

In most Rpg with very basic combat mecanics, after a while, every mobs are more a waste of time than a "thrilling encounter".

Agreed.

I enjoy Conan exiles, even though its combat system isn't really that much more detailed than Witcher 3 and it has next to no roleplay elements (like, cutscenes, characters and stories). Theres just loads of weapons, which all have like 2 different attacks (light and heavy). The combat is good enough and the sandbox is awesome, so conan is good.

Have you tried out the "unarmed combat" mod from steam workshop? That feels like 5x more fun and responsive than what Cyberpunk has right now.

far better than any given title save dedicated melee simulator like Kingdom Come.

The unarmed combat system of Cyberpunk isn't even halfway close to Mirror's edge, which is a parkour based puzzle platformer oriented game. Which is also the Battlefield team's side project, meanwhile Cyberpunk is CDPR's "Most Ambitious" title and main project.

I personally love the idea of animations becoming tighter as the character gains experience.

If the proficiency system of Cyberpunk brings in many distinguishable animations as we progress, it's its immersive and awesome. But if it only increases the animations speed and damage value, then its just as boring.

I will admit, all FPP is the same to me. I can't tell the difference between "good" and "bad."

Especially when it has that generic FPS aesthetic.

I don't like this idea that RPG's are not supposed to have good combat or mechanics. Since when was this a thing?

YEA !!, we are here to play a cool game and have fun, not watch a movie (dialog and conversation) and do math (creating a build purely through computing stat boosts). I seriously hate it when people say "its an RPG, it doesnt need good combat".

Just because the game I'm playing happens to be an RPG doesn't mean it shouldn't be given the same attention to detail as other genres when it comes to combat! When you have to make excuses for combat being half-baked, or not fun due the genre, I think you're settling for less, and it begins to affect the genre as whole.

True, and we can clearly see its effects on the community now.

And what if you want to roleplay the pacifist route? It was possible in Deus Ex: HR (after they remade the silly boss fights). Though, there was still combat. Well, in Fallout 1-2 you could talk/hack your way through the game.

The "pacifist route" in Cyberpunk would still make you fight just as much. Its just the decision of "killing" the knocked out target at the end of the fight. Its not a "non-violence" route in cyberpunk, so combat is just as relevant there.

Or to put it bluntly (and more clearly), if it's going to suck, then, at least, make sure it isn't annoying. Case in point, the Witcher 3's combat, which was mediocre, but still good enough to have an immersive fantasy RPG.

This would also mean that CDPR hasn't improved at all in making combat systems. And this is CDPR we are talking about, who are well known for their rate of improvement in every AAA title they launched. That would just be disappointing as hell.

in a branching narrative RPG like CP2077

CDPR describes the game as "Action- Adventure" though.

Never understood why people say witcher 3 combat is bad. I don't know even 1 rpg that does third person action combat better than witcher 3

Dark Souls.
Monster Hunter.

Their combat systems and bossfight satisfaction are the industry standards right now.
 
You've experienced some discomfort when trying to tell Geralt how to swing his sword. However, if you use guns, instead, then you just have to point and shoot. No dodge/sidestep, no parry, no riposte, no light swing or heavy swing; just pull the trigger.
I fully intend to use guns in Cyberpunk2077, but I also want to play a game that for the first time, really gives me good fun with swords. I feel like Cyberpunk2077 COULD do this right. I guess I'm excited, and I'm hoping for amazingness, but I'm not expecting amazingness because I feel it will probably just be "okay" but not like "super amazing" just because I think swords in video games are difficult to do in a way that is actually genuinely fun. I guess, if Cyberpunk2077 swords were to be like skyrim in terms of how simple it were to use them, but maybe better somehow, I guess that would be okay. I don't know. I feel kind of lost, like I know what I DON'T want, but I find it difficult to imagine what CDPR will actually do with swords. The katana gameplay seemed like it had some things that needed work, but it was also cool, and seemed better than anything I would have expected from skyrim, which kind of makes me feel lots of hope and makes me kind of happy because it's already at least that good, or slightly better, but I kind of wonder if CDPR has already improved swords even further since then, but I don't know what to expect or what I would consider to be good or even amazing beyond what I have seen of the katana gameplay. I know for sure that I want to use the katana with the bullet blocking shield I heard a rumor of a long time ago, in combination with the kereznikov effect (almost time stop) and hopefully some perks and skills can greatly increase the length of the kereznikov effect to the point where I can actually stop time for over 10 seconds continuously, and just go
"ZA WARUDO!" and sprint through a large group of enemies on super speedy cyber legs and just SLICE SLICE SLICE SLICE SLICE SLICE all the enemies and close my katana in it's sheath like *click* and them time starts up again and then all the enemies slide apart and turn into little slices and fall down. It would be so cool!
 
No no no I am not a button masher. witcher 3 combat was so broken that at times it made me feel like a button masher because of how unresponsive the controls were. I felt like at many times w3 outright completely ignored my inputs even if I was being calm about it. The game would ignore my inputs so badly that it would create very tense and frustrating situations where geralt would just stay sitting there and get attacked while I tried to maneuver and attack and block, and the game just didn't care what I wanted to do. Instead of fighting the enemies, I was fighting the game.

If the combat is bad like that in Cyberpunk2077, I might possibly ask for a refund.:giveup:

You sure your keyboard/controller wasn't broken? Lol

Seriously though, I never had problems with Geralt in fights. You just had to keep an eye on every ennemy and time your moves right.
The only annoying thing to me were the crossbowmen which I always took out first because they would ruin my attacks.

The combat wasn't the best ever made but was far from bad.
Post automatically merged:

Hence: "Well, in Fallout 1-2 you could talk/hack your way through the game." I think it should be possible to avoid fighting, if you want to.




^
Yeah and? We all have a different conception of what an RPG is and Dark Souls isn't one of them in my opinion
 
You sure your keyboard/controller wasn't broken? Lol

Seriously though, I never had problems with Geralt in fights. You just had to keep an eye on every ennemy and time your moves right.
The only annoying thing to me were the crossbowmen which I always took out first because they would ruin my attacks.

The combat wasn't the best ever made but was far from bad.
Nooooo my keyboard/controller wasn't broken.... *sigh* as you know I disagree it was just so awful, I could not handle the stress it gave me... I didn't like fighting the game constantly. but whatever.:giveup:
 
I fully intend to use guns in Cyberpunk2077, but I also want to play a game that for the first time, really gives me good fun with swords.

Therein lies a challenge for the devs. Convention dictates that every play style should be balance. This means that swords should roughly be as powerful as guns. However, that's not realistic. Yet, most games still try to compensate by giving melee weapons an edge of some kind. I disagree with that premise. The melee route should naturally be more challenging.
 
Everyone I know we are all curious, how many random NPC's we can make angry and have them chase us down the street?
 
Nooooo my keyboard/controller wasn't broken.... *sigh* as you know I disagree it was just so awful, I could not handle the stress it gave me... I didn't like fighting the game constantly. but whatever.:giveup:


I'm sure CP2077 will be better, at least the gunplay
 
Therein lies a challenge for the devs. Convention dictates that every play style should be balance. This means that swords should roughly be as powerful as guns. However, that's not realistic. Yet, most games still try to compensate by giving melee weapons an edge of some kind. I disagree with that premise. The melee route should naturally be more challenging.
I agree with everything you said, which is why I think that the bullet blocking shield in the special katana in combination with speedy cyber legs, in combination with kereznikov is going to be an excellent combination. I feel like the cybernetics are going to help support the melee weapons by allowing V to utilize their usefulness faster and better, resulting in something that can actually counter and defeat many ranged weapon wielders if V is fast and smart enough. Of course I'm also going to use a gun as well, but I really want to have huge amounts of fun with the katana and other melee weapons. Now I'm thinking I might go with bullet blocking shield katana for close to medium range + sniper rifle for anything further. I don't know if it will be very comfortable, but I hope CDPR does not go with the rout of "nerfing" everything, essentially making everything overly weak and "balanced" (balanced like as in a buzzword, not as in real balance, which is in many ways subjective anyway) I would rather CDPR go the "Everything is completely overpowered rout" so that no matter what the player uses, it's effective and very very fun, and also the NPC's all have the same overpowered gear as well.

The thing I noticed in games like battlefield bad company 2 from EA was that they kept on updating and patching and nerfing all of the guns over and over again just constantly because everyone kept complaining that certain guns were too good, which was silly because the multiplayer lag made all the guns either unnaturally super effective (depending on what team the game placed you on for some weird reason) or the lag would make all the guns completely ineffective, to the point where a shotgun at point black range, or even a knife would do no damage, even after using it repeatedly. Sometimes the lag would let people knife each other across the map LOL

I guess to put it simply, they slowly nerfed what felt like all the guns until all the guns were equally very weak, very boring, and very ineffective, and nobody wanted to use any of the guns and eventually everyone seemed to abandon the multiplayer, but that was just one of the issues with the game.

Do you want to know when the game had the best and most fun guns? It was in the games multiplayer demo that came out for free way before the game came out. That port valdez map, the gun balance, just everything made that demo a thousand million times more fun than the full release game ever was. All the guns in the demo were totally overpowered, and they were all equally amazing and fun to use. No matter what the player chose, it was extremely fun and satisfying. The full game was never even close to being that fun.

So basically my point is that I think that everything should just be as wild and full of passion as possible and totally OP, but also not too cheesy and not too silly. I mean, Cyberpunk2077 seems to have a somewhat realistic and serious and dark tone, but it in no way means that there can not be comedy and fun and silly things, I'm just saying that I notice that Cyberpunk2077, from what we have seen so far, seems to have a very good sense of when, AND how, to implement anything silly or funny, which I really respect a lot. It takes some serious patience, and serious will power, and serious intelligence, and very very good taste and attention to detail for CDPR to be able to implement that good style when it's the right moment for it, and also to know when to avoid it.

I can really tell, they really seem to know what they're doing in that sense and I really like that a lot.
Post automatically merged:

I'm sure CP2077 will be better, at least the gunplay
I really like the guns, A LOT. I really really do. I will be using them for sure, but I really want to do lots of katana kereznikov za warudo stuff :)
 
Last edited:
I'll give a simple example. Stealth is usually an option in RPGs, which means such a mechanic must be implemented. Usually, it's just a simple indicator of how well hidden you are. This is enough for a normal RPG

Stealth is still non-trivial. GTA5 for example has many things going for it, but stealth isn't one of them.

While it technically has stealth and it can be used to pass missions (even to the point that the casino heist has stealth as one of its possible approaches), it lacks both stealth indicator and the "grace period" when you are about to be detected, where you get notified and can still duck behind cover in time. You just get detected instantly. Its in a way realistic but not a good game experience, as you have no idea whether you are doing good or bad when stealthing. And minor mistake you aren't aware of can lead to failure in a mission. I wanted to say this, because stealth is one of the things that modern players take for granted.


However, if you use guns, instead, then you just have to point and shoot. No dodge/sidestep, no parry, no riposte, no light swing or heavy swing; just pull the trigger.

To be honest, one of the better things CDPR could add to the gun play in CP2077, would be the ability to lean around corners and shoot (the way rainbow 6 siege does it). It would
a.) Make you more difficult to hit since you are hiding most of your body
b.) peeking around corners works well with stealth-gameplay
c.) be not that difficult to implement, I think. You need just two animations: lean left and lean right. And it would work with most weapons straight off the bat.
d.) be more 'believable' and works exceptionally well with First person view.

I just remembered one hands-on demo video where the player was distraught that he wasn't detected when he was crouching in plain sight about 10 meters away from an enemy before he ducked behind cover.
 
Last edited:
No no no I am not a button masher. witcher 3 combat was so broken that at times it made me feel like a button masher because of how unresponsive the controls were. I felt like at many times w3 outright completely ignored my inputs even if I was being calm about it. The game would ignore my inputs so badly that it would create very tense and frustrating situations where geralt would just stay sitting there and get attacked while I tried to maneuver and attack and block, and the game just didn't care what I wanted to do. Instead of fighting the enemies, I was fighting the game.

You sure your rig wasn't getting nailed with FPS drops or something?

The only other thing I can think is your timing was off. TW3 was one of those games where giving an input followed by another input relied on timing. You had to make the second button press at the right moment. Unlike some ARPG's, it actually did a pretty good job of having this timing in sync with the animations, IMO.

Most of it was based on enemy type combat patterns though. By this I mean to say you could "solve" enemies based on their type. Generally a Drowner behaved consistently with every other Drowner. There was only minor variation with levels. Case and point, Drowned Dead, or whatever they were called had a few extra tricks up their sleeves with their attack patterns. Although, they were subtle.

All of the above was one of the drawbacks in TW3, IMO. Once you mastered the timing on attacks, parries, dodges, etc., memorized enemy type attack patterns, exploited weaknesses learned through the bestiary and experience (bombs, potions, signs) and consistently abused Quen the combat stopped presenting a challenge. It stopped being reactive, for the most part, and instead became highly proactive. That is, I don't need to react to dodge an attack because I already know exactly when it's coming.

On the flip side... It was also arguably a beneficial aspect of the game. Knowledge of the bestiary and how to approach your... quarry, was the only area I felt truly captured that "RPG mechanic" vibe in combat mechanics which were otherwise strictly action based.

If the combat is bad like that in Cyberpunk2077, I might possibly ask for a refund.:giveup:

At this point I haven't seen anything I'd consider much of an improvement. It's probably premature to make this statement before playing the game. I can't help it. If anything it looks like a regression. I think comments suggesting it looks more like a TES title are spot on for the melee. TES titles had a lot going for them but combat never felt like one of them. It always seemed like flashy animations and effects but very little mechanical depth.

The hand to hand almost looked like a carbon copy of TW3 to me. The play defensive, dodge an attack and counter, rinse/repeat until victory strategy.

Gunplay reminded me of gunplay in a FPS like Doom or Halo. Presumably character attributes will play a role there but it still looked very much like those type of games.

At this point I'm expecting for an initial playthrough to avoid combat when possible, in fact. I don't mean taking a non-lethal approach necessarily. I get the feeling some virtues still exist in the CP game setting. Forgiveness likely isn't near the top or even on the list. So if a NPC is shooting at the player character one minute and surrendering the next they're probably not going to make it :). It depends on the context of course. But avoiding combat if possible? Yeah, it's sure looking like it.

That auto lock on, though, more annoying than the combat of the Witcher ever was.

Isn't it though? It's even worse in Kingdom Come because you can't turn it off completely. Worst of all the pull of the lock on is absurdly strong. You end up locked on a target and can't reliably switch off of it. I've avoided using similar functionality like the plague in every ARPG. I certainly did in the Witcher.
 
Personally from what I've seen so far the combat both with guns and sword looks satisfactory.

I know lots of people have complained about the sword gameplay but for me it looked really awesome. Deflecting bullets and the way the guys head popped off and dropped in the distance is what I've always wanted. I want to see limbs flying away from the body.

I also really loved the ninja-like running animation as V sprints to the car with the katana. I need this game now!!

I will get to RP my Cyberninja fantasy finally!
 
Stealth is still non-trivial.

For some games, but not all.

I just remembered one hands-on demo video where the player was distraught that he wasn't detected when he was crouching in plain sight about 10 meters away from an enemy before he ducked behind cover.

 
And what if you want to roleplay the pacifist route? It was possible in Deus Ex: HR (after they remade the silly boss fights). Though, there was still combat. Well, in Fallout 1-2 you could talk/hack your way through the game.

They've already said that you need to hurt people in the game even if you don't kill them. So yes it's a combat game.
 
They've already said that you need to hurt people in the game even if you don't kill them. So yes it's a combat game.

I understand if you have to shoot/fight your way out of a situation and it's not possible to avoid it. However, if you can actually hurt people as a dialogue option, there should be other alternatives too (e.g. bribery).
 
Top Bottom