Armor rework suggestion

[3lmu3rt0]

Y'all remember how CDPR was harping on and on about how style is the most important thing in Night City? Yeah, that didn't really pan out with how the game actually plays. They have us all running around in the lamest outfits because they just couldn't let go of the way TW3 handled armor and loot RNG. Kitsch? Neokitsch? Neomilitarism? Never heard of those, all I've seen so far is Entropism, Entropism and more Entropism; whatever gives me the higest armor rating is what I'm wearing (Getting the job done no matter how. The look? Who cares?).
Now don't get me wrong, I enjoy the related memes as much as anyone and by all accounts, this isn't an issue unique to Cyberpunk. But considering that they made an entire trailer devoted to explaining the history and significance of styles in Night City, to end up with such a haphazard approach to equipment just feels wrong. I mean, we have miniskirts and tuxedos offering more protection than bulletproof vests and tactical clothing for god's sake! Shit, a raggeddy tank top with mustard stains can have more armor than the lower tiers of Integumentary Cyberware! Why the hell would anyone undergo surgery to install subdermal armor if they can get better protection from a single layer of clothing??? It just doesn't make sense.
So, it is in this spirit that I have though up the following changes to the way armor rating works, even though I am painfully aware CDPR will probably never read this let alone implement these changes, I just had to get this out of my system. Also note, I devised this rework with Normal Difficulty in mind, as I have not yet had time to play the higher difficulties so I don't know how it would scale but the core idea would be the same.

Clothing armor changes:

• Common - 10 armor MAX
• Uncommon - 20 armor MAX
• Rare - 30 armor MAX
• Epic - 40 armor MAX
• Legendary - 50 armor MAX
• Bulletproof helmets/vests/clothing - 40 armor MIN & 80 armor MAX

With these values players should have more leeway to just wear whatever they want without sacrificing too much in the way of survivability, while at the same time retaining the incentive to acquire higher rarity clothing. This should also solve the very annoying issue of finding tank tops with more armor than bulletproof vests as well as finding duplicate pieces of clothing with wildly different armor ratings. (I have personally even found lower rarity versions of certain clothes with considerably better armor rating just because I looted them later in the game)

Integumentary armor changes:

• Common - 100 armor, no req
• Uncommon - 200 armor, no req
• Rare - 300 armor, no req (Maybe 8/10 body req but not sure it'd be a good idea)
• Epic - 500 armor, 12/14 body req
• Legendary - 700 armor, 16/18 body req

These changes are not only aimed to offset the significant loss in armor rating for clothing but also to make tank builds more distinct, since in the current state of the game a stealthy Netrunner can pack just as much subdermal armor as the beefiest Solo. However, even if the Netrunner would only be able to equip up to Rare tier armor, with a full set of Legendary Clothing they'd still be able to bring their armor rating all the way up up to 600. Likewise, the Solo would be able to get up to 1K armor rating. And this is without even considering Clothing Mods.

That's really about the gist of it, any thoughts and/or discussion y'all might have are welome in the comments, even if it is unlikely CDPR will implement these changes in the foreseeable future (Or at all, for that matter).

Also yes, I'm aware Armadillo exists but you still need an available mod slot for it which you can only find on certain pieces of clothing, which is the whole point of this rework; Make all clothing more appealing regardless of rarity, if you want real armor then you better get chipped. Besides, since Armadillo works on a percentage basis I think it would work seamlessly with the rework without any need for modification, as a highly armored build will be able to reap immense benefits from the mod while a lightly armored build will still get great utility from it, albeit not to the same extent.

 

[piotrrk]

Armadillo quickly overruns base item armor so a 4 slot shirt will have 1K armor. Then 4 slots on body, 3 on head and shoes etc. That gives 4K+ armor with slot or two for the critical legendary mods. For hard/very hard you pretty much need legendary armor for max slots, on normal you will be more than fine with epic and rare even. And if you are a netrunner you don't even need armor as anything dies before they even notice you

Also body requirement for clothes has no sense not to mention that at high body you get survival options in cyberware. The game is designed to compensate and not double-down on things. If you have high int and low combat skill there is crit chance and crit damage cyberware and alike.

If they want to do any balance and tuning they would have to re-think hard and very hard from current dumb versions and then make all mods unique and not stacking so world is balanced around your base armor and you can't get orders of magnitude more with mods.

 

[3lmu3rt0]

Also body requirement for clothes has no sense not to mention that at high body you get survival options in cyberware.

Just want to make clear I don't want body requirement for clothing, just for subdermal armor

 

[piotrrk]

Just want to make clear I don't want body requirement for clothing, just for subdermal armor

The cyberware one? Still bit questionable in current design.

 

[captainvideotrash]

How about this: every clothing item has *visible* lvl and it can crafted to higher tier if certain lvl is met. You can achieve this lvl by upgrading the item. Tier lvl determines the number of mod slots and not some random bs. Military stuff would also always have better stats but not enough to make game play difference.

 

[MojoBreaker]

this game is more unbalanced than any korean mmorpg.

 

[ash23neuro]

Just want to make clear I don't want body requirement for clothing, just for subdermal armor

Legendary subdermal armor is a joke with its 200 armor .

 

[1cmf]

Honestly, I have been playing on very hard and I don't feel that armor matters. If anything, slotting all backpacking or movement speed or other things for quality of life is better than raw stats, as they do so much dmg it isn't worth it to try to "tank" anything.

Better off utilizing cover shooter mechanics until you get perks that allow you to heal and quickly chain kill.

I have not played on normal or easy yet, so don't know if armor mattered more there or not.

One stat I haven't been able to understand well is "evade". I haven't seen it go up past 1 (have not tried to invest in it, but had perks that was supposed to increase when using pistol or reloading). Enemies miss shots, wonder if this just decreases enemy accuracy, or it causing "no dmg" on a hit on "x" percent of hits?

 

[piotrrk]

I have not played on normal or easy yet, so don't know if armor mattered more there or not.

Here is 6500 vs 1500 example (cold blood +100% armor to what cloth + armadillo provide) on normal:

On very hard those under level mobs would kill at 6500 armor in few shots (5-10 would say), while 6500 is not close to min/maxing as you can get vastly more and be unkillable even on very hard I guess.

Melee weapons even on normal go through armor quite well because melee weapons tend to have absurd DPS values thus armor mitigation against them is ineffective (even though in the end melee weapons don't do so much more damage as the DPS labels would suggest - armor mitigation is calculated versus those labels).

And melee builds based around speed and healing from damage or from hitting are pretty popular for very hard. The other is netrunning and killing skull enemies from over 9000 meters.

 

[jj284b]

Y'all remember how CDPR was harping on and on about how style is the most important thing in Night City? Yeah, that didn't really pan out with how the game actually plays. They have us all running around in the lamest outfits because they just couldn't let go of the way TW3 handled armor and loot RNG. Kitsch? Neokitsch? Neomilitarism? Never heard of those, all I've seen so far is Entropism, Entropism and more Entropism; whatever gives me the higest armor rating is what I'm wearing (Getting the job done no matter how. The look? Who cares?).
Now don't get me wrong, I enjoy the related memes as much as anyone and by all accounts, this isn't an issue unique to Cyberpunk. But considering that they made an entire trailer devoted to explaining the history and significance of styles in Night City, to end up with such a haphazard approach to equipment just feels wrong. I mean, we have miniskirts and tuxedos offering more protection than bulletproof vests and tactical clothing for god's sake! Shit, a raggeddy tank top with mustard stains can have more armor than the lower tiers of Integumentary Cyberware! Why the hell would anyone undergo surgery to install subdermal armor if they can get better protection from a single layer of clothing??? It just doesn't make sense.
So, it is in this spirit that I have though up the following changes to the way armor rating works, even though I am painfully aware CDPR will probably never read this let alone implement these changes, I just had to get this out of my system. Also note, I devised this rework with Normal Difficulty in mind, as I have not yet had time to play the higher difficulties so I don't know how it would scale but the core idea would be the same.

Clothing armor changes:

• Common - 10 armor MAX
• Uncommon - 20 armor MAX
• Rare - 30 armor MAX
• Epic - 40 armor MAX
• Legendary - 50 armor MAX
• Bulletproof helmets/vests/clothing - 40 armor MIN & 80 armor MAX

With these values players should have more leeway to just wear whatever they want without sacrificing too much in the way of survivability, while at the same time retaining the incentive to acquire higher rarity clothing. This should also solve the very annoying issue of finding tank tops with more armor than bulletproof vests as well as finding duplicate pieces of clothing with wildly different armor ratings. (I have personally even found lower rarity versions of certain clothes with considerably better armor rating just because I looted them later in the game)

Integumentary armor changes:

• Common - 100 armor, no req
• Uncommon - 200 armor, no req
• Rare - 300 armor, no req (Maybe 8/10 body req but not sure it'd be a good idea)
• Epic - 500 armor, 12/14 body req
• Legendary - 700 armor, 16/18 body req

These changes are not only aimed to offset the significant loss in armor rating for clothing but also to make tank builds more distinct, since in the current state of the game a stealthy Netrunner can pack just as much subdermal armor as the beefiest Solo. However, even if the Netrunner would only be able to equip up to Rare tier armor, with a full set of Legendary Clothing they'd still be able to bring their armor rating all the way up up to 600. Likewise, the Solo would be able to get up to 1K armor rating. And this is without even considering Clothing Mods.

That's really about the gist of it, any thoughts and/or discussion y'all might have are welome in the comments, even if it is unlikely CDPR will implement these changes in the foreseeable future (Or at all, for that matter).

Also yes, I'm aware Armadillo exists but you still need an available mod slot for it which you can only find on certain pieces of clothing, which is the whole point of this rework; Make all clothing more appealing regardless of rarity, if you want real armor then you better get chipped. Besides, since Armadillo works on a percentage basis I think it would work seamlessly with the rework without any need for modification, as a highly armored build will be able to reap immense benefits from the mod while a lightly armored build will still get great utility from it, albeit not to the same extent.

this would make armor completely pointless btw, because 40 points of armor practically reduces enemy damage per second by 1 point.... so if enemy on higher levels deals 500 damage, you would need to have 20000 armor to negate the damage... with armor around 2000 you only reduce damage taken by 50 points....

 

[3lmu3rt0]

this would make armor completely pointless btw, because 40 points of armor practically reduces enemy damage per second by 1 point.... so if enemy on higher levels deals 500 damage, you would need to have 20000 armor to negate the damage... with armor around 2000 you only reduce damage taken by 50 points....

Okay so then they should buff subdermal armor even more to level the playing field. My main issue here is that there is really no incentive at all to drop 14K eddies on "Legendary" subdermal armor that only gives you a measly 200 armor points. As it stands right now I can just equip modded clothing and still have better armor rating without ever installing any Integumentary Cyberware...

 

[moonknightgog]

Why the hell would anyone undergo surgery to install subdermal armor if they can get better protection from a single layer of clothing??? It just doesn't make sense.

This game feels like many systems were developed in complete isolations and then slapped together. It's full of internal contradictions

 

[jj284b]

i think subdermal armor would be better if it just gave flat percentage damage reduction... let say 5/10/15/20/25% to make it worth getting...

Post automatically merged: Jan 5, 2021

This game feels like many systems were developed in complete isolations and then slapped together. It's full of internal contradictions

Game systems like armor are exactly the same as they were in Witcher 3...

 

[ottffss1]

Whatever it is it should be flat dr as a % of max for easier balance, and if you are decked out in the best gold stuff dr cap should probably be around 50% + whatever perks give you though perks could raise to maybe 66% on a totally defensive tank build. That be somewhat more balanced.

 

[jj284b]

Whatever it is it should be flat dr as a % of max for easier balance, and if you are decked out in the best gold stuff dr cap should probably be around 50% + whatever perks give you though perks could raise to maybe 66% on a totally defensive tank build. That be somewhat more balanced.

i think we will see that via mods eventually...

 

[piotrrk]

Okay so then they should buff subdermal armor even more to level the playing field. My main issue here is that there is really no incentive at all to drop 14K eddies on "Legendary" subdermal armor that only gives you a measly 200 armor points.

14K isn't much. It's 400 with cold blood, almost 600 for cold blood / tech build. Yet it would be more fun if all of those 3 slots were for the alterations - resistance/reaction to shock/burn/chemical damage - without requirements on stats that already unlock perk-level resistance in one way or another.