So, the game is a bit of a mess. It has its good things, but the bad seem quite prevalent. I and certain other folks have been making these sorts of suggestion here for 8 years now, and even at the danger of sounding smug: "CDPR, you probably should've listened to us a bit more." Who would lift the cats tail if not the cat himself. But that's enough of selfrighteousness.
Like so many others, I decided to make a thread about how the game might be improved from the state it is in right now. Only personal opinions, but I really do think these sorts of things would give the game a more RPG kind of feel and make it an overall better experience even if some things might sound a bit unorthodox on paper.
So let's begin from the bottom. Skills and stats affect the almost everything in the game, so adjusting those first and foremost should be the starting point.
As it is, there are 12 skills and 5 stats. All of which are related to combat, killing and/or sneaking; datamining being an exception, but even that only produces resources to be used in killing and sneaking. That's pretty much the only two things you do in the game aside from watching cutscenes and running/driving around the city. Kill or sneak.
So I decided to add a non-combat skill under every stat. And I tried to do it with as little requirements for extra voiced dialog or animations, and also with as little redisigning of things as possible because even though the game IMO needs to be completely redesigned, I don't think that sort of thing would ever be on the table. These are also only quick concepts, not some actual design work. And also, all of this requires a lot of work on creating gameplay opportunities for them (possibly added with a DLC later on or something like that), mission uses and all that. It's just a bunch of suggestions. Commets and critique is accepted.
I have some ideas on tweaking the itemization, crafting and other things, like interactivity and stat/skill effects on gunplay, etc, too. But I'll see about them later on. Possibly. I'm not sure why I even bothered with this much, but as it is, I had some spare time, and I actually want the game to be good, or better than it is now.
Here goes. This is going to be a long one, and probably span over several posts as I keep updating things (if or when I have more time).
New stat and skills
REF
Gameplay applications
1) DRIVING
Add in the driving skill. Adjust the vehicles so that the slower ones are more cumbersome to steer, turn very slowly, with a word, they understeer. Do the opposite for faster vehicles, that they oversteer. And make both have slow braking (either it takes a relatively long for the car to stop, or they slide with handbrakes for a relatively long distances. Essentially, driving will feel even more shit than it does now. And that’s the purpose.
Now, have the skill adjust those aspects so that at a maximum, every vehicle behaves ”almost” the same: their steering is easier, they turn much better and their brakes work like brakes should (much shorter stopping times, much less slide with handbrake). But only almost. Different vehicles already have their own characteristics, and that is fine. The idea is to get the vehicles behave in a somewhat ”enjoyable” way, not to make them all the same.
Additionally, allow V to jack into the vehicles and turn on an ”autopilot”. Meaning, that you set a waypoint to the map, and V will drive there as an AI (not the fastest way, but still), while the palyer can sit back and watch the sceneries (or toggle back to manual driving when ever he desires).
Let the skill progress through mileage, starting relatively fast, but also gradually slowing down fast after a certain point (let’s say first spike on the slow at skill level of 7, and second at 14). And allow the autopilot too to increase the skill, but only 0,5 times what manual driving gives.
This incentivizes driving even when it feels bad, because it rewards the player for deciding to drive in the first place, that it is not just the mundane task that you do. And it gives the obtainable vehicles too a bit of a different meaning other than pointless moneysinks. Although, there is still something that needs to be done with owning those vehicles and a reason for buying them in the first place (which there is none as of now).
2) DISGUISE
Take a page from Hitman. Allow the player to wear disguises. The sort of distinct apparel or masking that gangs, cops, corpos, whoever uses to lessen their aggro levels and allow infiltration to gang turfs without needing to sneak (as long as you don’t get ”too” close). Disguises aren’t sold anywhere, but put together from looted/found equipment using the TECH stat. This will, of course require faction specific apparel to exist, or at least to the length of it existing in the players inventory and being noticed by the related NPC’s.
The skill itself might control for example:
The perktree might consist of (for example):
3) GAMBLE
There are gambling opportunities and slotmachines in the game a bunch. Allow V to take use and take part in them and adjust the economy and possibilities so that winning big actually has something to spend it all on, but still so that money isn’t trivial. Instead of taking part in it, allow V to bet on the car races and boxing matches, and if possible, add more. Card games, pool, casino games. And allow cheating on both sides, the player and the opponent. And of course include consequences for getting spotted as a cheat (even with slot machines and such – there must be some sort of anticheat programs). But make it so that cheating does never guarantee a win, only improves the odds.
The skill itself might adjust for example:
The perks might consist of for example:
4) PICKPOCKET/STEAL
Allow V to pickpocket NPC’s and steal peoples belongings. He is called a thief in the game afterall.
Normally in games this happens via sneaking behind the NPC’s and in ”dangerous areas” this should be the case still, but there are more ways to pickpocket than that. For example, you might get close to a common pedestrian and ”press e” to pickpocket, which starts an animation as if you were bumping into the guy. It might be just a background check there if you get anything and if you get caught, but it might also be a little ”quicktime event” where you have to ”press e” again at a certain moment which ensures that there is something, but not that you won’t get caught. If you get caught, you get nothing and the NPC might aggro on you (might be even dangerous), or he calls the cops, runs away and gives you a wanted star.
The stuff you might get and the difficulty of the skillcheck would be based on the distrcit and the person in question. The skillcheck itself would be an RNG check. So that there are no guarantees.
Also, allow the loot to be worthwhile. Chance for special items, for example.
Also, give items an ownership so that you can’t just barge into someones home or shop or clinic and pocket everythign that isn’t nailed down. Use either the same sort of method as with pickpocketing or the more conventional ”crouch, hide, nab” method.
The skill itself might adjust for example:
The related perks might be about (for example):
5) AWARENESS/NOTICE
Tie the highlighting of the various loot items and boxes littering the ground, tables and bodies and the chances of there being something extra to this skill (let the eye implants focus solely on analyzation, quickhacks and breach protocolls). The amount of shit there is to pick up is staggering to say the least. And everything having a coloured box over it along with the bonkers crafting systems just begs the player to collect every paper cup and fan he runs across. The crafting and itemization itself require a good amount of adjustments to work in a somewhat sensible way, but more on that later.
Firstly, let there be a ton of loot all over the place. But leave it all unmarked in anyway (perhaps even unlootable/invisible in some cases) unless you have a decent progression on the skill.
And as of bodies, tie the chance of there being something extra or ”higher” level stuff there besides a bit of money, ammo and the weapon the guy used to higher skill. And let it all work by chance. This would make shops more worthwhile and offer a worthwhile moneysink the game now lacks.
It need not be all about looting either. There might be events and objects in the world you might not notice without the skill.
The skill itself might adjust for example:
The perk tree could be about (for example):
6) NEGOTIATION
Basically a bargaining skill for haggling prices at shops and better rewards from missions. Adjust every item price higher and every mission reward and selling price lower. Same for mission related monetary exchanges (debt for Vik, Rogues fee for the information, prices of buyable cars and what ever else there might be that I haven’t seen yet). Don’t leave a single price unadjusted (perhaps barring items that sell of 1€$).
Getting prices lower should NOT be a simple matter of skill getting higher and prices automatically getting lower. There should be some form of activity to it where you suggest a price and based on the metrics of the ”opposition” (e.g. disposition, streetcred… what else there might be) and a chance of finding a ”sweet spot” both would agree. This might happen via having a finite amount of tries that are tied to item rarity.
Let’s say, for a starting character with low skill, two attempts for common items and one for uncommon. And as the skill and perks progress, you get to haggle for rare, epic and legendary items. (If you fail, you don’t get to try again in X amount of time; and if suggest something the vendor deems preposterous, the prices might even go up a notch).
How it works could be that at the vendor window you get an option to haggle and there you might move a slider from 1% to 100% (or higher for selling, with higher skill) to where you think might be a good spot to suggest. And within the slider there is a certain ”sweet spot” that is sized according to the item rarity and your skill and this guarantees success (e.g. at low skill the sweet spot might be set 10-15% discount, at higher skill it might be 10-40%). But, to make things a bit more interesting, there’s always a very small chance that you can pull the slider all the way to the max (or where ever you wish) and there is a check made behind the screen that might net you an item for free or at what ever discount you chose.
And similiarly for other bargaining situations, be they cars or Vik or what ever.
With the afore mentioned awareness/notice and gambling changes, this would give money a lot more importance.
The skill itself might adjust for example:
The perks might be about (for example):
To be continued... (possibly)
Like so many others, I decided to make a thread about how the game might be improved from the state it is in right now. Only personal opinions, but I really do think these sorts of things would give the game a more RPG kind of feel and make it an overall better experience even if some things might sound a bit unorthodox on paper.
So let's begin from the bottom. Skills and stats affect the almost everything in the game, so adjusting those first and foremost should be the starting point.
As it is, there are 12 skills and 5 stats. All of which are related to combat, killing and/or sneaking; datamining being an exception, but even that only produces resources to be used in killing and sneaking. That's pretty much the only two things you do in the game aside from watching cutscenes and running/driving around the city. Kill or sneak.
So I decided to add a non-combat skill under every stat. And I tried to do it with as little requirements for extra voiced dialog or animations, and also with as little redisigning of things as possible because even though the game IMO needs to be completely redesigned, I don't think that sort of thing would ever be on the table. These are also only quick concepts, not some actual design work. And also, all of this requires a lot of work on creating gameplay opportunities for them (possibly added with a DLC later on or something like that), mission uses and all that. It's just a bunch of suggestions. Commets and critique is accepted.
I have some ideas on tweaking the itemization, crafting and other things, like interactivity and stat/skill effects on gunplay, etc, too. But I'll see about them later on. Possibly. I'm not sure why I even bothered with this much, but as it is, I had some spare time, and I actually want the game to be good, or better than it is now.
Here goes. This is going to be a long one, and probably span over several posts as I keep updating things (if or when I have more time).
New stat and skills
REF
- Driving (1
- Disguise (2
- Gamble (3
- Pickpocket/Steal (4
- I actually didn’t find a decent additional skill here, that would have a feasible perktree under it, or wouldn’t overlap with what the stat itself already does (like opening doors).
- Awareness/Notice (5
- Negotiation (6
- I was thinking about Human Perception here, but haven't gotten to figuring its uses yet.
Gameplay applications
1) DRIVING
Add in the driving skill. Adjust the vehicles so that the slower ones are more cumbersome to steer, turn very slowly, with a word, they understeer. Do the opposite for faster vehicles, that they oversteer. And make both have slow braking (either it takes a relatively long for the car to stop, or they slide with handbrakes for a relatively long distances. Essentially, driving will feel even more shit than it does now. And that’s the purpose.
Now, have the skill adjust those aspects so that at a maximum, every vehicle behaves ”almost” the same: their steering is easier, they turn much better and their brakes work like brakes should (much shorter stopping times, much less slide with handbrake). But only almost. Different vehicles already have their own characteristics, and that is fine. The idea is to get the vehicles behave in a somewhat ”enjoyable” way, not to make them all the same.
Additionally, allow V to jack into the vehicles and turn on an ”autopilot”. Meaning, that you set a waypoint to the map, and V will drive there as an AI (not the fastest way, but still), while the palyer can sit back and watch the sceneries (or toggle back to manual driving when ever he desires).
Let the skill progress through mileage, starting relatively fast, but also gradually slowing down fast after a certain point (let’s say first spike on the slow at skill level of 7, and second at 14). And allow the autopilot too to increase the skill, but only 0,5 times what manual driving gives.
This incentivizes driving even when it feels bad, because it rewards the player for deciding to drive in the first place, that it is not just the mundane task that you do. And it gives the obtainable vehicles too a bit of a different meaning other than pointless moneysinks. Although, there is still something that needs to be done with owning those vehicles and a reason for buying them in the first place (which there is none as of now).
2) DISGUISE
Take a page from Hitman. Allow the player to wear disguises. The sort of distinct apparel or masking that gangs, cops, corpos, whoever uses to lessen their aggro levels and allow infiltration to gang turfs without needing to sneak (as long as you don’t get ”too” close). Disguises aren’t sold anywhere, but put together from looted/found equipment using the TECH stat. This will, of course require faction specific apparel to exist, or at least to the length of it existing in the players inventory and being noticed by the related NPC’s.
The skill itself might control for example:
- The proximity at which you’ll start to get noticed (with low skill you need to keep your distance).
- The time it takes for the ”enemy” to recognize you’re not one of them.
- The speed you can move in and not look suspicious.
The perktree might consist of (for example):
- What activities you are able to do while being seen (e.g. hacking an access point or a laptop, breaching to cameras, amount of looting, performing quickhacks and entering security offices).
- How effective (e.g. rarity) disguises you are able to put together (e.g. higher level gangs might not let you close at all with a ”common” diguise).
3) GAMBLE
There are gambling opportunities and slotmachines in the game a bunch. Allow V to take use and take part in them and adjust the economy and possibilities so that winning big actually has something to spend it all on, but still so that money isn’t trivial. Instead of taking part in it, allow V to bet on the car races and boxing matches, and if possible, add more. Card games, pool, casino games. And allow cheating on both sides, the player and the opponent. And of course include consequences for getting spotted as a cheat (even with slot machines and such – there must be some sort of anticheat programs). But make it so that cheating does never guarantee a win, only improves the odds.
The skill itself might adjust for example:
- The ability spot a cheat in casino/bar games.
- The ability to cheat yourself in casino/bar games.
- Giving slight visual hints on who might (but is not guaranteed) be a strong bet in a competition gambling like races or boxing.
The perks might consist of for example:
- Opening schematics for crafting items/implants that allow you to cheat in mechanical games like slot machines.
- Opening schematics for covert quickhacks that might allow you to influence a competitor you’re betting on.
4) PICKPOCKET/STEAL
Allow V to pickpocket NPC’s and steal peoples belongings. He is called a thief in the game afterall.
Normally in games this happens via sneaking behind the NPC’s and in ”dangerous areas” this should be the case still, but there are more ways to pickpocket than that. For example, you might get close to a common pedestrian and ”press e” to pickpocket, which starts an animation as if you were bumping into the guy. It might be just a background check there if you get anything and if you get caught, but it might also be a little ”quicktime event” where you have to ”press e” again at a certain moment which ensures that there is something, but not that you won’t get caught. If you get caught, you get nothing and the NPC might aggro on you (might be even dangerous), or he calls the cops, runs away and gives you a wanted star.
The stuff you might get and the difficulty of the skillcheck would be based on the distrcit and the person in question. The skillcheck itself would be an RNG check. So that there are no guarantees.
Also, allow the loot to be worthwhile. Chance for special items, for example.
Also, give items an ownership so that you can’t just barge into someones home or shop or clinic and pocket everythign that isn’t nailed down. Use either the same sort of method as with pickpocketing or the more conventional ”crouch, hide, nab” method.
The skill itself might adjust for example:
- The amount of money you are able to lift from a person.
- The rarity of the items you are able to lift from a person.
- The chance of not getting caught during a pickpocket and stealing someones belongings from their house/shop/clinic/what ever.
The related perks might be about (for example):
- Increasing the time in the ”quicktime event” to make it easier.
- Increasign the size of the items you can nab (e.g. taking someones gun)
- Giving the ability to reverse pickpocket (e.g. planting an explosive on someone without being noticed).
5) AWARENESS/NOTICE
Tie the highlighting of the various loot items and boxes littering the ground, tables and bodies and the chances of there being something extra to this skill (let the eye implants focus solely on analyzation, quickhacks and breach protocolls). The amount of shit there is to pick up is staggering to say the least. And everything having a coloured box over it along with the bonkers crafting systems just begs the player to collect every paper cup and fan he runs across. The crafting and itemization itself require a good amount of adjustments to work in a somewhat sensible way, but more on that later.
Firstly, let there be a ton of loot all over the place. But leave it all unmarked in anyway (perhaps even unlootable/invisible in some cases) unless you have a decent progression on the skill.
And as of bodies, tie the chance of there being something extra or ”higher” level stuff there besides a bit of money, ammo and the weapon the guy used to higher skill. And let it all work by chance. This would make shops more worthwhile and offer a worthwhile moneysink the game now lacks.
It need not be all about looting either. There might be events and objects in the world you might not notice without the skill.
The skill itself might adjust for example:
- The chance of loot getting highlighted in the first place.
- The proximity at which it gets highlighted if it gets highlighted (the higher the skill, the farther away you notice it)
- The chance of noticing certain world events and objects (like a car that has a bomb rigged under it, highlighting near by NPC chatter about ”my new revolver/paycheck” that could be pickpocketed, or stuff like that).
The perk tree could be about (for example):
- The ability to notice higher level loot (e.g. rarity).
- The amount of money among the loot.
- The amount of parts in the loot.
6) NEGOTIATION
Basically a bargaining skill for haggling prices at shops and better rewards from missions. Adjust every item price higher and every mission reward and selling price lower. Same for mission related monetary exchanges (debt for Vik, Rogues fee for the information, prices of buyable cars and what ever else there might be that I haven’t seen yet). Don’t leave a single price unadjusted (perhaps barring items that sell of 1€$).
Getting prices lower should NOT be a simple matter of skill getting higher and prices automatically getting lower. There should be some form of activity to it where you suggest a price and based on the metrics of the ”opposition” (e.g. disposition, streetcred… what else there might be) and a chance of finding a ”sweet spot” both would agree. This might happen via having a finite amount of tries that are tied to item rarity.
Let’s say, for a starting character with low skill, two attempts for common items and one for uncommon. And as the skill and perks progress, you get to haggle for rare, epic and legendary items. (If you fail, you don’t get to try again in X amount of time; and if suggest something the vendor deems preposterous, the prices might even go up a notch).
How it works could be that at the vendor window you get an option to haggle and there you might move a slider from 1% to 100% (or higher for selling, with higher skill) to where you think might be a good spot to suggest. And within the slider there is a certain ”sweet spot” that is sized according to the item rarity and your skill and this guarantees success (e.g. at low skill the sweet spot might be set 10-15% discount, at higher skill it might be 10-40%). But, to make things a bit more interesting, there’s always a very small chance that you can pull the slider all the way to the max (or where ever you wish) and there is a check made behind the screen that might net you an item for free or at what ever discount you chose.
And similiarly for other bargaining situations, be they cars or Vik or what ever.
With the afore mentioned awareness/notice and gambling changes, this would give money a lot more importance.
The skill itself might adjust for example:
- The size of the ”sweet spot” at a haggling situation slider.
- The amount of attempts you get per rarity
The perks might be about (for example):
- The ability to haggle for higher rarity items.
- The ability to haggle for over 100% selling prices.
- Bigger chance for getting the price you want (not ridiculously high chance, just a bit higher than the very small it is initially)
To be continued... (possibly)
