How to fix combat by overhauling "Ping" and "Mark"

[Mobster100]

For me combat is slightly broken in CP at the moment, especially towards mid/end game where some of the abilities and weapons gets a bit out of hand in regards to how powerful they are. Especially some quick hack and tech weapons.

But having thought a bit more about it, I don't think it's solely due to them alone, but that a lot of it comes from the ability to "Ping" and "Mark" targets. The mere fact that you can get a visual on all enemies allows you to deal with them as if there were no cover in the game, yet the enemies act as if cover helps them, which doesn't make a lot of sense from a lore perspective, as they should be well aware that it wouldn't.

However making the AI just charge you in a huge pile, wouldn't work either, so some sort of balance need to be made I think.

Some of these things are already in the game as far as I know, but might need to be balanced and some would be changes or overhauls.

Changes to Ping
The way ping works now is that you "ping" a target and all enemies/devices linked to it will be displayed for 30 seconds with no cool down. However I think several options could replace or change it slightly, so it would make for a much more balanced and fun ability.

General for all options
The purpose of "Ping" should be more of a scouting ability or something used just before sniping someone, rather than a "Mark" everything ability, but will get back to that later.

- Ping should have a cool down of 10 seconds.
- Ping duration should be lowered to maybe 6-7 seconds duration enough for a sniper to take their shot.
- Each enemy and device have an individual defense value against pings, sort of like a firewall or something and V's skill with quick hacks will be tested against this. It makes sense that a good hacker is much better at this, than someone specced for brute force is. It would also mean that pinging someone might fail, so only revealing some targets rather than everything, depending on how many resist it.
- The more times a target is pinged the more resistant it will get, which is to prevent the player from just pinging over and over again. This could be mitigated by some skills or cyberware as well if needed.
- Depending on enemy types, the resistance should also play a role, like the Voodoo boys should have a much higher resistance against it than anyone else, given they are suppose to be hacking experts and therefore better suited at defending against it etc.

Two options of how it could be changed:

Option 1
Ping should only reveal an area around the target pinged, let's say 10 meters as a base range and each other target within that range will make a roll for whether or not the ping works or not. Could even make it so ping could cascade, so if one target is successfully pinged a new area around them of 10 meters will be chosen and rolls for everything within that range will also be made and so forth.
So a person really good at Nethacking will obviously get a lot more information than one that is not specced for it. It would also mean that doing multiple pings might not reveal the same information each time as new defence roll would be made each ping attempt.

Also since ping would have a cool down, it gives enemies time to move between each ping adding a bit more tension to an encounter, not knowing if the data you have is 100% accurate, especially if you are not specced as a Netrunner.

Option 2
Ping works a lot like it does now, so each enemy/device linked to the network will be the ping target. But again you have the defence rolls and the cool down, which in some cases would not reveal everything. The player would never know for certain, how reliable their informations are.
Also enemies should be split up into minor clusters of enemies and devices, so you are less likely to reveal everything with just one ping.

New quick hack
Could add an advanced ping, let's call it "Sonar", which you could cast on a person or device and would work more like a Sonar would, by shooting out waves in all directions in a huge area, but only reveal things for maybe 1 - 1.5 seconds. And therefore something you could use, just to get a sense of where enemies might be. So it's more of a brief image of what is going on a place and a tool for figuring out how to approach something rather than used for killing people through the walls with tech weapons.

Marking enemies
This functionality is probably the one that ruins combat the most in my opinion. That "Ping" last as long as it does is a problem in itself. But being able to "Mark" enemies makes the ping permanent and can be done through walls. Given that you have 30 seconds or basically as much time as you want to "Mark" enemies, this ruins so much.

And looks like this:

The idea of "Ping" based on its description is clearly to reveal things for 30 seconds. However this "Mark" mechanic, which isn't even an ingame ability, but a game or player tool is making it last forever. And even allows you to track targets as they move, which doesn't really make sense, how V would know where they are, when the ping duration is over. Furthermore, i think it's a bad gameplay mechanic all together, because what you do is make a ping and then you start marking targets. And once that is done, then you begin. Marking targets is useful, but not a fun mechanic as its a slow process, but also when you finally sneak in or start combat, simply knowing where all enemies are, removes a lot of tensions in the fights.

To me the best solution to this, is simply to scrap the "Mark" functionality all together, simply making it impossible, or at least this should be changes to a tracker ability or special "shot" that you can shoot an enemy with, which will then last for 2-5 minutes or something, which will allow you to track that target only. Obviously you can shoot several enemies which could be useful as long as you can see them. Yet it wouldn't be a "Mark" all ability.

For me, applying these changes would greatly improve combat in the game overall, especially for quick hacking and tech weapons (as a starting point).
Because quick hacks need you to be able to see your target, so you can't do it or at least it is much harder to just quick hack enemies from a distance without them being able to do anything. However I do still think that they have to be better balanced than they are now, being able to instant kill anyone is not a good mechanic in general in a game, and so of them are simply to overpowered.

For tech weapons, you can still use it to snipe people through the walls and covers. But it will be much more difficult to just snipe off a whole base without them being able to do anything, because of you not knowing where the enemies are before they start shooting back at you, but also due to the unreliable ping and them moving between each of them.

 

[xls1988622]

Agreed! Counting on modders on this one.

However, without improving enemy AI and reaction time it's a bit pointless to 'nerf' only the player.

 

[Ayinde_Palmer]

For me combat is slightly broken in CP at the moment, especially towards mid/end game where some of the abilities and weapons gets a bit out of hand in regards to how powerful they are. Especially some quick hack and tech weapons.

But having thought a bit more about it, I don't think it's solely due to them alone, but that a lot of it comes from the ability to "Ping" and "Mark" targets. The mere fact that you can get a visual on all enemies allows you to deal with them as if there were no cover in the game, yet the enemies act as if cover helps them, which doesn't make a lot of sense from a lore perspective, as they should be well aware that it wouldn't.

However making the AI just charge you in a huge pile, wouldn't work either, so some sort of balance need to be made I think.

Some of these things are already in the game as far as I know, but might need to be balanced and some would be changes or overhauls.

Changes to Ping
The way ping works now is that you "ping" a target and all enemies/devices linked to it will be displayed for 30 seconds with no cool down. However I think several options could replace or change it slightly, so it would make for a much more balanced and fun ability.

General for all options
The purpose of "Ping" should be more of a scouting ability or something used just before sniping someone, rather than a "Mark" everything ability, but will get back to that later.

- Ping should have a cool down of 10 seconds.
- Ping duration should be lowered to maybe 6-7 seconds duration enough for a sniper to take their shot.
- Each enemy and device have an individual defense value against pings, sort of like a firewall or something and V's skill with quick hacks will be tested against this. It makes sense that a good hacker is much better at this, than someone specced for brute force is. It would also mean that pinging someone might fail, so only revealing some targets rather than everything, depending on how many resist it.
- The more times a target is pinged the more resistant it will get, which is to prevent the player from just pinging over and over again. This could be mitigated by some skills or cyberware as well if needed.
- Depending on enemy types, the resistance should also play a role, like the Voodoo boys should have a much higher resistance against it than anyone else, given they are suppose to be hacking experts and therefore better suited at defending against it etc.

Two options of how it could be changed:

Option 1
Ping should only reveal an area around the target pinged, let's say 10 meters as a base range and each other target within that range will make a roll for whether or not the ping works or not. Could even make it so ping could cascade, so if one target is successfully pinged a new area around them of 10 meters will be chosen and rolls for everything within that range will also be made and so forth.
So a person really good at Nethacking will obviously get a lot more information than one that is not specced for it. It would also mean that doing multiple pings might not reveal the same information each time as new defence roll would be made each ping attempt.

Also since ping would have a cool down, it gives enemies time to move between each ping adding a bit more tension to an encounter, not knowing if the data you have is 100% accurate, especially if you are not specced as a Netrunner.

Option 2
Ping works a lot like it does now, so each enemy/device linked to the network will be the ping target. But again you have the defence rolls and the cool down, which in some cases would not reveal everything. The player would never know for certain, how reliable their informations are.
Also enemies should be split up into minor clusters of enemies and devices, so you are less likely to reveal everything with just one ping.

New quick hack
Could add an advanced ping, let's call it "Sonar", which you could cast on a person or device and would work more like a Sonar would, by shooting out waves in all directions in a huge area, but only reveal things for maybe 1 - 1.5 seconds. And therefore something you could use, just to get a sense of where enemies might be. So it's more of a brief image of what is going on a place and a tool for figuring out how to approach something rather than used for killing people through the walls with tech weapons.

Marking enemies
This functionality is probably the one that ruins combat the most in my opinion. That "Ping" last as long as it does is a problem in itself. But being able to "Mark" enemies makes the ping permanent and can be done through walls. Given that you have 30 seconds or basically as much time as you want to "Mark" enemies, this ruins so much.

And looks like this:
View attachment 11162372

The idea of "Ping" based on its description is clearly to reveal things for 30 seconds. However this "Mark" mechanic, which isn't even an ingame ability, but a game or player tool is making it last forever. And even allows you to track targets as they move, which doesn't really make sense, how V would know where they are, when the ping duration is over. Furthermore, i think it's a bad gameplay mechanic all together, because what you do is make a ping and then you start marking targets. And once that is done, then you begin. Marking targets is useful, but not a fun mechanic as its a slow process, but also when you finally sneak in or start combat, simply knowing where all enemies are, removes a lot of tensions in the fights.

To me the best solution to this, is simply to scrap the "Mark" functionality all together, simply making it impossible, or at least this should be changes to a tracker ability or special "shot" that you can shoot an enemy with, which will then last for 2-5 minutes or something, which will allow you to track that target only. Obviously you can shoot several enemies which could be useful as long as you can see them. Yet it wouldn't be a "Mark" all ability.

For me, applying these changes would greatly improve combat in the game overall, especially for quick hacking and tech weapons (as a starting point).
Because quick hacks need you to be able to see your target, so you can't do it or at least it is much harder to just quick hack enemies from a distance without them being able to do anything. However I do still think that they have to be better balanced than they are now, being able to instant kill anyone is not a good mechanic in general in a game, and so of them are simply to overpowered.

For tech weapons, you can still use it to snipe people through the walls and covers. But it will be much more difficult to just snipe off a whole base without them being able to do anything, because of you not knowing where the enemies are before they start shooting back at you, but also due to the unreliable ping and them moving between each of them.

every player has access to mark, because they have cyberwars. Mark is limited by line of sight, and you have to actually identify the enemies first. Ping+Mark is strong, but Mark alone isn't too crazy.

I use Mark a lot to keep track of enemies in the heat of battle, I don't play snipers/tech users much because they are OP in many ways. For melee/solo type players I think Mark is needed because tracking people while moving and whatnot IRL works better than in a 2d game. Humans have greater FOV, more responsive eyes/neck, sound/depth perception fps etc. So I wouldn't get rid of it entirely. It might be too powerful for long distances and cover.

Your ideas on ping are good, I think ICE is very underrepresented in game, but the problem is, most players who play like you seem to invest in intellegience, so they ll never miss a target anyway. But it is better than nothing. I think though, maybe they wanted to keep netrunning simple, They didnt give enemies much counterplay vs netrunners. Seems more RPish.

They used to make netrunners need to get access to network before using quickhacks, but they removed that to make it more straightforward I think.

 

[IamLoco1337]

In my opinion we should only be able to see enemies through walls as long as we´re in scanner mode. Switching back to normal view should hide them again. This way you can still guess where they are and land a lucky shot, but it´s not a guaranteed head shot as it is now.
As soon as you get the widow maker, this game becomes way too easy, even on very hard.
Not even speaking about Overwatch or the even better Breakthrough.

 

[HarelMor]

I don't use the ping, and I never mark enemies. In this way, enemies that take cover don't act illogically, and the game is a bit more challenging. I prefer to pay for my mistakes than to know everything in advance. As a player, I have the option not to use overpowered abilities and mechanics. There are so many games with similarly "broken" mechanics.

 

[isaktheviking]

The abilities themselves aren't the problem, the game is unbalanced for effectively one reason
>they removed the cyberwire as a prerequisite to quickhacking

Line of sight is supposed to be physical and probably limited to ~20 yards. This solves the problem of being able to quickhack while "seeing" enemies as a red pixel through 15 walls. They probably ran into the problem of wanting to let V quickhack people through the camera network, which is cool, but couldn't accommodate that with the cyberwire limitation and just chose to scrap the core cool idea for the slightly neat ancillary one, breaking the game. That or it's just yet another game mechanic broken by removing the gorilla arms-cyberwire-mantis blades special abilities.

By mid to lategame it feels like there are 0 enemies using quickhacks. Maybe it's personal ICE, some passive perk, something but you stop getting burned and the enemy AI is disallowed ultimates and midtier quickhacks that can autokill the player. I think they screwed around with this with a hotfix as people when the game launched were complaining about being suicided and blinded and things lategame and they just switched it off. Pacifica is one of the easiest regions now because all the enemies are netrunners who can't netrun.

Tech weapons cut both ways, the problem is enemies aren't aggressive with them. Same with smart weapons. An AI overhaul (of actually having AI) would massively change the game. Usually you're seeing an enemy slowly trying to line up a shot with a tech sniper rifle and... just move to the right slightly... and they miss and wait another 20 seconds to pop off a shot (or take it on the chin, spam 1-2 heals, and you're completely fine.) An enemy with a Q88 should be an anus puckering moment, but the most broken handgun in the game in the hands of an enemy NPC isn't even a problem (they might even shoot it single fire actually) and the fact they have an automatic weapon that can shoot through all cover doesn't stop them from getting slotted.

With smartguns if you have wikkiko's tigerclaw tattoo (or it seems any smartgun chip) you're immune to them, but the AI never acts on the fact their bullets will never hit you. The enemy also aims smartguns line of sight and doesn't use indirect fire to shoot around cover (or ricochet for normal weapons, but not even the player bothers with that) making them pretty much 100% not a threat.

Generally the mechanics are fine, it's just that the AI plays the game like a rote cover shooter.
If CDPR dropped an AI patch, that made the enemies use the techgun-smartguns properly, re allowed enemy netrunning, and re applied the cyberware limitations to quickhacking the game would play better.
Tech guns could also be nerfed for all by having a cover calculation; some kind of damage reduction modifier based on distance and number of things you're shooting through to make shooting through 10 walls and popping an enemy at 90 yards nonviable via a 99% damage penalty.

 

[Ayinde_Palmer]

The abilities themselves aren't the problem, the game is unbalanced for effectively one reason
>they removed the cyberwire as a prerequisite to quickhacking

Line of sight is supposed to be physical and probably limited to ~20 yards. This solves the problem of being able to quickhack while "seeing" enemies as a red pixel through 15 walls. They probably ran into the problem of wanting to let V quickhack people through the camera network, which is cool, but couldn't accommodate that with the cyberwire limitation and just chose to scrap the core cool idea for the slightly neat ancillary one, breaking the game. That or it's just yet another game mechanic broken by removing the gorilla arms-cyberwire-mantis blades special abilities.

By mid to lategame it feels like there are 0 enemies using quickhacks. Maybe it's personal ICE, some passive perk, something but you stop getting burned and the enemy AI is disallowed ultimates and midtier quickhacks that can autokill the player. I think they screwed around with this with a hotfix as people when the game launched were complaining about being suicided and blinded and things lategame and they just switched it off. Pacifica is one of the easiest regions now because all the enemies are netrunners who can't netrun.

Tech weapons cut both ways, the problem is enemies aren't aggressive with them. Same with smart weapons. An AI overhaul (of actually having AI) would massively change the game. Usually you're seeing an enemy slowly trying to line up a shot with a tech sniper rifle and... just move to the right slightly... and they miss and wait another 20 seconds to pop off a shot (or take it on the chin, spam 1-2 heals, and you're completely fine.) An enemy with a Q88 should be an anus puckering moment, but the most broken handgun in the game in the hands of an enemy NPC isn't even a problem (they might even shoot it single fire actually) and the fact they have an automatic weapon that can shoot through all cover doesn't stop them from getting slotted.

With smartguns if you have wikkiko's tigerclaw tattoo (or it seems any smartgun chip) you're immune to them, but the AI never acts on the fact their bullets will never hit you. The enemy also aims smartguns line of sight and doesn't use indirect fire to shoot around cover (or ricochet for normal weapons, but not even the player bothers with that) making them pretty much 100% not a threat.

Generally the mechanics are fine, it's just that the AI plays the game like a rote cover shooter.
If CDPR dropped an AI patch, that made the enemies use the techgun-smartguns properly, re allowed enemy netrunning, and re applied the cyberware limitations to quickhacking the game would play better.
Tech guns could also be nerfed for all by having a cover calculation; some kind of damage reduction modifier based on distance and number of things you're shooting through to make shooting through 10 walls and popping an enemy at 90 yards nonviable via a 99% damage penalty.

not really, because all of those mechanics you mentioned are cheap and OP. Few would want to play against it. Stealth/hacking/tech would be the only reliable way to win. Unless they nerf them in cpu hands.

 

[GuilmonexK]

They need to add more mechanics for countering quickhacks, if enemy netrunning is going to be reapplied. We currently have 2 one-shot quickhacks (suicide and reset) or 3 if you count the suicide at the end of cyberpsychosis. Both player and enemies should have some way to block/resist/counter or whatever to reduce the effect of these deadly quickhacks.

Maybe something like give you 10 seconds to decode enemies quickhacks when they are uploading to you. High level enemy netrunners can do that too or have high rate of successful decoding. Not just stand there and watch the bar fill up and you can't do anything to it.

Tech weapon shouldn't ignore 100% armor, that just trash the whole armor system even more. Maybe 50% or something, with a perk go up to 60%.

The Smart bullet jamming should have a time duration. Or act like a invisible force-field with hidden HP bar to block set amount of bullets, then go into a cool down.

 

[isaktheviking]

not really, because all of those mechanics you mentioned are cheap and OP. Few would want to play against it. Stealth/hacking/tech would be the only reliable way to win. Unless they nerf them in cpu hands.

They you've gone full circle to "boring cover shooter"
I see and appreciate what they were trying to do with the mechanics, but they never figured out mid to lategame balance and character progression. And (because it admits fault) we're unlikely to get a full overhaul of the core game so get used to the Fallout4 tier AI being utterly unable to deal with your godlike powers as the games one netrunner.

Simplest way to deal with it would be clear conveyance in the player trees for "personal ICE: stop 1/2/3 enemy quickhack(s) every 30 seconds" on the tech tree and give the enemy the ability to do everything but ultimate quickhacks on you (like you can't use suicide/cyber psychosis/system reset on game bosses). Same for the enemy to make hack dueling a thing and a meta of dropping low quality quickhacks first before dropping an ultimate due to ICE. Game should also clearly flash "QUICKHACK ATTEMPT: BLOCKED" when it happens, as currently when you get the unclear perk or personal ICE cyberware enemy quickhacking just stops.

I'd like tech guns and smartguns to actually play into enemy combat. There needs to be a fair balance like armor actually mattering (until you get the techgun ability to shoot past it) for stopping tech weapons. And the smartguns not working on tigerclaws thing needs to be explained far clearer, because that is a shred of balance to smartguns but allows for a broken build due to enemies never switching to melee or a backup gun when you can't be targeted by smart weapons.


The most broken thing though is stealth in gigs. You don't break it as long as you are not detected, but it doesn't matter if the enemy is alerted and seaching for someone. Or if everyone is dead at the end of it. Real stealthy for V to slip in and out of a building to steal data and leave no survivors. That one is a truly simple fix: body found = stealth run failed.

 

[Mobster100]

every player has access to mark, because they have cyberwars. Mark is limited by line of sight, and you have to actually identify the enemies first. Ping+Mark is strong, but Mark alone isn't too crazy.

I use Mark a lot to keep track of enemies in the heat of battle, I don't play snipers/tech users much because they are OP in many ways. For melee/solo type players I think Mark is needed because tracking people while moving and whatnot IRL works better than in a 2d game. Humans have greater FOV, more responsive eyes/neck, sound/depth perception fps etc. So I wouldn't get rid of it entirely. It might be too powerful for long distances and cover.

Because they have cyberware (I assume)? is that something in the lore or just you "offering" that as an explanation?

The issue is that its extremely easy to get a visual on things, you just have to ping something, doesn't even have to be an enemy, could be a camera a vending machine or whatever.

I do agree that the perception that you as a player have in real life is greater than that of character in a game. However I don't think mark is the solution to that. What they could add were a small area around the player, which will let them know of any enemies nearby, if they are making sound. In which case they would be highlighted in a generic form simply telling you that noise is being made in a specific area, but not which direction the NPC is facing etc. Also this shouldn't work through concrete floors etc. Sort of like how it works in TW3 where you get those "audio" ripples and you can see from which direction it comes from.

In my opinion we should only be able to see enemies through walls as long as we´re in scanner mode. Switching back to normal view should hide them again. This way you can still guess where they are and land a lucky shot, but it´s not a guaranteed head shot as it is now.
As soon as you get the widow maker, this game becomes way too easy, even on very hard.
Not even speaking about Overwatch or the even better Breakthrough.

Even that would be better than it is now.

My main issue is the whole "wall hacking" that these abilities give you. And I do like the idea of tech weapons being able to snipe someone through walls, at least some walls. So its about finding a good balance between it still being possible, but not to the point as you say, where you get a certain weapon or to a specific state in the game and it's pretty much just game over for the NPCs.
So reducing the amount of time ping last, would allow you to get off a shot, but at that point there is a huge chance that you would alert the enemies. Either by them noticing the shot itself or the body, which would give them time to act before you do another ping and snipe another one, it would make sniping off a base a lot harder and probably also more interesting.

I sort of like that you can see through walls while in scanner mode, could maybe be a heat seeking thing. So the closer the enemies the strong ther signal would be etc.

Another solution could be inhalers, which certain enemies could use to increase their resistance against ping for a certain amount of time. Like them having noticed that someone is out there and as a defence solution, inject something that will make them invisible to pings for 30 seconds or 45 seconds.
And it would just be random whether or not they had these. Even V could have access to something similar, so when someone is trying to quick hack you, you pop one of those and it will interrupt the hacking and make you immune for a certain amount of time, preventing a NPC hacker to not just spam hack you as it is now. They could simply make these rather expensive to make, so it is not something that you would just pop like health injectors.

To me one of the biggest issues is that the NPCs seem completely unaware of the world in which they live, they ought to be just as prepared against cyber attacks as they are against being shot at.

I don't use the ping, and I never mark enemies. In this way, enemies that take cover don't act illogically, and the game is a bit more challenging. I prefer to pay for my mistakes than to know everything in advance. As a player, I have the option not to use overpowered abilities and mechanics. There are so many games with similarly "broken" mechanics.

This is the same problem I have with the game, that you as player have to "nerf" yourself in order to fix things and I agree with you that it is a sign of a clearly broken mechanics within the game. Or at least a clear indication of something that haven't been tested well enough in regards to whether or not it functions as intended or not in the long run. Because for a chunk of the game it's not too bad, its when you get near the mid/end part then it just seems to collapse completely.

It should be the other way around Players should aim at maximizing their things rather than trying to figuring out, how to nerf themself in order to making it more enjoyable.

Post automatically merged: Jan 31, 2021

Line of sight is supposed to be physical and probably limited to ~20 yards. This solves the problem of being able to quickhack while "seeing" enemies as a red pixel through 15 walls. They probably ran into the problem of wanting to let V quickhack people through the camera network, which is cool, but couldn't accommodate that with the cyberwire limitation and just chose to scrap the core cool idea for the slightly neat ancillary one, breaking the game. That or it's just yet another game mechanic broken by removing the gorilla arms-cyberwire-mantis blades special abilities.

I don't know what the exact reason is, my guess is that this have more to do with roles and types of plays than anything else. A Nethacker is sort of like a CP magic user, which in general is a type of class that smite enemies from range. However since you have tech weapons that can shoot the wing of a fly from hundreds of meters and even through walls, it would sort of ruin both aspects of the game if there were a range limit like 20 meters.

For the tech weapons, especially the sniper versions, to be useful it doesn't make a lot of sense if you first have to get within 20 meters and then mark everything to then get distance so you can snipe. And for the nethacker to basically be in close combat to do their stuff, you would probably be better off just speccing melee or shotguns. Last I don't think they wanted players to be completely excluded from using certain abilities, sort of like, everyone should use hacking, how much depend on your spec and for that to work with all specs it need to have enough range to be useful for a sniper build as well as an up close one, which I assume is also one of the reasons that time slows down while you do it, as it would be very messy having to quick hack when being up close if it didn't.

 

[isaktheviking]

I think part of the problem @Mobster100 is that there is very little intentional cross primary stat synergy for making a build. Each is 100% self contained everything you need for a playstyle, going from OP to hilariously broken when you cross spec instead of cross speccing being required for viability.

Currently If you go 20INT at LV 13 you just win. Removing the cyberwire-true line of sight requirement paired with the (probably unintentional) ability to quickhack through walls via ping/mark makes netrunning ridiculously OP.
Having to physically be near enemies or be "in network" via a terminal/cameras would be a small nerf to quickhacking which would make combat far more dynamic.

It means you'd have to do one of two things
>invest in stealth
to get close enough to hack enemies and survive/remain undetected
>investing in guns
pop off quickhacks as a weapon in your assaultman arsenal alongside grenades for hybrid play.

As it sits if you hit 20INT you get legendary quickhacks and rapidly get a legendary cyberdeck. 30 ram that auto refreshes and you can kill from outside the enemies detection range, leveling buildings on very hard with contagion alone. That kind of play is utterly broken and simply won't work for multiplayer and would be incredibly shitty if the NPCs could do it back.

Forcing you to physically jack in to enemies with the cyberwire like the game design intended eliminates all those problems and forces you to spec into something other than netrunning to make it viable.

As for tech weapons, something needs to be done to balance them. Cover rating would be a check on it's OP'ness same as RAM is on being able to lay out enemies (until you perk into a broken 20int netrunning build) and could similarly be negated by perks. You should have to be maxed out in the lategame to be able to pop a ping and shoot everyone in a building through the roof, not level 1 like currently.
As intended, tech guns highlight enemies when you aim down the sights. Thats OP enough and forces you to search for enemies in your reticule; simple enough way to handle it. "Ping shows everyone, including those you can't shoot" while "the sight shows enemies the game calculates you can shoot through cover." making mass pinging to cheeze tech guns a detriment, not cruise control for building clearing.

As for techgun sniper build, it should probably be nerfed to balance. longer charge time, longer per shot delay similar to the ashura smart sniper. But currently once you get your first tech precision rifle you'll never use a tech sniper again as they're functionally the same. A gameplay change would be tech snipers being big guns, even slower to fire but shooting through everything with very little DT/DR and cover stopping them, then precision rifles being more affected by walls, armor, and distance to balance fire rate and mag capacity.

Everyone generally seems to have a consensus that How OP these systems handle at LV1 should be how OP it feels at Lv50.

 

[Hayte]

I feel like a lot of quickhack design is based around convenience so the idea is this:

Recasting ping every 6-7 seconds gets annoying so just give it a longer duration to minimize ping spam. Same deal with the old monowire hacking concept. I imagine in gameplay, it became frustrating to animation lock (a bit like the Mantis Blades finisher) whenever you want to upload a quickhack so they just made it sight targeted (although legendary ping eliminates the line of sight requirement).

I think you are really onto something about enemies not reacting to being pinged or having any countermeasure against the perfect knowledge players have about their location.

I think a lot of issues the game has can go away if enemy AI is developed further so that:

1) they move around more via patrol routes. Interestingly, this makes the RNG seed method used to generate corpse loot much harder to exploit by save scumming, so it kinda gets rid of that problem too.

2) When enemies detect a body they go into a high alert state and all enemies on the subnet begin patrolling, triggering a lot of movement and positional interchange. Think of them as becoming ghosts to your pacman. They go into a kind of search and destroy mode, so you are forced to move in response.

Enemies already go into a high alert state when they hear gunfire or see a body but its isolated to the enemy units in alert range. Everyone else on the subnet doesn't react. Furthermore, the alerted unit frequently does not move or patrol, they just stand still saying "come out, come out...I can hear you!". Or they walk very slowly in your direction.

Instead, everyone on the subnet needs to go into high alert state and they all need to start moving and at different speeds (some walking, some jogging, some double backing or switching their patrol route from clockwise to counter clockwise). For players who opt to go the stealth route, it encourages perfect stealth. If you can't achieve perfect stealth, you need to improvise if you want to remain undetected, because enemies switch to a high movement state, which complicates stealth gameplay.

3) Instead of ping continuously revealing enemy positions, it pulses for x seconds every y seconds for 30 seconds (even during scan targeting bullet time). This means you only know where enemies are momentarily and when the sonar blip fades, they move and you have to use some prediction to anticipate where the blips are going to be next. This is much closer to how a sonar ping actually works so I think its really lore friendly too. Tune the x and y values so that its not too easy or too difficult to aim.

The quickhack menu is a problem here though. If you have a brief window to upload, having to tab up and down through a menu works for the top and bottom quickhacks, but ones in the middle take too long to get to. I think for this to work, quickhacks would need individual hotkeys.

Using this method, enemies will not be targetable through walls all the time. You need to predict, aim and upload in the brief window that an enemy is visible or you need to take a risk - stick your head out and gain continuous line of sight to upload. For this to create exciting, emergent cat and mouse gameplay, it comes back to movement. Enemies have to move on pre-defined routes a lot more than they already do. This also makes scouting and observing much more critical to hacking gameplay. You want to sit back and observe patrol routes or get caught out by un-anticipated movement.

I'm also conscious of the idea that hacking is extremely powerful and can be played in a way which effectively removes combat from the game. I understand that some people view protracted combat encounters as an interruption to the story or an immersion breaker if they find themselves dying repeatedly. Is it a good idea to take that away from them? I'm not sure.

While I don't particularly enjoy hacking gameplay as it is currently implemented, some people do. I think it would be helpful to get that perspective in any thread that spitballs big overhauls to hacking gameplay mechanics.

 

[isaktheviking]

Same deal with the old monowire hacking concept. I imagine in gameplay, it became frustrating to animation lock (a bit like the Mantis Blades finisher) whenever you want to upload a quickhack so they just made it sight targeted (although legendary ping eliminates the line of sight requirement).

An idea. Quick hacking is triggered not through the [tab] scanner function but is an aimed scrollwheel click ability of the cyber wire, same as the launcher and using a reticule for manual aiming or smartchip to auto latch onto an enemy over cover.
Opens up a new interface where you upload quickhacks similar to the "upload daemons to the network" function. Cut back to normal gameplay and the target and compromised network suffer the consequences. If you're stealth build, they go on high alert but you aren't detected. If you're a combat magic netrunner build you start blasting.

The mantis blade heavy attack being directional and janky did make me ditch it immediately, so I could see how in play their version of the cyberwire quick hack might have been similarly annoying. The launcher mechanic though is solid. Also would make for an interesting gameplay element; grenades or quickhacking

 

[Ayinde_Palmer]

Because they have cyberware (I assume)? is that something in the lore or just you "offering" that as an explanation?

The issue is that its extremely easy to get a visual on things, you just have to ping something, doesn't even have to be an enemy, could be a camera a vending machine or whatever.

I do agree that the perception that you as a player have in real life is greater than that of character in a game. However I don't think mark is the solution to that. What they could add were a small area around the player, which will let them know of any enemies nearby, if they are making sound. In which case they would be highlighted in a generic form simply telling you that noise is being made in a specific area, but not which direction the NPC is facing etc. Also this shouldn't work through concrete floors etc. Sort of like how it works in TW3 where you get those "audio" ripples and you can see from which direction it comes from.


Even that would be better than it is now.

My main issue is the whole "wall hacking" that these abilities give you. And I do like the idea of tech weapons being able to snipe someone through walls, at least some walls. So its about finding a good balance between it still being possible, but not to the point as you say, where you get a certain weapon or to a specific state in the game and it's pretty much just game over for the NPCs.
So reducing the amount of time ping last, would allow you to get off a shot, but at that point there is a huge chance that you would alert the enemies. Either by them noticing the shot itself or the body, which would give them time to act before you do another ping and snipe another one, it would make sniping off a base a lot harder and probably also more interesting.

I sort of like that you can see through walls while in scanner mode, could maybe be a heat seeking thing. So the closer the enemies the strong ther signal would be etc.

Another solution could be inhalers, which certain enemies could use to increase their resistance against ping for a certain amount of time. Like them having noticed that someone is out there and as a defence solution, inject something that will make them invisible to pings for 30 seconds or 45 seconds.
And it would just be random whether or not they had these. Even V could have access to something similar, so when someone is trying to quick hack you, you pop one of those and it will interrupt the hacking and make you immune for a certain amount of time, preventing a NPC hacker to not just spam hack you as it is now. They could simply make these rather expensive to make, so it is not something that you would just pop like health injectors.

To me one of the biggest issues is that the NPCs seem completely unaware of the world in which they live, they ought to be just as prepared against cyber attacks as they are against being shot at.


This is the same problem I have with the game, that you as player have to "nerf" yourself in order to fix things and I agree with you that it is a sign of a clearly broken mechanics within the game. Or at least a clear indication of something that haven't been tested well enough in regards to whether or not it functions as intended or not in the long run. Because for a chunk of the game it's not too bad, its when you get near the mid/end part then it just seems to collapse completely.

It should be the other way around Players should aim at maximizing their things rather than trying to figuring out, how to nerf themself in order to making it more enjoyable.

Post automatically merged: Jan 31, 2021

I don't know what the exact reason is, my guess is that this have more to do with roles and types of plays than anything else. A Nethacker is sort of like a CP magic user, which in general is a type of class that smite enemies from range. However since you have tech weapons that can shoot the wing of a fly from hundreds of meters and even through walls, it would sort of ruin both aspects of the game if there were a range limit like 20 meters.

For the tech weapons, especially the sniper versions, to be useful it doesn't make a lot of sense if you first have to get within 20 meters and then mark everything to then get distance so you can snipe. And for the nethacker to basically be in close combat to do their stuff, you would probably be better off just speccing melee or shotguns. Last I don't think they wanted players to be completely excluded from using certain abilities, sort of like, everyone should use hacking, how much depend on your spec and for that to work with all specs it need to have enough range to be useful for a sniper build as well as an up close one, which I assume is also one of the reasons that time slows down while you do it, as it would be very messy having to quick hack when being up close if it didn't.

they never say exactly, but you start the game with cyber eyes, tracking someone is basically software. My guess is its predictive

you can only use ping if you dont use another OS, so solo/power/melee usually don't gave ping at all. The only way to track enemies decently is with Mark. The agro detector mod is decent, but when your running dodging/spinning its difficult without differntiation. That said they could make behind walls not work for Mark, or limit in some way. Don't think they can get rid of it though.

as for the old quick hacking, I think there was other ways to get access to their subnet, like computers/cameras, but yeah, you'd have to be stealth first essentially to get access, then you become god mode. But yes, they seem to have decided that was too much prep work.

I think to be honest, they made the game action second and an rpg first, many things are in game because its cool, not for balance purposes. I agree this is problematic for me, because I like a bit of a challenge, but I think a lot of other players prefer rpgs to have things that just do the thing they want done. especially the type who often play spell casters.

Perhaps some one will mod it, or they ll add a harder more balanced mode. but those things are probably a long time coming.

 

[Mobster100]

Currently If you go 20INT at LV 13 you just win. Removing the cyberwire-true line of sight requirement paired with the (probably unintentional) ability to quickhack through walls via ping/mark makes netrunning ridiculously OP.
Having to physically be near enemies or be "in network" via a terminal/cameras would be a small nerf to quickhacking which would make combat far more dynamic.

I completely agree with you and one of the problems is that it seems like as they designed some of these quick hacks, it were more about what sounds cool rather than how do we actually balance it and make for a fun gameplay.

I think some of the ideas are really cool, like the one where you can make a people go nuts and attack each other, which is not really a new ability, Skyrim have something like to that as well, however in their case, if I recall correctly, there are limitations, certain enemies/monsters are immune and also there are level restrictions.
Now CP could use something similar, given that there are enemy levels and also due to cyberware almost anything is possible, so that certain enemies being immune due to that could be explained.

Again if I remember correctly, it's been awhile since I have played Skyrim, but im pretty sure that if you fail an attack like this, it will cause the enemies to attack you. Whereas in CP these can't fail, if you have enough mana you are 100% sure that it will work. Which sort of ruins it, if we compare a netrunner class to that of a wizard, It wouldn't work in Skyrim either, if they were able to just keep attacking enemies without them reacting to it.

Another issue is that there doesn't seem to be a real middle ground in terms of these quick hacks, its either instant kills or not, in the beginning when you have a hard time regaining your RAM, and you can't hack through wall, you probably have to rely on weapons as well, but the moment you get a lot of memory and regeneration, it quickly goes from you causing damage, to you just melting them instantly, as you say even with contagious you can 1 shot lots of enemies in one go.

That is an issue, but also I think the whole way that some of these quick hacks works are just broken, simply because there is not really any bad consequences to using them. They are pretty much just win buttons.

And again I think the biggest give away how unbalanced they are, is that some of them mysteriously vanish during boss fights and just gets magically replaced by other hacks.

So regardless of how they would potentially change how the whole quick hack system works, I still think they would have to rework some of the hacks themselves, there is a bit too many ways to just instant kill stuff.

As intended, tech guns highlight enemies when you aim down the sights. Thats OP enough and forces you to search for enemies in your reticule; simple enough way to handle it. "Ping shows everyone, including those you can't shoot" while "the sight shows enemies the game calculates you can shoot through cover." making mass pinging to cheeze tech guns a detriment, not cruise control for building clearing.

This could work as well, I think.

Recasting ping every 6-7 seconds gets annoying so just give it a longer duration to minimize ping spam. Same deal with the old monowire hacking concept. I imagine in gameplay, it became frustrating to animation lock (a bit like the Mantis Blades finisher) whenever you want to upload a quickhack so they just made it sight targeted (although legendary ping eliminates the line of sight requirement).

You might be right, I don't know. The issue I see now, at least from my own playthrough and from watching others, is that you spend a great deal of time in the beginning of a mission, simply pinging and marking stuff, whether that is by going through cameras or whatever. And then once you are done, you start the mission.

In the beginning this works fairly well, I enjoyed the whole planning thing and then executing whatever plan I thought was best, because it might go well or it might not, that to me at least made it work

However as you reach mid/end game, you still do the whole pinging thing, but now its not really about the intel or making a plan anymore, because you are going to clean the whole place from the outside anyway, it's simply so you can see who to target.

I think a lot of issues the game has can go away if enemy AI is developed further so that

Nothing of what I have suggested here removes the fact that the AI needs improvement. So I completely agree, however I don't really think a lot of improvements would work with how the current system works. The enemies have no options, besides trying to zerk you if you can kill them through walls. But to me as I wrote originally this is not a good way to handle it, and would make combat even worse I think and more like shooting zombies with guns. Also I doubt it would be especially fun for the player to be constantly headshotted behind walls or smart killed as well. The ability to use cover in shooter games seem to really be a good feature in general, so would personally prefer to keep that.

But it needs to work for enemies as well, which is the problem now as I see it, because what can they do, they have two options, either take cover (which doesn't work) or they can charge you like zombies, which would make for boring gameplay.

And again the whole issue is the player's ability to "wall hack".

Even buffing enemies with resistance again hacks or them taking reduced damage when in cover wouldn't help, the player's would simply shoot 3 to 5 times rather than 1 or 2 times. The enemies can run back and forth between cover, but again it would just be pointless as I see it and not fix the issue.

To me it's sort of like another issue that most if not all shooter games have, which uses covers, including CP, which is that when an enemy have found cover and is shooting at you, they keep doing the same thing, they pop their head up and you try to headshot them and they keep doing this until you either move or you headshot them. And in most cases I think what most people do, is that they figure out where exactly they pop up and then they place the cursor there and just wait. It would be such an easy fix to make it so they changed position slightly, maybe shot from around the corner if possible, tried to sneak to another position after shooting maybe 1 or 2 times etc. CP in my opinion have simply just on purpose introduced the issue of wall hacking, which is not really good in shooter games in general I think. Especially not if they plan on making it a multiplayer version, which could turn out to be a pvp game, since the current story doesn't really make a whole lot of sense in a co-op experience I think.

3) Instead of ping continuously revealing enemy positions, it pulses for x seconds every y seconds for 30 seconds (even during scan targeting bullet time). This means you only know where enemies are momentarily and when the sonar blip fades, they move and you have to use some prediction to anticipate where the blips are going to be next. This is much closer to how a sonar ping actually works so I think its really lore friendly too. Tune the x and y values so that its not too easy or too difficult to aim.

Yeah that is sort of like how I imagine the "Sonar" ability I suggested in the first post. It should be an scout ability used for intel rather than a mark and kill everything ability. I think something like that would be really cool, also pinging stuff now in CP, can be extremely confusing, with people and devices all over the place, and even though one could argue that it is an argument against ping, I would disagree, I would rather say that it is a poor design, compared to how it could be done.

I'm also conscious of the idea that hacking is extremely powerful and can be played in a way which effectively removes combat from the game. I understand that some people view protracted combat encounters as an interruption to the story or an immersion breaker if they find themselves dying repeatedly. Is it a good idea to take that away from them? I'm not sure.

This is a video I made showing the issues with hacking... which was when I first really started to wonder how broken and how much it ruins combat, I don't actually think I have the ability to hack through walls, but can do it through the window:

You can only imagine how ridiculous this would be, for those that have gone deep into hacking, which I haven't, I basically have that legendary thing I show, which is something you can buy, so its not exactly rare in that regards. But as you can see, these are skull enemies and they can't do anything, even those guys in the hallway that shoots me in the start doesn't even react to me killing them. And in the beginning this is awesome and a lot of fun, but eventually it ruins the game more than it benefits it I think, simply because it removes all tension from combat, because there is none, it's a push to win button.

It's about finding a good balance between weapons, hacks and enemy AI.

I think to be honest, they made the game action second and an rpg first, many things are in game because its cool, not for balance purposes. I agree this is problematic for me, because I like a bit of a challenge, but I think a lot of other players prefer rpgs to have things that just do the thing they want done. especially the type who often play spell casters.

But I don't think this changes the fact, that the most important thing, must be that the gameplay mechanic works, even if they are going for the stuff being cool, it not really a tradeoff, things can be cool while not ruining game mechanics, it have been done for ages in games

 

[hulkman2456]

I don't use the ping, and I never mark enemies. In this way, enemies that take cover don't act illogically, and the game is a bit more challenging. I prefer to pay for my mistakes than to know everything in advance. As a player, I have the option not to use overpowered abilities and mechanics. There are so many games with similarly "broken" mechanics.

Yeah. I never used mark in the game. I only did it in the tutorial and quicky forgot about it. I was like: Do you really need this ability? I do use ping. But I think it's my play style. I rather rely on my aiming skill for kills. Rather than hacks. I don't even use the auto aim guns. I prefer long range kills and ripping people apart with swords and arms.

The ideas here are good. There needs to be some sort of problem for ping. I think it should just be alert. If you do it enough. The enemies know someone is invading the system.

 

[Heartstopper]

I just want them to fix legendary short circuit(does full damage when ANYTHING you do causes crit damage) so it doesn't apply to vehicles. It got irritating real quick instantly getting hunted by police when some stupid pedestrian walked into the side of my vehicle and getting electrocuted. Not to mention this one ability passive with something like an SMG is easily the most brokenly overpowered high-damage combination in the game.

 

[GogRelvas]

For me combat is slightly broken in CP at the moment, especially towards mid/end game where some of the abilities and weapons gets a bit out of hand in regards to how powerful they are. Especially some quick hack and tech weapons.

But having thought a bit more about it, I don't think it's solely due to them alone, but that a lot of it comes from the ability to "Ping" and "Mark" targets. The mere fact that you can get a visual on all enemies allows you to deal with them as if there were no cover in the game, yet the enemies act as if cover helps them, which doesn't make a lot of sense from a lore perspective, as they should be well aware that it wouldn't.

However making the AI just charge you in a huge pile, wouldn't work either, so some sort of balance need to be made I think.

Some of these things are already in the game as far as I know, but might need to be balanced and some would be changes or overhauls.

Changes to Ping
The way ping works now is that you "ping" a target and all enemies/devices linked to it will be displayed for 30 seconds with no cool down. However I think several options could replace or change it slightly, so it would make for a much more balanced and fun ability.

General for all options
The purpose of "Ping" should be more of a scouting ability or something used just before sniping someone, rather than a "Mark" everything ability, but will get back to that later.

- Ping should have a cool down of 10 seconds.
- Ping duration should be lowered to maybe 6-7 seconds duration enough for a sniper to take their shot.
- Each enemy and device have an individual defense value against pings, sort of like a firewall or something and V's skill with quick hacks will be tested against this. It makes sense that a good hacker is much better at this, than someone specced for brute force is. It would also mean that pinging someone might fail, so only revealing some targets rather than everything, depending on how many resist it.
- The more times a target is pinged the more resistant it will get, which is to prevent the player from just pinging over and over again. This could be mitigated by some skills or cyberware as well if needed.
- Depending on enemy types, the resistance should also play a role, like the Voodoo boys should have a much higher resistance against it than anyone else, given they are suppose to be hacking experts and therefore better suited at defending against it etc.

Two options of how it could be changed:

Option 1
Ping should only reveal an area around the target pinged, let's say 10 meters as a base range and each other target within that range will make a roll for whether or not the ping works or not. Could even make it so ping could cascade, so if one target is successfully pinged a new area around them of 10 meters will be chosen and rolls for everything within that range will also be made and so forth.
So a person really good at Nethacking will obviously get a lot more information than one that is not specced for it. It would also mean that doing multiple pings might not reveal the same information each time as new defence roll would be made each ping attempt.

Also since ping would have a cool down, it gives enemies time to move between each ping adding a bit more tension to an encounter, not knowing if the data you have is 100% accurate, especially if you are not specced as a Netrunner.

Option 2
Ping works a lot like it does now, so each enemy/device linked to the network will be the ping target. But again you have the defence rolls and the cool down, which in some cases would not reveal everything. The player would never know for certain, how reliable their informations are.
Also enemies should be split up into minor clusters of enemies and devices, so you are less likely to reveal everything with just one ping.

New quick hack
Could add an advanced ping, let's call it "Sonar", which you could cast on a person or device and would work more like a Sonar would, by shooting out waves in all directions in a huge area, but only reveal things for maybe 1 - 1.5 seconds. And therefore something you could use, just to get a sense of where enemies might be. So it's more of a brief image of what is going on a place and a tool for figuring out how to approach something rather than used for killing people through the walls with tech weapons.

Marking enemies
This functionality is probably the one that ruins combat the most in my opinion. That "Ping" last as long as it does is a problem in itself. But being able to "Mark" enemies makes the ping permanent and can be done through walls. Given that you have 30 seconds or basically as much time as you want to "Mark" enemies, this ruins so much.

And looks like this:
View attachment 11162372

The idea of "Ping" based on its description is clearly to reveal things for 30 seconds. However this "Mark" mechanic, which isn't even an ingame ability, but a game or player tool is making it last forever. And even allows you to track targets as they move, which doesn't really make sense, how V would know where they are, when the ping duration is over. Furthermore, i think it's a bad gameplay mechanic all together, because what you do is make a ping and then you start marking targets. And once that is done, then you begin. Marking targets is useful, but not a fun mechanic as its a slow process, but also when you finally sneak in or start combat, simply knowing where all enemies are, removes a lot of tensions in the fights.

To me the best solution to this, is simply to scrap the "Mark" functionality all together, simply making it impossible, or at least this should be changes to a tracker ability or special "shot" that you can shoot an enemy with, which will then last for 2-5 minutes or something, which will allow you to track that target only. Obviously you can shoot several enemies which could be useful as long as you can see them. Yet it wouldn't be a "Mark" all ability.

For me, applying these changes would greatly improve combat in the game overall, especially for quick hacking and tech weapons (as a starting point).
Because quick hacks need you to be able to see your target, so you can't do it or at least it is much harder to just quick hack enemies from a distance without them being able to do anything. However I do still think that they have to be better balanced than they are now, being able to instant kill anyone is not a good mechanic in general in a game, and so of them are simply to overpowered.

For tech weapons, you can still use it to snipe people through the walls and covers. But it will be much more difficult to just snipe off a whole base without them being able to do anything, because of you not knowing where the enemies are before they start shooting back at you, but also due to the unreliable ping and them moving between each of them.

I like it a lot. The idea that Ping might be an aproximation rather than a definitive position is great and it could be that the more inteligent the player the more accurate it is.
On my newest playthrough I'm playing a cool netrunner and techie but I have a lot of rules about marking and other stuff: I can use quickhacks allways (except turn off cameras or turrets, that I only do when breach protocoling. Otherwise i must find and hack a hacking point if it exists on that area/network or put to sleep an enemy (and imagine I hack him directly) so i can turn off devices or mark enemies. It's a lot more engaging this way but I wish these were features of the game.

 

[Mobster100]

I like it a lot. The idea that Ping might be an aproximation rather than a definitive position is great and it could be that the more inteligent the player the more accurate it is.
On my newest playthrough I'm playing a cool netrunner and techie but I have a lot of rules about marking and other stuff: I can use quickhacks allways (except turn off cameras or turrets, that I only do when breach protocoling. Otherwise i must find and hack a hacking point if it exists on that area/network or put to sleep an enemy (and imagine I hack him directly) so i can turn off devices or mark enemies. It's a lot more engaging this way but I wish these were features of the game.

I agree with you, and to me this is a huge problem or flaw in the game design. Players shouldn't have to nerf themselves, which is basically what you are doing and I did it as well in my playthrough.

Also it would just make sense that the world and especially the enemies behave as if they live in a world where hacking is a normal as buying groceries. Yet, none of them seem to behave as if they know what it is. One would expect there to be a huge market for anti hacking stuff.

 

[Talendear]

I agree with you, and to me this is a huge problem or flaw in the game design. Players shouldn't have to nerf themselves, which is basically what you are doing and I did it as well in my playthrough.

Also it would just make sense that the world and especially the enemies behave as if they live in a world where hacking is a normal as buying groceries. Yet, none of them seem to behave as if they know what it is. One would expect there to be a huge market for anti hacking stuff.

Honestly, I have to say that in my opinion, the whole idea of taking a "nerf" approach to this game to make it "enjoyable" is akin to someone saying that as a chess grand-master, they find it boring to play against someone who played chess on occasion and have to pretend they know nothing about chess.

To take the analogy farther, the facts are these:

1) V has the potential from the beginning to be (in chess terms) a grand-master. Not everyone in the world has this ability.

2) As V's potential is realized, yes, those random individuals who dabble in chess are going to seem lame. This is how things actually work in the real world. So which do you want? Realism (often touted as the goal that players wish to see) or your version of fun? If you want your version of fun, just realize you are not dealing with realism.

3) In game, grand-masters are rare. Honestly, in NC as we see it in game, there are 2 still living. Adam Smasher and Rogue. Morgan Blackhand hasn't decided if he is still alive according to Claire. This also reflects realism.

4) Balancing is artificial. It doesn't exist in the real world. No one in the real world is balanced. They use what they are good at and hopefully they excel at what they do.

5) If you want balancing, make all weapons do a set amount of damage. From level 1 to level 50 any weapons do the same amount of damage as their other level counterpart. Tone down the whole concept of weapons getting bigger and better as you level. Design a game around that concept with maybe one or two perks that allow minor increases in damage. It also removes those pesky effects of needing to increase armor/hit points as well. You might also want to think about making all weapons do the same amount of damage so no weapon is better while you are at it. And maybe make it so you can't headshot people to begin with. Balance is god after all (though it doesn't sound much like cyberpunk at this point).