i agree that gamewise the game doesn´t transmit enough danger-I did complain about that in another thread-, I think that this is caused by:
-no random encounters while exploring: this is directly from tabletop, based on neighbourhood,time of the day, maybe even how you dress in a certain neighbourhood --> I think this should have been a game option, not all people would have liked it I think... extreme mode: you spend too much time in photomode and a curious ganger decided you are a nice target for a shotgun,ruining your photo.
-In most RPGs, we are doing a suspension of belief. With this I mean that by any measurable standard, in any setting a fully leveled character is a weapon of mass destruction not a normal human,elf,dwarf... Its even worse in games where you import characters to a sequel, since either they force you a reset of stats (so back to average human) or they handle like in Shadowrun:Shadows of Hong Kong that after defeating a demon God in Hong Kong police beats your team with a canister of gas...okey, lets take it for the sake of the story. Only RPGs that I know that avoid this kind of suspension of belief are those that the character can take permanent damage (World of Horror,Fear & Hunger, Kenshi...) so you can lose a limb or an untreatable injury even at high level, since a bad attack on your side and lucky strike on the enemy can cause that... this forces the player to consider whether to combat or not even a low level enemy.
So I think you need to evaluate NC in terms of the lore, not in terms of what V at level 50 with legendary equipment is able to do. Its the most dangerous city of North America,it lost roughly 3 million people in 2 years:
"In the year 2076, Night City's population fell by 29.24% - the third worst decline in North America."
You live in a relatively big apartment, because there is surplus (if you can pay,capitalism is capitalism)... megabuildings were build toaccomodate population after the nuking while reconstructing.
"Kerry used to be poor, Rogue lived to 80 in a pretty risky line of work.", this actually is an interesting discussion about whether they sold out or not and if they are doing what they dreamed to do when they were the age of V. River basically give up as a cop and Peralez has always been an upper class as far as I know.