Why Gigs in Cyberpunk feels like a serious downgrade from Witcher contracts...

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Some side quests and gigs are really disappointing in cyberpunk because in fact you don't have any choice or any impact on the outcome. Moreover, some of the most interesting and most exciting quests to do actually ends up without any conclusion at all, as if what you did was useless or just worst than if you never accepted the contract in the first place. Witcher 3 had so much more monster hunting missions and side quests with way more choices and impact on the story and main events of the city / world. Cyberpunk is really awesome in a lot of ways, but way under what we could expect from the studio.
Unfortunately, CDProjekt lost some great developers since the witcher 2 and even if I'm having lot of fun and great time playing it, the truth is they should have worked on the game at least 3, 6 more months in order to elaborate the whole game and give their beloved fans and customers what they deserve.
The good thing is that with Cdprojekt we already know that we'll have great dlcs and even better expansions adding, i hope even more hours than those we had for the witcher 3.
One of the thing making the success of the witcher series, was also all the informations, dynamic quests and missions you could unlock by listening to the right characters dialogue at the right time at the right place, and which weren't marked on the map beforehand.
Basically, cyberpunk gives a lot of immersion but less epic moments overall in my opinion.
Personnaly, the last time I was heavily thrilled and excited was during one of the first missions of the game, when I was sitting on some gang leader's side and using my reflexes in order to disarm him and totally change the situation instead of having to pay for the chip, and I wish the game offered more dialogues in its gigs and contracts.
How many times did I end up killing everybody in some missions because you just couldn't talk with some crucial npcs and just needed to kill them without even knowing all the sides of the story or being able to chose ? Too many.
In the witcher, you get to be a monster hunter who choses whoses sides he stands for or not, but in cyberpunk you're just being the bitch of all fixers during the whole game.
I truly expected more, but hopefully they'll improve all of it with dlcs, expansions and a future enhanced edition.
 
Some side quests and gigs are really disappointing in cyberpunk because in fact you don't have any choice or any impact on the outcome. Moreover, some of the most interesting and most exciting quests to do actually ends up without any conclusion at all, as if what you did was useless or just worst than if you never accepted the contract in the first place. Witcher 3 had so much more monster hunting missions and side quests with way more choices and impact on the story and main events of the city / world. Cyberpunk is really awesome in a lot of ways, but way under what we could expect from the studio.
Unfortunately, CDProjekt lost some great developers since the witcher 2 and even if I'm having lot of fun and great time playing it, the truth is they should have worked on the game at least 3, 6 more months in order to elaborate the whole game and give their beloved fans and customers what they deserve.
The good thing is that with Cdprojekt we already know that we'll have great dlcs and even better expansions adding, i hope even more hours than those we had for the witcher 3.
One of the thing making the success of the witcher series, was also all the informations, dynamic quests and missions you could unlock by listening to the right characters dialogue at the right time at the right place, and which weren't marked on the map beforehand.
Basically, cyberpunk gives a lot of immersion but less epic moments overall in my opinion.
Personnaly, the last time I was heavily thrilled and excited was during one of the first missions of the game, when I was sitting on some gang leader's side and using my reflexes in order to disarm him and totally change the situation instead of having to pay for the chip, and I wish the game offered more dialogues in its gigs and contracts.
How many times did I end up killing everybody in some missions because you just couldn't talk with some crucial npcs and just needed to kill them without even knowing all the sides of the story or being able to chose ? Too many.
In the witcher, you get to be a monster hunter who choses whoses sides he stands for or not, but in cyberpunk you're just being the bitch of all fixers during the whole game.
I truly expected more, but hopefully they'll improve all of it with dlcs, expansions and a future enhanced edition.
That's what I wanna see too. Seeing some legitimate criticism in these forums. Hopefully devs improve the game by looking at them because right now, certain aspects of Cyberpunk feel disconnected from the actual RPG fan.
 
I have the same thoughts on gigs being a lot like Ubisoft content, I love sci fi stories in general and read the potential of some the gigs, but they pretty much come down to stole that, kill that, etc. There are even some gigs where you don't even need to enter the zone to finish them and since gigs and NCPD's areas are the majority of the game, I felt them more like filler content than actual side content. There are some where you do need to talk to people, but those are minority and still, pretty basic on how you complete them.
 
I don't remember any fetch quest in Witcher contracts. Even though there were quests like finding a book in a book store, that quest was tied to much bigger story. Even collecting Gwent cards, sometimes led to bigger quests like Sasha romance.
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Compared to some Ubisoft games, Gigs can be considered okay. However when comparing to Witcher 3, this is disappointing.

Dragonroot was example of a fetch quest in W3...
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That's what I wanna see too. Seeing some legitimate criticism in these forums. Hopefully devs improve the game by looking at them because right now, certain aspects of Cyberpunk feel disconnected from the actual RPG fan.

Actually, some gigs are like that.. even in Watson, there are few "kill gigs" that can be resolved different way by incapacitating the target and taking him alive. Also, some gigs have a follow-up gig, like for example gig to put a tracker on a car, which then leads to a gig where you need to sneak into apartment and take a chip from it, and deliver it to Kang Tao representative... both require silent approach..

Also, if you kill one gang leader in such a gig, it has impact on Clouds mission later, because you can threaten Woodman, (not kill him) which them leads into revenge mission later on...

Personally, i think people are still too angry, therefore are not paying attention to stuff happening in the game..
 
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Actually, some gigs are like that.. even in Watson, there are few "kill gigs" that can be resolved different way by incapacitating the target and taking him alive. Also, some gigs have a follow-up gig, like for example gig to put a tracker on a car, which then leads to a gig where you need to sneak into apartment and take a chip from it, and deliver it to Kang Tao representative... both require silent approach..

Also, if you kill one gang leader in such a gig, it has impact on Clouds mission later, because you can threaten Woodman, (not kill him) which them leads into revenge mission later on...

Personally, i think people are still too angry, therefore are not paying attention to stuff happening in the game..

I noticed that too, some NCPD calls lead to gun for hire missions and some gigs open NCPD calls, there are way too much missions and names to keep track of. Don't get me wrong, I love how they connect, but the maps fills with so much marks that is hard to keep track of every single one of them. You don't have to discovered them to know what they're.
 
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I noticed that too, some NCPD calls lead to gun for hire missions and some gigs open NCPD call, but they're too much missions and name to keep track of. Don't get me wrong, I love how they connect, but the maps fills with so much marks that is hard to keep track of every single one of them. You don't have to discovered them to know what they're.

Presentation is indeed an issue
 
The police is close to non-existent. However there are some useless patrol polices involve in some NCPD activities which appears to be either flatlined or last stand before you pull your gun out. More likely you can find them in skull shape event, their dead bodies are lying left and right. There are mixed of MaxTac but I don't quite remember.

God given this police woman power to know when I am going to step out and give a broadcast message. It's like she is playing the sims here, always observe whatever I do, drop some police to mess with me just because I dashed on npc.
 
Dragonroot was example of a fetch quest in W3...
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Actually, some gigs are like that.. even in Watson, there are few "kill gigs" that can be resolved different way by incapacitating the target and taking him alive. Also, some gigs have a follow-up gig, like for example gig to put a tracker on a car, which then leads to a gig where you need to sneak into apartment and take a chip from it, and deliver it to Kang Tao representative... both require silent approach..

Also, if you kill one gang leader in such a gig, it has impact on Clouds mission later, because you can threaten Woodman, (not kill him) which them leads into revenge mission later on...

Personally, i think people are still too angry, therefore are not paying attention to stuff happening in the game..

Those gigs in Watson you mention are the best example of how POORLY the gigs are designed.

I did both before doing the heist (I was level 16 before starting the Dex chain) I failed the car to check if I still get to break into Putin's flat and whadda you know, you do, and since Putin and his wife are present at the hotel during the heist and you see them on the way to your room I've decided to kill them both during the apartment mission and whadda you know they were both still there at the hotel during the Heist mission, but i guess the ruskies discovered how to revive people who get their heads chopped off with a sword.

And on another playthrough i got the car mission after I killed the Russian fixer and his wife in their apartment, again poor and lazy design, I'm pretty sure there's little to no point of bugging someone's care if they are dead.

This is why we are disappointed, not angry..

This is representative of the core issue of the game, a shallow experience with the illusion of choice and no consequences, other than flatlining you cannot fail anything, there isn't a bad ending, there aren't any failures that come and bite you in the ass or hidden successes that somehow give you a second wind then the situation seems dire.

And these are things TW3 handled well even if not perfectly, for example if you encountered the sprit in the tree before actually getting the quest it wouldn't break things down the line, force you to repeat a mission or gate that content behind a linear progression. You can do things out of order and whilst it does changes your overall experience it does so in a believable manner, "oh yeah that evil thing in the woods, well i sorted it out for you already..." was a perfectly good way to deal with giving players the freedom to experience and explore the world on their own terms and that isn't possible in CP2077.

Why do you think you get a call from the fixer when get to a POI? because they didn't hand players the freedom to do content outside of the very specific rails they put you on, it's just lazy design.
 
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Dragonroot was example of a fetch quest in W3...
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Actually, some gigs are like that.. even in Watson, there are few "kill gigs" that can be resolved different way by incapacitating the target and taking him alive. Also, some gigs have a follow-up gig, like for example gig to put a tracker on a car, which then leads to a gig where you need to sneak into apartment and take a chip from it, and deliver it to Kang Tao representative... both require silent approach..

Also, if you kill one gang leader in such a gig, it has impact on Clouds mission later, because you can threaten Woodman, (not kill him) which them leads into revenge mission later on...

Personally, i think people are still too angry, therefore are not paying attention to stuff happening in the game..
Dragonroot quest has all the ingredients of a standard fetch quest. But when you actually play the quest, it turns out to be not about collecting stuff at all. You get most of the enjoyment out of the prophecies that soothsayer tell in the end. Most gigs in Cyberpunk doesn't have that. Most of them end abruptly.
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Dragonroot was example of a fetch quest in W3...
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Actually, some gigs are like that.. even in Watson, there are few "kill gigs" that can be resolved different way by incapacitating the target and taking him alive. Also, some gigs have a follow-up gig, like for example gig to put a tracker on a car, which then leads to a gig where you need to sneak into apartment and take a chip from it, and deliver it to Kang Tao representative... both require silent approach..

Also, if you kill one gang leader in such a gig, it has impact on Clouds mission later, because you can threaten Woodman, (not kill him) which them leads into revenge mission later on...

Personally, i think people are still too angry, therefore are not paying attention to stuff happening in the game..
I agree that game has a lot of details. But those are really inconsistent.
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Those gigs in Watson you mention are the best example of how POORLY the gigs are designed.

I did both before doing the heist (I was level 16 before starting the Dex chain) I failed the car to check if I still get to break into Putin's flat and whadda you know, you do, and since Putin and his wife are present at the hotel during the heist and you see them on the way to your room I've decided to kill them both during the apartment mission and whadda you know they were both still there at the hotel during the Heist mission, but i guess the ruskies discovered how to revive people who get their heads chopped off with a sword.

And on another playthrough i got the car mission after I killed the Russian fixer and his wife in their apartment, again poor and lazy design, I'm pretty sure there's little to no point of bugging someone's care if they are dead.

This is why we are disappointed, not angry..

This is representative of the core issue of the game, a shallow experience with the illusion of choice and no consequences, other than flatlining you cannot fail anything, there isn't a bad ending, there aren't any failures that come and bite you in the ass or hidden successes that somehow give you a second wind then the situation seems dire.

And these are things TW3 handled well even if not perfectly, for example if you encountered the sprit in the tree before actually getting the quest it wouldn't break things down the line, force you to repeat a mission or gate that content behind a linear progression. You can do things out of order and whilst it does changes your overall experience it does so in a believable manner, "oh yeah that evil thing in the woods, well i sorted it out for you already..." was a perfectly good way to deal with giving players the freedom to experience and explore the world on their own terms and that isn't possible in CP2077.

Why do you think you get a call from the fixer when get to a POI? because they didn't hand players the freedom to do content outside of the very specific rails they put you on, it's just lazy design.
I have this feeling of the game been so superficial in those gigs. They tackle most of the themes of Cyberpunk but I feel they didn't explore any of them.
 
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I feel like they added a lot through notes around the scene, a few times I really laughed out loud when the notes around an area explained why the scene was so grizzly. And really IMO I love witcher 3 but only the actual monster contracts were interesting, and there wasn't that many of them - have played it 3 times.

Yea and I agree. Some of them are great, have great writing, an awesome backstory or a really intiquing theme. The problem is if you start using shards for everything.

One thing TW3 for example (if we're comparing it all the time anyway, and since people don't like comparisons to similar games that did some things better - like GTA or RDR for instance) did have a lot of notes and letters and books to read, and a lot of them were just as interesting as CP2077. Thing is though, it wasn't as formulaic. Monster contracts and quests were very varied. You had so many different types of missions. For some you found a letter in a bandit camp, for others you met an NPC that asked you for a favor, or you needed something and and an NPC had it, but they wouldn't give it to you, so you had to find a way to convince them. Yet other ones you just stumbled upon a corpse or a chaotic scene that suggested a crime or a violent conflict and followed the tracks with your Witcher senses. For contracts, most of the time you read the sign on the notice board, you went to the place, maybe talked to witnesses or relatives of the victim, investigated the area, identified the monster, prepared with potions and oils. And yes, often it was as easy as this, but sometimes you got to the place and suddenly it was something you weren't expecting at all. For example the contract with the monsters working together. Or the troll you could pay in alcohol. There was interaction, convincing, twists and turns.

Now I haven't played all of Cyberpunk, surely not. But what I have seen and played myself and heard people talk about all was pretty much straight-forward. Get to an area, get a call, small exposition dump about the situation, message on your phone, deal with Cyberpsycho X or kill gangers Y or retrieve package Z. 2 or 3 shards lying around of people having a conversation related to the "gig" and the people you just (most probably) killed. Rarely anyone you can talk to (yea there are some, I had a few as well) or influence, most of the time just taking out people. And then sending a message to your fixer and getting the eddies. And yea, that might be a nice RP-choice for someone who wants to play the stone cold money-in-hand mercenary, but its sure as hell JUST that and doesn't really provide anything for anyone wanting to play another kind of character. And its formulaic to a T.
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Unfortunately, CDProjekt lost some great developers since the witcher 2 and even if I'm having lot of fun and great time playing it, the truth is they should have worked on the game at least 3, 6 more months in order to elaborate the whole game and give their beloved fans and customers what they deserve.

Honest opinion here.
I'd make that 1 - 2 years, with all the stuff that was missing, cut or undercooked. And we're not even talking about the overproportionate amount of bugs which also factor into the time they should have taken before releasing the game.
 
One thing TW3 for example (if we're comparing it all the time anyway, and since people don't like comparisons to similar games that did some things better - like GTA or RDR for instance) did have a lot of notes and letters and books to read, and a lot of them were just as interesting as CP2077. T
Oh, I love the journal in RDR2. Did I already said that? I say it a second time.

The log in W3 is very good, describing important persons in the game and special monsters, like the plague maiden.
But the journal was a further development. What is okay, released 2 years later.
It helped to stay on track and you want to explore everything, to see what Arthur would scribbel in his book. It would've been nice, if there were a kind of digital journal, with photos, audio, mpegs. Not so stupid like in Spider Man, taking fotos of sightseeing points. But a Album-App or something like that. I had a Samsung Note a few years ago. 2077 there will be some, too.
"I meet a girl today, called Panam...(jpeg of her butt)... My headaches get worse...(illegible writing)...Johnny is a piss poor singer and I hate Rock (mp3 HipHop)...."
- Maybe not for everybody, but I would have liked it. What I don't like is drowning in shards, that are listed in the log... That's like 2006 skyrim, at some point I quit to read the books, they where everywhere...

 
Oh, I love the journal in RDR2. Did I already said that? I say it a second time.

The log in W3 is very good, describing important persons in the game and special monsters, like the plague maiden.
But the journal was a further development. What is okay, released 2 years later.
It helped to stay on track and you want to explore everything, to see what Arthur would scribbel in his book. It would've been nice, if there were a kind of digital journal, with photos, audio, mpegs. Not so stupid like in Spider Man, taking fotos of sightseeing points. But a Album-App or something like that. I had a Samsung Note a few years ago. 2077 there will be some, too.
"I meet a girl today, called Panam...(jpeg of her butt)... My headaches get worse...(illegible writing)...Johnny is a piss poor singer and I hate Rock (mp3 HipHop)...."
- Maybe not for everybody, but I would have liked it. What I don't like is drowning in shards, that are listed in the log... That's like 2006 skyrim, at some point I quit to read the books, they where everywhere...


Indeed anyone who's yapping about "omg read the shards".... the shards suck, I don't care what's in them, if what's in them is so important that it drastically changes your experience and turns side gig into something between a religious experience and a close encounter then that content should be in the game.

Shards shouldn't be more than an optional item to enhance your experience and to achieve that the shards A) need to be separated to categories properly half of them are duplicate junk and B) have a proper interface to view them in relation to a gig, a person or an event.

You don't have to go full on RDR2 with the diary although it's awesome even something as basic as the CODEX in mass effect would be an upgrade over the shard system we have now.
 
Oh, I love the journal in RDR2. Did I already said that? I say it a second time.

The log in W3 is very good, describing important persons in the game and special monsters, like the plague maiden.
But the journal was a further development. What is okay, released 2 years later.
It helped to stay on track and you want to explore everything, to see what Arthur would scribbel in his book. It would've been nice, if there were a kind of digital journal, with photos, audio, mpegs. Not so stupid like in Spider Man, taking fotos of sightseeing points. But a Album-App or something like that. I had a Samsung Note a few years ago. 2077 there will be some, too.
"I meet a girl today, called Panam...(jpeg of her butt)... My headaches get worse...(illegible writing)...Johnny is a piss poor singer and I hate Rock (mp3 HipHop)...."
- Maybe not for everybody, but I would have liked it. What I don't like is drowning in shards, that are listed in the log... That's like 2006 skyrim, at some point I quit to read the books, they where everywhere...

I love the journal in RDR too. I wish that they gonna add something like that for the next Wicher game.
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Indeed anyone who's yapping about "omg read the shards".... the shards suck, I don't care what's in them, if what's in them is so important that it drastically changes your experience and turns side gig into something between a religious experience and a close encounter then that content should be in the game.

Shards shouldn't be more than an optional item to enhance your experience and to achieve that the shards A) need to be separated to categories properly half of them are duplicate junk and B) have a proper interface to view them in relation to a gig, a person or an event.

You don't have to go full on RDR2 with the diary although it's awesome even something as basic as the CODEX in mass effect would be an upgrade over the shard system we have now.
I read everything in games. Cyberpunk shards are interesting to read but most of them feels like important quest details that they present in a cutscene. Both Witcher 3 & RDR presented those details organically via dialogue and cutscenes while letters that you loot enhanced the experience.
 
I love the journal in RDR too. I wish that they gonna add something like that for the next Wicher game.
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I read everything in games. Cyberpunk shards are interesting to read but most of them feels like important quest details that they present in a cutscene. Both Witcher 3 & RDR presented those details organically via dialogue and cutscenes while letters that you loot enhanced the experience.

Yep that's the point, if the are crucial to the plot then that information should be conveyed to the player through gameplay.

The shards are ok as a tool for easter eggs, fluff and some extra material for lore nerds but their interface is terrible I've picked up the same shards 50 times over since there are a ton of generic ones, the important ones are often picked out of order and aren't then tagged properly the interface also sucks the categories are too freaking generic and the entire interface is way too cumbersome to navigate through.

It's just lazy design where they only have a hammer so all they see is nails.

This game could've been the game of the decade if CDPR spent half of the $200M marketing budget on development and let the game sit in development for 1-2 more years.
 
Get to an area, get a call, small exposition dump about the situation, message on your phone, deal with Cyberpsycho X or kill gangers Y or retrieve package Z. 2 or 3 shards lying around of people having a conversation related to the "gig" and the people you just (most probably) killed. Rarely anyone you can talk to (yea there are some, I had a few as well) or influence, most of the time just taking out people. And then sending a message to your fixer and getting the eddies. And yea, that might be a nice RP-choice for someone who wants to play the stone cold money-in-hand mercenary, but its sure as hell JUST that and doesn't really provide anything for anyone wanting to play another kind of character. And its formulaic to a T.

Dragon Age Inquisition. All side quests in the world where go to place X -> kill everyone and then the bits of lore were distributed only thorugh letters.
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It helped to stay on track and you want to explore everything, to see what Arthur would scribbel in his book. It would've been nice, if there were a kind of digital journal, with photos, audio, mpegs. Not so stupid like in Spider Man, taking fotos of sightseeing points. But a Album-App or something like that. I had a Samsung Note a few years ago. 2077 there will be some, too.
"I meet a girl today, called Panam...(jpeg of her butt)... My headaches get worse...(illegible writing)...Johnny is a piss poor singer and I hate Rock (mp3 HipHop)...."

It could be something like dialogue choices. You have different thoughts that you can pick and choose to write down after the quests. Maybe with different style of writing depending on the lifepath
 
Dragon Age Inquisition. All side quests in the world where go to place X -> kill everyone and then the bits of lore were distributed only thorugh letters.

Dragon Age Inquisition was a pretty shallow and boring game, it was essentially an MMO without the social aspects. This isn't a game you want to copy.
TW3 was essentially a diametric opposite of Dragon Age both in terms of how it handled social commentary with finesse and nuance and both in terms of how it had meaningful side content instead filler chores.
 
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