New Game Plus - The Right Way

[weirdwayne15]

So I read that CDPR thinks that NG+ is complicated. That they need to rebalance things and panic over what can be carried over and what can't be. First even if you did just bring everything over, a method I'm not fond of, you would not need to rebalance everything, let people be OP though unlocking a higher difficulty to choose in NG plus is always welcome. There may be some paths you'd rather people not take if they have everything identify what those are and place logical roadblocks.

However, the method I prefer and wish more games would take is the method that games like Devil Survivor 2 and the "Tales Of" series take. That is you earn points by accomplishments and you can spend those points after the game is completed which unlocks new features for your NG+ experience.

I will not make an exhaustive list these are only "examples" of things you could unlock.

Access to an additional lifepath dialog such as streetkid, nomad, corpo. Additional meaning in addition to your chosen life path.
Additional points to use when leveling up
Bonus EXP gain
Unlocking a new life path (this would require a small expansion at least)
Unlock a new ending path (this would also require a new probably small expansion)
Bringing over your transmogs (for whenever that gets released)
Bringing over your vehicles

Things "like" this, would make playing through multiple times more rewarding and trying to unlock everything is also enjoyable. Starting with a premise like I think helps to bring focus and allows you to have more control over the NG+ experience. Both for the players and the devs.

Yes, this is not "simple" it does take work and ingenuity, but when you're trying to tackle the mentioned problems a more refined NG+ process like this is the better way to go. This is all my "opinion" I've been waiting for NG+ since I first finished the game when it was released. I would like to see it done right. So when I saw the way the devs appear to be tackling NG+ I felt obligated to say something.

 

[Audi82]

If he wants a modder can do it in few days all alone. And no, there is not need to rebalance anithing, with a slightly higher level character (from 50 to 60 for example) you basically gain some extra different perks and attribute points to unlock them, it's not much a matter of power, change very little from this point of view. Basically you have the possibility to use differents approaches every time you want without that a total and boring respec is needed.... know that because I use a mod that remove the level cap and no, you not became a God...

 

[Rascott]

If I were in the CDPR team, I wouldn't spend a minute developing NG+, I would prefer to spend all the potential of the developers to improve the game systems and continue to introduce additional content within Cyberpunk 2077. The modders will be able to develop NG+ as @Audi82 says.

Now that developers are not tied to the old generation there may be some big surprises:

Improved police and gang system, they finally remember your actions.

The workshops to modify the vehicles are in Night City.

Vehicle combat.

Eat and drink realistically in the city.

We are not the only ones on a motorcycle.

For combat experts, an improved difficulty of enemies that makes us suffer or an adaptive difficulty that increases if our combat statistics are getting better.

General AI improvement.

Advanced system for vehicle AI. The door is opened to illegal races in the city.

Cinematics on installing Cyberware in Ripperdocs.

Miles has already said that it is very complex to create NG+ since it involves tweaking the entire game, I support the decision not to develop it at this time.

 

[Audi82]

grab the stats from your last save and put the level cap 10lv higher it's basically a joke for them (even for a modder). ..NG+ it's just matter of time. Cinematics during ripper docs surgery? yes, cool, but requiire a lot of coding and animation work, I almost sure that you can forget it, I mean, we can't even change color of our damn ride...

 

[Rascott]

grab the stats from your last save and put the level cap 10lv higher it's basically a joke for them (even for a modder). ..NG+ it's just matter of time. Cinematics during ripper docs surgery? yes, cool, but requiire a lot of coding and animation work, I almost sure that you can forget it, I mean, we can't even change color of our damn ride...

The immersion that Viktor produces during the installation of the optics is impressive, creating animations for the cyberware of arms, spine or legs is not that expensive to develop, we are talking about mounting 3 or 4 more animations that would be executed in Ripperdocs clinics giving a quality to those BRUTAL locations. I do not rule it out.

 

[Audi82]

yes, and they already give us that, asking for extra cinematics for each body part when you put on new cyberware it's pure utopia if you consider how even BASIC features that we ask are considered almost miracles of programming according to them

 

[AlienSpaceBats]

I wonder how difficult it would be to take a page from Horizon Zero Dawn's NG+; a loadout of V's gear is generated based on what they have equipped after finishing the game which can then be accessed from their stash after visiting their apartment.

I really don't think balance is a priority after someone has already beaten the game. Often NG+ is an enticing prospect because players can have access to powerful or OP toys from the beginning, and can enjoy playing as a completely overpowered demigod.

 

[Rascott]

yes, and they already give us that, asking for extra cinematics for every body part when you put on new cyberware it's pure utopia if you consider how even BASIC features that we ask are considered almost miracles of programming according to them

They have been very stifled by the old generation, now that they have more freedom over the game systems we can expect more advanced content.

Picture it: sit back, Ripperdocs comes around once you pick the cyberware upgrade, raise your arm and install the hardware, or lay back on the gurney and install the upgrade on your spine.I assure you that it is not a very complex job to do that and the fact that Viktor only does it once orphans the experience for the rest of the game when throughout the story we are improving our body.

Take heart, these guys are incredible.

 

[Spectral_Warrior]

If he wants a modder can do it in few days all alone. And no, there is not need to rebalance anithing, with a slightly higher level character (from 50 to 60 for example) you basically gain some extra different perks and attribute points to unlock them, it's not much a matter of power, change very little from this point of view. Basically you have the possibility to use differents approaches every time you want without that a total and boring respec is needed.... know that because I use a mod that remove the level cap and no, you not became a God...

I get the impression you have no clue what you are talking about.
NG+ implementation is way more than having you enter a new game while being already level 50, have the needed perks and gear.
And how on earth do you arrive at the conclusion no rebalance is needed?! What do you think a new difficulty is?
Thats essentially the same thing. They dont 'just' rescale PH, armor, weapondamage and so on with a factor like 150%.
And with regards to the bold green: you also have no notion of what an RPG game then is?
The entire idea is that you CHOOSE you specialties, but must trade-off these to your characters 'weakness'.
The entire idea and capability of the respec is already destroying that, because wtf do choices in character spec mean then? (Luckily they stayed away from attribute just yet)

 

[The_Blacks]

I wonder how difficult it would be to take a page from Horizon Zero Dawn's NG+; a loadout of V's gear is generated based on what they have equipped after finishing the game which can then be accessed from their stash after visiting their apartment.

I really don't think balance is a priority after someone has already beaten the game. Often NG+ is an enticing prospect because players can have access to powerful or OP toys from the beginning, and can enjoy playing as a completely overpowered demigod.

And not only that: NG+ was also made for when you want to experience the story again without having to worry about combat difficulty/collecting gear again, so it's a feature that ought to be there since launch

 

[Audi82]

And not only that: NG+ was also made for when you want to experience the story again without having to worry about combat difficulty/collecting gear again, so it's a feature that ought to be there since launch

exactly

 

[GrimReaper801]

I get the impression you have no clue what you are talking about.
NG+ implementation is way more than having you enter a new game while being already level 50, have the needed perks and gear.
And how on earth do you arrive at the conclusion no rebalance is needed?! What do you think a new difficulty is?
Thats essentially the same thing. They dont 'just' rescale PH, armor, weapondamage and so on with a factor like 150%.
And with regards to the bold green: you also have no notion of what an RPG game then is?
The entire idea is that you CHOOSE you specialties, but must trade-off these to your characters 'weakness'.
The entire idea and capability of the respec is already destroying that, because wtf do choices in character spec mean then? (Luckily they stayed away from attribute just yet)

On top of all of that, the whole "modders will do it in no time" thing is laughable at best.

Guess what! With the current tools and frameworks, it's technically possible to go fetch a character's data. Wanna know why modders haven't created NG+ already if they can go get that data? Because it is not that simple. There are a ton of variables to edit. A single mistake and you might not even realize that what you've done will stop part of the main quest from triggering 20 hours down the road.

Modding is great. The fact CDPR is going out of their way to support modding is amazing. Modders have done incredible things already but they are not miracle workers. It took years for an alternate start mod to be created for Skyrim. A game that is far easier to mod than CP2077 will ever be. For the same reasons - tons of variables.

People need to be realistic about what modding is and it's limitations. REDmod just came out. Creators are just starting to explore it and it's capabilities, there are months if not years of adaptation ahead before we see any kind of major game rework mod happening.

 

[Spectral_Warrior]

And not only that: NG+ was also made for when you want to experience the story again without having to worry about combat difficulty/collecting gear again, so it's a feature that ought to be there since launch

Maybe the idea in itself sounded 'cool' in the beginning... The sort of "what if" type of idea.
But going by a description like this, you can also explain it differently (and seeing some comments it sound more that the following)::
NG+ was made specifically to bypass the design of the game where you build up your character. ie, the 'boring stuff'. In a sense you could almost call it a cheat.

With regards to your final sentence: IF the game aspects would not change at all, and you litterally just started with you own endgame level, gear, perks etc. But enemies would all be exactly the same, then yes. I could follow your reasoning where you could bypass the leveling, collecting and upgrading.

But people simultaneously want that the game becomes different also, in that everything gets dialed to eleven. Enemies must be stronger, weapons must be more minmaxed, HP bars must be higher. Increased levelcap (or no levelcap).
With all these things you 'force' a complete rebalance of all major systems in the game because evidently they simply dont want their endgame gear in the beginning. They want a new version of the game that tosses out must of the rules from the original game design.

 

[northwold]

Just on (a tiny sliver of) the issues that arise in implementing new game plus.

Take Witcher 3. You get a sword as a reward for a quest. In your new game you do that quest. Will the game crash at the end of the quest? Will a whole series of seemingly unrelated systems break? These are issues you need to go through the entire game identifying and fixing before you release NG+.

Cyberpunk. You come into the game with a load of cyberware that you're not supposed to have at that point in the game. You jump your way to the end of a quest without having gone through the bit in the middle. By doing so, you miss a trigger point that you must pass through for the quest to advance. Does the quest complete? Does it break? Does the game crash?

If people were a bit more thoughtful about how games actually work they might realise that NG+ is not necessarily simple at all, and that what is involved in making it work may vary wildly from game to game depending on how much a game allows a character to evolve during the first playthrough. Even finding all the pressure points in the first place is complex.

No, a modder could not do it in a polished and professional way in a day. In six months, perhaps, with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the game's systems and code. But then they'd have to do it all again whenever anything got changed. And I don't see how a developer could release a version of NG+ in which they didn't bother to deal with all the difficult stuff, including, yes, things like what is Vik talking about giving you an implant when your whole body is ten times the spec of anything he has for sale. Leaving that kind of stuff in would be utterly amateurish.

 

[Martind_Forlon_]

Imo to make NG+ working, there must be reworked almost every NPC starting with abilites, implants and how they can use it efficiently (I have few different chars with lvl50 and despite all tuning made in 1.52 they are all very lethal and I only need to chose how much risky (or lazy) way I want to use for play no matter what opposing npcs do). Another thing may be new mission fail conditions, more advanced local defense systems, more deadly opposing netruners etc. Heavy load of work ... would I want it to happen? ... of course yes, but I think one really should be more realistic about such things. Imo they are only now with CP in a state where work on it slowly starting to be more comfortable for them, they (how I understand from what was said) imo have now better and more reliable working tools etc. Modding support also was added only now. Trying now go directly for NG+ would be imo a bad move. Personally I really look forward to prepared expansion, this imo should be top priority and I hope that they may in meantime add some new quests. (btw, I did one or two newly added quests with patch 1.6 and they were fun and nicely done ... )

 

[ReptilePZ]

I don't think there's a "right" way to do NG+ and it's not something I care about, personally. However, I can say with a degree of certainty that there is a wrong way to do it for a story-driven RPG where choices and consequences are presumably an important part of the game, and it's this:

Access to an additional lifepath dialog such as streetkid, nomad, corpo. Additional meaning in addition to your chosen life path.
Unlocking a new life path (this would require a small expansion at least)
Unlock a new ending path (this would also require a new probably small expansion)

Nothing that would enrich a first playthrough in a game like this should be locked behind NG+.

 

[weirdwayne15]

I don't think there's a "right" way to do NG+ and it's not something I care about, personally. However, I can say with a degree of certainty that there is a wrong way to do it for a story-driven RPG where choices and consequences are presumably an important part of the game, and it's this:



Nothing that would enrich a first playthrough in a game like this should be locked behind NG+.

NG+ Enriches a playthrough when done right. To say nothing that would enrich a first playthrough is like saying give me god mode, flying cars, unlimited options right off the bat. Unlocking new features as rewards is enjoyable. There is a balance between challenge and rewards. It can be difficult to strike. Also there are reasons you may want to lock off lifepaths until you finish the game, you being the devs. To provide more context to things is one reason, but if it dramatically changes the story like through an expansion they'd want you to play through the original story first. One can be very creative when it comes to new game plus content. I loathe the idea that most people do which is simply "carry everything over" They did that in The Witcher 3, but nerfed all of your gear, and then didn't even carry over your gwent cards which made NG+ rather worthless to me.

So yes NG+ will enhance and preferably make subsequent playthroughs notably different. Opening up new paths generally. Be it by making more options available through additional attribute points, dialog options, or new content. I both hope and look forward to that.

 

[ReptilePZ]

NG+ Enriches a playthrough when done right. To say nothing that would enrich a first playthrough is like saying give me god mode, flying cars, unlimited options right off the bat. Unlocking new features as rewards is enjoyable. There is a balance between challenge and rewards. It can be difficult to strike. Also there are reasons you may want to lock off lifepaths until you finish the game, you being the devs. To provide more context to things is one reason, but if it dramatically changes the story like through an expansion they'd want you to play through the original story first. One can be very creative when it comes to new game plus content. I loathe the idea that most people do which is simply "carry everything over" They did that in The Witcher 3, but nerfed all of your gear, and then didn't even carry over your gwent cards which made NG+ rather worthless to me.

So yes NG+ will enhance and preferably make subsequent playthroughs notably different. Opening up new paths generally. Be it by making more options available through additional attribute points, dialog options, or new content. I both hope and look forward to that.

I very specifically meant nothing that would enrich a "game like this", i.e. a story-driven RPG where paths, choices and consequences are a main focus. I feel that if you can add more paths/dialog options from the start, you should, rather than locking them behind NG+.

I think the same can work great in other games where the focus is elsewhere, or where you tie NG+ into the story so it would make sense that certain dialog options or paths would only pop up in subsequent playthroughs, e.g. a time loop story or some such.