Anyone thinking Cyberpunk would be better game without rpg elements

[BabaBooey88]

If we take out the "shooter", the closest game to Cyberpunk is, oh what a surprise... The Witcher 3
(leveled enemies, area, weapons, clothes, loots,...)

Sounds like TW3 isn't a very good RPG then. I haven't played it, yet, so I can't make a definitive claim. From the comments I've read here, the videos I've watched, and playing 2077 myself - I can say that I feel Cyberpunk is more of an RPG than that game. I don't expect to be surprised once the next gen update arrives. I think it will be an enjoyable action adventure game with some branching quests and progression mechanics.

I understand you mean well. However; Love The Witcher 3 or not, we're talking about this game and it's mechanics. You can't just cast the spell of a seven year old game with a common fan base to magic wand these gripes away. I should ask though.. When you kill some monsters in the wild, did they happen to drop a pair of bed wench's trousers or a butcher's girdle that provide better armor stats than any number of armor Geralt has available to himself?

 

[LeKill3rFou]

When you kill some monsters in the wild, did they happen to drop a pair of bed wench's trousers or a butcher's girdle that provide better armor stats than any number of armor Geralt has available to himself?

Monsters no, but humans yes
If you are level 8-10, use a level 6 sword/clothes (relic ones which is equivalent to legendary in Cyberpunk) and are in a level 8-10 area, there are great chances that the first common or rare sword/clothes dropped by an human will have better stats than the ones that you're using...
So they don't take "something" on another "looter-shooter" for Cyberpunk, they simply (re)use something which was already present in their previous "masterpiece" and replace "sword" by guns...
Runes > mods
Clothes/weapons have "runes/mods" slots
Contracts > GIGs
Unknow locations > NCDP Scanner Hustles
Witcher senses > scanner
...and I can continue "all day long"

 

[BabaBooey88]

Monsters no, but humans yes
If you are level 8-10, use a level 6 sword/clothes (relic ones which is equivalent to legendary in Cyberpunk) and are in a level 8-10 area, there are great chances that the first common or rare sword/clothes dropped by an human will have better stats than the ones that you're using...
So they don't take "something" on another "looter-shooter" for Cyberpunk, they simply (re)use something which was already present in their previous "masterpiece" and replace "sword" by guns...
Runes > mods
Clothes/weapons have "runes/mods" slots
Contracts > GIGs
Unknow locations > NCDP Scanner Hustles
Witcher senses > scanner
...and I can continue "all day long"

Can I dress Geralt up like a... lady of the night?

 

[Davin_Dittrich]

My personal opinion: Neither a yes nor a no, as the execution is what matters.

You can - in theory at least - very easily take out the gameplay features that make CP77 an RPG and streamline the shooter and cinematic aspects, you could try to make the experience more on rails, have it be more like a branching movie with shooting as a tool for player agency.
I still think that the story itself should at least stay as nonlinear as it is now (so very little) or should be expanded upon as a trade-off. If you throw out all the time wasting RPG elements you need to have a more satisfying and at least slightly longer experience, or just more optional story elements to encourage multiple playthroughs.

On the other hand you could also say that the game needs less combat and should focus much more on decision-based storytelling. So going the combat-less RPG route would work just as well. Have the decision-making process be the roleplaying game, not the skill/perk tree. That way the various roles that were cut early in development, like Journo, could become viable, non-combat playstyles.

The genre and world of Cyberpunk can fit most of both spectrums pretty handily, you just have to design the game from the get-go around whatever you want it to be.

 

[Caranfang]

I think that the Mass Effect-Trilogy did this better:

• For those who want to concentrate on the action, the dialogues were reduced to cut-scenes (which meant that certain outcomes were simply not possible)
• For those who are more interested in the story, the fights were made easier

 

[Guest 3847602]

Can I dress Geralt up like a... lady of the night?

No. You can make him wear Yennefer's trouser's, though.

 

[BabaBooey88]

No. You can make him wear Yennefer's trouser's, though.

Ten outta ten.

 

[CloudAtlas451]

I love Cyberpunk 2077 but… I largely agree with you. Cyberpunk 2077 aims to portray a world where “a stray bullet could end you while hailing a cab”. The core issue is that the moment-to-moment gameplay Cyberpunk (I think) intends to provide – a relatively “realistic”, fast-paced shooter doesn’t mesh well with a level-based, stats-driven progression system.

Designing good shooter gameplay with fixed stats, for just one playstyle (cover-based, Doom style, stealthy, with melee weapons, etc.), is already not easy. The guns should feel distinct yet balanced, the enemies should be varied and challenging, movement should feel good, combat should have a good flow, the time-to-kill should feel right, etc. And Cyberpunk offers not one but 4-5 playstyles. Making all of them feel good is already a tall order. Not to mention the 4 different difficulty levels. But balancing all that out with a level- and stats-based progression system like Cyberpunk’s on top must be almost impossible. Your level, attributes, skills, and perks drastically change your hit points, gun damage and recoil, movement speed, the relative level of your enemies and your guns, all of that overshadows much of everything.

The level scaling system is probably the biggest culprit here. And I guess it's no surprise that the most popular mods that change combat eliminate the scaling altogether. Combat feels much more consistent. You can actually keep using the gun you like (without spending an increasingly obscene amount of resources to keep it up-to-date). You can go everywhere and have a good time. I didn’t feel like I was missing out on anything here. Personally I wouldn’t mind seeing the abilities and perks system gone as well, as it adds little for me, but at least the player can distribute points in such a way that it at least doesn’t detract from their experience.

I don’t believe the abilities and perks are going away anytime soon, but I do hope that CDPR adds a “shooter mode” that removes scaling altogether, maybe as part of the NG+ update. If solo modders can already get that to work reasonably well, that shouldn’t be too much effort. And it’s not like there wouldn’t already be other, more interesting progression systems in the game anyway: First and foremost cyberware, but also expensive weapons and gear, street cred, or thematically fitting loot during or as reward for missions (Arasaka gear from The Heist, for example, or Overwatch from Panam). If CDPR wants to go the extra mile, just expand them a bit.

 

[Caranfang]

Sorry, but any game based on an RPG must also be an RPG.

 

[pliskards]

I think they should have just done a lot of these things differently. Given the universe that it is in I think pretty much all upgrades to stats, skills, etc. should have been done through Cyberware, implants, etc. I think it would have been ideal if you would have customized the looks of a character that had no cyberware implants, upgrades, etc... but then their look changed based on what types of implants you were putting in.

I posted these in another thread, but I think 'loot' and implants should have looked something like this (obviously they could get a lot more detailed and interesting, this is just a basic concept):

Rusted Head Insert of Overheat
+2 STAM
+5 HP
Grants Overheat Skill

Finley Crafted Head Insert of Overheat
+25 HP
+10 STAM
5% CRIT CHANCE
10% CRIT DAMAGE
7% TO COOLDOWN
Grants Overheat Skill

Then I would have just given guns varying damage/fire rates/maybe unique ones have a few cool skills attached and had clothing just be a visual thing.

To add further customization I think classes would have been interesting to just give you characters a different feel. If you picked a 'tank' you could have had extra HP and armor. Net runner could have had bonus to hack damage and cooldown. Sniper could have had increased crit chance. So on, so on.

 

[Don_the_brawler]

I'm gonna join the bandwagon and throw my two cent no into the pile. Yeah no. These things are awesome.

- stats are cool because you can choose to make V strong. You can choose to make V tech savvy. If your V isnt strong then he isn't opening the side door and needs to enter the front and deal with whatever lies in waiting there. Perhaps theres a roof hatch you could hack? If you were tech savvy, stealth would be a lot easier. I don't wanna see these things taken away.


- skills and perks. Most of the skill and passive perks I'm familiar with do way more than three to ten percent, lmao. If a perk has 10% its probably a way for keeping the character from being op. Even if you disagree or dislike this opinion, I honestly dont see any way the game could effectively benefit from taking these out.

- crafting is fun. Crafting is one of the most important parts of bring a techie. I craft a lot of stuff in every playthrough I've had so I totally want this to stay.

- loot? Bruh... I want loot. Not going into explanation. Free weapons and clothes is amazing. Don't like them? Sell them... break them so you can CRAFT STUFF or UPGRADE STUFF. If those options don't appeal to you... "shrug" leave em on the ground.

 

[CloudAtlas451]

- skills and perks. Most of the skill and passive perks I'm familiar with do way more than three to ten percent, lmao. If a perk has 10% its probably a way for keeping the character from being op. Even if you disagree or dislike this opinion, I honestly dont see any way the game could effectively benefit from taking these out.

If a game has static values for the player character, item, and weapon attributes, it's easier to balance everything so that combat feels good. The more of these attributes are variables, the more potential combinations you have here, and the more difficult this task becomes. And the more inconsequential every individual system becomes. And Cyberpunk has a lot of these numbers-based systems that can vary somewhat independently: your level, enemy levels, gun levels, attributes, skill XP, perks, cyberware, difficulty levels, etc. That's how you can end up with player experiences ranging from e.g. "the game is too easy even on very hard, I oneshot everything with a pistol" on the one end to "all enemies are bullet sponges, I need 5 headshots with my shotgun at close range to kill a random gangster" which can both be true depending on the particular combination of circumstances the player finds themselves in. And that's a shame, because in principle I actually enjoy combat in cyberpunk a lot - if these stars align.

It's not that scaling, attributes, and perks are necessarily bad in and of themselves, it's more that they're relatively easy to pinpoint as a source of problems and improvements. Easy compared to AI improvements or anything that requires new assets, missions, voice-acted cutscenes and the like anyway.

 

[Mobster100]

No stats. No skills. No perks. No crafting. No loot ( or working similar to Deus Ex). Clothing only used for customizing appearance.
Most of these only give you shallow, dull 3-10% passive bonuses that add little to nothing to actually modifying gameplay in a meaningful way or changing your interaction with the world.
Like in Deus Ex, you'd simply buy all implants as way of modifying your playstyle.
Without levelled loot, world would be much more open to explore and difficulty more fair and consistent.
In game Economy would also be more logical and balanced.
Protection would come from dermal implants, or from wearing body armor with durability factor ( like in Far Cry games or other FPS).
Less pointless tedium of inventory management, more enjoyable experience focused on completing quests than looting and spending time in ingame menus.
Environment design would be "more clean" and immersive, without loot icons distracting the player and objects often placed without any logic ( by trying to mimic "looter games).
World would be more immersive without illogical restrictions ( equipment "levels" restrictions, bulletsponge enemies with skull icons).
And instead, rpg team could be replaced with open world content creators who would add activities and interaction with the world.
And overall, people would have lower/more accurate expectations: lot of disappointment comes from far higher expectations on rpg aspects than was the case Witcher ( which was just as poor, but by design far more limited in it).
I'm a huge rpg fan and I'd always prefer good rpg over great action game: but in CDPR's case, I think their rpg team does their games far more harm than good and has overall net negative impact on quality of their games.

I would say no.

CP would be a better game if it were as they originally announced it.

Quote: "RPG first", "All choices matters and will shape the story"

Unfortunately they forgot this along the way and delivered an action, adventure game with very poor RPG in it, where choices hardly matter at all.

The skill system ("haven't tried it with the overhaul changes") based on how it were originally, were pretty boring I think and personally I didn't bother to much with it. Which again to me comes back to the lack of RPG, there should have been lots of skills focusing on none combat stuff, sort of like we know it from Fallout 2 / 3. Skills that would let you interact with the world based on what type of character you wanted V to be.

I personally hope for TW4 that those working on the RPG elements when it comes to the character really give it a good boost and a severe testing, because so far this is one of the weak points about CDPRs RPG games in my opinion. The interaction with the game world could be done a lot more interesting, doesn't have to be complicated.

But to me in RPG character development is a very important part of the experience and I would rather it being to complicated with lots of stats than it being simplified.

We already know that they have very good quest designers and able to tell these so they are interesting. Now they just need to figure out how to get the rest of their games on the same level.

CP in my opinion, is being carried by the storytelling, the city and the characters. The rest of the game is below average or average at best.

But I think they could make a good adventure game if they wanted, but personally I prefer games where you can pick up loot, customize your character and also prefer games with a free to choose protagonist as V. Even over Geralt, despite him being very cool.

And I don't think V as such is a weaker character than Geralt, because in TW the whole story is more or less about him, whereas in CP it is basically about everyone other than V and still as a character you feel like its yours, especially supported by the other characters like Jackie etc. So had the story been about V, I think it would have made for a very good protagonist to be honest.

But overall I think the biggest issue is the lack of RPG elements, whether that is the character skills and interaction with the world or just in general interaction in the world. And obviously that the world changes based on what you choose and you can see the effect, so way to much action and adventure and to little RPG

 

[Didacgomez]

We already know that they have very good quest designers and able to tell these so they are interesting. Now they just need to figure out how to get the rest of their games on the same level.

CP in my opinion, is being carried by the storytelling, the city and the characters. The rest of the game is below average or average at best.

Even if I mostly agree with your whole post,here is where I personally have doubts (i've been wondering that part myself in the past).
Are their quests truly that good? Or are they "just" storyteller tools? In CP2077, the more non-linear levels (within a gameplay focused on combat) are Gigs but are mostly one-shot and loosely connected.
Because if we want (i also want) more meaningful skills,non-combat related skills to solve stuff your quest design is vastly different to accomodate different ways of solving them and maybe different outcomes that result... i remember 1 fallout 1 quest with 8 different ways to achieve the objective based on character skills + player "smartness".
If you add possibility of killing all NPCs, even story ones stuff starts to be complex... and your storytelling cannot rely on cinematic experience.

 

[Mobster100]

Even if I mostly agree with your whole post,here is where I personally have doubts (i've been wondering that part myself in the past).
Are their quests truly that good? Or are they "just" storyteller tools? In CP2077, the more non-linear levels (within a gameplay focused on combat) are Gigs but are mostly one-shot and loosely connected.
Because if we want (i also want) more meaningful skills,non-combat related skills to solve stuff your quest design is vastly different to accomodate different ways of solving them and maybe different outcomes that result... i remember 1 fallout 1 quest with 8 different ways to achieve the objective based on character skills + player "smartness".
If you add possibility of killing all NPCs, even story ones stuff starts to be complex... and your storytelling cannot rely on cinematic experience.

Sure there are quests in CP that are less good than others. Even if Gigs are one shot, I don't think the issue is with the Gigs themselves, I personally had a lot of fun with them as a lot of them allow for more freedom than for instance the main quests does, which are extremely linear.

I think a lot of the problems with the Gigs comes down to the lack of good RPG elements as well, because had CP made use of skills to manipulate or interact with the environment, using the BDs, a lot of them could have been focused on these things rather than just combat. At least in my experience it is almost always easier to do the quests guns blazing than to stealth them. I do recall certain quests where you had to avoid being detected, but in general most are solved with combat, which I think is a shame. Because combat is fun, but it doesn't do a lot in regards to character development or forcing the player to make interesting choices.

But they could easily have added quests where you would have to chat your way through them, manipulate people, infiltrate areas using different skills, put trackers on people or cars etc that could lead to other things. We also know from the first demos they released, that they heavily implied that you could get that little robot to follow you around, but were later dropped into what we have now.

The second issue is that the world doesn't react to what you do, which also makes it difficult to hook up choices to what the player does. As we know the gangs, police, fixers etc. doesn't care about what you do, you can shoot them in the 100s and it has no impact.

I think they could have borrowed some ideas from AC where you have bounty hunters chasing you if you cause to many issues. You have the whole uncover the secret cult thing which adds another layer to the game, this they could have used to let the players uncover or infiltrate some of the big organizations or work for them, like getting missions to work with a gang to uncover a leader from one of the other gang and then the player would have to gather these information and finally take them out or something, but where it is a more open free roam system.

 

[exu1981]

It would be too boring,. Thankfully this isn't a looter type game like The Division, Warframe, or Diablo.

 

[Kang_Tao_Grunt]

Cyberpunk is not Cyberpunk without rpg.

 

[Don_the_brawler]

If a game has static values for the player character, item, and weapon attributes, it's easier to balance everything so that combat feels good. The more of these attributes are variables, the more potential combinations you have here, and the more difficult this task becomes. And the more inconsequential every individual system becomes. And Cyberpunk has a lot of these numbers-based systems that can vary somewhat independently: your level, enemy levels, gun levels, attributes, skill XP, perks, cyberware, difficulty levels, etc.

Some builds are gonna be more combat potent than others which, I can see how this may cause issues with a desired build not being as effective. I think theres enough ways to be combat effective that one can potentially compromise a little should their desired playthrough? I've never been challenged to the point where I thought some build was too difficult. I imagine some people would enjoy the challenge. If your not competitive, then perhaps drop a difficulty?

"all enemies are bullet sponges, I need 5 headshots with my shotgun at close range to kill a random gangster"

I'm a bit curious what level and location a person might need to be to cause this much difficulty because that sounds like a person in an area where they should level up before challenging.

 

[cartlidge]

Cyberpunk is not Cyberpunk without rpg.

this is as simple as it gets.. it's like saying.. would D&D be better without the RPG

Would cyberpunk be better with more RPG? YES

 

[SteelDragon2050]

Sorry, but any game based on an RPG must also be an RPG.

Absolutely false. Some of the most well received Warhammer 40k games are the dawn of war series, and those are RTS (Real Time Strategy)