Big change suggestion on armor system

[KrowAnders]

Hey, folks. Played through the game one and a half times, spent a long time doing side quests and all that. I kept going back to this one complaint... Armor. The thing is, they made all these cool clothes and I love a lot of the models, but most folks aren't going to wear them because the stats never measure up to the stats of other things. This really pigeonholes you into looking a certain way. I know there's a way to upgrade and increase stats on clothing items and all that, but I have a better solution.

Subdermal armor is in the game, sure, but it's a ripperdoc thing. That "special" slot over on the right? The one for the full body outfits? Get rid of those, or make them something else. Use that "special" slot for your armor. Subdermal armor should be your standard armor system and you should be able to upgrade it at the ripperdoc. You could have upgrades that provide minimal protection but higher mobility and stealth, or upgrades that soak a lot of damage but make you a slow tank. Remove all stats from clothes and make them entirely cosmetic with the exception of clothing items that would provide you with added protection, like ballistic vests or helmets.

The cyberpunk genre is about looking as cool as possible. Self expression. They even said this when they were promoting the game. Then they implemented an armor system that forces you to make a choice on stats or your personal style. I like the game, I enjoy playing it, but this one thing keeps getting at me. It's a simple change, an easy to understand change, but it's a big one.

 

[LeKill3rFou]

Hey, folks. Played through the game one and a half times, spent a long time doing side quests and all that. I kept going back to this one complaint... Armor. The thing is, they made all these cool clothes and I love a lot of the models, but most folks aren't going to wear them because the stats never measure up to the stats of other things. This really pigeonholes you into looking a certain way. I know there's a way to upgrade and increase stats on clothing items and all that, but I have a better solution.

Subdermal armor is in the game, sure, but it's a ripperdoc thing. That "special" slot over on the right? The one for the full body outfits? Get rid of those, or make them something else. Use that "special" slot for your armor. Subdermal armor should be your standard armor system and you should be able to upgrade it at the ripperdoc. You could have upgrades that provide minimal protection but higher mobility and stealth, or upgrades that soak a lot of damage but make you a slow tank. Remove all stats from clothes and make them entirely cosmetic with the exception of clothing items that would provide you with added protection, like ballistic vests or helmets.

The cyberpunk genre is about looking as cool as possible. Self expression. They even said this when they were promoting the game. Then they implemented an armor system that forces you to make a choice on stats or your personal style. I like the game, I enjoy playing it, but this one thing keeps getting at me. It's a simple change, an easy to understand change, but it's a big one.

For me, I never look stats of clothes
I look at the "look" and more important, the number of mod slots. Because "armadillo" mod.
Example : jacket lvl 5 (10 armor) but with 4 mod slots, will be much better than every end-game one (like with 190 armor. It's 200 max i think) with less mod slots.

 

[KrowAnders]

Still looking at a stat on an item of clothing. It's either mod slots, or the amount of protection, or whatever. Literally the only thing that should influence your clothing choices is if you like the look or not. Clothing shouldn't have stats on it, and you should have a subdermal armor mod that you upgrade or mod throughout the game.

 

[LeKill3rFou]

Still looking at a stat on an item of clothing. It's either mod slots, or the amount of protection, or whatever. Literally the only thing that should influence your clothing choices is if you like the look or not. Clothing shouldn't have stats on it, and you should have a subdermal armor mod that you upgrade or mod throughout the game.

It's not the same, the game need a cosmetic system, not an overhaul of armor system

 

[KrowAnders]

A cosmetic system would require an overhaul of the armor system. Your cosmetics are currently providing stats and they shouldn't be.

 

[Didacgomez]

But is style over substance not style without consequences... you can go in style with some drawbacks or you can go with substance but not looking cool, i would say that the contradiction would be if both can be done for free (and as @LeKill3rFou said is why you have Armadillo to improve that tradeoff).
At the end, i don't think that the system is that different from most RPGs out there.

 

[_Fender_]

Is there really that much difference in difficulty of a game if you go with clothes you like instead of clothes with bigger protection? From my second playthrough I stopped caring about stats, walked mostly without googles and helmet and in very hard difficulty didnt felt like I was struggling at all.

At the end I think people will be more happy with matching clothes with stats when we will be given more options of clothing so lets wait for DLCs.

 

[Mybrokenenglish]

Every time I see posts like this I remember all the times we've been telling CDPR exactly not to design the game this way, since the 2018 demo, on this very forum. And we all see how much they cared.

 

[AlienSpaceBats]

I agree that clothces should be made mostly cosmetic (with exception to combat armour, etc.) but I think they kind of are anyway, at least how I approach it. I don't feel forced into wearing a specific style at all.
I always choose the clothes I like, I completely ignore the stats and replace with Epic and Legendary versions when they're available. It's relatively easy to craft Armadillo mods of increasing armour values and put them in the mod slot/s. Without even trying I have an armor score in the thousands by the end of the game (I always grab that legendary subdermal armour before Konpeki too).
For me the bigger problem is actually finding the specific clothing items I want. I dislike how store inventories are so random.

 

[wyzman001]

Hey, folks. Played through the game one and a half times, spent a long time doing side quests and all that. I kept going back to this one complaint... Armor. The thing is, they made all these cool clothes and I love a lot of the models, but most folks aren't going to wear them because the stats never measure up to the stats of other things. This really pigeonholes you into looking a certain way. I know there's a way to upgrade and increase stats on clothing items and all that, but I have a better solution.

Subdermal armor is in the game, sure, but it's a ripperdoc thing. That "special" slot over on the right? The one for the full body outfits? Get rid of those, or make them something else. Use that "special" slot for your armor. Subdermal armor should be your standard armor system and you should be able to upgrade it at the ripperdoc. You could have upgrades that provide minimal protection but higher mobility and stealth, or upgrades that soak a lot of damage but make you a slow tank. Remove all stats from clothes and make them entirely cosmetic with the exception of clothing items that would provide you with added protection, like ballistic vests or helmets.

The cyberpunk genre is about looking as cool as possible. Self expression. They even said this when they were promoting the game. Then they implemented an armor system that forces you to make a choice on stats or your personal style. I like the game, I enjoy playing it, but this one thing keeps getting at me. It's a simple change, an easy to understand change, but it's a big one.

your basic idea does get a lot closer to the original book game....there was "skin weave" and "muscle and bone lacing" and "frames" .I agree the in game current RD armor is nice to have but lacking....and everything was up-gradable if ya had the eddies and you didn't snap from the stress of the procedure ... they totally left out the psychological stress...every thing had a cost that went against you , depleting your mind and would make you crazy if not managed / dealt with

 

[NorseGraphics]

You can look cool in any outfit. It's how you upgrade them, and at what cost. The 'cheapest' armor are the Legendaries rolled for max number of slots (to re-roll - run over 150m away from the body/container, and return. The slots should change, both in number and what mods are attached). Edit. And the 'best' mods are the Epic Armadillos (Purple).

My 'weak' corpo has 4570 armor (he's at level 50). So, it depends on how much effort you're willing to put into it. My first play-through felt really hard as I had 200 or so armor, and barely survived the end-quest at level 27. Being more patient makes things much easier.

 

[pndrad]

The upgrade system needs to be reworked, should be able to upgrade easier. Also needs some more armor like clothes, but it should carry a heavy penalty in dialogue.