Nice thread! For someone who didn't install 2.0 yet, this is a glimpse into preparing to step into the future. It looks so far like heavy modding is a must for me to enjoy 2.0.
P.S. I suggest to post how much playtime anyone with a strong opinion had when 2.0 launched. It might show patterns. For me, 2.0 cut out at 1009 hours of gameplay. Naturally, any change is going to hit hard.
I'd say hacking didn't change much - you can now queue multiple hacks if you have the perks.
What did change is that you can't breach enemies now (so no "free" vulnerabilities, reduced ram costs etc.) and managing ram became a necessity. One can't endlessly upload everything anymore - and this necessitates either using a playstyle that plays around the limited ram or using weapons much more often. We no longer have essentially unlimited ram and the perceived changes stem from that. With unlimited ram the playstyle wouldn't be much different in 2.0.
P.S. I suggest to post how much playtime anyone with a strong opinion had when 2.0 launched. It might show patterns. For me, 2.0 cut out at 1009 hours of gameplay. Naturally, any change is going to hit hard.
All I know is I've lost half my health and 80% of my armour in one crash + autoupdate. My principal attack method and my last-ditch fallback have both been nerfed, and now every enemy has been level-scale, so all progress feels like it has been lost.
The trouble is that this has only been out for a few days, and all guides still reference the old model. There's no way to get myself back into the game that I was close to finishing.
I'd also recommend to start a new playthrough, because a lot of new features will be introduced gradually and you will have easier time to learn, and it also just feels fresh.
Not going to happen. I am simply not going to dump 200hrs of play to relearn a game I had already learnt and understood. I do not have the time. If I wanted to learn a different game, well I've got a pile of games in my backlog and it's not getting any smaller.
These changes should only ever have been an opt-in. New Game, NG+? No problems or arguments from me. Adding them only if PL was started (like they did with TW3's DLCs)? All good.
Decimating an existing playthrough? A massive lack of respect on the part of the developers for the amount of time I have already invested.
Hmmm. I think it's down to whether someone has had enough or not. No nostalgia even? The more someone played, the more nostalgia there is bound to be.
About numbers, it takes some 62 hours for me to finish everything in the game. With my 4.5 playthroughs that is like... 279 hours of that, and 700+ hours of being an uber-powerful deity of NC. I clearly love that, which has been taken away with 2.0. No wonder I still play 1.63 and wait for modders to have me covered. ^^ Although I might enjoy the crunch from zero to hero in the new system, I might as well have 'f*ck this sh*t' leaps.
I must have been part of the silent majority but I loved the game from 1.0 release onwards. This 2.0 patch feels terrible to my stealth netrunner playstyle. I hate the removal of breach protocol and I do not like the smart weapons integration into the netrunner skill tree. It's great to have options and alternative playstyles, but its bad to remove playstyles that people did enjoy. Overall the patch feels like a massive step backwards. I will not purchase PL. I was completely hyped at the DLC but now thats dashed. Hopefully modders will get to work and undo a lot of what this patch did. Until then I'm running 1.63 legacy on steam.
Replaying the campaign, it feels painfully obvious that these changes were made completely based off Phantom Liberty. Going through the pacifica parts of the campaign is where my experience finally broke down. I played a lot of old side missions and felt completely hamstrung. The tactical approaches to these situations don't work anymore as an OG netrunner. The reveal timer basically forces combat and the RAM costs just delete the tech wizard playstyle. Also daemons not working on cameras and turrets is another major hiccup in progressing through these missions.
Something felt so great about taking down an entire room without ever being seen. It wasn't "hard" in the execution, the challenge was seeing the pathways and identifying the approach. I hate the run and gun that this game has become.
Also removing the DPS figure and taking armor out of clothing has hurt the itemization. Now you're just looking for random perks on gear and wading through a ton of useless cosmetics. The wardrobe already fixed the issues with the armor system but now it's been removed entirely.
The cyberware limitations are manageable but the perks to buff them are tied up in tech skill tree which is just kind of lame. I was 20 int max netrunner skill treee and just felt weak. I had a t4 deck and it just doesn't feel good. I wasn't even through a fourth of the story and was already outpaced as a netrunner even though I had little left to go aside from a better deck and spells. By this point in the game I was really starting to come into my own but you just don't pop off anymore.
It felt so cool to identify the stupid soda machine that high level bad guys linked to their subnet and you crashed all their systems wirelessly before they had a chance to react. The "cool" moments I had from my previous 173 hours just aren't there anymore.
The only good thing is the police fixes and shooting from cars but they don't outweigh the negatives with this patch. Also seen MORE bugs than I EVER had in my 1.0 playthroughs. Amazing but true.
