Cyberpunk 2077 Difficulty Settings and Highest difficulty on 1st Playthrough

[Bloodartist]

Basically the Very Hard difficulty should just be 2-3 shots kill you and your enemies.

I don't think Ive ever seen or played a PVE game where it took same amount of hits to kill both you and your enemies. Usually "hard" means that you die in one shot while your enemies are bullet sponges. This goes for Witcher 3 too.

Sure, it would be cool and very Cyberpunk 2020-y, but I dont see it happening.

 

[Tree_Fox]

I don't think Ive ever seen or played a PVE game where it took same amount of hits to kill both you and your enemies. Usually "hard" means that you die in one shot while your enemies are bullet sponges. This goes for Witcher 3 too.

Sure, it would be cool and very Cyberpunk 2020-y, but I dont see it happening.

I don’t see it happening either. That’s why I said it was my ideal difficulty setup. Unfortunately we’re probably going to get the same difficulty progression as every other game - you do less damage, the enemies do more.

 

[kofeiiniturpa]

I am kinda worried that inspite that they implied working on it, they don’t have a solution to the horrid system where harder means spongier enemies and a more brittle PC.

And that the smartgun thing doesn’t really seem to show any skill impact or effect (paired with CDPR implying that: smartguns do less damage and the gun does all the aiming (implying that it’s ”not” the player ”nor” the character)), so it might be just a gimmick afterall and enhances the idea of the first point.

 

[Rfb_28]

I think Ghost of Tsushima did a pretty good job about difficulty settings, I hope that something similar will be implemented on CP2077

 

[replayNinja]

I am kinda worried that inspite that they implied working on it, they don’t have a solution to the horrid system where harder means spongier enemies and a more brittle PC.

And that the smartgun thing doesn’t really seem to show any skill impact or effect (paired with CDPR implying that: smartguns do less damage and the gun does all the aiming (implying that it’s ”not” the player ”nor” the character)), so it might be just a gimmick afterall and enhances the idea of the first point.

yea the smart weapons are there for players who want to focus on story and not so much gameplay. I'd still use them though because they look pretty cool even if they'd feel gimmicky after a while, I just don't want the AI to fall over without putting up a fight.

 

[BluPixel]

I don't think Ive ever seen or played a PVE game where it took same amount of hits to kill both you and your enemies. Usually "hard" means that you die in one shot while your enemies are bullet sponges. This goes for Witcher 3 too.

Sure, it would be cool and very Cyberpunk 2020-y, but I dont see it happening.

In Ghost of Tsushima the player and the enemies are both deadly and die in a few hits

 

[TZODnmr2k5]

Just dont use the smart weapons. I wont be playing with those.

My guess is theres a sizeable group of people that really want to play through the story with no FPS skills, like you already said.

I knew a guy like that at my previous job. Hes in his 40s, he really enjoys playing through games like that but the guy cant fight FPS to save his life.

My mom might even play. She usually plays games like Bauldors Gate. I can see her playing through and trying to win by mostly talking. She just doesnt have the FPS skills that most of us have.

I'm not the best. But I can play games against other people in Rainbow Six and hold my own. My problem is I am deaf in my right ear, so I have no sound placement. I cant tell if a sound I am hearing is coming from the left or the right. Sometimes it gets me killed.

Yeah I used to play FPS with ease, unfortunately age has caught up with me and my medication gives me a nasty tic in which my right hand quakes involuntarily especially once the adrenaline kicks in... really pisses me off, and in FPGames I use K&M by default as controllers are painfully inaccurate and I'll be damned if I use auto aim!

I usually play on normal by default, but may switch to easy/depending on my tic during my playthrough, but if I can make it within the game by talking my way through all the better... except for those damned scavengers and maelstrom pricks, ever since I read that they kill children for sport, I plan on murdering the lot of them!

 

[Vronos]

I am more interested in how they balanced the combat with the existence of stealth takedowns. Apparently there are level-gated enemies (barf) like in The Witcher 3 which are also marked with skulls above them and so are those just immune to stealth takedowns or how is that going to work? I also really hope that we won’t have a repeat of the asinine situation where you can put an entire platoon’s worth of supposedly high-grade ammunition through the skull of an enemy and him having not so much as a scratch. In TW3 this was even more egregious as using a low-level SWORD (which, you know, still has sharp edges and weight, no matter the 'level') you weren’t even able to give high-level bandits — including completely unarmored ones — more than a paper cut.

Some degree of sponginess and level-gating can be excused and handwaved by appealing to military grade augmentations or what not (depending on the enemy of course) but even that can suspend disbelief only so far. After a certain point it becomes nevertheless ridiculous again. We’ll have to see if CDPR learned from TW3 in this regard.

 

[jay_dvrden]

i have a razer blade and i hope it will run it

 

[Madae]

I'll probably go for the 2nd hardest and a stealth build for my first. I want it to be difficult, but not unfair, so it takes a lot longer to get through and I'm forced to explore (not that I would have had a problem with that to begin with, though).

 

[gogmeister777]

In a game like this, I'll be going with the hardest for the first playthrough.

I want to get the maximum out of that fresh experience and be forced to adapt to everything it can throw at me. It'll make the playthrough last longer too.

The combat might be FPS but I doubt it'll be like Doom Eternal or similar so the hardest difficulty should be fine.

You only have one first playthrough and when I see those credits roll I want to know that, from a challenge perspective, my very first V experienced it all

 

[Bloodartist]

am more interested in how they balanced the combat with the existence of stealth takedowns.

Easy solution would be that the stealth takedown isn't 100% on a "boss" level enemy. But also that you probably wouldn't need to kill anyone on some missions, just sneak through?

I honestly don't expect the combat to be at all difficult. The NPC AI didnt seem very impressive in the gameplay videos. We know theres sniper rifles, stealth takedowns, stealth hacks and suicide hacks.... lots of things which would make things easy for you. Hopefully not boringly so.

I dont want things to be too easy, but I also don't want to be loading the game 5+ times in a single mission. This balance will be difficult to find if bullet-sponginess of the enemies is related to their levels (ugh...). Difficulty of the encounters would be far easier to control for devs if they just let go of the stupid leveling system (not progression, mind you). Enemies would have a fixed power level and combat against certain enemies would be easy/hard depeding on skills/perks/cyber.

Grinding side-missions/Activity for XP to level is soooooo RPG-y..

 

[Vronos]

I honestly don't expect the combat to be at all difficult. The NPC AI didnt seem very impressive in the gameplay videos.

You make it sound like that is a good thing ;P

And sure, actual “boss” enemies being immune to stealth takedowns is not a new solution but I was more talking about level-gated enemies in general, mobs included. That is, even the numerous kind that nevertheless has a skull floating above it to indicate that one’s character is underleveled. Would those automatically get the same immunity?

 

[Bloodartist]

You make it sound like that is a good thing ;P

Not really. Just an observation. As I said before, Im hoping for engaging and balanced combat that leaves me at the top.

 

[Mobster100]

From the very little the devs have said about the difficulty settings in Cyberpunk 2077, it appears they have focused on making the game as accessible as possible for players not accustomed to FPS games. My concern is in doing this, introducing things like Smart Weapons, will this make even "hard" difficulty feel like normal difficulty. The difficulty settings look to be very similar to that of the Witcher 3 which I also played on Blood and Broken Bones (hard) on the first play through and then Death March(Insane) on New Game+. I'm wondering given the efforts made by the devs (understandably) to make the game more accessible whether the highest difficulty would be the most satisfying on first play through.

As I understand it the enemies won't scale in difficulty (the same as in Witcher 3) so after a certain point where you become a living weapon I'm hoping it won't feel too easy. There is the option of changing difficulty in game but changing difficulty because a certain area is too hard, only to switch it back afterwards takes the fun out of it for me personally.

I don't think we have to worry about smart weapons making the game to easy. Adding weapons like this clearly must have instantly raised the question of whether this would work or not. And if they are just a single button "auto" win weapon, they sure must know that it won't work. So I would think that they have added some sort of weakness to them. So either they are bad against armor, maybe there are modifications that makes them unable to target people etc.

Also if I understood it correct, enemies can use the same weapons as you can, so guess they are going to smart you as well

 

[Dungeon.master.]

I think it depends on how it's done. In Skyrim the highest difficulty was f'ed up, bandits could kill you in full set of daedric armor with ease. It was dumb and annoying. If cdpr manages to make it challenging, yet interesting, i'd play it on my first playthrough, although i would not recommend doing it on your first one. Walk around Night City, get used to it, and then set the difficulty to the highest

 

[Darkem_101]

I want to play on the hardest difficulty so the game is challenging.

 

[mhl333]

Any comparition on difficulty levels already? Is very hard more bullet sponge than normal?

 

[feckyer1ife]

I hate the clothing stats so bad i had to restart the game on easy. CDPR you need to fix this. well you need to fix this whole game

 

[Vronos]

I hate the clothing stats so bad i had to restart the game on easy.

Can you elaborate on this? What about the clothing stats made you restart the game on easy?