The ability to upgrade a weapon to match your current level would be really cool. Also, don't have weapon prefixes unless you include a way to change them.
The ability to upgrade a weapon to match your current level would be really cool. Also, don't have weapon prefixes unless you include a way to change them.
For the love of everything Cyberpunk
PLEASE make a working RPGMMO with perpetual world and don't focus all your energy on graphics.
GAME FIRST - GFX LATER (World of Warcraft conquered the world this way)
Planetside 2 is half dead because they did the reverse (GFX and world is very "pretty", but the basic game is repetitive and boring at worst)
For the love of everything Cyberpunk
PLEASE make a working RPGMMO with perpetual world and don't focus all your energy on graphics.
GAME FIRST - GFX LATER (World of Warcraft conquered the world this way)
Planetside 2 is half dead because they did the reverse (GFX and world is very "pretty", but the basic game is repetitive and boring at worst)
Actually WoW "conquered" the MMO world by making things as easy as possible for it's players thus anyone could max out their levels and attain the "best" gear, heck you barely had to know how to play your class, just push the same 3-4 buttons every time they recycled.
WALL OF TEXT AHOY, read it if you wish, or don't, your call -- I don't know how to put all of this in a few sentences, short and to the point isn't really my strong suit.
My "dream RPG" for CP2077 would of course be an isometric point'n click game with turnbased combat, but since that's probably out of the question, I've been thinking a lot about how to compromise.
Some "along the lines of" suggestions....
Since you will create your character from the ground up, I'd like that to work like in the PnP. You choose your career package and assign your starting attributes, career skills and pickup skills -- you can of course learn other skills along the way, but that should be harder to accomplish than going with your chose career. How ever many skills and careers there will be...
I'd like to see a control scheme similiar to Witcher 1, with 2 perspectives. Over the shoulder with some in and out zooming possibilities, and high up point'n click perspective (with WASD still operable, of course).
I'd like the combat to work so that in OTS perspective, you point where the direction where the character shoots but skills determine the spread and how much the recoil throws the aim aside, or in melee/HtH, the attackspeed and damage; and in ISO perspective, the character shoots where the cursor points with skills determining the spread and recoil distortions (and attackspeed and damge for melee/HtH).
The default firing would be "from the hip", so as to justify the large (if low skill) spread and low recoil control; but you would be able to opt for an "aimed shot" where the character locks on a target and you get the "focus reticle" similiar to Deus Ex where the skill, range and weapon of choice determines how long it takes to get a "certain hit" -- so as to simulate the 3.2 second rounds and sacrificing a turn for aiming in the PnP.
I know there's some controversy over how much stats should dictate the characters potential in performing the tasks; so I'd suggest that there be two difficulty modifiers. One for General Gameplay and one for Combat (scaling easy-normal-hard).
Combat difficulty adjust the base values of spread and recoil and attack speed etc. for all weapons, slightly (JUST slightly!) alters the done damage (both you and the NPC's), adjusts the availability and base values (for buying and selling) of weapons, armor and ammo; possibly gives you a starting bonus for combat skills based on your chose career, and adjusts how easily combat skills are improved; the amount and relative ability level and gear of "enemies", etc.
Gameplay difficulty adjusts how effective the skills are, their impact on the gameplay (weapon accuracy, skillchecks and cumulative effects like with barter affecting the prices, etc) and stats (damage and weight modifiers from BODY, movement speed and other modifiers from REF, and so on), how easily you get improvement points, the base prices and availability of items; and so on.
The core gameplay is always the same, but you could basically tailor it yo suit your preferences with the difficulty settings. Set both on easy and you have an easy sandbox shooter where skills and stats are helpful but not mandatory; set both on hard and you get a punishing experience where combat is brutal and your character build is absolutely paramount to your success in Night City.
That's just a quick and admittedly a clumsy example, but I think the point comes through. Let the difficulty (or other) settings adjust the values of gameplay distortion that comes from the character build.
I remember seeing a screenshot from some conference that implied there'll be some sort of "tactical mode". I don't know how legit it is or what is meant by it, but I'd hope that'd involve some sort of tactical pause or emulating turnbased gameplay in some manner.
Combat aside, I'd hope that - in the vein of a good PnP session - there'd be opportunities for inventive gameplay through skilluses to the objects in the world. Something that is not necessarily highlighted nor obvious. Like using the strength feat on a manhole (to reveal something like some hobo's temporary home, or possibly just shit and rats - not every place needs something cool), you could hide there if you are being chased and perhaps even use it as a cover in a firefight. SImiliarly using strenght to a firehydrant and open it (or if you happen to have a pipewrench in your pocket, use it to halve the STR requirement); seemingly an irrelevant task but it may offer opportunities for distraction when used in the right place, or tactical opportunities like knowing that water and electricity combine well. Tipping a smaller car over (if strong enough) to provide cover.
Having the avareness/notice skill to reveal something in the environment (like, if you decide to poke through some trash, you might notice a crumbled piece of paper which could contain a clue to a quest). Noticing a crack on the wall and with enough in "demolitions" you could get an approximation of how much C4 you need to blow the wall open there without collapsing the whole building (and you could try it blind with lesser chances of success and possibly losing everything there was to gain, and possibly even hurting yourself).
It'd be cool if the language skill would be used to translate what people are telling to you, that the text you look at would be gibberish ( "#¤VI¤d%TT@U%&fs/s(%& ) until you have the right amount of skill to understand that he says: "Stop staring at me and fuck off you cretin.", but I don't know how that'd work with fully voiced game (other than books, letters and computer entries).
There are all sorts of neat little possibilities to explore.
The main thing is to make the skills have a tangible effect on the gameplay to make it worth having and improving them, and to make it fun to find out what all you can do with them if/when you have them. Through the interplay between the world and your characterbuild, comes the reactivity and narrative choices and consequences that mold your version of the storyline, which, preferably is about a more personal journey than about what happens around you. You may well miss out on a lot of things, but that should be ok, and the ending should provide a reflection that. Your direct or indirect actions affect the lives of others in different ways, and that should be the spice of the conclusion... what you did while getting where you were going. (Fallout and Fallout 2 being good examples of narrative structuring and conclusive endings.)
A shameless repost of one of my old post regarding roles and and mission structures since I don't feel like writing all that the second time (ANOTHER WALL OF TEXT INSIDE SPOILER TAGS):
Thinking about quest structure and roles... Reactivity should be the first and foremost principle regarding that. That there are options based on the role and the character build that feel rewardingly different and provides refreshing reactivity that rewards beyond simply accomplishing the task and geting paid.
Say, you meet a gang in a grumbling abandoned apartment building they've squatted. You need some persuasive skills to get in touch with them (eg. corp, techie); or, if you are a fixer or rocker you get a free entrance but still need to prove yourself somehow (to lesser extent than with corp or techie) to be trusted a mission they have been planning; or, if you are a cop, the entrance and questline is denied from you altogether. Or what ever fits the bill.
Eventually you get in good terms with them and they trust you with this quest about finding and stealing a new kind of aug some powerful augment mogul is prototyping in his skyscraper the other side of the town. This will provide a large sum of money in the black market and you are offered either a hefty sum of money or a contraption that is to be obtained from nowhere else in the game (your choice).
You seek out the building and start figuring out how to enter. You could go in guns blazing (eg. solo), but this would also alert law enforcement making things a bit fishy; you could gain free entrance (eg. corp) and use that to your advantage; or you could hack or scramble with some systems to put on a firealarm (techie, netrunner, eg.) causing a panic inside the building, and using the chaos to your advantage. Or sneaking inside through some route. Etc.
Once you get inside, you can do the straightforward questline and recieve the reward, or if you have the right role and right character build and explore a bit, you may be able to obtain information that might compromise your willingess to let the prototype into black market. Perhaps you then find the big man himself and are able to become a turncoat mid-quest; maybe, if you get caught as the right guy (correct role, correct character build), you can persuade the captors to let you become said turncoat; elsewise you will be pummeled and thrown out with little to no equipement (perhaps they even strip your augs out, or break them so that they need to be repaired).
If you do the mission straightforward as instructed, you'll be rewarded with what was promised and services from the gang you worked for (eg. blackmarket access, items, gear and information that you'd otherwise have no access to, further quests from them, etc), as well as word going on among the other gangs that you've done a great service to this group which then results in some other gangs being less hostile towards you; but you also just managed to make a powerful enemy from the mogul and his goons. Job well done, reaping the rewards, bearing the consequences and moving on.
If, on the other hand, you decide or must become a turn coat, you'd be obligated a counter mission. Go set some explosives to the base of the gangs house and demolish it (killing everyone there - men, women, children, everyone). Doing this will grant you access to the moguls wares and services (once again, unique in the game; gear, discount augs, quests, etc), but it will also wipe all of the gangs services and benefits out from the game and make other gangs overall less trustful of you.
If you fail, and get thrown out; you'll be the laughing stock for the gangs and need to perform some serious stunts get in their good side again and the corporate guys of that specific nature to deny services from you. Sounds like a massive defeat no-one might want to bear; but, it could, if you do the right things, get you closer to a third party (say, someone being bullied by the gangs and harrassed with overpriced livelihood by the corporate) that gives you a third way of unique continuation of the game (firstly, getting back on your feet and who knows what next).
Those are some immediate effects. The choices you make could also ripple in a smaller scale throughout the game with little side effects here and there, if you find them and have the right character to unlock them. Perhaps you later find the remains of a once powerful gang that got decimated and reduced to group of homeless people whose former soldiers need to now do cheap mercenary work to provide for their families, and the group is of no offensive threat to anyone anymore, they just linger on in their shit. With the specific role (and build), you could talk to a woman with a little girl in some corner (or, be a cop or corp for example and you're told to fuck off without a chance of approaching her), and get her to open up a bit. Her husband is missing and the family needs his income to scrape by, she pleads to your good will to find him (reward being a unique rep bonus with certain groups and people the player might, or might not be interested in). You start to follow the hints that eventually lead you to a pile of rubble that's strangely familiar...... ooops, it's the gang who you blew up some time ago; you made a choice back then and now you realise you've ruined the lives of the family you are now trying to help. OR; if you did that quest the other way, you may find him and give hime the info that his family is starving so what ever he is doing, he better hurry the fuck up.
One the other side, you might get friendly with some law enforcement types and find out that they've had a surveillance job for years on some tech mogul who's been prototyping a certain aug that must not be released, elsewise the the insanity rate caused by the augs will blow up and then everyone is in deep shit. They would need to plant some discriminative evidence to get their hand on the man (and the rest will unfold on it's own; they get their hands on the aug, open it up for evidence and cease it's production). You set out to do the job only find out that you earlier just provided the item the cops are after to the gang who has been selling it in blackmarket..... oh, shit. Or, maybe you did the earlier quest the other way and everyhting goes as planned.
Maybe, because you blew up the gang, the other gangs are at more alerted state making it harder interact with them. Maybe, because you stole the aug, the corporation has tightened their security protocols making it harder enter their buildings again and since they've lost an expensive piece of research, the prices of augs skyrocket.
The rippling needn't always be even that large; it could well be some hearsay in a conversation related to the subject and what it has caused purely on a narritve level. Or some smaller visual changes here and there (like more people like the girl in the trailer appearing and rampaging around).
The player might well miss out on all the longer term reactivity, and that's ok. That it is there to be found, is the point, not whether or not it is spoonfed to the player. That sort of thing is of course immensely complicated to design and implement (or at least I would think so), but that's something I think the game should to strive towards at least to some degree if it wants to stand out from the current market. Effects from the choice of role, skillbuild, choice of narrative paths (some of which are only open to certain builds) within the quests; the whole nine yards. Consequence on a shorter (more immediate) level and in longer terms.
I'm not expecting a perfect game (and my example is far from that), obviously, and I'm not saying "this is it, this is how it needs to be done, or else it's shit, shit, shit". But there is an idea for a framework of sort to draw inspiration from (if it suits the goals of the game -- and I think it does, or should). It does provide interesting prospects for hugely varying gameplay experiences for different builds. And I'd really like to see CDPR try to push the limits on reactivity, choice and consequence, cause and effect - beyond the choice of left or right, sword or bow, stealth or combat.
All kinds of possibilities to consider if there's the will for it; and knowing CDPR to be of the more ambitious type, what with all the pompous "we'll redefine the RPG genre" talk, I think they should look into actually doing that.
I hope I didn't go completely off topic with this one, or made it an incomprehensible rambling (the point was just to provide few examples).... The mind is faster than the fingers on the keyboard.
Just for examples sake...
TLDR; ??? Make CP2077 a good multifaceted cRPG that dares to be different and stand out from the mainstream.... I guess.
"The core gameplay is always the same, but you could basically tailor it yo suit your preferences with the difficulty settings. Set both on easy and you have an easy sandbox shooter where skills and stats are helpful but not mandatory; set both on hard and you get a punishing experience where combat is brutal and your character build is absolutely paramount to your success in Night City."
"The main thing is to make the skills have a tangible effect on the gameplay to make it worth having and improving them, and to make it fun to find out what all you can do with them if/when you have them."
I quote what jumped out at me. Guess my A/N was working.
I think that's really, really important, those bits. I like the rest, but I hope that if REDs see nothing else, they see that.
Hello I had an idea to make a game editor for kiberpank2077 kiberkit call him the opportunity to create their weapons modify buy implants combat skills.
implant stealth gives you the opportunity to pass by enemies unnoticed implant pass through walls. on the run run into the house through the walls. type missions chase on a motorcycle
use the environment to beat the enemies in the style of bat kungfu- install implants knowledge of martial arts.
parkour running along the walls jumping skolenie parkour acrobatics. fly on dzhetpake.
opportunity to run on the walls and sbivatsya enemies jump over the obstacle
Battle of the kosmomototsiklah with swords. with car chases. Fight with the interaction such as throw in a banner split face against the glass hit the table on the refrigerator.
All this talk about controls and gameplay perspective makes me think of another idea, maybe they should make Cyberpunk 2077's gameplay and perspectives fairly modular? The ability to play the game in a 1st-person/3rd-person Action RPG method (ala TES, Recent Fallouts, Witcher 2/3) or play in a more tactical, isometric, point-and-click style (like Classic Fallout, Infinity Engine, Witcher 1's Isometric option) at will would be great and make it very accessible to all kinds of gaming preferences. Personally, I'm pretty malleable and can stand to play either style depending on my mood, and Witcher 1's gameplay options in that regard were pretty cool.
What is also very important to me is branching outcomes based on your choices and actions along with multiple endings. I hate games that call themselves RPG's and yet choices are just window dressing and it all leads to the same outcome. I was bummed to hear that the witcher 3 will not have branching outcomes like the witcher 2. The argument was because they did not want people to miss parts of the story. Having choices that change the story IS THE WHOLE POINT OF AN RPG. Your actions MATTER and affect things. Having all roads lead to the same outcome makes it less an RPG and more of an FPS with some RPG elements. I do not expect all roads to be open when I play an RPG, I expect some paths will be open and other closed based on my choices. The fun is going back later and seeing how the game will be different with a different choice. If it is endings and the company wants to have a sequel, do not limit all choices to the same outcome. Just create multiple endings and then chose one REAL ending to continue it with.
Some people (non RPGers obviously) complain loudly when they aren't "allowed" to experience the whole game in one play thru.
No matter what you do, or don't do you're going to annoy someone, so I say don't placate anyone, just do what works best.
What is also very important to me is branching outcomes based on your choices and actions along with multiple endings. I hate games that call themselves RPG's and yet choices are just window dressing and it all leads to the same outcome. I was bummed to hear that the witcher 3 will not have branching outcomes like the witcher 2. The argument was because they did not want people to miss parts of the story. Having choices that change the story IS THE WHOLE POINT OF AN RPG. Your actions MATTER and affect things. Having all roads lead to the same outcome makes it less an RPG and more of an FPS with some RPG elements. I do not expect all roads to be open when I play an RPG, I expect some paths will be open and other closed based on my choices. The fun is going back later and seeing how the game will be different with a different choice. If it is endings and the company wants to have a sequel, do not limit all choices to the same outcome. Just create multiple endings and then chose one REAL ending to continue it with.
You misunderstood what's happening on TW3. There's plenty of choices that affect the story, just no choices as drastic as the fork in TW2 that blocks off entire regions and main quests for two-thirds of the game, because in an Open World game that wouldn't be as desirable.
I'd expect CP77 to take a similar approach. Choices will affect the availability of individual missions, and will have long-term impact that you can't just "fix" by loading a recent save, but no single decision with such a massive impact.
I know this has probably been mentioned already, but I thought I'd add my voice to the pile of people who like this idea: if you have to have multiplayer support of some kind in Cyberpunk 2077, I would love it to be along the lines Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2, where you could create a story module or campaign from scratch and then load it up in multiplayer and host your friends through the campaign as a DM/Referee who has the authority to change and control things at will, or join your friends in playing somebody else's custom module or campaign.
I'd be perfectly fine with a singleplayer-only game or even just co-op in the campaign, but the standard Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2 set for pen-and-paper to computer game conversions was the best aspect of those games, especially with the kind of multiplayer support it had.
I know this has probably been mentioned already, but I thought I'd add my voice to the pile of people who like this idea: if you have to have multiplayer support of some kind in Cyberpunk 2077, I would love it to be along the lines Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2, where you could create a story module or campaign from scratch and then load it up in multiplayer and host your friends through the campaign as a DM/Referee who has the authority to change and control things at will, or join your friends in playing somebody else's custom module or campaign.
I'd be perfectly fine with a singleplayer-only game or even just co-op in the campaign, but the standard Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2 set for pen-and-paper to computer game conversions was the best aspect of those games, especially with the kind of multiplayer support it had.
Hmm, I was playing Mass Effect recently and I was thinking how similar it is to other Bioware franchises. Same characters archetypes, same story situations, same story structure, a lot of stuff and ideas reused, even the damn hanoi tower puzzle.
So I don't think CDPR should fall into the same trap, and they should re-use as little ideas or the structure of The Witcher series as possible, with the plot but also with game design or quest design.