Now that the developers are seemingly on-board with modding and supporting the community:
This game DESPERATELY needs a challenge mod of some kind.
Think Witcher 3 Enhanced Edition mod - and you'll know what I mean.
Some suggestions:
Problem:
Enemies don't react effectively to being attacked from range/stealth. This is particularly evident when quickhacking - and they simply become "alerted" even when taking serious damage - and then they just stand around a bit, waiting to be killed. Another big problem is that you can attack them from a different level - and they won't be able to stay in search mode - and they'll just go back to standing around - making killing them utterly trivial.
Solution:
Enemies need to actively and aggressively search for the player as soon as they take damage - regardless of how they take damage. They should NEVER stand still when being attacked by the player and they can't see the player. They should only remain in cover when they've actually spotted the player - otherwise they need to move FAST and search, and THEN head into cover and start attacking the player (unless they're melee, in which case they should never - ever - stay in cover).
Problem:
You can be in stealth and Quickhack from a very long distance - and enemies simply have zero ways to combat it. Netrunners are obviously supposed to be a defense for this, but you can simply move out of range - and they just aren't enough of a threat.
Solution:
Initially, I think Quickhacking needs to be close range only. It's simply too powerful to be able to clear entire rooms from a distance at the start of the game. We need some of the later perks to enable distant hacking - but only gradually - and only up to something like 10-15 meters, so you can take advantage of cameras.
Also, again, enemies should never be "alerted" when being hacked. They should become aggressive immediately AND all their friends should join them. They need to search and keep searching for a much longer time - and, if possible, netrunners need to be faster and more responsive.
Problem:
There's something seriously off with damage scaling in this game. It starts out well enough - and the game is somewhat challenging on Very Hard - if you simply shoot things. But, it doesn't take that long before the combination of better weapons, perks, cyberware and mods make almost everything except bosses 100% trivial.
Solution:
We need some serious adjustments - and perhaps consider some kind of damage ceiling for damage/hitpoints.
For whatever reason, the developers thought it was a good idea to deal with damage starting in the hundreds and ending in the millions.
That's a very, very poor choice when trying to balance things out and such bloat is extremely hard to manage.
I don't know if it's possible - but if the source numbers and scaling factors could be found, I highly suggest tweaking them to something much more managable. Say, damage should range from 1 to 1000, perhaps.
That would make balancing a lot easier to figure out for 1-50 level players and enemies.
Problem:
Inhalers are available in absurd quantities, they have zero cooldowns - and they're entirely spammable with zero consequences. Effectively making you immortal except for one-shot kills if you want to be.
Solution:
There are many ways to handle this. One would be to simply add cooldowns to inhalers - and have the common ones have longer cooldowns (say, 10 seconds). The Legendary inhalers should perhaps have a 3 second cooldown.
Another way would be to implement a Witcher-style toxic response to the inhaler - meaning the player can only use them sparingly or suffer serious detrimental effects, like reduced response times or gradual damage over time.
Perks to alleviate or improve inhaler usage should be part of the Body attribute as well.
This game DESPERATELY needs a challenge mod of some kind.
Think Witcher 3 Enhanced Edition mod - and you'll know what I mean.
Some suggestions:
Problem:
Enemies don't react effectively to being attacked from range/stealth. This is particularly evident when quickhacking - and they simply become "alerted" even when taking serious damage - and then they just stand around a bit, waiting to be killed. Another big problem is that you can attack them from a different level - and they won't be able to stay in search mode - and they'll just go back to standing around - making killing them utterly trivial.
Solution:
Enemies need to actively and aggressively search for the player as soon as they take damage - regardless of how they take damage. They should NEVER stand still when being attacked by the player and they can't see the player. They should only remain in cover when they've actually spotted the player - otherwise they need to move FAST and search, and THEN head into cover and start attacking the player (unless they're melee, in which case they should never - ever - stay in cover).
Problem:
You can be in stealth and Quickhack from a very long distance - and enemies simply have zero ways to combat it. Netrunners are obviously supposed to be a defense for this, but you can simply move out of range - and they just aren't enough of a threat.
Solution:
Initially, I think Quickhacking needs to be close range only. It's simply too powerful to be able to clear entire rooms from a distance at the start of the game. We need some of the later perks to enable distant hacking - but only gradually - and only up to something like 10-15 meters, so you can take advantage of cameras.
Also, again, enemies should never be "alerted" when being hacked. They should become aggressive immediately AND all their friends should join them. They need to search and keep searching for a much longer time - and, if possible, netrunners need to be faster and more responsive.
Problem:
There's something seriously off with damage scaling in this game. It starts out well enough - and the game is somewhat challenging on Very Hard - if you simply shoot things. But, it doesn't take that long before the combination of better weapons, perks, cyberware and mods make almost everything except bosses 100% trivial.
Solution:
We need some serious adjustments - and perhaps consider some kind of damage ceiling for damage/hitpoints.
For whatever reason, the developers thought it was a good idea to deal with damage starting in the hundreds and ending in the millions.
That's a very, very poor choice when trying to balance things out and such bloat is extremely hard to manage.
I don't know if it's possible - but if the source numbers and scaling factors could be found, I highly suggest tweaking them to something much more managable. Say, damage should range from 1 to 1000, perhaps.
That would make balancing a lot easier to figure out for 1-50 level players and enemies.
Problem:
Inhalers are available in absurd quantities, they have zero cooldowns - and they're entirely spammable with zero consequences. Effectively making you immortal except for one-shot kills if you want to be.
Solution:
There are many ways to handle this. One would be to simply add cooldowns to inhalers - and have the common ones have longer cooldowns (say, 10 seconds). The Legendary inhalers should perhaps have a 3 second cooldown.
Another way would be to implement a Witcher-style toxic response to the inhaler - meaning the player can only use them sparingly or suffer serious detrimental effects, like reduced response times or gradual damage over time.
Perks to alleviate or improve inhaler usage should be part of the Body attribute as well.
