I do not have problem with gas stations in Cyberpunk 2077.
I thought to write this up to sum up what design decisions in game made it work for me and as food for thought for people wondering their own suggestions.
Gas station problem presents situation where game feature such as gas station, may present very different things to different players. Gas station problem is name I came up with for something car racing games and communities have been dealing with for decades. It goes back to early street racing games, such as Test Drive and Need For Speed to early open world games such as Test Drive: Unlimited to modern games such as Forza Horizon, the Crew and NFS: Heath.
Open world racers today, still don't have functional gas stations or no gas stations at all (Horizon 4), even it's feature that keeps getting asked and there's a good reason for that.
What gas station or such (player house, other landmarks etc.) can enable in today's open world car games?
1. Distinct architecture compared to other buildings make it a great meeting point for convoys (let's meet there and go explore) and other meets (lemme show up my livery).
2. Depending of world, there might be a large parking lot that enables showing of drifting skills or maybe there's a abandoned airstrip or other location nearby that enables drag races and speed traps to try and show top speed of tune.
3. Photo location, for photographers own joy and/or to share in social media.
4. Quick repair if such feature is needed (NFS: Heath)
Odd one out: Enable refueling player car. That one is literally out. While suggestion to add such feature has surfaced every now and then for decades, it's not implemented because most of the target audience don't want that. First; fueling a car, no matter if it's a Ferrari or old Ford, is just something very banal. Secondly; it doesn't enable anything like on listed above (1-4) and third; We realize, that no studio has infinite resources and one small step can lead to elevator descending to hell at the speed of sound.
So how does gas station problem present itself in Cyberpunk 2077 and how CDPR found their way around it in a way that I as player appreciate. Some spoilers ahead.
Example: 1. Looting and Crafting - Guns
Design CDPR has for Cyberpunk allows players with very different motivations choose how involved they get with crafting, or if they just focus more on looting. We can also note, that we can swap role play reasons between columns. This is in my opinion very good solution. Special note to story segment where we get our gun back from weapon smith. It's a named gun, but in the end nothing special. It doesn't set any expectations, motivate player to take any path, it just tells us, that there are special items like that in game.
Example: 2. Different scenario, player character nudity
This is an example of one small step leading to an elevator descending to hell at the speed of sound. I'm happy that CDPR has been clear that in game nudity is not up to debate. Fair or unfair, moralizing it is pointless. Sometimes we just can't have nice things because somethings just are outside of our control.
While example 2 is quite serious matter by itself I think in general it might be worth awhile to think about implications of suggested feature. Express elevators to hell probably won't be implemented.
Example: 3. Suggestions and side activities, skills
Say game if there's a bottleneck and certainly feel there are couple of them. What kind of features would work solving that without creating a gas station problem or find a way around it?
Those are just for example. I could think of Brawling skill could be gated to bot level, as that can give only so much challenge or in other words, is unable to offer challenge beyond certain point that goes above player character comfort zone so we don't get in situation where there are player hitting that bot for 6 hours to make them OP and then feeling actual boxing matches unchallenging and experiencing whole game being boring bot beating sim 0/10, not recommend to anyone unless really like boxing with a bot.
Example: 4. There are many things that probably aren't a gas station problem.
What I have been thinking there are things that are up to different taste or something more fundamental, like gaining and processing information. I was surprised to read that not everybody liked data shards scattered in game missions. For me they were huge factor to me willing to suspend my disbelief. For me data I gathered by doing some side gigs and NCPD missions gave picture of gangs, their goals, internal dynamics and overall picture of what kind of city the Night City is. That then changed how I saw police and I think it had quite a bit of impact to how I later experienced NPC character River.
I recall other game, Mass Effect series which had some sort of encyclopedia for fluff, but I never really came to read those as space magic is still space magic, no matter how much fluff is made around it.
For immersive features, I don't care about every food cart not selling food, that feature can be there as far as I can ignore it, like it won't cause dialogue prompts every three meters on tight packed market squares for example so not creating a gas station problem.
While there are very different views of what kind of game Cyberpunk 2077 I hope these examples can help people who think that it's a great game, there should just be more of it.
I thought to write this up to sum up what design decisions in game made it work for me and as food for thought for people wondering their own suggestions.
Gas station problem presents situation where game feature such as gas station, may present very different things to different players. Gas station problem is name I came up with for something car racing games and communities have been dealing with for decades. It goes back to early street racing games, such as Test Drive and Need For Speed to early open world games such as Test Drive: Unlimited to modern games such as Forza Horizon, the Crew and NFS: Heath.
Open world racers today, still don't have functional gas stations or no gas stations at all (Horizon 4), even it's feature that keeps getting asked and there's a good reason for that.
What gas station or such (player house, other landmarks etc.) can enable in today's open world car games?
1. Distinct architecture compared to other buildings make it a great meeting point for convoys (let's meet there and go explore) and other meets (lemme show up my livery).
2. Depending of world, there might be a large parking lot that enables showing of drifting skills or maybe there's a abandoned airstrip or other location nearby that enables drag races and speed traps to try and show top speed of tune.
3. Photo location, for photographers own joy and/or to share in social media.
4. Quick repair if such feature is needed (NFS: Heath)
Odd one out: Enable refueling player car. That one is literally out. While suggestion to add such feature has surfaced every now and then for decades, it's not implemented because most of the target audience don't want that. First; fueling a car, no matter if it's a Ferrari or old Ford, is just something very banal. Secondly; it doesn't enable anything like on listed above (1-4) and third; We realize, that no studio has infinite resources and one small step can lead to elevator descending to hell at the speed of sound.
So how does gas station problem present itself in Cyberpunk 2077 and how CDPR found their way around it in a way that I as player appreciate. Some spoilers ahead.
Example: 1. Looting and Crafting - Guns
Code:
Some examples of possible player motivation
Mechanic is interesting | Mechanic is uninteresting time sink
Keep visual style (living legend) | Not interested, how does gold plating on a gun make ammo pack more powder anyway?
Keep Jackie's Gun for example, | Role play, practical mercenary
for role play reason |Design CDPR has for Cyberpunk allows players with very different motivations choose how involved they get with crafting, or if they just focus more on looting. We can also note, that we can swap role play reasons between columns. This is in my opinion very good solution. Special note to story segment where we get our gun back from weapon smith. It's a named gun, but in the end nothing special. It doesn't set any expectations, motivate player to take any path, it just tells us, that there are special items like that in game.
Example: 2. Different scenario, player character nudity
Code:
Motivations Elevator to hell
Humour and or roleplay scenarios: | This could be fun, but there are children models in
Stranger arrives at gas station | game. Said nudity would be among base features
wearing only sun glasses and | unfortunately reality is that there would be players
has a baseball bat in his hand | sticking things in various places with kid models
kick everyone's ass. | and posting that stuff all over social media.
| Then there would be huge controversy, there would
| be lawsuits not only regarding game but potentially
Express my self for... | every platform that sells it.
| Generally certain things are repulsive among general population
| regardless, everyone who has game would be potentially part of that
Fredom to express... | controversy and there's big difference between playing a game that
| not everyone likes and between playing that pedophile game covered by media.
| Latter can shatter careers.This is an example of one small step leading to an elevator descending to hell at the speed of sound. I'm happy that CDPR has been clear that in game nudity is not up to debate. Fair or unfair, moralizing it is pointless. Sometimes we just can't have nice things because somethings just are outside of our control.
While example 2 is quite serious matter by itself I think in general it might be worth awhile to think about implications of suggested feature. Express elevators to hell probably won't be implemented.
Example: 3. Suggestions and side activities, skills
Say game if there's a bottleneck and certainly feel there are couple of them. What kind of features would work solving that without creating a gas station problem or find a way around it?
Code:
Motivations Solutions?
Game play, player skill | Gun range, near V's apartment
|
Game play, character skills and | Bot at gym near V's apartment, Brawling
player skill | (synergy, Athletics)
|Those are just for example. I could think of Brawling skill could be gated to bot level, as that can give only so much challenge or in other words, is unable to offer challenge beyond certain point that goes above player character comfort zone so we don't get in situation where there are player hitting that bot for 6 hours to make them OP and then feeling actual boxing matches unchallenging and experiencing whole game being boring bot beating sim 0/10, not recommend to anyone unless really like boxing with a bot.
Example: 4. There are many things that probably aren't a gas station problem.
What I have been thinking there are things that are up to different taste or something more fundamental, like gaining and processing information. I was surprised to read that not everybody liked data shards scattered in game missions. For me they were huge factor to me willing to suspend my disbelief. For me data I gathered by doing some side gigs and NCPD missions gave picture of gangs, their goals, internal dynamics and overall picture of what kind of city the Night City is. That then changed how I saw police and I think it had quite a bit of impact to how I later experienced NPC character River.
I recall other game, Mass Effect series which had some sort of encyclopedia for fluff, but I never really came to read those as space magic is still space magic, no matter how much fluff is made around it.
For immersive features, I don't care about every food cart not selling food, that feature can be there as far as I can ignore it, like it won't cause dialogue prompts every three meters on tight packed market squares for example so not creating a gas station problem.
While there are very different views of what kind of game Cyberpunk 2077 I hope these examples can help people who think that it's a great game, there should just be more of it.
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