Driving in Cyberpunk!

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Because driving is such a big part of the way to navigate Night City, it's important that it be responsive and fun to handle. It's also especially important for car races. I want them to avoid the driving being too stiff, weighty, or floaty. Something that's fun and easy enough to control within a crowded, dense city environment. The Witcher 3s mediocre horse mechanics were a pain at times, so it makes me worried about how they will handle driving. Additional HUD changes like a rearview mirror and the ability to instantly look behind you would be helpful. Maybe automatic driving for combat mode?
 
I’d still want there to be driving skills where the skill value governs the steering wobbliness and accuracy after specific speed thresholds. Meaning that the player would need to actually invest into learning to drive in order to ”go fast” abd attend racing games, or even get moving reliably with vehicles that have very fast acceleration.
 
Hey,
what comes from the top of my head:
- vehicle bumps depending on the terrain (nice-to-have to make driving more interesting and responsive)
- player needs to manually change gear (kinda weird and redundant)
- maybe some nitro stuff...
- different vehicle responsiveness (based on weight, speed,...) (redundant?)
- weather effects? (rain, dirt,... on the front window of the car; some wind effects while on a motorcycle?)

The racing skill could be based on character attributes and skills...I don't know...like, depending on the environment or something?
- e.g. while racing on top of a mountain, you need some extra reflexes(intelligence attribute?) or skills (parkour?)
- e.g. while racing in the dark, you need some sort of dexterity and strength?

While racing, a player could have this "fear level bar" as Roach had in Witcher 3. It could fill as a player hits some objects or people,... and when fully filled, it would just automatically cause a player to crash...

I don't really know, these are just some random ideas :)
 
I’d still want there to be driving skills where the skill value governs the steering wobbliness and accuracy after specific speed thresholds. Meaning that the player would need to actually invest into learning to drive in order to ”go fast” abd attend racing games, or even get moving reliably with vehicles that have very fast acceleration.
No one is going to want to waste a character point in 'help me drive more accurately'. It'd be better to tie car handling into what kind of vehicle you get and what type of upgrades you can afford.
 
No one is going to want to waste a character point in 'help me drive more accurately'. It'd be better to tie car handling into what kind of vehicle you get and what type of upgrades you can afford.
Totally agree with you , i wouldn't put points into something that can be completely avoided . You don't need to drive when the City and story is better explored on foot .

I did like how FP looked riding the bike , it seemed very much like RL ( even thought i know we haven`t seen enough of this) .
 
It'd be pretty cool if COOL would affect how you drive. The cooler you are, the less prone you are to crashing and you would be able to handle cars better.
 

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Just wonder how deep they intend to go in terms of driving mechanics and how the vehicles actually handle. CDPR has stated manual shifting is out, so what about power braking, drifting, burnouts etc. And that's just based on standard cars/bikes with wheels. Will there be hovercars/flying cars at some point as shown in the concept art? That presents a different set of handling I'm sure. Also, lets not forget that the vehicles in the city will handle different from something built for the wasteland, which would have a much different feel when driving on raw terrain/off road/sandy environments.

Based on the demo and deep dive, driving seems pretty basic on a gameplay level. Not quite sure if or how stats will affect driving ability and handling as well as vehicle tuning/customization but it will be interesting to see.

I hope its one of the deeper features of the game and to be able to really invest in building a garage full of purpose built assortment of vehicles for various objectives and fun. I hope to see the ability to build race cars, death race, mad max battle, trucks & cargo carriers, multi purpose type vehicles. Each vehicle can be upgraded in specific ways for various functions for speed, armor, cargo or spare passengers for missions.

A scenario I would suggest is - The player is at the far west coast bay of Night City, you're meeting a contact that needs help retrieving some valuable "resources" of a larger quantity far east outside NC in the badlands. Your contact can send a small recon group to notify you when the marauders guarding these recourses are spread thin due to another group that can be sent to plan a ruse to get their attention, a distraction to allow you to get in, take out what enemies that are left, get the goods, and get gone.

This is where you come in. The mission objective is many miles outside of NC, Do we take a vehicle built for speed and limited cargo space and get as much as we can get in, get out? Or do we take something a bit more cumbersome and extra cargo space and some extra manpower with the chance the enemy could eventually find and catch up to you, and you have to hold them off as long as possible, making the mission more challenging but the pay off is greater. In preparation for the mission, you can spec out the vehicle to optimize mission effectiveness in advance.

The wastelanders vehicles are built for it, so building a vehicle to complete the mission in that type of environment is key to success. I think these kind of decisions should have real weight on how much you know of the situations you're dealing with and how you prepare for them. Witcher style.
 
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There's zero indication driving will be anything more than a minimal point and click affair. I have no idea what racing would look like given racing in TW3.
 
I'm really scared that driving will be bad... I imagine a driving system as bad as the first watch dogs or even worse saints row, maybe even without damages in case of collisions with vehicles or environment... a 10+ year old driving that makes traveling tedious... There must be a reason why nobody, even the press, has seen driving in traffic so far. I really hope I'm wrong.
 
I'm really scared that driving will be bad... I imagine a driving system as bad as the first watch dogs or even worse saints row, maybe even without damages in case of collisions with vehicles or environment... a 10+ year old driving that makes traveling tedious... There must be a reason why nobody, even the press, has seen driving in traffic so far. I really hope I'm wrong.

I'm not so much worried about the feel of driving, but how it is adjusted for the missions that require it (and of course, that there won't be skills to govern it).

Many games of this sort that I've played, I've noticed that situations where you have to either chase someone or escape from someone, it is adjusted completely bonkers. You might have a Kawasaki Ninja under you and you need to chase a garbage truck; what happens is that you just can't catch it no matter how much throttle you give to your superbike. Not a chance until the game decides that now you've chased it enough and are allowed to catch it. But until then the opponent is simply uncatchable. And vice versa if you have to escape someone, you simply can't until after a certain amount of time. And the police is a whole number of their own in this regard, I won't even go there. I saw this happen in Sleeping Dogs, GTA, Watchdogs, Saints Row... And it just feels aggravatingly stupid.

I was reminded of this kind of assbackwards design when I saw the car chace in the 2018 demo, in which the player was LOCKED into the chase, and no less than by reversing the roles where the gangers attacked and drove in front of the player and turned the situation into the player chasing them... for no sensible reason. None. At. All.

That's kinda one the reasons I would very much like driving to be abstracted in a certain sense, or at least allowed to be abstracted. With skills governing them. That if you can drive well manually, there are no artificial barriers preventing you from achieving success too quickly, but first you have to make your character able to drive well, so that his inability doesn't prevent "you" from being able, and it might even aid you if you-the-player are not well adjusted to driving manually. And then there's of course the thing, that you should be able to put the character on autopilot when he's behind the wheel, leaving the driving completely characterskill driven.

And why does this text editor constantly force italics on mid-writing?
 
Many games of this sort that I've played, I've noticed that situations where you have to either chase someone or escape from someone, it is adjusted completely bonkers.
that's true, I don't like that as well.

BTW, just spoke with a friend who saw the public demo this afternoon and he confirmed that driving and shooting are the weakest parts in the demo. OFC devs haven't shown collisions so we still don't know anything about that.
 
We know they hired devs experienced in FPS, but I've not heard they hired any devs experienced in driving mechanics. I don't think either is something they could just figure out on their own. They need to hire the right talent.
 

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Back in topic to driving though. Its hard to say much about it because they have only shown a few instances of it with the Quadra and the bike. I do think the driving will be somewhat limited based on the design of the city and confined in some areas seem to be as you would expect in a dense urban environment but I would expect some areas to open up a bit.

They have sold me on their approach to driving gameplay so far, as being able to drive 3rd and 1st person is rarely done in games outside of the racing genre. If they can get handling right and sound design right, it shouldn't be an issue.
 
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Maybe automatic driving for combat mode?
Didn't they have that in the first demo? I mean, it could easily be a preset kind of thing, but I definitely would prefer if any time we choose to shoot back while in a moving car, the car will just autopilot a random route until the combat finishes or we choose to take over. Aiming and driving separately at the same time never feels good to me, especially when I need to shoot backwards and crash into things I didn't see. In a world with self driving cars, I would definitely like this kind of approach to vehicle combat wherever possible.
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I was reminded of this kind of assbackwards design when I saw the car chace in the 2018 demo, in which the player was LOCKED into the chase, and no less than by reversing the roles where the gangers attacked and drove in front of the player and turned the situation into the player chasing them... for no sensible reason. None. At. All.

I see where you're coming from, but it wasn't THAT bad. Felt to me more like some guys decided to pull off a driveby on another car, they were just taking potshots at V, then they pulled ahead so they could open up the back and have more guys shoot. Unlucky for them, V and Jackie got mad and stuck on their tail long enough to take them out.

From the perspective of the enemy, they shoot your car up, hopefully kill you, and if you run away, they haven't really lost anything. If things go bad for them, they can just try to run. From a player perspective, the feeling of being locked into a chase you don't care about could be handled simply by giving us the option to enter combat, or just keep driving and try to get away. Similarly, a simple option to stop shooting and take the wheel back should exist in case the player changes their mind, or if the fight is turning into more of a chase than they care for.

Being railroaded isn't fun, sure, but I think the fix would be pretty simple here.
 
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Felt to me more like some guys decided to pull off a driveby on another car, they were just taking potshots at V, then they pulled ahead so they could open up the back and have more guys shoot.

That’s exactly what happened there, but it looked forced an even stupid that Jackie just kept following them without a prompt, as if he couldn’t not follow, not taking an opposite turn at any crossroad which would’ve - logically - solved the situation quickly by giving them time to get away while the goons turn their van.

I get that it was just a showcase of ”flashy mobile combat”, but the way it was composed made it feel rather bad.

Of course it can be fixed... there’s a lot of things that could (and from the looks of it, should) be fixed rather easily (at least on paper), but some things just look like they are meant to work the way they do, and that’s how they will remain.
 
I've seen the last demo: the 1st person BIKE driving felt very unrealistic ... and not only to mee :( but i'm pretty sure it will be fixed before release !
 
I just want to say: GTA5 has both TPP and FPP. Driving a GTA5 car in TPP is ok, but driving it in FPP with PC keyboard on/off controls is pure hell.
 
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