Have you managed to play TW3 without levels as well? DMG numbers are not a problem (if you know the level), but no levels means you can find yourself dead with 1 hit fighting a random group of bandits (who are levels higher than you).
I've tried, but after a few hours I turned them back on. Also, if anywhere, cyberpunk would be the world where you have an AI installed in your head that gives a numerical representation to how dangerous a person is likely to be.
whoa there, that escalated quickly
you know levels 99.9% mean bullet sponges, so... nope.
The most common alternatives would have to be no levels at all, which still could lead to running into really dangerous people and not knowing it until too late, or level scaling (which IMO is the bane of good game design).
Well, if they tell you that max-tac, trauma team, full borg conversions and big robots are very dangerous, you know it and you don't try to fight them 'till end game (but you can try, if you're very good you can do it since DMG are equal for both, they just have better "abilities/cyberware" and more advanced gear). A good game designer would make you face them gradually:
-in an early mission, first time you meet trauma team, you are forced to run away (jackie screams "jaina, trauma team is here! just run for your life!" if you don't you die),
-mid-game you start fighting a couple of them in another mission (you need to escape from a building during a swat/max-tac incursion and "the boss" before the exit is a couple of them, so you test their power in a controlled setting)
-eng-game: it's all max-tac and arasaka ninjas
We've got millions of examples in videogames where enemies are introduced this way, first one that comes to my mind (since is the most recent) is sekiro and these sons of bitches:
No levels, but trust me, you know a strong enemy when you meet one. You "just" need a good game designer who knows how to place enemies.
EDIT: demo showed how scanner can give you info about how dangerous an NPC is, that could subsitute levels with colours or word:
So you don't end up fighting someone too strong /EDIT
An acceptable compromise for levels IMHO, is standard levels for enemy type: ALL scavengers (first demo) are level 2, ALL vodoo boys are all level 18 and ALL max tac officers are level 36 (bosses excluded, ofc). Levels do not reflect their DMG output or HPs (if not to minimum extent, an advanced assault rifle is better than a 9mm, and skinweave gives more defense or HP than a t-shirt), but their abilities:
-scavengers are normal guys with guns and that's it (level 2)
-vodoo boys have good cyberware for their limbs (unhuman strenght and speed) (level 18)
-trauma team has very good gear (level 25)
-max tac has both cyberware and gear (x-ray vision, smoke bombs, super strenght and speed, double jumps) (level 36)
You don't level up bullets' DMG or HP: a bullet deals 25HP in the body and 100 in the head, always, enemies' (and yours) defenses change thanks to gear and cyberware.
A scavenger dies with 1 headshot (100HP) from a 9mm gun (given gear has no levels), a vodoo boy as well, 2 if has skinweave (200HP), trauma team wear an helmet, so more headshots are needed, let's say 3 (300HP), max tac has everything, so can be bullet sponge for a 9mm, but all of them remain consistent throughout the game.
So you don't meet a level 2 scavenger and at end-game a level 30 scavenger which looks the same, but is stronger than a level 15 max-tac and weaker than level 40 max-tac. This is the problem with levels being immersion breaking. Not levels per se.
I like your ideas. However, they would be super hard to implement in an open world game. With linear level design they would work. But the designers can't know where the player will go next in an open world to scale things like that. Unless they block off entire zones of the city until later in the game. Which IMO would be lame.
But level gating areas has exactly the same problem, then. It's not really open world if you can't go in heywood unless you match the area's level. You can't travel to skellige before level 16 in TW3.
With the system I described, which is exactly the same as sekiro (don't know if you've played it), the world is almost completely open exactly because it has no levels and you can do different areas in the order you prefer. But sekiro doesn't have side quests (from software's side quests are not real side quests), so a good way to solve it is looking at RDR2: in RDR2 side quests appear only when it makes sense for the plot, briefly: there's an alteranation between moments when you are forced to do the main quest and moments when you can do side quests. Game pacing and rhytm are so perfect that you never think "oh my god, I'm in a hurry to find Ciri, but first lemme play some gwent".
Now, given TW3, we can assume CP2077 will have a similar structure and won't be skyrim-like. It's narrative-driven, CDPR said it several times. So devs will know exactly were we'll be and which skills we'll have during the main quest. Side quests (and vendors) will be unlocked gradually thanks to street creds (which are a brilliant idea, limped by classic levels, though).
What happens in my vision: you start the game-> tutorial-> open-world, night city is yours to explore. Jackie (or any NPC) tells you that you need to get more famous in order to catch the major league's attention. You do that completing some missions (main quest) but you can also do side quests to gain more E$ (= gear and cyberware). You're not in a hurry, it's coherent with the narrative. You have a limited number of side quests and are pretty easy (you don't have end-game quests from the beginning like in TW3 which made you wait 60 hours between accepting and completing them), being early game, so you don't end up being overpower even if you do all the side quests: you buy a better assault rifle, a better car, stuff like that. You enjoy role-playing and CDPR's top notch narrative (not that in TW3 that level gated gear had any sense to exist, since you could find better stuff every time you levelled up, which happened 34 times during each playthough). During this mission, you meet "low levels" enemies (scavengers and alike), if you don't try to get into a police station, you won't have any trouble with max tac and what not. BUT, if you manage to get into a police station and steal some corpo rifle, that's great! Risk and reward! And it's not overpower, because it's not level-gated so as I described in my previous post, a bullet from it is slightly more powerful than a 9mm bullets, but not like lvl 10 bullet vs lvl 35 bullet. You get your reward but you don't break the game.
You meet dexter de shawn, kill maelstromers, jackie dies, you want to find dexter for revenge so you need to get even more famous to get in contact with a big fixer (main quest): open world again and new (harder) side quests you can accept, buy better gear and cyberware. The cycle starts again.
