Fairly disappointed leveled enemies are still in.

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Well, the title should be pretty self-explanatory, but I'll elaborate a bit on that.

I was reading/watching impressions about the private demo and while most of it sounds impressive and almost unbelievably good, I couldn't help but notice how the press is pointing out that enemies are still tiered by levels and have their level clearly stated as a label close to their names.

I'm definitely disappointed by that, not just because arguments could be made that it's an immersion-breaking detail, but also because I genuinely don't think the game needed levels in the first place from a mechanical standpoint.
If The Witcher 3 is anything to go by, levels were completely superfluous there as well and they introduced far more issues that they solved.
They forced level-gated gear, they introduced a progressive unnecessary stat inflation over time for both the character and the enemies, encouraged item bloat, created nonsensical scenarios from a narrative standpoint (i.e. Wild Hunts general level six, scary big stone golem level 9, then followed by lvl 30 wolves and lvl 40 angry farmers with pitchforks come to mind).

A progression system where you just unlock talents/improve skills without any need for levels would have been so much a better fit for Cyberpunk, especially considering how the pen&paper ruleset was notoriously a level-less one.

it is possible that they lvl up with your lvl. Some missions the enemy is always 1 or 2 lvl above/lower (to) you so. So some missions are easy and some are hard.
Dont think this is the case.. but possible :)
 
Do you imply that you could kill the president of the USA easely because there is no levels in reality?
No?
Then it means there are other means to make killing someone more difficult without inflating it's health and damages.
This is a game, not real life. Besides, TW3 and other games like Skyrim had levels with no problems. If they put the same system that TW3 got after an update with the option of enemies having the same level of the player, better yet.
 
Do you imply that you could kill the president of the USA easely because there is no levels in reality?
No?
Then it means there are other means to make killing someone more difficult without inflating it's health and damages.
Why do you want to say the real world????? This is the game. OK LOL
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The real world and the virtual world are unclear, it’s terrible.
 
The levels should be an indicator the characters relative skill level. Not how much lead s/he can eat lead before dying.

E.g. if you see an NPC with a level 18 tag and you yourself are level 4, you can fairly reasonably assess that when the NPC has gear and knowhow to spot and off you very fast and easily, while you might still have hard time pulling off that precious headshot from afar.

There could even be an invisible check made against the enemy's level that adjusts your skill against his. But no HP bloats.
 
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Level 1 directly kills the strongest boss, the game is over, this game is really fun

LOL
Some of you honestly seem to suffer from a tragic case of narrow vision.
I already made this example few months ago in the "gear and equiment" thread, but just to reiterate: Breath of the Wild is an action adventure without levels of any sort and yet equipment and special abilities by themselves are STILL more than enough to make Link comically overpowered and virtually unkillable by the late game.
So, where does this necessity to introduce levels come into play, exactly?

Now, I'm not saying that CP 2077 should play like BoTW, nor that it should adapt the same (still deeply flawed and frankly monotone) progression system, but can we please admit that adding some sort of level bloat to characters is NOT a necessity to keep things challenging?

If anything I think it's actually detrimental to that goal, but I'm not even expecting everyone to agree. Just to not come up with nonsensical rebuttals that don't make any sense and are directly contradicted by existing examples.

Another case is Gothic: no one is "leveled" in Gothic. every time you cross an NPC or monster, its level of threat is implicit in what it is and what equipment it carries. You won't see wolves repurposed all across the game at variable levels and an orc will always be more of a threat than any wolf, regardless of when you'll meet them.
Consistency.
 
Levelled enemies are an interesting topic, one that I feel I want to to comment on.
Basically, I think enemies having levels makes sense to some extent. I like logic, so I'll be going for that angle. Feel free to skip this somewhat lengthy post.


Let's say you're facing a gang of thugs. Thug 1 has only recently joined the group, and doesn't have much experience with combat yet (low-level enemy), whereas Thug 2 has been around for a year and has lived through a couple of tough battles (mid-level enemy). Thug Boss is a true veteran who has fought more battles to the death than he can remember (high-level enemy).

Alternatively: Gang 1 has only recently entered the scene, and its members haven't had to fight too many battles yet (low-level enemies). Gang 2 has to fight for survival on a weekly if not daily basis (high-level enemies).

Add to that locations, gear, and other relevant things and the equation becomes a lot more complicated with far more believable outcomes (= enemy levels, for both individuals and groups).

Similarly, other types of enemies being of varying levels can, in my opinion, be justified by saying some of them are more experienced than others, or are otherwise in a more advantageous positions (for example have larger numbers) than others of their kind. This of course is rarely, if ever, actually used as in-game justification, but still.

I'm aware higher-level enemies having more health doesn't really make any logical sense; that's still an artificial device to differentiate between the aforementioned Thug 1 and Thug 2 (as an example).


What doesn't make sense to me, at all, under any circumstances, is something like normal wolves being more dangerous than superhuman mutants just because the wolves are level 50 and the superhuman mutants level 2.


In general, I think it's refreshing to find a game where enemies don't have levels; where their threat level is determined by what type of enemies they are. Or, they can have levels but still be mainly governed by their type (the Requiem mod for Skyrim is a good example of this approach IMO).

All things considered, whether or not enemies have levels is not a major thing to me; it's not something that'll make or break a game.
 
It's important to remember that leveled enemies are an immense help with reducing asset creep. Imagine enemies having no number indicators of threat level, you would have to create a lot of different models and animations for enemies themselves and their equipment to inform the player that "this enemy" is more dangerous than the other ones in the city/district/location. In a game of this size it would take a really long time, even if not everyone had a special model (changing details on existing assets takes a lot of time and resources too). Doing that you also have to account for QA and other stuff, so while it is not the perfect solution, it's one that works for many players.

Of course you can always decrease the scope of the game to avoid that (for example the Gothic series, although it wasn't perfect either) but I don't think CDPR would want that. So unless we use procedural tools for 3D modeling and animation (yes, I know that technology like that exists and is being used by other studios) we have to live with what we have. It also doesn't mean that feedback on this subject is worthless.

There's always the case that maybe CDPR just likes this kind of systems and that's why they are implementing them, after all leveled enemies are not "bad design" (IMO).
 
Honestly, if anything I'd hold the "you can reuse the same enemies at different levels" as an additional point against the system.

Putting aside that poor enemy variety is an entirely separate issue, I'd rather have consistency (i.e. the already explained "an elite will always be more dangerous than a thug") and a lower number of enemies than artificial variety justified only by a level tag and some recolored model.
 
Just chiming in to say this is something I'm also apprehensive about. I'd be okay with character levels as long as they don't pose an insurmountable difference due to stat bloat. Most people have pretty firm expectations on what is supposed to happen when someone is shot in the head. Dumping several mags into a hobo only for him to 1HK you because he's several levels higher would be really disappointing.
I'm also not very keen on seeing prefixed, suffixed, color coded items with stats largely depending on item level, for the same reason.
 
People are so invested in what a typical RPG looks like that I think admitting even the possibility things could be done a different way causes them pain.
What's a typical RPG?

I think it's mostly a lack of imagination. "RPGs have levels", "looter-shooters have randomly generated gear", "FPS games do X", "flight sims do Y", etc. Certain things are (or should be) inherent to a system, RPGs are character based, FPS games are player based, flight/driving sims (SIMS not just driving in any old game) need excellent controls, platformers stress timing and precision, QTEs and "fight" (i.e. Mortal Combat) stress player reaction speed, etc.

Mixing genres is fine but adding one or two elements from 'X' genre to a 'Y' genre game doesn't make the game 'X' genre. Conversely when certain basic game mechanics (FPS vs RPG combat for instance) are used in 'X' game it changes the nature, and genre, of the game, it's no longer fundamentally an 'X' genre game.

This is the "problem" we face. Publishers want to increase sales (duh) and by adding one or two RPG elements to a shooter, racing/piloting game, 4E game, heck even a purely FPS game they say it's an RPG. They're not. Any more then adding a little armor and a gun to your car makes it a tank.
 
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