Hacking has been simplified?

[Swedrami]

According to the article in the latest August issue of Gamestar magazine you're no longer required to first breach one of the local network's access points to unlock the specific types of hacks to perform on NPCs or devices connected to said local network.

Instead you just scan NPCs or devices and then, depending on the equipped daemons have automatically all the corresponding performable hacks (short-circuit, overheat, force suicide, etc) presented to you.
Hacking in general reportedly now also uses a slowly regenerating resource ("memory") and the hex code-based breaching originally performed at the mentioned access points (10:17 minute mark in 2019's Deep Dive) has been degraded to just reduce the overall memory cost upon successfully stringing together the code pairings.

I sincerely hope that's just the article's author incorrectly recounting things from his hands-on session and that the above is actually not true.

 

[satyrsangre]

1 yeah apparently this is the case

2 i imagine there will be a difficulty modifier for your cyberdeck memory where it recharges very slowly or only under extremely specific conditions, making breaching much more necessary

3 locking hacks behind the Breach protocol may have made the accessibility of hacking too high for the standard difficulty mode. and it may have complicated the world design since the Breach boxes would have to be kinda everywhere--constantly. sometimes people don't want that hard of a playthrough, esp if they're going into the game for the story and not the engagement of mechanics

4 for me, i think the compromises they've made are reasonable. they're not degradations. they're really hard design decisions that have to made so that the mechanics are somewhat balanced. personally, as was mentioned in another thread, difficulty should be modular. something i hope is modular is the hacking. the idea that Breach protocols, daemons and demons are finite cyberdeck resources that have to be bought/crafted is all i've ever wanted (fuckin love the cyberdeck in Shadowrun).

i think it lets the gameplay go more quickly, especially if you're being chased. i could do the Breach protocol, reducing cost on everything i want to hack in the environment, but then i run the risk of detection. maybe i'm being looked for--aggressively--so i skip the Breach protocol, but then i can only hack like 2 things because the pressure's on and i have to keep moving. to me this isn't about degrading the experience. streamlining sure, but not as a bad thing. just letting the player have the option of being quick or contemplative about her decisions.

 

[OneWingedHawk]

So now i am interested, does that mean you can use these quick hacks on random NPCs too? since you don't really need to breach the local network of an area to get access to them?

 

[satyrsangre]

@OneWingedHawk now that would be interesting :O especially if we could create a distraction. that's really, really interesting.

 

[Sir.Smoke]

hmm, dumbing down ? I have learned on this forum that if one can customize their genitals, the game is a success

 

[Bloodartist]

According to the article in the latest August issue of Gamestar magazine you're no longer required to first breach one of the local network's access points to unlock the specific types of hacks to perform on NPCs or devices connected to said local network.

Instead you just scan NPCs or devices and then, depending on the equipped daemons have automatically all the corresponding performable hacks (short-circuit, overheat, force suicide, etc) presented to you.
Hacking in general reportedly now also uses a slowly regenerating resource ("memory") and the hex code-based breaching originally performed at the mentioned access points (10:17 minute mark in 2019's Deep Dive) has been degraded to just reduce the overall memory cost upon successfully stringing together the code pairings.

I sincerely hope that's just the article's author incorrectly recounting things from his hands-on session and that the above is actually not true.

Im not sure I like this.. Hacking the local network first before being able to use quick hacks wouldve added a layer of gameplay - you wouldve needed to sneak in first and find an access point and do the minigame.

At a surface this seems to
1.) Make hacking overpowered af as you can just point-and-click people to have their head explode or whatever
2.) Mean that you can't use it "enough" since the large cooldown you suffer once your "hacking resource" runs out. So its LESS likely to be used as your characters "main" playstyle, since you cant rely on it as much as you wanted. This seems bad in more than one way. Being "easy to use" is in this context kind of a negative if you ask me... Forcing you to just sit with your hands on your lap while the cooldown finishes is... not a good concept. Why not use the old system?

I heard about this design from a hands on preview: Basically you have a very slow regenerating resource that you use to do quick hacks. You can do hacks easily at a distance for as long as you got that resource. Once the resource runs out, it regens really slowly.

This "easy access but with cooldown" thing seems lazy and simplistic in comparison, and it in NO WAY manages to differentiate itself positively from other games that do this sort of thing. Maybe they didn't have time to plan all access points of the maps properly... I can ONLY see negatives in this system.

ps. Is the hacking minigame scrapped entirely? That was pretty much the ONLY reason I would even consider going for a hacker playthrough. Just point-and-clicking NPCs is not my idea of how hacking should feel. Not to mention this sort of "hacking resource" makes no sense to me. How does this work? Do AIs get tired? Lame.

 

[HellKnightX88]

Not a fan but I'll still make it my goal to find every box and hack into it.

 

[Swedrami]

[...]

ps. Is the hacking minigame scrapped entirely? That was pretty much the ONLY reason I would even consider going for a hacker playthrough. Just point-and-clicking NPCs is not my idea of how hacking should feel. Not to mention this sort of "hacking resource" makes no sense to me. How does this work? Do AIs get tired? Lame.

Not scrapped entirely but demoted to a pre-hack thing you can do, apparently at any time and without any prerequisites like breaching an access point, to lower the resource cost of the actual hack(s). At least that's how it's described in the article.


And who do we have to thank for all this BS again - fucking focus groups, [...].

Anything that's slow, more methodic/strategic getting in the way of this abstract "flow of the game" = BAD and NOT FUN and therefore must be removed or streamlined and yes, dumbed down.

These focus groups/playtesters not capable of even the slightest bit of patience really is why we can't have nice things anymore.
Everything must be fast, fast, fast and instantly gratuitous. NO other ways of having fun allowed.

Guess we should be thankful that in addition to the scrapped techie path they didn't get rid of the netrunner path as well.

To quote Mr Silverhand here:
"Fuck."

 

[kofeiiniturpa]

It was simply too "HARDCORE" for their target audience.

It's kinda weird, in a lot of ways CDPR has all the capabilities of making a game that's decently complex, but they keep cutting themselves short on it when it comes to gameplay mechanics and systems, while going all in on narrative elements. I think they'd be right at home making Telltale like games.

 

[KakitaTatsumaru]

I think they'd be right at home making Telltale like games.

Nope, targeted audience focus on combats, so they have to remain the main selling points.
Story is there probably because they like interactive story themselves, even if in in the grand scheme of things combats sells more and is higher priority.

 

[BluPixel]

Was the breach thing seen in 2018 when V jacked into the maelstrom ganger to access their network?

That sucks if they've removed that. I really liked this slow, methodical approach of the hacker. It reinforced the hacker fantasy plus the animation was sick.

Forcing you to just sit with your hands on your lap while the cooldown finishes is... not a good concept. Why not use the old system?

On the plus side, this plus the deamons will force you to carefully choose your targets instead of wasting your resources by hacking everything in the area in one go.
There will most likely be a perk that will let you regen faster or greatly reduce memory consumption at high level anyway.

 

[maxzorazon]

Anything that's slow, more methodic/strategic getting in the way of this abstract "flow of the game" = BAD and NOT FUN and therefore must be removed or streamlined and yes, dumbed down.

I agree, I don't like appealing to a broader audience by making the game more casual. I had posted some related hacking concerns on reddit...

But having a satisfactory game mechanics for hacking is quite hard IMO. The gamey part of entering a network had issues very well mentioned here.

Hoping for the best.

 

[lelxrv]

It's not necessary for the reason of dumbing it down for masses. The mechanic might be great for the first 30-50 hacks, but the following 1000 will feel draining and tedious. If you're constantly interrupted by a complex mini-game (that you already completed dozens of times)... You have to keep in mind how it combines with other systems.

I have no opinion on either hacking systems, I'll see when the game comes out.

 

[satyrsangre]

which is why the option to implement it at your own discretion makes more sense. especially if there is a difficulty modifier that makes it more compelling/consequential to use.

 

[OneWingedHawk]

Isn't this almost exactly like how it was before? other than of course the whole connecting into a mandatory local network part?

 

[4RM3D]

Can someone tell me a game wherein the mini-games didn't suck? I don't think I ever played a game where I enjoyed the lock picking mechanic. Hacking in games, I can't recall any interesting ones either. And why do the devs keep putting in these mini-games, regardless? It rarely adds to the authenticity of the world. It doesn't convey anything, either. It's just that everyone expects there to be some kind of mini-game.

Either just remove it completely and make it a skill check or actually turn it into a fully fleshed out mechanic and really go all it. But that requires money and creativity. More importantly, it's never ever going to work, ever. Why? To put it simple with arbitrary numbers. If you don't implement a mini-game, you'll (only) alienate 10% of your player base. If you do implement a (poorly thought out) mini-game, the other 90% are going to complain because it will require a different skill set (talking about IRL) than the main gameplay and these skills, like using the other half of your brain, isn't something you want to force onto players OR, the opposite, it doesn't require any skill and it's just an annoying filler.

To put things into perspective. I have been playing Filament lately. The gameplay is pretty well suited to use as a hacking mechanic. Maybe not for CP2077, but it's still interesting and it makes sense (as far as mini-games go). However, some of these puzzles are quite challenging to solve and that wouldn't fit the rest of an open world game not solely focused on puzzles, unlike Filament. Then you've got these RPGs that want to be something more so they include a few "puzzles". And yes, that image is reminiscent of when I needed to open a locked door by matching symbols.

You could make an argument to make the mini-games optional, or better yet, implement a setting for customizable difficulty. But that's just going to be a waste when time and money is put into creating the mini-game and no one wants to try it.

 

[G30M1]

A lot of people want to roleplay being a hacker. But, a lot of those people wouldn't want to put in the work to simulate actual hacking.
It's like in the real world. A lot of people would probably want to hack into systems and do things, but they're not taking the time and effort to actually learn how to do it.

And this is a roleplay game that is reaching a large audience.... so, yeah. It would be simplified.

 

[KakitaTatsumaru]

A lot of people want to roleplay being a hacker. But, a lot of those people wouldn't want to put in the work to simulate actual hacking.
It's like in the real world. A lot of people would probably want to hack into systems and do things, but they're not taking the time and effort to actually learn how to do it.

And this is a roleplay game that is reaching a large audience.... so, yeah. It would be simplified.

Yeah, but strangely when it comes to firefights it's doesn't follow the same logic.

 

[G30M1]

Yeah, but strangely when it comes to firefights it's doesn't follow the same logic.

Firefights?

 

[Mebrilia]

Can someone tell me a game wherein the mini-games didn't suck? I don't think I ever played a game where I enjoyed the lock picking mechanic. Hacking in games, I can't recall any interesting ones either. And why do the devs keep putting in these mini-games, regardless? It rarely adds to the authenticity of the world. It doesn't convey anything, either. It's just that everyone expects there to be some kind of mini-game.

Either just remove it completely and make it a skill check or actually turn it into a fully fleshed out mechanic and really go all it. But that requires money and creativity. More importantly, it's never ever going to work, ever. Why? To put it simple with arbitrary numbers. If you don't implement a mini-game, you'll (only) alienate 10% of your player base. If you do implement a (poorly thought out) mini-game, the other 90% are going to complain because it will require a different skill set (talking about IRL) than the main gameplay and these skills, like using the other half of your brain, isn't something you want to force onto players OR, the opposite, it doesn't require any skill and it's just an annoying filler.

To put things into perspective. I have been playing Filament lately. The gameplay is pretty well suited to use as a hacking mechanic. Maybe not for CP2077, but it's still interesting and it makes sense (as far as mini-games go). However, some of these puzzles are quite challenging to solve and that wouldn't fit the rest of an open world game not solely focused on puzzles, unlike Filament. Then you've got these RPGs that want to be something more so they include a few "puzzles". And yes, that image is reminiscent of when I needed to open a locked door by matching symbols.

You could make an argument to make the mini-games optional, or better yet, implement a setting for customizable difficulty. But that's just going to be a waste when time and money is put into creating the mini-game and no one wants to try it.

Shadowrun Dragonfall had a nice well done hacking system. So well done that some modders in some modules created a whole Net to hack and to discover things around. Of course it required brain and it required patience and a bit of strategy.

Things that are not popular for who seek the fast paced action of FPS.