OK so very hard was thought out to still be playable with 0 grind, which is nice for those that wanna finish the game and maybe have a tiny bit of a challenge if they only do the main story and a a side quest or two, but for completionists its horrible.
Obviously a lot of the 20 point perks don't even work now and we can still be way too strong in the game, but there is a way to make our build choices matter and all the OP abilities actually be enjoyable to use. The concept is simple, in practice it won't be but it is the only way for everyone to be happy..
The way to do it is by giving different types of enemies abilities we have in a difficulty setting above very hard.
Netrunners should be able to briefly reboot our optics, short circuit, overheat, poison(if we aren't immune, with us not having any way of negating their hacks with ICE, only immunities) or cripple us, make us hit ourselves , ping us , basically almost all the hacks we can have and use tech weapons and shot through cover or smart weapons and shot around it. With us having to quickly find them and kill them before we die.
Snipers should Aim much faster and also able to soot us through walls, ignore defense, with the only way of avoiding death to be dodging and killing them even faster and without the stupid lasers to indicate you are in their aim, instead of that scopes should glare during the day and be reflective at night like cat eyes.. much better for gameplay, also much harder, but that's the point.. snipers should be scary.
Enemies with Shotguns and HMG's should be even tougher and able to regenerate hp pretty fast, able to use explosive rounds which would mean if you sit close to a gas canister or vehicle you are screwed almost every time unless you spec into body urself and get less dmg from explosives from the engineering tree and then almost die from 1 explosion but not quite and if you don't then only way to counter to be second heart cyberware. They should also use all of the best grenades.
Melee enemies should do more damage with strong attacks than they do now and dodge, use cover till they can flank you to avoid getting shot, right now they just dodge a bit then charge in and die. Enemies with bladed weapons should be fast at doing so and be really dangerous up close. with you not surviving a strong attack unless you have over 10-12k armor and around 900-1k hp. Enemies with blunts should be able to block and regenerate their hp and stamina, be even tougher than ones that use shotguns and some be able to stun us, some knock us down, even if they do lower damage than ones that use blades.
Enemies with assault rifles should be able to use all the abilities different types of AR's have, like if they use power ones they should use ricochet, to get us albeit with lower damage when they do that cause.. if all the enemies I stated above can do all that, we still need a reason to use cover.
Mechs should be tougher than their respective fleshy counterparts, like they kinda are now but amped and large non humanoid mechs should have explosive rounds and missiles with you having to find cover to survive. Drones should probably do something like fire Bolas( basically a string with 3 weights that wraps around your legs) to immobilize you briefly.
Also Tranquilizer shots from the projectile launcher should last 4 seconds only if you charge the shot( lower less you charge) with diminishing returns, 2 for the second time and that's it, third time not working at all, Dot effects on this weapon with other round types should have chance increased the more you charge it and explosive rounds should increase their range as you charge, that way all of them are useful, but not undermine the use of weapons or hacks.
The main bosses of the game should have the respective abilities of their archetype. Oda should be really hard to hit without the use of quickhacks or grenades and go invisible as soon as he does get hit but not to heal at first but to hack you. Smasher should have a destroyable shield on his left hand with him replacing it as soon as you destroy it, with ones encased in some of those pillars, with him dodging every hit till he gets to one of them and when all are destroyed us having to first go for the legs so he can't dodge (though his stamina was limited that's why he'd need shields) but still able to sprint and have a sort of an energy shield which amps his defense that can only be destroyed by hitting a part of his chest( only skipping that if we do it with companions that would do that for us) so he would only take meaningful damage at the last part of the fight, where he will pretty much walk slowly like a terminator and shoot you with his HMG and sprint at you to melee range to one shot you unless you are using cover/dodging or countering. And system reset should also work just like tranquilizer, diminishing returns with only a short time of it actually working, honestly all the control hacks should have diminishing returns and not just for him.
IMO this would make all our OP damage and abilities worth it and fun to use even in the future when they fix perks, cyberware and mods that would make our characters even stronger, leveling actually be needed to progress and give people some sense of accomplishment when they do. With these changes stealth would also be harder cause you'd have to avoid alerting enemies you can't one shot anymore cause if you do then all the enemies that can kill you fast like snipers, or other netrunners, would find you.
Thing is they already sold the game in massive amounts and to implement all this would mean a lot of extra work and money, prolly won't happen, but that's how you balance a game with strong and cool abilities without taking them away.
I could go on for a lot of time till I cover everything in detail, but there is no point unless someone at CDPR sees this and actually agrees with me.
Obviously a lot of the 20 point perks don't even work now and we can still be way too strong in the game, but there is a way to make our build choices matter and all the OP abilities actually be enjoyable to use. The concept is simple, in practice it won't be but it is the only way for everyone to be happy..
The way to do it is by giving different types of enemies abilities we have in a difficulty setting above very hard.
Netrunners should be able to briefly reboot our optics, short circuit, overheat, poison(if we aren't immune, with us not having any way of negating their hacks with ICE, only immunities) or cripple us, make us hit ourselves , ping us , basically almost all the hacks we can have and use tech weapons and shot through cover or smart weapons and shot around it. With us having to quickly find them and kill them before we die.
Snipers should Aim much faster and also able to soot us through walls, ignore defense, with the only way of avoiding death to be dodging and killing them even faster and without the stupid lasers to indicate you are in their aim, instead of that scopes should glare during the day and be reflective at night like cat eyes.. much better for gameplay, also much harder, but that's the point.. snipers should be scary.
Enemies with Shotguns and HMG's should be even tougher and able to regenerate hp pretty fast, able to use explosive rounds which would mean if you sit close to a gas canister or vehicle you are screwed almost every time unless you spec into body urself and get less dmg from explosives from the engineering tree and then almost die from 1 explosion but not quite and if you don't then only way to counter to be second heart cyberware. They should also use all of the best grenades.
Melee enemies should do more damage with strong attacks than they do now and dodge, use cover till they can flank you to avoid getting shot, right now they just dodge a bit then charge in and die. Enemies with bladed weapons should be fast at doing so and be really dangerous up close. with you not surviving a strong attack unless you have over 10-12k armor and around 900-1k hp. Enemies with blunts should be able to block and regenerate their hp and stamina, be even tougher than ones that use shotguns and some be able to stun us, some knock us down, even if they do lower damage than ones that use blades.
Enemies with assault rifles should be able to use all the abilities different types of AR's have, like if they use power ones they should use ricochet, to get us albeit with lower damage when they do that cause.. if all the enemies I stated above can do all that, we still need a reason to use cover.
Mechs should be tougher than their respective fleshy counterparts, like they kinda are now but amped and large non humanoid mechs should have explosive rounds and missiles with you having to find cover to survive. Drones should probably do something like fire Bolas( basically a string with 3 weights that wraps around your legs) to immobilize you briefly.
Also Tranquilizer shots from the projectile launcher should last 4 seconds only if you charge the shot( lower less you charge) with diminishing returns, 2 for the second time and that's it, third time not working at all, Dot effects on this weapon with other round types should have chance increased the more you charge it and explosive rounds should increase their range as you charge, that way all of them are useful, but not undermine the use of weapons or hacks.
The main bosses of the game should have the respective abilities of their archetype. Oda should be really hard to hit without the use of quickhacks or grenades and go invisible as soon as he does get hit but not to heal at first but to hack you. Smasher should have a destroyable shield on his left hand with him replacing it as soon as you destroy it, with ones encased in some of those pillars, with him dodging every hit till he gets to one of them and when all are destroyed us having to first go for the legs so he can't dodge (though his stamina was limited that's why he'd need shields) but still able to sprint and have a sort of an energy shield which amps his defense that can only be destroyed by hitting a part of his chest( only skipping that if we do it with companions that would do that for us) so he would only take meaningful damage at the last part of the fight, where he will pretty much walk slowly like a terminator and shoot you with his HMG and sprint at you to melee range to one shot you unless you are using cover/dodging or countering. And system reset should also work just like tranquilizer, diminishing returns with only a short time of it actually working, honestly all the control hacks should have diminishing returns and not just for him.
IMO this would make all our OP damage and abilities worth it and fun to use even in the future when they fix perks, cyberware and mods that would make our characters even stronger, leveling actually be needed to progress and give people some sense of accomplishment when they do. With these changes stealth would also be harder cause you'd have to avoid alerting enemies you can't one shot anymore cause if you do then all the enemies that can kill you fast like snipers, or other netrunners, would find you.
Thing is they already sold the game in massive amounts and to implement all this would mean a lot of extra work and money, prolly won't happen, but that's how you balance a game with strong and cool abilities without taking them away.
I could go on for a lot of time till I cover everything in detail, but there is no point unless someone at CDPR sees this and actually agrees with me.
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