Important news regarding Cyberpunk 2077 release date

[Mybrokenenglish]

I don't quite understand this bullet sponge critic. Would you prefer bosses like Sasquatch die in 1/2 shots like a random trash npc? Because I've never seen a boss in an rpg get kill in 5 seconds. You've got to add something to make the fight last longer than you can blink

It really depends, but the most important thing is the enemy design:
Royce has an autonomous shield probably provided with AI that blocks bullets. He is a bullet sponge until you destroy the shield's generator on his back. Then he goes down with 2 shots. Good design, nobody complains.
Sasquatch is a very muscolar woman with a pump that provide her with a drug that gives her super strenght. Bullets hit her body, blood comes out. Lots of bullets, lots of blood. She is a bullet sponge until you destroy the pump. Then she dies in 2 shots. This is not realistic at all and completely immersion breaking. Terrible design (and lazy since it's just copy-pasting royce's).
Then we get to another horrible design: enemies who share the same model and abilities, but
- one matches your level and dies with few bullets (realistic)
- another is 5 levels higher than you and is a bullet sponge (not realistic)
- a third one is 5 levels lower than you and dies after a single punch (not realistic)
Totally immersion breaking and easily avoidable when designing a game (many exemples in videogames' history)

the same is applicable to levelled weapons and yada yada yada.

To answer your question, I'm fine with bosses being bullet sponges if their design makes sense and I'm fine with bosses dying with 1 headshot if the boss encounter is designed in a way that the difficult thing is to get to shoot the boss. It can be a room full of enemies, it can be a robot protecting him, it can be several traps, it can be the boss being super fast, it can be you first need to find a way to access the room where the boss is, it can be that first you need to catch the boss during a car chase, it can be an invisible boss you need to find first or you need to hear his footsteps, it can be that you don't want to kill the boss at all but just defeat him with a dialogue... These are already 9 design for 9 different bosses in a videogame, 10 with a bullet sponge.
It took me 30 seconds to think about them. And I'm no game designer, go figure how many ideas CDPR guys have. The question is: do they use those ideas in the game or just go for "people are used to bullet sponges, look at all the looter shooters on market, just go for that"?

 

[Restlessdingo32]

I don't quite understand this bullet sponge critic. Would you prefer bosses like Sasquatch die in 1/2 shots like a random trash npc? Because I've never seen a boss in an rpg get kill in 5 seconds. You've got to add something to make the fight last longer than you can blink

Context is critically important in this area. The underlying problem is when the context doesn't fit at all. It's not even close. Enemy X takes lots and lots of rounds to the face with nothing to support it beyond, "It's a boss.". This takes me, as the player, out of the moment. Any mention of catch terms like immersion go out the window. For a game parroting this term so heavily it's a real problem if this were to happen. If every enemy in the game takes multiple clips to drop it's a serious problem.

It's fine if the context fits. As noted above, an enemy has a protective shield you must disable to open them up to damage. Perhaps a boss is some manner of machine construct where dumping bullets into them makes sense to some degree. Anything to explain why they're able to eat bullets like candy.

 

[kofeiiniturpa]

Journos and toobers? This is an authority for you?

No, but they usually tend to reflect the opinions of the mass market (the core audience of the game).

 

[KakitaTatsumaru]

Except it wasn't really a promise.

Neither is September release by the way, because to the yes/no question:"Is it set in stone?" they avoided answering yes/no nor used the word "promise".

Post automatically merged: Jan 20, 2020

I don't quite understand this bullet sponge critic. Would you prefer bosses like Sasquatch die in 1/2 shots like a random trash npc?

Unless she is wearing some kind of body armor justifying her resilience, yes, I would prefer that.

Post automatically merged: Jan 20, 2020

Only if your character dies after being hit once or twice too.

THAT would be Cyberpunkish 2020 at last!

Post automatically merged: Jan 20, 2020

Understood. But there are different games for that. Of course I may be wrong and there will be a über-realistic difficulty level in CP2077, but considering the fact that it would require reworking the whole game mechanic, I find it very unlikely.

It does not have to be a problematic difficulty level, you just have to design the quests around that.

 

[imitenotbecrazy]

I don't quite understand this bullet sponge critic. Would you prefer bosses like Sasquatch die in 1/2 shots like a random trash npc? Because I've never seen a boss in an rpg get kill in 5 seconds. You've got to add something to make the fight last longer than you can blink

I actually enjoyed Ghost Recon: Breakpoint for it's realism in bullet damage. You COULD one shot a boss with a well placed bullet to the head, but they always had some tactics to make that more difficult. One notable boss fight had the sniper boss behind cover with a small opening for them to shoot at you. You could hit them with a good shot right into that opening, but you had to deal with a bunch of other baddies distracting you. Alternatively, you could also have snuck past everyone and get behind the boss to one shot them while they're laying down behind the cover.

 

[kofeiiniturpa]

I don't quite understand this bullet sponge critic. Would you prefer bosses like Sasquatch die in 1/2 shots like a random trash npc?

Yes. Absolutely. She shouldn’t be any more ”superhuman” than her goons. The difficulty should come from being able to hit her without dying yourself; and from the question whether it is desireable for her to die or not in the first place. Arcade ”boss fights” like Sasquatch or Royce as presented in this game already feel beyond stupid.

If a climatic mission ending is desired, those ”boss fights” should be replaced with more multifaceted ”events” where the so called ”boss” is in a somewhat key position, but not a special character stats-wise nor a required kill.

 

[Nikola_Nesic]

Techi can for example, hack and sabotage some of boss gears or to sabotage some equipment or machine in boss area and end boss that way.

 

[Verrenus]

I recently re-watched the uncompressed version of the 48-minute demo from 2018 and remembered how excited I was for the game back then.

Nowadays, however, the utter lack of any new screenshots, videos or marketing of any kind coupled with the recent delay make me seriously wonder if we’re going to see CP2077 releasing this year at all. TW3 got delayed twice before releasing in May 2015 and by all accounts it was not as complex as CP2077 is striving to be.

You would think CDProjekt RED would have tried to dull our pain by releasing some new promotional material, but apparently that’s too much to ask for.

 

[mhl333]

No, but they usually tend to reflect the opinions of the mass market (the core audience of the game).

Unfortunately you are right. The mass market, people with high expectations for low demanding challenges are now deciding what is "great". And that's why AAA devs dont really care of creating something unique, difficult and demanding that would be entertaining at the same time.

 

[doktor_fleck]

Neither is September release by the way, because to the yes/no question:"Is it set in stone?" they avoided answering yes/no nor used the word "promise".

Post automatically merged: Jan 20, 2020

Unless she is wearing some kind of body armor justifying her resilience, yes, I would prefer that.

Post automatically merged: Jan 20, 2020

THAT would be Cyberpunkish 2020 at last!

Post automatically merged: Jan 20, 2020

It does not have to be a problematic difficulty level, you just have to design the quests around that.

She can have sub-dermal armour implants for example.

Designing quests has nothing to do with that. You need to rework whole levels, enemies spawns, cover, AI and so on to give the player a chance in combat and also make combat a viable progress option. If you just increase difficulty to "one-shot-one-kill" without changing the game design appropriately, then basically every combat will end with player swarmed by enemies and dead. This would make combat uninteresting and bad, therefore forcing players to ignore combat altogether. This is not a good game design.

 

[KakitaTatsumaru]

She can have sub-dermal armour implants for example.

You mean that if V have sub-dermal armour implants then V (+ normal armor on top of that) V should be able to ignore being shooted at?

Designing quests has nothing to do with that. You need to rework whole levels, enemies spawns, cover, AI and so on to give the player a chance in combat and also make combat a viable progress option.

You're just basically criticizing my choice of word, not what I said.

 

[doktor_fleck]

You mean that if V have sub-dermal armour implants then V (+ normal armor on top of that) V should be able to ignore being shooted at?



You're just basically criticizing my choice of word, not what I said.

I didn't see Sasquatch "ignoring" anything. V defeated her after all. And sorry, you've said that "quest design" is responsible for making game more realistic. Or at least I understood it that way. Which is obviously not true.

 

[KakitaTatsumaru]

I didn't see Sasquatch "ignoring" anything. V defeated her after all.

Only after destroying the magic spot in her back, of my memory goes well.
But you know what? My V wants a magic spot in the back too!

And sorry, you've said that "quest design" is responsible for making game more realistic. Or at least I understood it that way. Which is obviously not true.

Exactly what I just said: choice of words.
I'm a game master, and everything you said are things I prepare when I prepare a quest, that's "quest design" for me.
Of I do a quest which requires something my players cannot do/have then I'm a bad GM and ingame their fixer screwed his job as a fixer.

 

[Mybrokenenglish]

I didn't see Sasquatch "ignoring" anything.

Look better then:

9:08 if timestamp doesn't work: almost a full magazine on her, HP bar doesn't go down a bit and she is just moving like nothing is happening. The exact definition of bullet sponge.

Then V destroys the "magic pump" and she becomes vulnerable.

 

[kofeiiniturpa]

Look better then:

9:08 if timestamp doesn't work: almost a full magazine on her, HP bar doesn't go down a bit and she is just moving like nothing is happening. The exact definition of bullet sponge.

Then V destroys the "magic pump" and she becomes vulnerable.

Bad design is bad. No two ways about it.

 

[Mybrokenenglish]

Bad design is bad. No two ways about it.

have I said the opposite? O.O

 

[Verrenus]

I just watched that portion again and no matter how Terminator-like the boss is, she isn’t an armoured, multi-ton tank. V unloads a magazine at what looks like 600 rounds-per-minute into her - Sasquatch should flinch a hell of a lot more than that.

For a hamfisted explanation, it could be that the gizmo on her back is pumping her with a drug that negates her pain response (sort of like adrenaline does), so that could account for her weakness once V destroys said gizmo - all of those hundreds of bullet wounds suddenly start assaulting her brain with pain signals.

Still, this doesn’t explain why she can shrug bullets like raindrops at the beginning of the fight, though.

 

[IndifferentEmpathy]

Then we get to another horrible design: enemies who share the same model and abilities, but
- one matches your level and dies with few bullets (realistic)
- another is 5 levels higher than you and is a bullet sponge (not realistic)
- a third one is 5 levels lower than you and dies after a single punch (not realistic)
Totally immersion breaking and easily avoidable when designing a game (many exemples in videogames' history)

I don't remember if I compared the Royce/Sasquatch encounter bullet sponginess with Halo Hunters or not, but games like Halo, Mass Effect etc. usually have enemy variety and always provide enemies that e.g. die to 1-hit head-shot alongside sturdier ones - and in greater quantity so you never feel like your guns do little damage.

Problem is in CP2077 all enemies are the same - humans, with augmentation level way bellow what would cause cyber-psychosis. So fighting something like Sasquatch feels weird. It could be improved if our damage removed her flesh revealing something like terminator endoskeleton underneath, since flesh is not much of a defense so even elephants can be killed by single riffle caliber bullet.

 

[kofeiiniturpa]

have I said the opposite? O.O

Wasn’t an argument.
Just stating the obvious in agreement with what you said.

 

[gogmeister777]

It doesn’t take much to please you, does it?

Re: W3.

Heh, I'm so very easy to please All it takes is a game that can break the record for GotY awards to get into my top 3, a top 3 that hadn't changed in 15 years. So yeah, nothing special is needed

Post automatically merged: Jan 20, 2020

Then we get to another horrible design: enemies who share the same model and abilities, but
- one matches your level and dies with few bullets (realistic)
- another is 5 levels higher than you and is a bullet sponge (not realistic)
- a third one is 5 levels lower than you and dies after a single punch (not realistic)

I really, really hope they avoid this.

Post automatically merged: Jan 20, 2020

Context is critically important in this area. The underlying problem is when the context doesn't fit at all. It's not even close. Enemy X takes lots and lots of rounds to the face with nothing to support it beyond, "It's a boss.".

Context is important, I agree, though it has its limits. I remember my brother hating the combat in Bioshock so much he stopped playing. One thing he mentioned was enemies that could take multiple shotgun blasts to the face without even flinching.

I explained that they were 'leadheads', so they actually take far less damage to the head. He said, 'Oh, well, that explains why but it doesn't stop it feeling crap'.

So it's a careful balance and you're never gonna please everyone. I'd love to know how much of the delay is down to 'polishing' and how much involves significant changes to the feel and balance of combat.

EDIT: Just read that Dying Light 2 has been delayed. Thing is, they've said something along the lines of, 'We're not sure when we'll release right now, let you know in coming months'. I have to wonder whether I'd have preferred CDPR to say a similar thing :O