Issues with Gunplay with Cyberpunk

[Sardukhar]

I'd agree BF does it really well.

I think comparing the rifle in Syndicate (just replayed it) with the Militech Avenger 9mm on burst isn't accurate. 9mm is a pretty light cartridge and sounds it, if you've never fired one.

I would like to see, yeah, more like the Battlefield series crispness and echo. That crack and echo, to me as a shooter, really makes it visceral.

Also, Iaramshe makes a great point. Heat, by Michael Mann, is still the gold standard. Actual weapon sounds, not "improved", right off the range. Very good.

 

[CyberBobber]

I am convinced the devs are improving exactly this sort of stuff during these 10 months before the launch. They have literally said so, as the game is now near content-complete. I wouldn't be too critical toward anything you see in that 2018 video honestly.

You are right here, last months are used for polishing.

Division 2 combat slightly imrpoved and Need for Speed driving would be enough for me. No idea if its technically possible though. I would also prefer better music over gun-sounds and stuff, no idea if these are connected.

 

[Suhiira]

I would like to see, yeah, more like the Battlefield series crispness and echo. That crack and echo, to me as a shooter, really makes it visceral.

Ever fire a weapon in an urban environment? You get echos from the buildings.
And firing most any weapon indoors can be hard on the ears. (Keep in mind indoor shooting ranges are designed to minimize the sounds.)

 

[KakitaTatsumaru]

I agree and think a balance can be struck between the realism and RPG 'stat' elements.

Actually it's not the RPG fault. In C2020 you can die from a hit in the head.
So don't make poor RPG the scapegoat.

The real problem here is having V doing the missions alone and having to survive that.

 

[yyb0568]

That's big area they need to improve and enemy ai take your time CDPR the game will release next year However still lots of things to dev still chance to delay

 

[fridgeband]

I know this is an RPG, but I still want it to completely out-do every GTA game and multiple other shooters ever made. I do care a huge amount.

 

[cichon_alan]

i think is too soon to discuss this yet

 

[weirdwayne15]

Actually it's not the RPG fault. In C2020 you can die from a hit in the head.
So don't make poor RPG the scapegoat.

The real problem here is having V doing the missions alone and having to survive that.

In Cyberpunk 2020 anything the DM says happens happens. That's how PnP RPGs work. I've purchased the rule book and some modules working on running a game. There is no rule that says head shots kill in Cyberpunk 2020, however if a DM says you were shot in the head and died or an NPC was shot in the head and died that's what happens. In Cyberpunk 2077 the Game Mechanics are going to be more strictly adherent to the statistical elements of the game, based on what we've seen thus far. So this has nothing to do with scapegoats.

 

[Sardukhar]

There is no rule that says head shots kill in Cyberpunk 2020,

Funny story.

Head hits double damage. (As a Ref, I promptly make this any vital area hit - heart, femoral, etc - but I digress)

When any limb takes 8 damage in a hit, that's a Mortal 0 check. Average human dies 50% of the time ( just under).

When the head takes 8 damage in a hit, that's automatically death.

So, Rules As Written, at 4 damage to the head, you die. Automatically.

4 damage is very very easy to do. You can do it in a punch. A 9mm does 7 damage on average.

Oh and if you hit someone with a ranged weapon very close or touching range, it does maximum damage. So a .22 is an autokill, for example.

Now as a Ref, I have that 8-damage-to-the-head rule be -before- doubling, otherwise fistfights would be hilariously lethal, as Martial Arts (including Boxing) adds damage, so an average guy who's only a beginning boxer (level 2-3) would be killing his opponents every couple hits or so, as soon as he rolled 4 or better on 1D6. And every hit if he has Boxing 3.

Every third hit if you factor BTM, of course.

Bit unlikely.

Gets even sillier if they are a competent fighter, at +5 to damage and +1 from their Body. You have guys running around knocking heads in left and right!

Still, Rules As Written, 4 damage to the head is auto death. No save, nothing.

 

[Rawls]

I don't think I've ever played an open world RPG that had "fantastic" gunplay. If it manages to be fun and at least good-not-great (so like B+) I'll be satisfied.

 

[Mybrokenenglish]

I don't think I've ever played an open world RPG that had "fantastic" gunplay. If it manages to be fun and at least good-not-great (so like B+) I'll be satisfied.

I don't think anyone here (should) expect a gunplay as good as doom/battlefield/COD, that'd be as crazy as expecting a driving as good as forza/GT. Those games are specialized in 1 thing only and come from devs who have done those type of games for 20 years.
But expecting something better than deus ex HR/MD, fallout 4 and borderlands 2 is fair if not -almost- mandatory because 1) budget 2) those games are way older than CP 3) those games were barely acceptable in shooting.

Spoiler: slightly related OT

For driving I expect something like watch dogs 2, we don't have many examples, but GTA has a too big budget (and experience) to be taken as comparison (even if GTA 4 is 12 years old now and ran on ps3/360), while WD1 was absolute shit when it comes to driving. WD2 is something in between: not shit, far from being optimal. It works. Still, ubisoft has a huge budget, but except for world building their games don't excel in almost any aspect, at all.

 

[Suhiira]

Now as a Ref, <clip>

Half the fun of GMing is creating work-arounds for game rules-as-written that someone didn't think thru far enough.

The other half, of course, is crushing your players hopes and spirits

 

[laramshe]

In terms of gunplay, I just expect good gameplay, not fantastic

Half the fun of GMing is creating work-arounds for game rules-as-written that someone didn't think thru far enough.

The other half, of course, is crushing your players hopes and spirits

Yup, never trust a smiling gamemaster...

 

[Snowflakez]

For driving, imo it would've been better if it was entirely First Person ( it's much easier to get it right from that perspective), most people don't seem to care about it nearly enough ( compared to seeing your character walking around in TP).

HELL no. If they did that, I would never drive a single vehicle.

I'll take arcadey feeling driving over make-me-puke first person driving any day.

I agree with most of the other stuff you said in the OP, though.

I don't think anyone here (should) expect a gunplay as good as doom/battlefield/COD, that'd be as crazy as expecting a driving as good as forza/GT. Those games are specialized in 1 thing only and come from devs who have done those type of games for 20 years.
But expecting something better than deus ex HR/MD, fallout 4 and borderlands 2 is fair if not -almost- mandatory because 1) budget 2) those games are way older than CP 3) those games were barely acceptable in shooting.

Spoiler: slightly related OT

For driving I expect something like watch dogs 2, we don't have many examples, but GTA has a too big budget (and experience) to be taken as comparison (even if GTA 4 is 12 years old now and ran on ps3/360), while WD1 was absolute shit when it comes to driving. WD2 is something in between: not shit, far from being optimal. It works. Still, ubisoft has a huge budget, but except for world building their games don't excel in almost any aspect, at all.

Well said.

Although, personally, I will be satisfied if the shooting is at least better than Fallout 4's. Holy crap-oli, I've been playing that lately and hating every single second I spend in combat. The shotgun feels AWFUL, as does every other gun.

 

[Mybrokenenglish]

HELL no. If they did that, I would never drive a single vehicle.

I'll take arcadey feeling driving over make-me-puke first person driving any day.

I agree with most of the other stuff you said in the OP, though.



Well said.

Although, personally, I will be satisfied if the shooting is at least better than Fallout 4's. Holy crap-oli, I've been playing that lately and hating every single second I spend in combat. The shotgun feels AWFUL, as does every other gun.

I think we can all agree that bethesda is the shittiest studio (among the AAA studios, ofc) when it comes to animations. If CP will have that level of shooting, oh boy oh boy...

 

[Snowflakez]

I think we can all agree that bethesda is the shittiest studio (among the AAA studios, ofc) when it comes to animations. If CP will have that level of shooting, oh boy oh boy...

I think it's less that their animations have always been shitty, and more that they have stagnated as of late. In my eyes, the jump between Oblivion and Skyrim was reasonably large in that sense. Obviously, Skyrim's animations are not 100% perfect by today's standards, but by 2011's, they were alright for a TPP/FPP hybrid RPG.

Thing is, there have been very minor (if not nonexistent) improvements since then. Fallout 4's animations were downright awful and disjointed, 76's were largely copy-paste.

It shouldn't be THAT difficult for CDPR to one-up Bethesda with that in mind, and I'd argue that they have an obligation to. By going with FPP-only for "immersion" reasons as they've stated time and time again, I really feel like they need to get it right. As such, seeing them skip that in some areas (perhaps no contextual animations) is very unfortunate.

Let's hope they at least get combat right. Like you said in another thread, the animations from 2018's demo were adequate enough, hopefully it hasn't somehow gotten worse.

Do you think it may be a case of consistency? For example, maybe that auto pistol V used was good, and maybe some of the melee weapons journos have seen before are good, but Sasquatch's hammer is just bad. Maybe there will be a few weapons that just feel wrong. I hope not.

 

[Ouroboros612]

I really hope the audio from the demo were placeholders. The difference from the demo and your comparison video is night and day. Proper gun audio isn't even hard or time consuming to fix, so crossing my fingers here. I seriously doubt the gunshot audio in the demo is final. Considering the money CDPR has invested in this game it would make no sense for them to hire their janitor as their audio guy.

 

[Mybrokenenglish]

By going with FPP-only for "immersion" reasons as they've stated time and time again, I really feel like they need to get it right. As such, seeing them skip that in some areas (perhaps no contextual animations) is very unfortunate.

You know how much I agree on this, but there wasn't much we could do one year ago about this except for giving feedback, there's nothing we can do now since the feedback would be exactly the same. "Oh, please, add contextual animations, don't make us feel like a floating camera if you want to maximize the immersion" didn't work 1 year ago, it won't work now. Which is fair. They're making the game, they know what they can or can't (or want to) do. We'll just need for rockstar to make a full FPP game to set the standard once again (I mean, RDR2 is already a standard for FPP animations, but we all played it in TPP since it's so much better). It's a bummer, but if I could change only one thing from the demo, that'd be "+X% DMG to bullets" perk (which was another useless preventive feedback of mine). And we haven't seen yet what happens with "theeeeeeeeese guys are levels higher than we are", which is probably my biggest fear.

Do you think it may be a case of consistency? For example, maybe that auto pistol V used was good, and maybe some of the melee weapons journos have seen before are good, but Sasquatch's hammer is just bad. Maybe there will be a few weapons that just feel wrong. I hope not.

As a non-dev (by far), my only guess can be that the 5 weapons shown during the first demo were the only weapons they animated at that point and they did them with the highest possible attention since they wanted to show them (mantis blades were not great, but acceptable given the early state: you'd expect improvements), while what was shown 2 weeks ago was the current state of other weapons and those didn't receive enough attention in the last year since probably the animation team focused on everything else to finish the interactive scene system (that looks like a mess to be done).
It's also possible that CDPR dropped some "special dev move" seen from other companies in the past (coff watch dogs coff anthem coff the division coff) and last year showed some fancy pre-rendered stuff that actually was not 100% existing. So the 2018 demo was played live, but a very vertical slice, more like "a target" than the reality

At this point I wouldn't rely too much on the PAX demo since it could be affected by these devs' attentions to hide bad things and instead show things that work fine. For example at E3, after the first day feedback, they stopped showcasing the hammer's moveset. We'll need to see it and wait for journalists to confirm it's the same stuff they saw at E3.

Actually, I'm watching the old demo for confirmation and - except for the shotgun which one-shot-kills everyone - there's no animation when enemies are hit until they die. It's not easy with ironsight and all those pink numbers covering their bodies (I don't want go for a "I see what you did there", though), but you can se that if you pay attention. Which is a bit scary at this point, if they haven't improved a bit from that.

 

[Erect_Cactus]

we haven't seen yet what happens with "theeeeeeeeese guys are levels higher than we are", which is probably my biggest fear.

I really doubt you can kill Stout’s bodyguards (or Stout) and this way strongarm her into letting you work for her. I think it’s either meet her or don’t scenario.

 

[KakitaTatsumaru]

In Cyberpunk 2020 anything the DM says happens happens. That's how PnP RPGs work. I've purchased the rule book and some modules working on running a game. There is no rule that says head shots kill in Cyberpunk 2020, however if a DM says you were shot in the head and died or an NPC was shot in the head and died that's what happens. In Cyberpunk 2077 the Game Mechanics are going to be more strictly adherent to the statistical elements of the game, based on what we've seen thus far. So this has nothing to do with scapegoats.

You say that as if Cyberpunk doesn't have rules (even if yes, the DM can ignore them).
Just check: if you follow the rules, you're normally dead with a shot in the head, two if you are lucky.