Let's talk about how lazy the perk system is.

[Attidd]

If you haven't realized yet from the mods that boost your oxygen, the perk that makes you undetectable underwater and the item that lets you breathe underwater.
That a lot of this game has some useless or lazy crap in it. Then let's talk about the whole perk system.

The only explanation I can come up for this is they kept marketing that this game had over 400 perks, and a lot of customization. In the trailers and gameplay videos they will show you glimpses of the perk trees without showing any of the perks, just to make you fantasize how amazing the customization in the game was going to be. Everyone was getting hyped at seeing how the game has so many more perks than other RPG's. The few they do show you, were gameplay changers to really hype you up.

Yet when you actually get the game you realize at least half of the perks don't even WORK or they are literally useless. The other half is full of stat modifiers, they're redundant or they're things that should be available by default like crafting.


Here's some examples of USELESS perks. (not including the dozens of perks that don't even work..)

• Dodge while aiming (already available by default)
• Dodging cost no stamina
• Dodging gives you stamina (WTF did we really need 2 separate perks for this? Why couldn't they combine them?)
• 2 separate perks for increasing grenade damage (Could've been combined into the same perk)
• 5 different perks which are just different ways of saying they increase damage, or they're redundant like the dodging stamina perks
• Knife throwing
• Immune to shock (there's mods and cyberware that let you do this, how redundant)
• Undetectable underwater
• Shoot guns while dodging
• Shoot while carrying a body
• Increase damage while carrying body
• Blunt has 4 useless blocking perks that don't even work! 4!! 25% of its perks would be useless even if they did work. At least 60% of its perks don't even work.

It's so obvious we have all these useless perks just to hype up the game when you see a screenshot of the perk tree and for interviewing they keep saying "we have over 400 perks!" "Look at how big our crafting tree is!" the players then get excited and say "OMG they have more perks than fallout, WOOOOW!" only for you to realize it's just damage, damage, damage, more damage, damage, damage, crit chance, crit damage.. FALL DAMAGE REDUCTION... (and that doesn't even work) If it's a perk that doesn't increase damage or health chances are it doesn't work

Here's some perks that don't work for example

• All the blocking perks for blunt
• Health Regen perks for blunt
• Armor reduction perks for blunt
• Tech tree increasing armor
• Manic & Momentum shift from annihilation
  
  See the pattern yet? If it doesn't increase damage or health, then chances are it doesn't even fucking work. let's continue
  
  
• Fall damage reduction
• Evasion perks
• Hackaton
• Anamnesis
• Efficiency
• Biosynergy
• Ok let's just say the ram recovery perks and bonuses don't work, you get the point
• Half of the health regen perks don't work, and health regen randomly stops at times even if you don't take damage.
• Knife throwing won't let us retrieve knife
• Deathbolt sometimes doesn't work with mantis blades.
• Armor perks
• Health regen melee perks for blade & street brawler sometimes doesn't work
  
  You caught on yet? If it isn't a basic stat modifier that increases damage or health it probably doesn't work (with exception being recipe perks) Game is filled with so many filler perks, the ones that aren't damage are useless or don't work. (Who is going to get a perk for shooting while carrying a body? Increase armor while grappling someone? (doesn't work btw lol) or increase damage while carrying a body. The few perks people would want like movement speed don't even work! We are all trapped into just increasing our damage or getting new recipes for crafting.
  
  This perk system is horrible.
  
  Edit: I forgot to mention that their "over 400 perks" marketing is dishonest as well since they're including the multiple points you need for an individual perk. So if you can upgrade a perk 3 times, they count that as 3 perks when they say the game has "over 400 perks". Just another lie added to the list. Not even Bethesda was willing to be that dishonest about how many perks they have. If they did then they would have more perks than this game. They made us think this game had more perks than fallout when it didn't.

 

[Simpson3000]

Perhaps or you simply lack creativity. They placed perks in the tree so people could try out new ways of finish challenges in the game world. And only because some mods give immunities you dont have to pick them. Mod slots can be a rare thing, too perhaps other mods are more important than fire or shock immunity. I prefer to pick the battlemashine immunity so in a fight i am immun to fire, poison, shock and bleeding as soon as battlemashine got triggered.

The throwing knife is a difficult thing since you cannot craft knifes in the early game but.. you can collect them, many enmies drop them and with certain perks for poison or increased damage you can make them more lethal. If you want to play a char that only fights with hands but could perhaps need a short distance throwing attack for that one guard he/she cannot reach without entering a camera zone..

Only because you cannot make use of certain perks, does not mean they are useless.

 

[claudiu111]

But even so there aren't 400 perks. Are there?

 

[jasonhargrove]

like so much in Night City
choose your own adventure

 

[jharzowski]

First of all, they never promised that many perks to begin with. Not 400 thats for sure..

 

[Martynxas]

Well perks are plainly uninspired

 

[MojoBreaker]

sshhhh !!! dont talk about underwater, developers might see it and create entire save the atlantis DLC just for that perk alone.

 

[Restlessdingo32]

The word you're looking for is bloat. It's a more bloated version of TW3 progression with stats added and skills separated out from the perks. It has identical shortcomings too. In fairness it should not come as a shock. All up until release the signs pointed toward the progression playing out this way. The only reason we didn't know it was absolutely the case is because they didn't provide sufficient info to paint a full picture of the mechanics. Given this we can probably omit jumping into the, "They lied, Aaaaghhh.", narrative here.

In the interest of avoiding the hater label.... Quality trumps quantity when it comes to character progression. Less overall abilities with more meaningful benefits and better parity. Ideally done in a way where player choices made in the character progression define the player capabilities appropriately. This part is.... not the case here.

So there you go, the description of the problem and a suggestion to do it more better.

 

[StarfleetCommand]

This game really feels rushed, everything but the main story, some side quests, and the city feels skin deep, it's truly heartbreaking. Wish they hadn't lost their minds back in 2018 when Keanu joined and it became Keanupunk.

 

[Gleyrs]

Fall damage reduction does work as a perk, just not as an item mod. It's very easily testable but you obviously didn't bother... ironic when you come here complaining about things being rushed.

The "redundant perks" often stack and are found in different trees or further down certain trees meaning to unlock them all you have build your character in certain ways... like in a.. RPG...

Immune to shock is one perk point which you get fast enough whereas the other shock immunity is a cyberware slot which are incredibly limited and/or expensive, and/or needs a different stat to higher to install.

Dodging not taking stamina and then giving you stamina is pretty sweet for a blades or blunt character early on. Stack it with other perks like dodging granting more damage and cyberware like dodging slowing time along with weapons that do extra damage when slow time is active... now you dodge one time and you increase your damage three fold and increase stamina instead of losing it.

Cyberpunk takes a lot of flack and it deserves it in a lot of areas. They definitely didn't either fully test or finish the perk system because their are indeed glaring problems like saying a stat point in tech gives armor when it demonstrably does not, but its far from lazy, other than in the unfinished way.

I've probably spent more time planning my character (and subsequently the stats of 2-3 more characters I plan to try with different stats/perks) and staring at the level up screen than actually running through the piss easy missions once you've optimized your build. It's mostly a shame there seems to be no real challenges once you get a couple sweet optimaizations going

 

[Patrik_Ku_era]

What perk system?
No really, perks in this game are either useless or perks, that should automatically increase during leveling up.
Ok I reached intelligence lvl 20, or whatever the perk tree for hacking is named. I expected there will be something rewarding for lvl 20, I mean some cool perk, nah. I can use demons like any other character build, I can one shot peoole withmy revolver no matter the fact I,haven't equipped a single weapon perk, I can kill people with 2 katana swing yet I haven't bought a melee weapon perk. Just useless perk system to give us players some character uniqueness illusion.
Many people love hating AC Valhalla...damn, compared to this game Valhalla has a cool skill tree with unique abilities to actually change your gameplay + another set abilities learnt throughout the game.

 

[Raptorousrex]

I was wondering any point with diving after Pyramid Song?

 

[moonknightgog]

Honeslty perks shouldn't be here at all. Gameplay modifications and abilities should derive solely on cyberware. Right now things like Gorilla Arms are just glorified melee weapons, because opening up a door or holding a turret depends on the Strenght stats rather than cyberware

 

[Raptorousrex]

Honeslty perks shouldn't be here at all. Gameplay modifications and abilities should derive solely on cyberware. Right now things like Gorilla Arms are just glorified melee weapons, because opening up a door or holding a turret depends on the Strenght stats rather than cyberware

Indeed actually even enemies with gorilla arms seem to throw stronger punches than V ever can with gorilla arms!

 

[zorba1138]

Perhaps or you simply lack creativity. They placed perks in the tree so people could try out new ways of finish challenges in the game world. And only because some mods give immunities you dont have to pick them. Mod slots can be a rare thing, too perhaps other mods are more important than fire or shock immunity. I prefer to pick the battlemashine immunity so in a fight i am immun to fire, poison, shock and bleeding as soon as battlemashine got triggered.

The throwing knife is a difficult thing since you cannot craft knifes in the early game but.. you can collect them, many enmies drop them and with certain perks for poison or increased damage you can make them more lethal. If you want to play a char that only fights with hands but could perhaps need a short distance throwing attack for that one guard he/she cannot reach without entering a camera zone..

Only because you cannot make use of certain perks, does not mean they are useless.

Perhaps you simply lack critical faculties and blame again the player when it's clear that the perk system is an unfinished mess filled with broken perks that range from simply being bugged to being irrelevant.

It's not about creativity or challenges, there are no challenges / achievements in the game that require certain perks, the majority of the perks don't actually work even the basic ones "increase X by Y".

There are tons of other inconsistencies in the game it's quite clear that hacking people was intended to be either done in a takedown or with the monowire, now the monowire is simply a boring melee weapon and you can hack anyone with the scanner. Gorilla arms were a requirement to force open doors (it's still in the item text) but now it's simply a body skill check.

There is only one combat mission that takes place near water (stealing info from the docks) and even it has no actual approach from the water since the hostile area is quite far from it, the commando perk was clearly a placeholder from an early state of the game when more content near or around water was planned.
The fact that you have O2 tank consumables and mods that increase oxygen also indicate that.

Every system in the game is unfinished and feels like a placeholder, I'm sick of people excusing this and blaming the player for holding their phones wrong.

The bugs are one thing but the fact that over half of the content in this game is in an utterly unfinished state needs to be brought up every time and CDPR should be publicly shamed for this.

It's not about reducing the scope of the game or changing the initial design goals but it's rather them doing that and still delivering an empty shell of a game with placeholder mechanics and entire systems riddled with bugs, items and abilities that do not have a place in the game that are tied to mechanics and events the player would never get to experience.

The word you're looking for is bloat. It's a more bloated version of TW3 progression with stats added and skills separated out from the perks. It has identical shortcomings too. In fairness it should not come as a shock. All up until release the signs pointed toward the progression playing out this way. The only reason we didn't know it was absolutely the case is because they didn't provide sufficient info to paint a full picture of the mechanics. Given this we can probably omit jumping into the, "They lied, Aaaaghhh.", narrative here.

In the interest of avoiding the hater label.... Quality trumps quantity when it comes to character progression. Less overall abilities with more meaningful benefits and better parity. Ideally done in a way where player choices made in the character progression define the player capabilities appropriately. This part is.... not the case here.

So there you go, the description of the problem and a suggestion to do it more better.

I wouldn't call it bloat, it's definitely bloat now because none of the other systems in the game is there to support it as they are all in shambles just like the perk system.

The perk system is probably the best indication of the original path the game attempted to take, a path that was clearly years away from completion and they simply couldn't wait any longer. But unfortunately they had no fall back plan and a way to get all of the systems in A working state even if it wasn't anywhere near the original scope.

Which is why you have mods, perks and items that don't work or aren't relevant for any content, why you have so much info about weaknesses to certain type of damage but all mobs take exactly the same damage regardless of those stats, why there is no benefit to equipping gorilla arms vs monowire anymore whilst it's clear that they used to have specific mechanics around them.

This game is a borken empty shell with the only thing in a remotely complete state is the story they cobbled together and even that has more gaping holes in it than a Kabuki joytoy.

 

[Meccanical]

Should have went with less perks that do more dramatic things in my opinion. Number crunching is the least interesting way to design a system like this for an action RPG. They don't change the way you play, they make the things you already do more overpowered. Seldom do you gain new abilities that grant you new mechanics to play with, and when you do they are largely useless. I had to go out of my way to do an aerial takedown for instance, and it's less efficient than grabbing someone and chucking them in a dumpster.

 

[Martynxas]

I think another think worth mentioning is damage creep, holy shit end game is broken, you either one shot mob or one tap you. There are so much bonuses who begin to stack upon each other, for example i have sniper rifle which crits head for 100k and im not fully optimized for damage, weapon is modless, im playing netruner techie with reflexes

 

[Dr_Sinister420]

Well considering they butchered how the stats and skills work from the pen and paper game, it's not surprising that their perk system is a mess. Cool is not stealth stat. It's for being able to out talk someone or to help with making a screw up look like you meant to do it that way

 

[tavellone]

It's not that the perks don't work or are useless, it's that they are designed for things that were ripped out or never properly implemented in the game.

 

[vindelanos]

why you have so much info about weaknesses to certain type of damage but all mobs take exactly the same damage regardless of those stats,

You sure about this?