Level scaling ruins the game

[LeKill3rFou]

Why would you think that npc scaling made the game harder? It didnt, quite the contrary.

NPC scaling made the weak enemies a bit stronger (but they are still pretty weak) and it made the strong enemies weaker (they are now also pretty weak).
I made two full playthroughs before 2.00 (so before NPC scaling was added) and two after, and with NPC scaling the game is noticable easier.

It depend on "when" (at which level) you're looking at
At the beginning of the game until level 30, level scalling make the game easier, sure.
But after level 30, it make the game a bit more difficult (I say a bit, because it still rather easy). Before, there isn't any enemy at higher level than 30/35 on the map. So after reaching level 30, you over-leveled all enemies on the map without any exception and the game turned out to be damn easy, even in "very hard".

I mean before level scaling, beating max level enemies (i.e level 30) at level 40/50 was just a formality... (CDPR had to divide the armor value by almost 10 and remove clothe mods to try to add a bit of difficulty in 1.5/1.6)

 

[MaxiTB]

Character progression is a very important element of the RPG genre. It's the journey of your character going from total rookie to master, and traditionally this reflects on the difficulty curve. You start the game with an incompetent character and everything is difficult, then you character become more and more competent and things become increasingly easier. The pre 2.0 Cyberpunk was like this. Your V starts low level and combat and stealth and netrunning are hard, and then V increases in experience, buys more and more cyberware, and everything become easier. There's a very good sense of progression in there.

There's nothing to add here. The point of level progression as an mechanic since the classic pen&paper days is to progress.

But level scaling ruins it. Now every enemy is as competent as V regardless if it makes sense for them to be (gonks like Valentinos can stand their own against a level 50 super augmented V). It completely removes the sense of progression, it makes V's abilities feel weaker and the enemies become bullet sponges. As a result the game feel samey and it flattens the difficulty curve. It's a dirty way of bringing balacing to the game, regardless if the game actually needs it.

Level scaling means there is not direct benefits of having better levels and not only make this type of progression redundant but can also introduce a huge amount of balancing issues (theoretical example: you gain levels by doing non-combat activities which reward non-combat gear and now all the enemies are combat wise stronger while as player you stay behind and actually get weaker). BTW "dirty balance" is correct technical term in this context, as in contrast to "clean progression".

It's an horrible decision and I hope it will be made optional in the near future.

I doubt this will happen, because it is a architectural change. You can't simply switch this on or off like a feature sadly, well, at least not by having proper item domains set up and balancing the whole game basically twice on every level. Considering that they said this game done content wise, I don't think they will rewrite basically their whole game to implement data domains for different progression models.

 

[Tarille]

Level scaling is... A tricky scenario to deal with.

The base level of it is freedom vs "Progression" but it's much more nuanced than that.

Since you have to break down the game into its pieces to see the impact of dynamic vs static scaling.

For example, the original scaling where Pacifica is the high level zone you get a progression as you move through the districts. But you can encounter dissonace in the form of "Why don't the VDB's simple take over NC if they're so much stronger than everyone else?"

While the counterside is your level 1 V can go beat up on Animals just the same as Maelstrommers and the overall feeling of leveling up is rendered moot (Outside of additional benefits beyond mere level based stats, like getting more Cyberware capacity and Attribute points which provide bonuses on top of the base health and damage increases from levels and tiered up weapons)

In my opinion, Cyberpunk could do away with "Levels" and "Level scaling" and all that nonsense and instead utilize an entirely reputation based system;

So instead of levels, you gain attributes/skills based on your overall reputation. This can be functionally the same as experience/levels it just ties in with reputation instead of the 2 being independent systems like they are in CP2077. Further, this system will also gate out gigs and story missions, you have to have enough reputation for people to offer such things to you (I.e. You need enough levels to do this higher scaled content) - Allowing things to make more sense with less "Level 1 V takes on entire Arasaka ninja army alone"

Overall reputation will have a slight effect on overall difficulty. Meaning pleb enemies somewhat scale with you so they're not completely irrelevant at max "Level" (But still significantly weaker than the PC).

While each faction will have its own reputation with the PC. With higher notoriety (AKA lower reputation) meaning they start bringing out tougher gonks (Because they are aware some tough MFer is going around taking out their people). This can allow them to scale into the later game if you keep fighting them (While some sort of pacifist PC would face more pleb enemies even late game). Further, this can transition into bonus things like extra car chases, assassin squads, reinforcements and elite troops being called into missions increasing difficulty as one progresses within that region (Which may or may not end up requiring overall reputation to continue as gigs might get tough enough to gate behind having enough "Levels").

 

[ExSteam]

"So instead of levels, you gain attributes/skills based on your overall reputation. This can be functionally the same as experience/levels it just ties in with reputation instead of the 2 being independent systems like they are in CP2077. Further, this system will also gate out gigs and story missions, you have to have enough reputation for people to offer such things to you (I.e. You need enough levels to do this higher scaled content) - Allowing things to make more sense with less "Level 1 V takes on entire Arasaka ninja army alone""

They do have gated content based on reputation. You are only offered a few gigs and cant get more till you do them. Even though its not a numerical gate the comments from the fixers is "V, you are building a rep and people are talking etc", so they offer more gigs.

If you read the forums people are mad that ability checks stop them from opening a door (they feel they are missing out on something important), gating content based on street cred may do the same.

I have seen streams where people have completed the game with 20 or more points unspent in both attributes and perks with no issues, the game is just not difficult overall. Specially if you grab Sir John, so many streams of people just walking through content with that in hand.
Me personally I think they need to add more mini boss fights and make very hard.....very hard.

At the beginning of the game Jackie and V go into Arasaka tower to steal from the Arasaka's. To me that implies they are already pretty tough and accomplished and just this one heist away from being legends or close to. And in the beginning we only fight security guards, we run from Adam Smasher and Oda would have wiped the floor with us.

In summary, level scaling for me was better because walking through everything at the end was a let down. At least the npcs being a little more beefy meant if they swarmed me I just couldn't stand in the open and had to dash for cover just in case a lucky crit took me out.

 

[Tarille]

They do have gated content based on reputation.

Sure, they gate some vehicles behind street cred. Not that it matters because you can literally have maxed out street cred before even leaving Act 1...

If you read the forums people are mad that ability checks stop them from opening a door (they feel they are missing out on something important), gating content based on street cred may do the same.

It's not really the same thing.

Firstly, people are mad about the change to how ability checks scale. They used to be able to get through every check with only a handful of point and now things scale to require almost complete investment.

Secondly, unlike attributes of which you get a limited amount, reputation can always be maxed out on any character as the only requirement is doing content.

Thirdly, unlike ability checks which gate off side paths or additional dialogue options and are in your face... Gated off gigs simply won't show up until a later point in time. Much like how some gigs already don't show up until you do certain things and get a call about them. Also, unlike how fixer gigs are complained about because of their arbitrary "You must do these 2 gigs before the next ones are available" these lockouts can be justified due to their increased difficulty meaning you go against higher level enemies within them.

 

[Nixilos]

Don't even want to do all the checks, I intentionally skip the ones that don't make sense for the theme of my character. Stuff like this just FEELS passive aggressive at best, and lazy at worst on the part of the devs though.

I don't care whether I meet the requirements to move the piece of sheet metal roofing material that's just sitting there. I care that they thought it was funny to make it require 10 body for any reason. Speaks to the quality of the whole redesign for me but I'm in a minority opinion there I'm aware.

It's scuffed.