Leveling up too fast

[thegrownassman]

One thing that limits my enjoyment of this game is the rate at which you level up. I started a new playthrough with 2.0 and Phantom Liberty; did a bit of side content and then went through the questline that leads to Phantom Liberty's start. Besides that, all I did was clear all the Badlands content (for the achievement I hadn't unlocked), and some of the vehicle theft events, as well as about 5 of Mr. Hands' new gigs in Dogtown, and I'm maybe half-way through Phantom liberty (completely ignored Takemura for now) and I'm already at level 55, have two Attributes completely maxxed out, and have a ton of Legendary+ iconic weapons and Cyberware (Technical and Cool build). There is still at least 60% of the game's content left.

I am still enjoying the game, but I hate reaching max level so quickly. The Witcher 3 really seemed to take a long time to reach max level. It was always a treat to get that Level up notification because you had to work hard to get it. Now it seems like I'm constantly getting more XP than I deserve, and though there is more story and content to look forward to, I can't look forward mechanically to anything but more powerful loot. No more perks, no more Attribute points, and that makes me want to stop playing - or zoom through the end of the game without finishing everything. There's no incentive in my mind to do so, mechanically. I have never done Johnny's full questline of getting the band back together in my multiple playthroughs (before 2.0) because that lack of progression leads to a loss of interest. I wonder if others are having the same experience.

I know there's mods to make level progression slower, and on my next playthrough I might try them, but I like to experience the game the way the devs intended and I am wondering if this is a balance issue or purposeful. I can't understand why they would want you to reach max level so quickly - other than the idea that the game is meant to be replayed and you SHOULDN'T be incentivized to do everything in a single playthrough. But imaginging doing the entire Takemura questline and then the end-game missions AFTER finishing Phantom Liberty and reaching the level cap... I'm just not into it. I want levelling up to feel like a real achievement. Any thoughts?

 

[Bloodartist]

Few things:

- The game now has level scaling, so it doesn't matter what level you are at; you can play any areas of the game freely anyway. I greatly prefer this system, while I do agree leveling feels somewhat fast. Level has never been a goal to me. Story is. And V's progress should be measured by her reputation, but it isn't.

- 2077 Never did a particularly good job detailing V's rise as a merc. And by this I mean how does the world react to V, their reputation, how NPC's interact with V. This is almost non-existent, or at the very best completely random. The only major jump seems to be the "heist" at Konpeki plaza. Before it, nobody has heard of V. After it, it seems that they are treated as a regular merc. Except, when they aren't. The world at large still doesn't know who V is, nor learns at any point even down to the end.

She doesn't truly have a reputation, apart from there being this vague "street rep" stat. There are only a handful of hand-written quests where some NPC has actually heard of V, but they aren't related to anything in a way that I can detail. Its just random. New missions unlocked by street rep from fixers are just the same as the old ones. I cannot discern any difference between them.

 

[Crimsomrider]

Yeah it does go kinda too fast.

Personally I think it would be perfect if XP gain was reduced by 25-50%, including Skill Progressions and Street Cred, because I got to level 35, max Street Cred and 60 Netrunning without ever leaving Watson and it goes up so fast that low tier gear progression doesn't even come into play since by level 8 V already starts getting rare gear.

For me 1.6 leveling experience was perfect, with the exception of Athletics. That one sucked as it was so painfully slow

 

[warlock75]

I think it's purely down to level scaling, they didn't adjust the XP that you get so you end up having XP equal to your level all the time, instead of less or more depending which level mob/gig you were dealing with. Looking at all the different issues, level scaling seems to have been slapped on with no check on how it affected other gameplay.