So I've put about 300 hours into the game so far (yay quarantines!) and I've decided to post my inevitably ignored thoughts on how to actually improve the game here. I know this will very likely lead to nothing but here we go anyways. I'm going to ignore/ limit the commonly posted issues such as Goldeneye level AI and the various glitches and focus on what I see to be mechanical changes to the way the game is played by us to improve the overall feel.
Starting off let's tackle difficulty. Cyberpunk is a very easy game. Contrary to its image showing V in a burning city and unable to find a t-shirt, fire and t-shirts are no threat at all. The various status effects that the enemies can hurl at you are both too easy to negate and frankly don't do much to begin with. Also outside of exploding barrels, cop one shot mechanics and the Valentinos with the revolvers I've never really felt a threat to my character. I think this comes down to the above mentioned lack of status effects having an impact. Each faction seems to carry different grenade types but either never or too rarely uses them. This also negates certain cyberwear being worth investing in such as the one where you do improved damage while on fire, or the one where you regenerate health while poisoned instead of taking damage. Now while I could torch myself or poison myself by hurling grenades at my own feet like a madman there's no point in using strategies like that since again enemies are not really a threat. Also as discussed the ai is basically a toaster with enemies either standing out in the open too much, using cover excessively (especially when it's clear you're using tech weapons to shoot through walls or murdering via legendary ping and quick hacks). Now to address this and make things more interesting we need factions to behave differently. Make maelstrom aggressive and cyberwear reliant, Arasaka and Militech flank heavy, 6th street use close knit squads, etc. We also need to just throw away exploding barrels. I'm pretty sure they're just football nukes randomly scattered around and it makes me wonder how night city is even standing.
Next let's talk about gearing. First and foremost, if a piece of clothing is legendary it needs max slots for its type. If I have a legendary coat on it should not have rolled with 2 mod slots when the max is 4. Sure out in the world, roll random mods into it. That's fine. It should still always have max slots. Now regarding this we need the ability to either have a cosmetic set we can overlay everything with, or have the ability to bring each piece of clothing in the game up to a legendary status. I'll get more into crafting shortly. The other major part of gearing I want to discuss is cyberwear. Cyberwear should have no stat requirement full stop. I think to counter this though it should be dramatically more expensive for higher tier ones. I don't think a ripper really cares how cool V is. He should be able to apply those upgrades no matter what. Let's say you want the legendary synaptic signal optimizer to improve your health. Why is that limited to people with max body? It limits build options dramatically because you don't have ways of shoring up your weaknesses. You don't get a pacemaker because your heart is working great after all. Limiting cyberwear in a game that is about cyberwear is frankly dull.
Next let's move onto how we level our characters. Attribute points are terrible. The way they are utilized in game also handicaps builds tremendously. I don't think skills should not be tied to them at all. The game sold me on organic growth, that skills would develop the more you use them. So let us do that. My suggestion here is remove the attribute requirement for skills so I could have for example 15 handguns but only have 12 reflex attributes. Limit the attributes to a Stat bonus. Also tie the perks available to the perk level instead of the attribute level. Also a decent amount of checks should be tied to the various categories instead, for example engineering for breaking into cars, opening some doors, with athletics being tied to yanking people out of cars and opening other doors. Now I know this makes a very large and glaring problem with two perk categories, the first category being cold blood. Cold blood is incredibly easy to level as is and has some rather significant passive. I would suggest lowering the xp gain rates in that category dramatically. I would say bring it down to half or even one third of what it is now. The second category that is an issue is athletics. It is way too slow to level unless you're doing a rocky training montage all over the city. I would say triple the xp gain on it. With this new system I think we'd need to change how we gain attribute points. I would tie them the organic progression in the perk category. Like I said before make it organic growth. On character creation everything would start at one. To gain an attribute you would need, as an example, 3 perk levels for reflex due it it having the three perk lines of handguns, assault, and blades, then reflex would go up by 1 point. Cool you would have to get 2, because it has stealth and cold blooded. Now to take care of people who want to only level 1 weapon type I would suggest an additional system be added. There are two I options in my mind but being totally theoretical it would have to go to testing. The first idea is looking at the perk trees the 20 point perk seems, in my mind, to be gradually increased. What could happen is after a skill hits 20 it could have bonus levels that auto apply a perk point just to that perk and contribute to the attribute gain. I would say each level gained this way would be a notably smaller xp requirement than perk level 19 to 20 but again that would need testing. The second idea is an xp overflow where once you hit 20 in something the remaining xp would be split into the remaining categories under that attribute to continue leveling it up. I see this way as more problematic because shotguns could be used to boost athletics and street brawler very rapidly this way when they're normally harder to level.
Now my final suggestions. This is for a crafting overhaul. As we all know crafting is a mess. If we follow my suggestion for untangling attributes to perk levels I feel this will help a bit but I also think more needs to be done. First and foremost, if none of those suggestions are followed we need a way for non crafters to be able to upgrade items. Both in rarity and item level. I'd suggest Wilson in your building if you want a specific npc but for convenience sake I think all vendor npcs should have the option to use your materials, pay a fee and upgrade your stuff. Now for crafting in general. First we need a new tab. That tab's sole purpose works be rarity upgrades. And it should follow what I said early on in the beginning about gearing, stuff should always have max slots for the rarity. In the the rarity upgrade tab all we should see is our non legendary equipment. This will dramatically clean up the mess that is our current crafting menu by taking our recipes we don't need to see. For example I don't need a rare Dying Night recipe if I literally can never make it again. You could even untie this from the crafting level even if my suggestions regarding perk levels aren't followed, similar to how the current upgrade process work to improve item level so people could get the most out of iconic weapons that their build would live if only that had sunk a third of their attributes into technical ability. Having a rarity upgrade option that can reside entirely from the crafting system would also solve the cosmetic issue in regards to clothes. To make it more worthwhile for people dedicated to crafting, again if it's not unhooked from the current attribute system I would suggest improving material cost reduction perks. Also on a crafting note the auto dismantle perk should not automatically dismantle any items with a value besides 3 eddies.
If you made it to the end thank you for reading my wall of text and feel free to discuss.
Starting off let's tackle difficulty. Cyberpunk is a very easy game. Contrary to its image showing V in a burning city and unable to find a t-shirt, fire and t-shirts are no threat at all. The various status effects that the enemies can hurl at you are both too easy to negate and frankly don't do much to begin with. Also outside of exploding barrels, cop one shot mechanics and the Valentinos with the revolvers I've never really felt a threat to my character. I think this comes down to the above mentioned lack of status effects having an impact. Each faction seems to carry different grenade types but either never or too rarely uses them. This also negates certain cyberwear being worth investing in such as the one where you do improved damage while on fire, or the one where you regenerate health while poisoned instead of taking damage. Now while I could torch myself or poison myself by hurling grenades at my own feet like a madman there's no point in using strategies like that since again enemies are not really a threat. Also as discussed the ai is basically a toaster with enemies either standing out in the open too much, using cover excessively (especially when it's clear you're using tech weapons to shoot through walls or murdering via legendary ping and quick hacks). Now to address this and make things more interesting we need factions to behave differently. Make maelstrom aggressive and cyberwear reliant, Arasaka and Militech flank heavy, 6th street use close knit squads, etc. We also need to just throw away exploding barrels. I'm pretty sure they're just football nukes randomly scattered around and it makes me wonder how night city is even standing.
Next let's talk about gearing. First and foremost, if a piece of clothing is legendary it needs max slots for its type. If I have a legendary coat on it should not have rolled with 2 mod slots when the max is 4. Sure out in the world, roll random mods into it. That's fine. It should still always have max slots. Now regarding this we need the ability to either have a cosmetic set we can overlay everything with, or have the ability to bring each piece of clothing in the game up to a legendary status. I'll get more into crafting shortly. The other major part of gearing I want to discuss is cyberwear. Cyberwear should have no stat requirement full stop. I think to counter this though it should be dramatically more expensive for higher tier ones. I don't think a ripper really cares how cool V is. He should be able to apply those upgrades no matter what. Let's say you want the legendary synaptic signal optimizer to improve your health. Why is that limited to people with max body? It limits build options dramatically because you don't have ways of shoring up your weaknesses. You don't get a pacemaker because your heart is working great after all. Limiting cyberwear in a game that is about cyberwear is frankly dull.
Next let's move onto how we level our characters. Attribute points are terrible. The way they are utilized in game also handicaps builds tremendously. I don't think skills should not be tied to them at all. The game sold me on organic growth, that skills would develop the more you use them. So let us do that. My suggestion here is remove the attribute requirement for skills so I could have for example 15 handguns but only have 12 reflex attributes. Limit the attributes to a Stat bonus. Also tie the perks available to the perk level instead of the attribute level. Also a decent amount of checks should be tied to the various categories instead, for example engineering for breaking into cars, opening some doors, with athletics being tied to yanking people out of cars and opening other doors. Now I know this makes a very large and glaring problem with two perk categories, the first category being cold blood. Cold blood is incredibly easy to level as is and has some rather significant passive. I would suggest lowering the xp gain rates in that category dramatically. I would say bring it down to half or even one third of what it is now. The second category that is an issue is athletics. It is way too slow to level unless you're doing a rocky training montage all over the city. I would say triple the xp gain on it. With this new system I think we'd need to change how we gain attribute points. I would tie them the organic progression in the perk category. Like I said before make it organic growth. On character creation everything would start at one. To gain an attribute you would need, as an example, 3 perk levels for reflex due it it having the three perk lines of handguns, assault, and blades, then reflex would go up by 1 point. Cool you would have to get 2, because it has stealth and cold blooded. Now to take care of people who want to only level 1 weapon type I would suggest an additional system be added. There are two I options in my mind but being totally theoretical it would have to go to testing. The first idea is looking at the perk trees the 20 point perk seems, in my mind, to be gradually increased. What could happen is after a skill hits 20 it could have bonus levels that auto apply a perk point just to that perk and contribute to the attribute gain. I would say each level gained this way would be a notably smaller xp requirement than perk level 19 to 20 but again that would need testing. The second idea is an xp overflow where once you hit 20 in something the remaining xp would be split into the remaining categories under that attribute to continue leveling it up. I see this way as more problematic because shotguns could be used to boost athletics and street brawler very rapidly this way when they're normally harder to level.
Now my final suggestions. This is for a crafting overhaul. As we all know crafting is a mess. If we follow my suggestion for untangling attributes to perk levels I feel this will help a bit but I also think more needs to be done. First and foremost, if none of those suggestions are followed we need a way for non crafters to be able to upgrade items. Both in rarity and item level. I'd suggest Wilson in your building if you want a specific npc but for convenience sake I think all vendor npcs should have the option to use your materials, pay a fee and upgrade your stuff. Now for crafting in general. First we need a new tab. That tab's sole purpose works be rarity upgrades. And it should follow what I said early on in the beginning about gearing, stuff should always have max slots for the rarity. In the the rarity upgrade tab all we should see is our non legendary equipment. This will dramatically clean up the mess that is our current crafting menu by taking our recipes we don't need to see. For example I don't need a rare Dying Night recipe if I literally can never make it again. You could even untie this from the crafting level even if my suggestions regarding perk levels aren't followed, similar to how the current upgrade process work to improve item level so people could get the most out of iconic weapons that their build would live if only that had sunk a third of their attributes into technical ability. Having a rarity upgrade option that can reside entirely from the crafting system would also solve the cosmetic issue in regards to clothes. To make it more worthwhile for people dedicated to crafting, again if it's not unhooked from the current attribute system I would suggest improving material cost reduction perks. Also on a crafting note the auto dismantle perk should not automatically dismantle any items with a value besides 3 eddies.
If you made it to the end thank you for reading my wall of text and feel free to discuss.
