My thoughts on how to improve the game (long)

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I think the biggest issue this game has is that it presents you with this enormous, well-designed world that just invites you to get lost in it. Every NPC, vehicle, billboard or building has an insanely detailed and creative design - but 99% of the time you can't explore past what you see, and there's this feeling of immediate disappointment for every [CLOSED] door or a cool BD your software isn't compatible with.

I actually believe the game would have been better received if the design was flatter and less creative lmao, people would drop the dramas and move on in a day. This just has so much potential I can't help loving it and wishing more was done with it in the same time.

After putting a solid 70+ hours in the game, here's a list of things I felt were clearly missing.

1) Life path impact
At the moment a huge complaint from the community is that life paths don't do all that much and basically boil down to a few dialogue choices and a 20-min prologue. I realize the involvement it would take to bake life paths further into the main story - it's basically impossible at this point. But you could make life paths much more impactful.

- Give us a lifepath-specific passive or even a lifepath specific talent tree
Would actually make this a meaningful gameplay mechanic as opposed to a 20-minute interactable cutscene.

- Give us a few extra additional interactions in the world based on our lifepath.

Having a corpo V run into a former subordinate out in the world, seeing their reaction, maybe getting some cool dialogue out of it... String a few of these along the key locations tied in with some main quests so the players don't miss them, hide a few in the world for the completionists.

- Give us a few lifepath-specific sidequests throughout the game
This one I'm honestly surprised hasn't been implemented yet. It can be a quest chain, it can even be 5 - 6 standalone quests. A corpo V could get a quest to sell some intel to Militech, et cetera... It would actually give us some incentive to reroll our character down the road.

2) Lack of romance options
Romancing is done well but it's really not a choice - you feel like you don't have any real options at all. If you're a straight male V there's Panam - and that's it. If you're a straight female V there's River.

Just having two romanceable options per sex/sexuality would at least give us some feeling of agency and actual choice. Witcher did this well with Yen/Triss.

3) Character customization

- Body types

Being able to customize the dick size on my character but not go through 3 basic body types like slim, fit, or chubby? Come on CDPR.

- Change your appearance in the open world
Just do it, this feature isn't as essential as some make it out to be but the lore really implies it ought to be there. Feels like the most obvious feature to have, and the lack of it just screams 'cutting corners'.

- Have cyberware have a cosmetic impact from time to time
Every pair of mantis blades looks the same. Even a reskin of the actual blades would feel impactful as you replace models. Apply this to every other aug - you catch my drift.

- Character customization (perks)
Allow us to reroll our character fully, not just the perks (and for 100k at that). If it has to be 100k (an obscene amount of money), at least give us a quest where we can maybe reset our character for free, once?

4) Driving
Generaly solid, but can feel insanely clunky at times. Braking feels awful in particular, especially when combined with the zoomed-in minimap - you've no time to react and take a turn in time.

5) AI/NPC behaviour

- Civilian behaviour

Slight tweaks to make random NPCs appear less like furniture. This does not have to be anything huge.

For example, ensure that every citizen has a random 1 - 10 number which will affect how they respond. Let some NPCs freeze up in fear when you start shooting, let some run away, let a rare amount of NPCs respond aggressively.

- Driving AI
Allow cars to go around us if we're blocking their path. Have some NPCs get out of their car if we collide with them, have others drive away aggressively, or just stay in place. Hard collisions should have some impact. At the moment I'll go through a car at 200mph and get the same 'WELL THIS SITUATION IS NOT IDEAL' line as their car blows the fuck up 50 feet in the air.

- Police AI
Police AI is non-existent. Allow police to chase us in vehicles, have MaxTac arrive at the scene feel impactful. Don't spawn cops in secluded locations. Make Pacifica an actual war zone where cop response is small/non-existent. You don't have to count how many NPCs saw you and animate those NPCs using their phones or whatever. Dividing the map into a bunch of smaller regions, assigning a score of 1 - 10 to a zone and have it affect the likability of the police going after you is enough. A tedious task but easy to pull off, and it would play well with the lore of Cyberpunk.

7) Interactivity

- Random interactions

At the moment interactivity falls a bit flat when exploring the city on foot. I think this is one of the biggest issues with the game right now, and the main reason why some people claim the world feels 'empty' when you're not actively ticking boxes off the map or going from checkpoint A to checkpoint B.

Ensuring that you run into one unique unexpected interaction, every 3 - 4 minutes when roaming the world would be immense. It doesn't have to be huge. Red Dead had a tonne of these tiny random interactions - little non-consequential stuff that could feed us tidbits of lore and ensure random exploration is rewarding. An NPC trying to smooth-talk us into wandering deeper into a dark alley, then trying to rob us, for example.

- [CLOSED]
I've approached so many doors wanting to explore what's inside and learn more about Night City, just to realize the doors are permanently locked. I don't think anyone would care if these were your generic Witcher 3 huts but again, so much thought has been put into these they just invite you in. Let us explore a bit more.

- BDs
Need I say more? We don't have to be able to go through all different layers from a BD bought at the store - but just adding a 2-min sequence you could watch/rewind through would be insanely good. You could explore the world for rare BDs. Maybe 1 in 5 BDs could allow you to go through the layers to discover something cool or start a quest if you go looking for clues.

Sex
I don't think that people here want to play CyberSex 360 VR. It's the fact that you only have two prostitutes to choose from, in a hypersexualized megalopolis where a can of soda has tits and a dick on the packaging. It just doesn't sit right. I mean, hell, rehash the same animation but with a different model 30 times if you have to.

Arcades and mini-games
A nice-to-have for sure. Give the completionists a few cool mini-games to play, maybe start a neat little quest chain if you've completed them all.

8) Animations

Add a simple animation when heading to a ripperdoc (with an option to skip it). Buying implants feels like it has zero weight considering how invasive the actual procedure is lore-wise.

Add simple drinking animations when buying a drink at a bar - these are already in the game.

Allow our character to sit down and take in the view throughout Night City.

Give us a few extra finisher animations with melee weapons in particular.
 
Very nice suggestions. I'm on my way to trying to create my own topic featuring suggestions, but have to first get to ten posts.
 
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