Pax Mod turned into a togglable non-lethal gameplay setting or reintroduction of Target analysis

[SaintSimz]

Hello, I understand we're seeing the last lap of updates so I thought this may be the last opportunity to make a request like this in case it's a complex change.

It's been hard to enjoy everything Cyberpunk's combat has to offer while taking the non-lethal route with the removal of mod slots from iconic weapons and due to some other things I'll list in notes below. I love the game's emphasis on the importance of life and death, but it kinda takes you out of that when the weapons you're most likely to enjoy are often lethal.

Some notes I would love to be looked at in case this or a variation of it is implemented like the old Target Analysis cyberware mod I've read about:

- Like above, all weapon fire be made non-lethal
- Quickhacks that aren't obviously lethal unlike suic and cyberpsychosis be made non-lethal
- Chain lightning or bolt from tech weapons no longer targets already downed enemies, finishing them off
- Critical headshots no longer kill on impact

It'd also be nice for cyberware weapons (monowire, etc) to be non-lethal too, but I'm not sure how complex a change like that would be so I left it out.

 

[Crimsomrider]

+1

I'd love to see the return of Target Analysis, in whichever shape or form it takes. Hell even as an actual piece of installable cyberware that goes into arms or whatever.

It was a glorious little cyberware mod that allowed me to actually have fun with all tools and weapons available without being a murderhobo, but now the whole non-lethal playstyle is mostly avoiding a vast majority of weapons and tools because ways to make non-lethal combat is quite limited and in certain cases outright impossible.

 

[Netrunner2go]

It would feel weird to make headshots or mantis blades non lethal… at least for me : /

 

[Zem]

It does seem like an unintended consequence of disallowing mods on most iconics that you now can't make them non-lethal.

The overkill kill with non-lethal weapons has always bugged me though. One light tap too many with a baseball bat and it's a kill. Be nice if the KO included a short delay during which the target is invulnerable to kills by non-lethal weapons. Like even 1-2 seconds would be fine. They hit the floor and THEN if you want to you can deliver the coup d'grace.

And what about stuffing bodies in closets, dumpsters, and crates? Why did this become lethal? Freezers and fridges, sure.

 

[Netrunner2go]

And what about stuffing bodies in closets, dumpsters, and crates? Why did this become lethal? Freezers and fridges, sure.

Yeah asked it myself as well doesn’t make sense for me - someone said it’s because they are removed from the game by stuffing them which technically seems to count as kill… still weird : /

about the whole lethal non-lethal discussion… isn’t the system just „fake“ overall? I was always curious by fighting Cyberpsychos with Commrades Hammer without killing them… careful use of any (range-) weapon is like playing non-lethal all the way until you make the „final killing strike“ no?… (not sure if it counts for katanas & knifes tho…)

 

[LeKill3rFou]

Yeah asked it myself as well doesn’t make sense for me - someone said it’s because they are removed from the game by stuffing them which technically seems to count as kill… still weird : /

Yep, likely tied to how the game/engine work. Bodies despawn when you drop them in containers and the game can probably no longer acknowledge the state they were (dead/unconscious). Also likely why a little bag containing the loot is created when dropping a body. If not, the loot inside the corpses would despawn too and would being "lost" forever.
Many thought it had to be a bug since well, since release... despite support answers saying it was not. But since they added the warning on the hud, it's clear it's intended or at least, it's something which can't be changed.

 

[Zem]

Yeah asked it myself as well doesn’t make sense for me - someone said it’s because they are removed from the game by stuffing them which technically seems to count as kill… still weird : /

This was always the case and it didn't count as a kill before. In fact used to be the other way around. I always wondered why dropping an unconscious body in a freezer WASN'T lethal.

careful use of any (range-) weapon is like playing non-lethal all the way until you make the „final killing strike“ no?… (not sure if it counts for katanas & knifes tho…)

True. Lethal/Non-Lethal is determined only by the final blow. Doesn't matter what kind of weapon you used to reduce them NEAR zero. Blades, sniper rifle headshots, grenades... as long as you don't use a lethal weapon for the last hit or touch them AT ALL after the final hit. Like I said that last bit is super annoying if they reach zero and you're rattling off a three punch combo or something still. Oops. Dead.

Related annoyance: Being able to tell if someone is dead or not. You'd think scanning a dead body would tell you whether they were dead or not, but it doesn't. And if they end up ragdolled, they don't always revert immediately to that laying down on their back pose where you can see they are still breathing. Hovering a weapon crosshairs over them usually, but not always, turns red if they are still alive. A more reliable indicator would be nice.

Post automatically merged: Jan 16, 2024

ep, likely tied to how the game/engine work.

No, it's not. We know it's not since it used to work the opposite way. Stuffing unconscious bodies in a container was never lethal prior to 2.0. There was also a choice of two prompts when performing a takedown near a container: one lethal and one non-lethal, so you could choose. Now the only choice you get is lethal in that situation.

So yeah, it was an intentional change. Just not sure why.

It's entirely possible it's a bug that ALL containers are now lethal. It's possible the intention was to make only some containers lethal (freezers, fridges, garbage chutes) and others non-lethal (closets, storage crates, dumpsters) and it just bugged out making them all lethal. It simply makes zero sense that stuffing an unconscious body is a closet is a lethal action.

 

[Crimsomrider]

Nah, the containers were always lethal but CDPR poorly implemented the feature because that's just how the majority of the game was since release. Unfinished, rushed, buggy... which they have been patching ever since.

2.0 unfortuantely instead of fixing what was broken and improving it, scrapped most things that were not developed properly which is why so many features, perks, items and abilities got scrapped and simplified. A Lite Edition basically.

In the case of containers; yes the non-lethal knockout option to directly toss someone into a container existed, but it still counted as a kill because the game despawns bodies once they're tossed in.

This is how it always worked and was evident by the Gig: Goodbye Night City in the Badlands, where putting anyone inside of containers would fail the gig's optional objective not to kill anyone. Another piece of evidence is that if you looked inside of containers when tossing a 2nd body inside of them, the first one would be gone.

So with 2.0 CDPR decided not to fix this, instead the non-lethal prompts along with their animations got scrapped and a warning was slapped on top to warn players it's lethal to stop misleading people.

It's a sad truth unfortunately, as everyone kept reporting this to CDPR for years to the point it even became a warning for the gig;

• Dumping bodies in hiding places may fail the bonus objective, so you may have to hide them behind rocks outside the compound if you wish to avoid raising any alarms.

 

[LeKill3rFou]

No, it's not. We know it's not since it used to work the opposite way. Stuffing unconscious bodies in a container was never lethal prior to 2.0.

Yes, it is
Since release, putting bodies in containers was always lethal and kill the "unconscious" dude you dropped in. Optional non lethal objectives always failed (and still fail indeed) if you put a body in a container. But since 2.0, it's clearly noticed while before, you were able to notice it only when an optional (non lethal) objective failed.
You can search a bit on the forum, the subject was debatted many times, on many game versions since I'm here

That's why I assume it's not something they can fix/change... So likely tied to how the engine/game work and can't be changed.

Edit : And it was a bigger issue on the first versions of the game, because picking up an unconscious guy and dropping it on the ground had great chances to directly kill him too... So when knocking out manually an enemy, you had to do it at the right place, exactly where you want the corpse to be and stay to not alert other enemies. It was terrible

 

[Zem]

Yes, it is
Since release, putting bodies in containers was always lethal and kill the "unconscious" dude you dropped in.

No way it was "always". More likely it was a sometimes thing and unpredictable. I always hid the bodies and I always did optional objectives and I'd have noticed being told I killed someone when I thought I hadn't. 95% of the time, you'd have no way of knowing of course, because there just are very few non-lethal objectives in the game.

And if despawning counted as killing you'd never be able to complete a non-lethal objective ever. Bodies despawn all on their own after a while once you move far enough away. So whatever causes this problem, it's not that.

 

[LeKill3rFou]

No way it was "always". More likely it was a sometimes thing and unpredictable. I always hid the bodies and I always did optional objectives and I'd have noticed being told I killed someone when I thought I hadn't. 95% of the time, you'd have no way of knowing of course, because there just are very few non-lethal objectives in the game.

Yes, it was 100% reliable and an intended behavior confirmed several times by CDPR support on tickets submitted by players who thought it was a bug...
During the quests which have an optional objective to not kill anyone, like the one in the Badlands @Crimsomrider noticed, if you dump an unconscious guy in a container, no matter the one, the objective failed instantly (100% reliable).
This is also the reason why you can't dump "important NPCs", like GIG targets you have to carry to fixer cars, in containers (there is no prompt at all) because it would likely mess up the GIG.

The fact is : Any body dumped in a container is automatically considered by the game as dead.

Quest with optional objective was the only way to confirm it, because corpses in containers simply "vanish" from the game forever, so you don't know if the guy you dropped in is alive or not^^

But you don't have to believe me, just search a bit on the forum, there are several threads about that, created on several versions of the game

 

[Netrunner2go]

What bothers me ever since is that the bodies vanish but the dropspace is marked as full… <.<

 

[Nixilos]

It would feel weird to make headshots or mantis blades non lethal… at least for me : /

This is why it makes sense as an eye or a coprocessor. If you can ricochet bullets off of dirt and rocks due to advanced targeting algorithms. you can certainly subtly shift the trajectory of a bullet or even a weapon swing to avoid vitals and kill shots while inflicting non fatal wounds.

A lot of things don't make sense in cyberpunk because they are cartoony game mechanics, it's true. However, it's also usually a failure of imagination, and a lack of science fiction literacy let alone knowledge of what is already possible IRL. For example, so many people argue revolvers should not be able to be silenced (so much so that it actually got changed) while completely ignoring that gas sealed revolvers exist in the real world, so why not in 2077? Not to mention real world suppressors are not silent, which already implies game logic or advanced tech.

Of all settings, this is one of the ones where things that normally seem like nonsense are perfectly believable. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

 

[LeKill3rFou]

What bothers me ever since is that the bodies vanish but the dropspace is marked as full… <.<

Yep
But slightly different I think. The state of a body is linked to the body itself which "despawn", while the "container filling count" is linked to the container itself which does not. I could be wrong, but I remember that container keep their state during the whole game. If you completely fill up one, it will appear as full until the end of the game.

 

[Zem]

Quest with optional objective was the only way to confirm it, because corpses in containers simply "vanish" from the game forever, so you don't know if the guy you dropped in is alive or not^^

I did search on this issue and I see other people saying the same things I am. However, I think this right here is probably why I and others don't recall this being a problem. There are only two (maybe three) missions in the entire pre-PL game that I can recall have non-lethal objectives or dialogue, unless you know of any others. Outside of those, there's literally no difference between thinking you were non-lethal and actually having the game recognize that.

Losing my Religion / Sacrum Profanum - Easy to do this one without dumping any bodies. There's like five guys and only one of them patrols. You can drop them all with non-lethal takedowns from behind.

Gig: Goodbye Night City - This one, honestly, I'd have to run again to see where I might even have dumped a body. It's a relatively small camp but has a whole ton of Militech guys, cams, turrets, etc. It's such a pain to do non-lethal that I think (when I bothered to do it) I probably ended up dashing in through a side gate, scaling a tower, and went in through the roof of the main building, then just booked out of there in the truck with the prisoner.

Gig: The Union Strikes Back. Not a stated objective in the quest tracker, but Rogue has different dialog if you kill civilian workers (even though they can be hostile) in the building vs. just the patrolling guards and primary target. But again, this one is most easily done going in through the roof, taking out a few patrolling guards, and then either grabbing or killing the target rather than dealing with everyone inside from the ground up.

I'd have said the better way to "fix" this bug would be to just remove all the containers in these three missions but then they added a fourth non-lethal mission in PL as well as made some ambushes trigger based on whether you were lethal or non-lethal (murder notes complaining you killed their gang mates, etc.) So it became a bigger problem.

Post automatically merged: Jan 16, 2024

The state of a body is linked to the body itself which "despawn"

It's probably messier than that. If despawned bodies were always considered dead then you'd never be able to complete Goodbye Night City non-lethally. Even bodies left on the ground will eventually despawn before you're done with the mission. And I found out the hard way once that you have to make it all the way to the bonus drop point and collect your reward before you can go back and slaughter everyone in the Militech compound. (Which I tested... you know... for science!)