Quickhacks are some OP nonsense

[hyperbolekitty]

I'm a level 10 INT build. Points are largely spec'd into quick hacks. I got short circuit and overheat both of which count as non-lethal(Fire doesn't kill I guess?). Majority of the missions I playthrough I can just zoom in from afar with scan, drop short circuit and overheat on enemies ad nauseum until all enemies are cleared. I'm either dropping these hacks from a far away distance or I'm doing it through the security cameras. They rarely upload the hacks to locate me(I wish they did it more often) and they seem to have no measures for how to deal with me. At a certain point, It feels like i'm playing Watch Dogs. With quick hacks the game feels very uneven as even though i'm on hard i'm able to just go through enemies with ease to the point where I had an actual encounter with a boss fight it felt jarring to deal with something that is completely outside my build(which is another discussion)

From a lore perspective its also jarring. At this point of time in 2077, things like network security and connected augments are very well established in the culture. One would think there would be someone who would be sufficiently paranoid enough to keep their augments completely offline and invulnerable from hacks. Or more enemies who would at least go the non-augmented route either because of said security issue or just from personal choices.


But i'm not here to just complain. I do believe that the hack mechanics can be improved with balance. My personal suggestions to potentially help the balance of quickhacking would include:

-Make quickhacks cost more RAM if done through cameras. Would encourage more active exploration of the environment and less cheesing of your enemies from far away.
-Counterhacks proc'd by enemies if you drop quick hacks on them. Things like instant-overheat applied to you, position reveal upload etc.
-Have enemies you just can't hack into. I.e, enemies who have no augmented devices attached to them or someone sensible and smart enough to keep their augments off the net.
-Have remote quickhacks be generally more costly than if done inside of an enemy computer. Again this is to encourage taking the risk of actually going into the enemy base to drop hacks as opposed to just sitting outside.
-RAM as "ammo" as opposed to regen. Regeneration of RAM is also what encourages me to just be able to sit from afar quickhacking enemies with little to no risk to myself. RAM ammo could be a drop from destroyed drones, mechs or even servers (in units of 1-4) but could also be bought from quickhack vendors. Doing this would also hopefully make quick hacking feel like they have "tactical" considerations for dropping enemies.
-As an addition to the above suggestion perhaps it could be so that the RAM regen ability instead makes it so that you could have more RAM per ammo consumed (1 RAM gained at level 1 and 3 RAM gained at level 3)

 

[MojoBreaker]

you can play on hardest difficulty and just quickhack through game. Its unbalanced same as Melee build

 

[Xayias]

By the end of the game I have been using cyberpsychosis to try to get enemies all bundled up together and then use contagion to just drop them all at once. I am using all gold quickhacks with a gold cyberdeck.
They should have RAM be retrievable only through the Jack nodes you need to hack to get the crafting componets. Each combat area has enough of them where you could get plenty back and require you to actually enter the level.

 

[TheRealTalidus]

Every ability you have to kill a person is OP, its not just quickhacks. Snipers can go through the world and penetrate everything, no matter how many walls, floors, earth you go through. Ping everyone, and pick them all off. You literally can clear an entire enemy location in about 20 seconds with a silenced sniper.

The weakest but, still ridiculous OP weapons are Smart weapons. I have a crafting build so all of my gear is super max. I can zip into a zone Ping everyone and just spray. Before everyone even goes aggro I've almost cleared the entire area.

Enemies just need to be boosted a ton is the reality. I am playing on hard and realize very hard will have to be next. I do think our defense needs to get boosted as well and we need to see more support for being "overwhelmed" when you are being attacked by multiple enemies. The only enemies that even give me a pause are Cops and Border Patrol.

 

[Prae255]

One of the scrapped/removed/WIP systems made it look like it was the prerequisite to make a physical connection through a gangmember.
That way you could gain access to the wireless network of his buddies, activating the use of remote quickhacks.
It doesn't solve the fact that the quickhacks are very strong and effective in this game.

But... more layers and depth to the system could be nice.

1. Physical connection required before gaining remote access to groups of enemies, either through a gangmember or a team-connected device. Advanced hacks (Epic and Legendary tier) should still be able to be executed remotely, but with a penalty to damage and duration, perhaps?

2. Logging onto an enemy's private network is fine, but it means that they should be able to ping you as well if they even get suspicious. (AI improvements?)

3. A minigame / skill you run on your own character when being detected: Deploying ICE. The better your results, the stronger your defense. The more layers you deploy, the better.
You might even fry your attacker's brain this way.

 

[Cabels2Carbells]

One of the scrapped/removed/WIP systems made it look like it was the prerequisite to make a physical connection through a gangmember.
That way you could gain access to the wireless network of his buddies, activating the use of remote quickhacks.
It doesn't solve the fact that the quickhacks are very strong and effective in this game.

This should be a requirement, and would actually go a long way into reducing the power of quickhacks. Given that currently I can just watch them from across the street and hack them all.

And add in giving the monowire it's utility back instead of what it currently is.

 

[zeeeon]

One of the scrapped/removed/WIP systems made it look like it was the prerequisite to make a physical connection through a gangmember.
That way you could gain access to the wireless network of his buddies, activating the use of remote quickhacks.
It doesn't solve the fact that the quickhacks are very strong and effective in this game.

But... more layers and depth to the system could be nice.

1. Physical connection required before gaining remote access to groups of enemies, either through a gangmember or a team-connected device. Advanced hacks (Epic and Legendary tier) should still be able to be executed remotely, but with a penalty to damage and duration, perhaps?

2. Logging onto an enemy's private network is fine, but it means that they should be able to ping you as well if they even get suspicious. (AI improvements?)

3. A minigame / skill you run on your own character when being detected: Deploying ICE. The better your results, the stronger your defense. The more layers you deploy, the better.
You might even fry your attacker's brain this way.

These are some solid points. I like all of them.
In fact, I'd like to add a few of my own:

1. ICE should be meaningful. In the Cyberpunk genre, ICE was reactionary and dangerous. In the Sprawl Trilogy, it almost killed Bobby Newmark in Count Zero. If you break an enemies ICE it should be impactful. To break an enemies ICE it should be very challenging.

2. Remote hacking should be saved for the mid to end game and honestly, imho be event specific. Early on you should be a novice hacker. Novice hackers don't typically get to remote pwn high value targets. It should be progression based.

Put the CYBER back into Cyberpunk!

 

[Rarolina]

I find it weird I can snipe with cyberhacks more or less. It seems like requiring the physical connection would be a good balance method.

 

[JC_Denton_86]

The problem is the AI isn't scripted to be smart enough against stealth builds or long range builds. They should rush you down more aggressively. They also need more defense against netrunner builds. Enemy netrunners are fine, but they aren't enough. We need the AI to be able to hit us back with some of the more op quickhacks we use on them, or at least have a way to put up some kind of "firewall" defense against our quickhacks after we've used them one too many times.

I don't want the game to become too hard for casual gamers, but I also think the combat is too easy and needs some tweaking.

 

[AdamTaylor]

Walk in range, Ping, Contagion, win.
Stupidly overpowered. lol

Post automatically merged: Dec 17, 2020

I find it weird I can snipe with cyberhacks more or less. It seems like requiring the physical connection would be a good balance method.

Originally that was needed. You had to basically stealth grab someone, and then you could forcefully hack them to gain access to their network and such.