I'm happy to wait, say, an additional 30 minutes...
(But, I full of @#$%. I've been so busy lately, one or two conversations like this are all I can reasonably engage in.)
It's been quite a busy fall here too. And it's a sort of habit of mine to "bow out" if I start to feel like I'm being a pest in a thread because I don't really wish to have prolonged "fights" over things... given that I do seem to have pretty unorthodox opinions on things compared to most others.
Exactly. See, what is weird is that "downtime" is what's missing from a lot of RPGs. If it's all one amazingly epic, blockbuster adventure to the next, that's the trouble. When diving off of a dragon to fight an entire horde of Orc warriors single-handedly before facing off against the demon / legendary warlord / secret wizard nemesis is just another day in the life...it loses its luster rather quickly. BUT! I also want that part of the game to feel that impactful and engrossing. Hence, I'll need pretty intricate systems to pull all of that off -- whether I use it 15 times over the course of my game...or only 3 -- the mechanics need to be in place.
Well this we certainly agree on.
You have these big event-battles you train for during the game with smaller fights ad nauseam, and it's all full of systemic progression and guidance, but then.... it all drops down to near zero when you holster your weapon.
Downtime from combat shouldn't mean "dead" gameplay. It should be calmer and more relaxing, but (optimally) not any less systemically or mechanically interesting -- and it shouldn't merely consist on preparing for a next battle. This is what developers seem to neglect - even Bethesda with their "do what you want" mentality, as all their extra systems aim to improve your damage output and resistances (be it alchemy, crafting, cooking....). Environmental interactivity or interactivity beyond the afore mentioned and speaking to NPC's to get you back fighting is somehow "not a thing".
And it seems to me, that this will very much be the case with Cyberpunk too.
I try to immerse myself in the actual sense of day-to-day life in-game as realistically as I possibly can. To me, that experience, that sense of distance and scale as it would feel in real life is more important to me than maxing my DPS or hundred-percenting achievements.
Same here. But, it's not easy the get the enjoyment out of it, if covering those distances don't offer any incentives to cover them beyond a subjective desire to willingly do so. And then you get the awful, awful fast travel teleportation points to keep the player away from the tedium of walking through the "empty" spaces. Sometimes it almost feels as though they lovingly created the visuals there, but then got tired and threw a "bypass" mechanism in. Even an abstracted travel isn't used anymore, just fade-out--fade-in.
I get a strong impression that this is going to be one of the things that puts CP2077 through the roof. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. But I don't think I'm wrong.
I'm not convinced about it getting even all the way to the roof. There's some nice ideas going on there, and it might actually deliver something fun, but somehow it feels as if the thought process at designing them was abruptly cut before reaching to where it was actually going.
Learning how to cook, for example, being the true artform it is, is still far less time-consuming than learning how to become a master hand-to-had combatant, a master of the sword, a master of the bow, and a master of battlefield tactics. Each of those "combat" skills would take about as long as it would take to teach someone to be a master chef once.
Thaaat's a bit far fetched, don't you think. There's a big difference between, for example, being a patissier or a poissonier. Being a chef that's masters every form of cooking is kinda the same thing as being one who masters many different forms of combat.
You are giving combat just the sort of attention here that it doesn't need, by elevating it over other things.
All the examples you have given seem to be something that would require the game to be point and click to implement.
For a good portion of it, yes.
For the game to have your character decide to search for and find something based on stats it needs to take your agency away, and make the journey for you.
These things.. In an open world video game, are things you just make the decision to do your self.. No stats required.
No, this is not true.
You can give a character an order to "search" or "be focused" just as you can order him to shoot by pressing a button.
I haven't, and I don't think anyone has, suggested a stat the determines "willingness" to do something. The stats determine the success rate of your given orders to do something.
So.. I guess its more of a question of what kind of game do you want.
An open world you can freely explore
Or something more like a choose your adventure point and click or something isometric that has a pop up to tell you your stat has activated and you find something on the ground.
I don't know how those two would exclude eachother out.
You can "find something" on the ground based on a stat check without a popup telling you so.
And about that point and click thing. You have it in already. Whether it is visible or not, the cursor is there in the middle of the screen, and with it you point and click as you interact with the gameworld, be it talking to NPC's, pressing elevator buttons, picking something up or shooting your gun.
