[Suggestion] Rethink Level Scaling and Character Progression

[Wlasiuk]

I think the progression system could be much more engaging with a few changes:​

• Enemies should have fixed health and stats instead of scaling with the player's level.
• V should always remain at 100 base Health, rather than gaining 5 Health automatically every level.
• Survivability should come primarily from player choice, especially through investing Attribute Points into Body and its related perks.
• Weapon and item tiers should provide only marginal stat increases, like 1-2% per tier. Instead most damage increases should again come from player choice, from perks and attributes like Reflex or Cool, not from passive gear scaling.
• Replace the current armour system with one that has diminishing returns, that would remove the need for an arbitrary hard cap, while still preventing armour from becoming overpowered. Like "<damage> * (0.5 + (0.5 * 0.99 ^ (<armour> / 10)))", which would make armour converge towards 50% damage reduction without ever reaching it.

​

The current level scaling system makes progression feel far less meaningful than it should.​

By around level 30, you can already reach your maximum damage output, yet both enemy and player survivability continue scaling all the way to level 60. The result is that both you and your enemies become increasingly spongey.

It's not about difficulty, even on Very Hard, you're close to immortal by the end of the game. The problem is that the combat loses its pacing and dynamics. Fights simply take longer because health pools keep increasing, not because enemies become more interesting or dangerous.

Level scaling is simply bad game design. It's often used as a lazy solution to compensate for an overinflated progression system, where numbers keep getting bigger simply because they can, forcing enemies to scale indefinitely just to maintain some sense of challenge. Such steep vertical progression only works in stage based games, where you don't repeatedly encounter the same enemies throughout the game.

Stat increases shouldn’t happen automatically just from leveling up, because that quickly inflates the numbers and makes most combat encounters feel meaningless. Instead, stat increases should be smaller and tied directly to player choices, which would make progression feel much more meaningful.

 

[Taril]

Level scaling was added to facilitate the sandbox-y nature of how they wanted the game to be. So you can go anywhere at any time.

In 1.0 they did have static enemy stats. But it meant you had to progress through Night City's districts in a set order based on their level.

This is always the crux when it comes to dynamic vs static systems. Dynamic provides more freedom as you can go anywhere and do anything with content always being scaled to you. While static provides a linear path to follow with maybe some leeway to push into higher level areas if you're able to deal with the stronger enemies there.

P.s:

By around level 30, you can already reach your maximum damage output

Not so. Damage will continue scaling up until level 51 when you get access to T5++ items.

I've honestly never seen any bullet spongey enemies even on Very Hard. If anything the opposite, I find that after mid-game all enemies become pushovers for the rest of the playthrough where all the damage modifiers I have access to just obliterate everyone. Compared to early on when enemies feel tanky because you just don't have access to any damage options (Where even stealth headshots aren't one hit kills on random gonks)

Interestingly, this used to be a LOT worse in 1.0, where perk trees were absolutely full of minor damage ups with coalesced into absolutely insane damage outputs when combined (The the point where you'd just one-shot even bosses)

It's not about difficulty, even on Very Hard, you're close to immortal by the end of the game.

Which is the point. The progression is about scaling into this immortal one-man-army. That's the whole purpose of being chromed out the gills.

At the end of the day, one of the main issues is around scope.

Is content supposed to prioritise freedom? Then dynamic scaling would be preferred.

Is the goal to become a super-immortal-death-machine? Then late game builds will end up being bonkers.

Beyond that... I don't know what the future holds for the series.

From my perspective, I'd love to see Orion completely rework the whole system from the ground up. Get rid of item tiers, put less reliance on cramming in as much cyberware as possible (Offering clothing based upgrades as an alternative) and generally redo the entire attribute and perk system to offer better customisation and build potential (Both in and out of combat... Skillchecks have had a ton of complaints after 2.0).

But we'll have to see what they go for based on what they learned from 2077.

 

[Wlasiuk]

Level scaling was added to facilitate the sandbox-y nature of how they wanted the game to be. So you can go anywhere at any time.

You don't need level scaling for that, only if there is such a high number inflation. Look at Elden Ring, it has a much flatter power curve and therefore level scaling is not needed, even when you can roam around freely.

In 1.0 they did have static enemy stats. But it meant you had to progress through Night City's districts in a set order based on their level.

You missed my point, read the entire post, I'm not asking for 1.0 back.
I'm asking for a way flatter vertical progression, that is defined through player choice and more meaningful, that doesn't need enemy scaling.

Not so. Damage will continue scaling up until level 51 when you get access to T5++ items.

I've honestly never seen any bullet spongey enemies even on Very Hard. If anything the opposite, I find that after mid-game all enemies become pushovers for the rest of the playthrough where all the damage modifiers I have access to just obliterate everyone. Compared to early on when enemies feel tanky because you just don't have access to any damage options (Where even stealth headshots aren't one hit kills on random gonks)

After 30 damage barely scales, at that level you most likely have already a tier 5 weapon available. That the same enemies get more spongy is not a feeling but a fact. When around lvl 25 an Overture can one-shot enemies with a headshot, it cannot do it at level 45 to the SAME enemies.

Interestingly, this used to be a LOT worse in 1.0, where perk trees were absolutely full of minor damage ups with coalesced into absolutely insane damage outputs when combined (The the point where you'd just one-shot even bosses)

Again I'm not asking for 1.0 back.

Which is the point. The progression is about scaling into this immortal one-man-army. That's the whole purpose of being chromed out the gills.

Which can be achieved with smaller numbers, when not upscaling the enemies.

At the end of the day, one of the main issues is around scope.

Is content supposed to prioritise freedom? Then dynamic scaling would be preferred.

Is the goal to become a super-immortal-death-machine? Then late game builds will end up being bonkers.

Dynamic scaling is not needed for achieving freedom, just a flatter but more meaningful progression, which would also result in becoming powerful, just with smaller numbers and without the need to scale up the enemies and bend the progression experience.

From my perspective, I'd love to see Orion completely rework the whole system from the ground up. Get rid of item tiers, put less reliance on cramming in as much cyberware as possible (Offering clothing based upgrades as an alternative) and generally redo the entire attribute and perk system to offer better customisation and build potential (Both in and out of combat... Skillchecks have had a ton of complaints after 2.0).

It's similar to what I'm asking for. But it could be done without redoing the entire system.

 

[Taril]

You don't need level scaling for that, only if there is such a high number inflation. Look at Elden Ring, it has a much flatter power curve and therefore level scaling is not needed, even when you can roam around freely.

You very much do.

I'm quite literally playing Elden Ring right now (I tabbed out to check something on the wiki)

Elden Ring very much punishes you for not following its progression of Limgrave > Liurnia > Caelid > Altus > Mountaintops > Farum Azula > Haligtree

You walk into Dragonbarrow on a level 1 character and you'll get one shot by everything and you will tickle enemies with your +0 weapon.

This is exactly how 1.0 Cyberpunk was with its static enemies. You could run straight to Pacifica after The Heist. But you'd just get decimated by everyone there while doing nothing to them.

With dynamic scaling, you very much can go to Pacifica right after The Heist and be fine as enemies scale to you.

That the same enemies get more spongy is not a feeling but a fact.

Your anecdotal evidence for it is not fact.

My anecdotal evidence shows otherwise. I get bored playing at level 50+ because of how patheticly weak enemies are.

Dynamic scaling is not needed for achieving freedom

It quite literally is.

Unless your plan is to completely remove any and all scaling whatsoever, making ALL enemies the same flat value and removing any progression from the player (Which is effectively making dynamic scaling... Just without anyone scaling)

Part of what people like is progression in their character. With them getting tangibly stronger. If this is a thing then dynamic scaling is the only way to allow complete freedom without making combat become trivially easy almost immediately.

This is the entire reason why dynamic scaling systems exist, despite their massive flaws. They are used whenever a game wants to promote complete freedom for players to do content in any order.

 

[LeKill3rFou]

Not so. Damage will continue scaling up until level 51 when you get access to T5++ items.

I've honestly never seen any bullet spongey enemies even on Very Hard. If anything the opposite, I find that after mid-game all enemies become pushovers for the rest of the playthrough where all the damage modifiers I have access to just obliterate everyone. Compared to early on when enemies feel tanky because you just don't have access to any damage options (Where even stealth headshots aren't one hit kills on random gonks)

Yep, after level 30-35, enemies are absolutely no match against V. There is only a (very) little spike when reaching Dogtown against BARGHEST guys.
It's mainly because enemies scaling is linear while V is becoming exponentially more powerful by getting access to more powerful cyberwares, so more armor, more perks, more abilities, and so on.

Interestingly, this used to be a LOT worse in 1.0, where perk trees were absolutely full of minor damage ups with coalesced into absolutely insane damage outputs when combined (The the point where you'd just one-shot even bosses)

It was quite broken... aside from being able to deal crazy damage (remember seeing 1 million damage^^), it was also possible to get enough armor to negate all damage.

Post automatically merged: Jul 17, 2026

After 30 damage barely scales, at that level you most likely have already a tier 5 weapon available. That the same enemies get more spongy is not a feeling but a fact. When around lvl 25 an Overture can one-shot enemies with a headshot, it cannot do it at level 45 to the SAME enemies.

Franckly you should one shot enemies at level 45... With my "usual" build which is a melee build, I can one shot enemies with a way less powerful handgun than Overture

 

[Wlasiuk]

You very much do.

I'm quite literally playing Elden Ring right now (I tabbed out to check something on the wiki)

Elden Ring very much punishes you for not following its progression of Limgrave > Liurnia > Caelid > Altus > Mountaintops > Farum Azula > Haligtree

You walk into Dragonbarrow on a level 1 character and you'll get one shot by everything and you will tickle enemies with your +0 weapon.

You can play through the entire game with lvl 1. There is vertical progression but it's much flatter. You don't reach x20 your starting EHP for example.

With dynamic scaling, you very much can go to Pacifica right after The Heist and be fine as enemies scale to you.

Your anecdotal evidence for it is not fact.

My anecdotal evidence shows otherwise. I get bored playing at level 50+ because of how patheticly weak enemies are.

I NEVER said that enemies don't become easier, but too SPONGY, V at that point is basically IMMORTAL.
It just takes longer to kill the enemies, nothing anecdotal, just go try out your damage at lvl 25 and 45 against the SAME enemy and you will see the difference in % HP lost.

It quite literally is.

Unless your plan is to completely remove any and all scaling whatsoever, making ALL enemies the same flat value and removing any progression from the player (Which is effectively making dynamic scaling... Just without anyone scaling)

Part of what people like is progression in their character. With them getting tangibly stronger. If this is a thing then dynamic scaling is the only way to allow complete freedom without making combat become trivially easy almost immediately.

This is the entire reason why dynamic scaling systems exist, despite their massive flaws. They are used whenever a game wants to promote complete freedom for players to do content in any order.

What you are saying is a contradiction, you want your character to become stronger, but when removing enemy scaling V is not allowed to become stronger at all?

Obviously V becomes ridiciously strong with the current system and enemies DO NOT keep up with V, so you end up becoming overpowered anyway.
That's why I'm suggesting when removing the enemy upscaling and to also remove passive number inflation of V. Just to reduce the power of V by the amount the enemies get upscaled currently.

V would become stronger than the enemies in both cases, but like I suggest through perks and attributes, basically player choice, and not through passive HP, weapon damage and armour growth.

 

[LeKill3rFou]

V would become stronger than the enemies in both cases, but like I suggest through perks and attributes, basically player choice, and not through passive HP, weapon damage and armour growth.

It's pretty much what it is currently. V become a bit stronger by the leveling and weapons (quite the same as enemies in fact), but what's make V really stronger and make a big difference are perks and cyberwares (it was the point of 2.0 overhaul).
I would say that compared to perks and cyberwares bonuses, the bonus given by leveling are not really significant.

 

[Taril]

You can play through the entire game with lvl 1.

Yes... If you utilise progression in the form of weapon upgrades and buffs to do massive damage. You also need to be good enough to no-hit every boss because you get one shot by everything.

As a casual player, you will get absolutely destroyed if you tried to play through the game at level 1.

There is vertical progression but it's much flatter. You don't reach x20 your starting EHP for example.

You very much do.

Between leveling Vigor (Going from ~400 health to up to 2000+), gaining passive damage reduction from stat allocation as you level to equipping better armour and using buffs to mitigate damage you can go way beyond x20 your starting EHP.

Like, there are literally tank builds out there that run around with 2000+ health and 95% damage negation (EHP is 40,000+)

Plus upgraded healing flasks (Both quality and quantity), plus other sources of healing (Prayerful Strike, Great Stars on hit healing)

I NEVER said that enemies don't become easier, but too SPONGY

I NEVER said "Easier", I said "Weak"

Meaning they take no effort to kill.

It just takes longer to kill the enemies, nothing anecdotal, just go try out your damage at lvl 25 and 45 against the SAME enemy and you will see the difference in % HP lost.

It is anecdotal.

I've played the game for many hundreds of hours and I always note how, especially with stealth builds, they are really bad early on when you can't one-shot basic gonks. But by the time you're level 30-35, you're easily one shotting even the tougher elite enemies and Animals.

My experience is that enemies, on Very Hard difficulty, do not scale into being sponges. They start off as sponges, but by the time you get to level 30-35 and get a decent build going (Especially after you finish getting your mandatory 20 Tech for cyberware capacity and can get 20 in your damage attribute and associated perks for your weapons) that enemies just get progressively easier to kill as your damage continues to ramp up.

What you are saying is a contradiction, you want your character to become stronger, but when removing enemy scaling V is not allowed to become stronger at all?

Not really?

If you remove enemy scaling. Then you lose out on freedom. As there would be a set progression inherently by way of scaling enemies with the level you are expected to encounter them.

If you remove enemy scaling entirely, making all enemies across the entire game equally strong in an effort to maintain freedom. Then any progression of the player character that exists will quickly make them outscale literally the entire game. Making combat not engaging very quickly. As such, if you wanted to retain freedom in such a scenario, then there would need to not be any player progression, so that combat remains engaging throughout the game.

This is where the whole thing with dynamic scaling comes in. It allows the player to progress. Gaining new skills and abilities. But retaining that freedom to do any content in the game at any time and get an engaging combat experience (As opposed to static scaling where you can outlevel areas and so doing them later will be trivial and boring)

V would become stronger than the enemies in both cases, but like I suggest through perks and attributes, basically player choice, and not through passive HP, weapon damage and armour growth.

I don't necessarily disagree with the idea of shifting where power comes from.

It's just the issue is that dynamic vs static scaling is a nuanced topic that heavily depends on the general idea behind game interactions rather than just "Dynamic scaling is bad" or "Static scaling is bad"

Dynamic scaling is used, and was implemented into Cyberpunk 2077, for the explicit reason of providing player freedom in content consumption.

With dynamic scaling, a player can do content in any order they wish and the enemies will adapt to suit them based off their level.

Of course, Cyberpunk's player scaling is higher than that of enemies, so this ends up with all content eventually becoming mindless due to the lack of significance of enemies with gratuitous player damage and defences.

 

[Wlasiuk]

Yep, after level 30-35, enemies are absolutely no match against V. There is only a (very) little spike when reaching Dogtown against BARGHEST guys.
It's mainly because enemies scaling is linear while V is becoming exponentially more powerful by getting access to more powerful cyberwares, so more armor, more perks, more abilities, and so on.

I NEVER said that V DOESN'T get more powerful, V DOES become close to IMMORTAL later in the game. just that enemies become spongier. I added proof to my post.

Franckly you should one shot enemies at level 45... With my "usual" build which is a melee build, I can one shot enemies with a way less powerful handgun than Overture

You don't play on very hard...

Just watch the video I added to my post and you will see what I mean.

Yes... If you utilise progression in the form of weapon upgrades and buffs to do massive damage. You also need to be good enough to no-hit every boss because you get one shot by everything.

As a casual player, you will get absolutely destroyed if you tried to play through the game at level 1.

You very much do.

Between leveling Vigor (Going from ~400 health to up to 2000+), gaining passive damage reduction from stat allocation as you level to equipping better armour and using buffs to mitigate damage you can go way beyond x20 your starting EHP.

Like, there are literally tank builds out there that run around with 2000+ health and 95% damage negation (EHP is 40,000+)

No idea how you get 95% damage reduction, a baseline build only has around 4 times the base EHP.

But Elden Ring was a bad example.

I NEVER said "Easier", I said "Weak"

Meaning they take no effort to kill.

It is anecdotal.

It's not anecdotal, I posted proof. Same enemy has clearly more HP at higher level and outscaled my weapon progression, I didn't even use a tier 5 Overture at lvl 33, even when it is available at that level.

I'm not saying that V doesn't become powerful.
I'm saying that enemies become spongier, and they factually do.

And all I'm suggesting is to remove the enemy scaling, but also keep V's numbers (health and damage) way more grounded, but define V through perks, attributes and Cyberware, instead of sheer numbers.

Example how to reduce the number gain:
Base HP 100, with maxed out body around 150 HP
Tier 5 weapon has only 10% more damage than a tier 1 weapon.
Armour would get the diminishing return posted above.

If you remove enemy scaling. Then you lose out on freedom. As there would be a set progression inherently by way of scaling enemies with the level you are expected to encounter them.

If you remove enemy scaling entirely, making all enemies across the entire game equally strong in an effort to maintain freedom. Then any progression of the player character that exists will quickly make them outscale literally the entire game. Making combat not engaging very quickly. As such, if you wanted to retain freedom in such a scenario, then there would need to not be any player progression, so that combat remains engaging throughout the game.

This is where the whole thing with dynamic scaling comes in. It allows the player to progress. Gaining new skills and abilities. But retaining that freedom to do any content in the game at any time and get an engaging combat experience (As opposed to static scaling where you can outlevel areas and so doing them later will be trivial and boring)

That's not necessarily true, only if you would remove the enemy scaling, but not remove V's number inflation.

If V wasn't dealing 10 times the damage at max level and instead only like double the damage, not scaling enemies would be totally fine.
Stronger enemies could spawn for example at important missions or enemy bases. But the average street goon would become anyway much weaker compared to V, just without the number inflation.

 

[Taril]

It's not anecdotal, I posted proof.

It is anecdotal.

Your individual experience is that of enemies becoming spongier.

My experience is the opposite. Had I bothered to record any of my many hundreds of hours of gameplay, I could show you this exact thing.

Stuff like my recent stealth pistol playthrough where I started off using La Chingona Doradas because I needed to spam headshots to kill enemies, then I started to use Death and Taxes because I could kill people with the 2 shot burst it does, finally I ended up with Pride and was just one tapping everyone.

Or my first playthrough, where I was using Breakthrough and I started off having to use Charged shots to take out regular grunts and multiple shots for elites. Later uncharged headshots took out regular mooks and charged headshots took out elites. Towards the end I could take out regular mooks with uncharged bodyshots.

Heck, I've done Quickhack runs and they don't scale quite like weapons do (Especially since you don't always just automatically get the next tier of quickhack when it's available as RAM costs changing can make them less effective on Very Hard when everyone has inflated RAM cost modifiers) and even then I never encountered any sponge enemies, I mostly remained pretty consistent even with using a bunch of T1-T4 quickhacks at level 60 (I even skipped most of the Intelligence perks because they weren't relevant to my playstyle which was mostly just T4 Contagion > T1 Overheat spam)

Which is my anecdotal evidence.

Unless you can show the exact code that modifies values having enemies health scale beyond what V's damage is capable of doing, we're only going off anecdotal evidence.

Simply showing a clip of you shooting a T4 gun and a T5 gun at different levels doesn't empirically prove anything. Not when there's plenty of other factors that can (And do) improve V's damage (Amount of and quality of cyberware, skill progress, mod quality, attachment quality, perk bonuses to utilise)

 

[Wlasiuk]

It is anecdotal.

You're misunderstanding the difference between anecdotal evidence and controlled testing.

Your examples are exactly that: personal impressions from normal gameplay. During a playthrough you're constantly changing variables new Cyberware, better perks, weapon tiers, iconic weapons, attachments, mods, skill progression, and buffs. It's impossible to isolate what actually caused your increase in damage.

My test does the opposite. It isolates the variable I'm investigating by comparing damage against enemy HP under controlled conditions. That's how you determine whether enemy scaling outpaces player scaling. The Cyberware I used is the same in both tests, just higher upgraded in the higher level test. I should have shown it too, but I guess this wouldn't change your view either.

Saying "I felt stronger" isn't evidence that enemy HP doesn't scale. It only shows that your overall build became stronger than the enemies despite the scaling which nobody is disputing.

You also shifted the burden of proof. I don't need access to CDPR's source code when the game's behaviour can be measured empirically. If damage numbers and enemy HP consistently show that enemies require more hits as levels increase while controlling for variables, that's empirical evidence.

If you believe my test is flawed, perform the same test yourself under the same conditions. Simply saying "my playthrough felt different" doesn't invalidate controlled measurements, and isn't a valid argument on its own. it's just subjective experience, not evidence.

 

[Spockprime]

I don't like either level scaling or static level progression. However, I much prefer the current design to the original design, where stat progression came from clothing. A RNG pair of orange gym shorts having 6x the armor of RNG grey ballistic pants made for awkward character development. That's only a slight exaggeration. They aren't going to redesign the system again, so it is what it is, so to speak.

That being said, hypothetically if we're going to remove the level system:

• Enemies should have fixed health and stats instead of scaling with the player's level.

I agree.

• V should always remain at 100 base Health, rather than gaining 5 Health automatically every level.

I agree.

• Survivability should come primarily from player choice, especially through investing Attribute Points into Body and its related perks.

I disagree. If the enemies aren't going to scale, then the player shouldn't scale either. To remove level progression, perks have to give new abilities or improve abilities, not improve player stats.

• Weapon and item tiers should provide only marginal stat increases, like 1-2% per tier. Instead most damage increases should again come from player choice, from perks and attributes like Reflex or Cool, not from passive gear scaling.

I disagree. Weapons shouldn't have tiers. A 5.56 round does the same damage from a $500 assault rifle as it does from a $5,000 one. Different calibers provide different damage, and "better" guns provide slightly better accuracy. Stronger or lighter material can change the damage for melee weapons, but not item level. For ranged weapons, some perks can provide better accuracy or lower recoil, but not higher damage. For melee weapons, strength can provide slightly higher damage and agility slightly better accuracy, but that's about it.

• Replace the current armour system with one that has diminishing returns

I disagree. Armor, if it's going to be in the game, should be entirely based on the material, not the item level.


And, none of that is likely to happen even in the next game. RPGs try to give the player a sense of progression, and I think most players have come to expect it. I would be surprised to see a major developer roll the dice on changing that in the second or later game in a series. Bioware sort of did that with Mass Effect, but that was with the move to Electronic Arts who envisioned the game as more of an action game fit for consoles.

 

[Wlasiuk]

• Survivability should come primarily from player choice, especially through investing Attribute Points into Body and its related perks.

I disagree. If the enemies aren't going to scale, then the player shouldn't scale either. To remove level progression, perks have to give new abilities or improve abilities, not improve player stats.

How I mean it, V wouldn't be able to reach EHP to 1000 anymore, like it's currently possible. More like 150-175 on top of some defensive perks, if you invest into it, to be noticeably more survivable, but not immortal. Similar to how survivable you are in a shooter games when you wear a high tier bullet proof west.

• Weapon and item tiers should provide only marginal stat increases, like 1-2% per tier. Instead most damage increases should again come from player choice, from perks and attributes like Reflex or Cool, not from passive gear scaling.

I disagree. Weapons shouldn't have tiers. A 5.56 round does the same damage from a $500 assault rifle as it does from a $5,000 one. Different calibers provide different damage, and "better" guns provide slightly better accuracy. Stronger or lighter material can change the damage for melee weapons, but not item level. For ranged weapons, some perks can provide better accuracy or lower recoil, but not higher damage. For melee weapons, strength can provide slightly higher damage and agility slightly better accuracy, but that's about it.

I like your idea, but tiers could be still a thing to indicate the quality of the weapon, of how accurate the weapon is.

• Replace the current armour system with one that has diminishing returns

I disagree. Armor, if it's going to be in the game, should be entirely based on the material, not the item level.

I think you misunderstood, I meant to change the formula of how damage mitigation provided by armour is calculated, not on what the armour is based on. To remove the need of a hard cap and have a diminishing formula, which naturally prevents anyone from becoming immortal when having high armour.

And, none of that is likely to happen even in the next game. RPGs try to give the player a sense of progression, and I think most players have come to expect it. I would be surprised to see a major developer roll the dice on changing that in the second or later game in a series. Bioware sort of did that with Mass Effect, but that was with the move to Electronic Arts who envisioned the game as more of an action game fit for consoles.

But level scaling destroys the sense of progression, I hope they put a bit more effort into balancing with the next game. Cyberpunk is not the first game which is criticised for it, and there are enough RPGs which work without it.

I'd write a mod for it, but couldn't get a hang of the modding tools for Cyberpunk yet, and I'm still busy with writing mods for another game.