The problem with how Cyberpunk 2077 handles clothing

[CrownedInFireflies]

RPGs are fundamentally about defining about character, and one of the ways you define character is your choice of appearance and fashion. Seemingly aware of this, when you first start Cyberpunk 2077 and enter the character creation menu, you're greeted with the text "IN NIGHT CITY, LOOKS ARE EVERYTHING." In gameplay, you're bombarded you with so many visually interesting clothing options. At the same time, the loot systems makes most of them quickly become obsolete or useless from the start.

The problem

• As players, many of us have a strongly engrained desire to be optimal. There's a joy in feeling that your character is the best that they can be. I play on the very hard difficulty, so it's useful, but even if I didn't need to, I'd still want to be optimal. Much of the job of game designers involves anticipating and accounting for the psychology of players, so this should be no surprise.
• Another thing is I, and I assume many others, want to look cool. The game lets us collect a lot of interesting clothing to dress our character, so this impulse is at least somewhat encouraged by the game.
• At the same time, the legendary clothing is extremely limited compared to the epics you can get from the world and stores, so you have a comparatively very narrow options to visually define your character. I went around every clothing shop and obsessively hunted for every piece of clothing I at least kind of liked, and got them all as epics (it involved so much skipping time). As a result, I created so many cool, unique fashion looks (counted 24 from my screenshots). I also watched many videos to find all the legendary clothing found in the game, and I can only make 2 outfits that I actually like from them because the options are so limited. Most of the clothes I really like have no legendary versions.
• This leads to conflict between wanting to look cool and feeling optimal. I've experienced this before in other games (looter-shooters like Destiny and its sequel), but it's even worse in Cyberpunk 2077
• I'd also like to mention that while leveling, being incentivized by stats to put on whatever marginally better-armored, mismatched clown outfits drops and constantly switch clothes as the flood of drops continues, also sucks.

Why it's worse

• The whole point of higher rarity/quality clothing is more slots, yet the game lets clothes spawn with less slots than that rarity is supposed to have. For example, a legendary jacket can have 4 slots, but it can also be found with 0 slots, making it essentially just a common jacket. I know save-scumming to reset item slots is an option, but CDPR's recent actions and words regarding loot makes it unclear how much longer this will be an option. Also, having to waste my time doing this at all is not fun gameplay.
• Legendaries can spawn for you at base armor waaaaay below your level. In the crate where you find the Rayfield Caliburn, there's a shirt that spawned for me at like 3.4 armor, even though I was at or close to level 50 already. I'm not going to wasting my scarce resources I have better uses for on upgrading this shirt.
• While many other games have repeatable activities that allow you to earn an item over and over, Cyberpunk 2077 can usually only be earned once with no other chances to get it. This makes the last 2 issues even worse.

This could have been avoided (SOLUTIONS)

• Instead of locked rarity/quality deciding how much slots clothing can have, just let us upgrade any piece of clothing to increase the amount of slots it has, this way, any clothes you like (whether it's some weak starter stuff or a later unique find) can get to optimal usefulness.
• If the first option sounds too easy, there could be items you find or buy (can be through lots of investment) to upgrade the slots of your clothing. You could still have have unique, "pre-upgraded" stuff hidden in the world that serve the same function as legendaries.
• This one might require the least amount of changes to the game's systems: make all shopkeeper clothing able to spawn in the shop in legendary rarity. Or, radically expand the legendary crafting specs for clothing in the clothing shops to include all the clothes sold at that shop. Also, guarantee clothes have the maximum amount of slots for their rarity, and the right base armor for the player's level.

Just let me be optimal and dress how I think looks cool at the same time.

 

[Mobster100]

RPGs are fundamentally about defining about character, and one of the ways you define character is your choice of appearance and fashion. Seemingly aware of this, when you first start Cyberpunk 2077 and enter the character creation menu, you're greeted with the text "IN NIGHT CITY, LOOKS ARE EVERYTHING." In gameplay, you're bombarded you with so many visually interesting clothing options. At the same time, the loot systems makes most of them quickly become obsolete or useless from the start.

The problem

• As players, many of us have a strongly engrained desire to be optimal. There's a joy in feeling that your character is the best that they can be. I play on the very hard difficulty, so it's useful, but even if I didn't need to, I'd still want to be optimal. Much of the job of game designers involves anticipating and accounting for the psychology of players, so this should be no surprise.
• Another thing is I, and I assume many others, want to look cool. The game lets us collect a lot of interesting clothing to dress our character, so this impulse is at least somewhat encouraged by the game.
• At the same time, the legendary clothing is extremely limited compared to the epics you can get from the world and stores, so you have a comparatively very narrow options to visually define your character. I went around every clothing shop and obsessively hunted for every piece of clothing I at least kind of liked, and got them all as epics (it involved so much skipping time). As a result, I created so many cool, unique fashion looks (counted 24 from my screenshots). I also watched many videos to find all the legendary clothing found in the game, and I can only make 2 outfits that I actually like from them because the options are so limited. Most of the clothes I really like have no legendary versions.
• This leads to conflict between wanting to look cool and feeling optimal. I've experienced this before in other games (looter-shooters like Destiny and its sequel), but it's even worse in Cyberpunk 2077
• I'd also like to mention that while leveling, being incentivized by stats to put on whatever marginally better-armored, mismatched clown outfits drops and constantly switch clothes as the flood of drops continues, also sucks.

Why it's worse

• The whole point of higher rarity/quality clothing is more slots, yet the game lets clothes spawn with less slots than that rarity is supposed to have. For example, a legendary jacket can have 4 slots, but it can also be found with 0 slots, making it essentially just a common jacket. I know save-scumming to reset item slots is an option, but CDPR's recent actions and words regarding loot makes it unclear how much longer this will be an option. Also, having to waste my time doing this at all is not fun gameplay.
• Legendaries can spawn for you at base armor waaaaay below your level. In the crate where you find the Rayfield Caliburn, there's a shirt that spawned for me at like 3.4 armor, even though I was at or close to level 50 already. I'm not going to wasting my scarce resources I have better uses for on upgrading this shirt.
• While many other games have repeatable activities that allow you to earn an item over and over, Cyberpunk 2077 can usually only be earned once with no other chances to get it. This makes the last 2 issues even worse.

This could have been avoided (SOLUTIONS)

• Instead of locked rarity/quality deciding how much slots clothing can have, just let us upgrade any piece of clothing to increase the amount of slots it has, this way, any clothes you like (whether it's some weak starter stuff or a later unique find) can get to optimal usefulness.
• If the first option sounds too easy, there could be items you find or buy (can be through lots of investment) to upgrade the slots of your clothing. You could still have have unique, "pre-upgraded" stuff hidden in the world that serve the same function as legendaries.
• This one might require the least amount of changes to the game's systems: make all shopkeeper clothing able to spawn in the shop in legendary rarity. Or, radically expand the legendary crafting specs for clothing in the clothing shops to include all the clothes sold at that shop. Also, guarantee clothes have the maximum amount of slots for their rarity, and the right base armor for the player's level.

Just let me be optimal and dress how I think looks cool at the same time.

They could also just add shop where you could go and pay some money and get your cloth turned into something else. Sort of like a barbershop just for clothing.
I think one of the biggest issues with the clothing is that you can't color it. So if you have to optimize for stats you end up looking like a circus clown.

If they added those two options and a lot more variety, like there seem to be a lot of clothing that the NPCs wear that you don't have access to, so add that as well. And that would be a very good start.

 

[Obsidian_Crane]

• As players, many of us have a strongly engrained desire to be optimal. There's a joy in feeling that your character is the best that they can be. I play on the very hard difficulty, so it's useful, but even if I didn't need to, I'd still want to be optimal. Much of the job of game designers involves anticipating and accounting for the psychology of players, so this should be no surprise.
• Another thing is I, and I assume many others, want to look cool. The game lets us collect a lot of interesting clothing to dress our character, so this impulse is at least somewhat encouraged by the game.

It's like the designers intend you to have to choose mechanical optimisation or fashion optimisation or something.

it's like they deliberately built in a choice over the question of "style or substance?" and layered in a whole lot of thought about this question into the design of the game.

The Legendary Item drop issue and how slots are handled I largely agree with and have suggested solutions before as well. But "style or substance" is supposed to require some degree of choice by you as the player and everything not being "optimal" is definitely deliberate.

 

[Onmens]

That clothing section for the hazmat suits and whatnot, it would be cool if we could create and save our own outfits to be used in there.
Purely for aesthetics.