The sense of exploration and sidequests

[dalenotchip]

Getting phonecalls about gigs/jobs a fixer wants their merc to do makes perfect sense, and with a computer in our head having marks on the map makes sense as well. Heck we have that now with Google maps

Where they messed up is giving us police markers. Not knowing about an assault in progress until we stumble upon it would have made more sense and also would be an encouragement to not fast travel as often and explore. Plus we wouldn't see the same assault in progress for a month. How long does it take a gang to rob a noodle vendor.

The other thing they could have done in the spirit of the OP.

All those special surprises could have had little unmarked Mini-missions. From the data shards they could give clues to unmarked locations to get more of the story. Example ( if you found the dead dude selling real chickens they could have gave a clue to his address. If we found it we could see an apt full of chickens or empty packages of artificial meat he was molding to chicken shape.

 

[LeKill3rFou]

Where they messed up is giving us police markers. Not knowing about an assault in progress until we stumble upon it would have made more sense and also would be an encouragement to not fast travel as often and explore.

You can disable these icons if you want

 

[Czembro]

Getting phonecalls about gigs/jobs a fixer wants their merc to do makes perfect sense, and with a computer in our head having marks on the map makes sense as well. Heck we have that now with Google maps

The issue is with execution, as phonecalls aren't really working well with map markers.

Having gigs marked on a map suggests that those are provided by the fixer - that makes sense. What doesn't makes sense is that when V goes to one of these locations the fixer calls with "Hey, there is a job nearby...". Yeah, I know there is a job, you specifically marked it for me, thats why I'm here. It sort of feels like devs were trying to kill two birds with one stone implementing it like that, but sort of missed the mark. If we assume that map markers are provided by fixers then them getting V details of the job when being at the location feels rather awkward.

Someone may say "but hey, you can disable the gig markers on the map, so you can get call from fixer seemingly at random, which should feel much more realistic" and I would absolutely agree, if not for a rather major issue - you can't get a call from fixer while in the car, which greatly reduces the chance of getting job details, as car is the primary way of getting around the city.

So, how to fix it? Here are some of my ideas:

1. Notice board - something that CDPR already did in Witcher 3 and that would work perfectly in the world of Cyberpunk 2077. There could be some sort of "deep web" site accessible for mercs that would list jobs, giving player more agency in acquiring them. This could also put more incentive on going back to V's apartment, as the site would be accessed through their terminal. Alternatively a more mobile approach would also work, something like a "phone app". Either would work, though for me accessing it from V's apartment would make it feel more like a base of operation, which I crave,
2. Map marker come with details - fixer marks the job on the map, why shouldn't they provide details with it? Makes more sense in-world, but can be rather messy in execution on the map,
3. Make calls/texts trigger while in car - with gig markers turned off this would put more incentive on exploration and feel much more realistic. Potential issue - call trigering during other quest,
4. Accept the job through map marker (sort of a mix of 1. and 2.) - hovering over the map marker provided by fixer gives you the option of accepting it (e.g. by holding mouse button), which triggers the call from fixer with details.

 

[LeKill3rFou]

as car is the primary way of getting around the city

"Some" may say that walking is the primary "and the best" way to getting around the city
(I suppose some other can also say that is TP points... too^^)

Joke aside, I agree with 1,2,3 and 4

 

[Bealdor]

I actually found "The Highwayman" by exploring. I saw a dirty great big dam, and went there to see what was there. It helps that I am a total packrat and enjoy searching every nook and cranny for treats and loot. Just stumbled across an openable door and there it was

Indeed, but it's not every players who take the time to explore the city
(some already asked about the secrets added in 1.6 to know where they could find them...)

The whole quest system of Elden Ring works that way and almost everybody seems to praise FromSoft for it. lol

 

[Czembro]

"Some" may say that walking is the primary "and the best" way to getting around the city
(I suppose some other can also say that is TP points... too^^)

Joke aside, I agree with 1,2,3 and 4

Taking how hard it is sometimes to find a good parking spot I wouldn't be suprised

I actually enjoy walking (and I mean walking, not running) around NC a lot, but the city's infrastructure isn't very pedestrian friendly (I believe there is no way of geting from Watson to City Center on foot without getting on the road).

 

[LeKill3rFou]

Taking how hard it is sometimes to find a good parking spot I wouldn't be suprised

I actually enjoy walking (and I mean walking, not running) around NC a lot, but the city's infrastructure isn't very pedestrian friendly (I believe there is no way of geting from Watson to City Center on foot without getting on the road).

I count me in "some"
At the beginning, I moslty explore the whole city on foot (except like you said sometimes to cross bridge and in the Badlands, obviously). Like right now, I complete all the NCPD Scanner Hustles in a row on the whole map, so I go from one to the other on foot (and I loot/kill/search around on my way). I only call Jackie's bike to store things in the stash, that's all. (I select Psycho Killer quest to not have quest marker and everything is disabled on my map, but for say the truth, I know where NCPD Scanner hustles are so...)

Funny that I generally trigger all the available GIGs on the city.
(On a side note, it's even more true in 1.6 to search the "secrets" that CDPR hide. But for now, no luck... Nothing in Watson^^)

 

[Czembro]

(On a side note, it's even more true in 1.6 to search the "secrets" that CDPR hide. But for now, no luck... Nothing in Watson^^)

Yesterday in Watson at night I found an NCPD car with an officer inside and a lot of feminine moaning coming from it. I think it's implied that the officer was watching some naughty videos Curious thing is that it was marked on minimap with yellow NCPD mark, but not on the actual map.

You can see it here (not my reddit post, but this is the exact thing that I've found).

 

[LeKill3rFou]

Yesterday in Watson at night I found an NCPD car with an officer inside and a lot of feminine moaning coming from it. I think it's implied that the officer was watching some naughty videos Curious thing is that it was marked on minimap with yellow NCPD mark, but not on the actual map.

You can see it here (not my reddit post, but this is the exact thing that I've found).

Yep I see it (it's the same icon as the "new" car chase introduced in 1.5).

 

[ReptilePZ]

For me, this was the main aspect that genuinely disappointed me with the game. The story was fine, if it was a bit more fleshed out, with maybe some better characters as well, it could've even been great. I feel like I also personally respond better to a story that is less bombastic than what Cyberpunk was trying to deliver, and that I can chalk up to personal taste, so I don't hold it against the game. All the life sim and GTA comparisons I do not give a toss about either. I can see how people got the wrong impression with the PR flailing that CDPR did, but I had a fairly accurate idea of what the game would be like after the first demo was released.

But the vast majority of the side content was just so profoundly uninteresting to me, which did take me by surprise. It truly felt like they forgot their own rhetoric from TW3, where they were specifically calling out other games for having this kind of boring content.

I don't even think it was intentional, you could see the start of this with Blood and Wine - the Wine Wars, Big Feet to Fill and Knight for Hire quest chains were the herald of what was to come in Cyberpunk. I think the intention in both Blood and Wine and Cyberpunk was to tie together these otherwise repetitive Points of Interest into a quest chain to give them a bit more meaning. However, the mistake (in Cyberpunk especially), from my perspective, was that most of the side content now ended up being done in this style, with only a few side quests that weren't a collection of PoIs. And I exclude the optional Main quests from this list - that is all of the companion quests, as those were extensions of the main quest, really, rather than true side content.

So, it is only natural that the feeling of discovery and exploration will be diminished, when you can sense a formulaic approach to the content that the game world is filled with. I think the method of quest acquisition matters less than the quality and originality of the quest itself.

As for some of the arguments that just because you have tall buldings in the city, it's somehow impossible to attract the player's attention to a quest without vomiting markers all over the map, I think that's really just an excuse. If you make clever use of the city's verticality, talk and sounds of the streets, the Net, the various clubs and gang/corporate HQs and, yes, even the phone, to name a few, I think there are so many possibilities to enable exploration and quest presentation that both feels more natural and engaging, while imbuing those activities and spaces with more meaning.

 

[animalfather]

Interesting concept, never heard about that game Sable

check it out its amazing. its on gamepass.

 

[CS554]

I did a little peek at stats via my Xbox app to achievement data related to side content. There's a a problem that relevant achievements don't separate between NCPD scanner missions and gigs via fixers. In any case, those are what we have and I don't see any sort of rise on those completion stats compared to pre 1.5 patch data. I don't have a way to check data from those months though.

For my own experience, I'm glad I did most of my playthroughs before 1.5 patch as I really don't like doing things exactly the same way every playthrough and some other things introduced and there are some other things that just don't work for me.

 

[IskrasFemme]

This is the biggest contradiction of the game. There are good side quests, well done, but after doing them, the game just ends, you close the game and never play again, if not, to repeat the same missions.

Cyberpunk lacks a quest generator. Luckily there are mods - who don't use CDPR tools for obvious reasons (they're awful and limited) and they did the work of crafting this 'random generator' of quests.

Well, easy to understand why games like GTA and RDR2 have 100,000 players daily logged into these games (each one). They could argue 'but it's online', exactly, but the modalities allow closed, private servers, including (solo). What really draws attention in these two games is exactly the possibility of always doing something new...

Post automatically merged: Sep 14, 2022

about exploration

It doesn't 'hold' the player for a long time. What exists in Cyberpunk are 'closed doors', repeated things, with no, absolutely no life...no interactions...nothing. There are no 'news', nothing happens... an infinite loop of boring things...

But there are plenty of food machines to visit, there are and, miraculously, they don't weigh heavily on consoles... old-gen, that should explain why CDPR has flooded the landscape with these useless but well-coded machines (hello' CPU processing' useless and repeated hundreds of times with no logical reason for it, are you okay?). Repeating food machines a billion times must have been a pretty expensive creative job...and difficult.

 

[AikoHayashi]

For me the fixer progression was a bad decision. They probably did it because people complained because of the big amount of quests, but still...When people replay the game they prefer to do the GIGs in the order they want or even skip quests they don't like.

Post automatically merged: Sep 14, 2022

This is the biggest contradiction of the game. There are good side quests, well done, but after doing them, the game just ends, you close the game and never play again, if not, to repeat the same missions.

Cyberpunk lacks a quest generator. Luckily there are mods - who don't use CDPR tools for obvious reasons (they're awful and limited) and they did the work of crafting this 'random generator' of quests.

Well, easy to understand why games like GTA and RDR2 have 100,000 players daily logged into these games (each one). They could argue 'but it's online', exactly, but the modalities allow closed, private servers, including (solo). What really draws attention in these two games is exactly the possibility of always doing something new...

Post automatically merged: Sep 14, 2022

about exploration

It doesn't 'hold' the player for a long time. What exists in Cyberpunk are 'closed doors', repeated things, with no, absolutely no life...no interactions...nothing. There are no 'news', nothing happens... an infinite loop of boring things...

But there are plenty of food machines to visit, there are and, miraculously, they don't weigh heavily on consoles... old-gen, that should explain why CDPR has flooded the landscape with these useless but well-coded machines (hello' CPU processing' useless and repeated hundreds of times with no logical reason for it, are you okay?). Repeating food machines a billion times must have been a pretty expensive creative job...and difficult.

It is not mandatory to play games you don't like.

 

[IskrasFemme]

For me the fixer progression was a bad decision. They probably did it because people complained because of the big amount of quests, but still...When people replay the game they prefer to do the GIGs in the order they want or even skip quests they don't like.

Post automatically merged: Sep 14, 2022

It is not mandatory to play games you don't like.

It is not mandatory to agree on all aspects of a game in order to play a game (much less to talk about aspects of that game - and talking about aspects of a game shouldn't be 'mandatory' in the sense of someone reaching the ridiculous level - deplorable - to be offended by it).

Person A: hey, that aspect in especific is BAD (blablabla...reasons)
Person B: 'Why are you offending me? I will cry...'