Visual customization - Whats the Point?

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Hey folks,

what exactly is the point of having nice clothing (as rewards, craftable or purchasable items ) for visual customization of V? You never see your V in cutscenes (since there are none) and you can't see yourself on reflective surfaces. All you have is the inventory screen and a look in the mirror. Did the decision to cut third person cutscenes leave the visual customization in a non-sensical, superfluous state? Or phrased differently, wouldn't third person cutscenes or at least conversations Witcher-3-style be nice?
 
Taking into consideration that visibility of nudity being limited only to inventory screen was allegedly a design decision (as stated here) it seems that CDPR's idea of character customization is that player will, from time to time, enter said screen to look at V and then go back to actual game. If you ask me, I would say it's just a bad game design.
 
still think its just an lame excuse caused by the rushed release... they promoted style as major aspect in this game and removed it literally everywhere... no cuts, no reflections, no mirrors, no point in SC (other than unlocking cyberware) and if u you look at the meme-shadow which doesnt even show your (or any) haircut - its clearly unfinished they cant be serious that this is 2021 AAA standart or "game design"... smells like yeah... excuses all over the place...
 
I think it might be how they designed the game, it's just a very bad design. They simply haven't connected the dots during the development, so in game's marketing they strongly advertised style importance in the game world, but at the same time they've limited ways of actually seeing character customization outcome to the bare minimum being the inventory screen. Normally at some point someone in CDPR should say "hey, this two things kinda exclude one another, maybe we should do something about that", but either no one noticed, or they've simply ignored it.
 
might be but still there are trailers out with cutscenes and even working mirrors... so the intention was already given - removing it by calling it "design decision" simply leaves a gran of salt... like there is so much more which was cut cause of timing problems, made this one most likely just one of these aspects too...
 
The biggest issue I think now is that we may never know why something isn't in the game, specifically in the way how common sense would expect it to be.
The fact that customization is very narrative driven in the world of CP is still true. We (as the player) are however uniquely excluded from it in nearly every way. And I can see the general idea, RPG should have customization, because if you can measure yourself to a certain playstyle you'll want to own it with everything, including dressing to the occasion. However then "..." Happened and only get to seebit while perusing our backpack. (Not to mention certain specifics such as clothing magically reducing bodyparts.)

The groundwork and building blocks are present. But from there on out its tangled into a bit of a mess.

This btw also reminds me of cars, why cant I go to... Lets say claire's garage, and have my Mizutani be painted Red with fluorescent lights like a Tyger Claw vehicle. Why cant I have my CT-3X be painted Mox style.
Why cant I slap a unique decal on the hood of a car to advertise ME with.
Styles that are already in the game, no less.
 
sad thing is there are already mods which allow u to store ANY car on your phonelist fully function as well as customizing them - hell you also can sell them for eddies too!... and this mod is built without a proper REDkit... so absolute no clue why it isnt in the game at all... but modders can work it out in the first 2-3 month on their own... punch in the face for the console ones tho... its all rushed - hopefully they gonna add it official later on : /
 
Hey folks,

what exactly is the point of having nice clothing (as rewards, craftable or purchasable items ) for visual customization of V? You never see your V in cutscenes (since there are none) and you can't see yourself on reflective surfaces. All you have is the inventory screen and a look in the mirror. Did the decision to cut third person cutscenes leave the visual customization in a non-sensical, superfluous state? Or phrased differently, wouldn't third person cutscenes or at least conversations Witcher-3-style be nice?
1st, arguably, clothing for V in the game is not much "nice" in general. Personally, i find that many clothing items are plain ugly. Some - somewhat ugly. Others - very ugly. Only few are not ugly, to me, and extremely few are any neat.

2nd, the point of "having visual customization" is very simple: at very least, it serves to provide the basis for most simple and useful to the player game mechanic of customizing V's defenses / abilities via clothing mods. One can have few clothing pieces for each slot with different clothing mods and switch those as needed, and then "different looks" of each item help the player to recognise which piece does what at a glance. Like, "OK i have long sleeved thing for maximum armor, and i have the vest for the same slot for when i want maximum running speed, and then i also have shoulder straps for the same slot which i upgraded with mods for extra damage vs higher level enemies". This kind of thing.

And 3rd, to answer your question - no, third person cutscenes and/or conversations "from behind player character" - will not be good for this game, because it's 1st person perspective game. In this kind of a game, doing those would break immersion. I mean, how often you "hop out" of your 1st-person view to observe yourself "from above" in real life? This is why for many people it feels very, very wrong when a game switches back and forth between 1st and 3rd player character view many a time. Best avoided.

Instead, i think Cyberpunk already does the best thing there is to do, about it: cutscenes and player camera control / animations in 1st person view which actually reflect all the clothing player uses. It's subtle, but it's there. You see your V's clothes (or lack of :D) when V goes to sleep, to shower, when V vaults, when you simply look down, when something drops V down, etc etc. This is the proper way to go, and the game does this quite swell already. Of course, there is yet some room for further improvement - like, perhaps, adding kicks and more parkour moves which let us see much of V's own body in currently used clothing, and perhaps advanced system for NPC reactions based on V's wear / looks in the future - but in general, i'd say the game's doing this part not that bad.

Unlike, again, the quality and diversity of player clothing itself, which so far are both lacking in terms of style imho - and that's not just me, lots of folks say even NPCs are often tons more cool than even most nearly-looking V we can ever have... %)
 
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well thats your opinion - i for myself finding myself riding on a bike from a to b to c or just anywhere without a given reason - just to see my chars gear if i upgraded parts or style with new ones... cause its the only way i can see it out of the inventory screen... : / but i 2nd your call on the art of styles most of them are ugly in my opinion as well - what i cant understand because there are so many npcs which wear decent to cool gear... in every 2nd crime scene i just watch at the dead bodys... "gimme that jacket" or "these boots are made for walking"... but than again nope not for u v... :( not even talking about the npcs in the parade area or the kinds of lizzy f.e.....
 
@Fins_FinsT
With regards to your first points. This applies to some.
Others will put on clothes that look cool to them with disregard of the stats.
Or make an educated decision based on a specific job that requires more armor or such.
Point being, with millions of players all having their own take on how they choose between clothes, what color, slots-amount etc. The amount of potential variety is/should also be large.

If I look at myself for example. I've got a (imo) cool looking set of semi-camouflaged stuff I like to wear in more natural enviroments.
I have differents styles for city like, ranging between somewhat slutlike to biker-like.
I also tend to thieve a lot cars because (at the time) I like their style better than the one on my call-list.

And specifically the modification part, after the fact, is what many seem to want. I know I do.
That and the fact there a very strange disparity between what V can wear and what manay NPCs wear.
 
And 3rd, to answer your question - no, third person cutscenes and/or conversations "from behind player character" - will not be good for this game, because it's 1st person perspective game. In this kind of a game, doing those would break immersion. I mean, how often you "hop out" of your 1st-person view to observe yourself "from above" in real life? This is why for many people it feels very, very wrong when a game switches back and forth between 1st and 3rd player character view many a time. Best avoided.

I guess that is where tastes differ. When I came to the end of the game, where it concludes with a 3rd person cutscene, I was instantly thinking how much this cinematic representation added to and conveyed the gravity of this particular situation portrayed. It left me with a sad realization that this added layer of emotional depth was often (not always) missing. Seeing your character react instead of simply hearing him/her and framing it accordingly did affect me more.


2nd, the point of "having visual customization" is very simple: at very least, it serves to provide the basis for most simple and useful to the player game mechanic of customizing V's defenses / abilities via clothing mods.

This could have been achieved (and partly was) by cybertech modifications. Which is - given the setting - a lot more convincing.
 
And my opinion does not contradict yours, my friend. Note how i said "many" people dislike when a game switches back and forth between 1st and 3rd person view, yes? Well, "many" does not mean "everyone", you see. Like you, i find it OK to go 3rd person view whenever i use a bike (by the way, Jackie's Arch has one very special feature no other bike has - it keeps V's bottom fully visible, offering complete view of the character whenever you ride). But not everyone is like you and me in this regard, see.

Another thing about it, which we also probably would agree about - is how V's possible outfits have very few pieces in the "special operative" / "ninja" / "military" styles. I mean, we play a merc who gets busy doing all kinds of dangerous bouts, but we can't (any much) even give V proper gear for the job? An exception to this problem would be "netrunner" kind of V, for which we have a range of rather well made netrunner suits in the game - but then, even that doesn't actually work, as netrunner suits are "inner torso" and thus all the pants and "outer torso" clothes end up on top of a netrunner suit, making resulting look a complete mess. Ever tried any short pants over a netrunner suit, for example? Looks ridiculous and totally stupid!

And then, there is also colors problem. The way we have it, very often it's a few legendary items with max slots we end up using for practical purposes, but almost always it's widely mismatching colors on those. My last playthrough, for example, i have me a random find blue netrunner suit, in itself quite OK looking, but then it's also crafted golden-shine pants and red-pinkinsh random drop max slots outer torso jacket. The result being V looking like she's a gonk with massive brain damage... :D

I say, all that really makes it quite urgent to add improvements to clothing system along "transmogrification" and also "re-coloring of any clothing item" paths. I.e., give the players tools to fix and customize their player character looks. It'd make lots of folks quite happy, i think. :)
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@Fins_FinsT
With regards to your first points. This applies to some.
Others will put on clothes that look cool to them with disregard of the stats.
Or make an educated decision based on a specific job that requires more armor or such.
Point being, with millions of players all having their own take on how they choose between clothes, what color, slots-amount etc. The amount of potential variety is/should also be large.

If I look at myself for example. I've got a (imo) cool looking set of semi-camouflaged stuff I like to wear in more natural enviroments.
I have differents styles for city like, ranging between somewhat slutlike to biker-like.
I also tend to thieve a lot cars because (at the time) I like their style better than the one on my call-list.

And specifically the modification part, after the fact, is what many seem to want. I know I do.
That and the fact there a very strange disparity between what V can wear and what manay NPCs wear.
Please see just above and comment my suggestions in last paragraph just before this line. I guess you'd agree those would help much.

And about "clothes which look cool with disregard of the stats" - this, some folks do, yes, but they still know they sacrifice in-game capabilities. Ain't nothing good in it. Transmogrification mechanic was invented years ago to solve this problem (which lots games have, it ain't just CP2077 matter). I.e., no need to invent the wheel here. The solution to this is well known and implemented in many various particular manners in lots of titles. Just needs to be added here, well enough, i think. Right?
 
I do agree. Mine was also more to add to your comment and not to critisize it, should you think that was the case.
So, yeah :)

I do often choose to dress up with regards of what I like to look at (read as: how I like my V to look)
Knowing fullwell I sacrifice topnoch-ness.
But its exactly as you say, those who do, usually choose to.
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I forgot one btw, the hoarder mentality.
 
I like FPP a lot and dont miss TPPt even in cutscenes (not against it but it just works very well for me if I stay within character all the time) and still have some fun with fashion and character customisation. But I use photo mode a lot so thats partly why. The point is to build your character in various aspects even if you dont use or see it all the time.

Best solution for me would be to be able to see your reflection in a mirrors etc. naturally while in FPP but its probably not gonna happen because of red engine.
 
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I like FPP a lot and dont miss it even in cutscenes (not against it but it just works very well for me if I stay within character all the time) and still have some fun with fashion and character customisation. But I use photo mode a lot so thats partly why. The point is to build your character in various aspects even if you dont use or see it all the time.

Best solution for me would be to be able to see your reflection in a mirrors etc. naturally while in FPP but its probably not gonna happen because of red engine.
I got a bit of good news for you about mirrors: from what little i know about how reflections are calculated, plus from what i see CDPR doing about mirrors in 1.2 (as reported by some posts in the forum), plus from what i know about how frame limiter allowed to avoid mirror bug in earlier versions just fine, - from all this, i'm plenty sure CDPR will soon manage the technical side of the "mirror issue" completely, after which we can hope to see lots more reflections appearing in the game and working smoothly.

At least, there are rational reasons to hope for it which i see. Perhaps in couple more major patches? We'll see. :)
 

msxyz

Forum regular
Taking into consideration that visibility of nudity being limited only to inventory screen was allegedly a design decision (as stated here) it seems that CDPR's idea of character customization is that player will, from time to time, enter said screen to look at V and then go back to actual game. If you ask me, I would say it's just a bad game design.
Then the player will use one of the many in-game mirrors and discover that V is wearing undies even if there aren't any in the inventory screen :shrug:

...or look at V's shadow and wonder why V has become bald all of a sudden :giveup:

Last, a player could always try to look at V's reflection in a window, and realize there isn't any (b-but raytracing! :cry: )
 
Its probably just my opinion but I dont like third person cutscenes, especially in a 1st person game. it was the standard setting in Fallout4 and I disliked it. I play the character and see everything through her eyes until I get to talk to an NPC, then I'm suddenly placed in a seat against the wall and I am watching the character speak. It completely disconnects me from the character and makes me care less. I dont mind a standard third person(like when driving) option being offered, but I prefer everything in first person myself.

As for customization, there is photomode where you can see your character, put them in various poses, screenshot and share on whatever platform you like(which I have done plenty). Its an option you can open, not a requirement like a cutscene. Considering that you spend half the game running around in whatever random stuff you picked up, its maybe not that bad you dont see your character as much of it is special or doesnt mix together. Its only late game that you can make or buy matching sets.

Now dont forget, and I invite you to watch YT playthrough for it, most people dont bother with looks in CP2077, they just pick what has the best stats, some laugh in the inventory screen and then forget as they play on.
Personally I see no difference with real life, where I cant see my own body unless I look in the mirror or part of it when I look down. In CP2077 you actually have a body in 1st person, which is not that common. Looks still matter, same as they matter in real life. The way it is now makes me care about the character and makes me care about looks.
 
And the thing with armor is that people wear stupid clothes because they have higher armor value like +5, yet still complain about them. And at the end you can wear something you actually like despite its weaker and dont see much difference in your resistance to hits. I play most of a time without hat and glasses and dont see game any harder.

Also when it comes to switching from FPP to TPP during cutscenes, its very easy to let go and switch to "movie" mode when it shifts. Because we are in FPP all the time, we feel like we participate in the same level all the time and everything stays very natural. At least thats my point of view. I~m glad CDPR did it that way.
 
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