Damn hard to answer without playing the game. Isnt the typical approach to give 3 choices? Fight, flee or talk out.
i am not sure what to pick here, sometimes in my Solo play thru i will want to go guns blazing killing everyone like the Scavs in the demo. Sometimes in my Hacker play thru i might want to talk me way out of a sticky spot or do a little stealth mission . I guess i want options for different play styles.
3. I think balancing fun and realism is normally the best path in video game design, and it's no different here. Sometimes something that serves the story well is better than the realistic option, though normally, the closer you stay to realistic consequences, the better it will serve the story. So it doesn't really have to be either or.
Also 7. Generally have some non-violent option for encounters (sneak around, talk your way out, bribe, whatever). Every option doesn't have to be available for every encounter. Also, I think having some violent encounters being unavoidable is fine, so long as it's not almost all of them.
Also 7. Generally have some non-violent option for encounters (sneak around, talk your way out, bribe, whatever). Every option doesn't have to be available for every encounter. Also, I think having some violent encounters being unavoidable is fine, so long as it's not almost all of them.
Went with 3 & 9, but mostly I just want a good number of options to be able to do things in different ways with different characters. Having options to not murder is good for variety, but also I am hoping for different options for murder, I hope my netrunner doesn't always have to default to pacifism just because he doesn't really fight like maybe he can cause an industrial accident or "wipe their drive" next time they start up a brain dance.
What would be an acceptable split to you, if we were to break what you said down into percentages?
I.E. 70% unavoidable combat vs 30% open-ended, 50/50, 70/30 the other way, or something else entirely (not trying to shoehorn you).
You don't have to give specific numbers, for example, I'd personally prefer only bigger plot moments to be more "linear" in that sense. So for me it'd be maybe 20/80 forced vs open-ended gameplay.
It's so hard to estimate without knowing a lot of information about the open world, and also how one defines "avoidable."
Like say if there was a quest line where you made a choice and because of your choice, a violent encounter occurs once you arrive at location X, I would still count that as avoidable, even though in the moment of the attack it's not avoidable ... because it could have been avoided if you made a different choice earlier in the game. That was an awkward sentence.
But to answer your question, I would definitely prefer it you could avoid combat at least the majority of the time in missons ... so at least 51/49. Ideally I would prefer something more like 70% or even 80% of mission specific encounters to have non-violent alternatives, and still "complete" the mission.
For open world stuff, it's a bit harder to say ... because you can always run in an open world encounter ... so really all of those are technically "avoidable." I generally like to keep my body counts as low as possible in games, because when you've killed 1000 people, you would think NCPD may start taking serious notice of you.
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I think Fashion should be it if you want to avoid combat. This game just screams multiple char approach, so much fun stuff you can do with Cyberpunk.
7.
I tend to think like this: Cyberpunk the game put the players in a socio political state where finding a gun in your pocket is as common as a cellphone in the 21st century. It seems like a normal situation in regard of the ingame law. You're living in a violent world, then you'll defend your life against random goons, that's the game's rules. So that's perfectly ok.
Now it doesn't necessarily mean that your character is a natural born killer too. He/she may have ethics, maybe he/she don't want to provoke fights or murder people in command. Due to the game rules you are a nobody, crushed by the society every day, trying hard to survive by any means. You will have specific hobbies that will not be "good" in regard to today's standards (hacking for profit, blackmailing, thief, contraband, intelligence, or whatnot) but I hope that there will be a way to roleplay a character who tries to avoid direct murder as long as possible, he/she may have a choice to choose within multiple missions, avoiding the hitman missions as often as possible, or even have multiple choice of completion so you can act immorally but in distance, covering your identity (ex: hacking someone's car to make it explode so you don't need to fight his bodyguards when he's outside, or even need to sneak into his house by night). That way you can even take profit of the different character classes, it provides variety of gameplay.
Two reasons for that:
First is replay value: we need to make a fair equality usage of all the "know hows" provided by the game, for replay value. And replay value is a huge bonus for RPGs. Today I want to be a "Duke Nuk'em" Solo, tomorrow I want to sneak of hack, no gunfights if possible.
Second is the ethics: In The Witcher series, Geralt was "one" kind of character, even though he was complex he was mostly a swordsman so that justified the numerous fights. And even though, he had ethics regarding to his actions, in some way. In Postal 2 (being criticized as one of the most immoral and violent game ever), you can play entirely or mostly being pacifist, it's true ! Not killing anyone ! Ethics my dude. It must remain on the player's hands. If CP77 feels like you have some control over your character's ethics, you'll win some unwanted (but maybe inevitable) social struggle on the net.
I tend to think like this: Cyberpunk the game put the players in a socio political state where finding a gun in your pocket is as common as a cellphone in the 21st century. It seems like a normal situation in regard of the ingame law. You're living in a violent world, then you'll defend your life against random goons, that's the game's rules. So that's perfectly ok.
Now it doesn't necessarily mean that your character is a natural born killer too. He/she may have ethics, maybe he/she don't want to provoke fights or murder people in command. Due to the game rules you are a nobody, crushed by the society every day, trying hard to survive by any means. You will have specific hobbies that will not be "good" in regard to today's standards (hacking for profit, blackmailing, thief, contraband, intelligence, or whatnot) but I hope that there will be a way to roleplay a character who tries to avoid direct murder as long as possible, he/she may have a choice to choose within multiple missions, avoiding the hitman missions as often as possible, or even have multiple choice of completion so you can act immorally but in distance, covering your identity (ex: hacking someone's car to make it explode so you don't need to fight his bodyguards when he's outside, or even need to sneak into his house by night). That way you can even take profit of the different character classes, it provides variety of gameplay.
Two reasons for that:
First is replay value: we need to make a fair equality usage of all the "know hows" provided by the game, for replay value. And replay value is a huge bonus for RPGs. Today I want to be a "Duke Nuk'em" Solo, tomorrow I want to sneak of hack, no gunfights if possible.
Second is the ethics: In The Witcher series, Geralt was "one" kind of character, even though he was complex he was mostly a swordsman so that justified the numerous fights. And even though, he had ethics regarding to his actions, in some way. In Postal 2 (being criticized as one of the most immoral and violent game ever), you can play entirely or mostly being pacifist, it's true ! Not killing anyone ! Ethics my dude. It must remain on the player's hands. If CP77 feels like you have some control over your character's ethics, you'll win some unwanted (but maybe inevitable) social struggle on the net.