What is your biggest fear regarding CP2077

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The feeling of emptiness after completing the game. I know that many discussed this situation on this forum and that it is more of an ugly truth rather a concern. But I believe that there may be solutions which can lessen the effect caused by this feeling or to make it gradually go away.

One example I can think of right now is when I completed the last mission in Assassin's Creed Syndicate. In this last part, I started to feel like 'oh man, here is that weird feeling starting to form up'. But all of a sudden this emptiness started to be filled up again when I found that there is a new line of quests offered by Queen Victoria. The sudden feeling of emptiness was quickly followed by a sudden feeling of fullness. :ok:Even though it was clear that it was some sort of an epilogue, the experience that you are doing a new set of missions directly after completing the main story, and within the same main game's setting, was a nice addition.

Another interesting epilogue was the one in the Rise of the Witch King. But then I felt more emptiness because I wanted to play more after the fall of Angmar:sad:

Sigh... like I said, more of an ugly truth.
 
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So few RPG’s (actual or masquerades) even try to make use of out of combat gameplay and related stats and skills, even when there’s soooo much potential gameplay to be had.

I wonder why that is.
Assuming you didn't mean it as a rhetorical question, my guess would be that violence has been gameyfied so much that doing so just comes easy to both developers and their audience. By comparison, there is no general consensus on how to make, say, social interaction or hacking into compelling gameplay, and we're not going to see the AAA industry pioneering efforts in that area.

I would question whether tabletop games are that different. D&D is still the poster boy for TTRPGs, and ultimately it is a game all about killing things and stealing stuff. Its mechanics reflect that and, in essence, it is not so different a game from Diablo or even the much sneered at looter-shooters. And it's not like CRPGs tend to take inspiration from systems other than D&D.
 
I would question whether tabletop games are that different. D&D is still the poster boy for TTRPGs, and ultimately it is a game all about killing things and stealing stuff. Its mechanics reflect that and, <clip>
Keep in mind D&D was origionally a supplement/expansion for a miniatures wargame (i.e. Chainmail).

While it's true a good many PnP games focus on combat just as many don't.
Try "Call of Cthulhu" sometime.
 
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Keep in mind D&D was origionally a supplement/expansion for a miniatures wargame (I.e. Chainmail).

While it's true a good many PnP games focus on combat just as many don't.
Try "Call of Cthulhu" sometime.

CoC, done well by a competent GM doesn't need any combat. Or at least it becomes a much lower priority after figuring things out and wondering just how much Sanity your character is going to lose.
 
diplomacy, stealth, and finding general alternate paths through quests is frequently an option

Yeah, but I'm not really talking about sneaking past battles or speaking my way through, nor tinkering for better weapons and armor or brewing potions to help in fights for that matter. That's the basic stuff that's pretty much expected of RPG-likes these days.

I'm talking about the less usuals stuff. Interacting with the world in different ways.

Say you had a fantasy game like Skyrim where you're a newbie in the land... what about a skill for mapping that let's your character draw his own maps or read premade ones? Or navigate without one if that's not what you'd want to do...

A skill biology to learn things from animals and plants? A skill for anatomy to learn from your fallen foes? Geology for minerals? Languages for... getting to try and interpret spoken and written words of foreign languages, and speak them yourself? Cryptology to decipher hidden messages in graffiti and posters? Forgery to make different levels of counterfeit ID (maybe you can decieve yourself a loan from bank with counterfeit ID and good negotiations skill, but you'd also need to spend the money fast before they notice you were a fraud and shut your fraud account... or perhaps you can get access to palces you'd otherwise couldn't with fake ID, just be careful you don't get caught inside... etc)? Human perception to learning behavioral psychology by oberving people? Swimming, so that you can... swim? Driving so that you can... drive? Negotiation so that you can haggle a better bargain (and I mean actually having to do the haggling, not just skill automatically adjusting prices...).

The list is endless. I could go on and on. And the post would become unreadable if you started listing what all you could do with the information and effects that might come with all that.

Stuff outside combat is almost always taken for granted. The character is expected to do it all no matter how complex the issue might be when looked past the surface and when there is a skill or stat governing the task, it is streamlined for babies and it's ultimately naught but a moment in passing as far as gameplay longevity goes. But for some reason he never can shoot a gun or swing a blade until late game. It's skewed and neglecting a great deal of potential, and just to make combat the centerpiece of the game because most games do.

What if combat was an incident you'd just have to cope with, a result of your (usually bad) choices, but the game centered around a broader level of interactivity? That if you were to specialize just for combat, you'd only get around a fourth of what the game had to offer in terms of getting through it because there'd be so much more at the center of the gameplay experience to find and do and excell at and to build your character for (and not just random activities to fill the world with, but missions and storylines that relied on things that weren't related at all to combat or active combat avoidance, and which, at times, denied combat altogether).
 
Kofe, did you just unironically advocate including a geology skill? I mean, I get it you want crazy width of gameplay ... but that sounds like a serious waste of resources for the .01% that would actually use it. Everything in game development is about opportunity costs. Resources and time are finite.

Also skills like geology and such are of limited utility when information is constantly at the tip of ones finger through an optical scanner.
 
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Whilst others have gone over most of my biggest fears already, another is that V's dialogue won't be handled well enough to cover all the different types of playstyles. Whilst one person might become a ruthless cyberwear-upped killing machine, another may want to be a slick corpo agent that manipulates people. Others might want a mix in the form of a cool-headed assassin.

Having a broad enough range of options for both my examples of the killer and agent, whilst still being able to combine said options to make the assassin without said options clashing with each other, seems like quite the task.

A compromise will probably need to be made between the range of V's personality and the amount by which different lines clash with each other.
 
Kofe, did you just unironically advocate including a geology skill? I mean, I get it you want crazy width of gameplay ... but that sounds like a serious was of resources for the .01% that would actually use it. Everything in game development is about opportunity costs. Resources and time are finite.

Also skills like geology and such are of limited utility when information is constantly at the tip of ones finger through an optical scanner.

I think it was just an example. The point was there are more things a player could do in a game to progress within it beyond shooting, stabbing, blowing up, sneaking past or hacking/engineering around something. It's become incredibly common for our modern day action RPG's to get reduced down to those tasks with a narrative, progression system, a collection of characters and the label "RPG" slapped on it.

The sad part is I remember "RPG's" from 10-20 years ago with so much more in this department. There has been a lot of progression in the graphics, user friendliness and presentation in modern games. Conversely, the little things and the "other" tasks have regressed.
 
I do not want a life simulator, I want to enjoy it.

I'm not suggesting a lifesim. Not at all. Just gameplay and characterbuild variety and diversity.

Kofe, did you just unironically advocate including a geology skill? I mean, I get it you want crazy width of gameplay ... but that sounds like a serious was of resources for the .01% that would actually use it. Everything in game development is about opportunity costs. Resources and time are finite.

Also skills like geology and such are of limited utility when information is constantly at the tip of ones finger through an optical scanner.

Yes, I did. But it was meant more as a general commentary than a straightforward suggestion. I remember CDPR laughed at the skill in the old blog (before the forums were here), so I threw it in there because already at that time, I was thinking: "Why rule anything out that way, who knows what kind of intrigue it might offer?".

Generally speaking, though, I see no issue in skills that only few people would use. It's their loss if they don't (And how would we know before it is tried? If such things are made to be interesting, nobody can tell how popular they might be). But the ones who do, are all the more happy to find the game offering a branch to grab onto in order to widen the possibilities of expressing their character in more or less eccentric, but still reasonable ways.

Skills like geology or library search other similiar "niche" skills are not there to make the game turn upside down, if you do or do not invest in them, like combat skills and other more commonplace and expected skills are. They are there to increase the flavor of your character and the gameplay experience as a whole, and as such they don't require massive amounts of content (few checks here and there, few dialog options... in places that call for it... that's it).

And speaking about resources... So far I've seen nothing more wasteful of resources than adding day&night schedules for massive amounts of NPC's you can't even interact with, and boasting about it to boot. That does nothing to the player. Nothing. And they said it themselves too, something along the lines of "well, if you follow an NPC for 15 hours, maybe...."

What I'm pushing for has a clear and undeniable gameplay profit even when not everybody would use it (and as said, not everybody has to...).
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The point was there are more things a player could do in a game to progress within it beyond shooting, stabbing, blowing up, sneaking past or hacking/engineering around something. It's become incredibly common for our modern day action RPG's to get reduced down to those tasks with a narrative, progression system, a collection of characters and the label "RPG" slapped on it.

This is exactly what I'm talking about.
 
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100% disagree. It has to feel like a city. The masses are part of that. As far in depth, it would take literally decades to script in depth interactions with all of them. Again, opportunity cost.

How does it add to the feel of the city anymore than if the NPC masses were randomly generated on the spot based on time of day?

You can't tell they have schedules unless tail one for god only knows how long. And even if you bothered with that, you can't do anything with that knowledge.

What matters with the NPC's is how they act out when you see them (how they interact with the surroundings and each other) and interact with them (what ever means there might be... pickpocketing, intimidating, seducing, observing.... not discussing deeply, though, obviously).
 
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How does it add to the feel of the city anymore than if the NPC masses were randomly generated on the spot?
2 reasons.

1.) You can hand craft small interesting interactions the player is likely to stumble on.
2.) It's built on a system they already have from TW3. Redoing a whole new procedural system for Engine might be even more time consuming.
 
And even if you bothered with that, you can't do anything with that knowledge.
I disagree. Knowing NPCs' timetables can be hugely beneficial because you then (always) know where the NPCs are.

If you need to talk to them, or kill them, or interact with them in some other way, knowing their location can save a lot of time wasted wandering around. You can also use the knowledge to set up situations that otherwise might not occur -- which can be useful as well as fun.
 
How does it add to the feel of the city anymore than if the NPC masses were randomly generated on the spot based on time of day?
I'm pretty sure >95% of NPCs will be like that, and the very specific ones won't leave their location, as it was in TW3 (except for quests/narrative).

NPCs will just react to weather (if it rains they spawn/go under some roof), day/night and danger (you shoot, they run), but will be procedurally generated as in any GTA game.

The number of NPCs on screen is very important for me to create the right atmosphere. The thing I like about videogmaes (apart for interactivity, ofc) is that they represent a world and events happening in it (in real time) without you needing to imagine things, opposite to books and board games.
 
The illusion seems very important to people.
it is for me, maybe even the most important thing I want in a videogame. That's why I hate levels and whatever breaks the immersion so much and why I love animations. The game needs to keep me as far as possible from thinking "ah, yeah, just a game".
 
it is for me, maybe even the most important thing I want in a videogame. That's why I hate levels and whatever breaks the immersion so much and why I love animations. The game needs to keep me as far as possible from thinking "ah, yeah, just a game".

Yeah, well... I’m not against that illusion, but if I had to choose - as per the resource allocation part of the discussion - I’d change invisible schedules to something concretely gameplay related in a heartbeat and without second thoughts.
 
Yeah, well... I’m not against that illusion, but if I had to choose - as per the resource allocation part of the discussion - I’d change invisible schedules to something concretely gameplay related in a heartbeat and without second thoughts.
fair enough, but I honestly don't think this is the case of "one or the other". Adding skill checks for everything is not that demanding (not talking about development time, just CPU/GPU/RAM), I think it's a deliberate choice of devs who want to make an action-RPG (action game with C&C and stats) which needs to be fun and appealing for a broad range of gamers.
Plus, CDPR failed TW3's progression system where geralt had like only 50 skill points to spend throughout the game in few "+X% DMG" skills (it didn't offer much more than that in terms of skills) and still it was unbalanced as fuck at the point they had to gate everything behind levels not to break the game completely (and if we got it right, they did the same for CP2077).
a couple of weeks ago I was replaying the mission when you save hjalmar in undvik, I was level 20-1 and, since I was there, I diverged for like 20 meters from the dotted line to get the tools for the master blacksmith and a level 26 (only five levels above me) troll was there. 20 fucking meters away from level 20 enemies I was supposed to fight. I decided to try anyway but nooooooooo.... 5 levels! I hit that troll with the best witcher sword, oil and potions, nothing, I couldn't even see a small HP loss... I can't believe we'll have the same shit in CP2077, 5 years later
So I wouldn't look at CDPR for deep RPG mechanics, since they haven't made a single game so far which has them and has them right. Obsidian and Larian are more trustworthy on this regard.
 
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