My Fix List 1.0
I think for most people just getting the game playable is the crucial issue. People on last-gen systems (constituting a lot of gamers) are what's holding back a positive sentiment for the game. How does CD-Project Red handle that? Offer them a free upgrade to PS5/Xbox if/when they're able to upgrade their consoles. I think that's the best you can do. Because honestly, the most amazing parts of this game are so muted by last-gen performance that it can't be appreciated there. I'm on PC and I can't even have a conversation with my last-gen friends about the facial animations and general presence of the characters. This is something that CP2077 did a shockingly good job at and no amount of optimization is going to deliver that experience to LG-consoles. So give it to them for free for Current Gen consoles when they upgrade.
Now, for MY experience and how to improve some features of the game from my point of view:
1. Allow us to purchase non-customized vehicles. Create a method, perhaps someone whom you can bring a car/truck/bike to (park it in a garage or shipping container) and for a fee, they'll scrub/hack its registration for you. It then shows up in your vehicle menu. Even better if I can gain the skill myself to hack vehicles and alter their registration to me. Bonus if I can set up a shell corporation to register vehicles too. Lots of the stock bikes and cars are amazing-looking. Unfortunately, if I find one I like now, it despawns the next time I drive any other vehicle.
2. Let our companions hang out with us. The characters are great. Great enough you want to have them around. Get some dialog expansion for the key companions and turn them into proper ones that you can dial up or text and they'll show up a couple MINUTES later (put a count-down timer). I don't want to see them when I turn around, stalker style. I want them to ride up and hang out, sling some contextual dialog and peace out some time later (based on relationship level).
3. Make our POV in first person in most vehicles a little bit taller/higher. I like driving FPS. And the interior assets are amazing. But I feel like I'm about 5'2. And while there is nothing wrong with being that tall, modern cars are adaptable because people who are 5'2 need to be able to see over the dashboards too. Just like V. V deserves to have a seat-height adjuster.
4. Adaptive Minimap. Make it zoom out logarithmic to my speed and zoom back in as I slow down to standard. Using it to navigate while driving is so deeply frustrating and reckless ; I often hit pedestrians just because I have no indication of a 90-270 degree turn until .25 seconds before I arrive. Yes I'm speeding, yes that's really why pedestrians are dying. But we're playing Cyberpunk 2077. We're going to speed. Save the pedestrians, make the map zoom better.
5. Make wanted levels harder to shake. I can jog briskly in a straight line for two minutes and evade a squad of cops with a drone and an untold number of flying vehicles. They should be able to rapidly track me. I should really need to get clever to get away (breaking line of sight, ditching/swapping vehicles). Get those drones up above us shadowing us on foot, harassing us, forcing us to stop and handle them before they tip off the cop-deployment vehicles. This also provides you a fix for "appearing cops" - have them tactically drop out of flying vehicles. Those can safely appear out of nowhere (behind the player's head).
6. Make a background simulation of gang/corporate influence. I know that deep down the game SHOULD be about toppling/changing the powers that be in Night City, because that's fun. Learning the lesson of "It's Chinatown" isn't fun. Sure, that makes for compelling stories, but not repeated gameplay (which is what the game is once the stories are exhausted about 60hrs in). You can't destroy corps/gangs outright, but maybe you can minimize them. Let me use whatever route of ingress suits me most as a player. Maybe violence. Maybe Espionage. Maybe Netrunning. Let me use them all to chip away at the coporations and gangs. Maybe let me perform special missions for neat loot once I have a corp/gang sufficiently minimized, like a raid.
7. Stock Market. This is a companion to #6. Make it possible to use my phone or computer to buy, sell, short stocks and then get dividends/payouts. Let me manipulate the stock market (gently) to my own benefit by fucking with corporate assets. Let me distress these buttoned up skinflints to the point they're calling their lifecoaches. This also creates a solution for the "person randomly falling out of the sky as if from a tall building" bug.
8. Change appearance at Ripper-Docs. Put me back in the character generation screen for a couple thousand eddies.
[I'll update this as I think of more things]
