What's up with the awful difficulty design now?

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Not an actual challenge to get one shot during a gun fight fyi. I've been full health and died with a lucky crit hit by some rando NPC. This is not good design. This isn't how you make something more challenging. The reason why Elden Rings difficulty works is simple. It's fair and once you realize the challenge you can over come it. There's nothing to overcome when you get downed by a hit scan enemy from 40 meters. Bad design, fix this CDPR.
 
Not an actual challenge to get one shot during a gun fight fyi. I've been full health and died with a lucky crit hit by some rando NPC. This is not good design. This isn't how you make something more challenging. The reason why Elden Rings difficulty works is simple. It's fair and once you realize the challenge you can over come it. There's nothing to overcome when you get downed by a hit scan enemy from 40 meters. Bad design, fix this CDPR.
Try "Easy" difficulty.
 
The snipers telegraph their position and that they're about to shoot you with a laser (remember some can shoot through cover too if they've got a tech rifle). Getting one-shot in CP2077 is a pretty niche event. It's either because you've ventured to a higher threat region too early (I did that in my first play through without understanding that this concept existed, thanks to the Delamain jobs) or you've selected a difficulty setting higher than normal and you're still low level.

If you're getting one shot, try the location later. Go do some easier content and level up, get better armour rating and some defensive perks. Then go back and try again.

I can't speak for Elden Rings because I've not played it. But I can speak for CP2077. It's just like many other non-linear RPGs that have high threat enemies that'll down you fast if you're low level. I play on Very Hard and the times of me losing most of my health quickly rapidly vanish as I level up.
 
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I play on very hard and I`m happy with difficulty changes after 1.5 - definitely 2-3 shots are usually deadly (but I dont go for max armor - style first) and I`m close to level 40 now. Before 1.5 at that time I was overpowered and it was a stage where fights were not demanding at all.
 

Someone mentioned snipers and getting one shot and it brought back memories.
 
Not an actual challenge to get one shot during a gun fight fyi. I've been full health and died with a lucky crit hit by some rando NPC. This is not good design. This isn't how you make something more challenging. The reason why Elden Rings difficulty works is simple. It's fair and once you realize the challenge you can over come it. There's nothing to overcome when you get downed by a hit scan enemy from 40 meters. Bad design, fix this CDPR.
Can you give more details?

Game difficulty you are playing on?
Your character level and where in Night City getting one shotted becomes an issue?
How much armor your character has?
What character attributes you have invested?

I play on normal with focus to Body and got one shotted by Kang Tao snipers at one point of game. Also 6th. Street gangers could eliminate my V with one ~1,3 seconds consistent burst (from close distance, all bullets hit) from their assault weapons, but that hasn't been a problem for some time anymore, got more health, more armor etc.
 
The most stupid thing is that white casual clothes/guns have the same mod slot number that a legendary have. One mod slot in casuals and one mod slot in most legenderies.
So what's the point of legenderies then?
 
The most stupid thing is that white casual clothes/guns have the same mod slot number that a legendary have. One mod slot in casuals and one mod slot in most legenderies.
So what's the point of legenderies then?

Few items slots have 2 sockets so you need epic or legendary to get that. The change reduces the need for legendary clothing which opens more options to picking things for looks. Prior to this change you would rush legendary open world pieces ASAP, reload save for max sockets, equip it, craft armadillos and be immortal pre-konpeki and making non-legendary clothing obsolete after 15 minutes of gameplay.

Not an actual challenge to get one shot during a gun fight fyi. I've been full health and died with a lucky crit hit by some rando NPC.
If he is a skull then no wonder. Like when doing Totentanz cyberpsychosis you can aggro NPCs from Totentanz if you get to close and they are much higher level. Also if you are in a much higher level part of the city then any NPC can annihilate you. For level parity NPCs your gear does matter but usually you will die not from the shot but from an explosion it caused. You can die even from turret explosions you cause not to mention all those explosive objects.
 
You are right about Elden Ring's difficulty. The game is always fair. If you take the time to learn the enemies moves, skills and timing you will succeed.

Unfortunately for you, the same can be said for CP2077. It's already been pointed out that snipers have a very obvious laser pointed at you. You need to move out of their way. If they have a tech rifle, you can't just run behind cover and immediately stay there, they will fire and hit you. You need to get behind cover and move a bit. Because, now, enemies aren't completely moronic, we asked for this and it's a damn good change. Melee enemies have very clear movesets that can be dodged quite easily once you realize what they are. The same can be said of every enemy you will meet.

Just like any Soulsborne game, if you run into areas that are made for much higher levels you WILL get wrecked.

In other words, you need to adapt the way you play. Just like you would any Soulsborne game.
 
The most stupid thing is that white casual clothes/guns have the same mod slot number that a legendary have. One mod slot in casuals and one mod slot in most legenderies.
So what's the point of legenderies then?
This is a little unintuitive now. It used to make more sense when we could have up to 4 slots on some items. But the game is better balanced now (although I'd just argue they could have just limited the power of the items we slot in).

Anyway, as mentioned above... the point of higher quality slots is you cannot slot legendary mods into an epic or lower item. So there's still a benefit in having a legendary item, just less of a gap compared to how it used to be. More importantly, even on Very Hard difficulty, the game is beatable with the tools we have right now, slot counts included.
 

GLN7

Forum regular
I just finished the game on regular difficulty, and have no idea what OP is talking about.

Snipers took me out occasionally very early, because I didn't believe they could penetrate cover. I was wrong.

After that, with a build that got body to 10 at level 50, and put no points ever into health passives... I kicked Adam Smasher's ass in with only 180hp starting DFtR.

I am not a MLG. The difficulty is fine.
 
I just finished the game on regular difficulty, and have no idea what OP is talking about.

Snipers took me out occasionally very early, because I didn't believe they could penetrate cover. I was wrong.

After that, with a build that got body to 10 at level 50, and put no points ever into health passives... I kicked Adam Smasher's ass in with only 180hp starting DFtR.

I am not a MLG. The difficulty is fine.
This game is one of those few that actually has an inverse difficulty curve. It gets easier as you level up, not the other way around. And I think that the OP is suffering with that feature (it's easy to fall into the trap of over-extending in the game, once you get to Act 2).

I remember when I first played, finished Act 1, started the Delamain jobs, ended up on the far side of Rancho on the border of the badlands and tried one of the NCPD scanners in passing... The severe bullet sponge really put me off initially but when I realised that difficulty was mostly based on region I rethought my approach and never had an issue since.

I was a level 10 character in a level 20 zone, is all. If the OP is playing on a higher difficulty, this can happen even in Watson in Act 1. You just need to be very careful about which encounters you try and, if you try them, how you approach them. And will probably need to F5/F9 several times early on. What they probably don't realise is that the game gets easier and so these issues don't exist forever.
 

GLN7

Forum regular
^^^ Maybe the OP never played Witcher 3 and wasn't aware that a red skull meant "you prolly gonna die". This is a mechanic in other games too though... Open worlds have monsters that a newbie can't handle - by design.

Absolutely correct about inverse difficulty, which is exactly how it should be imo. It is a power fantasy after all!
 
^^^ Maybe the OP never played Witcher 3 and wasn't aware that a red skull meant "you prolly gonna die". This is a mechanic in other games too though... Open worlds have monsters that a newbie can't handle - by design.

Absolutely correct about inverse difficulty, which is exactly how it should be imo. It is a power fantasy after all!
Well, I say that and only exclude DFTR ending. That's the only part that's truly challenging now :D
 
This is great (and rare in games unfortunately ) as long as it is applied equally to NPC as well as the player. Not getting killed by a bullet should be about cover, strategy and geometry not how many dozen head shots it takes to remove all your HP.
 

Madae

Forum veteran
My only beef is that armor seems generally worthless. First game I played a glass cannon, fashion over function, type and I havent really noticed much of a difference than my current game where im decked out in legendaries. Enemies still have a chance to 1 shot/2 shot me, even with 600 health from bonus perks and mods, which I didnt have in my first game. It almost seems like damage from mobs is a percentage rather than a flat amount.
 
My only beef is that armor seems generally worthless. First game I played a glass cannon, fashion over function, type and I havent really noticed much of a difference than my current game where im decked out in legendaries. Enemies still have a chance to 1 shot/2 shot me, even with 600 health from bonus perks and mods, which I didnt have in my first game. It almost seems like damage from mobs is a percentage rather than a flat amount.
Armour has a huge impact.

I just ran up to 3 scavs and let them shoot me with my current build with 1994 armour and it took some time for them to pull me down to trigger the biomon. I then reloaded and took off a few items to cut my armour to 1189 and they cut me to shreds in comparison. You can see the chunks of health being taken off are way larger and it's very easy to visualise by looking at the health bar. Obviously there's some variance in the damage they inflict depending on them getting criticals or not but the difference is pretty clear.

The issue with the current game is that there's comparatively very little difference between rare, epic and legendary armour any more due to the slot count being cut down. I don't know if the devs really considered this when they did what they did to slots. The only difference between an epic item and the legendary version of it is the fact you cannot slot the legendary mod into the epic item. There's functionally no other difference.

Armadillo epic @ level 50 is +68.5 armour.
Armadillo legendary @ level 50 is 75 armour.

So, ultimately, the difference between an epic and legendary outer torso item is a measly -15 armour :D

The same can be said when comparing many rare items with legendary items, because they can have slots too, albeit not 2 on the torso items. Still though... even uncommon items can have slots! the total difference in a full armour build (armadillo everywhere) between legendary and an uncommon set with a single slot on every item is a matter of a few hundred points. Enough to make a difference but not nearly as significant as the comparison I ran just now by taking off a few items to cut my armour by about 40%. Bearing in mind that a balanced build probably wants deadeye or something similar on the face-wear anyway and this cuts the benefit down even further in terms of raw armour.

What this means is, there's less of an impact between a maxed legendary build and a "fashion first" build than there used to be when we had legendary items with four slots that allowed 4x150 armadillo mods to be slotted in. Is this a good thing? Well, you can still get over 2500 armour with a properly specified build and my build that has that armour was able to defeat the toughest content in the game so... I think it's fine. You could try running about with a build that had sub 500 armour and see how you get on but we get a lot more survivability via perk/skill/cyberwear choices I think and so the chances are, if you're not specced for armour then you're getting some other benefit somewhere else. As I've said a few times elsewhere, at level 50 and fully specced, very few Vs will be anything but deadly. The only real way to see the benefit of armour is to empty some clothing slots entirely (because stuff you obtain at level 50 is scaled to level 50 and so functionally the same as legendary unless slotted).

All that said, I think the new mitigation system may be worth looking into as an alternative, if you can get the mitigation chance up. I've not tried it yet because I don't think you can craft it.
 
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