While I still believe stealth is playable, I think there was a missed opportunity where stealth didn't get the same boost as other more direct combat play styles. Initially when they revealed Monowire for the game it was supposed to be a way to hack enemies from distance without being noticed. Now it spreads quickhacks but in a very direct way. Gorilla Arms, Mantis Blades etc all of them are direct weapon attacks with the only difference being ranged or melee.
Monowire should have been something you use to do stealth kills and having it's own bonuses. If they wanted to incorporate netrunning then they could have just done something like "Doing a take down with the monowire, you wrap the wire around their neck and jacking in directly grants you buffs. You either take the enemy down or hack them and release. The enemy is under your control and sees you as an ally for a duration". Or you hack their eyes and become invisible to them for a longer duration. Or grant you access to the cameras in the network that the NPC is connected to. Use it to grant greater buffs to covert quick hacks. I don't know something like that, I just don't think we needed another melee cyber arm.
I'm still doing a stealth playthrough and so far so good, I just wish I had the added buffs that the other more direct players have. I know stealth isn't an easy thing to build gameplay around and it can seem boring compared to the rest but it's good to have options. The problem isn't that they nerfed stealth/Netrunning because it needed to be balanced, the issue is they didn't replace it with anything or improve on what was already there so it feels less as good as everyone else.
Monowire should have been something you use to do stealth kills and having it's own bonuses. If they wanted to incorporate netrunning then they could have just done something like "Doing a take down with the monowire, you wrap the wire around their neck and jacking in directly grants you buffs. You either take the enemy down or hack them and release. The enemy is under your control and sees you as an ally for a duration". Or you hack their eyes and become invisible to them for a longer duration. Or grant you access to the cameras in the network that the NPC is connected to. Use it to grant greater buffs to covert quick hacks. I don't know something like that, I just don't think we needed another melee cyber arm.
I'm still doing a stealth playthrough and so far so good, I just wish I had the added buffs that the other more direct players have. I know stealth isn't an easy thing to build gameplay around and it can seem boring compared to the rest but it's good to have options. The problem isn't that they nerfed stealth/Netrunning because it needed to be balanced, the issue is they didn't replace it with anything or improve on what was already there so it feels less as good as everyone else.