Combat difficulty
 

So until after the first actual main quest mission I tried to do some of the gigs, assaults and crimes.
I had zero difficulties with combat until then in the main quest, but totally failed in taking out the gangster mobs. So I checked the difficulty settings and noticed that it was on hard. After switching to normal it's a littel to easy now.

While I'm not an experienced shotter gamer I normally don't have any problems with shooter games on higher difficulty levels.
So I wonder if I've overlooked something obvious like an implant, perk, weapon (type) which makes it doable on hard again.
Any ideas?

In short: hard too hard, normal too easy. What can I do?

Well, I tried 3 different builds on Very Hard - and the game becomes trivial around level 6-8 - if you optimize your build.

You can do what I'm doing. Wait around 12-24 months until the modding community fixes the balance of the game.

There are multiple aspects which could be mentioned here. I am not 100% sure about everything, but this is how I see it:

1. Quests vs World: The Main quests increases in difficulty quickly. I did a bit more in the main quest, and also started getting issues when going into the "Ghost Town" quest. It was still doable though, but hard.
The world however is split into zones and each zone has enemies of different levels. So make sure to start in the northern part of the city where enemies are easier.
This can have a DRASTIC difference. Like 1 headshot to kill an enemy versus 50 headshots. On level 10 or so I killed a few enemies which I just couldn't kill in fair combat…so I used my car to run them over. And I got like a level 30 weapon I couldnt use.

2. Weapon Balance. And this is going into spoiler territory and will probably ruin your gameplay once you are aware of it, even though it is unavoidable at some point. But I will mark it as spoiler.

Thanks a lot!

I did. It has a long cooldown so you can't spam it - keep it for stealth needed missions where creating distraction is not possible.

I mainly play melee and I am on my second play through now and find the difficulty just right myself. I have a friend who is hard core who has been sharing their "net runner" V play through with me. His V is OP on very hard. But after he told me all the stuff he did to get her that powerful … I can see why.

Based on that and other comments … those hard core folks who are good at figuring out mechanics and invest in mastering the game and find the best path for their build … are going to find even very hard combat easy I would guess.

Average folks just playing will probably find it more balanced. So depends on your game play style. For the types like my friend an ultra hard would have been a good idea. He still loves the game though and should point out pretty much any game he has played he finds trivial eventually - even the ones with reputations for being ultra hard core. Some of the battles he did in warhammer and XCOM were amazing. I lack the patience to get that deep into mechanics myself.

While I would agree that yes, I am good at figuring out OP mechanics and stuff like that…there was absolutely nothing I did here. I just found the weapon, thought "Oh, a tech weapon", tested it, it felt OP…started using this sniper kind of rifle in close combat…and when I wanted to upgrade it and saw that the DPS actually is reduced (display bug) I checked in the internet because I though the weapon is just bugged and too much damage. Only after that I saw, that as a tech weapon you can also shoot through walls and whole buildings.

At that point I had zero points built towards that. It's just "here you go, take this weapon and be overpowered".

Yea that does sound OP for sure. I haven't ever used any tech weapon myself, I was more talking about how powerful hacking can get if you really invest time in it - crafting, getting the right combinations, earning the skill points, etc.

I am sure plenty of folks will object to my hard-core/average as well. I am mainly going by those I know personally who play or from discussions on various forums and sites.

Also, for clarity, I don't play C2077 for combat. I play it for the overall experience and the game excels at that. Definitely my GOTY for 2020.

Melee is trivial as well, sadly.

The AI can't react effectively - so you can pretty much slaughter everything in sight - so long as you're not vastly under the level requirement.

Not because of numbers, but because you can kill things much faster than they can respond.

The scaling in this game is beyond atrocious. We're talking Daggerfall level of imbalance here.

Not a major surprise, given the overall state of the game - which was obviously rushed with minimal Q/A.

I suspect it will be a lot better in a year or two. Not necessarily because of CDPR fixing it, because Witcher 3 was also mostly a travesty - even on Death March - but because the modding scene will probably have a few mods out to balance things a little.

Quickhacking and Breach Protocol seem to be the most overpowered skills in the game currently, but you don't really need them. Tech weapons - or any kind of ranged approach will break the pathetic AI.

At range - or, in particular, if you engage enemies that are above or below you - they can't respond at all. They'll go on alert or become aggressive - and then they'll simply return to normal as if nothing happened. This will be the case even if you kill their friends standing 3 feet beside them.

Cyberpunk AI makes Bethesda games look like Cyberdyne systems.

Melee can be challenging if you go in slow motion, however. The scaling, while incredibly lazy, does present a challenge in terms of the numbers alone.

But if you rush it - you can destroy everything before they can respond - for the most part, if you're within the level range.

I honestly have no clue how anyone could find this an appropriate challenge - unless they utterly ignore their own gear/build and pretend that having nothing stand against them except bosses and "Very High" enemies post Act 2 is a reasonable state of affairs.

Sounds like the combat could use a higher difficulty with better enemy tactics and abilities (and not just bloated HP) then … at least based on what I am hearing here anyhow. I agree the AI isn't all that bright at times. I mean the combat is about perfect for me as I am not a twitch or FPS style player. My reflexes are slow, I have two left thumbs, and I don't react quickly to combat situations. So for me its great.

Five of us are all playing this at the same time on Discord (not multiplayer - more playing and sharing experiences, etc) so I asked them a moment ago. They all love the game but the two combat folks said they would like a harder experience. They still enjoy the game, however, for its overall story and atmosphere. The rest of us are more about the story, characters, atmosphere, exploring, quests, and combat is secondary.

So my view point is somewhat biased towards that. Seems a lot of it comes down to play style and what you are used to. Also how much time you want to invest in combat and how important it is to your experience.

I seem to recall people complaining Skyrim, FO4, and some other popular games were also rather trivial to combat so not sure this is exclusive to C2077. I mean one of the most common complaints I see for games (with exceptions of course) is trivial combat and that harder mode is just inflated hit points.

Ah well doesn't matter much to me as I am having a complete blast playing and totally enjoying the game along with my friends. It's a shame, however, that the game couldn't have come out in an overall better state … no argument or disagreement in that regard.

Hopefully at some point there will be ways to improve the combat (via mods, patches, whatever) for those who get the most enjoyment out of that aspect of the game.

I still find it odd, being a fantasy buff, that I never could get into the Witcher games even though I thought I would love them … while I didn't expect to like this game at all … and yet it quickly climbed to one of my all time favorites. I would love to see a second game based on it, hopefully with more polish and refinement.

It's certainly not the only open world CRPG with terrible balance issues, I agree.

That said, it's probably THE modern CRPG that's most held back by utterly terrible immersion breaking issues when contrasted with the marketing campaign.

I don't remember a more disappointing game in recent history.

I think the last game that comes close for me is Master of Orion 3.

Of course, that might be more about how absolutely incredibly CDPR pulled off the marketing for Cyberpunk than about how little the game actually lived up to all the lies of the adverts.

In fact, the more I think about it - the more I think that's the real issue.

I think we're talking about one of the most successful and deceitful marketing campaigns in gaming history.

It's particularly bad when it comes to balance, though - and, as mentioned, it's actually on par with Daggerfall - which makes it worse than games like Morrowind and Oblivion - both of which are among the most atrociously poorly balanced CRPGs of all time in my experience.

I wasn't going to reply as its clear I misunderstood the combat issues and/or my bias was getting in the way … so bowing out of that.

I only wanted to add I felt the hype was too much and hurt them in the long run. It was a turn off for me and another reason I hadn't been interested in the game. But then I consider all marketing to be a mix of half-truths, misdirection, and embellishments.

In the end I feel bad for those who worked hard on a game (i.e. not the suits) that was released as it was and got the reception it did.

That being said I still think its a great game despite its flaws and very glad I got it as I am getting a lot of fun out it. Never played a game like this and it has really made a very strong impact on me - especially the story, setting, and characters.

Okay enough said :P

I would say it's a bit worse than in Skyrim. In Skyrim the system broke in the moment where you learnt two jobs and Job A boosted goods produced by Job B which then increased goods from Job A, which then increased goods from Job B which then lead to the ultimate equipment which destroyed everything. I am not sure anymore if it was symbiosis between 2 or 3 jobs. But…this also only happened because you needed hundreds of hours to see everything in Skyrim. If you only played Sykrim for 60h, this likely wouldnt have been an issue.
Cyberpunk is relatively short in comparison though. I am only playing 1h per day, so I didnt finish it yet. But for me the balance already broke at around hour 20. So I would say its worse in Skyrim in that regard (release Version of Skyrim, no idea what they changed with patches).

Oblivion on the other end is a completely different ballpark. Not because the balance was so bad, but because it had a completely different kind of issue. Oblivion is the only Game I know where the character-skill decisions which should make the most sense, are the ones which are worst for you. So if you play a melee character, the worst you could do is picking melee skills as main skills. If you do that, you will level too quickly. And that means you don't receive enough attribute points on level up. And because enemies scale with your level, that means that the strength you gain on level up might be inferior to the strength your enemies gain when they scale with your new level.
So instead the best way to level your character was to pick skills as mainskills which you never use. Then by using melee for example you get your attribute points (you need to note them down somewhere) and once you got enough attribute gains, you were then allowed to use the main skills (like magic) to trigger the level up. That way you actually outpace the strength of the scaling enemies.
So yeah…I would call Oblivion as the worst Character System I have ever seen in any game. But it's a whole different issue than just broken balancing.

Not sure what happened with that quote and the weird signs?!? :)

Anyway, I don't know anyone who can truthfully claim to be free of bias in things they care about.

Of course, don't reply if you don't enjoy the exchange - but you seem to have some insight to appreciate, so I would consider that unfortunate.

In any case, this might be a semantic issue - but I don't think the hype is the problem here.

The problem is that we have a game that COULD have been worth the hype, but they opted to release it in what I consider a broken state.

Well, I guess not so much broken as it is simply unfinished.

Of course, if you can ignore the half-way implemented features like the AI and all the missing immersion-related stuff (no actual police system, no crime system, no customization, almost no impactful CnC, no transportation system and so forth) AND you don't focus on game mechanics and balance, then it's likely a wonderful game.

I personally had a blast for the first 20 hours or so.

In fact, I was having so much fun that all the immersion-breaking shit didn't really bother me much.

It wasn't until I realised that I wasn't being challenged by anything - and that my build was simply too effective. that things went bad for me. I was playing as a netrunner type of character, investing heavily in Breach Protocol and Quickhacking.

At first I thought I had stumbled upon an unfortunate and overpowered combination.

It wasn't unthinkable that I had found a way to break the game. But no, that wasn't the case. I mean, I'm a pretty decent min/max'er - but I'm not THAT good.

So, I started over - as I didn't want to play a game for 100 hours and have no actual sense of danger.

Same result, if only slightly less powerful. This was a build focusing on ranged weapons and stealth. My typical "stealth archer" type of character.

Then I tried a melee build - same result.

Once you realise how the mechanics and the scaling work - it's all downhill from there.

I would call it one of the least competent games in terms of balance, if I didn't suspect it was simply not tested due to a lack of time. I think they intended for a lot of things to be tweaked - they just couldn't make it for the release.

With all that said, there's clearly a great game in there. The story content was very strong as far as I could tell. The story NPCs were above and beyond - much like you would have expected from CDPR, and about the only thing in the game that was on par with the hype.

The reason I'm a little pissed about it all, and I very rarely get pissed about games these days, is precisely because the game SHOULD have been more. As in, SO much more. Not just that, but because it could relatively easily have been.

I mean, even if they fix it up - and modders eventually get it to a balanced state - there is NO second first impression.

That means years and years of work from talented developers is largely wasted here. They will never get their moment in the sun.

Why? Because suits got greedy. Old story, yeah, but in this case it's particularly sad.

I get that a lot of people are able to enjoy themselves with what is there - and maybe they don't really care about what it could have been.

That's cool - and I envy you to a certain extent.

But I'm very big on games that bring genres forward - and it's always worse when a game tries and comes close, then when games are just there to make a buck.

In this case, we could have had a genuinely impactful open world Deus Ex - full of meaningful choice and intricate systems.

But what we got was a 2001-era GTA world with broken mechanics and, admittedly, great story content and pretty visuals.

Yeah. Even though from the trailers I thought "It can't possibly be as good as it looks" I was still disappointed. I think the hype actually carried it for a while because it's better to start with enthusiasm. Some games I really don't want to play but I feel like I should give them a chance and sometimes they end up surprising me. But 2077 had everything going for it and squandered its advantage.

*particularly ironic in this game, since it's very anticorporate ;)

Not a lot more insight as I tend to agree with the general idea that the game needed at least another year in the oven and that the suits got way too greedy. So the users and the workers pay the price. I still think its a great game but totally agree it could also be so much more (I say the same for Skyrim and FO4 though - both could have been more, especially the companions in Skyrim, but I digress).

Still, much as I enjoy the game, I see many things that seem unfinished and/or cut content. Longer origin stories (corporate one is very short), numerous balance issues in combat (even though that doesn't bother me like it does others not being a combat person), bugs ranging from minor annoyances to quest stopping (luckily haven't seen any of those), the whole older console support issue (should have just dropped support for them and instead focused on making the game good for the consoles that could run it and PC), and so on.

I also had very low expectations for the game so that might be why I am more blase about it all and simply enjoy the game for what it is versus what it could have been … as I never had high hopes for it to begin with.

It is still my GOTY because my GOTY decision is solely based on how much fun I had with a game and, regardless of the issues, I have had a serious amount of fun with this game. More so than any other game this year at least, except BG3 early access. Not sure I would throw an early access game into my own GOTY though.

On a side note BG3 early access is in far better shape then C2077 is now. But BG3 is a fantasy turn based combat game and something I am more familiar with. So C2077 got the edge on my GOTY for being such a fun new experience versus a fun old experience … if that makes any sense.

Yep suits got greedy. CDPR over-hyped the game, had multiple delays, and gross mismanagement sums up the entire development cycle of Cyberpunk 2077.

Still you know what? I enjoyed the damn game enough to call it my GOTY.

Just wait till Star Citizen gets released. :)

Well, it didn't have enough delays.

I consider eight years long enough. Hence the mis-management from CPDR. Reddit is a good source of where to find employee posts over the years on this topic.

Anyway the game is nothing revolutionary and is basically Witcher III 2.0. Frankly they needed a publisher to give them a kick in the ass to get development moving faster.

Yep, of course. But a year ago they should have had the balls to say "Sorry, folks, we need 2 more years." (Which means that I just corrected myself, because that would have been less delays, bu a single large one.)

No, the best balanced decision was to release it only for pc and maybe the next-gen consoles. For the latter perhaps with a very short (1-3 months) delay. In addition increase the minimal hardware requirements to include ssd and a higher end gpu.

No problem with an HD on a PC but on consoles that's a different matter. I have an XFX 590 and have no problem running the game on ultra either on the PC of course.

So nope mismanagement again took to damn long to develop that the console generation changed. One employee came out last year on Kotaku with the leaks.

Of course he was dis-credited but hey what do you know he we was correct.

I agree with mismanagement. I mentioned what they should have done after the fact, when it was already too late.

I'm not a fan of long development times in general. Those magnum opus projects are just not realistic and feasible. Look at star citizen. Maybe take two years max? Evolution over revolution.

I think what made the witcher 3 great were the previous two entries. They started from existing stuff and made it better. Sure with cyberpunk they also are using an existing universe, but that is not the same as already having assets, overarching storyline, … and mechanics that they can start from.

As a player having played tw1 and tw2 was also a significant added value. At least I was much more connected to all the characters.

I think there's been some exagerration with how bad the balance is. Yeah, it's not good, but it's not so bad that it's ruining the game for me.

I think most games can be made trivial if you min-max to the utmost. There's nothing unique about CP 2077 in that way.

So well… I just got a weapon that auto-hits with the bullets flying around corners and stuff. Normal difficulty is piece of cake now.

Yeah, all Smart weapons have auto-targeting. They usually do less damage than Power or Tech weapons though.