Cyberpunk 2077 - PS5 and XSeries versions out now + major patch

[Alan Stock]

I'd go for Hard. On Very Hard you can basically insta-die which is no fun. On Hard you get a chance to use meds but will die fast. You can change it mid-game anyway so see how you get on. If you build a more tanky character I can imagine Very Hard is a lot more tolerable. Its worth noting that you'll end up pretty OP anyway, even the latest balance changes don't seem to have affected that too much.

[Radish]

Really? It sounds like they've made it quite a bit harder:
 

• The maximum number of mod slots you can have across all clothing items was reduced from 20 to 9
• Legendary mods now require legendary pieces of clothing to be equipped
• Every mod is now tied to a specific category of clothing (i.e. Deadeye crit mod can only be equipped in eyewear gear)
• Your default crit damage has been reduced from 100% to 50% and every point in Reflexes now gives 0.25% crit chance instead of 1%
• Crit chance and crit damage of legendary weapons has been significantly reduced across the board
• Stat requirements on some of the best legendary weapons have been increased (i.e. Comrade's Hammer now requires 10 body instead of 6 to use properly)
• Legendary armadillo mods now give 75 armor per mod instead of 270
• Evasion has been replaced with Mitigation. It is governed by 2 stats, similar to crit chance and crit damage. You have mitigation chance and mitigation amount, for example you can have a 10% chance to mitigate 50% of damage on hit.

 

Saw someone say their Sniper Rifle stealth headshots now require 3 hits to kill rather than 1. 

[CarloOos]

It seems I’m out of step with the forum as vastly I prefer the 30fps quality mode, having felt the same way about the next-gen version of Control as well.
 

For me the appeal of Cyberpunk is the immersion in the world, not the combat, and there’s a real depth and texture to the image from the combination of ray-tracing and motion blur mode that’s almost completely missing from the performance mode. Whenever I flick between them it’s like everyone turns into plastic action figures. Maybe I’ll be tempted to flick back during some of the bigger setpieces, but I’ve started a new character and I’m still in the prologue.

 

The other game-changer is the HDR which does much improved, on Xbox at least. Having some actual shadows for all those neon speculars to pop against makes a huge difference. 

[Alan Stock]

My thoughts on difficulty are based on what I played on my session the other day, which involved a number of fights. I have a hacker/rifles build so I was already squishy, the patch changes are more likely to affect a melee or tough gunner type build. Even so damage taken by me didn't seem to be radically different, and yes, the sniper is less effective but I was still able to kill enemies with stuff like smart guns pretty quickly. For me the mod limits don't make much impact because I struggle to fill all my mod slots anyway, due to my stats there are only limited mods I can equip anyway. I thought it was interesting that in the patch notes they made Easy a bit harder, did anyone play on Easy because I'm curious why? Maybe you were almost invincible or something.

[Floshenbarnical]

6 hours ago, Wahwah* said:

 

I've looked at the 30fps mode in a couple of places.  Both times I didn't notice a visual difference, other than it being unplayable. 

 

I'm not saying that to be hyperbolic, I really wondered why they included the mode. I suppose it's me that's changed,  or maybe my tv makes 30fps look bad - I don't know if I've played a game in 30fps since I got it - but looking at Cyberpunk, 30fps seems worse than I remember it being,  I assumed the game was actually limping along at something 20fps.

 

It does feel like shit, doesn't it? I was stuggling to navigate my megabuilding, let alone shoot people. Felt like I was drunk. I turn it on for screenshots

 

2 hours ago, Jamin said:

I'm about to start this, never played before but giving the 5 hour trial a go and if like will just pay the PS5 £20 price. Quick question - I assume there are difficulty levels, which one would you recommend? I like a good challenge and often find Normal difficulty in games these days is too easy and so it loses my attention by mid/end.

 

I still prefer Very Hard (ooh matron). It makes every encounter a battle to the death and forces you to take advantage of all the systems, at least in the early game. Have cleared the starting neighborhood (not Northside) of blue icons (for now) and died many, many times. A particularly grim early game encounter is the NCPD scanner hustle that has you pitted against many Tyger Claws in a little outdoor mall area very close to your apartment - it's the one with cameras everywhere, 3 entrance points, pachinko machines everywhere, and the Target has Dodge cyberware and mantis blades. There's also a Netrunner, which is the worst. Took me 5 attempts (no sneaking!) with my shit DR5 Nova and a pocket full of flashbangs. Thank god the load times are so much better.

 

Hopefully this difficulty is maintained through the whole game. I'm only putting perk points into skills that improve reloading times or allow me to sprint while reloading, etc, because after I completed Act 1 I just walked all over everyone.

 

Worth bearing in mind that (I think) your Mitigation stats are boosted while you're sprinting and sliding. You can use meds while sliding, also, which is great for healing while also getting out of trouble.

 

I just have to level up one more time and I can pull my Overture out of my trunk and start blasting 

 

Edit: thinking about writing some RP-style update posts regarding my nighttime jaunts, as long as people don't find it so cringeworthy that I get hounded out of the thread

[JPL]

32 minutes ago, Floshenbarnical said:

It does feel like shit, doesn't it? I was stuggling to navigate my megabuilding, let alone shoot people. Felt like I was drunk. I turn it on for screenshots

I don’t get this. Didn’t you originally play this on base PS4? Surely that would have had a pretty bad framerate. I don’t get how a solid 30fps now makes it unplayable.

[K]

Top tip for anyone who’s not done this: the controls feel a lot more responsive if you turn off the horizontal and vertical turning bonuses in the advanced controller options. 

[Floshenbarnical]

19 minutes ago, JPL said:

I don’t get this. Didn’t you originally play this on base PS4? Surely that would have had a pretty bad framerate. I don’t get how a solid 30fps now makes it unplayable.

 

I think that because the textures were all from the PS1 the motion-blur effect while rotating wasn't as bad. It really makes me feel quite dizzy on this.

[T Pot]

26 minutes ago, JPL said:

I don’t get this. Didn’t you originally play this on base PS4? Surely that would have had a pretty bad framerate. I don’t get how a solid 30fps now makes it unplayable.

 

It's not solid 30FPS now though. At least not on the Series X. With RT turned on if you go to places like Lizzies bar or get into big gun fights it tanks. 

[Thor]

5 minutes ago, Floshenbarnical said:

I think that because the textures were all from the PS1 the motion-blur effect while rotating wasn't as bad. It really makes me feel quite dizzy on this.

Yep, with all the motion blur (which you can turn off) the 30fps mode in PS5 was quite nauseating for me.

[Floshenbarnical]

1 minute ago, Thor said:

Yep, with all the motion blur (which you can turn off) the 30fps mode in PS5 was quite nauseating for me.

I did turn it off. It's still blurry.

[CarloOos]

Fair enough if it makes you nauseous, but without the motion blur it looks like a bunch of spray-painted action men figures being bounced off each other in a giant polystyrene play area. Far too clean for my tastes.

[Ste Pickford]

I just took the plunge with this.  £20 on PS5 was my can't-resist price.  My goodness, the UI is incomprehensible, isn't it?  I remember thinking the same about Witcher 3, and I got my head around that in the end, but it makes a very bad first impression.  I can't tell what screen I'm going to go to next, or why, or whether or not I should be using the pointer or what anything means.

[JPL]

24 minutes ago, T Pot said:

 

It's not solid 30FPS now though. At least not on the Series X. With RT turned on if you go to places like Lizzies bar or get into big gun fights it tanks. 

I’m glad I’m not sensitive to it. I’ve got it on ray tracing mode and it feels great to me.

[MattyP]

3 minutes ago, Ste Pickford said:

I just took the plunge with this.  £20 on PS5 was my can't-resist price.  My goodness, the UI is incomprehensible, isn't it?  I remember thinking the same about Witcher 3, and I got my head around that in the end, but it makes a very bad first impression.  I can't tell what screen I'm going to go to next, or why, or whether or not I should be using the pointer or what anything means.

Absolutely agree! Lots of things on screen and a constant barrage of info thrown at you. Think I at one point got "trapped" in an upgrade screen and couldn't figure out what to do (dude that upgrades your bodies organics early on in the game forget his name). Managed to somehow get out of the screen with a bit of fiddling around (still not sure how).

 

However all that said its still an interesting game and world to explore - I'll probably end up biting at £20 too... even if I don't get as much time to commit to it as I would like still enjoy just "messing around" in the city. All the other bits I need to figure out - might go through the VR training again as I skipped it when having a "quick go" on the demo. In fact I'll probably start afresh with the game and pay more attention to things this time!

[T Pot]

3 minutes ago, JPL said:

I’m glad I’m not sensitive to it. I’ve got it on ray tracing mode and it feels great to me.

 

I mean fair play if you enjoy it then that's all that matters. For me the small improvements to the shadows wasn't worth it.

[K]

The UI is pretty bad. It's the classic ungodly mess that makes sense if you've been playing it for ages, but is very unintuitive. There are loads of screens where it looks like you should be able to skip between buttons using the d-pad, but nothing happens if you do. I wanted to see what my character was wearing the other night, so I clicked on 'character' in the main menu, which doesn't show your character - you have to click on 'inventory' instead. To put on clothes, you click on them in the inventory subscreen, but to take them off, you have to go out to the top-level menu. It's not quite Rockstar levels of having three different menu systems that pop up depending on whether you press start, select, or up on the d-pad, but it's not far off. 

[smac]

1 hour ago, K said:

It's the classic ungodly mess that makes sense if you've been playing it for ages, but is very unintuitive.

 

Yeah, this.

[Broker]

This seems pretty good. The writing isn’t as irritating as Witcher 3, which was my main concern about it. The city looks fantastic, the characters seem likeable enough so far. Shooting is a bit crap but it’s an RPG so I can forgive that.

 

I went to a blue NCPD icon on my map and there were some angry people there so I shot them all and now the icon is gone, is that done now? Is there like a reward? 
 

1 hour ago, Ste Pickford said:

I just took the plunge with this.  £20 on PS5 was my can't-resist price.  My goodness, the UI is incomprehensible, isn't it?  I remember thinking the same about Witcher 3, and I got my head around that in the end, but it makes a very bad first impression.  I can't tell what screen I'm going to go to next, or why, or whether or not I should be using the pointer or what anything means.

Yeah the menus are a mess, so confusing and awkward. I’m not sure what I should be using or doing but I’m muddling through so far.

[Floshenbarnical]

40 minutes ago, Broker said:

This seems pretty good. The writing isn’t as irritating as Witcher 3, which was my main concern about it. The city looks fantastic, the characters seem likeable enough so far. Shooting is a bit crap but it’s an RPG so I can forgive that.

 

I went to a blue NCPD icon on my map and there were some angry people there so I shot them all and now the icon is gone, is that done now? Is there like a reward? 
 

Yeah the menus are a mess, so confusing and awkward. I’m not sure what I should be using or doing but I’m muddling through so far.

 

There's usually a backpack somewhere with a conversation transcript, some loot, and often some €$ inside. That marks it as complete, after you've incapacitated/ dismembered/ ventilated/ electrocuted/ exploded/ incinerated/ beaten everyone to death.

 

The menu UI is so shit because it's designed for PC, I'm guessing. In the crafting menu if you want to switch over to Upgrade you have to move the cursor all the way up to the top to click it, which maddens me.

[Talk Show Host]

Does anyone know why I always have a dot in the middle of my screen even when I disable crosshair in the menu? I was under the impression it wasn’t there before.

[Opinionated Ham Scarecrow]

The gunplay is massively improved since I last played it. It seems completely reworked.

[JPL]

5 minutes ago, Opinionated Ham Scarecrow said:

The gunplay is massively improved since I last played it. It seems completely reworked.

I’m what way? Feels exactly the same to me.

[danbot]

Do we reckon there's any chance of the Stadia version being fixed or does nobody really care at this point?

I'd quite like to play the rebalance but it looks like poo.

[englishbob]

I found the shooting very floaty - is that because I haven't levelled up or something?

[choddo]

2 hours ago, Broker said:

This seems pretty good. The writing isn’t as irritating as Witcher 3, which was my main concern about it. The city looks fantastic, the characters seem likeable enough so far. Shooting is a bit crap but it’s an RPG so I can forgive that.

 

I went to a blue NCPD icon on my map and there were some angry people there so I shot them all and now the icon is gone, is that done now? Is there like a reward? 
 

Yeah the menus are a mess, so confusing and awkward. I’m not sure what I should be using or doing but I’m muddling through so far.

You usually get a small financial reward from the popo for clearing out scum but the message can fly past pretty quickly.

The menus will start to make a bit more sense eventually, they are clunky.

[Opinionated Ham Scarecrow]

1 hour ago, JPL said:

I’m what way? Feels exactly the same to me.

 

It just feels weightier and there's more feedback. Particularly with the pistols and when landing headshots. The enemy AI is also improved massively and not just whack a mole anymore.

[Broker]

1 hour ago, Fallows said:

 

See how you feel about it after you're all kitted out with over 20 perk points spent on whichever gun type you favour. As you say, as it's a RPG it's not going to hand you all of the fun toys right away.

Oh yeah, it’s more that I’m not expecting it to have a detailed recoil model or feel like Apex or something. It’s the first game CDPR have ever made with guns in it. It’s fine, it certainly doesn’t feel as bad as other gun RPGs like Fallout or Borderlands. 

[Transient Curse]

6 hours ago, Floshenbarnical said:

 

I still prefer Very Hard (ooh matron). It makes every encounter a battle to the death and forces you to take advantage of all the systems, at least in the early game.

This is how I like games to be,  I'm going to restart the game again so I can crank the difficulty up from hard. 

[jonamok]

Lore question. The currency is EuroDollars (€$). So, I get people calling them EDdies. But what are “ennies” currency that other NPCs definitely refer to in dialogue and subs? Another (unnecessarily confusing) name for the same thing?