Hard and very hard

[STUPIDGUARDIAN]

Edits:
I took screenshots of a single headshot on normal, hard and very hard, and how much damage the same melee enemy does to me on normal, hard and very hard. These are my results here:

Enemy health is scaled with difficulty, not their defense. I did the same damage on all 3 difficulties with a headshot, but I took around 95% of their health on normal, and around 50% of their health on hard and very hard, so the scaling of the later difficulties seem to be close to the same.

For the melee dude hitting me, I lost 42 HP on hard, 45 HP on very hard, and 19 HP on normal...

It seems going from normal to hard is a humongous leap between normal and hard, and a pitiful difference between hard and very hard. I had 553 armor for this entire experiment btw. I'm not sure if mitigation scaling is off but considering I almost did the same amount of damage on both hard and very hard with a headshot, I think the difficulty scaling is horribly made between hard and very hard.

I tried with bullets afterward just to see how numbers went. I got shot from full HP from 1 handgun round. These are my results:

Normal: 1 damage
Hard: 19 damage
Very hard: 23 damage

What is up with this scaling? Again, 553 armor this entire time.


Original:
Can anyone else confirm this with me, I've been playing the game on hard and the game is brutally hard. I decided to test something since I was just getting slaughtered. I lowered the difficulty to normal and suddenly I was immortal. Then I put the difficulty to very hard, and nothing changed from hard. I did the same damage and took the same damage as hard. Could anyone else confirm if they made hard and very hard the same difficulty? If not then they over scaled hard because I go from immortal to a joke between normal and hard, and barely feel a difference between hard and very hard.

[Punished Rusty Shackleford]

I think the enemies cap at level 20 regardless of difficulty. you are able to defeat them easily. the game difficulty flatlines after a certain level I believe. I've been playing on Very Hard and I noticed a drop in the difficulty after a certain level.

[voormithadreth]

I played the whole thing on very hard and it was fine. You die easily until you go up a few levels like in any open world game on the highest difficulty, but w/e.

But yeah, don't expect a challenge on Normal in a modern game if you aren't a game journalist or completely new to the genre.

[EvilDonut]

The game is brutally EASY to be honest. And the pc gets to be an OP beast when they start buying cyberware.

[Orrus]

The difficulty balance and systems balance for this game are a complete joke. The only answer has to be that it was unfinished and never fully realized. The level scaling, damage scaling, enemy stats make absolutely no sense from a game design stand point.

[Ka-mai19]

I agree that normal is a joke.

Part of the issue, though, is making sure you do tasks that have the "moderate" label since the game also factors in your level when taking on missions. If you take on "hard" or "very hard" missions you'll probably die very easily.

I will say, though, that with the right builds the game becomes super easy on hard (haven't gone up to very hard). Currently I have a legendary revolver that gives me 100% critical hit chance and like 130% bonus crit damage, and I also put perk points into extra headshot damage. Oh and it also has something like a 3.50x headshot damage multiplier. Basically, everything dies in one shot regardless of how beefy they are. Especially if I get a headshot. I consistently get critical hits that deal 200k damage at the minimum.

Once you setup your build+gear the game becomes trivial. I'm considering going up to very hard for this reason lol.

[Muscarine]

Very hard just means more bullet sponge who hit harder

Literally nothing else changes

So that means it just takes slightly longer to completely break out of bounds and make anything a joke

Could reach 9K armor and 1 shot anything except from bosses (couple more swings, not harder by any means) by the end of the game while shrugging of + regenerating any kind of damage, and that's without even bothering to optimize my slots (my torso armor was still purple with only 1 slot for example, because i like its look)
Took out the entire border guard regiment, and the two dozen maxtac + reinforcements in front of the city hall without breaking a sweat
These guys are still skull threat at level 50, basically the "hardest" enemies in the game (even "harder" than some endings)
Tells you a lot about how "difficult" the game is, but i'm not gonna complain too much about it because obviously CDPR's idea of difficulty is just more hp more damage instead of better AI and more enemies with advanced tactics

edit - oh yea and if you're wondering, pretty certain CP2077 brings back bright designs such as level difference = penalties
Melee ignores armor, it's broken
Environmental explosions idk if bugged or not but no amount of armor will help you survive, and the perks and mods for reduction respectively don't do enough and don't work

[Homeless.]

Very hard is just bulletsponge enemies and you take more damage, but since AI is completely retarded it's gg ez

[Wisp Cat]

Originally posted by Muscarine:

Very hard just means more bullet sponge who hit harder

Which, of course, was an advertised feature of the game:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P99qJGrPNLs