2.0 Here we go again...

[JimG]

So I've just read the patch notes for 2.0 and all I have to say is why? Why would you add level scaling to enemies and items when you KNOW it's the most hated feature in an RPG. It completely defeats the purpose of levelling up. You've levelled up and got more health? great it doesn't matter because so do your enemies.

Item stash in vehicles is now connected to your home stash. Why? Because its too much ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ effort to walk from the car to your house.

The TV in your apartment has now one channel because it was seemingly too much damn effort to fix the audio being too low so they just removed it.

This isnt an RPG its a disgrace. You should be ashamed of yourself for making this game so casual CDPR.

[Xengre]

Level scaling isn't an issue tbh. The game is already extremely easy as is. If you want to be even more over powered why not just set the game to the easiest difficulty?

You realize while enemies level you also gain more abilities to unlock as you level so you aren't defeating the purpose of leveling? Or how about the fact that you unlock higher quality tiers of equipment which lets you put more mods, have bonus effects, etc.?

Just some counter points to consider.

As for the TV audio this is on your end possibly. I have no issue with it, myself.

[Wonzling]

I don't understand why people are so upset with level scaling in CP. I don't like scaling in RPGs in general but didn't even notice it in CP. I've played both scaled and un-scaled CP and the only difference now is that bullets from lowly gangoons are still kinda dangerous a higher levels if you aren't a tanky build. Which I like because otherwise guns don't feel like weapons anymore and more like hitpoint subtraction sprays.

[farmerj13]

I am still waiting for someone to make a mod that just scales up leaders and elite members of gangs and mobs(there is a few that come close by giving each gang special abilities). But this would be the best of both worlds, once you've leveled up the low level grunts go down with ease but the captains can still go toe to toe with you no matter where you are in game.

[egg fu]

please correct your title to "1.0", accessing stash from your vehicles have always been a day 1 feature lol

[Titan Awaken]

First things first: 2.0 was 5 months ago so you’re bringing up old news. Are you still on Internet Explorer in 2024?

But more importantly, level scaling is a non-issue. Even pre-2.0, where level scaling was non-existent, you would be neither overpowered nor underpowered in relation to enemies if you simply took on the appropriate missions/gigs based on your level.

Outside of deliberately OP cheese builds, I don’t know how y’all play if your V is noticeably overpowered or underpowered compared to your enemies because when I played, I had a pretty balanced experience throughout the entire game. Again, this was pre-2.0 where no level scaling was present.

Level scaling is a largely superfluous addition; it didn’t add anything new but instead it just reinforced what was already present. If it impacts your enjoyment THAT much that you felt compelled to make a complaint post about it 5 months post release then chances are the problem is with how you’re playing and approaching things.

[Graf Erik]

Originally posted by Anon:

Explain why scaling is bad.
Edit: *crickets*, I see...

Sure.

The first thing we need to put straight, is that npc scaling does NOT make the game harder. Its incredibly how often that nonsense is claimed.
Its honetsly mind-boggling how many people, even in this very thread, claim that NPC scaling is good beause it makes the game more challenging, or that people are against NPC scaling because because it makes the game harder. It doesnt.
Noone ever complained that the game got harder by NPC scaling, its a lame strawman.
Adding NPC scaling made the weak NPCs a bit stronger, but they are still easy to kill. And it made strong NPCs weaker, so they are now also easy to kill. Everyone is now easy to kill. It didnt make the game harder or more challenging, it just made it less varied. It made the game bland.

As for NPC scaling itself:
NPC scaling is just lazy and it ruins games.

Pretty much all RPGs have player progression, and player progression means that the player character gets stronger over time. Gets better gear, learns better skills, new perks. And thats good, its a major driving element in RPGs. It gives you a purpose.

But player progression poses a problem for game design: If the player gets stronger then he will need stronger enemies, right? Lets call this the power level problem

The traditional solution to this problem is simply populating the game world with different groups of enemies, with a different power level, dwelling in different areas. Start the player in an easy area and let him make his way. That works really well. Its the way it was in CP until 2.00, and it did work pretty well.

Sure in open world games you have the problem that some players might take more optional content then others, thus getting stronger then other players at the same stage/ in the same area. In case of CP there was a certain lack of strong enemies and a surplus of weak enemies in late game, if you did everything. A minor issue, I just dialed up the difficulty mid game.

The lazy solution is just coupling the strength of NPCs to the strength of the player. On first glance it solves all problems. But on closer inspection it solves none, and creates a multitude of new problems.

1. It negates progression. If the player gets stronger and the NPCs get stronger as well, the player isn't really getting stronger. He might deal a higher damage, numerically, but the effect is still the same. The game cheats the player out of his progression. And that makes a large part of the game mechanics completly pointless.

Example 1: The last time I played Skyrim (2nd playthrough) I didn't got far. Maybe level 10? I had just leveled up, got a new fancy sword AND I had unlocked a perk for that sword. Awesome, right? So I went into the next dungeon. Same general style as the one before, same 'set' of enemies. Draughr. But literally every enemy had just been replaced with the next stronger iteration of them. A bit bigger, 50% more HP. Before I needed 10 hits to kill one, and now I again neeeded 10 hits to kill one. I never finished that dungeon. I stopped halfway through, and uninstalled a week later. Never touched it again.

2. It forces you to do silly meta games. Typically the NPC level is just bound to the player main level. Lazyness. But player main level isn't necessarrily bound to effective combat strength. That means, that in order for the player to actually get stronger, he needs to get stronger FOR THAT LEVEL. But if on the other hand the player makes progression choices that are not super rational, thought through, maybe out of role playing considerations... then the player will get weak FOR THAT LEVEL. And thats why NPC scaling doesnt actually solve the power level problem. A player thats not meta-gaming will soon find himself in a world were he is outleveled by anyone. A painstaking min-maxer will find himself getting stronger then anyone.

Example 2: Skyrim again, first playthrough. Somwhere around level 20 I started messing around with alchemy. Was nice, fun. Collecting ingredients, mixing them together, trying to create something usefull. Did this for a few hours, just for fun. But I leveled up while I did this. When I got back to work, into the next dungeon, I didn't stand a chance. All enemies were suddenly far stronger, because I was a higher level. I was outclassed. So I was forced to strike back. I took some time to study the skill tree, and finaly I closed the unholy trinity of crafting, alchemy and enchantment. Combining all three I crafted an echanted sword with 50 times more dps then any regular weapon. That big bad dragon in the end? One strike, dead. Made the whole game super boring, thats why I started a second playthrough.

In CP I started a new playthrough on 2.00, and when my V was level 15 I was easily one-shooting NPCs with a silenced pistol. Hundreds of them, on very hard. And I wont tell you how.

3. It ruins the ingame power plausibility. In the game there are NPCs that are supposed to be strong, and NPCS that are supposed to be weak. In a realistic setting you might at least argue that they are all humans, and a bullet to the head will kill every single one of them. But not so in a Cyberpunk setting. Here we have beings, merged from flesh and chrome, that can easily shrug of 10 headshots. Take Adam Smasher. This thing isn't human anymore, its a cybernetic one man army. Or at least it should be. But thanks to NPC scaling he is bound to your power level, so if you meet him early he'll be just weak. Laughable weak.
On the other hand if you meet a random small gangster towards the end of the game he'll be automatically super strong. Simply because you are.
It totaly breaks the immersion.

Example 3: Oblivion. Very early in game I came out of that capital, and on a crossing I was abushed by three bandits. Three pretty lame bandits, bad skills, bad eqippment, but it was 3 of them and I was level 2. Was a hard fight but i won.
A few weeks later I came to the exact same crossing, and I was ambushed by... three bandits. This time I was level 80 wearing full deadric armor. And so were the three bandits. Each of this bandits was stronger than an average deadric demi-god, wearing armor that was worth more than a small kingdom. Was a hard fight but i won. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And thats why npc scaling is bad

[JimG]

Originally posted by Graf Erik:

Originally posted by Anon:

And thats why npc scaling is bad

This is why The Witcher 3 won GOTY. You can have both. Playing that game on death march was fun as hell. The combat was intense and if you were under/over levelled, you could leave it or come back later.

Even if they had copied AC Odyssey and allowed players to put a limit on how far the scaling went it would have been more bearable. I honestly think it boils down to players not wanting to think. It has to be. They wanted the CoD crowd and they got it. Well done CDPR.

[thufirhawat333]

If you want to play OP, you can always knock down the difficulty. Now I start my playthroughs on easy, because of the bullet-sponginess, and gradually increase the difficulty to Hard - which I enjoy the most.

[Silverbane7]

Originally posted by farmerj13:

I am still waiting for someone to make a mod that just scales up leaders and elite members of gangs and mobs(there is a few that come close by giving each gang special abilities). But this would be the best of both worlds, once you've leveled up the low level grunts go down with ease but the captains can still go toe to toe with you no matter where you are in game.

Could try a combination of mods.

https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077/mods/8467
Enemies of NightCity buffs bosses and mini-bosses for you.
(If you don't want SDO scissor difficulty, you can leave it out, you just miss out on that mods break hold function)

https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077/mods/10986
Custom very hard
I'd say pick the 'true difficulty 2' option. It keeps the difficulty level of very hard, but tweaks the lower level goons into spawning as higher grades
(Enemy Rarity: Replaces the weak enemies with their more advanced archetypes. A
weak enemy may spawn as a Rare, and a Rare as an Elite)

If you are lucky, both of those will work with the lifepath bonuses and gang-corp traits mods you mentioned here

https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077/mods/2217

There is also this
https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077/mods/7233
Gangs of NightCity.
Overhauls the gangs on the street, adds a faction system, let's V join one.

Sometimes, you gota dip into more than one mod to get what you want.

[Silverbane7]

Originally posted by dragon15:

dont forget the worst addition ever: cyberware shards are RNG drops. and if you miss one on the ground the game still counts for the limit so its gone forever

There's a mod to fix that too
https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077/mods/11399
Cyberware capacity shards RNG removed.
Sets them to 0 (no drop) and gives you +75 capacity over time. No more loosing out on shards you forgot to grab, can't collect ect. Updated for 2.11 and Regina's new shard.

[TokusatsuTV]

scaling is a non-issue. when hit 50, if you know what you're doing, you should be able to stand up to maxtac for more than 5 minutes. that alone should tell you any other scaling in the game will be fine compared to maxtac fights.

[Phynrae]

Originally posted by dragon15:

dont forget the worst addition ever: cyberware shards are RNG drops. and if you miss one on the ground the game still counts for the limit so its gone forever

True. That actually does suck.

[FinementCiselé]

Originally posted by TokusatsuTV:

scaling is a non-issue. when hit 50, if you know what you're doing, you should be able to stand up to maxtac for more than 5 minutes. that alone should tell you any other scaling in the game will be fine compared to maxtac fights.

Scaling problem isn't actually standing in full combat mode but more when you deal with going stealth, as you can't really go stealth without a certain build.
This remove diversity in the end has they pushed the "balance" too far.
Before 2.0 you had cheesy stealth netrunner. Now you have cheesy sandy/karen slomo overpowered ninja with infinite knife.

Not only that but you're also capped on the power of your gear, at 5++, and while your gains are marginal on raw damage, the enemies HP scale exponentially, resulting in bullet sponges that if you do a run right now trying to do PL quests that requires stealth above lvl 45, you're almost doomed.

[Proudly Toxic]

IDK, I feel like the level scaling hasn't been an issue in both of my playthroughs.

One I did a Katana build, the other I did a Smart gun Netrunner build.

Netrunner build if it needs to stealth can 1-shot every enemy and maintain permanent overclock with legendary Synapse Burnout and Sonic Shock. Everything dies without being able to trace in 1 hack queue and gives me back enough health, ram and overclock duration to keep chaining it forever, and I'm not even using the best cyberdeck for it since I like hearing voices in my head with the Tanto. This is on Very Hard btw.

The gun aspect of the build is also working fine, and while it takes about as many bullets to kill someone now as it did when I was at the start of the game its not like enemies are bullet sponges. Only the named bosses and cyberpsychos are, and they still die in 2 seconds if I put up a queue with cyberware malfunctions and synapse burnout that goes out while I'm emptying the Hercules into them to speed up upload and benefit from overclock smart gun damage buffs.

My Katana Build wasn't using Sandy and it also got through Don't Fear the Reaper super easily, and breezed through most of the game. You just need to have a decent build.

I also generally hate level scaling in games, but Cyberpunk has managed to make the character not lag behind the level scaling. If you play to your strengths and you don't make builds with stats that don't complement eachother even though the world is trying to keep up with you you're still a god.

[DooHeyKey]

If I remember correctly Fallout 3 was level scaling to enemies, I used to remember how much I wanted to level up to see what kind of random encountered ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ monstrosity leveled up bastard I will find next in the capital wasteland to give me one hell of a challenge in a fight... man I MISS those times...