• hollyberries@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 year ago

    Sorry to hijack, would you recommend a new playthrough or picking an existing character? I am only missing the Silverhand ending, and I saved that for Phantom Liberty. Seeing as that comes out in 4 days, are there enough changes for it to be worth rolling a new character?

    • Malix@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      I can obviously only speak for myself: I started a new playthrough just to see what has changed. So, worth? I’ve only just picked up the relic, no sidequests/gigs/etc done yet.

      Some things feel new, eg. I don’t recall the arasaka tower had destroyable walls or somesuch before, but could be I just managed to sneak/shoot better before. Mostly the things that are changed/feels changed are fairly small, apart from the skilltrees and mechanics.

      Also, the PL questline apparently opens when you’re done (?) with voodoo boys, so I kinda felt that I want to tackle that when it’s given to me. But with the new enemy scaling (love or hate it), I guess the dlc mission(s) stays relevant regardless of your level.

      But ultimately up to you, I guess. Flip a coin if unsure? :P

      • rastilin@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        But with the new enemy scaling (love or hate it),

        Definitely hate it. Scaling means that you’re actually worse off for gaining a new level. It also means you can’t blow through weak enemies or take down a powerful enemy through pure strategy.

        • Malix@sopuli.xyz
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          1 year ago

          It’s quite divisive subject. While I’m more in the camp indifferent about it, I do get the arguments for and against it.

          To me curbstomping lowlevels is just pointless, and legendary godslayer gigathug lvl 99 is silly. Occasionally I end up putting a quest/mission/whetever on hold and later I realize it’s now “gray”. Walking through enemies that can’t hurt me, to get a magguffin to get an (at that point) insignificant reward feels dumb. Sure, I could just not do the mission at that point, but… I’m compelled to do all. Always. :D

          Fairly consistent difficulty and growing arsenal of player’s tools without making me op sounds all good to me. But, remains to be seen how the scaling feels later on.

          Each to their own, but admittedly it seems odd change to the game at this point. I don’t mind it, but… eh. Odd.

          • rastilin@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            True, but at that point why even have levels? Which, I’m not being sarcastic, levels are purely design theory inherited from taking D&D electronic, if they don’t want levels they can just make a game without them. It’s strange to have levels and stats and all the things around that and then just make all of it not matter secretly in the background.

            This philosophy seems to be trending, from WoW and Anthem scaling where Anthem’s beginner weapons doing more damage to endgame enemies than endgame weapons do, to Uber’s “ghost” cars that don’t really exist. There’s this idea of giving you all this data and all of it being “fake”, just to distract people.

            Also, as mentioned before. It’s very easy to mess up your leveling and be weaker than expected, possibly due to taking non-combat or non-applicable skills. At that point the scaling will just make the rest of the game a slog.

            • LoafyLemon@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              From my understanding of table-top cyberpunk RPG, when using level scaling, levels still matter, but they don’t play the only major factor during encounters. You can still steam roll weaker enemies, but you can also die if you make some major mistakes. I think it makes the gameplay more engaging and interesting.

              Scaling rewards the player’s engagement and skills, while no-scaling rewards time and effort put into levelling your character. Both have their ups and downs, and most games use a hybrid implementation with some leeway for the scaling (skyrim for example).

              • rastilin@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                Scaling rewards the player’s engagement and skills, while no-scaling rewards time and effort put into levelling your character. Both have their ups and downs, and most games use a hybrid implementation with some leeway for the scaling (skyrim for example).

                In my opinion Skyrim is one example of it being done badly. Partly because not seeing weaker enemies anymore breaks immersion, but mostly because any attempt to engage with the non-combat systems will break your power curve. If you take Smithing from 10 to 80 for example, that’s 8 levels the enemies now have on you. So you have to be using Smithing a lot to make up for that. It’s worse if it’s something like 150 points over Lockpicking / Speech and Pickpocket which have no benefit in combat. That’s another 15 levels the enemies get, and it’s even worse if you switch from one handed weapons to two handed, or change armor types at any point.

            • Dudewitbow@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              Levels allow scaling for other things like weapons, to also scale, making the user switch weapons enough to stay relevant.

              When you have fixed weapons, you have situations like in Horizon Zero series where people make fun of getting a quest where you would receive the passed down family weapon ober the ages and was cherished, only to find out after that the weapon is trash and whatever your using ends up staying thr strongest.

              • rastilin@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                When you have fixed weapons, you have situations like in Horizon Zero series where people make fun of getting a quest where you would receive the passed down family weapon ober the ages and was cherished, only to find out after that the weapon is trash and whatever your using ends up staying thr strongest.

                I mean, there’s a reason they gave that weapon away. Maybe it really was trash and that’s all they had.

      • HubertManne@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        if your talking about the wooden ones that are a bit like dividers in one of the areas they have alwyas been destructible.

        • Malix@sopuli.xyz
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          1 year ago

          yea, exactly those. Funny how I have never noticed that before, and I’m like 8 characters deep.

          • HubertManne@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            lol. I only did 2. one I abandoned early on and another I stuck with mainly because of respecting limits. Im ultimately gonna start new but not sure I can give up the sweet corpo perks for the street kid life.

      • hollyberries@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 year ago

        I decided to wait. Used an existing character to just run around and I am not pleased with the framerate drop (50-55 to 31 max on the same settings).

    • FaeDrifter@midwest.social
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      1 year ago

      I started a new playthrough and I’m really enjoying it. The story is the same but the new trait system makes it feel like a proper RPG, and the combat feels more intentional.

      There still 3 days until release, I’ll probably stick with my new character through the expansion even if I have to wait a few days to reach the new content.