[DoctorEldritch]

@ZaidH The RPG mechanic is solid, but I am a bit annoyed that I can't level up everything and need to choose the route from the start and can only change it once. I guess they wanted more replayability, but I find it annoying. But other than that I'm liking it so far.

[ZaidH]

I personally liked this because it forced me to experiment around early with different weapons and then level up as needed. If you're playing on PC though, maybe there's a mod you can use for infinite respec?

[DoctorEldritch]

@ZaidH There is a mod, yes. But I mean, you need to experiment early, yes, but weapons truly show their potential at level 15, really. And for Tech Tree, Level 15 is when you first get any perks for weapons at all, before that you need to make do with a basic version of those weapons. And level 15 takes a long time to reach unless you are gunning for it and ignore all else.

And with you only being able to respec once, this means that to experiment you need to do some save/load a few times to try out how the weapons feel on maxed-out stats in each tree. Which is tedious.

[ZaidH]

Ok now that does sound tedious. This is not the most optimal solution, but you can maybe check out the builds you like on YouTube or on the wiki? By the end of the prologue, my preference came down to a Katana or a stealth revolver build. Seeing vids on YT definitely helped me make the decision.

Hope CDPR allows more room for freedom in the sequel.

[DoctorEldritch]

@ZaidH There is that, but it can be hard to feel the vibe of the build when watching it. I mean, the most important thing in a build is that it needs to be fun for you. Which can be anything: you like slicing up enemies like a mad meatgrinder bent on enslaving humanity? Sure thing. You want to do the whole RDR2-esque western feel with revolvers and lightning reflexes? We gotch. Oh, you want to be a walking arsenal of high-calibre guns and explosives that even Adam Smasher takes some pointers from? Sure. Or maybe your thing is to silently sneak behind enemies like a futuristic Sam Fisher? Can do that, too. The thing is, just from watching it is not always clear which one of these is more fun in this particular game.

By the way, what was your backstory?

One thing about CDPR is that they are big on learning and improving, I think. I mean, compare Witcher 1 and Witcher 3, the jump in quality, gameplay, worldbuilding, pretty much everything is truly remarkable. If the same happens with Cyberpunk 2077 sequel, then I'd say we're in for a treat.

[ZaidH]

Agreed. You shouldn't need to rely on external sources to experiment in a game. Even in games like Elden Ring, which aren't exactly praised for accessibility, you can respec multiple times.

CDPR also burned through a lot of the goodwill they built over the years, so yeah, this factor too will definitely push them to improve things in future installments.

[DoctorEldritch]

@ZaidH Trying different builds with no restrictions is part of the fun. This is deckbuilding games bread and butter. I like deckbuilding games, maybe that's why I want the ability to do that. I mean, if you design the game so you can't max out every stat, at least make it more flexible in respecking. Make it an option you can pay for in-game, or something (I mean, the character can buy it with real money, like 100.000 eddies or something, no real money involved).

That is true, though a lot of the heat, and blame, came at the publisher, which is proper. I heard that they were the ones who rushed CDPR with release. But that is the rumor I heard, not sure if it is really the way it happened, it was a bit messy after the initial release back then.

[ZaidH]

It's funny how they give you an option to respec just once 😅 Respeccing doesn't break the game and is not a technical challenge to implement by the dev team. My memory is muddy, but did Witcher 3 also have similar restrictions?

Yeah I doubt it was the dev team pushing for those gameplay demos knowing full well the state of the game at the time.

[DoctorEldritch]

@ZaidH Witcher 3 had somewhat similar restrictions, yes. It had several trees you could upgrade, like a Combat tree with branches in Fast or Strong attacks, or Sign tree, or an Alchemy tree with branches for Potions or Bombs or Oils. And you could not upgrade all of that in a single playthrough, the whole tree needed several hundred points to upgrade, but you can only get to 85 (without DLCs) during single playthrough.

That being said, there are two notions. The first one is, you have the option to respect at any time, to do that you need to find a rare vendor (there are only 4 vendors like that in an entire game) and buy a somewhat costly (1000 coins) Potion of Clearance. This is an in-game option to respec, something I was hoping Cyberpunk would have. It would even fit the world lore, ripperdocs could offer a "system respec" service or whatever.

And the second one is, Witcher 3 has a New Game+ mode, so if you do not upgrade everything on the first playthrough, you have the option to do so on subsequent runs. And Cyberpunk is more prompt to replaying than Witcher, with the whole Lifepath mechanic.

So it is funny indeed why neither of these options were implemented. Maybe they had no time, I dunno.

but at least the dev team hopefully learned from this and chose a different publisher. Or at the very least the publisher will no longer push them as much after this...