Cyberpunk 2077 2.0 Discussion

[neogunhero]

I'll use whatever doc is around. Though I *did* pay Vik back pretty fast. (I looked up online how to catch up on my rent, too. It turns out that you can't.)

I did pay him back as soon as I could. I would have felt guilty if I didn’t, and sure as hell didn’t want him to be mad at me. He’s one of my favorite characters, I hope to have more interaction with him later in the story.


I ended up buying Phantom Liberty last night. I knew it was on sale for $20 during the winter sale but I’m having so much fun with the game I had to buy it immediately. I a bit on the fence of the fact that it essentially replaces the original ending, or at least has lots of influence over the ending, since I haven’t beaten the game and don’t know how the original ending is, but I don’t really mind as I’m basically getting a whole new game with a new story line. IGN says to start it right as you get to Act 3, but I’m thinking that’s going to take a few more hours.

 

[Zloth]

Judy seems a couple of seconds ahead of the song but V... what are you DOING!? Are you trying to hypnotize Judy??

View: https://youtu.be/ZIjV_Miflh8

V. Worst dancer in the history of RPGs.

 

[neogunhero]

Judy seems a couple of seconds ahead of the song but V... what are you DOING!? Are you trying to hypnotize Judy??

View: https://youtu.be/ZIjV_Miflh8

V. Worst dancer in the history of RPGs.

The dances you can do at some clubs make V look like a Zumba instructor

 

[neogunhero]

55 hours, almost at max level. I was worried it was capped at level 50, since I needed a few more attribute points. Perk points seem easy to come by from leveling your skills to finding random perk shards. I’ve got almost all perks I could really want, so I’m thinking of focusing the rest into assault rifle or smart gun perks just to switch it up. I’m way too powerful with my katana, usually dismembering most enemies in 1-2 hits.

Before starting Phantom Liberty, I wanted to finish up some things in NC first. First off, finished all Tarot Cards and Cyberpsycho sightings. A few more Tarot Cards in Dogtown but you finish the first part of the mission with the NC ones. Cyberpsycho mission was a bit underwhelming in terms of final reward but all the money and experience you gain from completing the sightings makes up for it. I accidentally killed a few, so maybe you’d get a bigger reward if you incapacitated them all. I’m still chipping away at the NCPD assault missions, there are so many of them.

I’ve also finished River Ward’s storyline. What an awesome character. Troubled but wants to do what is right and is willing to risk anything for his family. I enjoyed hanging out with him and learning of his past. When we were drinking together, it gave me the option to kiss him but I chickened out and toasted to friendship instead. After that we went our separate ways, I wonder if there will be any other chances to hang out. It started with helping the Peralez’s, but they took to the back burner as soon as I met River, so they are still waiting on me to finish their original mission lol.

So I started Phantom Liberty finally. Glad I spent more time in NC before starting the expansion, I’m fully prepped for anything that happens and I don’t have to focus too much on leveling. I’m very happy to see how seamless it is to get in and out of Dogtown. I was worried I’d have to fast travel all the time. The performance does seem to tank a bit in Dogtown but it’s still perfectly playable for me. Haven’t spent too much time exploring but I’m loving the vibes of the area. It reminds me a lot of Megaton from Fallout 3. Idris Elba gives an amazing performance as expected, his character Stringer Bell on The Wire is one of my all time favorite acted characters, so it was no surprise he’s knocking this out of the park.

As for the story, it is good so far and has me invested to keep playing. Songbird and President Meyers are cool characters, and I’m starting to meet a lot more. I read the story is like a tangled web of alliances and enemies, so I’m prepared for it to get a bit complicated and convoluted. V even says so himself when Reed calls on his old friend. It keeps you guessing and makes you have to form the right relationships.

And of course, I had to take a bunch of snaps of Reed.

 

[neogunhero]

Rumor mill is saying CDPR is preparing a new update, most likely bug fixes. I surely hope so as I’ve been encountering lots of minor bugs and glitches that would be nice to patch out. The biggest one I’ve encountered started last night when doing the carjacking missions for El Capitan, specifically ones where you steak the car inside of Dogtown and have to deliver them in Night City. After I cross the border into NC, the whole drive to the delivery point is just barren. No cars, no pedestrians walking around, absolutely barren. It’s a bit jarring since this game always feels so alive no matter what time of day it is. For there to be absolutely zero cars or people around is quite creepy.

Other bugs and stuff I’ve encountered were very minor things, the one I mentioned above is perhaps the biggest one I can think of. One of them was funny enough that I had to post a video to YouTube about it.

View: https://youtu.be/rg2sIa0QEJA

 

[Zloth]

That's even better than my vanishing cars!

I'm only seeing a few bugs. There are some spots you can get trapped in, which isn't a surprise in that huge city full of stuff. Scaffolding can sometimes be baffling when you can climb it on one side but not the other, despite the height being exactly the same. (Climbing their corners seems to work better.) Cars still slide around a bit more than seems sane. (Drive like your tires are bald and the roads are very wet.)

Uhoh, I hope they don't "fix" a fun little variation on rocket jumping that showed up in 2.1. If you shoot a gun with explosive bullets like the Comrade's Hammer into the ground while driving a motorcycle, you'll get pushed up into the air! Not real high, but high enough to jump over barriers at the sides of overpasses.

P.S. I just started seeing Tier 5++ weapons showing up! I wonder if there will be a triple-plus?

P.P.S. If there's an NCPD incident near a gig, there's a good chance the two will be connected in some way.

 

[neogunhero]

There are some spots you can get trapped in, which isn't a surprise in that huge city full of stuff.

When I travel by foot, I have a method to move faster. While sprinting you dash, double jump, mid-air dash. Do it all quickly together to keep your momentum. It helps you cover quite a bit of distance quicker than driving in some cases. I do this quite often if I’m walking around, but one time I did this and mid-air dashed into a decayed box van, clipping inside of it. I was stuck in the back and had no way out. I was stuck in a crouch so couldn’t sprint or dash. After a solid 3 minutes of mashing my keyboard I had to reload a previous save. Absolutely baffled how I managed to get stuck in a van lol.

Cars still slide around a bit more than seems sane. (Drive like your tires are bald and the roads are very wet.)

Not sure if this is just how it’s meant to be or if they need to tune up their driving mechanics more. Some cars and bikes handle way better than others. I really like the Beast you get from Claire, it’s huge so it doesn’t slip so much. I found that by holding Shift while turning it will make you turn slower, therefore making you slide less. On a bike you tilt forward so tap shift while turning rather than holding it.

P.S. I just started seeing Tier 5++ weapons showing up! I wonder if there will be a triple-plus?

I haven’t be able to upgrade any of my weapons or cyberware above Tier 5++, but maybe once I hit max level it will unlock a new tier? Getting close so I’ll find out eventually.

 

[neogunhero]

Reed is really shaping me up into being a somewhat decent human being.

I usually do things my way. I don’t care if the fixer wants me to be stealthy, I don’t care if Panam needs extra help after I’ve got my use out of her, I don’t care if Judy wants to hang out and do another mission, I don’t care if Takemura wanted me to stay silent while we infiltrated the parade. I do things how I see fit, and that typically means using my katana to get my way. Don’t like it? Screw you, this is how I operate, now pay me my eddies.

But Reed… I do not want to get on his bad side. Something about him makes me want to be his friend, even after I’ve been warned not to make friends out of him. Maybe he is really charismatic and that has washed over me, or perhaps I see him as the solution to all my problems… either way, I’m making sure that I keep him on my side. I had so many urges to pull out the katana and slice our way out of the situations we found ourselves in, but I knew that would only set us back further in our mission, and worse, he would be disappointed at me.

So I’ve been doing what he tells me to exactly how he wants it done. All this trust I’m putting into him does make me wonder about what will happen to me in the future, but scratch that, for now we got some partying to do.

 

[neogunhero]

CDPR announced a new patch coming sometime next week, it will just be some bug fixes mostly. I know it’s unlikely, but I hope there is some nice surprises. I’d like to see if they can improve performance anymore.

 

[neogunhero]

Finally hit level 60. Got almost all my cyberware to Tier 5++. Since I’m so rich I’ve been dismantling tier 5 weapons for crafting components instead of credits. Some of the cyberware takes a ton of crafting mats to upgrade.

One thing I like about PL is how nearly every vendor has some unique items. Most are tiny stat boost, like a permanent 2% increase to stamina regen, but I still buy them. That has made me try to hit up every vendor I run into. Even junk sellers and quick hack vendors will have an upgrade like this, not just food and bar vendors. It’s a nice little touch and I’m glad to have something new to spend my money on. I’m not quite ready to attempt to buy every car in the game but I’ll try to achieve that before finishing the game.

One small thing that irritated me was the auto fixer discounts you get from completing El Capitan’s car gigs. I was thinking the discounts will all be separate but instead they all stack up for 1 purchase. I had a 78% discount on all cars there and that’s when I figured out that they all stack, so I bought the most expensive car available after the discount, I thought that would be the smartest thing to do in that situation.

I’m taking a break from PL’s story, I feel like I’m moving through it too fast. There was one tough decision I had to make that made me pause the game and think for a few minutes what I should do and I still feel like I may a picked the wrong choice. I’m sticking with it though. So in my break I’ve been doing more side jobs, gigs, NCPD scanners and the such. I recently did a massive upgrade to my cyberware and I’m happy with my choices. My melee damage is higher than ever and even bumping up the difficulty to Hard I’m killing most enemies with 1-2hits, just this time I take a little bit more damage. Not to worry, I got a piece of cyberware that increases my health regen by 200%, have a ton of armor, and maxed out my health items so I’m good in every encounter.

Part of me is wanting to finish this game up though. It’s practically the only game I’ve played in the month of January and I just hit 68 hours playtime. I’m getting a bit burnt out because of how much I played it, but I’m afraid if I start something else it will slowly end up with me not finish this, so I may just power through the rest of the story. The only main thing I would like to do before finishing the game is buy all the cars but it’s really just to say that I did. I don’t think I’ll be starting a new playthrough anytime soon since I have done so much stuff this playthrough, changing my play style would hardly make it a new game. I really don’t want to do stealth since I typically dislike stealth games or stealth sections, and using guns primarily wouldn’t be very exciting after spending the last 70 with a katana 95% of the time (5% goes to times where I have to use a gun as Johnny or while driving).

Overall this is definitely one of my favorite games ever. I even loved it on launch day but I didn’t get as far as I am now and of course it’s a much better game now. I’ve really learned to appreciate how easy it is to refund perk points, more games need to do that so you can experiment with different styles all without having to start a new character. It also makes the game much more accessible overall as you can easily fix you mistakes, but you can’t refund attribute points which are important to place properly too.

 

[Zloth]

I'm at 140 hours and haven't quite hit level 60, but I'm close.

I've started doing a lot of gigs and just plain screwing around because I don't want the game to end! I finished all of Dino's gigs and I've got all the available ones for a couple more fixers (more gigs open as the main story moves on).

Netwatch put a hit out on me. After all I've done for them! Poor slobs had no chance. One of them yelled something like "there she is!" and a car comes screeching in and some nasty looking mercs stepped out. I quickhacked the car and blew it up, hurting most of them. They knew where I was already, so I made the least hurt one go cyberpsycho and attack his friends. While they dealt with the psycho, I picked most of the rest off with the Overwatch silenced sniper rifle. As I was looting the bodies, I got a message saying somebody was trying to kill me via a cyberhack. My ICE was making that very hard and a line pointed right to the hacker. My bullet followed the line, and there was another headless body on the ground.

Something strange has happened, though. V can't sleep in her original apartment's bed! The prompt never shows up. She can't shut the windows, either. Other apartments work just fine. <shrug> Maybe the upcoming patch will fix the issue.

 

[neogunhero]

Something strange has happened, though. V can't sleep in her original apartment's bed! The prompt never shows up. She can't shut the windows, either. Other apartments work just fine. <shrug> Maybe the upcoming patch will fix the issue.

I also had a weird bug in the original apartment. Maybe a slight spoiler, but after the party mission in Phantom Liberty, Alex gives you a BD of Lizzy Wizzy’s performance that you can rewatch in your apartment. I decided to take a quick look, and while in the BD I was still getting the prompt to open my phone, so out of curiosity I opened my phone mid-BD, closed it, then the whole screen just melted on me. The colors and pixels glitched then froze in the glitch state. I couldn’t do anything but close the game and reload my save. Weird stuff.

I haven’t gotten the no cars no pedestrian bug when doing El Capitan’s car gigs recently which is strange because I’ve done a bunch of them after I first posted about this bug.

 

[Zloth]

Speaking of... I was annoyed to find out that Lizzy's performance song isn't included in the soundtrack. Maybe the next patch will "fix" that.

 

[neogunhero]

So new patch dropped last night. The patch notes is quite long, so these are the points that stood out most to me.

It fixed a lot of bugs I was having, like having my heal item removing from its slot whenever I use a consumable. It even added some nice small features like the ability to have your music continue playing after you exit a vehicle or not. I tested this feature out and it works perfectly, exactly how I would want it to.

With the option enabled, if you are playing music, enter a vehicle, the music will play on the radio and continue playing after you leave. Now it also works realistically, if you have the radio on in a vehicle, it will turn on every time you enter it, and turn off as you exit the vehicle, and same thing if the radio is off in the vehicle it will remain off when you enter it. Very small touch but very welcome.

They also improved driving a bit by adding a new weight model to the driving simulation as far as I understand it. Bikes do feel a bit better, and some cars handle very slightly better than before, but overall they are still a tad bit slidey like they are on ice.

Another thing was some performance improvements and an option to utilize all P-cores but I didn’t get that option, presumably because it may be for Intel CPUs only, and there is already a similar option for AMD multi-threading.

They also did general performance boosts all across the game, and while it’s no miracle 120fps+ boost, it does seem to have made the game slightly smoother overall. I would have hitches and stutters and sometimes the audio would sound extra crunchy, but now it seems to have smoothed most of those out.

Lastly, they added the ability to do a color swap on Rayfield vehicles only. Hopefully that means other vehicles will follow, which means more patches, and that makes me happy 😊

EDIT: I forgot to add one more thing, they reduced max cyberware capacity to 450, which I have no idea what mine was at before the patch, but it automatically unequipped a lot of my cyberware. I had to run to a ripperdoc as soon as I found out to re add them, and it barely raised into my overclock range so I’m good.

EDIT 2: I keep forgetting to mention things. I recommend not to turn on the new option to change radio station with a press of a button. Good idea in theory, but it uses the radio button meaning you can’t hit it to easily turn off the radio with that option enabled, you have to hold it to open the radio then select “NONE” to turn it off. Wish we could rebind the change station button. Just a very slight inconvenience.

 

[Zloth]

"I Really Want to Stay at Your House - Fixed an issue where it wasn't possible to sleep in V's apartment bed while the quest was active."

That's my sleeping bug fixed. Being able to change car colors sounds great!

It sounds like a lot of the core mods have already been updated to work with 2.11, but I better give it another day.

 

[neogunhero]

The color swapping feature is really neat but I can kind of see why it’s only on Rayfield currently. It happens immediately and has a very cool effect as the colors change. Perhaps they could introduce shops to pull other cars into to get a paint job but that would be a big feature they’d have to make, at this point they’re mainly in maintenance mode with this game.

@Zloth I saw your screenshots at the museum. I just completed that gig last night, it was definitely one of my favorites. Phantom Liberty has amazing gigs and they feel more fleshed out than a lot of the base games’ gigs.

Here are a couple screenshots I took last night.

 

[Zloth]

Wait, that's my car! You thief!!!

Oh, bother it. I'll just by another. Sure is nice to be in the end game stage.

 

[neogunhero]

I finished Phantom Liberty over the weekend. What an amazing experience. The writing, dialogue, animations, overall story, all simply amazing. I loved every minute of it and I can’t stop thinking about how it would have ended differently if I done things differently. I won’t discuss any spoilers, but just know Reed was quite disappointed in me during our last meeting.

Now I’m a bit stuck, do I want to finish the game or keep playing it until I run out of stuff to do? For now I’ll keep going.

I bet there’s a good amount of side missions I haven’t discovered yet, so right now I’be been completing gigs and NCPD scanners but it’s getting a bit boring. I noticed there are achievements for completing all gigs and NCPD scanners in a single area, but that has caused me to be a bit burnt out by grinding them too fast.

With my playstyle, I kill everyone in mere seconds, then I go to the stash, grab the archived conversation, read it, and job complete. Repeat this 200+ times and you too can complete all NCPD scanner missions. It gets very repetitive but it’s honestly the fastest way to make money, take everyone weapons and sell them.

Speaking of money, I had 2.8mil sitting in my wallet last night and thought it was finally time to blow it all. Only thing left for me to buy that costs a substantial amount was the cars, so I bought every car listed in Autofixer. Strangely enough, I got the achievement for buying all cars when I had about 6-7 left to buy, I’m guessing those are ones I unlocked or were included with PL. I assume the achievement is for buying every car that is listed immediately when you first start the game, since you get access to more cars to buy as you progress.

Guess I’ll keep going until I’m fully finished. For now I’m still having fun, mixing up my style by using a shotgun.

 

[neogunhero]

I was only able to play about 30 minutes last night before I turned it off. I didn’t feel like grinding more NCPD scanner missions, and wasn’t in the mood to do some story missions. I’m at one of the very last missions, where you need to meet Hanako at a club. As you approach it, a message pops up saying something along the lines of “this is a point of no return”, but the other two story lines are less than 80% complete each. So I think I have a choice, I can finish the story now or try to complete the other story lines first. A bit conflicted because I’ve honestly burnt myself out on this game now. It’s all I’ve played for the past month and a half.

When I closed the game I tried to find something else to play but nothing was looking good to me. I think this is a sign that I need to finish Cyberpunk and move onto something different. I’ve had this thought a few times while playing, but I don’t want my next game to be a FPS. I need a good RTS or platformer to reset my FPS brainrot.

Gonna try to finish the game by this weekend, not sure if I will try to finish the other story lines though. Not sure what else Panam needs me for, I got my use out of her and made sure she knew, but now she is wanting to meet up again. And as for Johnny, not sure how much I want to relive his past memories.

 

[Zloth]

I’m at one of the very last missions, where you need to meet Hanako at a club. As you approach it, a message pops up saying something along the lines of “this is a point of no return”....

I think it has been about a month since I got that message. Poor woman has been stuck in that bar ever since. I'm surprised the media hasn't noticed yet.

The mission I thought wrapped up Phantom Liberty didn't wrap up Phantom Liberty.

 

[neogunhero]

I’m reaching 100 hours of playtime. I’m about to hit level 60 for Headhunter and Solo skills, already hit 60 for Shinobi and Engineer. That just leaves Netrunner at level 35 but beyond that none of the level perks are really beneficial to me so I may not grind it to 60. Being able to refund perks and put them elsewhere was really helpful for grinding those skill levels. I could easily refund smart weapon perks and put them towards shotgun specific perks to help me grind Solo. Engineer was easy because you just need to use Sandevistan a lot. I am also very good at going back to my apartments to sleep so I get the XP boost.

I’m also getting very close to finishing all gigs and NCPD scanner mission. I completed all in most boroughs, the only one I have left is Badlands which is a bit slower since everything is so spaced out. In between this I’ve been doing side missions and getting close to completing the Samurai storyline, I forget what it’s called.

Any time there is a potentially romantic situation I always try to make it weird and awkward. On the date with Rogue, I made her really upset at me and she left. Maybe I’m just a little jerk but it’s hilarious to keep shooting down the characters the game wants you to romance.

Anyways I’m still grinding through these activities. I feel like since this is quite literally the only game I’ve played since the end of December I am inclined to finish all the content I possibly can. I don’t feel compelled to try to get different endings though, and in a way I’m kind of ruining future playthroughs with me trying to complete every side activity and side mission available to me.

I’m not worried about that though, as I’d like to be finished with this game eventually and move onto another, though I’m not sure what my next game will be. It would be really nice to get hooked onto a new game as much as I’m hooked to Cyberpunk. I’m going to have a weekend completely by myself in about two weeks and I plan to game as much as I can during that time. My plan is to finish Cyberpunk and move onto something different at that point.

 

[neogunhero]

I wanted to add a side note here: this is the first game to make me overclock my CPU.

I’ve never messed with overclocking because I always thought it may be too hard and I was always afraid of frying my system. However through doing some research, something that is probably obvious to a lot of you, CPU’s generally have an upwards limit you can safely overclock to without breaking anything. For example, my Ryzen 1600X shipped at 3.6MHz, boostable to 4.0MHz. Boosting it was very easy, just went into the BIOS, changed some settings, save and continue. I put it at 3.95MHz just to be 100% sure I’m not pushing it too hard.

The results have been quite noticeable. I haven’t done any real benchmarks, especially a game like this I don’t want to constantly be looking at the FPS every time it feels like it slowed down. But just based off feeling, it does feel a tiny tad bit smoother than before. In areas where I was already getting good FPS, it feels a bit smoother. Driving through the city does as well. It seems to have definitely helped and confirms my CPU as the main bottleneck I believe. My RTX 2060 isn’t much these days, but it works good when the game isn’t very CPU intensive.

 

[Zloth]

You can check to see if a game is being bottlenecked by CPU pretty easily. Turn on the FPS counter and turn off v-sync, see what you're getting, then go in and drop the settings WAY down. If the CPU is the bottleneck, you'll get about the same framerate. If not, your framerate will jump way up - maybe even double. (It's possible, though rare in my experience, to have some other component bottleneck the game.)

I'm just about done. There are still some gigs and cyberpsychos out there, but I've seen all I want to see. I think. Johnny's old band mate keeps calling with things to do that have been fun. There's no indication of whether his story is done or not, though, and I don't want to look it up for fear of spoilers.

 

[neogunhero]

I'm just about done. There are still some gigs and cyberpsychos out there, but I've seen all I want to see. I think. Johnny's old band mate keeps calling with things to do that have been fun. There's no indication of whether his story is done or not, though, and I don't want to look it up for fear of spoilers.

If you’re talking about Kerry, I saw there is an achievement for completing his storyline. Not sure if those side missions count towards it or not.

 

[neogunhero]

I keep saying I’m going to finish this game soon but I keep finding things to do. All that is really left as far as I know is finishing up Kerry’s storyline and the main story. I have completed all side activities, all side missions unless more pop up, bought all cars, all apartments, max perks, max relic perks, not gonna worry about maxing skills.

It’s gotten to the point where I have so much money I literally have no idea what to do with it. Maxed all cyberware upgrades and all weapons I use, so I’ve been spending the money on clothes. It’s the only thing left I can think of besides Health Boosters because I keep running out. I’ve even donated nearly 100k to Garry the Prophet, kept giving the max amount each time I could.

I don’t think there are any more car stealing quests that will unlock new vehicles for me. They are worth continuing if I am still grinding skill levels but since I’m at the very very end of the game it’s a bit pointless other than to be able to say that I did maxed my skills out. Solo is at 59/60 and Headhunter is at 55/60 so I may finish those up. I’ve noticed you level up Shinobi with blade kills a lot faster than you level up Headhunter with pistol or revolver kills which kinda stinks because I completed all gigs and scanner missions so I just have to roam around looking for unlucky gang members.

I was also looking through the achievements and noticed I got the rarest achievement in the game for the ending I chose in PL. I guess my choices and actions weren’t what most people did… also it’s only so rare because it’s part of PL so a bit unfair to call it the rarest, but it’s at the bottom of the global achievements list.

So where I’m now is to complete Kerry’s storyline, perhaps finish the Skippy missions (have the gun, don’t really know how to actually start it), maybe do a few races and car stealing missions just to do em, hope for some random side missions, then complete the game.

It’s been a long journey but I’m really glad I played this game as much as I did. By doing just about every single thing this game has to offer, I really feel accomplished with my time in Night City. It will be a big relief when I finally finish this game once and for all and put it down. Besides doing a lot of hacking, I’ve had experience with all possible play styles on this single playthrough besides doing the different life paths. I also don’t think I will do multiple endings, though I will make sure to do a hard save right before going to speak to Hanako in case I change my mind.

This has been one of my all time favorite gaming experiences. It’s a bittersweet feeling to finish the game but I need to move onto something else now!