Still, ttk with a pistol headshot build is gonna be lower than anything you can do with rifles, they only really have advantage in how much ammo you have but with 3(4) weapon slots that barely matters.
Pistols are also the only guns that get consistent one-shots due to all the multipliers, making all other weapons in that playstyles redundant. Even Panam’s sniper deals less damage than pistols, making it incredibly situational outside the lowest difficulties.
They definitely are, but I always felt like they have too many restrictions/pain points to be on the same level.
Poor range, firerate, reload speed and mag size of most shotguns made them quite sluggish even with a one shot, while Kneel was surprisingly harder to pull off than headshots due to enemies using cover as well as just luck of where pellets land. Low damage against special enemies was also annoying.
It’s a shame how many weapon types in the game have really annoying downsides for no good reason while revolvers and big pistols are just allow you to around and click on heads at any range. But hey I like revolvers and big pistols and I certainly like running around and clicking on heads.
Again, it all depends on the skills you invest in. I have much more fun playing with guns and they are just as viable as pistols. Also I’ve done stealth consistently without even using a pistol
Well, if you compare pistols and assault rifles with all of their respective skills unlocked pistols will be better, they’ll also be better if you don’t have any skills at all. Sure if you only pick assault rifles skills they’ll end up being better, but not by much and it’s not a realistic comparison.
And even if you can do stealth without pistols (or even weapons at all), doesn’t mean that they aren’t heads above the rest in damage, consistency and ease of use.
It seems simple. Rifle should have higher DPS. Pistol should have high headshot multiplier and stealth capabilities, shotgun should have medium DPS but high burst.
Yeah, Cyberpunk’s weapon balancing is really wonky. The most egregious examples are precision rifles, sniper rifles and LMG’s.
Pistols can easily one-shot unaware targets due to the stealth damage multiplier from the silencer. At the same time, they still deal plenty of damage in combat.
Meanwhile precision and snipers get no damage boosts from stealth (meaning you aren’t one-shotting targets and immediately starting combat from the extra noise), don’t deal much more damage than a pistol, often with much lower fire rates. Meanwhile LMG’s manage to be so much worse than SMG’s and Assault rifles (and there are only two of them).
The other weapons have use cases and builds they synergize with, but those three weapon types just don’t perform well in their roles.
I sometimes wish cyberpunk had a no rpg levelling mode where all weapons ect have their own uses instead of this lvl/skill based weapon system where a big ass sniper gets shat on by a tiny pistol just cause you put a silencer on it 😭
It's daft because one of the things I like most about the Cyberpunk 2020 pen and paper RPG is it's damage system. It doesn't have hit points that scale with level/experience. So some mook with a cheap gun can absolutely kill the heroes if they get unlucky.
Tbf 2077 is a power fantasy game where V gets to break all sorts of lore for the sake of rule of cool. I’d prefer 2020’s system as well but that’s just not the game they were trying to make
Well, that at least was somewhat solved by the universal level scaling across all of NC in the update that came with Phantom Liberty. Basically, enemies and drops always normalize to your current level. So NC no longer has high and low level areas (like it did at release). Instead, enemies have "tiers" (the number of health bars) denoting whether they're elites or not. Some more dangerous areas (not whole regions) may have a higher preponderance of high-tier enemies (and things like kill squads from botched stealth tend to be full of higher tier enemies as well), but you won't have situations where the Valentinos are Level 20+ and in turf wars with gangs ten levels below them.
So this means your weapons can still fall behind (as only the drops scale to your level; though iconics can at least still be upgraded), but you can go anywhere in the city and the enemies won't get comparatively more or less difficult.
Hopefully the next game uses less vertical progression (numbers go up) and instead gives almost purely horizontal progression (perks and implants that expand your capabilities rather than just giving raw boosts to stats). Not familiar with newer editions of the TTG, but Cyberpunk 2020 had pretty flat progression over time. You had a bit of vertical leeway in your skills and stats, but most progression came in the form of gear and augmentation. To do more damage, you bought a bigger gun, you didn't find a shinier version of your current gun that magically does more damage for some reason.
The balance kind of makes sense tho. In theory a silenced pistol is the most reasonable weapon to use in 90% of situations that cyberpunk throws you into. The lack of silenced snipers is wacky but regardless its mostly CQC-stealth makes the most sense-typically solo (+1 if not solo) missions. The other guns come with their drastic weaknesses that one would struggle with if applied irl too.
Amen dude. Sniper rifles are absolutely useless in that game. It’s probably my favorite game of all time. I’ve beaten it multiple times with multiple play styles. I’ve never found a build that makes them more than a peashooter. You can never one shot and it always immediately starts combat. What’s the point?
Tbf, my first playthrough i did a generalist build without speccing into anything specific and pistols still consistently outperformed everything that isnt a shotgun
tbf you also need a good aim. I'm really casual player, so for hectic situations where I'm too stressed to have good aim I take out any rifle or smg, and spray in the general direction of an enemy. Or katana.
I also swear the hipfire in 2077 is just a "heres a general zone where your bullets will home in on people" because ive never missed a hipfire headshot from just about any range
I always ended up gravitating towards those four shot revolvers due to the massive damage per shot. They turn everything except boss fights into one hit kills.
It is very frustrating, since two of my three weapon slots are essentially for decoration. It's odd that there's no real synergy in the perk sets, you pick one weapon type then go with that. By the time you can unlock a second perkset for another set of weapons, you're so late game it's not worth it, or you've gimped yourself by forgoing all the other perks.
Most of the smart weapons perform terribly imo despite supposedly being an upgrade to regular weaponry, bullets fly off in random directions then when they do it they do so little damage.
That being said, it is nice that pistols remain competitive late game if you've built for it without needing some crazy legendary drop, not just because of the cool factor, but also because irl being shot in the face with a handgun vs an assault rifle might make a difference in terms of mess but doesn't really affect whether the person on the other side is dead or not.
Me : Let's do another playthrough of Cyberpunk, i'll do another playstyle !
Also me : Let's use Yorinobu's gun with a suppressor for 75% of the game and play stealthy.
Cyperpunks balancing pissed me off so bad I still havent finished it. I didnt follow any builds or anything, yet by the start of broken liberty I'm essentially unkillable. I got through the first few missions in that DLC with nothing but melee.
Friendly reminder that games have higher difficulties for a reason. Hard is what I'd recommend to anyone that's familiar with fps games, and very hard for when you're starting to feel the game's getting too easy
Then switch to very hard. The jump is pretty noticeable, so if you're "essentially unkillable" on hard you might actually get challenged there. Simple stuff, if a game is too easy on your current difficulty then increase the difficulty lmao
Cyberpunk's difficulty increases arent really all that interesting, there's only so much health and damage percentages you can crank up before I'd rather just go play something else.
At the end of the day, Cyberpunk is supposed to be something of an RPG, and the mediocre writing and mechanics are hardly enough to prop up the lackluster combat.
Well that's a whole nother problem, isn't it? Your complaint was that you were essentially unkillable and I told you how to make it so you're not unkillable
If you'd rather play a different game, go for it. I'm not your mama
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u/L3monGr3nade 7d ago
Cyberpunk. A good silenced pistol with headshot mods and a sight will beat almost any rifle