Cyberpunk 2077 - Patch 1.5

[Redglyph]

@henriquejr; spotted a new patch for Cyberpunk 2077, thanks!

Enormous Cyberpunk 2077 patch tweaks almost everything about it

CDPR has announced and detailed a major new patch for Cyberpunk 2077 that has gone live, and the studio has clearly been hard at work on this one. The list of fixes, tweaks and additions are enormous, and cover everything from AI behaviour to re-balancing skills, adding new elements to the world, and pretty much overhauling the driving model. Night City is about to go through some big changes.

Perhaps the most significant are those that CDPR groups under 'Living City', because there's an truckload of improvements to enemy and NPC AI. The patch notes basically list fixes for everything that non-player characters ever do in the game. The following is a partial list taken from the full patch notes, and there are improvements to:

"Taking cover, positioning, reloading, equipping weapons, dodging, blocking and many others [...] hit reactions and death animations [...] Enemies are now much better at blocking and evading (Kerenzikov) attacks [...] Further diversification of melee and ranged combat behaviors for different factions: reckless, aggressive, balanced, defensive and cautious [...] Followers now contribute more in combat [...] Numerous fixes and balance changes to netrunner combat."

On a more macro level there are also changes to how crowds react, with certain NPCs now willing to get aggressive if you're out of line, and generally improved reactions to the player, better pathfinding, and (hopefully) less obvious de-spawning. This applies to NPC vehicles also, which as well as receiving visual improvements on their turning and general movement within traffic, will now react to danger, or being bumped into, and NPC passengers can now die in car crashes. And if you're being chased by the cops, you can opt to hide-out in the area they're looking (previously you just had to put distance between them and you).

[...]

The patch came in for me at 47.09GB in size. The full notes can be read here.

More information.

 

[Couchpotato]

You have to basically re-download the whole game again due to all the file changes. At this point I spent over 300+ GB's just downloading the patches over the whole year.

 

[Redglyph]

We better get used to it. BG3 was the same.

 

[JDR13]

I had to reinstall the game anyways, so I didn't notice the size of the patch. The total install is still only 67GB which is a little surprising. I figured it would be larger.

 

[JFarrell71]

I had to reinstall the game anyways, so I didn't notice the size of the patch. The total install is still only 67GB which is a little surprising. I figured it would be larger.

That's strange. The PS5 version is in the 90's.

 

[JDR13]

That's strange. The PS5 version is in the 90's.

Weird. Maybe it's the way the different versions are optimized?

 

[largh]

How does 4K upscaling work? A dumb hypothesis: could the size difference have something to do with upscaling for TV vs a PC monitor? I mean I do know that 4K means ~4000 pixels horizontally…

 

[largh]

For those who still plan to buy it: it's on 50% discount right now

 

[Pladio]

We better get used to it. BG3 was the same.

I uninstalled it because of it
I am not playing it until it's finished anyway at this point...

 

[JFarrell71]

Weird. Maybe it's the way the different versions are optimized?

Yeah, I don't know. Could the PC support better compression? I'm reasonably sure amount of texture data, etc. would be comparable.

 

[khaight]

Got the game for Christmas, but I haven't installed it yet. I'm fine with leaving it in my backlog until the patching is done.

 

[Carnifex]

Yup, I'm another that wants to play this game at some point, that being when I read that the waters are safe and that all the patching/content seems to be finalized. Not holding my breath for that happening anytime soon.

 

[jpnole]

I have ATT fiber at 1GB up/down so the size of games and updates means nothing to me anymore. It's all done within minutes regardless of size.

 

[KaosWarMonk]

Yup, I'm another that wants to play this game at some point, that being when I read that the waters are safe and that all the patching/content seems to be finalized. Not holding my breath for that happening anytime soon.

Same. I'll buy it once it's finished. No rush, plenty of other titles in the backlog.

 

[sakichop]

I might have given this a try if elden ring wasn’t just a week away. I’ll just keep waiting for the best version. I personally don't think they should release any DLC until they finish patching the game.

 

[JDR13]

I'll just keep waiting for the best version. I personally don't think they should release any DLC until they finish patching the game.

They've delayed the DLC quite a bit to work on the game. It's already been 15 months now since release, and there's been no DLC yet other than a few minor freebies.

It's hard to believe it's been that long already. It feels like I was just playing Cyberpunk a few months ago…

 

[Andrew23]

I started the game some time ago and sunk about 30 hrs into it. While I didnt have big technical issues, over time I started to strongly dislike some of gameplay design aspects.

Most of all the way how NPC level scaling worked and how similar enemies are falling to 1-2 shots while few street blocks farther they become almost invincible bullet sponges.

I think that if you dont deviate much from main mission chains, this is not so much visible, but for me it was reason to put game aside. And because I dont think this is glitch, but design choice, I might not go back to finish it.

Maybe with some mod that addresses this.

 

[largh]

Most of all the way how NPC level scaling worked and how similar enemies are falling to 1-2 shots while few street blocks farther they become almost invincible bullet sponges.

It's an RPG A reason why I think many open-world RPGs are immersion breaking. The enemy levels should scale with the player level apart from some bosses (but then there would be no feeling of accomplishment, they say, BS if you ask me).

 

[Pladio]

It's an RPG A reason why I think many open-world RPGs are immersion breaking. The enemy levels should scale with the player level apart from some bosses (but then there would be no feeling of accomplishment, they say, BS if you ask me).

Level scaling is one of the worst designs in my opinion.

Why should a giant rat be a simple early game enemy when you're level 1 but a boss level fight when you're level 15?

 

[Andrew23]

It's an RPG A reason why I think many open-world RPGs are immersion breaking. The enemy levels should scale with the player level apart from some bosses (but then there would be no feeling of accomplishment, they say, BS if you ask me).

I think that in such game its not just matter of choosing suitable system basis, but its also necessary to make lots of human-hand finetuning and using secondary design tools (equipment, skills, progress gating, etc.) to make the world believable while keeping feeling of accomplishment in game as well. As CDProject didnt have enough time to finish technical side of game, I suspect they left also RPG system and gameplay design unfinished in some ways.