A modder has completely rebalanced Cyberpunk 2077 in a bid to improve the gameplay experience.
Prolific Cyberpunk modder Scissors123454321 released their gameplay rebalance megamod today on NexusMods, and it makes a huge number of changes to the balance of the game.
Cyberpunk 2077 – Our Commitment to Quality
Perhaps the headline change is the removal of scaling. In the base Cyberpunk, V and their enemies gain stats as you level up. This means, without any upgrades, V ends up much weaker than enemies at the level 50 cap than they are at level one.
The removal of scaling is a significant change that required a corresponding reduction in perks and items that increased stats such as damage, health and crit chance. But with scaling removed, Scissors123454321 was able to fix a number of problems with the base game. For example, your sidekick will actually be useful in fights now. It also makes for more consistent gameplay. Over to Scissors123454321:
“The game can’t account for whether you know you can get a full set of legendary armour and armour mods before your first gig, or whether you’re still running around with Yorinobu’s clothing and pistol at level 20.
“The reason why there’s so many big damage bonuses in the game like +100 percent melee damage here, +25 percent ranged damage there, is because these upgrades are all supposed to get washed out as you level up and the enemies just get more HP and damage.
“Hence the reason why these big bonuses had to be brought down. The end result is that the immediate bonus of a stat-increasing effect won’t feel as powerful, but by the end of the game it’ll feel the same.”
Removing scaling also means Scissors123454321 was able to implement enemy armour (in the base game only exo-suits provide armour, and only a few enemies wear exo-suits). “Now, enemies have armour, and armour-related perks and effects should actually be useful,” Scissors123454321 said.
There is a downside to the removal of scaling: upgrading is pretty much useless. But Scissors123454321 doesn’t sound bothered. “… I don’t have to pretend it wasn’t in the first place, so I can make the perks surrounding it more interesting.”
What I find remarkable about this mod is it reveals how many balance issues Cyberpunk 2077 shipped with. Many people know about the game’s performance problems and missing features, but it also has a tonne of bizarre balance quirks that render some aspects of play broken. For example, the mod buffs Syn-lungs because you got more stamina regen from a drink than the legendary version of this Cyberware.
Speaking of drinks (and food, and alcohol), the mod makes significant changes to these items to make them more useful, even adding a “Jackie Welles” drink and crafting spec for “immersion”.
Elsewhere, the mod aims to tackle an exploit that involves simply spamming healing items. With the mod, healing items have a cooldown. The mod also adds 24 drugs into the game, each with a unique model, icon and effect.
Here’s a cool change: the mod lets you customise the fire rate, dps and headshot multiplier of individual weapons. There’s a big balance sweep for all weapons with the mod, addressing weirdness in the base game (HMGs would hit for less than your bare fists).
There’s a huge amount to this mod, and it’s well worth looking over the long list of changes to see if anything sparks a desire to return to Cyberpunk 2077. Developer CD Projekt is of course working to improve the game, and only this week released Cyberpunk’s “biggest patch to date”, which includes some balance changes.
Modders, it seems, aren’t hanging about either.
