my biggest issue was the bullet sponging and totally unbalanced combat, youd either be a god that couldnt die or someone who has to land 50 headshots with a sniper rifle to kill someone
I love it now, everything feels punchy because you're not gated around finding new weapons every level. I'm sticking almost exclusively with the iconics that can be upgraded, but as far as I can tell the only difference between generic weapons is the tier they're in, the damage appears to be the same no matter what level you find the weapon at. Some other changes:
Armor is tied primarily to cyberware now, which has a limited capacity based on level and a handful of perks that increase the cap.
Cyberware has impactful changes to playstyle, granting new bonuses like higher melee attack speed, increased RAM, or restoring a portion of stamina on kill
Perks have drastically increased effects that often come with conditions that encourage active playstyles (e.g. 50% faster grenade recharge if you have no charges left)
Healing items and grenades have a pool of charges rather than being single-use.
Natural healing is faster, but healing items are less immediately accessible (No more sucking down inhalers in the middle of a firefight)
All the Skills have been consolidated into just five that correspond roughly to the five attributes' associated weapons, and they level quickly. Every five levels grants a bonus associated with the attribute (Netrunning (Quickhacks/Smart Weapons) increases max RAM and RAM recharge speed, for example)
Weapon upgrades are no longer gated by Tech
Clothes are almost entirely cosmetic. Any that grant mechanical benefits (Armored vests, for example) can be worn under outfits comprised of any clothing you have in your closet.
So pre 2.0, all the weapons, armor, cyberware, etc. had a level assigned to them in addition to the rarity that determined how big the numbers were, and it forced you to go through your vendor trash each time on the off chance that the numbers were better on any particular weapon you found. Now, every weapon of a particular type has the same parameters depending on rarity tier (white through gold) so if you have a higher tier of the same weapon, it's explicitly, if marginally better, and this keeps you from having to sort through 20-odd weapons every time you go sell, which drastically speeds up the process. Even more so if you stick with the unique iconic weapons, which can be upgraded with materials up to tier 5.
As a side-effect of this, the marginal increases can't boost the legendary item's damage that much higher than the common rarity, so even the most common weapons still deal adequate damage, so enemies aren't spongy like they used to be.
this is the answer i was looking for / hoping for, thank fucking god holy shit. so theres ten levels but the levels arent that different from one another if i understand right
I did, right around release date, and all the equipment was a lot more vendor trashy - I think it was built directly on Witcher 3 code, with items having leveled attributes and some having level requirements the same way that game handled equipment.
Each tier gives a marginal improvement over the last, but as far as I can tell there's only ten tiers (Five colors, each with a normal and '+' tier.) I can say combat feels pretty good with melee weapons, pistols/revolvers, shotguns, and grenades. I haven't tried the other weapons a whole lot but I imagine they feel just as good. Only thing that's a little weak maybe is Quickhacks, but even then I've got a few that will kill mooks outright.