《赛博朋克2077》开发者解释他认为的游戏设计存在的问题

关卡设计师Miles Toast解释了他认为《赛博朋克2077》设计中的错误，CD Projekt Red不希望在未来的游戏中重蹈覆辙。Toast在离开《巫师3》后，于2016年开始制作《赛博朋克2077》，并立即遇到了一个重大问题：CD Projekt Red希望在给予玩家自由方面更进一步。所以Tost必须创造支持所有游戏风格的关卡，从最残酷和直接的到纯粹的潜行以及介于两者之间的一切。

根据Toast的说法，这是一个疯狂的挑战，但同时也很刺激。当然，我们都知道它的结局:当《赛博朋克2077》在2020年发布时，它被证明是一款充满技术问题的未完成游戏。一个补丁接一个补丁，很多地方都出了问题，这个项目并没有让许多玩家满意。

Toast在GDC 2023大会上以“赛博朋克2077教会了我们什么”为主题的会议上再次谈到了这一话题，并直接谈及了开发者所面临的最大问题。

根据Toast的说法，关卡设计是他的专长，但矛盾的是，这个波兰工作室的优势之一—总是努力讲述强大的故事:“我们以成为故事讲述者而自豪，不想干扰玩家享受故事。”这就为每个关卡创造了一个无法跳过的通用路径。问题在于，这些路径太过明显。事实上，这只是游戏玩法中最受批评的缺陷之一。

根据Toast的说法，CD Projekt Red将从这个角度发展，参考特定的模式，第一个是Arkane Studios的《耻辱》系列，它在鼓励不同的游戏风格和寻找替代路径方面做得很好。

Toast随后阐述了在针对不同游戏风格设计关卡时应遵循的三个原则:它们应该提供距离感，也就是说，路径之间的距离应该更远，让玩家觉得自己的选择是有意义的;它们应该被玩家视为孤立的、特殊的，这样玩家才会认为它们是特殊的，从而更专注于游戏体验;它们应该具有特殊性，通过给予玩家独特的内容作为奖励来强化玩家的选择。

© Level designer Miles Tost explained what he thinks went wrong with the design of Cyberpunk 2077, a mistake that CD Projekt Red doesn’t want to repeat in future games. Tost started working on Cyberpunk 2077 in 2016 after leaving The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and immediately ran into a major problem. CD Projekt Red wanted to take it a step further in terms of the freedom given to the player. So Toast had to create levels that supported all playstyles, from the most brutal and straightforward to pure stealth and everything in between. According to Tost, it was a crazy challenge, but at the same time stimulating. Of course, we all know how it ended: when released in 2020, Cyberpunk 2077 turned out to be an unfinished game full of technical problems. In particular, it lacked the meaningfulness of different play styles, and the research was unsatisfying. Patch after patch, the game recovered its position, but there is no doubt that a lot went wrong and the project did not satisfy many players. Toast returned to this topic during a conference at GDC 2023 titled “What Cyberpunk 2077 taught us about non-linear level design”, directly touching on the biggest problems developers faced. According to Tost, level design, which is his specialty, paradoxically didn’t work out because of one of the strengths of the Polish studio – always striving to tell strong stories: “we pride ourselves on being storytellers and don’t want to interfere with less cautious players to enjoy the story” . This resulted in a generic path being created for each level that could not be skipped, which is useful for players with low stats. The problem is that these paths were often so obvious that players chose them independently using different playstyles. In fact, this is just one of the most criticized defects in the gameplay. According to Toast, CD Projekt Red will evolve from this point of view, referring to specific models, the first of which is Arkane Studios with the Dishonored series, which does a great job of encouraging different playstyles and finding alternative paths. Toast then illustrated three principles to follow when designing levels for different playstyles: they should give a sense of distance, that is, paths should be farther apart and give the player the idea that their choice means something; they should be perceived by the player as isolated and exceptional so that the player can consider them special and focus more on the experience; they should be treated as special to enhance the player’s choices by giving them unique content as a reward.