Unpopular opnion, but… Is it just me or the game doesn’t acknowledge much how good of a netrunner you are?
Say, when you have high body, you can literally intimidate people out of fighting you. When you use sandevistan it feels you are like the best shooter or ninja in night city. And all the fixers compliments you for being a “merc”, so it fits the concept.
But Netrunning? Doesn’t matter if you are literally wiping a full building of goons from your car, and can overclock like a freaking blood demon; Nix will still laugh at you if you say you are the best runner in nightcity. You’re not as good as Brigite, or Songbird, or maybe even [B@d](https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/B@d). You’ll always just be a merc. With a few rare cases of runner unique dialogs, most of them quite silly, like how T-Bug has to guide you step by step in Kompeki, and you have to remind her you know what you are doing.
Ngl, I kinda miss breach protocol; it at least made you feel more like a netrunner if you had to invade enemies’ private networks to make hacking them easier. As is now, netrunning is just a merc’s “weapon” of choice.
Just a lil frustrated now I’ve met Songbird and she makes a netrunner V look like an amateur.
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Probably because in the Cyberpunk lore, you’re not really a netrunner…You are a solo that can use some quickhacks. Netrunners operate in the virtual world, like all of the people you encounter in the game sitting in the netrunning chairs.
Sandra Dorsett recognizes V as a netrunner if you’re a good enough netrunner.
It is kinda annoying how you never truly feel like a Netrunner. Even more so with the recent updates. Hope they improve upon this in the sequel
Nix is objectively worse than you in the game, and worse than me in real life even, plugging his brain into some random found hard drive. That’s a mistake you learn to not even do with your regular computer in the first year of having one, much less would you do it with your actual head.
This is exactly why I don’t spec into INT. It’s just not all that fun and the dialogue choices are lacking.
V is as much a netrunner as Geralt is a sorcerer. That’s how I look at it at least.
Netrunners = Yennefer.
V = Geralt.
Yes, that does suck. V is never truly a netrunner, they are just a merc who happen to have a decent knowledge of how the NET operates, have the baddest cyberdeck on the block plugged in their head and have a variety of quickhacks installed. But V is never netrunning.
V just blows people heads off using a processor in their brain that quickly DDoSes an interface processor in enemy’s brain and using some kind of vulnerability, uploads a malicious code.
What is the most unfortunate in this situation is that in the end when V is basically a one-man-army, the quickhacker V never feels like they have earned it through skill, but more like they have the best hardware and software for a job than any single person around them.
Surely, that can also be said about Sandevistan or Berserker as well, but due to the visceral feeling of pulling the trigger or dashing from enemy to enemy in a fight it sure as hell seems that V is a damn legend and not just a merc with the best toys.
V is never an actual netrunner they can just use quickhacks. Theres a big difference there in the lore
TBF the netrunning you do are vastly simplified quickhacks vs literally immersing your consciousness in code. IMO we dont get to do proper netrunning in the game.
I am the lore!!!!!
Netrunners all have a big ego and are not people ‘s person. Don’t know why you expect praise of them.
You are not supposed to be that good of a Netrunner before the Heist. Or be good at anything.
So Mi is just too good of a Netrunner for V to ever reach her level
I mean you’re right but you don’t really dive in deep cyberspace for +18h/day and have to cool your body with synth coolant so your nerv system doesn’t melt itself while you are stealing corpo secrets on you confy netrunner chair.
You are basically a solo ripping apart different people in different situations and in different ways so you can fix you lil silly head. The most ‘netrunner-y’ shit you do is BD editting (which is normie af in the lore) and quickhacks, which are the equivalent of using a cracker you haven’t really programmed yourself to pirate a videogame you downloaded from torrent lol
The ONLY time V does a deep dive is with Brigitte side-quest and the script of the game is so neutral (given the vast ammount of combinations you can do on V’s tech hability) that it almost looks that V doesn’t really know what’s going on.
If you have enoguh netrunning level and you do the afterlife netrunner’s side quest (can’t remember his name) you have the option to say “From netrunner to netrunner… Bla bla bla” and he basically laughs in your face lol.
Altough the conclusion you’ve reached is quite good. I made myself the very same question several times.
V is the ultimate script kiddie. We use quickhacks that real netrunners developed. They do the pen testing and create the code. We just slap it on stuff.
It would be interesting to hop into a chair, plug your brain into the net and start beating on some corpo’s firewall trying to infiltrate their net.
Edit – speaking of good netrunners, has anyone noticed more stuff related to Spider Murphy since 2.0? I seem to be finding more references to her.
All this post has done is show me how they shoe horned an rpg into one class being available and it’s solo. You will be a solo and like it. This dude post how it’s stupid you can’t net run in any meaningful way and the only answers are “duh you’re railroaded in to being this one class the entire game no matter how you spec your v or play the game.”
>Just a lil frustrated now I’ve met Songbird and she makes a netrunner V look like an amateur.
That’s just Songbird. >!The amount of chrome she has, basically makes her a walking netrunner chair.!< >!She’s also a blackwall WMD. With a snap of her fingers, she can fry people like Brigitte.!< Obviously such power comes at a price. But being able to pull off feats like this, puts her in another league. I’d say, she’s somewhere in between ai Alt and Bartmoss. Unfortunately, V is nowhere near that good, although they’re definitely solid, if you have a netrunning build.
I feel like the game gives V just one side of Netrunning, really, which is the combat side. Lucy in Edgerunners was that to some extent, although she (obviously) also was a ‘proper’ netrunner with her access to cyberspace, etc.
True Netrunning as a game mechanic is very well represented in Shadowrun, where you traverse cyberspace as your digital avatar, fight digital representations of defensive programs, and all that. You’ve got none of it in Cyberpunk.
I’m convinced that this ‘shortcoming’ of Cyberpunk 2077 is actually for the best, because the hacking minigame is already quite jarring compared to the usual pace of the FPS RPG you’re playing. Adding a much more complex layer of cyberspace warfare would be akin to building a full-on game within a game, and that would just be yet another mechanic that we’d need to wait years to be fully realised via patches, DLCs and expansions.
I love ‘netrunner’ V, it’s my favourite build to play. But I don’t see myself as the new Alt Cunningham, or Rache Bartmoss, even though I can clear Arasaka Tower with just my mind. I’m a combat maniac of a hacker, and there’s that.
Have to remember that Songbird has been netrunning within and outside of The Wall.
You’re as a V learning the ropes still.
Netrunner is powerful in the game, and I recommend people take advantage of it.
V being a netrunner is in a similar sense of Aiden Pearce from Watch Dogs being a hacker
neither of them do a lot of their own actual netrunning/hacking respectively, they use premade programs to do comparatively simple stuff, but they remain formidable due to how well they combo their programs with their physical prowess/weaponry
A cyberpunk game where you do play an actual netrunner now that’d be pretty fun.
Cuz for netrunners standards thats pretty tame. A good netrunner could wipe out an entire building full of goons from the other side of the globe… a great one can wipe out the entire net! Let’s be fair, its great to play as a netrunner, my choice of build cuz it’s very cool to just look at an enemy and make him off himself, but they kept the lore consistent and I appreciate that, cuz let’s be honest, at most V is a good script kid!
Yeah, I feel you. Makes me wonder how much RAM people like Songbird, Brigitte, Lucy, and all those people have.
V is the equivalent of a script kiddie.
A really well equipped script kiddie with no fear and the will to ICE every choom in the room for few newyen.
I do and don’t miss breach. It would be cool if breaching the subnet was more than just a way to lower the ram cost by 1 in a building like it does now. But I also just got tired of it, lol.
I did a netrunner build for the sole reason of cracking the MaxTac convoy’s location during the PL mission myself. I had no idea Reed will tell me, paraphrasing, that I suck and he needs a real netrunner.
Never making that build again :/
Really, V is a really good quick hacker. Net running involves jacking up and going into the net. She does that once, and complains about how cold the ice is lol.
I really don’t get why they reworked the netrunner tree, sorry I mean intelligence tree, as much as they did. Like they could’ve gotten away with just tweaking some of the more OP perks and been good. Breach protocol was a great tool in a runner’s arsenal, and it makes sense that u would first have to breach into a subnet in order to make full use of it with ur hacks.
That said tho, V is still a merc. While he might seem like a good runner to us, he is a pretty low tier runner when taking into account what a **proper** netrunner does. All V does is upload premade daemons to his enemies soft.
V uses pretty much all their net running skills like a caveman would use an electric guitar. Like a club to kill things.
I think the fact that V just has a simple wrist port and no deep dive port/augmented interface shows they don’t do much of the “netrunning” aspect of being a netrunner. They don’t even have their own netrunning suit iirc
Because V isn’t a netrunner.
To put it in modern terms V is a Script Kiddie. Someone who bought a hack, exploit, or script to do a very specific task with very little in-depth knowledge of how or why it works, they just know it works and what the end result is. Realistically anyone in Night City can use quick hacks as long as they have the cash to spend and the chrome to run it.
A netrunner is the hacker that found the exploit, reverse engineered the code, and put it into an easily accessible script/program to sell to others. A lot of people do not have anywhere near the capacity to do this, both in reality and more so in game.
So, is V the worst netrunner in the city? No, and that’s because we don’t even classify as one to begin with.
I know it’s not the best analogy, but it’s about as close to modern equivalents that I can think of lol.
you’re merc choom
V is just using premade daemons. In that sense they are more of a script kiddie than a netrunner
>
Ngl, I kinda miss breach protocol; it at least made you feel more like a netrunner if you had to invade enemies’ private networks to make hacking them easier. As is now, netrunning is just a merc’s “weapon” of choice.
Fucking Same. It’s what really made you feel like Net runner.
A real netrunner sits in a chair and does some sneaky stuff in cyberspace from miles away pulling threads from afar where their influence might not even be noticed. V will just show up, kill everyone, then leave with absolutely no subtlety.
I actually have a bit of an answer for this from the Table top
Don’t remember which book but it’s heavily implied chair jockies look down on combat runners
Most of the runners we encounter are chair jockies
V is a combat runner
So doesn’t matter if V can do stuff some of those folks only dream of, because to them he’s just a combat runner
Also I’m pretty sure the only person who actually gives V credit as a runner is Johnny during that one gig in Little China, or was it Japan town?
There’s this one scene in PL after you-know-who is captured and Reed is asking you to find a netrunner. If you have 20 Intelligence you can tell him you’re a good netrunner yourself. He acknowledges it, but still says you may be good at field work and quickhacks, but you need someone with actual experience in the chair. So I guess that’s your answer – we’re never a full netrunner.
Probably T BUG
People do acknowledge you as a somewhat decent Netrunner. But V never really does any real netrunning, and thus isn’t really one.
He has the knowledge, the experience to deal with the Net’s codes, but he has yet to fully dive deeper into the Net.
I think real netrunners spend most of their time jacked in to their chair or their ice bath if they’re going into the net. But V pretty much just uses it for quickhacks and stealing eddys from laptops and vending machine lol. The only time V ever does real running he’s being guided so I think it’s fair of the main npc’s to poke fun at V a bit
Because you’re not really a net runner. You are a merc with a cyberdeck OS. All cyberdecks come with breach protocol. You purchase quickhacks which are basically programs which you direct to execute on enemies. Your not actually doing any hacking. You just have a computer that can breach another person’s cyberware (anyone with a cyberdeck can do this as breach protocol is standard to all decks). It then uploads and runs a program that you purchased or found.
It’s a common misconception that using quickhacks makes you a netrunner. Netrunners run on the net performing hacks. Hence you merc that can use quickhacks, tbug netrunner that runs the net to actually hack systems and cyber wear.