MO MONEY MO THUMBS - PAYDAY 2

[Plyem]

I recently realize that PD2 is pretty much the only multiplayer game I continue to come back to regularly, even if I have big breaks in playing. It feels weird to realize that I'm one the players who knows the systems, how they work and interact and whatnot. I think the game is not without flaws, but it ultimately really great. I've played tons of it and never interact with the general community, only with SA Goons and I've never really been sure of what the big problems are. For the most part, unless you're on deathwish every gun will get the job done as long as you're a good player. Even completing the 'weakest guns, no skills, suit only' achievements and challenges is totally possible. I have my preferred weapons (Super tweaked eagle & Kriss vector) but will often grab a random weapon to fool around with if I think I don't absolutely need to carry the team (pubbies. . .) or if I'm not on deathwish. This is before and after the rebalance, I never really noticed that big of a change. 

I wasn't playing when the safes / drills come through so I don't know if they provided major stat boosts at first and then that was patched out, but those weapon skills kinda don't do anything, and even if they provide stat boosts those boosts are pointless, as there are few weapons I can think of that are worthless without the boosts, and godlike with them. Even if there were a few of those weapons there's A TON of options anyways and the game isn't competitive. If a player has a theoretical weapon whose skin makes it super powerful, it doesn't really matter to me. I remember some people talking about how the game has become 'Free to Win' but I really, honestly, don't know how that is true. 

A lot of the DLC packs are totally skippable if you don't want them. There are a few that seem almost mandatory (Gage mods, FLAMETHROWER), but most of them can be ignored if you don't care about the weapons (Western pack, medieval stuff). Even the ones that have heists in them are pretty much skippable if you want, as long as you don't want to host the games yourself. 

The community being kinda shit doesn't affect me or how I play the game. I don't mind the DLC system and often times those are sale for $.99 anyways and they give me and exciting (FLAMETHROWER) ways for me to click on cops with my buds. 

And really, isn't that what it's all about? Clicking on cops and stealing increasingly absurd loot (NUKES AND GOATS)?

P.S. : Let us all play together http://steamcommunity.com/id/plyem

[Patrick R]

Anyone still playing this? I haven't touched multiplayer yet because I don't want to be the shitty newb who screws up the heist because he doesn't know the basic controls of the game. But I've put about 3 hours into the offline mode and completed two missions and I'm really getting into this, even though there's no real idea of teamwork with the AI teammates.

 

Question: Doing the jewelry store robbery, the alarm always gets triggered pretty much immediately. What am I missing? 

Question: What should I avoid when playing online for the first time?
Question: If I get one DLC pack, what should it be?

[Korax]

It's been a while since I played, but dipping back in for a little bit might be fun.

 

If memory serves, the jewelry store often has a metal detector on the front door. Search around outside for a switch box to turn it off. Couldn't really say what to avoid, other than the usual stuff for pubbing in online games - people are going to be dicks, especially if they think you're bringing them down. I have found some cool people, but you're probably better off playing with folks you know. And I quite enjoy the Hotline Miami heists. They're loud from the get-go, and have some great music.

[Smart Jason]

You can either turn the switch box off in the back of the Jewelry Store (or the Ukrainian Job, which uses the same map) or kill the guard standing directly in front of the security cameras in the back right hand room (this is useful for when you're rushing the store in stealth and unsure if the power box has been hit - so long as every guard is down, the metal detector is nonfunctional - on that map, at least).
 
It's hard to give general tips for playing online since each mission has its own idiosyncrasies that you might be expected to know and some strangers will just kick you automatically for not following. Typically, it's safer to join heists that can only be run loud when you're playing public games, so there's less of a chance of messing something up. These would be Mallcrasher, the Transport Heists (DLC), Watchdogs, Hotline Miami (DLC), Hoxton Breakout, White Christmas.

 

Of those I particularly recommend Watchdogs, Hotline Miami, and Hoxton Breakout: they're not heavy on minutiae and they pay quite well in cash and experience.
 
Typically, once you join, gauge the vibe of the team and see if it's cool to just say "Hey, I'm new" or "This is my first time running this mission." Watch out specifically if they say they're going for an achievement.
 
It might be tempting to only play on Normal or Hard, but that's really never worth it. You should be playing on Very Hard at a minimum as long as you can shoot a gun and understand the basic equipment of at least one skill tree. Even the best missions won't pay enough to advance on Normal or Hard (especially considering the likelihood of just disconnecting "randomly" from a pub game).

 

But also, playing Payday 2 on your own can be a lot more vibrant than you might be crediting it, given what you said about "no real teamwork." Solo Payday 2 isn't a coop shooter, it's a first person stealth game, and when you play it as such there's no reason not to play missions on the highest difficulty, Death Wish, for maximum payoff. If you're stealthing, all the difficulty will do is possibly influence a few random mission factors, and the number of guards on patrol - but if you're solo, you're just going to retry anyway once you're spotted in a way you can't handle or for a fifth time (if you don't know why the fifth time matters, start reading the basics of stealth on the wiki or the Long Guide below).

 

Good solo stealth missions in the base game are: Bank Heist (Cash, Deposit, Pro, Gold - don't mistake this for GO Bank, which is a much harder mission), Jewelry Store, Ukrainian Job, Nightclub, Diamond Store, Shadow Raid, Election Day, Hoxton Revenge, First World Bank.

 

I particularly recommend running Bank Heist until you can do it in your sleep. There are four different versions of it, all essentially the same map. I have a build that's purely optimized just for this mission, it's the bread and butter of the game - on good days you can be in and out in five minutes (I mean, there's an achievement for being in and out of the Ukrainian Job in thirty seconds, but Bank Heist actually pays like a real heist). Don't ask me about bad days.

 

Shadow Raid, Election Day, Hoxton Revenge, these can all become second nature to you eventually and get you levels and cash by the plateful without any need for dealing with asshole strangers.

 

But of course, these being stealth, you'll need to learn the strategies for them; they're naturally going to be harder than just shooting your way through. It's up to you whether or not you want to look up YouTube guides (searching "payday 2 ____ death wish solo" will always be more than enough) or puzzle it out yourself.
 
If you find a mission you start feeling comfortable with, stick with it until you get experience penalties. Use the Payday Wiki to look up more information about it and go from there.
 
Now, I'll just quote myself from a couple years ago back on page six of this thread, most of which (official Steam group, HoxHud, Long Guide) is still pertinent today:
 

Since some new players are coming into the game, I thought it'd be best to attempt to assemble a blanket introductory post. There are a few opaque matters on Payday which can be initially off-putting, as well as just a few Tips 'n' Tricks™ you may not know.

1. First off, you'll want to join the game's official Steam group, which will get you some more weapons, masks, and - with the recent conclusion of Crimefest - a whole lot else including a couple more playable characters, a new heist, and a general sense of community and belonging.
2. I am not usually the type to recommend a bunch of mods to people, but there is a rather essential one, endorsed by the developers of the game, called HoxHud. It adds much more information to the in-game HUD, some anti-cheating functionality (which is a pretty big problem in the Payday player base), and bunch of miscellaneous fixes and fun things (ask me about rainbow headshots). To download it, you'll need to join and remain a member of its Steam group, which gives you access to the download forum. It also enters you into a devil's deal of perennially waiting for the next HoxHud hotfix (and the hotfix for that hotfix) after every single game update due to how much the mod manages, but I think it's worth it.
3. For complete newcomers, there are loads of specific YouTube videos offering tutorials for every heist. Much of the game's Twitch streams are also done either by people quite knowledgeable in solo stealthing and while the major Payday clans (TCN and T$E) which stream loud missions nearly twenty-four hours a day aren't meant to be educational, you can glean a lot from them when you're just starting. I'd like to draw attention to 

 in particular. It's unfinished and updated so slowly that I don't have faith that it ever will be, but I think it's the most easily digestible and informative collection of videos for the game I've found.
4. Now, if you really want to sink your teeth into the game, the master resource is The Long Guide. Impossible to get through in just one sitting, constantly updated (and invalidated by future game updates and so on), it's a fascinating insight into the specific mechanics of every individual system of stealthing, skills, and every heist. As imposing as it is, there is no better way to learn about the game, although obviously no one should expect you to take it all in.
5. I suppose, of final note, if you are interested in picking up any DLC while the game's still on sale for Halloween but it all looks like an arbitrary mess of weapons of which you have no way of knowing the value. My recommendations would as follows: The Gage Mod Courier DLC is number one, as it gives purpose to the little hidden packages you're seeing around missions and unlocks a ton of excellent weapon modifications upon their collection. Weapon modding is actually extremely crucial to offense in Payday, as well as stealth. I would say the Gage Sniper Pack would be next, as the sniper rifle functionality is not going to be found anywhere else in the game and is uniquely powerful. Third, I'd advise the Gage Weapon Pack #01, for the inclusion of grenades and the very valuable Single fire and Auto fire mods. I know it may be tempting to buy heist DLCs instead of weapon packs, but you can actually play the "premium" heists so long as the host owns them - so consider playing them first as a preview. Anyway, this is a very minor point, and I loathe being an advocate for nickel and dime business modeling; I genuinely think that Payday 2 has a very ethical balance between free and paid content support.

I hope this was helpful! I hope we play together! I hope the board doesn't realize I'm secretly a viral marketer for 505 Games!

 

Hahaha, look at those last couple of sentences! So, I haven't actually played the game since last November after the extremely controversial addition of lock-and-crate style microtransactions (and the subsequent posts I made in this thread and others saying "I still really enjoy playing the game, though!"). To update my thoughts about the DLC, let me say a few things:

 

1. Payday 2 (Overkill, Starbreeze, 505 Games) would no longer qualify in most people's eyes as having a "very ethical balance" between free and paid content support. Although, if I'm appealing to "most people," I'm also reckoning all the Steam users who respond to every update with "fuck u overkill" or "payday 2 это хреново петух" or "comment on my profile with +1 rep and I'll comment the same on urs."

2. The game's received several DLC packs since I left, including (about fucking time) a free one today. (Which includes a playable character voiced by Sharlto Copley, so this might actually be what gets me back in.) I think it's gotten a UI overhaul, and they're currently beta testing a total redesign of the skills system. (You might know more about this than me, as someone currently playing.)

3. So including these system-level changes, today's Hardcore Henry update, my blind spot also entails the Yakuza Pack and the Chivalry Pack (both of which I could have purchased before I stopped playing but just couldn't put money toward the company after they unveiled safes), the Point Break Heists, the Goat Simulator Heists, and (although I own it automatically for owning the original Wolf Pack for Payday: The Heist), the Wolf Pack.

4. Having said all that, they did finally put a sniper rifle in the base game. And if you don't have grenades, you can throw playing cards. The gaps in functionality have been eroded pretty ubiquitously and which DLC to get is now a much more subjective question.

5. If, while playing single player games, you're the type to run around looting for items, I still recommend the Gage Mod Courier. You'll pick up the little colored packages around every mission and after a certain amount of each have been collected, you'll get an assortment of weapon mods. Every other type of weapon mod you can unlock is capped at either two (for a random drop) or one (for an achievement unlock). These are unlimited as you collected the packages, and free to assign (other mods can cost in-game money to attach). Many of them will be worthwhile just for the sake of their quantity, while a few (the Competitor's Compensator, the Funnel of Fun) are genuinely among the best in the game.

6. There are two weapon packs that still offer functionality you essentially can't get otherwise, however. The first of them is the aptly named Completely Overkill Pack. It has some modest gestures toward stealth but for the most part this is where the game's power creep goes full blast. If, when you were first learning Team Fortress 2, you just played Heavy and shot at everything and hoped you were helping, then you should put all your skill points into Enforcer, join loud heists, and use the weapons from these packs. The Overkill has (and only needs) two: the Vulcan Minigun for your primary slot and the HRL-7 for your secondary, an RPG that does the highest single shot damage of any weapon in the game. It can load one rocket at a time and holds four total, so you'll need to save it for the worst enemies (or, with its large splash damage, the most threatening groups seized up in a choke point). You can't even pick up ammo from enemies for it, only replenish from ammo bags (and, you should read about the mechanics of ammo bags from the Long Guide to understand that just refilling four units of ammunition may be more detrimental to the team than it seems initially). Still, it's a rocket launcher.

7. The Butcher's BBQ Pack (second of the aforementioned two) is more restrained by comparison. It comes with three primary weapons and a throwable - a Molotov Cocktail which does much less damage than the standard DLC grenade on impact but burns enemies (and allies) in its splash zone over time. Least interesting among the primaries is the Steakout 12G, a decent shotgun. The DLC pack shines, though, and gets its name, from the Flamethrower (whose strength is, counter-intuitively less in killing and more in holding off groups and special enemies) and the Piglet, a multi-shot grenade launcher.

8. If you were to ignore weapon packs entirely, which I think is totally viable, you could focus on just picking up one heist DLC. Even if you don't own a heist DLC, you can play it in lobbies run by those who do, but the DLCs themselves typically also come with the standard pack items - a mask set, patterns, materials, unique weapon mods, and at least one firearm and melee weapon of their own, although generally not as notable as those from weapon packs. I personally like The Alesso Heist and Hotline Miami for public loud. (Alesso can be done stealth, even solo stealth, but it's not as fun.) If you want something you can stealth on your own (remember, Death Wish stealth), The Diamond is great to run again and again.

9. The most important thing, of course, is to wait for the next sale. Then you pick them all up without having to make any kind of concerned decision (besides whether or not your purchase is implicitly endorsing sweet weapon skins with stat-boosting effects).

 

Uh, that's it. What the fuck, why did I write all this?

[Patrick R]

Oof. I'm gonna stick with this a bit but just reading that post reminds me why I've never tried to get serious about a multiplayer game. It feels like a part-time job just to understand all that. I have no idea what half of what you said means. I'm still trying to figure out why I can't throw the doctor's bag anywhere because nowhere is an "appropriate surface".

 

And maybe the difficulty curve is way different when you're playing online with four people who are all proactive (as opposed to two AI who are rubber-banded to you), but I've barely been able to complete jobs on normal, so I'm definitely not going to step into Very Hard yet.

 

Also, when I'm in casing mode in the Jewelry Store it doesn't set off the alarm, so does that mean the metal detector doesn't work if you don't have a mask on(??) or am I on a different Jewelry Store level. 

 

And why can't you shut doors in this game?

[Smart Jason]

Look at my Steam games. There's no Call of Duty, no Battlefield, no Tom Clancy's The Division. There's a lot of Team Fortress 2, but not since like 2012. I'm not a multiplayer gamer. I'm not a first person shooter guy. Payday 2 is my exception, in spite of or perhaps because of the fact that you can engage with it so deeply. This next part is gonna sound super FUCK CASUALS, HARDCORE GAMES FOR LIFE, DRINK MTN DEW: I don't know what games you play, but Payday 2 far from the only one about which I could write such a detailed post concerning its strategy, advancement, and community. (Next time make a post asking for advice about any Metal Gear or Final Fantasy.) That's not a part-time job for me, that's just how I enjoy engaging with a game. It just happens that this one is an online game.

 

Doctor's Bags aren't finicky, they just want flat surfaces without anything clipping them. It sounds like you're either trying to put them on tables with a bunch of assets whereas the ground (behind cover if you're playing with real people) is always fine, or you're literally trying to throw them - in which case, yeah, I guess the game would say anything out of your immediate vicinity isn't an appropriate surface. You place them; same goes for all equipment (ammo bags, ECMs, body bag containers, and so on).

 

I understood that the difficulty probably sounded daunting. My point was that when it comes to Normal to Very Hard, the difficulty leap isn't so oppressive compared to the rewards you're going to earn. You need to really grow your character in this game (another reason it probably suits me idiosyncratically among other multiplayer shooters) - better weapons won't become available to you until you reach higher levels, and intelligently specializing your skills is vital especially if you're aspiring to playing online. People much more practiced with the actual mechanics of game design could talk about why exactly there are some games you start on Normal and work your way up on and some games you just go full medicine ball on. This is the latter.

 

Pay attention to what I said in my last post (well, one of the things - you should pay attention to all of them, but this is one of the things I said which you should pay attention to, among the rest of the things to which attention should also be paid): when you play alone, you should be playing in stealth. I don't know what level you are right now, but respec. Stop using doctor bags. Get an ECM. Do all quiet missions. When things go loud, go to the Menu, hit Restart. Don't rely on AI teammates for loud missions because, yes, then you'll be confined to Normal and you'll be making pennies for every mission you happen to blindly succeed at, going nowhere, and learning nothing. Do solo stealth. You will learn the systems of the game this way instead of just shooting your way to the objective. You can play at higher difficulties and get more skills. This is the way to play online.

 

Metal detectors aren't going to go off before you're masked up as a concession toward casing mode (i.e., your gun isn't out yet) so you can walk around the level and get some visual information. It's generally not a good idea to do this inside a crowded room like Jewelry Store, though, since it's very easy to just walk into a security guard while casing and immediately get caught. There's only so much you can learn from going inside the store anyway - once you're good enough to reliably dance around roaming security guards, you won't even need to bother casing.

 

Shutting doors would be OP.

[Patrick R]

Oh no. I've played 19 hours of this in the past week. It is a part time job! And I can't stop!

 

My first solo stealth run of Jewelry Store was immensely satisfying.

[Smart Jason]

Does anyone want to talk and consider the fact that they've removed microtransactions from the game?

 

Today, they finally added two tutorial heists (one for stealth, one for loud). Could be good for you noobs to play before a potential Thumbs reunion game?

[Smart Jason]

Game is free to play for the next two weeks. (Big quarterly DLC sale is on too.)

 

You can find me as sansjason on Steam if anyone wants to play.

[Dewar]

I always forget to look in this forum. Interesting they decided to remove the microtransactions. I guess community playtime really did decrease.

[Patrick R]

I think trying to look for people on Steam is the worst and I'm always convinced I'm in the wrong spot, BUT

[Smart Jason]

I love how on Steam I can have a different username (sansjason), community ID (jasonsavior), and display name (Jason).

 

I guess it's the middle one you're supposed to search for.

[Twig]

username is your login shit that you ain't supposed to share (unlike so many other services where your username is also your display name)

 

used to be emails even!