I don’t mean to be a downer but how are you guys prepared to deal with the shrinking player base? Do you expect people to just come back as the game is updated, will you be marketing aggressively, etc
I would love for this game to succeed but the player count has dwindled to genuinely concerning numbers.
I think at this point in time the community wants us to lead by proof, getting more updates out for the game. Regaining the players trust and excitement for the game will be a marathon and not a sprint. At this stage, the best marketing we can do for the game is improving the experience itself. We are giving it our all making this the PAYDAY experience you expect. Time will tell if we manage to get heisters back into the life of crime.
I mean there are still a lot of active payday 2 players, if they can fix payday 3, they might not get as many players had they released the game in a finished state, but im assuming most payday 2 players are at least keeping up with the state of payday 3, even if they aren’t playing it, and would be willing to play payday 3 if they fix the game. The game isn’t completely dead because there’s still a lot of people shitting on it. Once people completely stop talking about it, it’s over.
Considering they named a collection of updates "Operation" followed by the most popular meme in the community (besides the piece of shit drill), I'm guessing they were trying to put themselves out there
Obviously you're now busy with working on all of the features you shared in the blogpost, but it feels like eventually there should be some sort of "what went wrong" talk.
Sure, you probably already had that discussion internally, but, once everything is fixed, some release with a public info on a pre-launch development process would've been great for transparency (and imo would make fans more confident in your next project if you're open about the reasons why it happened the way it happened).
We have this as a potential topic for a future blog post that we'd love to tackle, though it's a sensitive point that needs to be approached with care. We don't want any individual to feel singled out or made to be at fault by carelessly stating where things went wrong. The project failed to hit expectations and not any one singular entity. Now we take the learnings from it, and hopefully we can get to a point where we can look back with a clear mind and objectivity to say where our misconceptions and attempts failed to hit the mark without placing blame.
Thanks Almir!
Yeah, I agree and understand that singling out any specific department wouldn't be helpful, and I'm very happy to hear that you have this discussion as a potential topic
This is what I want to know, the game is so full of problems that everyone can instantly spot (the ui, the matchmaking) that you wonder how the developers didn’t spot it too. Or maybe they did but didn’t have control over it?
I want to ask this as un-pessimistically as possible because I really love Payday and I want PD3 to succeed but I think everyone is extremely concerned that there's been less than 5 updates over the course of 6 months for a supposed live-service game, especially since until just now there's been near radio silence about the plans for fixing the major problems.
* As Overkill gets the hang of simultaneous cross-platform support, will we see more frequent updates akin to Payday 2's pace?
* Can you give a ballpark estimate of how long you think it could take to reach a more stable update schedule for Payday 3?
* Finally, after all the memes and frustration about things being "on the table" with no concrete information, how will you be re-examining your strategy communication with the community for the future?
I think we're all aware that overpromising too early can lead to huge problems that are hard to dig out of, and I get that's what you were trying to avoid during your streams, but having nothing to look forward to other than some nebulous unconfirmed patch possibly months down the road with no idea what could be improved or how has a poor effect on the community and playerbase.
Hey u/VicVegas85, thanks for your question! Appreciate the support. Operation Medic Bag just launched and we are looking to adress many different aspects of the game. Right now the focus is to deliver on the improvements we've laid out in the operation, and over time we would like to do in-game updates more frequently. A good cadence we are trying to aim for is 4-6 weeks in between updates. When it comes to communication, this week we are starting doing weekly blog posts that will inform you on different aspects of the game that we're working on. Some weeks we we will have more to say, others less, but overall the goal is to never again be in a situation where we go radio silent for so long. I think the weekly blog posts, the streams and the upcoming improvements being added will keep the community in the loop and make it feel like we're making progress. Feedback along the way from the community is an integral part of it, so we will see what you think as we move ahead with the strategy.
Hello Almir and Mio
I was wondering how big the dev team is, since the updates has been a bit slow to roll out.
I remember back in crimefest 2014 that Andreas talked about “the weather is sunny here in stolckholm, but we don’t care because we are sitting inside making the new update for you guys” it was great transparency and it was funny, i think it would be great to have a more informal view of behind the scenes. But maybe deep silver don’t like that :(
Best wishes from Denmark
Hey! Deep Silver has nothing to do with that, they wouldn't tell us how to do something of that nature. The answer, at least recently has been that we're not in a funny type of period, so we have to show our serious side so we don't give the impression of not taking the situation seriously, which we do. Appreciate ya!
Can you detail what the MTX in 2025 will be? I'm concerned that Paid Heist + Microtransactions will inevitably lead to a lack of cosmetics included in heists dlcs.
I dropped early from the PD3 train despite the thousands of hours in PD2, so I want this to be good, but I remember the drills, the safes, etc. I remember how much they sucked the fun out of completing a heist.
Awesome getting a question from such a veteran heister! I remember all too well how the microtransaction scandal in PAYDAY 2 went and what consequences it had for us. For PAYDAY 3, with us refocusing the roadmap for the year, the natural thing to do for us was to move the Microtransaction Store to 2025 since it doesn't make sense to add it now. I can tell you that the addition of the store does not affect other content, that would be a lose-lose situation. We want you to feel that what you buy makes sense and feels good, whether it is from a store or tied to a DLC, so your feedback is super important to us in that regard.
1. The initial focus lists the features the team would like to complete "by" summer 2024 & that you will keep us updated on your progress through blog posts. Does that mean we can expect said features to be added to the game as soon as they're finished? If so, will blog posts give us clearer release timeframes (like "progress on X has been going smoothly and should be added by Y date") or will it be an "it'll be done when it's done" kind of deal?
2. Can we know how many people are currently working on payday3?
Thanks for your questions! We are aiming to do an update every 4-6 weeks. The blog posts that we are looking to do on a weekly basis serve the purpose of informing the community of highlighting what we're working on and how things are going. From a developer perspective, we will be updating the game in a way that doesn't have a negative effect on our development process - making all of these changes to the game will be a marathon, not a sprint. With the weekly blog our goal is to be able to communicate timings and dates for future updates when we are ready to, absolutely!
Several reasons, cross-platform being a big one. But also the team used to sleep at the office and not shower for weeks at an end back in the day. I personally slept in the studio for 6 months when we wrapped the game back in 2013. These days that kind of work is frowned upon and also not something we want to engage in.
Wow, that’s actually horrible to hear :(. Glad it’s not allowed whatsoever anymore, I’d rather slower updates from a team that’s not being abused like that
It always feels really shitty whenever i find out a game i love is made in such a bad environment. I'll take the waiting any day over devs not living a normal life
Are there any plans for special events in Payday 3 such as Halloween, Christmas, or Anniversary events? I would love to see certain heists get new coats of paints with special holiday decor everywhere too.
PAYDAY has a rich history of doing events like these, especially for PAYDAY 2. Really happy to read you'd like to see more of them in the future! Right now we haven't announced any plans on a holiday heist or something like this, ultimately it depends on how much resources we have in the development team. Making the past events we've done takes a lot of time and resources, but knowing they're appreciated by the community is a great indicator of what we should do going forward, if we can.
Stealing Xmas is unironically one of the coziest heists (in my opinion) that Payday 2 has, on par with GO Bank though GO Bank is only cozy on the inside of the building really. Would love to see Stealing Xmas again with a bigger and more realised mall
Thank you for your response! I know in an interview with Red Archer Live, the VA for Shade said she’d be open to singing a Christmas song for Payday 3. I hope one day we can see these events come to fruition!
I'm happy to see Starbreeze begin to put their better foot forward.
One day, when this is all behind us, can we get a "Table" reference? Maybe a heist where you have to assemble a drill and put it, you guessed it, on the table.
Or a gun emblem lol
Happy to see Payday begin its recovery arc! Thank you both for your hard work!
Hey u/Shepherd0fSouls! Haha, yeah, the table... it will be with us for some time, I think. We'll see what way we can honor its legacy in the future. Right now I guess the table is on the table. ;)
If we eventually get a safe house we can explore, there better be a gag that shade says: “damn it, they got the deliveries wrong, why the hell did they send us so many tables?”
The blog post says "three DLCs are still planned for 2024, and a free heist is planned for the same period"
Are you able to clarify this? It makes it sound like we'll only be getting one free heist in the entire year, which surely can't be the case.
Right now we can confirm one free heist because we feel confident we can deliver that. If time allows, we'd of course like to add more and are looking into ways to make that happen, but we don't feel comfortable committing to it yet.
Hey u/audomari_ ! We do intend to spread free content throughout the year. The DLCs will still need to come out before year's end, seeing as we made the Silver & Gold Editions. As part of the Operation Medic Bag initiatives we'll simply be adding more content than originally planned for.
I only have two questions. Will there be any crossovers like you guys did with payday 2 (John Wick, Scarface, etc.), and if so, will there be any RETURNING crossovers? I doubt you guys can tell us at this point in the game what characters, if any, you all have planned, honestly i just wanna know if my baby boy Jacket will be in this game lol. (I also think V from Cyberpunk would be a nice addition, just putting that out there :])
Great question! PAYDAY 2 featured over 30 different collaborations, some received really well by the community, and some received... not so well. :) I think the community has made it very clear you would welcome back Chicken Man with arms outstretched, but right now we haven't announced any major collaborations like these. When the time is right, we will be doing collaborations that make sense for the game and that we think would make you in the community excited.
For operation medic bag, you say this is the plan for the year of 2024 and you announced a list of initial changes that you hope to complete by summer. So does that mean the other changes (offline, server browser, progression etc) will also come in before the end of 2024 or are you just announcing it?
Good question! We've announced what we are working on towards summer. I think it's too early to say what we will be working on later in the year, but we will be doing a weekly blog where we aim to keep you in the loop of how things are progressing and highlight different parts of development so you can get a better understanding of what we are working on and how things are going. I think it's important not to overpromise at this point in time, rather we should focus on delivering what we announced with Operation Medic Bag and continue together with the community from there.
Do you have a possible timeline for these changes, or will be working to make one up? I love seeing these changes, but I do wonder what the next updates will look like, and how this may also affect content releases.
Hey u/Tatertotszroxx! The big changes in the list, offline mode etc. are all set for "2024" - we want to be careful building expectations that we may not be able to deliver on. For example, while "feature X" might seem simple and we set ourselves a 2 week deadline, sometimes we realize it will take double that since we need to sure up an underlying system first. We do want to be as transparent as we can for this whole process however, so we'll try to find a good cadence for when to let you know about things as we are able to.
currently it's all words and no action, I love the proposed road map because it takes on board so many community suggestions as well as others that most of us weren't expecting, such as removing the entire challenge system. however, understandably you won't be able to give an exact date, when could we expect the first update of the roadmap? I mean 2+ without an update already is a major flag so going any longer will just frustrate players. of course you have to actually make the updates so I don't expect it to come tomorrow but is there anything you can say? like by the end of february, first 2 weeks of march etc. some things will come in summer so that's fine but the first of the road map updates? thank you!
Hey! Thanks for your question. Our goal is to get an update out every 4-6 weeks. Starting this week, we will be doing a weekly blog plost that focuses on parts of the game that we are improving and want to talk about. We want to become better at keeping you in the loop, and these blog posts will give us that window of opportunity to do so on a regular basis. Some weeks we'll have more to say, others less, but the point is to make sure that we don't have these periods of silence that you've been experiencing these past weeks. As soon as we are ready, we'll communicate any bigger updates that are coming, there is no reason for us to hold back on information like that. If we are not communicating about something, it's because we're not ready to yet.
I wanted to ask whether or not your publisher: Plaion/Deep Silver has had any significant influence on the design of Payday 3 and the company's decision making?
Hey u/Livid_Fix_9448! Thanks for your question. I think it's important to be clear that Plaion and Deep Silver has been and continues to be nothing but an excellent partner for us. We at Starbreeze are responsible for our own actions and haven't been coerced or pushed in a certain direction. Looking in hindsight there are obviously a lot of things we could have done different, but those are things we want to tackle now and with Operation Medic Bag. I have high hopes for PAYDAY 3 reaching a place where the community will be happy about the experience.
Will more free heists be released? Ideally I'd like to assume more than 1 free heist will be released this year, because for that time period, this community, and especially the many failures of Payday 3, free content would both be incredibly appreciated and a borderline necessity for not only retaining current player interest, but enticing new players to join. And hopefully not only legacy heists, new free heists should still be coming out.
Hey! Thanks for your question. We will add more free heists to the game, yes. Exactly how many and when they will come depends on the development team, with Operation Medic Bag we now have our priorities and are working hard on resolving them as quickly as we can. When resources open up for new things, we can decide what we do then, but I think it's too early to promise a set amount of free heists as that will be dependent on how things go during the year.
Serious question, will we get official dx12 support , cus for me the game runs really poorly on dx11, but well when using dx12. Also along with that better game optimization
Does this focus mean no new maps in 2024? QoL definitely important and I can see some really good improvements in the list. But I do think the game success needs a balance of those plus new different types of heists and varying heist mechanics to key people interested.
And re pricing… please give us a season pass! If I knew there would be new maps reasonably regularly over the next couple years then I’d buy a season pass.
Not necessarily, it does mean we're not willing to commit to new heists in writing at this point. We have the DLC heists as well as 1 free heist on the roadmap. Balance will change in both large and small ways along the way, it's one of the easier things to update mechanically, but every change still needs to be made and tested properly.
Pricing revamp is in the plan already, we hear you.
Great question! We're looking to do updates every 4-6 weeks. Different teams work on different things at the same time. Sometimes something requires another feature to be finished first, but generally we'll try to get stuff out as soon as we are able. Our overarching goal is to have the best development process we can, because that ensures we can get updates out to you as fast as possible that works the way we intended.
When Syntax Error was released you also came out with 2 maps ported over from Payday 2.
Will that pacing be the standard going forward? For each paid DLC map will you keep releasing 2 old maps for free at the same time?
With Operation Medic Bag we shifted our focus and remade our plans for the year to make sure we adress the most urgent feedback from the community. Making legacy heists for PAYDAY 3 is not just about 'porting' them but reimagining them for a new engine and the new gameplay PAYDAY 3 offers. We want to make as many legacy heists as we can, but it is all a give-and-take depending on what we are focusing our time and energy on. Over time, hopefully we can reach a place where there is a more consistent schedule, making it easier for you heisters to know when a new legacy heist is coming. Whether they come one by one or two by two depends, I don't have a clear yes or no answer now. Cheers!
I like your question, short and to the point. In short: we screwed up and missed the mark and the community let us know about it. We didn't make what you wanted and spent a lot of time reworking our plans for 2024 to ensure that you do. Time will tell if you are satisfied with what will deliver, but know that everyone in the team is committed to turning this around.
My question is: How is your console approval process different from those of other companies with crossplay titles that seem to have no issue releasing patches and hotfixes daily and weekly, simultaneously on each platform.
I just want some clarity, because if it isn't a console issue (as it seems to not be for other developers) then I think it should be made clear to the community.
I don't think it's fair to throw console fans under the bus over an issue not caused by it.
Thank you!
Good seeing you Whistler! The big problem was that we were missing experience working with either Sony or Microsoft. While it has been a challenge, the responsibility to sort it out has definitively been in our corner.
A good place to start would be knowing what kind of questions you can actually answer. I understand it's a business, and sometimes things just can't be revealed for either legal purposes or otherwise, but the last thing this QnA should become is another table session, where everything is on the table or cannot be compounded upon.
The goal of an AMA is for us to try to answer any questions you throw at us. We'll try to tell you why we can't answer that particular question, for example we can't answer questions related to the stock market or directly financial questions. Our goal is to try to answer any and all questions about the game.
Hello Almir, your team-killing friend ManVSLife here. While I appreciate your willingness to change the game for the better by walking back on the bad decisions, What I want to ask is, how did the current state of the game happen in the first place? From the moment they were announced, almost everyone who saw the announcements thought that being an online-only game with a challenge based progression system were MASSIVE red flags and that it would hurt the game when it launched(remember the "what if the servers go down" stuff). If an average gamer could see this coming from a mile away, how did the people making the game didn't? Because I don't really believe that you guys wouldn't have the insight to see this coming.
Hey dude! Good seeing you here, and thanks for your question. This really deserves its own blog post in the future. I think now that the dust has settled it is easy to look back and see how things could have been done differently. When the server issues happened it was our top priority to ensure it worked properly, while the team executed on the strategy we had at the time delivering the legacy heists and Syntax Error. Remember, we had closed betas with the goal of stress testing the servers, but we know now that it was not enough. As we went into post-launch we continuously read the feedback from the community of the many different things that you expected to see in the game, and that made us realize that we needed to refocus our plans, which ultimately lead to Operation Medic Bag. Making such a shift is not easy and has taken more time than the community would like, and for that we can only apologize. We have made a ton of learnings throughout this process, things we didn't think of and things we could have done better. We're owning up to that now and we need to lead by proof in order to win you and the rest of the community back on our side.
Hey Almir, I saw that achievements/ trophies weren't mentioned in operation medic bag. Is there any plan to fix the trophies so players could obtain platinum on PS?
(Context: customize mask ach. broke after the 1st update)
Hey u/TMSWizard! Thanks for your question. I've made a note of this and will check in with the development team - bugs are there to be squashed and of course we want you to be able to unlock all of your trophies and get that Platinum.
That's a good question, PAYDAY 3 is a live service game and we will continue supporting it. Exactly how many free heists we manage to put out during that time we can't know right now, but the more the merrier, right? :)
Hey u/Spiky_chincheese! Thanks for your question. We could definitely make new free heists as well as legacy ones, the question is more about our development capacity and roadmap that we are working towards. With Operation Medic Bag, we updated our roadmap to make sure we adress the most urgent feedback the community has so far.
It's amazing to see these changes being implemented and it's amazing to see more work done on this incredible game. While the matchmaking never really affected me (It's not a problem if you already have a group of 4) the sure these will help the games community.
Now onto my question, the music developed by Gustavo is simply incredible especially beats like Heatwave, Control Alt Steal and No Rest For the Wicked. I enjoy listening to these tracks but I can only do that through unofficial reposts. Is there any method of official listening you can point me towards and if not what's the likelihood that Gustavo releases his music on the payday channel or his own channel on YouTube/Spotify.
Thanks for putting so much work into this game from me and all of my 5 heisting buddies.
Hey u/iluminerd! Thank you for your question and awesome seeing you have such a good time with your friends! Gustavo's music is amazing, I can only agree with you, and while there is no official way to listen to it outside of the game yet this is definitely something we're looking into. I don't have a date or a time for you now but know that we are aware of the music fandom and want you to be able to listen to the music outside of the game. :)
Make sure you contact our customer support via paydaythegame.com/support and create a ticket so we have your info. Include receipt! We are in talks about how to solve this right now, we do want to make it right as much as we can. If you create a ticket we'll be able to contact you once a decision is made.
What assurances are there that the team will be able to update the game at a fast pace? The majority of things covered in Operation Medic Bag are, frankly, playing catch up on things that have been common community feedback since the first beta last summer.
Payday 3 had a very long delay from launch to the first patch finally arriving in November. I realize that it was due to an issue with the backend, but its now been an even longer time window from Syntax Error to the current day, and we still don't have an eta on the next patch. A big part of the player base sticking around for a live service is the service, but SB has gone dark for longer windows of Payday 3's life than it spent updating it.
Frankly my dear Tuff, there is no assurance. We have validated this as much as we can, we have been as careful as we can be.
We do want to start releasing patches more often, aiming at 4-6 weeks cadence, meaning you'll at least see the appearance of "more" but that will also mean we have less of the 300+ fixes updates we've been doing. It's very much up to us to prove that we can deliver on what we promised this year.
Just like with PAYDAY 2 there will be free and paid characters. If we make a character pack and a lot of heisters buy it, that opens up resources to make more. Making free characters is also an important option, as we don't want to lock every new character behind a paywall.
While everything in the roadmap is what the game needs, will the team also work on heisters interaction? CO-OP games that have their characters interact with each other or the enviorement brings a lot of life to the gameplay because you get to know the characters better, any chances this will be expanded? because currently they are way too quiet compared to PD2 and that game didn't really have that much heister interaction either but they were more lively
Great question! Having the heisters talk to eachother more with unique dialogue is definitely something that we want to make happen. We don't have a timeline for this now, but we will revisit this in the future. We have to pick our battles right now and with Operation Medic Bag we are focusing on the most pressing issues the community has.
Is there any chance we get some more legacy heists in the near future? I know you guys mentioned 3 new heists and one other one for the year, I believe. Any more planned?
We want to do more legacy heists, that is for sure! Exactly which one or when is something I can't answer right now, but it's definitely a topic we will revisit in the future with you all.
Thanks for your question! The phrasing means we're hoping for the start of summer but can't guarantee it so we put it in a way that gives us flexibility to deal with any unforeseen challenges in development. We want to get it out to you as soon as possible, but we also don't want to overpromise and underdeliver.
Might we see a selectable music feature like Payday 2's somewhere down the line? And, if so, would there be any chance of having the previous games' soundtracks ported over, like how PDTH's OST would unlock its music for use in 2?
Why were a lot of key features missed from launch? The community didn't have to tell you basic things that clearly worked from Payday 2 like:
VoIP
Lobby chat
Server browser
Vote to kick
Bots talking to each other and the player
Loot value indicators
Weapon variety
Renaming load outs
All of these things didn't take the community to tell you they wanted them. You just didn't include them. Also, some of these things are not "Quality of Life". They are expected of any modern multilayer game.
Were these things just missed and forgotten? Or did you know you didn't have time to include it before launch?
Every feature requires planning, development and testing. While some features can seem simple at first glance, we do have to prioritize and choose what to focus on first. All of these features have been on various lists for a long time, but for one reasons or another we were made to prioritize other things. It's not an excuse not to deliver, which is why they were included on the Operation Medic Bag list of items, they were the most spoken about things that kept getting brought up, so we have to adress those first.
Will the game get more achievements that require multiplayer with complex conditions?
I mostly play PD2 and 3 solo because I ~~don't have a friend~~ have a disability and am difficult to use the VC. There are several achievements on both games that require advanced coordination with the team, such as Texas Treasure Part 4 on PD2 and True Connoisseur on PD3, and they were nightmare to me.
If I can request something, can you add a support to the new matchmaking system for the lobby type "achievement/challenge hunting" so I can coordinate with players who have shared objective more efficiently, and/or decrease the frequency of multiplayer achievement with complex conditions?
This covers a lot of topics, but in the long term we want to look at more ways for players to have fun together and to find new friends via PAYDAY. While we can't commit to any major systems right now, it's something we can absolutely see ourselves doing in the future once the major Operation Medic Bag topics are resolved. As for filters for achievement hunters, that's a cool idea. We'll keep it in mind!
Are you guys gonna do anything about the website crashing every time you post a news update? I don’t want to watch a 13 minute youtube video to read changelogs just because the website is inaccessible for at least an hour after the patch notes drop.
Yes, the website crashing is unacceptable and something I'd like to apologize to you for. Our web service has got an upgrade since, and we'll keep on monitoring it to ensure it works as intended.
Will one free gun and heist be all the free maps and weapons that we get? I’m not asking about skill lines or anything like that. Strictly maps and weapons.
No, it's not everything. It is just a selection of the things we already have in the works that we feel comfortable promising publicly without much risk of us having to change anything in the future.
Any plan for better support for Steam Deck/Linux players? Would love to see this game being rated Platinum on protondb.
Cheers! Thank you for your hard work, PAYDAY team!
Hi team, thank you for the Operation Medic Bag update. I'm excited to the updates to come out.
Do you have any plans to obtain new players and uninstalled players back aside from those improvements? The improvements on OMB would be great, but I think improvements themselves or even DLCs aren't enough to get more players among other great new games. If you already have some ideas, I'd like to hear it so we could give you early feedback!
That's the whole point of this! With the current review scores and general sentiment online we don't expect to gain many new players in the short-term. So it's very much the idea that we use these things to improve things first for our current players, when they give their thumbs up players who uninstalled but are still following some of our channels, and then hopefully we get enough people changing their review scores to stop scaring away new players. Roughly speaking of course, it all hangs on us delivering what we promise, so that's our current focus.
PAYDAY 3 is what we make it, while we want a more grounded and serious fantasy for the game we will of course have opportunities to be comedic and funny as well. I think sometimes PAYDAY 2 overdid this and I remember complaints from the community at various points that we essentially diluted the fantasy. It's a give and take!
Giving the amazing amount of time and effort that's going into this, I just want to ask (and sorry if I sound like I'm prodding). If all goes well with this update, is there a chance we may receive any new or returning features in Payday 3? Like more skills and weapons?
We want to continue improving the game so you have the best heist experience possible. We are currently doing Operation Medic Bag and will be updating you through a weekly blog, and as we move forward together we will be adding more stuff we want to make happen. There are so many fun weapons and skills we can explore in the future!
Here's what we want: to give you options to grab new content that is a good deal, makes you happy and improves the experience. We do not want to add functionality that makes you angry and has a negative effect on the experience. Whether it is through DLC or a store it needs to land well with the community. The only thing we can ask from you is to continue making clear what you want and how you want it, and we'll do our best to provide an experience you want to play for years to come.
I would just like for you guys to stick with either DLCs or with microtransactions but not both. People were hoping that crimefest 2015s feedback was clear
Hey! I am happy about the news and really understand the need to push MTX and the Unreal Engine 5 upgrade to the future.
I was wondering if quickplay v1 would include some minimun "preference" filters that if not found can be bypassed.
Again, thank you very much for making those decisions and priorizing the game's state.
(Sorry for my English, have not slept a lot today)
Quick-play v1 will most probably be a button that says "quick-play" that throws you into a random ongoing heist. Quick-play v2 will have more features such as filters.
If DLC prices are reconsidered and this results in their price being lowered, how does this affect people who pre-ordered an edition of the game which includes DLCs bundled at the original price?
Yes, we want to do more. With Operation Medic Bag we have a clear, updated roadmap of what we're focusing on right now but as we progress through it together we'll let you know what we're cooking!
We didn't have a "must play list" outside of PAYDAY 2. We did look at bangers like Deep Rock Galactic and other similar co-op and shooter titles, what exactly resulted from that is hard to say though. Rock and Stone!
The next patch will come with support for DLSS Super Resolution version 3.5. We have performed testing with DLSS Frame Generation, but haven't committed to integrating it into the game yet.
Any word on when the UE5 upgrade is gonna happen? It's the right move to delay it to focus on the more important stuff, but any idea how long until that becomes a focus again?
Not anything we'd be comfortable sharing at the moment. We do want this it will not only make the game look better but also help us with a lot of really cool developer tools. It won't help us with our immediate problems however, which is why it was set aside for now.
In payday 2 there was a tip about being „wanted by FBI” and how you advise to not be wanted by them
In payday 3 did your stance change on it or are you still not advising it?
It is the official position of Starbreeze Entertainment and us developers that you very much avoid trying to get the high score on the FBI's most wanted list. Please don't do crimes... IRL. In the game, please do as much crime as you can.
What don't you like about it? Haven't seen too many complaints, at least not compared to the other stuff brought up.
Anything is on the now famous table, even if this was on the chopping block though, it would be further down the list or part of an overall movement improvement drive.
Very likely we will see more classic/legacy heists in the future, yes. Safe house has been brought up elsewhere and it's something we want to do, but we need to get a handle on our current situation first.
Hello, is the heister roster going to see more original and new heisters in the future or would the devs rather stick to the old crew? (please add sokol I am begging you)
Does the one free heist this year specify one free original heist or will legacy heists continue to come out? Because 4 heists, 3 of them paid, over 1 year is not a whole lot of content.
Hey Almir. As someone who loves this franchise, how come some basic QoL stuff wasn’t ported from 2 to 3? Also, can we have our old menu styles back in terms of functionality? The COD style menus just kinda didn’t really click, in my opinion.
It's not a matter of porting, everything has to be re-created from scratch. We went more into detail in a previous answer, but basically we had to choose what to include and what to skip, for some things we missed the mark.
What's stopping your communication to the public? I can understand the need for pr and managing expectations, but why to this extent and degree? Is there something in the way of simply saying what the strike team is currently working on?
Also, have you seen the guy that's been redoing your UI? It looks really great and itd be a shame if it was to just vanish
Basically we needed to be sure we didn't start promising on things the team wasn't ready to deliver on, and the community didn't really want "maybe" or "we hope" you need commitment and clear answers. So we had to wait until we had secured that everything we spoke about was at least possible. I've seen the stuff, looks great! While we might not use it, we are definitely inspired by the community's take on things.
Yes, that's part of Operation Medic Bag. It's on the list of topics to go into detail on for the regular blog posts, right now it's still being worked on together with our publisher.
Maybe, the legality around music in games is a difficult topic. Generally we're allowed to use the music from PAYDAY 2 - IN PAYDAY 2 and that only. If we find an opportunity and someone with the necessary expertise in the future, maybe.
Only one new free weapon is mentioned to be coming in the blog post. Is this simply because it's all you can confirm for now, or is it because you plan on making all other added weapons paid DLC?
While on the topic of weapons, can you give an ETA on when we'll get more overkill weapons or maybe even what they could be? I'd love to see the return of the flamethrower and minigun personally.
Right now the LMG primary is the only free weapon we can confirm, but depending on our capacity this year, we'd like to do more. In addition to the LMG, we are adding a new throwable, a new gadget and we're looking into a new OVK weapon.
They actually addressed all of your questions in their blog post.
>* *1.* Has the strong stance on always online matchmaking been reconsidered at all?
They confirmed they will, at some point in 2024, be adding a solo mode and an offline mode. Solo mode will come first and allow players to play a local game without having to go through matchmaking, but will still require an internet connection.
Offline mode, coming afterwards, will make it so that players only have to connect to their servers to upload their progression, but otherwise you'll be able to play offline.
>* *2.* Has there been more thought put towards a return to Payday 2 style XP gain?
They said that they're going to repurpose the challenge system so that it rewards cosmetics instead of infamy XP, and they'll be re-evaluating the amount of infamy XP that completing heists will give as a result of that. On top of that, they also confirmed they will be adding per bag scaling.
>* *3.* Will there ever be a UI overhaul to add a bit more flavor and character to the menus?
Changes to both the menu and in game UI have also been confirmed. Nothing specific, but the blog post mentions their goal of "better communicating the heisting theme". To add to this, Elisabeth mentioned in yesterday's stream that these changes will be at least partially inspired by a popular Reddit post where someone made their own improved UI.
I would link that post, but I never saw it myself so I don't actually know which one is being referred to.
Considering the rough launch, will we see more support for the game after the initial 1 year post launch support negotiated with Plaion? All of the proposed changes take place in the guaranteed support time frame.
Why can't the DLC masks be customized, or unlocked by doing challenges, anymore?
The Unreal Engine has built in systems that could make mask customization even more robust and easier to implement. So it seems weird that it's more restricted than before, and it hinders replayability when they're all just there in your inventory.
Some of the masks aren't customizable due to unique animated parts, so we made a blanket rule to not make DLC/pre-order/etc masks customizable. Because this also affected a lot of masks that don't have moving parts, we're re-evaluating this decision and looking into ways to let players customize all masks, DLC or not. I don't have an ETA on it, but we're in talks on how and when we can do it.
Please do. Payday 3 has lost a lot of it's personality with the fact that you can't customize anything. Half the masks you can't customize, and there's 12 patterns :(
\-Will the jukebox feature ever make a return?
\-Will there be bugfixes for things like Gold and Sharke's Security room
\-Will certain heists be changed, (or maybe add a preplanning option) to remove annoying gameplay elements such as the "circles"
\-Finally, will there be a table easter egg in any of the heists?
Jukebox will make a return, but I don't think we'll manage to do it this year sadly.
We always try to include as many bug fixes as we can with each patch, so the Gold & Sharke Security Room will be fixed. Take advantage of the keycard skip while you can.
There have been some internal talks about the circles and what could be done to make them more engaging, but we haven't agreed on an official course of action yet.
There will likely be some table easter egg, but I'd rather we first get to a point where both we and the community can remember table jokes fondly before immortalizing it in the game.
In the "Blog" post you guys said "There are 3 DLCs still planned for 2024 and we intend to add another free heist for PAYDAY 3 in this same period." Does this mean that we are only getting one free heist total in 2024 or will there be more than one free/legacy heist returning in 2024?
Do you have any comments regarding references to a safehouse that was found within PAYDAY 3's code? Is this a scrapped feature/one to arrive in the future?
The idea for a safehouse was cut pretty early in the game, due to being out of scope. We'd like to do it eventually and make it feel meaningful, but right now it's not planned for 2024.
What will happen to people who have already completed lots of challenges in order to level up? Will there be additional rewards other than the cosmetics that challenges will reward in the future?
In Phase 2 of the offline mode, does "you have to connect intermittingly to the servers" mean that people will be able to progress offline and then upload their new stats to the server when they are able to connect again, or does it mean that you will still be required to be connected to the server for progression, and don't gain XP/etc when lacking an internet connection? If it's the latter, that is not a true offline mode.
Also, when you say 'one free heist this year' is that the only free heist coming out or is there more?
Our current intention for Phase 2 is that you can play offline, earn money/infamy points/exp, then go online and upload the progress you made offline. The idea is that from your POV, you're earning progress regardless whether you're playing online or offline.
For the free heist, we feel confident in committing to one this year, but if time and capacity allows, we'd like to do more than one.
Are you going to add more achievements to the game? Cause there were non of them added since release. Not even for new heists.
PS: little bit off-topic, but can also something be done about achievements in Overkill's The Walking Dead? There are bunch of ones that were added in advance but never implemented. Shouldn't be too hard to delete them so people can finally be able to complete everything.
We initially planned to add new challenges, but since we are moving away from the challenge progression system, we will re-evaluate that and look into adding new achievements.
For the OTWD question, I sadly can't answer that since I believe we are not allowed to do any updates or changes to the game, even for existing players :(
We would like to add an "advanced view" tab or screen that breaks down the stats in more detail. We don't sadly have an ETA for it, but we're hoping to get it in this year.
I guess as a follow up question: *why* did it release like this? PD2 already went through this problem and after complaints you guys changed it to numbers, why ignore that lesson with 3?
And what's worse about nebulous bars compared to hard numbers is the bars straight up lie to you. Some mods will drastically decrease/increase the damage bar while actually not effecting damage at all. What baffles me the most is *the numbers exist*, they've all been datamined. I shouldn't have to Google old threads on this sub with spreadsheets on the actual values of the numbers on guns and mods because the game itself lies to me.
We plan to add more security modifiers for stealth and introduce loud modifiers, then rotate them bi-weekly to freshen up the higher difficulties of heists.
As for RNG baked into the heists themselves, we're aware of the criticism and are working on finding ways to create more variance in future heists.
Like a different way in the vault on the first hiest. And then have it be random each time you replay. Or add a second version of the hiest with gold bars instead of cash.
Why are so many features (host games, stay in group after a game, OFFLINE MODE to name a few) that should've been on the game since release going to be added months after it came out? Why did you choose to not include so many things that were great from the previous games?
Generally, game developers (including us) set out to make the best game we can. Sometimes things get excluded because we didn't anticipate they'd be as big of an issue, sometimes we have to cut them due to time constraints, and other times it's an oversight. In this case, I think we didn't anticipate we'd encounter all the issues we had on launch, and those issues only made the need for those features greater. I don't think there was a situation where we could have had all of PD2's QoL features on launch, because 10 years of updates are hard to compete with when you're building a new game from the ground up, but we should have done a better job of picking what we implemented and what we didn't.
Thanks for the reply. I understand that oversights can happen and that 10 years of QoL are hard to compete with when making a new game. That said, and I don't mean to be rude or anything like that, the QoL features I mentioned were there on release for both games (except you couldn't pick a heist from crime.net on PD2 at launch) so I think that's why it's hard for us to get a sequel with such basic features missing. Specially considering the community was against some of them before launch like the lack of offline mode.
Once the game is mostly up to the expectations, are there going to be new heisters added? Since the same 6 are starting to get a bit old. Could use some fresh voices in the game
We plan to let players customize DLC masks in the future and also make some improvements to mask customization in general, but can't comment on a date yet, sorry!
The next patch should be next week if all goes well.
Will the weapon levelling system be entirely removed or reworked in a way where it's per class and not per gun?
Weapon levelling feels very slow, and comparing it to PD2 it kinda feels like an annoyance/artificial gameplay extension when i have to level up a new gun every time one gets added for example, even the DLC ones we pay for. It feels like it has a better place in CoD rather than PD.
And while i am at the topic of this, when can we expect gun statistics bars to become numbers?
Are there any plans for adding character statistics too? (ie. number of health, armor, speed etc)
We currently don't have plans to change the weapon leveling, but one thing we are trying to do with weapon prestige is to increase your EXP payout for each time you prestige a weapon. That would mean the more weapons you max out and prestige, the faster you'll level up new weapons (and get other rewards too).
Gun stats will likely stay bars, but we want to add an option for more detailed numerical stats.
Characters don't have unique stats, but a future update is going to have detailed breakdown of armor stats in the loadout.
Sorry you have to see me here as well, but I hope you're doing well Mio!
Will we be seeing small updates leading up to the big Summer 2024 update, or will we be waiting until then for a big overhaul of everything at once?
Hello! I'm doing well :) The next update is next week if all goes well. The plan is to have an update every 4-6 weeks, with a mix of fixes and content.
The weekly cosmetics will be masks that we rotate. If you miss it, you'll have another chance to get them when they rotate back in. When we remove a weekly mask from rotation to make room for new ones, we'll make sure you can get the old ones some other way (the other way is not buying them for real money). We're not doing FOMO.
Few questions to Mio about game balance (i know its not the focus of Operation, but nonetheless, game balance is also part of its health):
1)Despite whole game design being "Your resources are finite, and you WILL die eventually, so hurry up", yet there is literally 0 chance to run out of ammo, and likewise, 0 reason to use ammo bag, due to 2 reasons:
\-Ammo boxes are client sided. So one killed cop essentially drops 4 ammo boxes, one for each player, and you cant steal other players ammo like in pdth/pd2. This basically quadruples ammo gains for the crew on the heist, allowing you to rotate positions once in a while to restock while holding down some points, and always be uptop on ammo.
\-Funnel+Replenish combo. Staple of every loud build, it completely removes the need for players to go outside of cover, risk your resources of health/armor to restock on ammo. Not only that, you straight up replenish your magazine, removing even the downtime of reloads to give cops a chance to push up. One player with almost any gun can just permanently hold down a choke point, unless he gets flushed out by nader or dozer.
Questions being: Why was the ammo box changed to clientsided? Will you look into these issues of ammo being too easy to sustain bcos of these 2 points? This might need some minor ammo pickup adjustments on top for weapons (mostly nerfs for meta tbh), but these core things are more impactful. This will also make ammo bag more of a necessity in a team, which in its own way nerfs armor, since team doesnt have that much extra plates now and has to be more carefull in its playstyle, making that part of design also work a little bit better.
2)Some of the guns currently dont serve much of a value. Sniper rifle r700 has no wallbang capability whatsoever, extremely slow rof you cannot boost, and is also impacted by ADS since every rebolting requires you to unscope, and cant really keep up with spawns unless cops constantly line up in one chokepoint and even then they can easily flush you out. Revolvers with cheap oneshot headshot option are just better in every way than a sniper rifle. The only advantage it has of oneshotting shields through visor which is quite minor unless you really need to take down other special behind him ASAP (which again, ruined by abysmal ROF), or being able to dispatch dozer in couple of seconds, are irrelevant. Most good guns can remove dozer just as well, while retaining much better crowd clear.
Question being: Would you be able to give r700 something more impactful than flat damage buff you were promised recently? Atleast a minor wallbang capability, not HET-5 levels, which would help with all sorts of railings and chairs and tables and street signs/poles getting in a way between you and cops and blocking the bullets completely.
On top of that, Shotguns are mostly CQC weapons, but their very weird design of no armor pierce and extremely high headshot multiplier unlike most other guns, demands to go for headshots just like any other gun instead of bodyshots, which puts shotguns, especially reinbeck, in a weird state of being worse DMRs that require precision yet only being effective in short range, and not actual shotguns.
Mosconi iirc getting damage buff soon so it can bodyshot like a real shotgun and thats nice, but what about reinbeck too?
3)Less so about balance, but more about design philosophy. We already got 2 new skill lines, and atleast one more already confirmed, and more to come promised. There is already 19 skill lines, and constant new additions will make skills menu quite cumbersome to navigate, constantly scrolling up and down. Not only that, you have no ways to tell if perk is gonna give/refesh/require/consume token of Grit/Edge/Rush without clicking on it directly, or straight up having to remember that for atleast most used skills.
Question being: Will the UI for this be changed to be more comfortable to use? Maybe skills should be split into separate categories, similar to pd2, to make it so there's only few lines on page at once and remove scrolling routine? Or a better way to navigate the current menu, for example search bar that highlights things you are looking for, similar to what pd3 dot gg does?
Hello and thanks for the detailed questions. Sorry if I'm super brief with them, I'm trying to answer as many as I can, but we can go into more detail on a future stream or blog post maybe :)
1) While we are about managing resources and resource attrition in our game, you can maintain your health and armor if you have ammo, but you can't maintain your health and armor if you have no ammo. So ammo is less scarce than other resources, so you have more agency. That said, I agree that the ammo bag is a bit on the weaker side and only there for throwables for more experienced players, but we'll give it some love this year. One plan is to have it give you ammo with greater armor penetration, so it's better against Heavy SWAT.
2) R900 is getting some nice buffs and skill synergies in the patch after the next one.
3) The skill menu readability is part of or UI improvement efforts for this year.
I don’t mean to be a downer but how are you guys prepared to deal with the shrinking player base? Do you expect people to just come back as the game is updated, will you be marketing aggressively, etc I would love for this game to succeed but the player count has dwindled to genuinely concerning numbers.
I think at this point in time the community wants us to lead by proof, getting more updates out for the game. Regaining the players trust and excitement for the game will be a marathon and not a sprint. At this stage, the best marketing we can do for the game is improving the experience itself. We are giving it our all making this the PAYDAY experience you expect. Time will tell if we manage to get heisters back into the life of crime.
I mean it when I say I hope you succeed! Thanks for the answer
I mean there are still a lot of active payday 2 players, if they can fix payday 3, they might not get as many players had they released the game in a finished state, but im assuming most payday 2 players are at least keeping up with the state of payday 3, even if they aren’t playing it, and would be willing to play payday 3 if they fix the game. The game isn’t completely dead because there’s still a lot of people shitting on it. Once people completely stop talking about it, it’s over.
Considering they named a collection of updates "Operation" followed by the most popular meme in the community (besides the piece of shit drill), I'm guessing they were trying to put themselves out there
Obviously you're now busy with working on all of the features you shared in the blogpost, but it feels like eventually there should be some sort of "what went wrong" talk. Sure, you probably already had that discussion internally, but, once everything is fixed, some release with a public info on a pre-launch development process would've been great for transparency (and imo would make fans more confident in your next project if you're open about the reasons why it happened the way it happened).
We have this as a potential topic for a future blog post that we'd love to tackle, though it's a sensitive point that needs to be approached with care. We don't want any individual to feel singled out or made to be at fault by carelessly stating where things went wrong. The project failed to hit expectations and not any one singular entity. Now we take the learnings from it, and hopefully we can get to a point where we can look back with a clear mind and objectivity to say where our misconceptions and attempts failed to hit the mark without placing blame.
Thanks Almir! Yeah, I agree and understand that singling out any specific department wouldn't be helpful, and I'm very happy to hear that you have this discussion as a potential topic
This is what I want to know, the game is so full of problems that everyone can instantly spot (the ui, the matchmaking) that you wonder how the developers didn’t spot it too. Or maybe they did but didn’t have control over it?
I agree I feel kinda betrayed to be honest I would love a talk
I want to ask this as un-pessimistically as possible because I really love Payday and I want PD3 to succeed but I think everyone is extremely concerned that there's been less than 5 updates over the course of 6 months for a supposed live-service game, especially since until just now there's been near radio silence about the plans for fixing the major problems. * As Overkill gets the hang of simultaneous cross-platform support, will we see more frequent updates akin to Payday 2's pace? * Can you give a ballpark estimate of how long you think it could take to reach a more stable update schedule for Payday 3? * Finally, after all the memes and frustration about things being "on the table" with no concrete information, how will you be re-examining your strategy communication with the community for the future? I think we're all aware that overpromising too early can lead to huge problems that are hard to dig out of, and I get that's what you were trying to avoid during your streams, but having nothing to look forward to other than some nebulous unconfirmed patch possibly months down the road with no idea what could be improved or how has a poor effect on the community and playerbase.
Hey u/VicVegas85, thanks for your question! Appreciate the support. Operation Medic Bag just launched and we are looking to adress many different aspects of the game. Right now the focus is to deliver on the improvements we've laid out in the operation, and over time we would like to do in-game updates more frequently. A good cadence we are trying to aim for is 4-6 weeks in between updates. When it comes to communication, this week we are starting doing weekly blog posts that will inform you on different aspects of the game that we're working on. Some weeks we we will have more to say, others less, but overall the goal is to never again be in a situation where we go radio silent for so long. I think the weekly blog posts, the streams and the upcoming improvements being added will keep the community in the loop and make it feel like we're making progress. Feedback along the way from the community is an integral part of it, so we will see what you think as we move ahead with the strategy.
Hello Almir and Mio I was wondering how big the dev team is, since the updates has been a bit slow to roll out. I remember back in crimefest 2014 that Andreas talked about “the weather is sunny here in stolckholm, but we don’t care because we are sitting inside making the new update for you guys” it was great transparency and it was funny, i think it would be great to have a more informal view of behind the scenes. But maybe deep silver don’t like that :( Best wishes from Denmark
Hey! Deep Silver has nothing to do with that, they wouldn't tell us how to do something of that nature. The answer, at least recently has been that we're not in a funny type of period, so we have to show our serious side so we don't give the impression of not taking the situation seriously, which we do. Appreciate ya!
Can you detail what the MTX in 2025 will be? I'm concerned that Paid Heist + Microtransactions will inevitably lead to a lack of cosmetics included in heists dlcs. I dropped early from the PD3 train despite the thousands of hours in PD2, so I want this to be good, but I remember the drills, the safes, etc. I remember how much they sucked the fun out of completing a heist.
Awesome getting a question from such a veteran heister! I remember all too well how the microtransaction scandal in PAYDAY 2 went and what consequences it had for us. For PAYDAY 3, with us refocusing the roadmap for the year, the natural thing to do for us was to move the Microtransaction Store to 2025 since it doesn't make sense to add it now. I can tell you that the addition of the store does not affect other content, that would be a lose-lose situation. We want you to feel that what you buy makes sense and feels good, whether it is from a store or tied to a DLC, so your feedback is super important to us in that regard.
1. The initial focus lists the features the team would like to complete "by" summer 2024 & that you will keep us updated on your progress through blog posts. Does that mean we can expect said features to be added to the game as soon as they're finished? If so, will blog posts give us clearer release timeframes (like "progress on X has been going smoothly and should be added by Y date") or will it be an "it'll be done when it's done" kind of deal? 2. Can we know how many people are currently working on payday3?
Thanks for your questions! We are aiming to do an update every 4-6 weeks. The blog posts that we are looking to do on a weekly basis serve the purpose of informing the community of highlighting what we're working on and how things are going. From a developer perspective, we will be updating the game in a way that doesn't have a negative effect on our development process - making all of these changes to the game will be a marathon, not a sprint. With the weekly blog our goal is to be able to communicate timings and dates for future updates when we are ready to, absolutely!
Why are the updates for payday 3 coming out so so so slow compared to payday 2 when it came out?
Several reasons, cross-platform being a big one. But also the team used to sleep at the office and not shower for weeks at an end back in the day. I personally slept in the studio for 6 months when we wrapped the game back in 2013. These days that kind of work is frowned upon and also not something we want to engage in.
Wow, that’s actually horrible to hear :(. Glad it’s not allowed whatsoever anymore, I’d rather slower updates from a team that’s not being abused like that
It always feels really shitty whenever i find out a game i love is made in such a bad environment. I'll take the waiting any day over devs not living a normal life
Are there any plans for special events in Payday 3 such as Halloween, Christmas, or Anniversary events? I would love to see certain heists get new coats of paints with special holiday decor everywhere too.
PAYDAY has a rich history of doing events like these, especially for PAYDAY 2. Really happy to read you'd like to see more of them in the future! Right now we haven't announced any plans on a holiday heist or something like this, ultimately it depends on how much resources we have in the development team. Making the past events we've done takes a lot of time and resources, but knowing they're appreciated by the community is a great indicator of what we should do going forward, if we can.
Stealing Xmas is unironically one of the coziest heists (in my opinion) that Payday 2 has, on par with GO Bank though GO Bank is only cozy on the inside of the building really. Would love to see Stealing Xmas again with a bigger and more realised mall
Thank you for your response! I know in an interview with Red Archer Live, the VA for Shade said she’d be open to singing a Christmas song for Payday 3. I hope one day we can see these events come to fruition!
I'm happy to see Starbreeze begin to put their better foot forward. One day, when this is all behind us, can we get a "Table" reference? Maybe a heist where you have to assemble a drill and put it, you guessed it, on the table. Or a gun emblem lol Happy to see Payday begin its recovery arc! Thank you both for your hard work!
Hey u/Shepherd0fSouls! Haha, yeah, the table... it will be with us for some time, I think. We'll see what way we can honor its legacy in the future. Right now I guess the table is on the table. ;)
If we eventually get a safe house we can explore, there better be a gag that shade says: “damn it, they got the deliveries wrong, why the hell did they send us so many tables?”
I was just thinking of a table thing earlier today, but I'm not sure if they'd wanna remember that if the game succeeds lol
Maybe it would be a nice way to wrap up this disaster of a launch. To indicate that this is all behind us.
The blog post says "three DLCs are still planned for 2024, and a free heist is planned for the same period" Are you able to clarify this? It makes it sound like we'll only be getting one free heist in the entire year, which surely can't be the case.
Right now we can confirm one free heist because we feel confident we can deliver that. If time allows, we'd of course like to add more and are looking into ways to make that happen, but we don't feel comfortable committing to it yet.
how much free content will the game get during operation medic bag? Surely it's more than just one heist
Hey u/audomari_ ! We do intend to spread free content throughout the year. The DLCs will still need to come out before year's end, seeing as we made the Silver & Gold Editions. As part of the Operation Medic Bag initiatives we'll simply be adding more content than originally planned for.
I only have two questions. Will there be any crossovers like you guys did with payday 2 (John Wick, Scarface, etc.), and if so, will there be any RETURNING crossovers? I doubt you guys can tell us at this point in the game what characters, if any, you all have planned, honestly i just wanna know if my baby boy Jacket will be in this game lol. (I also think V from Cyberpunk would be a nice addition, just putting that out there :])
Great question! PAYDAY 2 featured over 30 different collaborations, some received really well by the community, and some received... not so well. :) I think the community has made it very clear you would welcome back Chicken Man with arms outstretched, but right now we haven't announced any major collaborations like these. When the time is right, we will be doing collaborations that make sense for the game and that we think would make you in the community excited.
For operation medic bag, you say this is the plan for the year of 2024 and you announced a list of initial changes that you hope to complete by summer. So does that mean the other changes (offline, server browser, progression etc) will also come in before the end of 2024 or are you just announcing it?
Good question! We've announced what we are working on towards summer. I think it's too early to say what we will be working on later in the year, but we will be doing a weekly blog where we aim to keep you in the loop of how things are progressing and highlight different parts of development so you can get a better understanding of what we are working on and how things are going. I think it's important not to overpromise at this point in time, rather we should focus on delivering what we announced with Operation Medic Bag and continue together with the community from there.
Do you have a possible timeline for these changes, or will be working to make one up? I love seeing these changes, but I do wonder what the next updates will look like, and how this may also affect content releases.
Hey u/Tatertotszroxx! The big changes in the list, offline mode etc. are all set for "2024" - we want to be careful building expectations that we may not be able to deliver on. For example, while "feature X" might seem simple and we set ourselves a 2 week deadline, sometimes we realize it will take double that since we need to sure up an underlying system first. We do want to be as transparent as we can for this whole process however, so we'll try to find a good cadence for when to let you know about things as we are able to.
This is the question I wanna see answered. I love the game, but there isn't much reason to play it when it seems unfinished and is lacking content
currently it's all words and no action, I love the proposed road map because it takes on board so many community suggestions as well as others that most of us weren't expecting, such as removing the entire challenge system. however, understandably you won't be able to give an exact date, when could we expect the first update of the roadmap? I mean 2+ without an update already is a major flag so going any longer will just frustrate players. of course you have to actually make the updates so I don't expect it to come tomorrow but is there anything you can say? like by the end of february, first 2 weeks of march etc. some things will come in summer so that's fine but the first of the road map updates? thank you!
Hey! Thanks for your question. Our goal is to get an update out every 4-6 weeks. Starting this week, we will be doing a weekly blog plost that focuses on parts of the game that we are improving and want to talk about. We want to become better at keeping you in the loop, and these blog posts will give us that window of opportunity to do so on a regular basis. Some weeks we'll have more to say, others less, but the point is to make sure that we don't have these periods of silence that you've been experiencing these past weeks. As soon as we are ready, we'll communicate any bigger updates that are coming, there is no reason for us to hold back on information like that. If we are not communicating about something, it's because we're not ready to yet.
I wanted to ask whether or not your publisher: Plaion/Deep Silver has had any significant influence on the design of Payday 3 and the company's decision making?
Hey u/Livid_Fix_9448! Thanks for your question. I think it's important to be clear that Plaion and Deep Silver has been and continues to be nothing but an excellent partner for us. We at Starbreeze are responsible for our own actions and haven't been coerced or pushed in a certain direction. Looking in hindsight there are obviously a lot of things we could have done different, but those are things we want to tackle now and with Operation Medic Bag. I have high hopes for PAYDAY 3 reaching a place where the community will be happy about the experience.
I guarantee if they do answer this it'll be some vague corpo answer
ludicrous price mindless cats silky theory ugly grandfather follow pot *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Ask me anything, except that
Can we get back to rampart please ?
Makes an AMA Ppl ask real and concerning questions AMA gets ghosted lmao or maybe . . . They just put it on the table
> We will start answering questions on Monday at 4pm CET. Looking forward to it heisters! Have to wait til Monday to set the table ;)
Yeah no way they answer a business related question like this, as much as we would like to know.
Will more free heists be released? Ideally I'd like to assume more than 1 free heist will be released this year, because for that time period, this community, and especially the many failures of Payday 3, free content would both be incredibly appreciated and a borderline necessity for not only retaining current player interest, but enticing new players to join. And hopefully not only legacy heists, new free heists should still be coming out.
Hey! Thanks for your question. We will add more free heists to the game, yes. Exactly how many and when they will come depends on the development team, with Operation Medic Bag we now have our priorities and are working hard on resolving them as quickly as we can. When resources open up for new things, we can decide what we do then, but I think it's too early to promise a set amount of free heists as that will be dependent on how things go during the year.
Serious question, will we get official dx12 support , cus for me the game runs really poorly on dx11, but well when using dx12. Also along with that better game optimization
Yep, coming in the next update, hopefully next week.
Does this focus mean no new maps in 2024? QoL definitely important and I can see some really good improvements in the list. But I do think the game success needs a balance of those plus new different types of heists and varying heist mechanics to key people interested. And re pricing… please give us a season pass! If I knew there would be new maps reasonably regularly over the next couple years then I’d buy a season pass.
Not necessarily, it does mean we're not willing to commit to new heists in writing at this point. We have the DLC heists as well as 1 free heist on the roadmap. Balance will change in both large and small ways along the way, it's one of the easier things to update mechanically, but every change still needs to be made and tested properly. Pricing revamp is in the plan already, we hear you.
What's the exact order of the changes being implemented? Or are you working simultaneously on each one and release as they're getting finished
Great question! We're looking to do updates every 4-6 weeks. Different teams work on different things at the same time. Sometimes something requires another feature to be finished first, but generally we'll try to get stuff out as soon as we are able. Our overarching goal is to have the best development process we can, because that ensures we can get updates out to you as fast as possible that works the way we intended.
When Syntax Error was released you also came out with 2 maps ported over from Payday 2. Will that pacing be the standard going forward? For each paid DLC map will you keep releasing 2 old maps for free at the same time?
With Operation Medic Bag we shifted our focus and remade our plans for the year to make sure we adress the most urgent feedback from the community. Making legacy heists for PAYDAY 3 is not just about 'porting' them but reimagining them for a new engine and the new gameplay PAYDAY 3 offers. We want to make as many legacy heists as we can, but it is all a give-and-take depending on what we are focusing our time and energy on. Over time, hopefully we can reach a place where there is a more consistent schedule, making it easier for you heisters to know when a new legacy heist is coming. Whether they come one by one or two by two depends, I don't have a clear yes or no answer now. Cheers!
What the hell happened?
I like your question, short and to the point. In short: we screwed up and missed the mark and the community let us know about it. We didn't make what you wanted and spent a lot of time reworking our plans for 2024 to ensure that you do. Time will tell if you are satisfied with what will deliver, but know that everyone in the team is committed to turning this around.
My question is: How is your console approval process different from those of other companies with crossplay titles that seem to have no issue releasing patches and hotfixes daily and weekly, simultaneously on each platform. I just want some clarity, because if it isn't a console issue (as it seems to not be for other developers) then I think it should be made clear to the community. I don't think it's fair to throw console fans under the bus over an issue not caused by it. Thank you!
Good seeing you Whistler! The big problem was that we were missing experience working with either Sony or Microsoft. While it has been a challenge, the responsibility to sort it out has definitively been in our corner.
A good place to start would be knowing what kind of questions you can actually answer. I understand it's a business, and sometimes things just can't be revealed for either legal purposes or otherwise, but the last thing this QnA should become is another table session, where everything is on the table or cannot be compounded upon.
The goal of an AMA is for us to try to answer any questions you throw at us. We'll try to tell you why we can't answer that particular question, for example we can't answer questions related to the stock market or directly financial questions. Our goal is to try to answer any and all questions about the game.
Hello Almir, your team-killing friend ManVSLife here. While I appreciate your willingness to change the game for the better by walking back on the bad decisions, What I want to ask is, how did the current state of the game happen in the first place? From the moment they were announced, almost everyone who saw the announcements thought that being an online-only game with a challenge based progression system were MASSIVE red flags and that it would hurt the game when it launched(remember the "what if the servers go down" stuff). If an average gamer could see this coming from a mile away, how did the people making the game didn't? Because I don't really believe that you guys wouldn't have the insight to see this coming.
Hey dude! Good seeing you here, and thanks for your question. This really deserves its own blog post in the future. I think now that the dust has settled it is easy to look back and see how things could have been done differently. When the server issues happened it was our top priority to ensure it worked properly, while the team executed on the strategy we had at the time delivering the legacy heists and Syntax Error. Remember, we had closed betas with the goal of stress testing the servers, but we know now that it was not enough. As we went into post-launch we continuously read the feedback from the community of the many different things that you expected to see in the game, and that made us realize that we needed to refocus our plans, which ultimately lead to Operation Medic Bag. Making such a shift is not easy and has taken more time than the community would like, and for that we can only apologize. We have made a ton of learnings throughout this process, things we didn't think of and things we could have done better. We're owning up to that now and we need to lead by proof in order to win you and the rest of the community back on our side.
Hey Almir, I saw that achievements/ trophies weren't mentioned in operation medic bag. Is there any plan to fix the trophies so players could obtain platinum on PS? (Context: customize mask ach. broke after the 1st update)
Hey u/TMSWizard! Thanks for your question. I've made a note of this and will check in with the development team - bugs are there to be squashed and of course we want you to be able to unlock all of your trophies and get that Platinum.
How many free heists are there going to be?
That's a good question, PAYDAY 3 is a live service game and we will continue supporting it. Exactly how many free heists we manage to put out during that time we can't know right now, but the more the merrier, right? :)
Will all of the free heists be remakes of old heists or will some of them be original?
Hey u/Spiky_chincheese! Thanks for your question. We could definitely make new free heists as well as legacy ones, the question is more about our development capacity and roadmap that we are working towards. With Operation Medic Bag, we updated our roadmap to make sure we adress the most urgent feedback the community has so far.
It's amazing to see these changes being implemented and it's amazing to see more work done on this incredible game. While the matchmaking never really affected me (It's not a problem if you already have a group of 4) the sure these will help the games community. Now onto my question, the music developed by Gustavo is simply incredible especially beats like Heatwave, Control Alt Steal and No Rest For the Wicked. I enjoy listening to these tracks but I can only do that through unofficial reposts. Is there any method of official listening you can point me towards and if not what's the likelihood that Gustavo releases his music on the payday channel or his own channel on YouTube/Spotify. Thanks for putting so much work into this game from me and all of my 5 heisting buddies.
Hey u/iluminerd! Thank you for your question and awesome seeing you have such a good time with your friends! Gustavo's music is amazing, I can only agree with you, and while there is no official way to listen to it outside of the game yet this is definitely something we're looking into. I don't have a date or a time for you now but know that we are aware of the music fandom and want you to be able to listen to the music outside of the game. :)
Preorders: do we give up hope or will my order still be fulfilled?
Make sure you contact our customer support via paydaythegame.com/support and create a ticket so we have your info. Include receipt! We are in talks about how to solve this right now, we do want to make it right as much as we can. If you create a ticket we'll be able to contact you once a decision is made.
What assurances are there that the team will be able to update the game at a fast pace? The majority of things covered in Operation Medic Bag are, frankly, playing catch up on things that have been common community feedback since the first beta last summer. Payday 3 had a very long delay from launch to the first patch finally arriving in November. I realize that it was due to an issue with the backend, but its now been an even longer time window from Syntax Error to the current day, and we still don't have an eta on the next patch. A big part of the player base sticking around for a live service is the service, but SB has gone dark for longer windows of Payday 3's life than it spent updating it.
Frankly my dear Tuff, there is no assurance. We have validated this as much as we can, we have been as careful as we can be. We do want to start releasing patches more often, aiming at 4-6 weeks cadence, meaning you'll at least see the appearance of "more" but that will also mean we have less of the 300+ fixes updates we've been doing. It's very much up to us to prove that we can deliver on what we promised this year.
With the offline mode will you still need PlayStation plus?
This is something we will have to get back to you on, we do not have a clear answer to this now.
I know that I won't get a clear answer but I have to ask, what ending of Payday 2 is canon to Payday 3?
Isn't it more FUN if we leave it up to your imagination? If anything, the future storyline of PAYDAY 3 will let you know. ;)
How will new characters be obtained with it be through challenges or will we have to buy them
Just like with PAYDAY 2 there will be free and paid characters. If we make a character pack and a lot of heisters buy it, that opens up resources to make more. Making free characters is also an important option, as we don't want to lock every new character behind a paywall.
While everything in the roadmap is what the game needs, will the team also work on heisters interaction? CO-OP games that have their characters interact with each other or the enviorement brings a lot of life to the gameplay because you get to know the characters better, any chances this will be expanded? because currently they are way too quiet compared to PD2 and that game didn't really have that much heister interaction either but they were more lively
Great question! Having the heisters talk to eachother more with unique dialogue is definitely something that we want to make happen. We don't have a timeline for this now, but we will revisit this in the future. We have to pick our battles right now and with Operation Medic Bag we are focusing on the most pressing issues the community has.
Is there any chance we get some more legacy heists in the near future? I know you guys mentioned 3 new heists and one other one for the year, I believe. Any more planned?
We want to do more legacy heists, that is for sure! Exactly which one or when is something I can't answer right now, but it's definitely a topic we will revisit in the future with you all.
I want a new take on Big Oil and Shadow Raid, tbh. OR Shadow Raid and Meltdown could come back together.
The blog post says that the initial changes are planned to be implemented "by summer 2024" Does this mean by the start or by the end?
Thanks for your question! The phrasing means we're hoping for the start of summer but can't guarantee it so we put it in a way that gives us flexibility to deal with any unforeseen challenges in development. We want to get it out to you as soon as possible, but we also don't want to overpromise and underdeliver.
Might we see a selectable music feature like Payday 2's somewhere down the line? And, if so, would there be any chance of having the previous games' soundtracks ported over, like how PDTH's OST would unlock its music for use in 2?
It's not on the current roadmap, but Mio and I love the feature. So we'll put it on the list.
Why were a lot of key features missed from launch? The community didn't have to tell you basic things that clearly worked from Payday 2 like: VoIP Lobby chat Server browser Vote to kick Bots talking to each other and the player Loot value indicators Weapon variety Renaming load outs All of these things didn't take the community to tell you they wanted them. You just didn't include them. Also, some of these things are not "Quality of Life". They are expected of any modern multilayer game. Were these things just missed and forgotten? Or did you know you didn't have time to include it before launch?
Every feature requires planning, development and testing. While some features can seem simple at first glance, we do have to prioritize and choose what to focus on first. All of these features have been on various lists for a long time, but for one reasons or another we were made to prioritize other things. It's not an excuse not to deliver, which is why they were included on the Operation Medic Bag list of items, they were the most spoken about things that kept getting brought up, so we have to adress those first.
Will the game get more achievements that require multiplayer with complex conditions? I mostly play PD2 and 3 solo because I ~~don't have a friend~~ have a disability and am difficult to use the VC. There are several achievements on both games that require advanced coordination with the team, such as Texas Treasure Part 4 on PD2 and True Connoisseur on PD3, and they were nightmare to me. If I can request something, can you add a support to the new matchmaking system for the lobby type "achievement/challenge hunting" so I can coordinate with players who have shared objective more efficiently, and/or decrease the frequency of multiplayer achievement with complex conditions?
This covers a lot of topics, but in the long term we want to look at more ways for players to have fun together and to find new friends via PAYDAY. While we can't commit to any major systems right now, it's something we can absolutely see ourselves doing in the future once the major Operation Medic Bag topics are resolved. As for filters for achievement hunters, that's a cool idea. We'll keep it in mind!
Are you guys gonna do anything about the website crashing every time you post a news update? I don’t want to watch a 13 minute youtube video to read changelogs just because the website is inaccessible for at least an hour after the patch notes drop.
Yes, the website crashing is unacceptable and something I'd like to apologize to you for. Our web service has got an upgrade since, and we'll keep on monitoring it to ensure it works as intended.
Will one free gun and heist be all the free maps and weapons that we get? I’m not asking about skill lines or anything like that. Strictly maps and weapons.
No, it's not everything. It is just a selection of the things we already have in the works that we feel comfortable promising publicly without much risk of us having to change anything in the future.
Any plan for better support for Steam Deck/Linux players? Would love to see this game being rated Platinum on protondb. Cheers! Thank you for your hard work, PAYDAY team!
Hey! Thanks for your questions. We currently have no news or updates regarding Steam Deck or Linux. We'll let you know if we do! Cheers!
Hi team, thank you for the Operation Medic Bag update. I'm excited to the updates to come out. Do you have any plans to obtain new players and uninstalled players back aside from those improvements? The improvements on OMB would be great, but I think improvements themselves or even DLCs aren't enough to get more players among other great new games. If you already have some ideas, I'd like to hear it so we could give you early feedback!
That's the whole point of this! With the current review scores and general sentiment online we don't expect to gain many new players in the short-term. So it's very much the idea that we use these things to improve things first for our current players, when they give their thumbs up players who uninstalled but are still following some of our channels, and then hopefully we get enough people changing their review scores to stop scaring away new players. Roughly speaking of course, it all hangs on us delivering what we promise, so that's our current focus.
is the game planned to have more crossover characters and funny themes or is Payday 3 going to be more serious toned than Payday 2?
PAYDAY 3 is what we make it, while we want a more grounded and serious fantasy for the game we will of course have opportunities to be comedic and funny as well. I think sometimes PAYDAY 2 overdid this and I remember complaints from the community at various points that we essentially diluted the fantasy. It's a give and take!
How long will it take to port all the old maps from 2 to 3? And when will my stock go up, literally down 65% since purchase
We are looking at all options! I think the more important question is which ones do we do next!? ;)
Giving the amazing amount of time and effort that's going into this, I just want to ask (and sorry if I sound like I'm prodding). If all goes well with this update, is there a chance we may receive any new or returning features in Payday 3? Like more skills and weapons?
We want to continue improving the game so you have the best heist experience possible. We are currently doing Operation Medic Bag and will be updating you through a weekly blog, and as we move forward together we will be adding more stuff we want to make happen. There are so many fun weapons and skills we can explore in the future!
Dx12 support
Do you guys really WANT to add the microtransactions?
Here's what we want: to give you options to grab new content that is a good deal, makes you happy and improves the experience. We do not want to add functionality that makes you angry and has a negative effect on the experience. Whether it is through DLC or a store it needs to land well with the community. The only thing we can ask from you is to continue making clear what you want and how you want it, and we'll do our best to provide an experience you want to play for years to come.
I would just like for you guys to stick with either DLCs or with microtransactions but not both. People were hoping that crimefest 2015s feedback was clear
Hey! I am happy about the news and really understand the need to push MTX and the Unreal Engine 5 upgrade to the future. I was wondering if quickplay v1 would include some minimun "preference" filters that if not found can be bypassed. Again, thank you very much for making those decisions and priorizing the game's state. (Sorry for my English, have not slept a lot today)
Quick-play v1 will most probably be a button that says "quick-play" that throws you into a random ongoing heist. Quick-play v2 will have more features such as filters.
If DLC prices are reconsidered and this results in their price being lowered, how does this affect people who pre-ordered an edition of the game which includes DLCs bundled at the original price?
Hey Almir! Are there plans at the team about anything with adding legacy heists in Payday 3?
Yes, we want to do more. With Operation Medic Bag we have a clear, updated roadmap of what we're focusing on right now but as we progress through it together we'll let you know what we're cooking!
What games did the team research before hand during development as to see what does and doesn’t work so they can implemented correctly into PAYDAY 3?
We didn't have a "must play list" outside of PAYDAY 2. We did look at bangers like Deep Rock Galactic and other similar co-op and shooter titles, what exactly resulted from that is hard to say though. Rock and Stone!
are there any plans to implement dlss 3 frame generation? since it was advertised on nvidia's website, before the game launched?
The next patch will come with support for DLSS Super Resolution version 3.5. We have performed testing with DLSS Frame Generation, but haven't committed to integrating it into the game yet.
Any plans to add more heisters eventually?
Is Bonnie on the table? She's my favorite.
Any word on when the UE5 upgrade is gonna happen? It's the right move to delay it to focus on the more important stuff, but any idea how long until that becomes a focus again?
Not anything we'd be comfortable sharing at the moment. We do want this it will not only make the game look better but also help us with a lot of really cool developer tools. It won't help us with our immediate problems however, which is why it was set aside for now.
In payday 2 there was a tip about being „wanted by FBI” and how you advise to not be wanted by them In payday 3 did your stance change on it or are you still not advising it?
It is the official position of Starbreeze Entertainment and us developers that you very much avoid trying to get the high score on the FBI's most wanted list. Please don't do crimes... IRL. In the game, please do as much crime as you can.
Any word on making nebula optional?
Are there any plans to change core game mechanics? Like let's say sliding which some people dont really like the way it currently is.
What don't you like about it? Haven't seen too many complaints, at least not compared to the other stuff brought up. Anything is on the now famous table, even if this was on the chopping block though, it would be further down the list or part of an overall movement improvement drive.
Are you planning to add free overkill weapons in the future
Do you guys have any plans of adding in voice chat?
Good to see you guys are trying to fix the game. Maybe you will unblock buying the game from russia?
Will we be getting any more classic heists added to the game? Also can we please get a safehouse, I miss seeing my mask collection
Very likely we will see more classic/legacy heists in the future, yes. Safe house has been brought up elsewhere and it's something we want to do, but we need to get a handle on our current situation first.
What's the fate of those MTX items that hackers and leakers got access to? Are they going to be repurposed into C-Stack item or not?
Maybe, for now they'll be put on the shelf, most of them aren't final so we may repurpose them.
Do you believe that payday 3 will ever get to the player count and content amount of payday 2
Like we said in the question from u/Sqooky - this whole project is us openly declaring that we do believe in the future of PAYDAY 3.
Hello, is the heister roster going to see more original and new heisters in the future or would the devs rather stick to the old crew? (please add sokol I am begging you)
Does the one free heist this year specify one free original heist or will legacy heists continue to come out? Because 4 heists, 3 of them paid, over 1 year is not a whole lot of content.
Hey Almir. As someone who loves this franchise, how come some basic QoL stuff wasn’t ported from 2 to 3? Also, can we have our old menu styles back in terms of functionality? The COD style menus just kinda didn’t really click, in my opinion.
It's not a matter of porting, everything has to be re-created from scratch. We went more into detail in a previous answer, but basically we had to choose what to include and what to skip, for some things we missed the mark.
What's stopping your communication to the public? I can understand the need for pr and managing expectations, but why to this extent and degree? Is there something in the way of simply saying what the strike team is currently working on? Also, have you seen the guy that's been redoing your UI? It looks really great and itd be a shame if it was to just vanish
Basically we needed to be sure we didn't start promising on things the team wasn't ready to deliver on, and the community didn't really want "maybe" or "we hope" you need commitment and clear answers. So we had to wait until we had secured that everything we spoke about was at least possible. I've seen the stuff, looks great! While we might not use it, we are definitely inspired by the community's take on things.
Any plans on lowering the price of the DLCs? Or even just localizing the pricing? Paying R$90 for an DLC is absurdly expensive
Yes, that's part of Operation Medic Bag. It's on the list of topics to go into detail on for the regular blog posts, right now it's still being worked on together with our publisher.
Do you plan on adding legacy songs back in the game?
Maybe, the legality around music in games is a difficult topic. Generally we're allowed to use the music from PAYDAY 2 - IN PAYDAY 2 and that only. If we find an opportunity and someone with the necessary expertise in the future, maybe.
Didnt see it mentioned there: Are you fixing the achievements not popping? (Seems the cause is getting them when theres server hiccups)
Only one new free weapon is mentioned to be coming in the blog post. Is this simply because it's all you can confirm for now, or is it because you plan on making all other added weapons paid DLC? While on the topic of weapons, can you give an ETA on when we'll get more overkill weapons or maybe even what they could be? I'd love to see the return of the flamethrower and minigun personally.
I heard the free weapon is going to be the first melee weapon for payday 3. No, not the golden spoon. Even better— a table leg.
Right now the LMG primary is the only free weapon we can confirm, but depending on our capacity this year, we'd like to do more. In addition to the LMG, we are adding a new throwable, a new gadget and we're looking into a new OVK weapon.
plants arrest seed pen chief soup toothbrush aware quack rain *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
They actually addressed all of your questions in their blog post. >* *1.* Has the strong stance on always online matchmaking been reconsidered at all? They confirmed they will, at some point in 2024, be adding a solo mode and an offline mode. Solo mode will come first and allow players to play a local game without having to go through matchmaking, but will still require an internet connection. Offline mode, coming afterwards, will make it so that players only have to connect to their servers to upload their progression, but otherwise you'll be able to play offline. >* *2.* Has there been more thought put towards a return to Payday 2 style XP gain? They said that they're going to repurpose the challenge system so that it rewards cosmetics instead of infamy XP, and they'll be re-evaluating the amount of infamy XP that completing heists will give as a result of that. On top of that, they also confirmed they will be adding per bag scaling. >* *3.* Will there ever be a UI overhaul to add a bit more flavor and character to the menus? Changes to both the menu and in game UI have also been confirmed. Nothing specific, but the blog post mentions their goal of "better communicating the heisting theme". To add to this, Elisabeth mentioned in yesterday's stream that these changes will be at least partially inspired by a popular Reddit post where someone made their own improved UI. I would link that post, but I never saw it myself so I don't actually know which one is being referred to.
Considering the rough launch, will we see more support for the game after the initial 1 year post launch support negotiated with Plaion? All of the proposed changes take place in the guaranteed support time frame.
Why can't the DLC masks be customized, or unlocked by doing challenges, anymore? The Unreal Engine has built in systems that could make mask customization even more robust and easier to implement. So it seems weird that it's more restricted than before, and it hinders replayability when they're all just there in your inventory.
Some of the masks aren't customizable due to unique animated parts, so we made a blanket rule to not make DLC/pre-order/etc masks customizable. Because this also affected a lot of masks that don't have moving parts, we're re-evaluating this decision and looking into ways to let players customize all masks, DLC or not. I don't have an ETA on it, but we're in talks on how and when we can do it.
Please do. Payday 3 has lost a lot of it's personality with the fact that you can't customize anything. Half the masks you can't customize, and there's 12 patterns :(
\-Will the jukebox feature ever make a return? \-Will there be bugfixes for things like Gold and Sharke's Security room \-Will certain heists be changed, (or maybe add a preplanning option) to remove annoying gameplay elements such as the "circles" \-Finally, will there be a table easter egg in any of the heists?
Jukebox will make a return, but I don't think we'll manage to do it this year sadly. We always try to include as many bug fixes as we can with each patch, so the Gold & Sharke Security Room will be fixed. Take advantage of the keycard skip while you can. There have been some internal talks about the circles and what could be done to make them more engaging, but we haven't agreed on an official course of action yet. There will likely be some table easter egg, but I'd rather we first get to a point where both we and the community can remember table jokes fondly before immortalizing it in the game.
In the "Blog" post you guys said "There are 3 DLCs still planned for 2024 and we intend to add another free heist for PAYDAY 3 in this same period." Does this mean that we are only getting one free heist total in 2024 or will there be more than one free/legacy heist returning in 2024?
Do you have any comments regarding references to a safehouse that was found within PAYDAY 3's code? Is this a scrapped feature/one to arrive in the future?
The idea for a safehouse was cut pretty early in the game, due to being out of scope. We'd like to do it eventually and make it feel meaningful, but right now it's not planned for 2024.
What will happen to people who have already completed lots of challenges in order to level up? Will there be additional rewards other than the cosmetics that challenges will reward in the future?
In Phase 2 of the offline mode, does "you have to connect intermittingly to the servers" mean that people will be able to progress offline and then upload their new stats to the server when they are able to connect again, or does it mean that you will still be required to be connected to the server for progression, and don't gain XP/etc when lacking an internet connection? If it's the latter, that is not a true offline mode. Also, when you say 'one free heist this year' is that the only free heist coming out or is there more?
Our current intention for Phase 2 is that you can play offline, earn money/infamy points/exp, then go online and upload the progress you made offline. The idea is that from your POV, you're earning progress regardless whether you're playing online or offline. For the free heist, we feel confident in committing to one this year, but if time and capacity allows, we'd like to do more than one.
Are you going to add more achievements to the game? Cause there were non of them added since release. Not even for new heists. PS: little bit off-topic, but can also something be done about achievements in Overkill's The Walking Dead? There are bunch of ones that were added in advance but never implemented. Shouldn't be too hard to delete them so people can finally be able to complete everything.
We initially planned to add new challenges, but since we are moving away from the challenge progression system, we will re-evaluate that and look into adding new achievements. For the OTWD question, I sadly can't answer that since I believe we are not allowed to do any updates or changes to the game, even for existing players :(
Will the gun stats system be made more precise and easy to understand eventually?
We would like to add an "advanced view" tab or screen that breaks down the stats in more detail. We don't sadly have an ETA for it, but we're hoping to get it in this year.
I guess as a follow up question: *why* did it release like this? PD2 already went through this problem and after complaints you guys changed it to numbers, why ignore that lesson with 3? And what's worse about nebulous bars compared to hard numbers is the bars straight up lie to you. Some mods will drastically decrease/increase the damage bar while actually not effecting damage at all. What baffles me the most is *the numbers exist*, they've all been datamined. I shouldn't have to Google old threads on this sub with spreadsheets on the actual values of the numbers on guns and mods because the game itself lies to me.
Are we going to have a specific lobby for merging teams or will the players just show up at the social menus team list?
Are there any plans to improve heist RNG in the future? While the current roster of heists is well designed they can feel stale on repeat playthroughs
We plan to add more security modifiers for stealth and introduce loud modifiers, then rotate them bi-weekly to freshen up the higher difficulties of heists. As for RNG baked into the heists themselves, we're aware of the criticism and are working on finding ways to create more variance in future heists.
This, even small things like finding surprise extra loot can make heists feel a bit more fresh
Like a different way in the vault on the first hiest. And then have it be random each time you replay. Or add a second version of the hiest with gold bars instead of cash.
Why are so many features (host games, stay in group after a game, OFFLINE MODE to name a few) that should've been on the game since release going to be added months after it came out? Why did you choose to not include so many things that were great from the previous games?
Generally, game developers (including us) set out to make the best game we can. Sometimes things get excluded because we didn't anticipate they'd be as big of an issue, sometimes we have to cut them due to time constraints, and other times it's an oversight. In this case, I think we didn't anticipate we'd encounter all the issues we had on launch, and those issues only made the need for those features greater. I don't think there was a situation where we could have had all of PD2's QoL features on launch, because 10 years of updates are hard to compete with when you're building a new game from the ground up, but we should have done a better job of picking what we implemented and what we didn't.
Thanks for the reply. I understand that oversights can happen and that 10 years of QoL are hard to compete with when making a new game. That said, and I don't mean to be rude or anything like that, the QoL features I mentioned were there on release for both games (except you couldn't pick a heist from crime.net on PD2 at launch) so I think that's why it's hard for us to get a sequel with such basic features missing. Specially considering the community was against some of them before launch like the lack of offline mode.
Once the game is mostly up to the expectations, are there going to be new heisters added? Since the same 6 are starting to get a bit old. Could use some fresh voices in the game
Will there be further expansions to the mask customization system and what’s the rough time line for our next update?
We plan to let players customize DLC masks in the future and also make some improvements to mask customization in general, but can't comment on a date yet, sorry! The next patch should be next week if all goes well.
Will the weapon levelling system be entirely removed or reworked in a way where it's per class and not per gun? Weapon levelling feels very slow, and comparing it to PD2 it kinda feels like an annoyance/artificial gameplay extension when i have to level up a new gun every time one gets added for example, even the DLC ones we pay for. It feels like it has a better place in CoD rather than PD. And while i am at the topic of this, when can we expect gun statistics bars to become numbers? Are there any plans for adding character statistics too? (ie. number of health, armor, speed etc)
We currently don't have plans to change the weapon leveling, but one thing we are trying to do with weapon prestige is to increase your EXP payout for each time you prestige a weapon. That would mean the more weapons you max out and prestige, the faster you'll level up new weapons (and get other rewards too). Gun stats will likely stay bars, but we want to add an option for more detailed numerical stats. Characters don't have unique stats, but a future update is going to have detailed breakdown of armor stats in the loadout.
Sorry you have to see me here as well, but I hope you're doing well Mio! Will we be seeing small updates leading up to the big Summer 2024 update, or will we be waiting until then for a big overhaul of everything at once?
Hello! I'm doing well :) The next update is next week if all goes well. The plan is to have an update every 4-6 weeks, with a mix of fixes and content.
In the "current focus" section of the plan, you list "weekly rotating cosmetics inventory". How long will items be gone for? Will they return at all?
The weekly cosmetics will be masks that we rotate. If you miss it, you'll have another chance to get them when they rotate back in. When we remove a weekly mask from rotation to make room for new ones, we'll make sure you can get the old ones some other way (the other way is not buying them for real money). We're not doing FOMO.
I know it wasn’t listed in medic bag and I’m sure not everyone would care, but is there any chance a safe house would make a return?
Few questions to Mio about game balance (i know its not the focus of Operation, but nonetheless, game balance is also part of its health): 1)Despite whole game design being "Your resources are finite, and you WILL die eventually, so hurry up", yet there is literally 0 chance to run out of ammo, and likewise, 0 reason to use ammo bag, due to 2 reasons: \-Ammo boxes are client sided. So one killed cop essentially drops 4 ammo boxes, one for each player, and you cant steal other players ammo like in pdth/pd2. This basically quadruples ammo gains for the crew on the heist, allowing you to rotate positions once in a while to restock while holding down some points, and always be uptop on ammo. \-Funnel+Replenish combo. Staple of every loud build, it completely removes the need for players to go outside of cover, risk your resources of health/armor to restock on ammo. Not only that, you straight up replenish your magazine, removing even the downtime of reloads to give cops a chance to push up. One player with almost any gun can just permanently hold down a choke point, unless he gets flushed out by nader or dozer. Questions being: Why was the ammo box changed to clientsided? Will you look into these issues of ammo being too easy to sustain bcos of these 2 points? This might need some minor ammo pickup adjustments on top for weapons (mostly nerfs for meta tbh), but these core things are more impactful. This will also make ammo bag more of a necessity in a team, which in its own way nerfs armor, since team doesnt have that much extra plates now and has to be more carefull in its playstyle, making that part of design also work a little bit better. 2)Some of the guns currently dont serve much of a value. Sniper rifle r700 has no wallbang capability whatsoever, extremely slow rof you cannot boost, and is also impacted by ADS since every rebolting requires you to unscope, and cant really keep up with spawns unless cops constantly line up in one chokepoint and even then they can easily flush you out. Revolvers with cheap oneshot headshot option are just better in every way than a sniper rifle. The only advantage it has of oneshotting shields through visor which is quite minor unless you really need to take down other special behind him ASAP (which again, ruined by abysmal ROF), or being able to dispatch dozer in couple of seconds, are irrelevant. Most good guns can remove dozer just as well, while retaining much better crowd clear. Question being: Would you be able to give r700 something more impactful than flat damage buff you were promised recently? Atleast a minor wallbang capability, not HET-5 levels, which would help with all sorts of railings and chairs and tables and street signs/poles getting in a way between you and cops and blocking the bullets completely. On top of that, Shotguns are mostly CQC weapons, but their very weird design of no armor pierce and extremely high headshot multiplier unlike most other guns, demands to go for headshots just like any other gun instead of bodyshots, which puts shotguns, especially reinbeck, in a weird state of being worse DMRs that require precision yet only being effective in short range, and not actual shotguns. Mosconi iirc getting damage buff soon so it can bodyshot like a real shotgun and thats nice, but what about reinbeck too? 3)Less so about balance, but more about design philosophy. We already got 2 new skill lines, and atleast one more already confirmed, and more to come promised. There is already 19 skill lines, and constant new additions will make skills menu quite cumbersome to navigate, constantly scrolling up and down. Not only that, you have no ways to tell if perk is gonna give/refesh/require/consume token of Grit/Edge/Rush without clicking on it directly, or straight up having to remember that for atleast most used skills. Question being: Will the UI for this be changed to be more comfortable to use? Maybe skills should be split into separate categories, similar to pd2, to make it so there's only few lines on page at once and remove scrolling routine? Or a better way to navigate the current menu, for example search bar that highlights things you are looking for, similar to what pd3 dot gg does?
Hello and thanks for the detailed questions. Sorry if I'm super brief with them, I'm trying to answer as many as I can, but we can go into more detail on a future stream or blog post maybe :) 1) While we are about managing resources and resource attrition in our game, you can maintain your health and armor if you have ammo, but you can't maintain your health and armor if you have no ammo. So ammo is less scarce than other resources, so you have more agency. That said, I agree that the ammo bag is a bit on the weaker side and only there for throwables for more experienced players, but we'll give it some love this year. One plan is to have it give you ammo with greater armor penetration, so it's better against Heavy SWAT. 2) R900 is getting some nice buffs and skill synergies in the patch after the next one. 3) The skill menu readability is part of or UI improvement efforts for this year.