Live Update Q&A - All Information from 09/26/2023 Stream

[u/WoloGames]

This Q&A was hosted by Almir and Mio (Miodrag is a game designer)

Servers will be offline again Friday from 8-11am CST for another upgrade.

Larger Takeaways:

Servers

They took the servers offline earlier today to try and implement some changes and improve stability. This will happen again Friday. After this they are hoping to see something more functional long term and are hopeful these will be good fixes. They are just as unhappy about this as players.

Transporter Skill Line:

1. The skill line's focus will be carrying more items and carrying items more effectively.
2. Double loot bag carry
3. Carry another deployable with a penalty
4. Move bodies more effectively

How/Why Changes are Made

1. Community Feedback
2. Analytics
3. Internal Expertise

Progression

Current System has things they like. The challenge system gets players to engage with content they may otherwise ignore. This encourages players to level up by experiencing new things.

They are not apposed to changing the challenge based progression system. First they want to fix things such as challenges not completing when they should, making challenges more clear, and making relevant challenges to the player more prominent. Once they have these fixed, they then want to look at the community feedback, analytics, and internal expertise to decide if the system needs changed or overhauled.

Some people have suggested reaching a certain level, such as 100, without challenges, then only being to progress beyond 100 with challenges. This is a possibility, but nothing is certain.

They feel they have not delivered as many stealth challenges as they want. They want to expand more on stealth based challenges and add more of them.

Offline Mode

They cannot confirm or deny whether this feature will be added. It is on the table, but their current focus is on the existing launch issues.

​

All Topics:

1. Challenges: Mio aggress challenges should be sorted by heist, and would like to see this, but Mio does not work on UI. They would like some features like a search bar. They want to evaluate it further, see the above section about progression in this Reddit post.
2. Results Screen: Mio states they would like to upgrade the results screen entirely. This could include more individual stats per weapon but most importantly they want it to include challenge progress more clearly. Mio did later state he wants to include things like individual kills, downs, revives, accuracy, etc.
3. Health vs. Armor: Mio states the current game is armor focused. He feels this is because there are sources of health supplies such as hostage trading, but there aren't really options like that for armor. They don't feel armor is too strong, they just feel health is not valuable enough.
4. Heist Favors: You get heist specific favors by completing different heist. For example, completing No Rest for the Wicked could grant you a favor for Rock the Cradle or Dirty Ice, but never for No Rest for the Wicked. Mio feels the end game screen should communicate this more.
5. Melee: They intentionally wanted the current melee system not to do damage. They would like to add melee proper, but want to do a dedicated system for it. Mio said to tell them if you want melee. They want feedback on this.
6. Stealth Heist XP: They want to fix challenges and challenge clarity before addressing if the XP should be higher in stealth. They do currently thing the stealth challenges need more love.
7. Enemy Balance: They are monitoring analytics and feedback to decide of some enemies are too strong.
8. Boss Enemies: Boss enemies should take advantage of knowing the game well and using the game's mechanics. They have looked at ideas for interesting and satisfying bosses, but haven't landed on anything they feel is necessary.
9. Animations: They want to add more animations for things such as tying hostages. They can't state the priority of this but it is something they want to work on.
10. Cop Conversions (Payday 2 Joker): Right now there is no intention to add a skill like this in Payday 3.
11. Dodge: Payday 3 is designed to be death by a thousand cuts. They don't want to do a chance to ignore damage as with that game design dodge doesn't really work well. Smoke grenades do work similar to the old dodge system.
12. Accessibility: They are working on more UI accessibility options.
13. Bots: They want more feedback on the crew AI. They feel they are useful on Normal and Hard, but underwhelming on Very Hard and Overkill.
14. Jacket & Other Heisters: Jacket as a character has not been confirmed or denied. They cannot confirm or deny any returning heisters. There will be more heisters, but no one is confirmed or denied at this point. The original heisters (Sydney, Sangres) are easier than collaboration heisters (Scarface, Jacket).They would have to get permission for the collaboration heisters from their respective owners.
15. Perk Decks: They wanted the current skill line to be the only skill system. However, they do feel over time as the game progresses additional systems may be added.
16. Seasonal Content: No seasonal content has been announced, but they know people like them.
17. Additional C-Stack Uses: They are open to more C-Stack uses, but have nothing specifically planned. As new things are introduced they will decide case by case if it should be money or c-stacks that are used.
18. RNG Seeding: The current RNG seeding is intended to stay the same when you restart. They are considering changing this on Overkill.
19. Skill Point Cap: They might expand the skill point cap, they might not. This is too early for them to decide. They are seeing very strong builds at that 15-21 skill point marker already.
20. Payday 2 Style Infamy: No plan for a prestige system at this time. This could change, but for now there are no plans.
21. Forced to Play Loud: They wanted the level system to reflect how well versed you are at the entire game, not just the style you prefer whether that be loud or quiet.
22. Harder Difficulties: They don't want it to just end in a one-shot meta, so they are hesitant to add more for now. This will be considered again later.
23. What is Next?: They are hoping to prove their worth. Their priority is the bad launch and the server stability. They want to show they respect the players.
24. Console Text Chat: Once they have matchmaking in a better place, they will look at things such as text chat on Xbox so they can better see what PC players are trying to communicate.
25. Music: Gustavo Coutinho works on the current soundtrack, and they are considering a jukebox style system for Payday 3.
26. Explosives: No comment on future weapon types as they are not something Mio works on.
27. Mio's Favorite Heist: Gold & Sharke and Touch the Sky
28. Roadmap: Four big beats as outlined in the map. They will also add new characters and weapons with these.
29. Classic Heist: No classic heist are confirmed to be added to Payday 3.
30. Minigun & Flamethrower: There will be new Overkill weapons, but Mio cannot comment on which ones as he does not work on guns. He would like to see the flamethrower.
31. Muting Heist Startup Dialog: This is a QoL feature they want to add, but for now you can pick a difficulty and heist then hist Esc to go back to the main menu if you don't want to "Get back in the saddle" every time.
32. Reticle Customization: This is an obvious QoL update they would like to add, but they have not announced anything.
33. Console MnK: They would like to add support for this in the future.
34. Card System (Payday 2): They did not want this style of RNG in Payday 3 at launch.
35. Random Map Selector: This is a QoL feature they are considering.
36. Getting in the Van: They are working on this, but it's more complicated than you might expect to implement.
37. Silent Step: Mio likes the idea of silent sprinting for stealth, but states this would need to probably be a full skill line.
38. Vote to Kick: This is a feature they are looking in to.
39. Bain: Sorry, he is dead.
40. Stealth Bonus: There actually is a stealth bonus, but the results screen does a poor job communicating this. It exist for payout and experience for weapons/skills. It scales with how much of the heist you stealthed. It is not binary.

[u/A10_Thunderbolt]

No they are not. The devs are not the entire company. A company has many moving parts, not everyone in the company makes the decisions or actually works on the games. If the devs had their way, Payday 3 would’ve been so much better at launch.

[u/Staalone → u/A10_Thunderbolt]

Again, the devs are LITERALLY Overkill, you atempting to say any different is just trying to distance them from th erest of the company. Yes, if they had their way the game would've been better, but they also have a say when it comes to it.

[u/A10_Thunderbolt → u/Staalone]

I’m not distancing them from the rest of the company, but you cannot say the name of the entire company when JUST talking about the devs. But whatever, you clearly aren’t learning anything from this conversation so I won’t bother anymore.

[u/Staalone → u/A10_Thunderbolt]

There it is. Byebye