The Failure Of Payday 3
Yet, so first things first. I never liked Payday. Yeah, that's right, I hated its original gameplay, the tanky enemies, as well as the setting. With Payday 2 releasing and gaining notoriety, I still didn't like it. I always heard good things from a few friends who played it, and while the game might not have been for me, I gained respect for it more and more, so today I decided to play a few rounds of Payday 2.
And, you know what this is quite exhilarating and fun, yes I'm actually enjoying it, these 10 stealth beginnings and the inevitable bombastic adrenaline fuel Rush as the [ __ ] hits the fan I think I get it I get why this game is so beloved so then why is payday 3 so dead the launch was very successful reaching new player Heights and developers even Bragg that they made the money back in the first two weeks so what happened, even today after the update 2 had brought in a few glimmers of Hope and the player numbers have increased twofold Payday 2 is still 10 times more popular than its sequel, but MX 2 to 3, 000 players is still really good what the [ __ ] are you saying it's Dead the game just released the update 2 brought in new people at least some of them back well that is true and this is the glint of hope I mentioned, but it's not enough not yet now to learn why payday 3 might still be heading for the chopping block of dead games we first examine, why it failed in the first.
Place let's start with the gameplay. First, did it fail? Well, honestly, not really at first glance. In fact, in all areas. Payday 3 improved drastically, with better AI, despite the fact that it's still incredibly stupid by YIC standards, but never mind the stupid postprocessing, filters, and ugly visuals that made the YX moment in his mouth while playing Payday 2 guns.
They look pretty good, and all other models are also more or less up to Modern Standard, and hell, even optimization seems possible. Ah, but you see, the problem arises from the little things. While I was looking at what other creators had to say and their critiques, a rather interesting comment was made, and they feel good enough that it's not floaty or slippery like the diesel engine.
But then again, a wet fart is better than a diesel engine. Things like slide to shoot and sprint to shoot are very slow actions, and now that I've actually had a chance to play with all the skills and mods, they don't really help that much you know it's clear that these actions are intentionally slow just to slow down the game play, but I think that's the wrong way to approach it and you know I feel it too and not just in movement but overall gamep play enemies and same difficulties seem to be more tanky and a lot of other little things that lead to overall experience to be oddly slower less exhilarating than its predecessor when the proverbial [ __ ] hits the proverbial fan while I'm not asking the game to be the next Call of Duty and ramp up its gameplay spasms like what the Modern Warfare did in recent years sadly for payday 3 this implementation is simply, just not as fun or interesting as payday 2's again you can have a far slower game in the same franchise and it'd be a far superior to for example the recent God of Wars comes to mind quite a lot so it's rather about how that change is handled rather than what the change is.
The next very notable problem that anyone left playing Payday 3 after launch admitted was the grind. The progression of the character level was a big, and I mean a big, problem, so basically, to anyone who's not familiar, there are infamy points. Basically, consider those character level XPS that were only given and only given through achieving challenges, like, for example, killing one police officer, killing 10 kills, killing 100, completing a heist 100 times, completing a heist a 100 times complete a heist a 100 times in stealth only stuff like that, and these character levels unlocked weapons and skill points, so the fact that you could complete a mission and get absolutely no challenges completed meant that you basically didn't progress, which is ridiculous, and once those easy challenges end, it only gets worse.
Now I guess you could say that luckily, in the recent update too, they added some small drip feeds of infamy points for completing missions, but the amount is so small that it makes you wonder whether or not it wasn't just a kneer reaction to the negative backlash, to just how [__] the progression system was seriously character progression through only challenges, what [__] were they smoking?
But your skills themselves and weapons rank up separately, and yes, that seems to be the only good thing about the fact that weapon and skill progression was not tied to the [__] character progression. Hallelujah! Even so, it's rather obvious that with Payday 3, the developers intended the game to be even more grindy than the last one, and this is one of the wrong lessons they've learned to keep players playing longer: just ramp up the grind.
Now, why does that sound so much like Starfield? I wonder, but you know what? Trust me, it works. See, I come from Elite Dangerous and Planet Side 2 backgrounds as a creator, and [__] me, are those games grindy, especially Elite Dangerous? Mindless task repetition is one of the easiest ways to keep people playing despite it offering barely any challenge or fun in the first place.
Still, it is a common manipulative tactic, but why make your game even more grindy and thus increasing redention? Well, it's probably in the service of our next mistake. Lesson after overwhelming success at least in popularity for Payday 2 I'm guessing the developers saw DLC as a profitable, but too difficult of a business practice to keep up granted Payday 2 was supported by tons and I mean tons of DLC over 10 years but it also was not easy to keep producing actual content and gameplay to earn more money so what if we do less work but earn the same amount, enter live service games or gas games service these games are always Online release small updates from time to time and monetize the [ __ ] out of their player base while doing less work this monetization type is ripe with fraud for more information please go watch this article but in case of payday 3 developers seem to be desperate for some kind of better monetization model while also keeping as high of a player retention as possible, and of course no other model does it better than live service [ __ ].
