I haven't looked at stats too much nowdays
Even the low damage weapons tend to work fine now that Body Expertise is in play
I just find it hilarious that they think having it apply to dozers isn't all kinds of broken.
Granted balance in the base game is an absolute trainwreck. Like, worse than MW3 bad. That's an achievement in itself :v:
EDIT: And yes I'm aware one is PvP while the other is PvE but the point I'm trying to get across is that both games have such piss poor balance in their own rights.
EDIT 2: Correction, some of the balance issues are similar in nature, like certain perks and proficiencies(MW3)/skills and perk decks (PD2) being a [B]requirement[/B] to make a weapon or weapon class remotely viable. That shit is really dumb.
Part of the issue is that for the community, "viable" is conflated with "on even footing with the meta". Prior to the difficulty update in Housewarming, most builds were pretty darn even. The problem is that only a sliver of these builds(in particular, stuff that's a weird gimmick otherwise) are really remotely workable on OD. This drives players to demand buffs to every kind of build in order to make that build viable on the highest difficulty.
I particularily dislike people telling me "Oh but it doesn't work on DW/OD"
I feel like it's rather uneven to put your main comparing ground with the hardest difficulty there is
Overkill might be not too hard, it's still the most middle ground you can get really
Idk about the current state of Mayhem
[QUOTE=Nickolas;51826646]I particularily dislike people telling me "Oh but it doesn't work on DW/OD"
I feel like it's rather uneven to put your main comparing ground with the hardest difficulty there is
Overkill might be not too hard, it's still the most middle ground you can get really
Idk about the current state of Mayhem[/QUOTE]
It's all down to the health inflation and spawn inflation that came with Housewarming- it made shots to kill, ammo regain, and damage per shot really important. The same changes effect all difficulties, but it starts to be restrictive above Overkill. On OD it's still really important, but also the insane enemy damage and spawn structure encourage gimmick builds that are about Jokers, further narrowing the range of possibilities.
A way to think about it is that anything is useable on OVK, but some things are less perfect than others. Pre-housewarming, anything was useable on DW, but some things were much more challenging to use. Post Housewarming, relatively little is really very useable on Mayhem and above, and only a small range of things work at all on OD.
Some amount of build restriction is entirely reasonable on higher difficulties, but the other problems with the new difficulty implementation pushed things much too far. This in turn makes people use "OD viability" as a baseline, which incentivizes power creep.
[QUOTE=Nickolas;51826646]I particularily dislike people telling me "Oh but it doesn't work on DW/OD"
I feel like it's rather uneven to put your main comparing ground with the hardest difficulty there is
Overkill might be not too hard, it's still the most middle ground you can get really
Idk about the current state of Mayhem[/QUOTE]
This happens with a lot of games. People use the hard difficulty as their "zero point" for measuring builds and the like.
[QUOTE=VintageCat;51825296]Obviously his work for PAYDAY gang would be happening before the zombie outbreak. Hatred for clowns might as well come from his relationship with the gang. (From his voicelines one can assume that he doesn't really like working in team)[/QUOTE]
Wasn't he caught by the cops eventually or something? Maybe that could have to do with his hatred of clowns, for his team letting him get caught.
[QUOTE=Hatley;51826957]This happens with a lot of games. People use the hard difficulty as their "zero point" for measuring builds and the like.[/QUOTE]
pretty silly, this game ain't diablo
but we have devs stating on multiple occasions that the game is balanced around DW and that OD is a crazy difficulty for crazy people??
who cares if john doe on reddit says it's not OD viable. if your build is "DW viable" (whatever the hell that means, it's not hard for it not to be outside of making sure you're specced properly into dodge or armor), then who cares after that
Is there any mod that removes the ringing from Flashbangs after you get stunned? I got unlucky enough to get graced with the shittiest shit known as tinnitus last year, and hearing that ringing everytime I get stunned is annoying, considering then I end up focusing on my actual tinnitus
Yeah, I could make do without that noise myself so any info on a mod like that would be nice.
Hearing .308 full on isn't fun [sp]was at an open range doing target shooting stuff, earpro was joggled off my left ear and the guy next to me had an XCR-M. Fun wasn't had[/sp]
[QUOTE=fendermcbender;51827347]but we have devs stating on multiple occasions that the game is balanced around DW and that OD is a crazy difficulty for crazy people??
who cares if john doe on reddit says it's not OD viable. if your build is "DW viable" (whatever the hell that means, it's not hard for it not to be outside of making sure you're specced properly into dodge or armor), then who cares after that[/QUOTE]
The game isn't really balanced around anything right now. The changes to enemy health, spawngroups and spawn limits create inconsistencies and problems on every difficulty. There's no indication that a theoretically or systematically coherent idea of difficulty is even being pursued.
hey has anyone in this thread ordered the official OVK payday masks? I'm thinking of doing somehting wildly indulgent and ordering the dallas and hoxton ones to hang on a wall somewhere and maybe one day do a Hoxton cosplay
[QUOTE=Dick Slamfist;51828361]hey has anyone in this thread ordered the official OVK payday masks? I'm thinking of doing somehting wildly indulgent and ordering the dallas and hoxton ones to hang on a wall somewhere and maybe one day do a Hoxton cosplay[/QUOTE]
I ordered the Wolf one, and wore it last Halloween.
[t]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/87727395/Eggman249/Misc/Ipad/File%20Oct%2031%2C%208%2008%2035%20PM.jpeg[/t]
I put some material in the eyeholes to black them out, but that's how mine looked.
[QUOTE=Finale;51827726]The game isn't really balanced around anything right now. The changes to enemy health, spawngroups and spawn limits create inconsistencies and problems on every difficulty. There's no indication that a theoretically or systematically coherent idea of difficulty is even being pursued.[/QUOTE]
i'm not saying what it is in practice, i'm saying what it is in theory. they said they balance around DW. does that translate? maybe. for build sake, yes, generally. for weapons, enemy health, and spawns (eyes on you, mayhem)? probably not.
One of the main issues is because of the huge HP differences between difficulties.
If they want to reduce the prevalence of the meta they need to flatten out enemy HP values across difficulties, higher difficulties only marginally increasing headshots to kill by 1 or 2 at the most and more focus on spawned enemies themselves.
Another issue is that they're addressing the balance part by part, as if they were all on separate "scales" (for lack of a better word) instead of a single big one. I mean hell, we've seen it happen in person.
Underperforming weapons > buff weapons across the board (CF2105) > trivial skills > skill rework (U100) > everything is suddenly piss easy > ludicrous enemy HP increases (Housewarming)
[QUOTE=fendermcbender;51827347]but we have devs stating on multiple occasions that the game is balanced around DW and that OD is a crazy difficulty for crazy people??
who cares if john doe on reddit says it's not OD viable. if your build is "DW viable" (whatever the hell that means, it's not hard for it not to be outside of making sure you're specced properly into dodge or armor), then who cares after that[/QUOTE]
they're doing a pretty bad job if dw is the middle ground to them, I always assumed it was overkill
[QUOTE=Dick Slamfist;51828361]hey has anyone in this thread ordered the official OVK payday masks? I'm thinking of doing somehting wildly indulgent and ordering the dallas and hoxton ones to hang on a wall somewhere and maybe one day do a Hoxton cosplay[/QUOTE]
I ordered the Dallas run during their very first early pre-order run.
If you have a giant head like me they are a little on the small side. I can basically only look down through the eye holes.
I really don't know what makes for good balance in the public eye since I usually just adjust accordingly and take it, regardless of whether it makes sense to, so i'm not sure what people want.
do people want more enemies with less health, the inverse of that, something else...? i'm sure it's not as simple as that, especially for people that understand how the numbers are crunched on headshot multipliers and stuff
OVERKILL is honestly the most balanced of the "higher up" difficulties PD2 has. enemies don't do 60-225 damage from any range and don't take 20 headshots to kill. and there aren't 80+ cops active with 4 human players.
simon are you okay
[t]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16550652/20170215164341_1.jpg[/t]
[QUOTE=DeadMansChest;51828520]One of the main issues is because of the huge HP differences between difficulties.
If they want to reduce the prevalence of the meta they need to flatten out enemy HP values across difficulties, higher difficulties only marginally increasing headshots to kill by 1 or 2 at the most and more focus on spawned enemies themselves.[/QUOTE]
Honestly, I would find Mayhem and Death Wish more fun if it was less about each individual enemy being much tankier and more damaging, and more there just being a shitload of them.
Just make it fuckin' Serious Sam.
[QUOTE=Finale;51827726]The game isn't really balanced around anything right now. The changes to enemy health, spawngroups and spawn limits create inconsistencies and problems on every difficulty. There's no indication that a theoretically or systematically coherent idea of difficulty is even being pursued.[/QUOTE]
It's balanced around how much of a potato the host's PC is :v:
Playing with me hosting, decent amount of cops with pretty aggressive AI, playing with my gf's ancient laptop hosting, barely any cops and they're all practically braindead and stand there doing nothing while you shoot them.
If OD's too hard, just downgrade your hardware.
Dude, why would you use any gun other than the locomotive?? It's so fuckin good. I use it pretty much as my primary weapon all the time and sometimes switch to the 'primary' weapon because i'm like i might as well use this once too.
[editline]15th February 2017[/editline]
[QUOTE=TacticalBacon;51829111]It's balanced around how much of a potato the host's PC is :v:
Playing with me hosting, decent amount of cops with pretty aggressive AI, playing with my gf's ancient laptop hosting, barely any cops and they're all practically braindead and stand there doing nothing while you shoot them.
If OD's too hard, just downgrade your hardware.[/QUOTE]
Is this actually a thing (got the game a few weeks ago from the humble bundle)? That would explain why every time i host we seem to fail ~%40 of overkill missions and every time my friend hosts we always manage to finish the level without much difficulty.
I wrote an effortpost on how difficulty ought to be conceptualized on the steam forum, I'll repost it here.
[quote="Finale"]
Get ready for :words:.
Difficulty works best (in most games) as a function of cognitive load on gameplay decisions. The number and complexity of decisions you have to make, and the speed with which you have to make them, increase to give a greater sense of difficulty. Payday 2 offers players a bunch of different decision scenarios that can overlap. Some examples of this sort of thing, divided into something like types I read about on gamasutra awhile back:
1. "Micro" decisions are stuff players do hundreds of times during gameplay, repeated actions that they don't plan. This is the main level at which player reflexes are checked, though higher level decisions still effect it heavily.
Three enemies are facing you. Which do you shoot, and with what weapon? Do you run away instead? Did you reload?
2. "Macro" decisions occur less often, and interact with how players strategize for a map. They are often still emergent from gameplay scenarios, and so can be partially planned against.
You need to defend an objective, but an ally has fallen down a considerable distance away. Another team member is nearby.
3. "Meta" decisions occur prior to core gameplay and usually try to remove cognitive load from the two lower scales of decisions.
How do you allocate skill points? Assets in preplanning?
Each of these can be made harder or easier, in particular by varying complexity. You can also have to make the decisions more times, or have to make them under greater pressure. New additions to game design can make players rethink decisions at all of these levels, and can add to their complexity, increasing difficulty. Changing the decisionmaking process at higher decision levels also makes the game feel fresher. Difficulty design for payday 2 can take advantage of all of these, but there are some constraints.
Payday 2 is a game with a large amount of randomness- in particular, enemies use hitscan weapons that roll dice every time they fire to tell if they shot you. You will automatically take damage some nonzero portion of the time. This places an upper bound on how much you can compress the time players have to make fast decisions under fire and still have the game feel responsive to player input. It also places limits on other aspects of the combat "micro-scale" decisions, the stuff players do hundreds of times in any loud heist. If a player is asked to make a decision that doesn't have much meaning, or asked to make the decision in an unrealistic time window (or a million times with no variation), it feels unfair. Inflating enemy health and damage on OD is reasonable, but it goes much too far. This, in turn, drives players to "meta" solutions, to reduce that impossible task- and there aren't many.
[b]Meta "solutions" to micro difficulty[/b]
Meta shifts and limitations are appropriate and often necessary when increasing difficulty, but only up to a point. Payday 1 and 2 had problems in that their top-tier difficulties are really restrictive at the meta level unless you have a weak computer or are a gaming god. In addition, the meta solution of Jokers works too well; players deal with the problem of lower level task impossibility, speed and rate by completely removing it. The same problem occurs in payday 1, where players just avoid combat as much as possible. That's a strong sign that that combat isn't well balanced, and that too much is being asked of players in lower level tasks. Ideally, changes to macro and micro level tasks can shift or somewhat narrow the meta, without being unduly restrictive. Payday 2 is just in a really weird place because the micro level tasks are [i]really restrictive[/i].
[b]Complexity works best[/b]
Currently, payday difficulty increases at the upper level are mostly a function of decision speed and amount, which are the least rewarding. The most interesting changes occur when the complexity of these decisions increases, at all levels of play. Medics are actually a good example of this (if a bit limited):
Three enemies are facing you. Which do you shoot, and with what weapon? Do you run away instead? Did you reload?
This gets more complicated if one of these enemies is a Bulldozer. And a bit more complicated if one of the other enemies is a medic! It's not a lot harder to figure out what to do, but you have to decide relatively quickly, and you will have to make the decision on the fly, along with a thousand others. It's possible to orchestrate it so these decisions are more complex, and occur more often. That increases difficulty, and it's much more rewarding than facing three light SWAT, especially if, whichever SWAT you choose to shoot, the other two will immediately kill you. This is why simplifying enemy spawn groups was such a weird step to take- more often you're facing multiple of the same unit. Not very complex to decide who to shoot when you're facing 4 shields, or 4 SWAT, or two dozers.
Winters and SWAT Turrets are both examples of "macro" scale decisionmaking changes that make on-the-fly decisions more complex. It's not coincidental that the lower difficulties don't have Winters and Turrets, or that the lowest ones have fewer kinds of special units. Complexity of decisionmaking is a much more controllable form of difficulty design than speed or volume. It can also provide for a broader meta. I think the game's design needs to be altered to refocus on that approach to difficulty. This doesn't require creating a bunch of new mechanics or enemy units, but it does involve reversing many of the changes made to the number of enemies, enemy health, and enemy spawngroup composition with the Housewarming update.
[b]Stealth[/b]
I've focused on loud difficulty here, but the exact same decision typology applies to stealth gameplay. The main difference is that stealth focuses more on macro level decisionmaking, and that micro decisions ("do I move a little bit out of cover?" or "the guard sees you!")can be very high stakes when they occur- and they're all more on player terms. This is part of why some players vacillate between saying stealth is "boring" and "unfair". In stealth, the different proportioning of load means that increases of decision complexity, speed and number are all somewhat viable, but a lot of pressure gets placed on individuals as a result. The binary outcome also places tremendous pressure on all game systems to work properly. Stealth being more reactive to players means that players at a high level of mastery really [i]need[/i] new mechanics or very high load adjustments to increase difficulty. Plausible difficulty alterations in stealth wind up having to be map-specific under most circumstances, and usually involve removing player information, or punishing errors more harshly. This puts the devs in a bind, because these same adjustments will make the game seem even less "fair" to less skilled players. And the problems of things like sync and detection lag are afflicting all parts of this.
[/quote]
[QUOTE=aydin690;51829201]Is this actually a thing (got the game a few weeks ago from the humble bundle)? That would explain why every time i host we seem to fail ~%40 of overkill missions and every time my friend hosts we always manage to finish the level without much difficulty.[/QUOTE]
Yeah. Whenever my friends care to do the tedious achievements I'm the designated host because laptop vs dedicated gaming rigs.
you know it makes a lot of sense for payday to be in the john wick canon, I was thinking in this world it's apparently a pretty casual thing for a 150 guys to be mowed down in broad daylight
people just aren't that concerned anymore
or you "could" use full speed swarm
i don't use it because it prevents you from having any other mod that uses tweak_data/groupaitweakdata as a hook. (it causes crashes) the one and only thing that should be taken from FSS and put into the game officially is the "don't use resources when you're not doing anything" part of the code.
making the cops more aggressive means they just ignore some objectives (the water valve in CF comes to mind, each time i played CF on OVERKILL with FSS the cops outright ignored the water valve.)
[QUOTE=fendermcbender;51828624]I really don't know what makes for good balance in the public eye since I usually just adjust accordingly and take it, regardless of whether it makes sense to, so i'm not sure what people want.
do people want more enemies with less health, the inverse of that, something else...? i'm sure it's not as simple as that, especially for people that understand how the numbers are crunched on headshot multipliers and stuff[/QUOTE]
The state of good balance is that as many set ups are as viable as possible, no particularly "too good to not use" and not many "too bad to use ever"
[editline]16th February 2017[/editline]
In overkill's case, there's really not much you can go too wrong with, which is why it's seen as pretty good balance. The beta mayhem which afaik isn't active or available seemed like a good point too, while providing some extra challenge.
[QUOTE=Demohamtheyum;51829446]or you "could" use full speed swarm
i don't use it because it prevents you from having any other mod that uses tweak_data/groupaitweakdata as a hook. (it causes crashes) the one and only thing that should be taken from FSS and put into the game officially is the "don't use resources when you're not doing anything" part of the code.
making the cops more aggressive means they just ignore some objectives (the water valve in CF comes to mind, each time i played CF on OVERKILL with FSS the cops outright ignored the water valve.)[/QUOTE]
I personally just feel like even if mods can certain tweaks can 'fix' the reaction aspect of police AI, and make it a more universal experience regardless of hardware, the fundamental experience you get with each of the higher difficulties is still kind of broken.
In vanilla, you'll just have a group of cops active at once, and they all have a ton of health, and do a ton of damage, but the hardware limitations might make it so only a handful are ever really active at one time. With mods, you've still got those ridiculous stats on enemies, but now you've got [B]all[/B] those enemies that were just idling all over you blasting you at full potential, and naturally make the game feel more challenging because you've got just a clusterfuck of damage and tankiness just overwhelming you. That might be bearable for lower difficulties, but on the higher ones, I think it would just bring to light how obscene some of these difficulties really are, and not in a good way.
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