It’s an incredibly bad sign that he’s talking about balancing weapons “for” a particular difficulty, and not for the game as a whole. It’s as if there’s no overarching set of design goals at all.
I mean at least we dished out a pre-release disscussion on the changes to be made.
IIRC the last time anything like this done was back during the skilltree rework beta from U98-ish to U100.
As far as I know, all the changes from then to now have more or less been just Jules
In the meantime, a little update on my garbage fanfiction OD remake mod.
We've completed almost all gameplay changes for the first major launch, and are
a. crushing remaining bugs, most of which are cosmetic,
b. resolving changes to Bulldozers, who are the last unit to be changed before launch, and
c. waiting on our massively overworked asset dude for texture edits to several Zeal units. (If there's anyone else here who is able and willing to do some of the smaller edits, please let me know; I'd love to take some of this off his overstuffed plate.)
We're using the enemies from payday the heist as placeholders as we continue to get things together- the new enemy appearances are going to be a big reveal for launch day. In the meantime:
[img]https://i.imgur.com/DSk3uWj.jpg[/img]
The HUD is not part of our mod, though it might be in Restoration? I'm honestly not sure, I've never touched its HUD materials.
The most recent updates included revisions that should make it much more challenging for the "I solo OD heists with FSS for people on twitch" crowd, while still being fair for mortal players.
If you'd like to join us:
[url]https://discord.gg/BdN4as7[/url]
Of all our changes, I think the one I'm proudest of was the silencer fix, added in the last couple updates. It took me hours of digging through documentation to understand exactly how silencers were inadvertently breaking enemy AI, an issue that had been in the game as a code and design oversight [B]since Update 10[/B], in 2013! Of course, it took me forever to figure it out, Frankelstner and a bunch of other people knew about it already, and it took iamgoofball like 15 seconds to code a working fix...
Is it possible to make enemy damage decrease with distance? Since on One Down the enemies do 225 damage shots with perfect accuracy from across the map.
[QUOTE=Finale;53055640]Of all our changes, I think the one I'm proudest of was the silencer fix, added in the last couple updates. It took me hours of digging through documentation to understand exactly how silencers were inadvertently breaking enemy AI, an issue that had been in the game as a code and design oversight [B]since Update 10[/B], in 2013! Of course, it took me forever to figure it out, Frankelstner and a bunch of other people knew about it already, and it took iamgoofball like 15 seconds to code a working fix...[/QUOTE]What's this?
woohoo, after burning all my offshore when safehouse 2.0 became a thing i'm finally a billionaire :toot:
[t]https://i.imgur.com/Lr1dcJH.png[/t]
[QUOTE=TheBorealis;53055982]Is it possible to make enemy damage decrease with distance? Since on One Down the enemies do 225 damage shots with perfect accuracy from across the map.[/QUOTE]
All enemies on Crackdown have damage and accuracy falloff over distance. Goofball set up an architecture we came up with that, thankfully, gives me really excellent control over enemy stats, even more so than overkill in some ways. It introduces some other problems we'll need to look at down the line, but it's worth it to have this level of particular control.
I just finished compiling a set of charts on damage falloff last night, so let me post some examples.
[img]https://i.imgur.com/WEXur6o.png[/img]
Note that saigadozers and LMG dozers don't spawn with assault waves on One Down, which is probably why their damage stats seemingly make no sense. On the other hand, they [I]do[/I] still spawn as scripted events in various heists, so it [I]still doesn't make any sense.[/I]
(At some point after launch I need to go back and revise the dozer falloff curves, I inadvertently synchronized them at medium range, which is cool, but not my intention.)
Please note that damage, health and accuracy are only the beginning of a really, really wide-ranging set of tweaks goofball and I have made to enemy stats, qualities and behaviors.
[QUOTE=Flubbman;53056357]What's this silencer fix?[/QUOTE]
This gets pretty complicated, so bear with me. This will be a summary.
All guns have a value called "[B]threat[/B]". This stat seems like it effects who enemies prioritize, but it really doesn't. Threat actually ties into "[B]suppression[/B]", which is a separate system that makes enemies less threatening in several ways. Suppression isn't directly relevant in the silencer fix. I'm just mentioning it to distinguish it- it's often confused with the stuff that's really to blame.
There's another hidden stat that all guns have, which I am going to call "[B]noise radius[/B]".
[B]History of Noise Radius[/B]
When payday 2 first came out, unsilenced guns had a very large noise radius (44-48 meters), and silenced guns had fairly small noise radii, a range from 0 to, iirc, about 7 meters. The radius was dictated by what silencer you attached.
In stealth, the noise radius is the radius of a sphere, drawn from the player and the point of impact. Within that sphere, NPCs will be alerted. The noise goes through all level geometry. This was, to put it mildly, not pleasant to deal with. There was no clear indication of what the range was, it would alert people through walls, you had to sort of mentally draw it, and a lot of maps didn't account for it. It led to a lot of arbitrary stealth failures, and it was generally a sucky system. In response, at update 10, the devs set [I]all[/I] silenced guns to have a noise radius of 0 or 1 meter. 1 meter noise radius guns still exist, but 1 meter is such a small range that you practically have to fire next to someone's head to alert them. No one missed noise radius mechanics.
Years passed, and other stealth mechanics took the fore. Many stealth maps are much larger, or have multiple floors, so noise radius becomes even more irrelevant. At the same time, changes to the game balance meant that instead of a major penalty to weapon stats (that could be compensated for with skills), silencers were a major component of meta builds. Suddenly, everyone was using silencers.
We had a bunch of testers, of the "I solo OD on twitch with FSS for fun" mentality complaining that Crackdown was far, far too easy. They were all using silencer builds, and were generally mowing down police before they could respond. This confused us, because Crackdown doesn't have the same performance issues that the base game has- fewer enemies are on the map at once.
In response, we buffed enemy health and damage a bit, but we also took another look at enemy target priority documentation while we were at it. We realized there was a huge problem.
[B]The huge problem[/B]:
[I]Noise radius is also used in loud[/I]. It's part of the calculation that assigns and reassigns target priority for enemies. It's a major part of a complex calculation that's constantly evaluated, so having a silencer effects things in a number of ways:
* With a noise radius of 0-1, police will ignore other members of their squad being killed, because they're outside the noise radius.
* Enemies also continue trying to get closer to players, to get to an optimum firing range, or pursue other objectives, rather than fire back.
* I think (less certain of this) that the threat and suppression systems still apply to enemies, even when silencer skills mean they don't "notice" the player. So enemies are suppressed by players they aren't aware of.
It appears likely that the devs never noticed this knock-on effect, or didn't care about it back when silencers weren't part of an effective loud build.
Bottom line, with noise radius set to 0 or 1, enemies take much, much longer to target players. This includes tasers and cloakers, who become much less likely to use their abilities unless the player is already shooting them. [I]This also compounds with other skills like optical illusions that reduce enemy targeting priority.[/I] It breaks the game.
[B]The silencer fix[/B]:
In crackdown, when the game goes loud, silenced guns get a universally reassigned 14 meter noise radius. They still attract much less attention, but you can no longer pick off whole teams of enemies while their partners stand idle. This fix is also being implemented in the Restoration overhaul.
Now, to be clear, this has been documented in the long guide for years, but the decision AI and suppression systems are some of the more complex ones. I knew there was a problem there, but I had no idea how big of an issue it was. This was just what got me off my butt to research it and come up with a fix, which goofball implemented almost instantly and effortlessly.
I can't say I'm happy with some of these proposed changes to sniper rifles. I haven't played in a while, but I just remember after the last difficulty buff, sniper rifles kinda became obsolete weapon choices. Not just because of their abysmal damage as a result of the equally abysmal health buffs to enemies across the board, but also because the ridiculous amount of redundant, or completely inferior choices in the light, and medium sniper rifle class. And that's all on top of the larger amount of enemies we now have to deal with, which are a particularly hard counter to sniping weapons in any game with overwhelming amounts of enemies. I already wrote a long post on the actual steam discussions, I hope they address some of my concerns.
Namely I just find it weird one of their solutions is to make a skill that gives them splash functionality. It's a high precision weapon, not a shotgun or explosive. We have to make it cross-function to actually work now? At least work with its existing strengths.
I think a much more interesting idea that plays on the strengths of a sniper rifle would be to increase bullet penetration for sniper rifles, and either make an inherent ability to sniper rifles that marks all enemies in a radius around a recently killed target (perhaps with the theia scope, or a new type of scope), or a skill that does this no matter what you use. That way, a sniper user could kill an enemy, and various enemies around their dead target will be marked to them, and the sniper rifle user could then shoot them through solid cover to dispatch these targets a lot easier. It would certainly be making the piercing abilities considerably more useful beyond just Shields.
I think "explosive headshots" is one of the better ways to buff snipers in horde games. TF2 did something similar in Mann vs. Machine with the Sniper class. Since Mann vs. Machine is against waves of AI bots, having a character that can only hurt enemies one at a time was useless. The Sniper had a weapon that penetrated (The Machina), but since you were aiming for headshots for optimal damage, you barely ever got penetration kills unless you bodyshot, and if you were at a height elevation you'd have even less of a chance to do so. The main upgrade you wanted for the Sniper in MVM was "Explosive Headshots" and generally the one you prioritized. Headshotting an enemy would "explode" in a radius around that enemy, dealing high damage but also slowing the enemy. This allowed skilled snipers to contribute to crowd control and also help debuff the enemy. This also preserved the point of having a sniper rifle - high damage, long range, precision required. Landing a bodyshot would be a waste, not only because you'd do way less damage, but you would only hurt one enemy and there wouldn't be a debuff.
The main reason I don't use Sniper Rifles in Payday 2 is because I can't kill fast enough. Snipers in Payday 2 are basically the Thanatos for killing special enemies and everything else for mediocrity. One shot, recoil, wait, one shot, recoil, wait... etc. until a reload. Snipers are simply outclassed by ARs with comparable accuracy/high RoF aside from the Thanatos's huge amount of damage. Penetrating shields lowers the amount of damage a bullet does for some reason (was this changed?) and shields inside other shields (shieldception) make it impossible to kill either until they move away from each other while explosives do the job just fine. Unless you use the Thanatos, snipers are a huge disadvantage against Dozers since you'd need three shots to destroy the visor and then land the headshot or wait until someone else does, while a high RoF weapon shreds it. Scope sway makes landing shots difficult at a distance (unless you mod it out which is kinda cheap but makes the game feel much better) and up close it's a lot harder to land consistent headshots if an enemy is in your face.
Snipers just aren't rewarding and don't help with crowd control. Other guns are simply better. There's craploads of enemies in Payday 2 so killing one at a time isn't ideal and bodyshots are already discouraged via the headshot multiplier. Landing multiple penetrated headshots is also tough since enemies crouch, dodge, and move their heads around, and the head is a much smaller target than the body. That's why I think explosive headshots are a good solution - they reward landing headshots and they help with crowd control. I know it's not realistic in the slightest, but when you think about it Payday 2 is barely realistic - you're basically commiting genocide with the amount of police slain and also using mind control powers to dominate enemies. I don't think explosive headshots are that big of a stretch.
The only reason I'm not a huge fan of the whole 'explosive' radius thing is because it's just going to mean stronger sniper rifles will reign over the others, and that just seems like it's passing the buck rather than making every sniper rifle have their own strengths. And since there are 3 different flavors of sniper rifle to choose from, it certainly sounds like with this radial damage, everybody is already anticipating the Thanatos and maybe some medium sniper rifles to be monster combinations, but I don't see much hope for the lighter class.
Right now, ROF is the most valuable aspect of a sniper rifle, and Overkill made the choice of releasing newer sniper rifles that were just continually superior to older sniper rifles as time went on to the point where we've got too many obsolete options.
They're going to need to touch upon the stats of sniper rifles, as much as they don't want to make sniper rifles some sort of grown-up battle rifles, ROF is going to be a critical aspect they need to address, because they've basically forced themselves into that corner. They can't possibly expect something like the Rattlesnake to be useful against its high ROF competitors anymore. And if they boost its damage by trying to move it to the medium sniper rifles, it'll be superior to every medium sniper rifle. They each have to have their own defining traits and advantages, or a new stat to differentiate each one.
One option of many good ones suggested in that thread is for the “explosion” to be a major chance to fully suppress or panic enemies.
edit: someone's suggested a "focus" skill that has a similar damage increase effect to the sniper in tf2, which I also like.
Decided to try all new heists since UE update and holy shit what happened to enemy spawn?
Assault kicks in and in less that 40s almost entire map is swarmed with heavy tans and specials. It to the weird stuff where a pack of 3 dozers spawn literally 5m behind me.
I remember OVK being a nice difficulty where you can enjoy plenty of fun builds without going into the bullshit hp values and meta breakpoints.
[QUOTE=Hammer7;53064462]Decided to try all new heists since UE update and holy shit what happened to enemy spawn?
Assault kicks in and in less that 40s almost entire map is swarmed with heavy tans and specials. It to the weird stuff where a pack of 3 dozers spawn literally 5m behind me.
I remember OVK being a nice difficulty where you can enjoy plenty of fun builds without going into the bullshit hp values and meta breakpoints.[/QUOTE]
Bots count as players now, so if you were taking them it was spawning cops at 4-player rates.
Yeah. Before they didn't count so you were given spawns for one player. But when they reworked bots to be slightly less incompetent and give the player boosts and such, they made them start counting.
Also in the Hox Housewarming update, they massively increased the max number of cops alive at once.
It hurts my FPS when there is that many, so I use this mod to reduce it back down to the previous.
[url]https://modworkshop.net/mydownloads.php?action=view_down&did=21527[/url]
The desc recommends using Full Speed Swarm maxed out. I do and it makes for a much more engaging experience.
I feel like I'm nagging about this, but it wouldn't hurt to have characters in-game at least blink or look around during certain actions, at least if we see PAYDAY 3… No One Lives Forever, Postal 2, and even Hello Neighbor had facial rigs for the various characters, with bones for facial animations since their game engines had no support for such unlike the Source engine when it was introduced in 2004.
Left 4 dead has something similar for the infected. They have ~5 second animation loops for facial expressions. Idles, angers, pains.
1 idle for casing, 1 for masked up / combat, 1 for down state. And probably 1 more static expression for taze.
i haven't played the game in years, anything i should know before i start again?
[QUOTE=BenjaminTennison;53064650]I feel like I'm nagging about this, but it wouldn't hurt to have characters in-game at least blink or look around during certain actions, at least if we see PAYDAY 3… [B]No One Lives Forever, Postal 2, and even Hello Neighbor had facial rigs for the various characters[/B], with bones for facial animations since their game engines had no support for such unlike the Source engine when it was introduced in 2004.[/QUOTE]
Key point here is that these game engines aren't being held together by duct tape. :weeb:
iirc the only difficulties with the absurd spawns are one down and mayhem unless they upped them across the board
[QUOTE=Coyoteze;53064914]Key point here is that these game engines aren't being held together by duct tape. :weeb:[/QUOTE]
Not to mention, the Diesel engine is [i]really, really[/i] showing its age. There's a slim chance that PAYDAY 3 will end up using Diesel 3.0 instead of the Valhalla engine teased for Overkill's The Walking Dead game.
If us warriors and Ulf Andersson cannot be granted entry to Valhalla, then may the Fimbulwinter freeze us before Ragnarok is unleashed.
[QUOTE=BenjaminTennison;53065361]Not to mention, the Diesel engine is [i]really, really[/i] showing its age. There's a slim chance that PAYDAY 3 will end up using Diesel 3.0 instead of the Valhalla engine teased for Overkill's The Walking Dead game.
If us warriors and Ulf Andersson cannot be granted entry to Valhalla, then may the Fimbulwinter freeze us before Ragnarok is unleashed.[/QUOTE]
pretty sure TWD switched to unreal engine, with valhalla becoming a plugin for UE or something
[QUOTE=VietRooster2;53065087]iirc the only difficulties with the absurd spawns are one down and mayhem unless they upped them across the board[/QUOTE]
when DW came out it had higher max cops at ~41, a number that was enough to cause problems on some systems. After housewarming, all difficulties above normal and below OD have a max cops of [I]56.[/I] OD has a max [I]84[/I] enemies at once.
A Crackdown progress update: We're going to release with texture edits complete for only part of the enemy roster. I'm keeping a really close lid on the new Zeal appearances (which are more tweaks to aid gameplay than the revolutionary stuff Restoration is getting up to), but I've got some really unsatisfactory teaser images I've been handing testers as previews. Here they are:
[img]https://i.imgur.com/N0fg6m6.png[/img]
Second draft of the AR version of the Heavy Zeal unit. The one on the left is how they normally appear. There were three more passes on this one before it was ready for release.
[img]https://i.imgur.com/SzxL0iB.png[/img]
Semifinal version of the light shotgunner Zeal, using the wrong weapon and without red shells. There's a couple important details hidden in this image (like the new face), but the barely visible red patch is actually super effective at making them stand out.
[img]https://i.imgur.com/YGOA0lG.png[/img]
Z-Dozer draft material is coming in now-this is all I can show. We're actually going to have to incorporate a texture fix mod for the dozers...their inner visor is all borked, and all the variants are currently sharing texture references to the head texture for normal dozers, or something. It's a mess.
Zeal unit assets are incredibly, unforgivably bad to work with, especially their UV mapping- we had to sink an idea or two because of bizzare last-minute maps by the interns that made these units. We're all indebted to Bandana Dee and Rex for shouldering the burden.
lmk if y'all have any questions or suggestions for making OD fun/tolerable.
new lore email
[QUOTE]From: [email]b.painter@paydaytaskforce.gov[/email]
To: [email]s.garrett@paydaytaskforce.gov[/email]
Date: 2018-01-19 15:27
Subject: Downtown building attack update
Sir,
Forensics is still analyzing the evidence recovered from the the site on 14th, but now that everyone is back from the Christmas break I felt that a short update was warranted.
We can confirm, as you expected, that the site appears to have been used by the Payday gang in some fashion, going by cursory analysis of the evidence. Just about all of the equipment we recovered has been destroyed beyond repair; some of it has even been mechanically compromised- drilled through, as well as neutralised with the usual electromagnetic methods. The hardware seems to have been a mix of home-made and cutting-edge industrial tech; whomever built it was no amateur tinkerer. The Lab is attempting to extract data from the pieces recovered, but they are not hopeful at this point.
DNA analysis of the blood we found is still pending- there was a lot of it and separation is taking longer than the lab expected.
The variations and types of spent ammunition casings found strewn about on-site would seem to indicate mercenaries were responsible for, or at least involved, in the attack. They were professionals, at any rate. For example, they hit the place exactly when when DCPD would be slowest in responding.
The oddest thing we found was laying on top of all the debris on the top floor, where most of the blood was- a piece of old textured paper with what looks to be a hand-drawn figure and inscriptions. I don’t recognise the lettering, but I’m attaching a snapshot of it. The image has also been forwarded to our research people for further study.
[IMG]http://fbi.overkillsoftware.com/img/email/crimescene.jpg[/IMG]
I will have more for you soon, Sir. In the meantime, please let me know if you have any specific needs.
//BP
Sgt. Brian Painter
Special Analysis Operations, Payday Task Force, Washington D.C.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Flubbman;53065718]new lore email[/QUOTE]
redditor Saflinger translated the Aramaic text as follows:
Top of page: Nebuchandezzar. Probably refers to the person.
Mask caption: Watcher, specifically [url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watcher_(angel)[/url], an angel. Not clear if it refers to the person or the mask. We have a few masks that describe watching angels.
Faded text: Nerves, or "turn over". redditor couldn't be certain.
[QUOTE=Flubbman;53065718]new lore email[/QUOTE]
Sounds like whatever happened with [sp]Bain, he went down fighting?[/sp]
[QUOTE=Jetamo;53065933]-snip-[/QUOTE]
You may want to fix that. It's [sp] not [spoiler].
I'm very confused about this totally not supernatural stuff
I've been meaning to do this for a while, but I think I just need to put out another public inquiry.
Anyone know of a working mod that replaces the "Criminal Intent" tune from the PD1 soundtrack with its original version as opposed to the current version?
Version 1 linked below:
[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNU1fVKZaTI[/media]
And to clarify, I want a mod to get this working in PD2, not PD1.
[QUOTE=Drewsko;53066401]
Anyone know of a working mod that replaces the "Criminal Intent" tune from the PD1 soundtrack with its original version as opposed to the current version?
[/QUOTE]
It's not quite what you requested, but I found this [URL="https://modworkshop.net/mydownloads.php?action=view_down&did=18432"]standalone mod[/URL] that adds it as a menu track. Although, I can't test it at the moment and none of the comments actually mention how well the mod works, so I apologise if it's broken in some way.
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PAYDAY 2/RAID v12: Locke Your Doors
