Payday 2, and the perversion of persistence

Payday 2 came out a few months ago, sometime in August. The first game frequently came up against complaints that it felt a little too much like Left 4 Dead with cops, suffered a lack of polish, felt a little too railroaded down some (admittedly) impressive setpieces. The successor has been polished, fleshed out. Ongoing days, casing mode, equipment options make it feel like a heist game - but when the going gets rough, some nice guns and interesting skill trees make it an entertaining police murder / drill repair simulator.

The lead director, Goldfarb, happens to be a fairly nice and open guy too. Frequent juicy snippets of forthcoming features, balance discussions, enough to keep any armchair designer fairly content. Which is a shame, because the guy gets hounded on Twitter now and then. Usually it’s interrogation on patches for the console version - understandable, frustrating. However, especially at launch, the accusation flies of nickel-and-diming, scamming the players. The game is short of heists to do, depending on who you ask it’s anything from 5 to an order of magnitude from whatever was promised before launch. Stuff gets cut from games at an alarming rate, it’s the only reason games end up playable. No doubt some will end up as paid DLC. Life will go on. No, your comparison between the developers and people who rob banks for a living isn’t really so insightful anymore.

But as ever, the question is why. There is a huge demand for new heists, new banks, new content. It seems unreasonable to be chomping at the bit about 2 months from a release which was undoubtedly rushed, but it’s understandable. People are burned the fuck out on Payday 2, by and large. A few extra heists is pallative care, a level editor an admission of defeat. I have about 120 hours of this game logged - playing TF2 habitually for years before it went to the dogs only clocked up 500 or so. I don’t even like co-op shooters that much, usually. It would be nice to credit the developers with making the game addictive.

Then I look at my heister - Chains, black guy in a light grey suit. Wolf’s frantic cries on seeing special enemies make me prefer him, but some dickhead has usually picked him by the time I enter the lobby. No-one ever picks the black guy. And either way, I play an Enforcer-Ghost. Shotgun-toting, rapid-moving, medium-armored man of mass destruction, using the provided skills to roll death into more death, to turn enemy counts upside down, to punch through riot shields and leave a fat ammo bag for his teammates as an epitaph for all the brave policemen murdered over a few bags of necklaces. And he’s only Level 91, 9 off the level cap. Starts to make sense now, right? 120 hours spent heisting and my guy still can’t figure out how to sprint sideways. I still have work to do.

Getting Paid

Payday 2 has 3 rewards for jobs well-done. The first is cash, liquid assets. 90% or so goes into an offshore account for bragging rights and contract purchase, the rest is available for buying and customizing equipment. The second is XP, used for advancing in the skill trees and getting access to higher-level equipment (a double-barrel shotgun being so much more complex to operate than an M16 with about 10 aftermarket mods on it). The third is cards, which randomly award anything from mission critical equipment to pocket money to the ability to put the Portal cake on your mask. The first is easy to come by, the rest require big, elaborate heists and small, fast heists respectively.

And so, perversely, a game about heisting - about desperate criminals risking it all on a get-rich-quick scheme - becomes about everything but the money. The uncovering of a “cash bonus” under one of those cards is frequently met with a cry of anguish, that the last 15 minutes of painstakingly sawing open deposit boxes has resulted in no cool weapon mods and no fancy mask patterns. Just some worthless cash for purchasing all the weapons you already have.

People who play games are problem-solvers. Your core audience has likely been solving problems since they were in single digits, and when you reward them for something you are going to get exactly that - you’re going to be solved. There is a “Big 5” of heists worth doing for XP at high levels - meth cooking, cocaine transportation, FBI office raiding, fusion reactor theft and a heist on an art gallery. On the highest difficulties, the XP reward for these heists completely dwarfs that for the lesser heists. The cards can be gamed by finding the heist that can be beaten in 30 seconds and sitting there doing that for a few hours. Expecting gamers to not game systems is the biggest misstep a designer can make - tip, the clue is in the name.

The game gets stale for anyone with a brain after days of doing the same 5 heists. People get burned out. Any new heists you present will be picked through for which ones reward best - the rest will be discarded. When you add a grind to a game, you attach a huge extra “Why?” to just about anything the player does. Why should I bother getting all the jewelry? Why should I spare civilians? Why should I bother getting more money in a game called Payday?

Design Reboot

There are too many overarching concerns to implement this even as some sort of mod (no mod SDK, obviously). A lack of permanence will no doubt turn people from this, in favour of whatever does have such creature comforts. Unless properly thought through, it can be gamed just as easily.

No persistence between sessions of the game.

At the end of a play session, all available cash is recycled into an offshore. All weapons are stripped of prints and sold. All skills are neuralised.

Players start a session with a blank slate - a Glock, a little spending cash and a few free skill points.

All weapons, mods, armour suits are unlocked. The only thing keeping you from getting them is your wallet.

Players can exchange money and items during a session.

Ammo costs money. Your armour now degrades between heists, and repairing it is expensive.

You buy skill points to distribute among the trees. No respecs.

Difficulty is augmented via a Heat meter. Higher heat means a bigger police force, tighter security, slower escapes. Stealthing jobs lowers heat. Going loud raises it. Jobs pay more on higher heat.

A failed heist results in all current equipment being confiscated.

At maximum heat or a certain cash level, the final heist can be played. Fort Knox. On completion, your session ends. Credits roll.

A system like this makes the small decisions just as important as the big ones. Decisions become more than “what”, they become “when” too. Long-forgotten, early game jobs and weapons become relevant again. Doing more crime with less equipment has its rewards. Cleaning that nightclub out becomes lucrative again when all you’ve got are a few MAC-10s and a crew whose favourite heist film is Ocean’s Eleven. An organic, memorable narrative is built between jobs. The heist is about the money again.

Though that map editor would still be nice.