Summary
Payday 3released an update that adds two new heists, new animations, a new skill line, and bug fixes. Although the game got off to a rocky start, it’s looking to recapture its fan base’s support.
The game launched with many issues, leadingPayday 3to become one of the lowest rated games on Steam. With its popular predecessor,Payday 2, being released all the way back in 2013, the franchise’s third game was highly anticipated for years. Unfortunately, its launch was underwhelming for many. However, its developer, Starbreeze Studios, seems to have no intention of abandoning efforts to rebuild the game’s reputation.
The centerpiece ofPayday 3’supdate is its two new heists. Starbreeze remastered two ofPayday 2’smost popular levels, Murky Station (now called Turbid Station) and Cook Off. The developer slightly tweaked the maps to better fit the new game. This update also introduced new first-person animations, the transporter skill line, new level-cap rewards, and over 200 bug fixes.
Cook Off gained popularity inPayday 2for being one of the best maps to accrue XPon. Its introduction toPayday 3makes it the second “loud only” heist in the game, and Starbreeze explained that a key difference in this year’s version is that it’s no longer endless. The maximum number of bags is now capped at 19. Turbid Station isPayday 3’sfirst “stealth only” heist, and received a few minor changes to fit the new game’s stealth systems.
Some worried thatPayday 3receiving old mapswould be a bad road to go down. It’s not clear yet whenPayday 3will receive brand-new maps, although fans can expect some eventually. However, the update did introduce a brand-new skill line. The transporter skill allows users to carry things more efficiently, whether that be loot, equipment, or bodies. Players can even carry two bags at once. The update’s level cap rewards consist of consumables that are dropped every time a player reaches a new renowned level. Renowned is what the game now calls levels that are past the level cap.
Starbreeze offered some answers as to whyPayday 3’slaunch and post-launchwas so troublesome. It explained that errors were found in the game’s update pipeline shortly after release. These errors were so critical that they could have wiped all progression for some players. These issues had to be immediately attended to, and significantly delayed the game’s first updates. With its first major content update seemingly a success,Payday 3fans can begin to grow hopeful for a brighter future.
Payday 3 Update Patch Notes
HEISTS
There are 2 brand new (old) heists in this update! Each painstakingly remade and slightly reimagined from their original PAYDAY 2 counterparts. Both of these heists tend to rank fairly high in popularity, we’ve seen a lot of people asking for both, we hope you enjoy it!
TURBID STATION, FORMERLY MURKY STATION
The private military contractor Murkywater had some “troubled times” in the past couple of years. As such, this heist has gotten a new name alongside its facelift when brought into PAYDAY 3. Turbid Station is the first ‘stealth only’ heist in PAYDAY 3 so far. In order to facilitate the new stealth systems introduced in PAYDAY 3, the team have made a few minor changes to the how it plays as compared to PAYDAY 2. The sense of familiarity is strong however, any veteran will feel right at home.
COOK OFF
How do you turn a crack house into a crack home? While ‘meth home’ would probably be more appropriate, someone tried turning this once disgusting den of debauchery into something livable. As such, the Cook Off house has gotten a few well needed renovations over the years. But once a drug den, always a drug den it seems.
The Cook Off house is the second ‘loud only’ heist in PAYDAY 3, following the footsteps of its predecessor. One difference in the new Cook Off is that it is not endless, the maximum number of bags possible is now capped at 19. The visuals of this heist have seen even more obvious changes over Turbid Station, though it’s still hauntingly recognizable to experienced heisters.
FIRST PERSON ANIMATIONS
Our animation team has outdone themselves and put together somefinelooking first person animations for a lot of the player actions. It really makes it feel better to swipe money when you see it getting taken.
As part of this, you can now inspect both your gloves and weapons by using the corresponding option in the context wheel.
TRANSPORTER SKILL LINE
This skill line is all about carrying, be that bodies, loot or equipment. With this skill line you’ll do so faster and more efficiently, even letting you carry two bags at once.
NEW MASK & PRESET WEAPON
Added the Under Wraps mask and the Compact7 Lycan preset weapons.
LEVEL CAP REWARDS
While we did expect you guys to outdo our expectations, you guys have crushed our predictions. As such this is the first addition of items exclusively available to those who have hit the level cap. We will call the levels passed the infamy cap “Renown”. When hitting a new renown level, you’ll be rewarded with consumable items that will be dropped for each renown level. We hope to expand this in the future, for all of you unstoppable heisters.
INFAMY FOR EACH HEIST COMPLETED
Our game designer Mio has written a blog-style post about the changes, and how they work just below.
RECOMMENDED CHALLENGES
Lastly on this list, we’ve added recommended challenges. Recommendations will show both on the main menu with general challenges you are close to, or could complete, and also in the heist selection when hovering over each heist.
Together with the Infamy per heist completion, we hope this will provide a good starting point for addressing your concerns about the challenges.
ADDED LOBBY CHAT FOR PC
We’ve added the much requested lobby chat for PC. We are still looking into how to best implement a text chat for console players.
GENERAL
HEIST COMPLETION INFAMY POINTS
“With this update, we are adding Infamy Points to heist payouts. Points are awarded for three accomplishments:
These payouts are added up together and aren’t mutually exclusive, which means that if you complete a heist without raising the alarm, you’ll get points for completion and for finishing it in stealth.
The amount of Infamy Points you get for each of these three factors depends on which heist you are playing and on which difficulty. Heists that are generally harder to stealth will have the majority of their points in the stealth payout. Heists that have low minimal loot (like Dirty Ice), will have a low completion payout, but a high “all bags” payout. And so on… To clear up any confusion, the “all bags” payout only cares about you extracting all the baggable loot, it doesn’t care about loose cash or the quality of the loot (for example, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a cleaned jewelry bag or not in Dirty Ice).
With this change, we’ve introduced an infinite source of Infamy Points to the game, so that required that we make some other changes. Once you reach the level cap (Infamy Level 150), instead of earning additional levels, all your Infamy Points will go towards a new system called “Renown.” Every time you earn 2000 Infamy Points, regardless of whether it’s from challenges or heist payouts, you will get a level of Renown and a random reward. The rewards can be a stack of C-Stacks, consumable weapon stickers and consumable mask patterns. We also plan to expand this system with more consumable cosmetics in future updates. Any cosmetics earned through Renown are exclusive to Renown and won’t be earnable through other methods. Please keep in mind that these rewards are consumable, so use them wisely, otherwise you’ll have to wait until they drop again for you to use them.
For this update, we have 1188 Renown levels, which will be visible to you in the main menu through a combination of icon and number next to your name. Once you reach the Renown cap, you will still be able to earn Renown rewards, but the number counter will no longer go up until we raise the Renown cap.
How does this affect any future Infamy Level cap increases? While we can’t say when we plan to raise the Infamy Level cap, once we do, all your Infamy Points will go towards your level instead of towards Renown. Once you reach the new Infamy Level cap, you’ll start earning Renown again instead, back from where you left off. And no need to worry about “wasting” challenges on Renown in the meantime; any Infamy Level cap increase will come with a set of new challenges worth as much as the new infamy levels require.
We plan to monitor this system and we’ll further tune it and update it based on stats and player feedback.” -Mio
BALANCE
There’s a lot to parse through, but our friendly neighborhood designer Mio has been kind enough to provide some additional information on most of the balance changes. Thanks Mio!
“While we are happy with how armor works as a mechanic right now, we wanted to address some armor-related skills that were overperforming. We also understand that players want more ways to restore armor without relying on the Armor Bag deployable. To help with this, a future update will introduce Armor Repair Kits that players will be able to get from hostage trading to repair damaged armor chunks (but not restore lost ones). We don’t have an estimated time for the Armor Repair Kit, but we’ll try to get it in as soon as we can.” -Mio
ENEMIES
“For this update, enemy changes are primarily bug fixes and other minor improvements. For the next update, we plan to make some balance changes to increase the challenge on OVERKILL difficulty.” -Mio
Payday 3
WHERE TO PLAY
Step out of retirement back into the life of crime in the shoes of the Payday Gang, the envy of their peers and the nightmare of law-enforcement wherever they go. Several years after the crew’s reign of terror over Washington DC has ended, they assemble once again to deal with the threat that roused them out of early retirement.The legendary Payday Crew, dreaded by the law and underworld alike, is back. Ripped from their peaceful retirement to rejoin the criminal world by a new threat, one born from the chaos the Crew left in their wake. In order to identify and crush this new threat, the Crew is leaving their Washington DC roots behind them and moving to New York City. A new location will bring with it new challenges, but also new opportunities for a heister with a plan.A professional heister knows it takes planning, hard work and a good amount of luck in order to execute a successful heist. In PAYDAY 3 the choice is put in the hands of the players, deciding how to tackle the heist, whether you sneak or go in guns blazing, whether you let your hostages go or keep them around as pawns, whether you go at it alone or bring friends. The choices are endless and in your hands, they will vastly change how the game plays.
