Early access script - Locke and Load event

Dear Patrons!
I've already finished the script for the Locke and Load event, and I figured some of you might enjoy having early access to it. The video probably won't come out until the 31st, since I'm working every day from now until the 1st. However, consider this some delayed satisfaction.



Crimefest 2017 has been and went, ten days of new content coming, primarily, for the PC. Unfortunately, my work schedule kinda-sorta forbade me from doing content daily, or even a half-way roundup. But, now that the event has closed out, and the Earth has stopped moving underneath me, it's time to assess the changes.

Overall, this year's crimefest was more announcement and community engagement-focused, rather than content focused. That led to some people calling this year "empty-fest ", "nothing-much-fest 2017", But rather than burying the lede, we'll go day by day and hammer out what I thought of this year's Crimefest.

On day one, Overkill released "story mode", which was described as, nominally, a way to get newer players into the game easier. I can understand that motivation: when you come into the game, assuming you bought the Ultimate Edition, you're looking at 55 heists, how do you know which ones are more difficult, which ones are longer, which ones are better for stealth, etc.. From the perspective of a more veteran heister, Story Mode doesn't change that much. when I played as a client, playing through an entire branch of the story mode only felt like playing a series of heists at a set difficulty. There wasn't any in-game indication that I was playing a set of heists in a series, if you hadn't told me that I was playing Story Mode, I wouldn't have known. Is this a bad thing? No, in fact having something designed to let newer players into the game easier be impact-free for more experienced players is actually a good thing. I was expecting a few more fanfares and in-game lines indicating what we had just done, and what we were about to do from Bain or the heisters; if it is a brand new game mode, then there should be a bit more content, but that's not what story mode is, or really needs. It's really just a framework for people to get to know some of the heists by sending them at you at a more controlled pace, with some of the easier or more straightforward levels. My experience as a more seasoned heister isn't ruined, and I'm not being forced to do baby-steps when other people play the story mode, so it's totally fine by me, and probably a really good idea for Payday 2 before entering a sunset period.


Day two involved exclusively: a stream where Jules and Simon went over Story Mode and answered some questions. The stream was good, but it did set up a precedent during this year's event where there would be an AMA or a stream, and nothing else released that day. I think they should have done this stream on the first day, when questions about how Story Mode worked would be more pertinent, but I gueeeesss that would lead them without anything for this day, so why not have a stream, it's not a bad idea, especially if a surly community might poo-poo a feature primarily meant for newbie players.


Day three introduced a spiffed-up contracts interface. Using the new interface, you can now more easily search for which heists might suit your fancy. Again, a better tool for newer players to the game; most people rounding the 500 hour mark have probably played every heist in every permutation possible, finding the ones they want from memory isn't too difficult. For newer players, you might want to have a list of all the heists stealth is possible on, or compile a list of favorites. They also added an achivement interface and a filter for modded servers. I don't go achivement hunting all that often, but if I were to, this is a way better in-game interface to find all of my missing achievements, what you need to do for them, and what your progress is towards them. "Oh jeeze, you know I want to complete every heist on Mayhem, but I don't remember which ones I haven't played!" well, now you can search all of this information up very quickly. Loading screens also got a touch-up: for just that little bit of extra immersion, you're now seeing more heist-appropriate loading screens. They also added a "modded server" filter, so that you can filter out servers that have been modded. You couldn't tell from the outset which ones had and which ones hadn't, and that could stick you in some interesting scenarios going into public games. Well, no more of that nonsense, I wish to play Vanilla Payday, and that's exactly what I can do with that filter.
So, here's where they could have stretched out their content. Stick the Story mode and the stream on day one, put the new contracts stuff on day two and the filter and loading touch-ups on day three. Makes it seem like you've got a whole lot more stuff in there, and there's not this one day where nothing comes out. Just sayin.


And on that note: Day Four... oh, man, day four. Ok, so, I thought: we hadn't heard about VR for a while, and there hadn't really been that much content so far in this year's Crimefest, and the little hint for the day pretty obviously looked like a VR headset, so I figured, alright! The VR beta is dropping today! Woo! Damn, that's gonna be cool, and I'm excited. Turns out that's not what they were going to do. Now, I know they wanted to keep the days secret until they hatched one-by-one, it's Crimefest tradition. But, only knowing an AMA is happening around 45, no, more like 20 minutes or so before the AMA happens doesn't really give people time to plan. 20 minutes before a 7 am AMA, in a lot of places in the united states, maybe 8 am, maybe 6 am depending on where you're living, no less. The only reason I knew it was going to happen, was because I was already up for work, which ordinarily would have precluded being able to participate, but I happened to get a lunch break during that time. Yeah, I get that they're in Sweden, and they don't have to conform to MY schedule, but seeing as we didn't know it was going to be a live Ask Me Anything ahead of time, some of us might have slept through it and only discovered it had happened after it was done. I was able to participate, though, and even though I didn't have time to prepare any questions, I still asked some, and I really wasn't liking the answers I was hearing. 


First of all, the designated form of movement will be teleportation. Like I imagined, the VR team too, thought that this would be the easiest and most compatible method of locomotion. Now, despite the overall outcry against this being the sole form of locomotion at first during the beta, I think it's actually reasonable in the short term. If they add only one movement method, and improve it over time and make it work really well, and then add more later, then you've got a system that works for everybody. This sounds like what they were going to do, but only after some considerable pressure from people who really wanted other options, almost as if they were never considering other options to begin with. You really do need multiple options for locomotion, teleportation is very limiting especially in a FPS setting. After playing some choice VR titles, Pavlov VR in particular, I've found that on the whole, touchpad locomotion actually doesn't really give me any headaches or motion sickness at all, as long as you do it right.


Apparently, when you teleport, you're also going to be phasing through enemies. That's gonna be weird, and a little bit like cheating, since other Desktop players aren't going to be able to do that, and apparently you aren't going to be able to do that with shields, but they don't know how to implement it yet. Apparently there will be a cooldown between each burst, I don't see how that's going to work with dodge, where you kind of have to be moving all the time in order for it to work, and it was asked during the AMA, will you be vulnerable to damage while you're moving, or just invincible, but that wasn't answered. Now, one of my patrons, Geno Garon, had a really cool idea: why don't we stick teleportation onto the dodge mechanic, and thumbpad onto the armor mechanic. When you're using dodge, it's really easy to sprint around cops, and cross over open distances without cover. This reflects the functionality of the teleportation system very well: as long as you're a reasonable distance away from the cover you're trying to move to, you can cross an open distance almost instantly and take no damage in the interim. With the thumbpads, you have to be more careful about your movement, and it's going to be slower by nature. I think one of the reasons Pavlov does so well with the thumbpads is that you're not actually moving that quickly. This way, the armor players will have more precise control, but they will move slower and will probably take damage while crossing open spaces. This is a perfect compromise and synergises control scheme with playstyle very naturally.


Going back to the AMA, some of the other solutions to control scheme that were mentioned during the AMA kinda made me sit back and scratch my head. So, the grenade system won't just work where you just throw the grenade. No, that would be primitive, in Payday 2 VR, you will aim your arm, and then hit a button, and the grenade will just shoot out and land where you aimed it. I get how in VR it's kinda difficult to make over-handed throws with the paddles without throwing the paddle, but this method... I just don't like how artificial it sounds. It's the same with their proposed method of reloading.
What they call "manual" reloading will involve, ok, get this, you hit the reload button, and that starts a timer, and when the timer is finished, then you intersect your gun with a square area near your belt. If you want to reload faster, you can intersect it earlier, but you get less ammo. I am... not in favor of this. Quite frankly, it sounds stupid. I understand that, from a balance perspective, you don't just want players to tap their hands to their waists to reload like in a lot of VR games. You could reload an LMG in an instant, and that would be kinda unfair. I also understand how modelling each and every one of the bazillion and one guns that we've collected over the last 3 years of DLC, to work in VR and have moving parts and everything, would be a bit of a high bar, a bit of a challenge. But it's like with the grenades, how you just point and click, and here with the reloading, how you just have a timer that counts down, and then your gun is reloaded, it betrays what is the core cool element that makes VR astounding. You have such a closer relationship to your environment when you have to actually hide behind parts of it from enemy fire, to the the gun you're using, when you have to actually reload the damned thing yourself when it's dry, and line up the sights accurately to ensure an accurate shot. It's more of a challenge to play the game this way, but it's also a fundamental element of what makes it exciting, and without that gritty, you know, eject the magazine, find a new one on your belt, slap it in, charge the bolt... no, actually just wait for a timer to tick down, another goddamned timer in a game full of timers. Without that grit, it's like saying "I'm going to go climb Mount Everest", and then slap in a VHS tape of someone else doing it and getting on a stairstepper: you've lost something in translation. I really hope this is not what they plan to do in the long run, and I hope the opposition to these two mechanics is loud enough so that they listen.


Day 5:alaskan deal heist, 30 new side jobs, Grimm Shotguns, laser colors,


Day 5 started out light with the ability to customize the color of your laser sights, flashlights, and any kind of rays coming out of your gun. ( get footage). This sounds like a really basic improvement, but it's actually kinda cool, along with skins you can give your gaming environment a little bit of extra "you"-ness, maybe not everybody has a purple flashlight, it's special, makes you feel good, ya know?
Next, there were a whole 30 side-jobs added to the already somewhat sizable roster. Now, I'm not a "side-job" kinda guy persay, I'm more a person of habit. I'm kinda like my ol' Grandfather, classic Texan, maybe a little bit of Hank Hill: no sir, no mods for me, thank you. I would like my steak well done, no pink in my meat, and I like my primary to be a car-4, secondary locomotive, and god-dangit none of those sneaky missions or side-objectives. Side-job? I'll take a real job, thank you. You got to put the work in, shoot straight, and you'll come out ahead of those fancy nobodies and their side-jobs.
Well, lemmie tell you, as somebody nearing 1,000 hours in this game, it gets to you doing the same thing the same way over and over and over. And if, say, there are a few extra ways to do the same thing over, then I'm all for it, hypothetically speaking of course. I would almost like a more rigorous system added to the game, maybe something like RAID's challenge cards, something that quite literally forces you to play in a totally different way, like the crab-walk, or maybe, you can't throw bags ever, or cops don't drop ammo, but ammo bags are +%800 or infinite or something like that. Whatever, don't wanna feature-creep a 4 year old game or anything.
And, speaking of creep, what do we need in Payday 2? More guns! The Brothers Grimm are supposedly 12 gauge shotguns that come in single and double format, in secondary and primary slots, respectably, and that means that you can go all Grimm all the time. You probably don't want to though, and that's not because they're not GOOD, they're quite good in fact. They do 18 damage per shot, and they fire a very wide cone of pellets fairly quickly. You WILL want to spec into ammo to use these shotguns, because they spray out a barrage of pellets that would make a touhou girl blush. They're really fun to use: very similarly to the stakeout, it's just super satisfying to turn any corridor or close-range encounter into a cone of death for anything standing in front of you.
And, of course thanks to standard Payday 2 logic, the heist they released with these guns is actually a really bad heist to use the Grimm Brothers ON. 


Now, I have nothing against the Alaskan Deal map, but it's got it's issues, which I think turn it into a rather mediocre heist..
The Payday maps that I consider to be fun, effective and exiting all involve one design feature: you have an objective, which is typically easy to get to, to hit, to set up at. Then the alarms go off, and the cops start to show up. When they arrive in force, the cops, by their presence, cordon you into a particular area, usually where your objective is, and begin to tighten their grip: there is a certain area that is in their control, and would be very difficult if not suicide to try and breach or to cross. You have a space that is safe for the most part, but, to get out, you have to cross that area, that no-go-zone the cops set up. What Alaskan Deal does is what I've seen a lot of newer Payday 2 maps do, and that is put you into the middle of an area where there are a ton of cops that spawn all around you, from above, from below, from either side, and you have to action-jackson their asses constantly while you move through the map accomplishing objectives, or stay in a central area and defend. That central area in Alaskan Deal has no cover that's not being surrounded by cops constantly spawning in. The cover on the ship that's a little safer is far away from the objectives, so you either stay put on the objective and just keep moving, or you stay put on the boat, which allows the cops to fill up that space, and quickly disable your maguffin, so then you have to cross that danger zone. It's like if the objective to Bank Heist wasn't inside the bank, but outside on the street. So, the cover that IS in Alaskan Deal feels very useless, because cops are spawning on all sides of it, and staying in the areas that are "safe" end up making things harder for yourself. Connor mentioned this earlier, and I have to agree, there are a number of maps that it's clear were made with Messiah and Swan Song in mind. Alaskan Deal is one of them: there are a number of corridors where you just have to go in one direction in order to get there, and there's zero cover, like the trip from the buildings to the ship. You just have to run from point A to point B and hope that you dont get downed, you don't have any cover that's not made useless by spawns coming in from either side, so you're not really fighting your way back, you're just trying to clear the area as much as possible, and then run and hope your armor, dodge or swan song lasts long enough for you to get to the ship. I don't really like this, it doesn't feel like quality shooter moments as much as it feels just like blasting cops as soon as they spawn and then running through open areas hoping not to die. It's not BAD level design, but it lacks focus, I'm not saying that every payday 2 map has to be the same, but there's deffinately things that make me sit up and say "wow, that was really challenging and cool, and tense", and Alaskan Deal didn't make me feel any of those things, only "oh jeeze, so many cops, they're everywhere, killkillkillkill, runrunrunrunrun ok, uh, what were we doing?"




Day 6: Payday 2 switch gameplay announcement


And after that quite invigorating set of brand new, DLC level content, on day 6 we got another announcement, this time without any sort of AMA or stream or anything really meaty, just... a trailer. With Almir doing his best face: "oh, I didn't see you there, I was just playing on a game tablet in the middle of a well-lit studio office, but hello heisters, and welcome to this trailer that we made to show you this thing, no you can't touch it, but let me push the buttons, see, they're buttons, and they work: it's real! You don't believe me? Look, I touch more buttons". Now, this is a trailer that shows some gameplay on a system that I don't own, probably won't get, and never thought of playing Payday 2 on before. Yes, Payday 2 on the switch IS cool, don't get me wrong, and it's gonna make the game just that much more available to a wider, probably younger, audience. This is not something that's in my wheelhouse, by a long shot, but even from a surface level, you have to wonder: are they going to update it as "well" as they have the console versions of Payday? Most of the comments on the video itself are regarding the console versions, are they just going to say "bugger you all, you'll just have to SWITCH, you dumb bastards, because we're not ever going to update the consoles". I mean, this is about as perfunctory and as obtuse as marketing gets: this is a video to remind you, just remind you, that Payday 2 is coming for the switch, and to tease at another announcement that might come later for PC players. It doesn't tell you anything about how it's going to run, how much content the switch version has, but just "keep your ear to the ground", and watch the forums for any actual information. That's a bit useless, isn't it? This whole day is useless; again, spread the content out and it won't feel like you just don't have enough for a 10-day event, or just don't have a 10-day event in the first place.


Day 7: Duke new character pack, Stoic Perk Deck, Crosskill guard pistols, Leather Sap, Rubarb and Sam Helmets


Day Seven added some more cosmetics, a pair of pistols, a perk deck and another melee nobody will ever use. As I've mentioned, melee is broken, why even add any more melees when I'm really not even bringing them? The masks are kinda cool, I like the Rubarb mask, that pretty cooky. The pistols are essentially the Bernetti 9s (check in-game).
Duke sounds like a mid-career Adam West playing Jeckyl and Hyde, and the performance is as delightfully nuanced and amusingly overblown as it should be. He even says "old chum". In stealth, he sounds like a storybook narrator, mid-action he's a sports narrator, and loud he goes full crazy.
His voiceover actor, Nicolas Colicos, has mostly worked as a character actor in UK television and American film, no videogames so far, as far as IMDB says. This premiere performance is really damned good, this is the note exactly that I was talking about with Sydney. He's not trying to sound like a crazy badass, he's trying to sound like a bookish self-described intellectual who is trying to BE a crazy badass, but he can't quite shake his upper-crust idiosyncrasies. When he's on edge, he's just a little bit off, he actually sounds crazy rather than just yelling and hoping that sounds crazy. I really like this character, really reminds me, again of Adam West, but also of Minsc from Baldur's Gate, and that's a really good combination. I wish there was more from this character, hearing Duke's lines, I kinda want to see a live-action version somewhere, played to the devilishly absurd that Nicholas has captured here.


The Stoic perk deck is an interesting idea, which I think might get sidelined because of it's unique method of health regen. Ok, so here's the pitch: instead of taking direct damage, you instead get %75 of that damage turned into damage over time. So, %25 of incoming damage is dealt directly, and then the rest of it slices up your health into these segments which deplete over time. You can stop that health from depleting by using the Stoic flask, which replaces your throwable just like with the Kingpin deck. Just like with Kingpin, you can only use your flask every so often, and kills you make reduce that time by 1 second, 2 at a later level of the deck. The flask turns all of your health which was slated to be lost over time, into regular health again, effectively negating that incoming damage. Stage 3 of the deck turns all your armor into health, and the final stage of the deck makes %50 of the health slated to be drained over time bounce back as health regen. Since the health you're regenning from getting damaged relies on the amount of health you can convert, and when you get downed you're left with a sliver, not very much to seed into a full recovery. When you're full up, it's great, but when you're down on your luck, the deck isn't going to help you power through. Like the Kingpin deck, you have to pay attention to your health a lot more, and sometimes I just get distracted with all the killin, so it might be a bad deck for me. I like the concept though, I think that the health regen, which only comes in the final stage of the deck, should be front-loaded however. The deck is kind of useless if you don't have every level, and not many decks are that impotent when they're incomplete.


Day 8: Payday crimewar,
And, (sigh) day 8, oh boy, another trailer to remind you that Payday 2 is coming to other platforms! Horay! Now I can wait even harder! Crime War was one I was actually interested in, though, because there's going to be a PvP feature, and that's something that I thought Vanilla Payday2 should have had a little while ago, just as a logical expansion of it's featureset. A mobile platform is something that I... wasn't really that exited for, but this is what we have to work with. It is kind of funny, especially during this crimefest, to see how many platforms that Payday 2 is being ported to, especially considering the aging and almost dead Diesel engine, that barely runs on high-end PCs. Next month we'll hear: "hello heisters, today we'll be announcing Payday 2 on the ti-83, oh boy, it's going to be a blast to mask up on your favorite graphing calulator,  Oh, hello heisters, good news, we've finally done what we've always wanted, and started production on Payday 2: The Final Payout, no need for electricity this time, let your fingers do the robbing on the abacus. Yes, it can run diesel, but don't ask how, Satan won't let me tell you..."




Day 9: Old Diamond Heist
The redone old Diamond heist is a great blast from the past, although I feel like cosmetically it's way different, I don't remember that fountain being there, although it might just be my old-man brain playing tricks on me. Uniquely, the Diamond heist has 4 floors, three of which are pretty much in play all the time, and cops can enter the gunfight from the roof by shooting down the glass dome. Each floor is similar, but has it's own unique personality, with one floor dedicated to cubicles, one floor has office space with party rooms, etc. Where a newer map like Alaskan Deal has one level of tension, exempli grata, lots of cops all the time, Diamond heist has a flow that helps to build tension. Right at the beginning, you are frantically searching for the son, the CFO, in order to trade him for safe codes. Moving the son is really tense, since you're vulnerable without a place to hold up and rest, and when you get to the roof there are cops everywhere. Once you have the safe codes, you have to hold out at the bottom of the building with every floor full of police is looking down at you, and you have very little cover. Once you get into the relative safety of the vault, you have some time to relax, put down deployables, and gather steam for the final bag push to the helecopter waiting outside. This is a really excellently designed flow, which builds tension, leading to a semi-climax, which edges you to the main climax and the escape. It's one of the reasons the old Payday The Heist maps were so looked forward to, a lot of care and attention was given to them, and they have a great buildup and release of tension that's rare for the newer maps. Now, playing these with the newer game mechanics is a little bit different, with all of your tippy-top skills and perk decks and inspire and health regen, it's not quite the same re-playing this old gem, but I for one still enjoyed it.


Day 10:


Day 10 concluded with a final Reddit AMA, and a mod for the Judge, oh boy. The AMA had a lot of really common community questions, like about No Mercy and if that's being done, and about the unique "burglar" costumes like what you got for Counterfit and Green Bridge. There were a ton more questions asked than were answered, though, I only saw around 20 answers, and there are over 600 questions, maybe less, on the thread now. There were so many, that apparently they're going to be answering them a little more slowly over time, which is fine by me, like with the VR AMA, there were some questions left unanswered, and I'm glad that they're going to stick around to answer them all.


I feel as if this year's crimefest came off like it was worse than it actually was. We actually got a lot of stuff, maybe a DLC and a half worth of guns, maps, characters and perk decks. It didn't have to be a 10-day event, however, some of the days felt like "filler", only in order to get to the big one-zero. It's a crimefest tradition, I know, but I just feel like I'm subtracting points ONLY because there were days where nothing much came out. I think the AMAs were  too unannounced and to early in the morning for those of us in the US to really participate, I don't KNOW that an AMA is what you're going to be doing when you have a little VR headset symbol, or a friggin little square box with some dots in it, what does that mean? Like, I don't know that I have to get up at 6 am on day 4 to get involved with an AMA, why would you plan it like that? Unless you didn't WANT anybody to show up, but that's the whole point, right?
All of the content that was released was good. It wasn't completely absolutely phenomenal, but we didn't pay for any of it, and I don't feel entitled to anything at this point in the game's development. I think the story mode was a really valuable and understated addition to how you navigate the game as a new player, and I think that the new contracts interface is going to be value-added over time. I really wanted to get my hands on Payday 2 VR, partially because I'm excited for it, but I can wait to judge the systems they have in place until mid-November, that's cool. The new guns, especially the Brothers Grimm, are fun to use, the heists, new and old, are both fresh content in my book, and the new heister was (eh?). I'm tempted to call this year's crimefest a success, the only thing stopping me was the sheer amount of marketing for future projects that we didn't hear anything substantial about, and the 6-am AMAs. Other than that, I think things went swell, and I'm looking forward particularly, again, to the VR mode coming mid-November. I believe that is going to be my next Payday 2 related content, so until then, take really good care of yourselves, and I'll talk to you next time.