Beta feedback: Weapon, perk deck and skills changes

[Ashley]

Hey guys! Here we would love to hear your feedback regarding the weapon changes in the open beta available.

Current weapon changes

We've drastically increased the ammo return for low damage weaponry in the game. Low damage assault rifles, sniper rifles and shotguns should now be extremely ammo effective. The intention behind this is that now players must decide between ammo effectiveness and DPS when picking weapons. Weapons that deal low DPS will be much more stable in the long term however they significantly lack the instant killing power that high damage guns have. We hope this will help make a more balanced choice when picking weapons.

Cavity 9 mm - Changed to DMR assault rifle sub type ( damage is increased from 65 to 160 )
Cavity 9 mm - Accuracy reduced by 8
Cavity 9 mm - Concealment increased by 2
Cavity 9 mm - Ammo capacity from 99 to 66
Broomstick - Damage from 37 to 65
Broomstick - Ammo from 150 to 90
Broomstick - Accuracy from 44 to 80
Broomstick - Rof from 480 yo 361
Broomstick - Precision Barrel - Damage from -3 to +110
Broomstick - Precision Barrel - accuracy from +12 to -8
Broomstick - Precision Barrel - stability from +4 to +8
Broomstick - Precision Barrel - Ammo cap is now reduced by 45
Fire axe, Spear, Gold Fever, Great Sword, Ice Pick, Pitch Fork, katana and Chain Whip went from 70(450) to 30(200)
Brawler - Bloodthirst - Now stacks up to 1600% instead of 300%
GSPS 12G - Ammo from 42 to 28
GSPS 12G - Damage from 90 to 155
Police can only use flashbangs every 15 seconds (instead of 4)

Perk Deck changes

We've buffed some perk decks to make them more viable on higher difficulties.

Biker - Prospect Perk 1 :
Every time you or your crew performs a kill you will gain 5 health and 5 armor. This cannot occur more than 10 times every 15 seconds.

Hitman - Tooth and Claw - Armor now recover after 1.5 seconds instead of 5.

Grinder - Histamine Perk 1 :
Damaging an enemy heals 1 life points every 0.3 seconds for 3 seconds.

Maniac - Insanity Perk 9 :
Damage absorption from Hysteria Stacks on you is increased to 100%.

Skill changes

We've buffed two reload perks to make them have a bigger impact to make assault rifles and sniper rifles more viable.

Technician Tree - Oppressor Subtree - Lock N’ Load Skill Aced :
Killing 2 enemies with SMGs, LMGs, Assault Rifles or Special Weapons set to automatic fire mode will increase your next reload speed by up to 60% 100%. This bonus is reduced by 1% 2% for each bullet above 20 in the total magazine size, down to a minimum of 20% 40% reload speed increase.

Mastermind Tree - Sharpshooter Subtree - Aggressive Reload Skill Aced :
Any killing headshot will increase your reload speed by 40% 100% for 2 seconds 4 seconds. Can only be triggered by SMGs, Assault Rifles and Sniper Rifles fired in single shot fire mode.


Tell us how you feel about this and what changes you'd personally like to see if any!

[Copy & Cat]

While this works for a decent amount of weapons in general way, it really doesn't fix long time problem for specific weapons that have been growing in number since the rebalance and other changes such as peacemaker, lions roar and G3 with assault kit as some examples, some of issues of the J36P and Compact-5 were fixed with the spec ops pack but that's a paid dlc, so the weapon fixing mods end up being locked behind a paywall.

The changes to grinder were mostly nice since non-dodge perk decks can't get a good amount of dodge it made grinder work mostly with the LWBV but the changes may have alleviated some of that problem, while biker is still a joke since the player cannot control his regen any way so it can end up going away when he needs the most, sad that hitman didn't get any change or rework ( still think a offensive crits and reloads speed deck could work) or sociopath didn't get any melee bonus for deck that needs melee kills to work.

Honestly can't see we getting a good balance if we have so many skills that give a large amount of damage bonus for weapons, and the reload speed bonus just seem like a cheap way to make the fast mags not look so strong. I am not mistaken the trip mines didn't have their damage changed in the dificulty update

[Hoxi]

I'm alright with most of the changes made, but there are some things that need to be addressed that I will talk below, Bowie has some good points, specially the first one about certain weapons.

Originally posted by Christmas Bowie:

the reload speed bonus just seem like a cheap way to make the fast mags not look so strong.

Kinda thinking the same, though saving 12 points while getting the same reload bonus at all times, through a DLC is not a good thing, it's even worse when you stack them. A nerf and penalties are needed for these, specially when they're straight upgrades to certain weapons that have no magazine mods. And since we're at it, the Low Drag Magazine should have some kind of penalty too, not only both are straight upgrades, they're locked behind DLC.

Though I'm alright with the reload bonuses for these weapons, Bloodthirst ace sure made them trivial considering the amount of points you needed to spend to get a 50% reload bonus for 10s, now they make sense.

Originally posted by Christmas Bowie:

I am not mistaken the trip mines didn't have their damage changed in the dificulty update

Trip Mines deal 1000 base damage and 1500 with Combat Engineer ace, when every grenade launcher except for the Arbiter deals 1300 by default, this needs to be addressed. And yes, I'm aware that Trip Mines are the only type of explosives able to damage Dozers multiple times, you can only one-shot One Down Dozers with these if you use crits.

If one-shotting them without using said builds is an issue, they could just buff their damage up to 6000 and make it so they don't deal multiple instances of damage against them, they would be able to one-shot every other unit except them and unlike now, it would take normal Trip Mines to one-shot a One Down Dozer, or just one with crits. Currently, one upgraded Trip Mine would deal around 11550 if their armor is intact, but a second one would only deal 3300 damage (right now I'm not sure if the second faceplate is the only piece of armor left).

Dealing just one instance of 6000 (base) - 9000 (with Combat Engineer ace) damage would be more consistent as you would either need two or three to take them down.

To clarify, I'm not balancing them around One Down (even though I used those values), but around how they currently work and compare to other explosives.


The Ace of Spades also didn't get any buffs regarding the enemy health changes, I don't know how much damage they would have to deal to be okay, but I personally think that around 160 would let them compete against other similar throwables (don't tell me I'm insane when literally everyone is somehow okay about the other ones dealing 1100 or 3250 or 100 + 11 ticks of 225 poison damage, I mean, what the hell).


Lastly, melee still needs some kind of rebalance for obvious reasons, but that's a whole different story. I would only suggest to add a free weapon similar to the ones that deal 70 (450) damage, or just make the Lucille Bat that kind of weapon.

[UnknownMerc]

Moving forward, we have seen now that we can get ammo pickups changed across different types of weapons.

I propose keeping buffs on the ones that currently have them, but dial it back. It is now too easy to keep them topped up. I think 2 - 4% is better than the current 3.5 - 5.5% and 5 - 7.5%. I think this should be extended towards all weapons to include most of the pistols (ones under the Deagle damage class) and towards LMGs. Reduced pickup on special weapons is fine. The current global pickup is fine for M308 (and should be the same across DMR kits, this needs fixing), is fine for shotguns that exist at the Locomotive damage class and up, and is fine for pistols at Deagle damage and above.

Basically most everything except the top class of the current meta needs a tiny bit of help. The constant nerfs to global pickup hurt so many weapons, but not the best damage dealing ones because they still do a lot of damage, and consistently, and get just enough back from boxes to survive even on 1D. I do not want these weapons to be nerfed, I just want a little help pickup wise for all the other ones.

The weapon penetration changes are good ones; those should be kept.

[DOY]

Originally posted by ♥Ashley♥:

Grinder - Histamine Perk 1 :
Damaging an enemy heals 1 life points every 0.5 seconds 0.3 seconds for 3 seconds.

Can you correct this? I honestly have no idea what you are trying to say here.
Edit: i see you are missing some cross-out formatting on the skills/perk changes.

[Pain Is A Warning]

Ammo pickup changes are good, I like them.

Though I feel there is a huge gap between 200+ ammo AR and a 150 ammo AR.

If you look at, say, JP36 vs AK, the damage difference between those two is not that great. The shots to kill and time to kill ratio is very similar between those two, AK has the slight edge here.

Then you start comparing ammo pickup of those rifles, and here, there's a huge gap. You can sustain your JP36 with ease, it's actually really hard to run out of bullets when you're picking up ammo boxes. With AK rifle, it's not that easy, and running out of ammo is something very real.

That makes medium ARs kinda inferior. They might have a bit better accuracy, so you can engage cops on longer ranges, and go for headshots more easily, but the 'infinite ammo 'of light ARs makes them just so attractive. I think this needs to be fine tuned, maybe medium ARs should get more base damage (50?) or just the ammo pickup must be adjusted.

Perk deck changes are good!

Grinder can hold its own on MH now with no problem, which I really like.

Biker is better than it was, but I don't feel the difference that much. You still don't have much control on your health/armor gains. Does well on MH and DW though when going full armor.

I did not try Maniac, but I feel that the flat damage reduction just cannot win. It's going to be overpowered on OVK and below, and kinda crap on MH and above, since the cop damage gap between difficulities is just really big.

Skill changes are really good. I like how fast the rifles reload, LMGs benefit from this nicely.
I don't like that the reload skill combines with the new fast magazine though. Animations are way too fast and immersion breaking, and we don't really need reloads that are so damn fast. Just make them not stack.

The best part of the update is shield piercing reduction thing.
Light snipers and AP slugs are finally glorious for shield/Winters killing.
HE meta was very stale and boring, I'm really glad that I can bring something else to heists and be useful.

AP slugs might still get some accuracy/damage buff. They are still not that great vs normal SWAT units. Shield killing is nice, because they don't move that much, and aiming for the head is very easy. SWATs will run, roll, duck, and their heads are way harder to hit. With buckshot it's not a problem, since you can just shoot from the hip in their general direction and headshots will follow. AP slugs need to be aimed carefuly, and you should be rewarded for good aiming - +12 acc and +20 damage would be a good start.

I guess that's it. If you're fixing the skills, please look up the Controller subtree.
It's the worst designed tree right now IMHO, with bad skills and other problems:

- Forced Friendship aced is a waste of 3 points
- Confident basic does nothing, since the domination mechanics are dumbed down completely, cops will surrender 100% of the time when not at full health
- Confident aced does nothing if you decided to take no Joker skills. And you cannot avoid this one if you choose to go for T4 using the left path, you just waste 4 points for nothing

And then there are other bad subtrees, but that's for another time.

[El Yar]

offer of division of damage for the caliber
damage and decay at a distance

[A bridge too Far]

In general, stopping power (or instant killing power whatever) means sustainable play i.e. ammo effictive. The main source of pickup is always high damage weapon. Instant kill = situation under control = safe to collect ammo drop = ammo balance. Even your low dps weapon is extermely ammo efficient, ammo lost if you can't collect it. If long guide still correct about ammo drops, every player has an effective buffer of just 5 kills before he must pick up ammo drops, or else some ammo is lost.

Kill enemy from far away is always a net loss because you are unlikely to grab the drop due to both safety and distance. For whatever reason you have to kill something far, high accuracy weapon is certainly the best choice and we will not use low acc one for that. By the way, lower accuracy weapon currently have more total ammo in order to compensate for missing fire. High acc weapon is comparatively less ammo effective than Low accuracy weapon. Therefore, JP36 AMCAR clarion is easier to maintain it's ammo lv than 150 ammo rifle.

Rather than further change of ammo pickup rate, is it good to test for a change of 40 damage tier weapon total ammo according to the highest acc they can obtain?

[Pain Is A Warning]

I got to play a Safehouse Raid yesterday with my buddy, we did it on MH.
I brought M1014 with DB rounds and CMP SMG.

I think the new ammo pickup could be a bit OP now.

It might be that it was because I was using my zerker-overkill build, so I was using less ammo to kill stuff since my damage was buffed through the roof... I had so much ammo I never had to even scavenge much.

Murder buch of cops squads with my 2 guns, then pick up 2 or 3 ammo boxes - BOOM, fully stocked again!

I guess we will see some reduction in ammo pickup for the weakest guns, and hopefuly a small increase in ammo pickup for medium guns.

[prop]

Grinder still kinda feels like stiff, Little bit more health each regen that will do the trick if you ask me.

[maSu]

Following skills need a redesign:

(i post some suggestions. Maybe my suggestions would be too strong, the numbers are not that important, its more about the mechanic of the skills)

Important note

if MY aced skills to the same properties than the normal skill, these values are not additive.

Example:
Skill X:
normal increased damage by 25%
aced increased damage by 50%

-> damage increased by 50% INSTEAD OF 50%+25%
(i dont like this "by an additional XX%" crap, same values will be overwritten by better ones)

Forced Friendship Aced

Add something useful. Maybe: "You regenerate 0,5%health per hostage/converted cop every 5 seconds. Maximum: 2% per 5 seconds"

Hostage Taker Normal and Aced

1,5% health every 5 seconds? 4,5% every 5 seconds? Really?
Why not something like this:

normal:
you regenerate 1,5% health every 5 seconds per hostage/convert. Maximum: 6%

Aced:
you regenerate 15 shield every 10 seconds. Time reduced by 2 seconds per hostage/convert. Minimum time: 2 seconds.

Ammo Efficiency

normal and aced version are too weak and in most situations you cant do that much headshots in such a small time. You need 16 points to get this skills and 4 / 8 points to get normal/aced version. This skill must(!) be strong.

normal:
Single Shot SMG/Assault rifles and Snipers only:
Headshot damage increased by 12,5%
25% chance that a headshot refunds the bullet (added to magazine).
12,5% chance that a bodyshot refunds the bullet (added to magazine).

aced:
Single Shot SMG/Assault rifles and Snipers only:
Headshot damage increased 25%
50% chance that a headshot refunds the bullet (added to magazine).
25% chance that a bodyshot refunds the bullet (added to magazine).

Saw Massacre

Remove this skill completely.

Add something like:

"Rambo"
normal:
If you got less than 50% ammo for your current weapon, your movement speed is increased by 20%
Not silenced weapons only.

aced:
If you got more than 50% ammo for your current weapon, your damage is increased by 20%.
Not silenced weapons only.

Body expertise

This skill is useless if the player is able to aim a little bit. Change it! Increase the damage of headshots too and lower the bonus for bodyshots a little bit.

normal:
LMG/SMG/Assault rifle in automatic mode only
Bodyshot damage increased by 100%.
Headshot damage increased by 15%.

aced:
LMG/SMG/Assault rifle in automatic mode only
Bodyshot damage increased by 200%.
Headshot damage increased by 30%.

Optical Illusions

normal: 5% dodge if you got less than 35 cc.

Unseen strike

its useless because the buff has no effect after taking damage and/or after it ended and you are still not damaged at all.

Normal:
If you do not lose armor/health for 4 seconds you get +20% critical hit chance for 2 seconds.

Aced:
If you do not lose armor/health for 3 seconds you get +35% critical hit chance for 3 seconds

Mechanic:
once the player didnt lose armor or health for 3 seconds, the buff will start.
of the player lost armor or health while the critical chance is increased, the buff will not be canceled.

Example1:
Player (Unseen Strike Aced) didnt lose armor health for 3 seconds but he is hit in the 5th second.
buff will be active from second #3 to second #8

Example2:
Player (Unseen Strike Aced) didnt lose any armor or health for 20 seconds (=losing health/armor after 20 seconds).
buff will be active from second #3 to second #23.

Example3:
Player (Unseen Strike Aced) is never loosing any health/armor.
buff is active all the time (after the initial 3 seconds)

Running from death

Useless. Change it.

Normal
when you would get downed you are healed by 10% of your maximum health and you are invulnerable for 1 second. Cooldown: 100seconds

Aced
when you would get downed you are healed by 10% of your maximum health and you are invulnerable for 2 seconds. Cooldown: 75seconds

Up you go

Useless. Change it.

Normal
Teammates can revive you 100% faster (stacks with inspire, normal).

Aced
You are invulnerable for 3 seconds after being revived.

Bloodthirst

aced
-> reload speed buff should aply on HITTING an enemy with a melee attack instead of killing.

Counterstrike

replace by:

"Fast strike"

normal:
time to charge your melee attack is dvided by three

aced:
you are immune to ANY (including cloaker, shields, ...) melee attacks while charging your melee attack

Reason for this change: melee attacks are useless unless they are charged. 450 damage per hit is nice, but the charge time is too long. And it would be nice to counter any melee attack by pressing your melee attack button. Cloaker is coming for you? Press your melee button as a panic button ;)

Frenzy

Just bad. Small redesign.

Normal:
maximum health is set to 30% of the normal amount.
all healing effects are halved.
all damage taken is reduced by 15%

Aced:
maximum health is set to 10% of the normal amount.
all healing effects are disabled.
all damage taken is reduced by 35%

[GlitchFling108]

chagelog by me FOR SURE

Assaullt Rifles

Queen's Wrath

Damage 40 to 54
Accuracy 56 to 61
Stabillity 60 to 68
Threat 12 to 16

Gecko 7.62

Damage 42 to 51

Shotguns

[Link]

Pfft why have those changes to the reload speed when I can just spend 5 bucks and get a mod that does it


Seriously though, with how the weapon balance is, it would be nice for the weapon pack and weapon mod pack DLCs to stop, I believe that alot of the weapons in the game are either way too damn similar to one another or exactly the same and most of them are locked behind DLC.

For example, White Streak and the Baby Deagle, both exactly the same stat wise, but ones behind DLC.

Another example, the sterling and scorpion are way too similar to be both included seperate DLC packs.



That's the only thing I have to add to weapon balance now, no more weapon DLC or weapon mod DLC becuase your either going to be given something that blows everything else out of the water, OR you're going to get something that sucks ass and will be left aside.

Course I'm not saying all DLC should stop. I think heist and character packs should stay only minus the weapons.

You see, character packs add depth to the game with Perk Decks and I think that completely adds a new expereince and a new way to play the game which in my opinion is worth my hard earned cash. Same with heist packs, you get a new map which is core content which is a brand new experience to the player. And new cosmetics are always nice because they don't effect the balance in any way shape or form.

if Payday's DLC starting changing to this I would see more of a reason to buy it, offars a new expereince and isn't tainted by either an OP weapon that blows everything out of the water *cough* Rust *cough* or a really low damaging weapon that was just there to raise the price of the DLC *cough* Sokol *cough*

Not to mention getting rid of weapon and weapon mod DLCs will also lessen the arguement that this game is Pay 2 win which I never thought it was until I saw 100% reload speed locked behind 5 bucks.




OH! one last thing. I don't think SMGs and Assault rifles should be included in the skills that are given to Snipers and LMGs, I think they should get skills of their own either in a new skill tree completely, or shoved some where into another skill tree. I think Assault rifles would be good to be in Master mind, while SMGs are good in Tech.

Also, instead of making us work for the reload speed with having to either get a kill or more. Just make it a flat buff, we've already put skill points in there so we shouldn't need to do something MORE to use it. Just give them flat reload buffs like Shotguns and Pistols.

[GlitchFling108]

Originally posted by JUG1E7NA0U6:

chagelog by me FOR SURE

Assaullt Rifles

Queen's Wrath

Damage 40 to 54
Accuracy 56 to 61
Stabillity 60 to 68
Threat 12 to 16

Gecko 7.62

Damage 42 to 51

Shotguns

[Glitshy]

Originally posted by JUG1E7NA0U6:

No reasoning why things should get changed like that?
I guess you want these all-round buffs because these are weapons you would like to be better as they are your favourites? All of these buffs are unneccessary (R93 already got 300 damage).

[Copy & Cat]

Honestly think some weapons should change the tier they are in, patchett and broomstick both would work better as heavy weapons with high damage low ammo pool and generaly better stats, broomstick due having a scope that would be useful if the weapon has both high damage and high accuracy like the heavy pistols do, keeping the damage or accuracy would just mean it's useless, and since it has a slow reload every shoot must count.

Patchett has small mag by deafault, bad mod options and low fire rate, simply dumping an large amount of bullets with slow rate of fire, bad accuracy, bad sights, is not good or fun.

G3 rifle has an interesting mod to make the gun do less damage and have more total ammo, but then there's the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ ammo pickup and mag size that make this more of a downgrade than a choice of playstyle.

Peacemaker does not feel like a handcannon feels like a slow piece of ♥♥♥♥ due simpley making all other revovlers absurdly strong, you simply took the weapon main strong point and gave to all other revolvers without balancing it.

Lions roar rifle has horrible reload, for no reasons, i regret thinking that fast mags could fix this problem mainly becasue that would a weapon fix is behind a dlc.

Some other weapon choices don't make much sense to me, why is kobus a 50 rounds mag smgs of lwo caliber a medium smg when that same high mag size makes more sense in gun made to spam bullets than the compact-5 does.

I know some weapons are DLC so they are more tricky to balance, but the moment that you buffed bows and GL that are DLC only weapons, and other smaller buffs like the fast mag that also work on DLC weapons meaning they got something added to them after their release, so that rule is already broken so other dlcs can be fixed and tweaked, you should have also fixed the other weapons not by just making random big buffs to ammo without fixing in the problems that existed since the weapons were introduced or rebalanced in last year crimefest for ♥♥♥♥ sake