Aftershock and moving safes manually

[Malidictus]

Here's how the heist is intended to go: You cut open Vlad's trucks, you wait for the C4, you use the C4 to retrive a truck, you use that truck to transfer the safes.

Here's how it ACTUALLY goes: You cut open Vlad's trucks, you move all the safes to the construction site wall by hand while waiting for the C4, you blow the wall to put the safes in the truck.

I can't be the only one who sees a problem with that. Not only does this make a complete mockery of the heist's narrative (which some of us still care about), it also turns the heist into a completely unnecessary exercise of moving lots of heavy bags that cops can't steal (which is boring as hell). As far as I'm concerned, players should not be able to move the safes all the way to the construction site wall, and here are a few suggestions on how to make it happen.

1. Make the safes super-heavy
The main reason people even attempt to move the safes by hand is they aren't that heavy. They're as heavy as gold or guns, which aren't that hard to move. Instead, I prompose making the safes as heavy as Meltdown Nukes. I doubt people would be as keen to try moving those by hand at that point, making the truck actually necessary in the same way Forklifts are. Besides, they're ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ safes!

2. Introduce a fence at the canal
People wouldn't be moving safes to the construction side wall if they couldn't GET to the construction site wall early. Introduce a fence just past the rail lines which needs the C4 to blow up. 2 charges for the fence, then 2 more charges for the wall. There's nothing in that section of the map until the C4 drops anyway.

3. Let cops reposses safes
Moving safes to the construction side wall is made much easier because cops can't actually interact with them. No need to guard your safes, no need to be careful. If they could be repossessed and moved all the way to the other side of the map, I suspect people would at least think about moving the safes, whereas now it's a no-brainer.

4. Change the heist objective progression
Give all players infinite SAWs for the trucks and start the timer for the C4 as soon as players find the first truck. This brings the heist closer to a Transport Heist, in that you're allowed to multi-task on opening multiple trucks if you can manage it. By dropping the C4 either shortly after the trucks are open or potentially even before that if players take too long, you remove the motivation to move safes by hand anyway, since there isn't all the dead air waiting for the C4 to drop. If need be, make the saws longer to break through the trucks.

---

Now, I'm not suggesting implementing ALL of the above, but at least a few of them would be nice. Making the safes heavier, at the very least, shouldn't require all that much work while solving most of the issues.

[Captain_Yamamoto]

+1

a good narrative is a happy narrative.

i upvote #1 and #4, specifically

[Grey Star, The Rival Defender]

4 would be the least annoying and most logical to implement from anarrative standpoint.

[Sep]

I kinda like all this suggestion.. but..

TBH, they can make this heist a lot easier just by lifting the truck carrying those safe.

[Hassat Hunter]

But it's 2 trucks, made into one.

I would go for 4, but it goes without saying only 1 takes no effort what-so-ever so that's probably the go-to option.

#3 by itself does little since cops don't wander the cannals either to reposses so they would need to add that. Not to mention they need to add loot-drops for the cops. All by all a lot of work for something that probably changes little since when do people leave them unattended?

[Malidictus]

#4 would be my personal choice, as well, but I doubt we'll see it happen. For one thing, it would take a significant amount of work to implement which I'm not sure Overkill are willing to put forth fixing a wonky old heist. For another thing, they seem to like their rigidly linear "Hoxten Breakout" style heists of late. Golden Grin is probably the last heist with any significant amount of multi-tasking allowed.

As to #3, do we know if cops need to specifically walk past a pag in order to think about repossessing it? I know bags are fairly safe if you can keep them out of line of sight of cops, but I've had mixed results with hostages. Seems like cops will deliberately path to them sometimes, but not other times, even if I hide them in the same place where cops typically don't go. In general, though, #3 is for the sake of completeness. Having loot that cops won't try to steal kind of makes the whole bag-hauling mechanic into a pointless time sing. With no need to guard your loot, haulinging is really boring.

As to #1, I proposed that purely because it's a dirt-simple yet highly-effective fix. Make the bags heavier and players stop being able to move them long-distance in the numbers they spawn on that heist. It's also a common sense change since these ARE giant massive safes, plus it's a better fit for the ambient narrative. Both Bain and Vlad keep talking about how heavy the safes are, and Vlad even has Meltdown-style joking about us throwing our backs lifting them. Makes sense for those things to be ACTUALLY heavy.

In fact, I'm not entirely sure if it's possible to mod the weights of the bags. My fear is the change will be local only - just for the person with the modded bag weight.

[lexilogo]

I'd actually take 1 myself.

But yeah, I would not mind these changes. Wouldn't make Aftershock particularly fun, but it would make it a bit more interesting.

[BeastGTS]

Originally posted by Malidictus:

Here's how it ACTUALLY goes: You cut open Vlad's trucks, you move all the safes to the construction site wall by hand while waiting for the C4, you blow the wall to put the safes in the truck.

I don't think you can assume that everyone, or even a majority, moves the safes to the construction site by hand.

Every time I have played this heist, with friends, or even in pubs, we have always used the truck. We either move all the safes into a pile near one of the lower trucks, or inside an abandoned train car. One person grabs the C4, blows the wall, and drives the truck to the safes. Everyone else helps throw the safes inside the truck once it arrives.

So, I don't think this is an issue. The worst part of this heist is everyone getting inside the truck at the end, due to the infinite assault. This is made worse by not being allowed to enter the truck during swan song. I have addressed this issue in the past; I don't see why you cannot enter vehicles during swan song if you can interact with objects.

[Malidictus]

Originally posted by BeastGTS:

I don't think you can assume that everyone, or even a majority, moves the safes to the construction site by hand.

That's how things have worked out in my experience, though. I've had to tell people to please not do that because it's annoying... But I have no real argument to offer as to why they shouldn't do it, besides "My lobby, my rules!" And really, nobody likes that.

Moreover, though, the heist's design encourages behaviour which doesn't fit with the heist's narrative. It's a bit like Panic Room in that regard, in that Bain keeps ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ about how you have to "Clear the roof!" on the final objective, but you can just hunker down in a room at the bottom floor and just wait for the wave to end.

Heist design informs how people play the game by virtue of incentivises certain actions and disincentivising others. In Aftershock, heist design guarantess that players are left with both trucks open, all safes available and a something like a 5-minute wait. There's nothing to do during that wave aside from survive, thus a lot of people are going to want to multi-task and do work while surviving. The only work available to do, however, is moving the safes closer to the end of the heist to save having to manoeuvre the truck - an activity a lot of players find difficult because they SUCK ASS at driving vehicles in this game.

My argument, then, is to either outright prevent people from multi-tasking in one of various ways, or else by eliminating the enforced dead air between obtaining all the safes and getting the C4. Payday 2 is at its weaket when no objectives exist and players are left to mill about waiting for the ceiling to fall. Even something as relatively boring as drilling the vault on Harvest and Trustee still offers time to move hostages, obtain bonus loot, block up windows and so on, plus it offers a static protection objective. On Aftershock there's no bonus loot to look for, no real hostages to move or manage (to say nothing of no real ability to move them with the size of the map) and nothing to really protect. It's dead air which incentivises people to find any way to keep busy.

[Copy & Cat]

Pretty sure the problem isn't the safe weight being too movable, but the c4 timer being very long

[Milk]

If you use anarchist with transporter aced, the safes weigh basically nothing.

You can't sprint, but you can throw them like the hulk.

[Sterling]

4 is the only one I think that wouldn't be a complete pain in the ass. The problem with Aftershock is that it's boring and the objectives don't progress properly. Why can we only use one saw in Aftershock if we can use 4 in Green Bridge?

[Milk]

How about they remove the ridiculous c4 bag wait, or make it so that you place a flare once the first truck is opened, which makes you wait while you're opening the second truck?

I mean it's like what, 3-5 minutes? You have ♥♥♥♥ all to do in that time. It's only logical to at least move the safes to an easier place to load all at once.

[Malidictus]

Originally posted by Lazy Floof:

How about they remove the ridiculous c4 bag wait, or make it so that you place a flare once the first truck is opened, which makes you wait while you're opening the second truck? I mean it's like what, 3-5 minutes? You have ♥♥♥♥ all to do in that time. It's only logical to at least move the safes to an easier place to load all at once.

I agree. In my opinion, starting the C4 wait as soon as the map loads and letting players saw both trucks at the same time while we wait would be best. If need be, lengthen the saw time a little. The goal here would be that the C4 would drop around the time the last truck opens up, or preferably before that. That way, the speed of the heist is determined by how well (if at all) you can guard both saws. Because remember - the two trucks can be in radically diferent locations thanks to the overpass.

[Infinite Thwomp Works]

I'm a little iffy about letting the cops move the safes, but I like most of the other ideas:

1) is a no-brainer, and honestly REALLY surprising that it wasn't that way to begin with. It's a heavy safe, which has a gun in it to boot. And not just ANY gun-- the safes depicted in the heist have a chance to have a Minigun, LMG, Thanatos, Rocket Launcher, or Flamethrower. Not exactly lightweight pieces.

2) To be honest, this is the only one other than 3) that I don't really like. If the Safes were made super heavy, and the timer for the C4 was changed, it's not really necessary, plus I like the idea of needing all 4 C4 to blow the reinforced wall.

4) YES. So much this. Every time my crew plays Aftershock, it's a question that keeps getting asked-- I'm not the one with Breacher, why am I the one who gets stuck with the only Saw? It means that the Technician is stuck having to do the lengthy upgrade process, It's also pretty absurd that it takes Bile SO long to get back after dropping us off in the first place. I can understand the delay when he's trying to extract us, because by that point the heat is super heavy, but to do a simple flyover? The saws taking longer is not only a better balance option, but honestly probably more lore-friendly. Saws shouldn't be that quick against an armoured truck, anyway.

[BeastGTS]

Originally posted by Malidictus:

That's how things have worked out in my experience, though. I've had to tell people to please not do that because it's annoying... But I have no real argument to offer as to why they shouldn't do it, besides "My lobby, my rules!" And really, nobody likes that.

Moreover, though, the heist's design encourages behaviour which doesn't fit with the heist's narrative. It's a bit like Panic Room in that regard, in that Bain keeps ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ about how you have to "Clear the roof!" on the final objective, but you can just hunker down in a room at the bottom floor and just wait for the wave to end.

Heist design informs how people play the game by virtue of incentivises certain actions and disincentivising others. In Aftershock, heist design guarantess that players are left with both trucks open, all safes available and a something like a 5-minute wait. There's nothing to do during that wave aside from survive, thus a lot of people are going to want to multi-task and do work while surviving. The only work available to do, however, is moving the safes closer to the end of the heist to save having to manoeuvre the truck - an activity a lot of players find difficult because they SUCK ASS at driving vehicles in this game.

My argument, then, is to either outright prevent people from multi-tasking in one of various ways, or else by eliminating the enforced dead air between obtaining all the safes and getting the C4. Payday 2 is at its weaket when no objectives exist and players are left to mill about waiting for the ceiling to fall. Even something as relatively boring as drilling the vault on Harvest and Trustee still offers time to move hostages, obtain bonus loot, block up windows and so on, plus it offers a static protection objective. On Aftershock there's no bonus loot to look for, no real hostages to move or manage (to say nothing of no real ability to move them with the size of the map) and nothing to really protect. It's dead air which incentivises people to find any way to keep busy.

While I can't tell what everyone's experiences are on this map, I think it is impractical to move 12 safes on MH+, a long distance, through a train yard, and canals, especially in the middle of an assault wave. It is already contrary to the objectives of the map to move the safes manually when you are supposed to use C4 and the truck. Furthermore, the truck is one of the easiest vehicles to control.

I'll agree that the C4 wait is a poor design on this map, but you shouldn't punish the player by making the safes heavier. The other ideas might work better, but I don't think it is worth reworking this map in its current state.