Stealth-altering mods currently suck or are unheard of

[Hurricane Jose]

This is beyond Silent Assassin. I almost never hear of any "good" stealth-altering mods and I know that the ones that might not suck don't get attention in this game because stealth just sucks in the base game.

Play single-player, hope to not get detected by any guards, don't kill anyone and only use three kinds of builds to finish the job.

That's not fun. It's mild gambling at best (when working with other players and praying that lag doesn't ♥♥♥♥ your ass) and turtling at worst (setting up sensors practically everywhere and moving at a sluggish pace).

And don't get me started on Bain's Bank Heists as they are easy as taking a ♥♥♥♥ to stealth. Literally kill everyone without reprecussions, dominate every civilian on the map, and jack off while waiting for a macro for your characters to complete while they move bags from the vault to the van. Maybe farm some Gage packages while you're at it.

I would want a stealth-altering mod that doesn't make this easier nor make the game any slower than stealth currently allows, but I don't see any such mod that fits that budget. I would also prefer it disable achievements because I feel dirty using modded games to reach achievements that the developers poorly designed.

"Poorly designed" could also apply to how they balanced sniper rifles and stealth as well, considering that they are absolute trash together. Maybe for a good laugh here and there but in all seriousness them not working together only gravitates new players to fix their game with mods.

I want to be able to play this thing with new people but having silliness like stealth characters running lethal shotguns with suppressors just doesn't fit the multiplayer stealth feeling that I would like to have with my friends.

Some skills also suck quite badly in wake of how stealth was designed.

So this conversation can go down one of two roads. Either finding a mod that I could try using to get this fun started, or making and balancing a mod with this intention in mind.

More guards to replace the dead guys is a good start to the developers making a fun stealth game. Maybe some non-lethal ammunition to temporarily stun guards, recording guard voices, or some other fun ingredients to play around with. Either way, I wouldn't reccommend playing this game with friends if you want multiplayer stealth without the use of some kind of mod.

Again, I don't want to cheat, so I don't care if the payout or achievements get withheld when I drastically change how the game works to make it more fun. I just want to have a janky old time with my friends, like how I modified the Alesso heist with mutators to make everything explode.

[PyroPaul]

Years ago i remember really liking the mod "Realistic Pager"... It added RNG to the Pager system - potentially allowing you to answer up to 8 Pagers during stealth. but if RNG wasn't on your side - you could fail to convince control answering the 2nd pager of a heist. This made answering ANY pager risky, which made it interesting.

https://modworkshop.net/mydownloads.php?action=view_down&did=16527

Personally - I am having Fun using Silent Assassin in tandem with Heavy Security

https://paydaymods.com/mods/304/silentassassin
https://modworkshop.net/mydownloads.php?action=view_down&did=16274#images
https://modworkshop.net/mydownloads.php?action=view_down&did=22066

Heavy Security allows you to add more guards to heists...
...a Lot more.

But a pager modifying mod like Silent Assassin is almost required on the higher security levels, as the guard density makes it literally impossible to do certain objectives under the normal pager rules.

I believe on the highest 'difficulty' settings it adds some like 40 plus skull dozers to the guard patrols.

[Zdann]

I don't think you realize how much work it'd be to modify Payday 2's stealth mechanics in the way you've described. Touching the AI code in general is an absolute nightmare.

[Donny]

Try Black jack, it lets you knock guards out with a blunt melee attack, you don't have to answer their pager, but you can't bag them up. Its a fun and realistic mod.
https://modworkshop.net/mydownloads.php?action=view_down&did=20375