Why did payday2 get turned into a horde shooter?

[Falco]

TL;DR: I think PD:TH is a better game because it has less cops that surround you slowly like a real group of enemies would irl.

I have played both 2 and the heist for years. I have a friend who asks me to switch back to 2 but I kinda refuse because fighting enemies in 1 feels more fun: You are still surrounded by many cops in pdth, but you don't feel the need to bring a brenner LMG in every single level. Remember when the hydra modifier came out years ago in Pd2? I thought that was a fun little mod that turned the game into a horde shooter. But I'm disappointed to see that this became the regular gameplay in payday2. There are hundreds of enemied in the map compared to PD:TH, all of them which don't seem to wait or try to surround you slowly, but they instead rush for the closest path to your location, the 1st game managed to hide this a bit better by making enemies not constantly rush you in a constant streamline of zombies, but by making them rush you in small groups of cops. The 1st game was more restrictive, it gave you less to work with but it also means the cops themselves had less health and were simpler to kill with a well placed headshot. 1st game had less weapons but each weapon felt useful and it filled its own niche role. 2nd game has an inventory bloat problem, sure it's fun to have more gun skins, but how many times can you reskin the amcar and the ak and call them a new gun? The special enemies seem to be done better in the second game I would say, especially snipers. But the 1st game spawned less shields, so you didn't need to spam explosives as much. In the 2nd game, I feel like I absolutely need to carry a judge with HE ammo, or else I will be surfing on shields for 20 minutes. The 2nd game gives you more options to mess around with builds and special abilities, but the 1st game mostly relies on your own skill about positioning and knowledge of the heist, there is no build in the 1st game that can help you as a crutch if you ♥♥♥♥ up your positioning and die in an open area with no cover, there is no swan song or automatic revive, no inspire bots.
Lastly my biggest complaint: cops in pd2 give you no room to breathe, in PD2 i feel forced to use LMGs and automatic weapons, increased mags, because there is a swarm of enemies attached to my sides. In pd2, I am not having a mid range gunfight with a police team, I am making my way through a crowd during black friday by using what feels like an airsoft LMG (I never tried the M60, so that could be an exception). These 2 games have drifted apart so much from each other, that pd2 feels like a modded unrecognizeable version. I am 100% sure that for pd3, overkill will not take any more inspiration from pd:th , because the pd2 formula can be bloated with more content to sell. Just think about it...we went from 1 DLC to HUNDREDS of DLCs! For all those fools out there who keep saying "you have grown up", that is false, or else I wouldn't be re-playing the 1st game occasionally, videogames have genuinely gotten worse after 2012.

[Sasha Pines (no brain)]

me who use double shotgun with barely any crowd control no i would say payday 2 ai give you way more room to make mistake then you even on DS difficult , the ai spawn cap is meh at best duo to how slow the ai are

[JAG]

From my admittedly limited experience in PDTH (only 114 hours), and having seen PD2 evolve over the years since 2014-ish, I have to agree. While the latter game has a far more active playerbase, is more mechanically sound, and actually has stealth (something I can't pass up personally), playing loud is daunting at times, and really makes me wish I could just go back to playing PDTH instead. Slow movement, small spawn rates, and a focus on cover first and foremost really made every gunfight tense instead of... me running around with a hacker crit build holding down M1.

Really, though, I believe the answer to your question lies in powercreep and content bloat. We've added a strong weapon in a DLC! Oh no, it's too strong, gotta buff the cops. The enemies are overwhelming! Let's center the gameplay loop around infinite sustainability instead of short-term survival (hence the existence of White Xmas and Cook Off early on, and subsequent infinite heists). The game is getting too easy, let's buff the cops even more. The players are feeling underpowered, let's add a new gun. Oh no!
Ad infinitum. Such is the fate of a live service game.

My only wish is that PD3 goes back to the PDTH roots, none of that horde shooter bs.

[Vision]

Yes, I wholeheartedly agree with this.

I dunno if I remember correctly but in the beginning of PD2 it still had low spawn rates and various SWAT teams with tactics, like in the first game (which was soo good).

At some point many years ago devs adjusted these rates and all AI and tactics were gone.
Its basically left 4 bank now.
Just sad.

If at least more ppl would play restoration mod as it fixes this stuff.

[Weaver Trevor Henriksson ☣]

Straight facts

[FoxF0_Has_Skill_Issues]

Hmm ye
Play PDTH if you want a more realistic mechanics and harder gameplays
Play PD2 if you want a more fun mechanics and easier gameplays

[Fordon Greeman]

Finally, someone who gets it.

[Ampuj4]

Yep thats the way it is. The original payday got right on realism. PD2 was good at start but at the times got wayyyy too bloated due massive amounts of DLC. Not saying DLC is bad but games wasn't surely designed in massive amount's of DLC in mind. More DLC was introduced to keep company afloat during hard times. And i don't blame them for that.

Thou what you truly want is that they learned from it and payday 3 starts from better standing. But we shall see very soon how's it going to be. Can see some horde/zombi shooter fans crying allready aloud if game falls back to it's roots within more original payday the heist approach. But all i can say is those hordeshooter fans don't truly know the roots of this series.

[Kirov]

Agree thats why I hope PD3 will be more like PDTH.

[lammy from um jammer lammy]

time (around 3 months) will tell if overkill has learned from their mistakes with this game when releasing payday 3.

[Kain Mightyena]

Originally posted by naii_:

time (around 3 months) will tell if overkill has learned from their mistakes with this game when releasing payday 3.

Uh… where the hell you getting that pd3 is releasing in three months when the game doesn’t even have a release date?…

[M0D]

Originally posted by Kain Mightyena:

Originally posted by naii_:

time (around 3 months) will tell if overkill has learned from their mistakes with this game when releasing payday 3.

Uh… where the hell you getting that pd3 is releasing in three months when the game doesn’t even have a release date?…

Because they've stated it's coming this year and we'll be getting gameplay sometime in Summer, so the time window is kind of there, though indeed, we don't have a specific release date.

[lammy from um jammer lammy]

Originally posted by Kain Mightyena:

Originally posted by naii_:

time (around 3 months) will tell if overkill has learned from their mistakes with this game when releasing payday 3.

Uh… where the hell you getting that pd3 is releasing in three months when the game doesn’t even have a release date?…

no specific date, but it's still supposed to be out this year and it's probable that overkill will release it on Payday 2's 10th anniversary. I mean, come on. I can't be alone in thinking that.


Either that or they're gonna start heavily advertising the game around that time.

[Hex: Gon’ Give It To Ya]

Payday the heist was as well

[lammy from um jammer lammy]

Originally posted by =AIMN'T= Dr. Disconnect:

Payday the heist was as well

what?

[Hex: Gon’ Give It To Ya]

Originally posted by naii_:

Originally posted by =AIMN'T= Dr. Disconnect:

Payday the heist was as well

what?

A horde shooter