Operation Cold Strike feels completely out of place.

[Coffee Man]

I don't mean to sound like I'm hating on the game, the developers or the updates to this game. If I did, I wouldn't have played this game for nearly 200 hours. Any update to this game is very welcomed by me.
I just want to express my opinion on the newest mission added to the game.

The new mission added by Update 13 doesn't feel like it belongs in this game. This is a crime game where you play as criminals. You rob banks, rob stores and take out rival bosses. In Operation Cold Strike, you raid a seemingly WW2-lookin' military base filled with russians for the CIA. The new mission contractor feels like the devs watched Inglourious Basterds (2009) and wanted to pay homage to it, but he ends up being annoying very soon, repeating the same lines over and over constantly.

The level itself is fun however. The new RPG-7 is very cool, the varied objectives are nice, the tank fight is unique and the new location is great. The balancing is a bit on the cheap side, but nothing that can't be fixed in the next update. Problem is, I (and many others) play this game to rob banks, kill gangsters and generally be criminals, not be CIA agents sent to steal nuclear warheads for them, in a cheesy military themed mission. I got more generic Call of Duty vibes than Crime Boss.

Payday 2 had it's own phase where they stopped adding actual robberies, and they started adding wacky and weird heists that didn't really fit the game, causing the game's style to be all over the place. Just because Payday 2 did it, doesn't mean Crime Boss should do it too.

If the devs want to add new content to this game, they should at least try to keep it somewhat consistent with the game's theme. The Gold Cup Heist, while the main heist itself isn't exactly that good with tedious design, the build up to it is very nice as you team up with Dragon and work towards prepping it up. Same with Cagnali's Heist, even if it's a bit on the cheesier side, you're still a criminal doing criminal stuff in that heist, as you work towards taking out a big rival who's out to put you down.

[Purple Legacy]

THANK YOU!
Exactly my thoughts when I saw the mission description AND when I played Cagnalis order for the first time. You know what a crime boss would do when some robot uprising happens? Join the new order or skip town. No profit = not my problem. The motel / streetfight mission with the servers is fun and has some loot, but the HQ raid mission is really just a bunch of shooty set pieces complete with a Legend of Zelda like boss fight at the end (hit glowy spot 3 times hurr).

And you're right, this is what what annoyed me in Payday 2 as well. At some point you stopped being a "heister" and became a fully-fledged global terrorist slash mercenary "A-Team" squad. Which can make for fun missions but completely ignores what the game premise is all about.

Let us rob more stuff. How about another big museum heist? Stealing a national treasure from a super secret underground vault, give us more varied stores to rob for early missions. Or something goofy like stealing a 500 year old bottle of Brandy valued at 2 million from some very angry brewers. Or literally digging up old pirate treasure located underneath a big military base due to some bad luck. Creativity can't be the bottleneck here, can it?

Edit: Don't want to sound ungrateful for a free heist though. Thanks devs, just a bit worried about the game direction. It introduced tanks, RPG and a lot of Russian themed assets. Did you pilfer them from the failed WW2 game Starbreeze did?

[Coffee Man]

Originally posted by Purple Legacy:

THANK YOU!
Exactly my thoughts when I saw the mission description AND when I played Cagnalis order for the first time. You know what a crime boss would do when some robot uprising happens? Join the new order or skip town. No profit = not my problem. The motel / streetfight mission with the servers is fun and has some loot, but the HQ raid mission is really just a bunch of shooty set pieces complete with a Legend of Zelda like boss fight at the end (hit glowy spot 3 times hurr).

And you're right, this is what what annoyed me in Payday 2 as well. At some point you stopped being a "heister" and became a fully-fledged global terrorist slash mercenary "A-Team" squad. Which can make for fun missions but completely ignores what the game premise is all about.

Let us rob more stuff. How about another big museum heist? Stealing a national treasure from a super secret underground vault, give us more varied stores to rob for early missions. Or something goofy like stealing a 500 year old bottle of Brandy valued at 2 million from some very angry brewers. Or literally digging up old pirate treasure located underneath a big military base due to some bad luck. Creativity can't be the bottleneck here, can it?

I understand that Crime Boss is supposed to be cheesy, and I fully embrace the cheese. I honestly didn't have much trouble with Cagnali's DLC, it's good enough content. It ties into the game well enough, you have rich b*tch trying to put an end to crime with her robocops (among other objectives), and the player trying to keep their criminal endeavours going by putting an end to rich b*tch. Not exactly a standard heisting or gangster theme, but I liked it well enough, it's unique and sorta like Terminator meets Heisting (and the soundtrack absolutely SLAPS). The tanky enemies and robots are a mixed bag, but nothing that breaks the overall experience.

Cold Strike doesn't have any of that. It feels like a generic military-themed mission that belongs in Call of Duty, and it sticks out from the rest of the game like a sore thumb. What we need is missions with the same elaborate level design as Cold Strike but themed after actual robberies and heists. Another big bank level on the scale of Hidden Vault or another cool "shootout on the streets" type of heist like Money Train, or just an entirely new unique heist.

[Purple Legacy]

I think the cold heist mission would be instantly improved if we weren't contracted by the CIA (lol) and instead just decided to steal a nuke for resale on the black market. Would also make more sense story-wise, because what good is it for America to steal one more nuke from the Russians when they have thousands anyway?

Tie it in with the Dragon Dogs. We stole them from China, now china wants something back or else eternal Triad assassin squads on our ass!

[It's Adam Lazlow]

The overall idea for Cold Strike was, to take Cracker's singleplayer story, and the two missions that take place in Siberia, with the fighter jet and the submarine and payload escort, and create a unique multiplayer heist with it, that is only for this mode specifically, since it doesn't really fit the campaign. (Unless they add it in the future which they did mention is a possibility in an earlier live stream)

Personally I'm not sure why the CIA is our contract, and especially without any mention from Nasara, who was helping Cracker with his adventures anyway, while Cracker was doing missions for "an agency". I'd guess it was the CIA tho I'm not sure at this point.

However the mission is quite fun, in both stealth and loud, the enemies pack a punch, and there are a lot of them, the tank bossfight is interesting, and the secret alternate vault area is a pretty hard challenge. You basically get a bunch of Gold, possibly left there by the Germans in WW2, and other valueables, a lot of small safes too, and you get a very good payout.

I'm very happy for the new updates, paid or free, but yes I would prefer if the rougelite mode got a new Main Goal expansion, I liked the 3 heist structure of Cagnali's order, which sadly doesn't appear on regular Roguelite, and Gold Cup is great but it's very lenghty and I personally don't want to replay it every time I do a playthrough.

I'd really like to see something more related to the Graves, Baker's soldiers, there is a cutscene during the Import Export goal, with a Graves soldier talking with a Khan about a cocaine exchange, I didn't even know the Graves were voiced like that, I could easily see some misadventures about the Graves, would be worth an expansion.

[William Shakesman]

Well, I love it but I loved the Cracker missions too

[Coffee Man]

Originally posted by It's Adam Lazlow:

The overall idea for Cold Strike was, to take Cracker's singleplayer story, and the two missions that take place in Siberia, with the fighter jet and the submarine and payload escort, and create a unique multiplayer heist with it, that is only for this mode specifically, since it doesn't really fit the campaign. (Unless they add it in the future which they did mention is a possibility in an earlier live stream)

Personally I'm not sure why the CIA is our contract, and especially without any mention from Nasara, who was helping Cracker with his adventures anyway, while Cracker was doing missions for "an agency". I'd guess it was the CIA tho I'm not sure at this point.

However the mission is quite fun, in both stealth and loud, the enemies pack a punch, and there are a lot of them, the tank bossfight is interesting, and the secret alternate vault area is a pretty hard challenge. You basically get a bunch of Gold, possibly left there by the Germans in WW2, and other valueables, a lot of small safes too, and you get a very good payout.

I'm very happy for the new updates, paid or free, but yes I would prefer if the rougelite mode got a new Main Goal expansion, I liked the 3 heist structure of Cagnali's order, which sadly doesn't appear on regular Roguelite, and Gold Cup is great but it's very lenghty and I personally don't want to replay it every time I do a playthrough.

I'd really like to see something more related to the Graves, Baker's soldiers, there is a cutscene during the Import Export goal, with a Graves soldier talking with a Khan about a cocaine exchange, I didn't even know the Graves were voiced like that, I could easily see some misadventures about the Graves, would be worth an expansion.

To me, the character stories are the weakest content of the entire game, so making an expanded version of one doesn't really sound that appealing. I played them once and I never touched them again. They're extremely scripted and restrictive with 0 variation, not to mention usually switching up the game's theme entirely, which is a direct opposite to how much freedom you have during actual robbery missions.

The character stories in concept sound cool, you have these unique missions that add more lore behind certain characters. But in execution, these feel like short janky missions that were shoehorned in to try and add some lore for characters in a game where the story isn't exactly very good. I don't care for the backstory of these characters, the story isn't the focus of Crime Boss, the replayable experience is. The overall design of a character, their ingame dialogue and the short description text for them is enough for me to piece together roughly what that character is supposed to be.

[Boboscus]

It's a cool nod back to the MW2 and when COD absolutely ruled regarding awesome campaign level design, but that's about it. It feels like they wanted this to be more Payday than Crime Boss, which is bad in this case, because they didn't copy Payday The Heist missions, they copied Payday 2 missions.

[Silikone]

Originally posted by It's Adam Lazlow:

Cagnali's order, which sadly doesn't appear on regular Roguelite

May be they patched that in the last update, I have it in my current run. Never played it and was so afraid when Baker died in his delirium !

[Moray Eel]

I hope the next mission is another Wiz mission. IMHO.

[♒ILCツ]

It would have been more fitting if there was loot to grab. Story wise it would make more sense since the gang could be ok with sabotaging a Russian base for a contractor if that meant there were valuables there too to steal, along side the fat paycheck for completing the job.

[Duchnokov]

Originally posted by ♒ILCツ:

It would have been more fitting if there was loot to grab. Story wise it would make more sense since the gang could be ok with sabotaging a Russian base for a contractor if that meant there were valuables there too to steal, along side the fat paycheck for completing the job.

there is a secret vault in that mission
you can put C4 on a wall around the start of the map

[John Price]

This mission is fun to do but not worth for money grinding, not as efficient

[=TBM= BangL]

afaik the russian units already existed in the game, for one of the character side stories.
i think this map was the result of "what else can we do with these?"

[Metatvorec]

Apparently we are being prepared for a war for the Arctic

[optimistic realization]

At the end of the day games are about having fun. It's basically a standalone separate from the campaign/story. I appreciate them giving us free content. Hopefully they had fun making it too. The game doesn't take itself too seriously and that's cool. Most other games now do take themselves too seriously. I just hope they revamp the online coop because that's what could keep this game alive for years to come. In turn, people who only like single player will get more content.