Since we're starting to derail the Beta thread over in Suggestions and Feedback, I thought I'd make a separate standalone thread to discuss the effect your computer's performance as a host have on the AI's ability to act and react, and what effect that in turn has on overall difficulty. For a lot of you this may be "no duh" material, but please bear with me. The link between CPU power and difficulty is something of a "public secret" at this point, and I think it's worth addressing directly.

What's the issue here?

In Payday 2, the AI (that is, the cops, civvies, bots, Jokers, Turrets, etc.) can only carry out a certain small number of actions per frame. I don't know how many those are, but I believe something on the order of 1 or 2. "actions" here refers to literally any thing they can do, from moving to targeting to shooting. Because of how limited actions-per-frame are, only so many cops can act in a given frame, with all of the others needing to wait until the next frame for a chance to act. It's entirely possible for cops to "miss their turn" for many frames in a row with this system. This impacts the game's difficulty in two ways:


1. The lower your framerate is, the easier the game becomes. Fewer frames per second mean fewer cop actions per second, which has the practical effect of making cops "idle." If you've ever walked up to a cop and had to wait 1, 2, 3 seconds for him to actually turn around and notice you, that's why. In fact, the difference between playing the game at 120 FPS vs. playing it at below 30 FPS is night and day. 30 FPS cops will be far less responsive, will take much longer to notice you, will shoot slower, will take more time to get anywhere and will generally be much easier to fight. You can literally run circles around them. Even at 120 FPS, though, cop reactions are still slower than they're supposed to be, and not by a little bit. I believe you need over 200 FPS in otder to eliminate the slowdown induced by the actions per frame limit.

2. The more cops on the map, the easier the game becomes. Yes, seriously. Actions per frame is the bottleneck. Adding more cops on the map means more critters competing for the same number of actions every frame, which in turn means more cops not doing anything. Unless you end up fighting literally all of the cops on the map at the same time, you're going to have an easier experience. The subset of cops you're specifically engaged in can now do even fewer actions per second, making them even slower and less threatening. In fact, with enough cops on the map, you can sometimes kite them entirely by just running away from them - they usually can't keep up, and will stream in one or two at a time.

Why does this issue exist?

Purely practical reasons. AI is very CPU-intensive. Too many AI calculations per frame can actually impact framerate significantly, even with a good video card. All of this calculation load falls on the host, too. If your host has a weak PC, this can render the game utterly unplayable on that machine. Since Payday 2 doesn't support dedicated servers (I'm not sure how it could...), that means that to get decent AI out of the game, you need a host with a pretty beefy machine. That right there would make a lot of the game's playerbase still playing on dated PCs essentially unable to host altogether.

In essence, Overkill have seen it fit to cripple the AI on weaker machines for the sake of running the game on them in the first place. While I can see where they're coming from, the result is a gaming experience which can vary WILDLY with the strength of the host's PC.

Are there any other issues that make the AI dumb and easy?

Yes, a few. One of the most common criticisms people levy at cops in Payday 2 is that they're suicidal and never take cover. That couldn't be farther from the truth. Cops are actually very adamant about taking cover. In fact, they'll typically move from cover spot to cover spot while travelling to their destination. Disabling this behaviour via mods produces a single conga-line of cops streaming towards the player like zombies, so this behaviour has a huge impact on how they move and where they stand. The trouble is the AI has no intrinsic ability to determine when it's in cover and when not. Instead, it depends on specific "cover spots" built into each map.

Cops will take cover where the map says they're in cover, but a lot of those spots are placed out in the open. In a lot of cases, you'll see cops staning in open ground seemingly waiting to die, but that's not how the AI sees it. To the AI, this is a safe cover spot where it's supposed to stand. The reason these exist isn't just "bad design," though. They're there to handle "congestion." cops generally don't want to stand within each other and will refuse to enter a room if it's "congested," i.e. all the good spots are taken. They'll instead wait outside and provide covering fire. You need more of these spots in a location to handle a large numbner of cops before the location becomes congested. The unfortunate result is it leads to cop "taking cover" behind nothing.

Then there's an outright bug with cop objectives. Cops spawn in "assault groups" with a specific objective. Some of those groups, however, can spawn with the objective of guarding their spawn points. Since those spawn points are outside the map, you never get to see those cops. However, those cops still exist and count towards the fixed maximum number of cops the game will try to keep on the map. They also tend to block their own spawn point while doing so. The result fewer cops in actual play, and fewer potential directions they can come from. On top of all the reaction delays induced by sub-200 FPS framerates, this makes them much, much easier still

Finally, there are issues with the nav grid on a lot of maps in the game. You generally don't notice it, but there are plenty spots on multiple maps which the AI can't path through at all. They can't get into the teller-side vault on Harvest and Trustee, they can't get to a lot of spots on Goat Sim Day 1 around where a truck could spawn, they can't use one of the staircases on Santa's Workshop if elves spawn near it, etc. Depending on how you move, you can end up in spots cops can't reach or doing things which causes them to keep going back-and-forth along roundabout paths. This, too, has the effect of making the number and aggression of cops seem much, much less than it actually is.

What can we do about it?

Well, most of what "we" can do is wait for Overkill to do something about it. Since that would involve inducing considerably more processor load, though, I wouldn't expect much. However, there ARE mods currently in existence which can alter or outright fix a lot of the above issues. I'm referring specifically to two of them - TdlQ's Full Speed Swarm and Iter mods. Iter messes with both the nav graphs on a lot of maps to enable additional paths for cops and bots as well as altering AI pathfinding to let them get to their goals faster. Full Speed Swarm does a whole bunch of things, but primarily it increases the number of actions cops can take per frame, fixes the "guarding their spawn point" bug and ensures cops react as fast as Overkill actually intended them to. Cops still have delayed reactions, but these delays are built in by Overkill's own developers.

I run both of those mods, and I can tell you from experience that the results are staggering. Going from Vanilla to FSS, it's a bit hard to appreciate the difference. You may notice there being a hell of a lot more cops on the map, you'll probably notice you're being shot at a whole lot more, but that's easy to chalk up to just bad luck. A "Wow, that was nasty!" sort of hand-wave. Going from FSS back to Vanilla, however - especially once you're used to FSS - is immediately obvious. Once you're used to cops reacting to your presence like a real person would, going back to them taking several seconds to acknowledge your presence, then several more to take cover is difficult to not see. That's when the vanilla AI limitations become undeniable. That's when you realise you can run circles around the cops and there's little they can do about it.

I'll give you a practical example. Everyone remembers Watchdogs Day 2 as a straightforward shooting gallery. You stand on the cop spawn points and mow them down as they apparate. Not with FSS. With that, cops spwan from a lot of other locations in addition to those two. They come in larget numbers, they're better at pushing you back and they're less defenceless as they cover open ground. Moreover, cops now spawn from the container ship blocking off one of the docks, and they spawn from there HARD. In vanilla, I've seen cops spawning at the ship maybe once per heist before they stop. With FSS, they spawn constantly and WILL flank you if you let them, to say nothing of stealing your bags. I still feel Day 2 needs more spawn points, but the difference is nevertheless enormous. It turned that heist from one of my least favourites into an actually pretty fun fight.

So are you saying the AI isn't actually dumb?

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. They may not be FEAR levels of sophisticated, but Payday 2's cops are very smart for horde mode enemies. They won't all pile up into a room for easy AoE, they'll try to avoid massive firefights, they'll try to guard objectives, they'll try to stick together, they'll try to take cover. They'll try to be as smart as they can be. Overkill's programming isn't bad. What makes the AI feel dumb is that it's hamstrung by bugs and a very severe bottleneck on its abilit to actually DO anything. You're playing an FPS. The AI, however, is playing a turn-based strategy. When a cop can only do one single action every couple of seconds, that's what it ends up as. That's why Bulldozers will sprint to where you were 10 seconds ago, why Jokers will get "stuck" waiting for their turn to think and why cops will walk past you heading off into the distance as you shoot them in the back.

This is also why "One Down is too easy." I'm sure we have a number of superhuman players who are genuinely good enough to ace even One Down at full strength. The thing, though, is that most people AREN'T playing One Down at full strength. They aren't playing it at 200+ FPS with all the missing cops involved in the game and finding their way around faster. In fact, I can attest from experience that FSS with cops set to Aggressive Assault with Iter makes Overkill about as hard if not harder than vanilla Deathwish. Yeah, their stats are lesser and Deathwish still hurts more on wide open maps with no cover like Forest and Goat Sim. However, in most heist, you'll find that responsive cops in proper numbers are more lethal than the lethargic, slow-witted troglodytes on higher difficulties, even with their higher stats.

So no, the AI isn't dumb. It's just not being allowed to act. As a result, difficulties are a lot easier than they should be, and get progressively trivial the lower your host's performance becomes.

As requested, here are links to the two mods mentioned in the above post:

Full Speed Swarm[paydaymods.com]
Iter[paydaymods.com]


CREATED BY: Malidictus


Desta.

As we all know, the Desync problem is bothering us in the Payday 2 game. We do not have Stealth tasks together and we can not save our friend who is falling in the loud sections.

In order to solve such problems I searched a number of Mods and I saw a mode called 'Adaptive Resync' among the modes I tested. What I've tried is that I see that this mode interacts with the Desync and Lag problems in general and completely abolishes the problem. I wanted to share it with you and you can download Mod by going to the link below.

You need to download the BLT file first and install the folder where Payday is installed, and then install Adaptive Resync mode into this folder for installation. After that you will be able to do quiet work with ease :)

BLT Mod[paydaymods.com]
Adaptive Resync[paydaymods.com]



Keep Those Helmets Flying!