payday the heist – The Daily SPUF

On Payday 3

September 20, 2020September 14, 2020 aabicus 0 Comments Filler, payday, payday 2, payday the heist

Starbreeze’s quarterly report has been published in PDF form, showcasing a PowerPoint discussing the future of the company, its IPs, and (most importantly) the upcoming Payday 3 in very limited detail. Users on the Steam Discussions forum and Payday subreddit have been rampantly hypothesizing how the game’s going to be. Since we don’t have any actual gameplay to discuss, the prevailing question is whether Overkill is going to focus on quality (like in Payday the Heist) or quantity (like in Payday 2) when designing the content that will be in-game on release. The prevailing opinion is that they’ll go for… [Continue Reading]

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Differentiating Maps Through Gameplay, part 2

September 17, 2020September 17, 2020 aabicus 0 Comments analysis, comparison, design, maps, payday, payday the heist

Previously I used Left 4 Dead 2 to showcase “thematic gameplay“, a development philosophy whereby each map in the game gets a subtle tweak to the core gameplay loop to make it feel different from the rest the game has to offer. Payday the Heist is actually another masterclass in this philosophy, so to reinforce my point I thought I’d discuss how a second title used thematic gameplay to create very memorable and distinguishable heists. 1. First World Bank First World Bank doesn’t really have any gimmicks, as it’s setting the baseline for the rest of the game. One after… [Continue Reading]

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Payday The Heist: AI Bots Explained

March 22, 2018March 19, 2018 aabicus 0 Comments AI, analysis, bots, guide, payday the heist

The bots in Payday: The Heist are designed to fill the role of an average if unremarkable teammate. They’ve got a number of behavioral quirks and coded advantages over humans, but that’s just to compensate for all the really basic stuff they can’t do at all. This guide will cover every possible difference I’ve found between the Payday: The Heist bots and their human counterparts. Statistics AI bots have 75 hitpoints that are constantly regenerating, turning them into pretty impressive bullet sponges so long as they aren’t standing out in the open taking suppressing fire from three different directions. When… [Continue Reading]

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Left 4 Dead: The Birth of a Genre

August 23, 2017December 11, 2017 aabicus 0 Comments analysis, design, left 4 dead, payday 2, payday the heist, steam

Left 4 Dead was a great game. It had the perfect mix of arcadey action and strategic gameplay to entice shooter fans of every skill level, while also having amazing writing and atmosphere that really sold the survival horror aesthetic. Sure, it wasn’t the first 4-player coop (Yahtzee even griped in his Left 4 Dead 2 review about how commonplace those sorts of games were), but it carved a niche for itself that is so prevalent nowadays that I’d call an entire subsection of Co-op horde shooters “Left 4 Dead clones”. Left 4 Dead famously came into existence when the… [Continue Reading]

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On Gold Weapons

August 19, 2017September 15, 2017 aabicus 0 Comments borderlands 2, call of duty, cosmetics, Depth, On Shooters, overwatch, payday 2, payday the heist, Saints Row, Team Fortress 2

Humans love to customize things. We want to leave our mark on the items that mean the most to us, and as a warrior culture we especially love to own weapons that have unique, stylized decals. In the programmed world of video games, where one need not worry about firearm maintenance or practicality, the sky is the limit for how many ways we can customize our guns. So why do so many developers immediately go for golden guns? When available (and they seem to be available in almost every game with weapon skins), a golden reskin will almost always have… [Continue Reading]

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Tips for Beating Left 4 Dead 2 and Payday the Heist on the Hardest Difficulty

February 6, 2017March 9, 2017 aabicus 0 Comments Filler, Left 4 Dead 2, payday the heist, tips

This article is a combination of two similar posts I made in the Left 4 Dead 2 and Payday subreddits. Both threads were basically the author asking for advice on beating every map in the game and rating them easy to hard. To add some color I also included random screenshots from my Steam folders. Dead Center: Pretty easy. The maps are very controllable and bright and lots of corridors to control the oncoming infected. Solo is a nightmare because bots don’t grab cans for the finale. The Passing : Harder than Dead Center, mostly because each map is really… [Continue Reading]