The marketing for Payday 3 is ramping considerably (understandably so, given the launch date proximity). Starbreeze is now sharing a developer diary every week, and today’s video is dedicated to the combat changes made by the studio over Payday 2. To begin with, the team outlined how difficulty works in the game.
We have normal, hard, very hard and overkill. The general intention is, if you’re just starting out the game and you’re still learning how to play Payday 3, we recommend you start off with normal.
Once you’re used to that, you can move to hard mode, which is our default difficulty while you’re still leveling up. Very hard is our difficulty where you’ve progressed enough through the game, where you have a loadout that you’re comfortable with. If you’re a veteran player, you’ll probably be playing very hard by default. Overkill in Payday 3 is planned to be a brutal, unfair difficulty.
In terms of enemies, one of the bigger changes people will find is that we don’t segregate them based on the difficulty you’re playing. What we want is for players to be able to experience any part of the game across all difficulties. What we instead do is we play with the enemy numbers and we play with their accuracy and damage.
One other thing that people will notice is we don’t actually change their health values between the difficulties. This is because we want to encourage people to be able to play with each other. We want to avoid a situation where you have to play in an easier difficulty and be bored, or they have to play in a harder difficulty and be overwhelmed.
Players will be able to choose whether their character is fast or not depending on the equipment they decide to wear. Armor is composed of various bits that can be broken down once shot at. Players can recuperate armor with the armor bags, while the health does not regenerate at all.
However, certain enemies will be able to hit your health directly. There are three categories of foes in Payday 3: common (SWAT), uncommon (those equipped with sniper rifle or shield), and specials such as Bulldozers, Zappers, and Cloakers, all of which have gotten their upgrades in this game.
Starbreeze singled out the shield SWAT because the AI of their allies can now much more effectively take cover behind them, making the shield enemy more fearsome than in the previous installment. When it comes to guns, each has its own progression path. Gaining experience with that weapon provides new options and ways to use it.
Payday 3 also introduces preset weapons, which come preconfigured with a specific set of mods. Players can still continue leveling those weapons levels when using a preset version. Overkill weapons can be unlocked during a heist as a power-up after completing certain objectives. These should be used during high-intensity combat situations to gain the upper hand.
Lastly, there are also a few gadgets, such as an ECM Jammer that locks the enemy to alert and a mini camera that can be placed throughout the map.
Payday 3 is launching on September 21st with cross-play and cross-progression. You can check out some freshly leaked gameplay here.
