PayDay 2’s core users are still terribly upset with developer Overkill. The introduction of what’s seen as a “pay to win” micro-transaction mechanic has gone right up fans’ nostrils. Overkill later amended it so that there are chances of random drops of the sacred drill, but people are still, rightfully, incensed. Doesn’t matter how angry they are, because Overkill’s not removing drills – on account of all the money they’re rolling in as a result.
Well, Overkill is making it better. I am, of course talking about their profit margins, and not the game and its microtransactions, because they’re managing to make it worse.
The latest update introduces “Team Boosts.” That makes sense, as the game is a team-based one. Team boost will give cash and XP bonuses to everybody you complete a heist with – and the more players on the team who have the boost, the better the rewards. Stacking!
How do you get these boosts? If you said “Buy them!” You’d only be half-right. While you can’t buy boost outright, they are tied to the game’s arcane weapon skin system which requires you to pay for drills to unlock.
There’s another upsetting bit to the update. There’s a new “Completely Overkill” safe given out to those who purchased last year’s Completely Overkill pack – but its randomness is upsetting people, with some who’ve paid getting high-end items and useful perks, with others getting Charlie Brown’s Halloween rocks.
It’s caused so much ire that the game’s Steam forum moderators have gone on strike until they’ve been given more information.
“We’ve recently being under a great deal of stress after the Crimefest update,” one mod says on the forum. “A number of death threats thrown at us as well as much more heavy moderation needed due to a huge increase in users breaking the rules. We are not paid and have been in a very stressful situation.
“A lot of people will be wondering why we didn’t do this earlier, due to the recent safe release. A lot of things happened and Overkill admitted it wasn’t managed very well. We we’re hoping Overkill would learn from its mistakes regarding the last update and we were hoping they took these into consideration with the COP. We have a lot of issues regarding the release of the COP that shows they have NOT listened to user feedback at all.
“I like to believe that I am not unreasonable but unfortunately the situation constantly degraded. We will no longer refuse to work if we are given a public interview with a member of Overkill. We want to be heard and see what Overkill are willing to do to fix the situation.
“If Overkill decides to let us go as moderators it’s something we are prepared for, I personally cannot sit by when they continue to promote immoral business practices. I felt the skins system needed work but could function. The recent safe update showed against that.”
Overkill, you greedy bastards; you’re ruining your own game.
Last Updated: November 13, 2015
Grand Admiral Chief SpaceNinja
November 13, 2015 at 13:37
Obvious image is obvious
Geoffrey Tim
November 13, 2015 at 13:43
ehhh..keep looking. ;P
Hammersteyn
November 13, 2015 at 13:44
*whistles innocently
Grand Admiral Chief SpaceNinja
November 13, 2015 at 13:56
Jip, saw there is more than one, but stating that the obvious one is obvious 😛
Hammersteyn
November 13, 2015 at 13:43
Those moderators got “drilled”
Hammersteyn
November 13, 2015 at 13:51
ROFL
James Anderton
November 13, 2015 at 13:52
When in doubt, shoot yourself in the other foot as well.
Ruthie Gibson
November 15, 2015 at 10:12
.
Alien Emperor Trevor
November 13, 2015 at 13:54
You could say it’s… PayDay2Win
Juan
November 13, 2015 at 14:35
its not, I’m not condoning the skins, but having one doesn’t make you super powerful, and in a PvE game, it up the average team victory % but not by much
I havn’t had any issues playing without the skins, and overall found the South African community a whole lot less poisonous than the us one
RinceThis
November 13, 2015 at 15:03
Yawn…
b1nd3r
November 13, 2015 at 13:56
glad i got this game for free 😛 still havent installed it >.<
Maxiviper117
November 13, 2015 at 15:31
This is pretty shoddy of them to do this now, at least the game isn’t PVP,if it was then this sort of implementations would of wrecked the fairness of the game.
40 Insane Frogs
November 13, 2015 at 18:41
And there goes Overkill….
https://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/images/toilet.jpg
Thomas
November 13, 2015 at 20:12
Guys please get the info right before posting a journalism about a false topic. This time the uproar is about the Completely oberkill pack rewards. Now you basically do false journalism, team stat boosts are w/e although it should have been added to infamy instead.
disqus_DTaNCraTNn
November 13, 2015 at 22:55
You got the article wrong.
1) Crimefest 1, _last year_, because this (particular) problem has a year in the making, had the goal of collecting Hype Fuel, to make the Hype Train go faster. It was basically a meter that had to be filled by the community. Upon doing so, several updates would be released at no cost. Not reaching the milestones would mean the update wouldn’t be released for free.
2)Completely Overkill Pack (COP) was released last year. It offered 4 masks with neon effects, a first for the game. A new texture for the escape van (extremely ugly in my opinion, just look for yourself). And a secret 😉 to be disclosed later. It cost 20$, twenty. It added some number of fuel tanks to the hype meter (I’m sorry I don’t remember everything… I think 3 or 5 tanks). There were only going to be 50 thousand copies of this pack for sale, as such the COP would go on to become a collector’s item.
3) Along the COP they released the Overkill Pack (OVKP), 5$, which was a more standard pack that had two heavy weapons as their main offering. It added one tank to the meter.
4) Customers started threads (positive and negative) about the nature of the secret, as expected. The developer assured the secret was cosmetic only and was being delayed until it was ready to show, it was being made with love.
5) Customers started threads about not getting the OVKP after buying the COP. The developers explained the OVKP was NOT included with the COP, despite the similarities on the name and escalated price. From the previous and given the price, customers started showing discontent at the price, this secret better be good, for 20$ was too much for four masks, even if they had neon effects.
6) The mods, specifically the ones going on strike now, made a post about the COP being mostly a donation to the developers. The developers made a post of their own stating this was not a donation, but it was support.
6) The whales of the game still bought the 50k copies that were offered for that’s what they do. Hopeful of the secret being a very nice cosmetic item (many players wanted cosmetics for the suits for example, up until that point only player’s masks were the only cosmetics), other players were into The Secret of Payday 2, an ARG, and bought it in case this alleged secret was a key into the next phase of the ARG. It is to note that only whales would buy a 20$ collectors dlc, and whales by definition will buy every single dlc on release day, this note makes sense later.
7) The hype train reached its final destination, my memory doesnt help about whether all the promised milestones were released on time, but I do recall they had failed on all their previous events before, with the FBI Files being released only months ago (and that had another scandal on its own), and the Safehouse Customization still TBA, so that’s why I bring it up.
8) Fast forward nearly a year, to _weeks_ before Crimefest 2, the COP reward is announced for release in the upcoming months, although still a secret. The COP DLC is marked as released, making refunds impossible, posts are started about this issue. Hype on the loyal customers, fear on those that already doubt the developer follows.
9) Crimefest 2 starts with microtransactions, gun skins this time, and well that was covered already. The community didn’t like them, the skins are ugly for the most part, of random qualities, they add stats to the guns they are applied to, the keys to open the safes are expensive, but CS:GO has the almost the same model so eventually the seas would settle. The developers patch in a way for drills to drop for players for free in order to calm the anger, these free drops are very rare, but it has some effect.
10) During this MT scandals the mods do their job 100%, some challenge them of just silencing anyone against the developers. This must be the time they got their death threats, if those are real. To note, the mods are are community mods, so they shouldn’t be paid (I hear they receive the DLCs for free).
11) The COP release is delayed, “because there are some issues with Valve”.
12) Now with Crimefest 2 over, and the scandal of MTs “old news”. The COP is released on Update 90. The contents: one COP safe and one cop drill, not tradable, not marketable. Inside a random gun skin, and 7 DLCs for the game, the dlcs give you access to all the weapons that the safe has skins for.
The skins, with random quality, a standard safe. The special gimmick of them? team boosts, these team boosts boost the entire team, bonuses include 1% experience, 1% accuracy, etc. Team boosts are not 100% assured, and may not spawn on your specific COP skin. As such you can easily get a low quality skin for a low tier weapon or a weapon you just plain never use, and without team boosts. Or you can win the lottery and get a mint top tier weapon with more than one team boost. These skins can be traded and sold on the market, but the market doesn’t have difference for qualities or extras, so they all go for the same low prices.
While a few of these skins are actually decent, you got things like this: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=553351317 and many more.
So what is the outrage?
a) The issue with Valve from 11) was most likely their lawyers not wanting to offer refunds for players that got skins for weapons they didn’t have. As customers had already shown they were willing to get refunds as they had tried the past few weeks/months and were stopped by marking the dlc as released. The final solution was to give the seven free dlcs. Which are added straight to library, not to inventory, so no extra copies to gift to friends. Because of 6) damage to the company was minimal. The sweetener ends up being a middle finger to all the whales that bought the pack, “anyone that bought the COP already has these dlcs”.
b) Among these seven dlcs is the Overkill Pack, the OVKP, the one that wasn’t included in the COP as per 5).
c) The skins are ugly in general, not so much love and care as the developers stated.
d) Whales that paid 20$ a pop got a single pop of a safe with 25 contents, for a skin of random quality, with a random chance of stat boost. The goal was clearly to have these whales go and have a bid war on the steam market for the best skins that were rolled. The developers get a cut from every transaction on the Steam economy.
What would have the whales accepted? what the now striking mods are claiming for, being able to access all the skins for free (as they already paid 20$ a year ago), and have all these skins in mint condition. Of course, the whales would have liked something better than gun skins, or at least awesome skins, but what can you do.
The outrage is not “more MTs”.