PAYDAY 3: Starbreeze Builds a "Strike Team" to Form a Plan
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- Опубліковано 17 січ 2024
- Payday 3 is in rough shape, no doubt about that. Now, Starbreeze is putting together a "strike team" to get things back on track. But is it too little too late?
Narrated and edited by John: Tuffcooke_
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All super valid points. There are a few other content creators, that focus on Payday 3. They've been making valid videos too with the top 5 or 10 things that Payday 3 needs to fix immediately to get the game back on 'track' type videos. These videos have been made 1-2 months ago. Certainly there's a either a cost issue and or a grotesque mismanagement issue going on here. There's no excuse for this sluggishness and a way overpriced DLC pack. It's a good way to let this game go right down the ****king drain, which is exactly where it's headed.
What made PD2's release so successful was the Dev's promised "no paid dlc" which was true for a couple years until they spent all their money and had to walk back their statements, but at that point PD2 was already a complete game with a solid community and good player counts daily, even with the Cross-play gap. PD3 takes the aggressive PD2 monetization approach right from the start on arguably an early access product. Starbreeze had way too much faith in a community that was getting tired of their monetization practices to release a less than half-baked highly anticipated sequel we all had been waiting almost 10 years for. What did they honestly think was going to happen???
To be fair, Payday 2 had a few years of pretty aggressive monetization before they then dropped to no paid DLC. The issue we're seeing here is that Payday 3 charges MORE money for less content while the game itself is in shambles
They come across completely clueless, like they should be well aware what the issues are as everyone has been complaining about the same thing for *four* months.
Like I said, its wild that they direct people to the feature upvote site which very clearly displays that they don't interact or at least update the feature upvote site
This is just Starbreeze racing against time.
I dont want another game thrown in the trash becaause the publisher lost hooes for it.
Very clear way to explain their actions so far: priorities. The game breaking bug NEEDED fixing and it isn’t hard to understand why that wouldn’t show up prelaunch before the numbers started flooding in. After that there were the Legacy and Syntax Error heists which were clearly their priority after that. After adding content (which at launch was a vocalised issue) they now have the time to prioritise on redesigning parts of the game to add an offline mode, new UI, etc. the striketeam is made of veterans who’s priorities were clearly on those other areas prior to this. I don’t get why you’re complaining about them just being open about where their current priorities are and the fact they want to make the game better for everyone
I just think they've been focusing on the wrong things. The entire community spent months asking them for things we thought the game needed, and now as the game is in crisis they've shown up and decided they're going to start a plan. It's far, far too late to be starting a plan. We need to see action and there's no timetable on when we'll see it coming
@@RustyChains I would personally disagree. A game breaking bug is definitely worth being their top priority, then content right after that considering (second to offline mode) that was maybe their biggest criticism. They can’t do everything at once. People seem to think Payday 3 is this lost cause but personally I’ve got about 240 hours on it and still love it to bits. I’m not saying it’s perfect, but it isn’t half as bad as people make it out to be. Also now that they’ve gone through their rough release, content updates and Christmas break they’ve now had time to recuperate and put something together. I guarantee the strike team was planned before Christmas, they just didn’t want to leave people with that before they had a break. They’ve also said they’re still putting together a plan of what they’ll be working on (which I can imagine they’ve also been putting together already, including the actually feasibility of certain things, since before Christmas too) Watch their streams, they’re very aware of the complains and are very open with their community about what’s coming next. We just need to wait for at least another week before the plans are revealed to us. Sure it’s been slow but it’s still a very new game and a lot of these issues weren’t foreseen by them. People just need to give the devs a chance and I’m honestly willing to wait since (as I say) I seem to be one of the only people who loves it. I can also imagine for a team that realistically is not very big compared to other dev teams, these things can’t be rushed otherwise it’ll just cause even MORE problems for people to complain about. They’re trying to make things right, but for a small team you can’t expect such giant changes to the game to come so quickly
My assumption what happened - pre-release plan was for team to split into one part moving onto developing Baxter, and another part supporting live-service for PD3 (as was stated in one of their press-releases), with internal expectation that they will be able to fix and support the game on their own. But, the release was worse than expected, as well as general feedback for the game, and the team that was still on PD3 was unable to work on the fixes quick enough or efficiently enough, so that's the reason why they decided just now on the strike team, after the team that was left "failed" to support the game post-release. And the strike team would be some of the devs who are now working on Baxter coming back.
Regarding 18 months of support - honestly I think best case scenario is maybe if they ditch the publisher altogether after that, and try supporting the game on their own? Obviously, I don't know at all, what was happening behind the scenes (and maybe you, as SBZ Partner, know more than us), but there are a lot of talks how some of the decisions (like forcing online-only, or releasing game in such an unfinished state to begin with instead of delaying it) probably wouldn't have been done by Starbreeze themselves, and Embracer/Plaion/Deep Silver is notorious for horrible marketing decisions and dev influence.
As for the sales figures, the game did recoup the cost, from what both Embracer and Starbreeze were saying, although Embracer in their report says that "The game is expected to contribute positively in FY 2023/24, but below management expectations." And payday 3 did end up being in Top12 best selling new releases on Steam of 2023. So I don't think that their financial situation is necessarily catastrophic as of right now, but yes, if they will never properly fix the game in the span of the first 12-18 months, it's a safe assumption that they would want to cut costs on it.
And I don't see them selling payday rights to anyone honestly, maybe they will slow down development, but still will be working on it.
This is a super well-thought out and articulated comment. Great read. To go in order here:
1) I hadn't thought of the notion of the strike team being Baxter/DND staff. I hope that isn't the case, because it rarely goes well when studios pull people from upcoming projects to support existing ones. It's a gamble. Do we want to risk the success of Baxter to support Payday 3, on the hope it works out? Time will tell.
2) It'd be tricky, but not impossible, to move forward without a publisher. As for the online only and everything, from what I understand based on what Almir has said on dev streams, this was a Starbreeze choice so they could run everything through Nebula. Obviously didn't work out in their favor, but publisher or not that needs to be fixed and that'll take time.
3) I don't think their financial situation is catastrophic or anything, but I don't see Payday 3 selling well-long term with the negative reception, as well as the most recent news piece being "We're going to take a moth to try to figure out how to fix everything". But if they do lose that publisher, it'll be hard for them to fund Payday 3 and Baxter at the same time. Things need to change quickly, or Payday 3 won't be sustainable
@@RustyChains Thanks, just had some thoughts I wanted to share which I didn't really see many people discuss.
1) While it would certainly suck if they had to do it, arguably, as you said yourself, if payday 3 won't be really sustainable and, importantly, bring them profit, Baxter might not happen at all, since that one is fully self-published, from what they've told. Not to mention the even bigger reputational hit if payday 3 won't end up being fixed at all, who would trust that they can make a new good coop game after that?
2) That it needs to be fixed is no doubt, I was mainly mentioning that because there are some speculation that they aren't able to do that because publisher won't allow them to do it. And SBZ being so "secretive" about those (saying that it's "on the table", but no other concrete info) is really weird, when the impression during PD2 development was, if I'm not misremembering, that they used to share more info. Like, didn't they delay Crude Awakening release a bit after the fiasco with epic online services transition? And the whole situation with crimefest 2015, where iirc they "backpedaled" on it in the span of several days due to the community outcry (checking right now, they added safes on 15th October 2015, and added drills from random drops 5 days later, on 20th, and were slowly phasing out it in the upcoming years). Sure, due to console verification process they can't really do updates this fast anymore, but still, it's just very uncharacteristic of them to be this "closed off", from my understanding, and that's what is weird.
3) My hope that "strike team" would mean a priority focus on bringing the fixes as soon as possible, once that "plan" is done. Maybe too hopeful, but imo they could address most crucial technical issues before 3rd DLC heist (so somewhere in summer) if they start in February. Those issues would be imo:
proper matchmaking (meaning, server browser, quickplay, filters),
proper lobbies functions (unready, kick option, direct buy of favors),
proper communications (cross-platform text and voice chats, ping wheel improvements),
proper progression (either just making display of all of the challenges much better, maybe similar to what is right now on pd3 gg, or just remaking it in general).
And I think it's fine if they will add offline mode sometime within the first year, as arguably it's not the thing that brings player numbers down the most, but it still should be in the game no matter what. Ideally it would also be cool to have official dedicated server available for user hosting, but that's far from crucial as of now.
And on a final note, I think it might be even "fine"/better if they just add a crude version of some of those first, but faster, than spending crucial time on making it "pretty". Mostly directed at server browser stuff - it would be cool, of course, if they outdid themselves on what was crime net, in visuals and functionality, but imo it's more important to first get *any* server browser, even if it's just a simple list with heist, number of players, region, ping and stealth/loud, etc, similar to what you would see in server list for source games/Battlelog (for battlefield games)/DRG, and then over time work on improving it.
If they dont offer offline play whats the point. as much as i like gtfo i hate having to be online to play. i hope den of wolves dont have online only to play but sure it will. so if they can fix this online only shit who cares.
Offline is unfortunately one of just many issues that need fixing. Right now many people don't find the game very fun. Being able to play what we have offline won't move the needle that much
@@RustyChains true but its a step the direction of practice every heist then get good enough where you can hop online and help someone less experience instead of everyone running around looking stupid. Also i have not played PD3 so as far as the gameplay i have dont know what to expect.