It wouldn't be an E3k video without an error: the silence at 1:27:42 and the subsequent fade-in of the next lines totally missed my eyes and ears during editing, I hope it doesn't hurt your opinion of the video too much!
Oh, and you said that the TTI TR-1 was in Fortnite, when Fortnite actually had the TTI MPX, confusingly labelled as an assault rifle but still modelled with and actually using the "light" pistol / SMG ammo. ...Yeah, with my embarrassing Fortnite knowledge out of the way, I started watching you because of Payday but I've absolutely stuck around for your general content style and personality. I watch your new series whenever you launch them to see if I like the content and I'm so sorry that a few idiots harassed you for not playing one specific game, and worse, for merely being yourself. Ideally they should've just silently moved on with fond memories if they didn't like your current stuff, or stayed for your new content if they like it, but being unerringly rude for the sake of it... yeah.
@@stevenbobbybills - For sure, and that's what this video is actually honestly about; treating the people you watch the way they treated PD2 content creators who left the game in 2018 and 2019 is simply not cool, and it's been boiling up inside of me for a few years. Having it all in one PD2-centric video helped a lot more than just scattered comments here and there in various videos, and I'm glad I made this, ultimately.
I find it hard to find words for explaining how I feel after watching this. I believe you never lost your integrity, most of all. In my opinion, you did everything right, and you'll be okay. What I told you in comments years ago on the previous video, still applies today. Ideally I'd love to just go and have a long 2 hour DM conversation with you about all of this and game design ideas and all that, but it's just time you need for yourself after this. All I can add is, I really was hyped when you started getting into Fallout territory. It's just there was too much for me to catch up with, despite being genuinely interested, it got overwhelming. I'll be honest, I was never interested in build videos. If anything, "Let's talk about Payday 2" was much better as a study on how this all happened along with your life experience the way it did back then. Now that all is said and done about PD2, let's hope that things will move on. Again, I'm struggling to find words to an extent. Keep up the good work. That's the best I can say as a random goober on the interwebs.
Okay, time to ramble now that I've seen the full video. E3k, I wanna start of with an apology on behalf of the entire payday community, despite the vast majority would never admit this to themselves due to self spite and piss tinted nostalgia glasses. You, or any other creator, never deserved to be dragged back into any type of video you abandoned. That behavior from viewers is truly disgusting. I'm also sorry about the loss of your father and the unfortunate timing and disregard of the community on that front. As a long, long time veteran of the game, having played since launch as I was 14 years old, logging in 5k hours on console and approaching 1k on PC, this game is truly my baby. It's been the one consistent thing in my life, and I love it. But, I also fully acknowledge the pure awful things about it, and I fully understand your opinions on it. I especially love to agree with you that this fanbase is egregiously toxic and unwelcoming. I myself try to prevent this kind of behavior, but also fall victim to it occasionally out of frustration because I play exclusively Death Sentence loud (if that's not obvious from my channel). A bonnie main at heart, and a lover of many firearms, this game keeps me with it for the sake of a good time. But I don't blame you from wanting to abandon it content wise. It's not worth the headache, if you aren't an established, beloved, long running member of the community. Furthermore, this video is top notch. I love the H3VR segments, I love the editing and music choice (especially that credits music, its beautiful), and I love your messages. You made me reconsider just why I even still play this. I'm still going to, but possibly for different reasons. I'm still excited for Payday 3 and have high Hopes for it, despite that I really shouldn't. I look forward to your future content, old friend. Stay Safe, stay classy.
I dont fault you for not knowing this, you dont slave the game like I do, but saying that nobody uses the 5/7 is pain. It's one of the most used secondary weapons from my experience, purely for it's good concealment and anti shield ability. It's in atleast 19 of my 30 builds.
Maybe a lot of it comes down to what's changed in two or three years? I very rarely saw the 5/7 throughout 2018 and the first half of 2019 and at most there was one in all the public lobbies I played for this video; most people took care of shields by using either the melee skills to knock them down, a sniper rifle, or by just circle-strafing around them. Regardless, I still don't think anyone was clamoring for a less-useful version of the thing with the RUS-12. The 5/7's no doubt got a hefty amount of fans, but it was also the only pistol of its kind, whereas there were multiple nearly-identical pistols in a small pool of damage tiers. You might see more 5/7s than Interceptors, but there's also many guns that fill the Interceptor's niche just as well, for instance.
@@E3kHatena Yeah that new addition has basically seen zero use by anyone I've ran with since a few days after its release. Just doesnt fit in a good position in the current meta.
I found your channel through that "Let's Talk About Payday 2" video despite never having played Payday 2. I just wanted to listen to someone talk about something they're passionate about. That's why I subscribed and it's why I've stuck around.
Just watched the first video and now saw this. I feel with you, the video made me cry in those emotional moments. Always remember people are there for you 💜
I saw your last bit Payday 2 and Fallout videos in my retrospective, and then discovered all your other stuff. I might not always agree, but I adore hearing your thoughts. You have a new fan here.
I really appreciate this video, thank you! Our timelines of enjoyment and eventual boredom with Payday are extremely similar, and this video was exactly what I needed. I occasionally feel an itch, like that for revisiting an old friend, when seeing the new content, but I suspected I would have exactly your response. It's hard for me to let go, few games have had my attention like Payday 2 did in it's heyday, but like so many things, you can't go back. While I will always yearn to have back the first time I played Big Bank or Hotline Miami, eventually you must move on. I think you bring a fun and interesting perspective to your videos and I will remain to see what great new places you can go. Best of luck to us all.
Glad the video resonated with you! The past few years, this all's been kinda sitting with me in a way that needed to come out, and bringing all of these personal gripes with the community to light felt vital, a moment of closure I think the channel actually truly needed.
@@E3kHatena It resonated hard. I honestly got emotional at the end of the original “Let’s talk about Payday.” It felt like the end of an era I, personally, cherished greatly. This new video reminded me of the importance of letting go and making room for new growth and adventures, especially when it came to your own reflection. Thanks again, you really put a lot of work and heart into this and it showed.
I recently reset my progress after years of not playing and have been going for achievements and stuff and.. man this game just FEELS good to play. The guns are satisfying and getting better at it at higher difficulty feels really rewarding. I'm well aware of the game's flaws but it isn't bad enough to really spoil it for me.
Video's more so focused on general burnout with the game, but that happens to any game at all. Payday 2 *is* a good game, but nothing you can play forever, as is evident.
This video genuinely almost brought me to tears by the end. The game analysis was nice but the most memorable parts are easily your parting message about treating others with kindness online and your story about losing your father, as a trans woman who's experienced no shortage of discrimination and who has lost a father who I loved very very dearly, this video really resonated with me. I'll be sure to watch that fallout video sometime, I'm sure it's really great. I wish you nothing but the best with everything.
The feel of a community going vitriol in terms of spouting transphobia, racism and homophobia really got a flash back in my mind from one game that I refuse to go back to because of it. Payday 2 has had its fair share of this and it makes me thankful that the community is trying to actually welcome and support one another, but the one game that has gotten worse and stayed with its toxic mentality is....Team Fortress 2. It sucks because I have had so many great memories involving TF2 but when I look on it now I'm afraid to even hit the install button to check it out again, it took a turn for the worst when the community practically is lashing out at workshop creators and kicking people just because their trans or anything that the community deems bad in their eyes. I'm happy though that at least with Payday 2 and many different PvE based co-op shooters are at the very least can be welcoming (some bad eggs may be there but still) and hell even older FPS games like Quake have a community wanting people to learn its mechanics and have new people to play against. I had some bad experiences with the Payday 2 community but it was more or less about what character I played as and not much else. Its always good to look back on something and just see how something is going, every now and again I look back at Payday 2 and when I feel up for it, I reinstall it and do a couple heists and have a blast. You still enjoy it and want to play it? Fair enough, if not? Also fair enough, no one should control what someone does in any form. I broke that chain and I know many others can too.
When I left Payday 2, the community I left behind was one of the most toxic communities I had ever seen. The game was flawed, very obviously so, but everyone would jump down your throat with "get good" the moment you voice those concerns. I remember having an argument with a friend who tried to convince me that the difficulties and balancing was good. Somehow, a game all about build variety benefits from having most of the sandbox fall out of viability on the highest difficulty, because that contributed to it's hardness, in his mind. This is despite the fact that there is NOTHING DIFFICULT about throwing together a meta build, and then destroying the entire map using it. The modding community was filled with people just... Sabotaging each other. One mod would be purposefully designed to break another if detected, and there were too many "ban player for this" mods out there. For overhauls it wasn't uncommon for players to spout random bullshit that isn't even true. I don't regret my time with the game, but I wonder how the fuck the community got this bad.
Connor Shaw (now going by Sheri) wrote a blog post on Cohost about their time with the game and they came to the realization that the people who fell into the game post-Crimefest were the type to strongly lean into the right-wing indivdualist ability to militaristically slaughter a society and system that they felt wronged them, seeing a skewed commentary on deregulation and personal freedoms, which led to a lot of the more hypermodern weaponry and aesthetics we see in the game today, with the likes of the touchscreen-enabled smart guns and FMGs. The game ultimately started catering to the crypto-libertarian crowd as they found the game appealing and had developers willing to accommodate their tastes after the mainstream pushed the game to the side for its (at the time) egregious microtransaction fiasco. I'll be frank, it's the one thing I'm most worried about with Payday 3, as the game seems to be leaning into the digital age crime a lot more given blurbs from the developers. I don't want to see people asking me for my opinion on the Rugpull Heist or how many ape JPEGs they should steal on Day 2. At the same time, a launch of a new game gives them an opportunity to invite a broader crowd in once more, and given its very outward ACAB leanings, there is some hope that the game's community could be a more welcoming one, at the end of it all. I won't hold my breath on it, but I do want to give them the benefit of the doubt for the time being.
I dunno what year you left it on, but right now overall the community is insanely chill unless: 1. Stealth only map (everyone gets tense) 2. Someone strokes out (e.g., someone needs to get over for an objective but they're too busy running loops)
@@DogeickBateman - The game's community exists outside of just the game, and when it comes to especially the queer content creators who covered the game 2017-2020, they faced a lot more friction from the people who played the game then they needed to. I can't speak on behalf of Sheri, who was actively transitioning very shortly after they left the game and community and spent their final year of coverage being routinely misgendered, but I can say that I have had Payday fans frustrated with me that I no longer cover the game and have had a small handful of transphobic comments left by people with PD2 profile icons. Sheri, having racked up 100,000 subscribers covering the game and then leaving it post-WHH, has seen the toxic underbelly of the community significantly more than I have and I feel compelled to agree with their description of the more vocal aspects of the playerbase.
Thank you for your payday videos and such. You've made some great builds and such and your let's talk about payday video was very well written. Best of luck in your future endeavors. I'm grateful for finding your channel through payday stuff.your builds have helped me branch into mayhem and deathwish a bit, I can't thank you enough for that. Best wishes to you and what you do next 🙂
Because of the sheer length of this vid, I’m gonna have to come back later. However, I do love that the chapters about Payday use Roman numerals just like the infamy system. Noice touch.
I will say that adding the H3VR segments into the video was a pretty good way to trigger my brain to wanna see more of it. That, and your admittedly unique way of talking.
I feel like the main issue with Payday 2 is that it's one of those games that became a Frankenstein, and not one where it positively changed in terms of gameplay. Even though I had over 1,000 hours in Payday 2, I decided to go back and play Payday The Heist. After 48 hours, I made it to the max level of 193. It was repetitive playing through the same 9 heists, with not much room in terms of changing up builds as "extra start-out ammo" became king. But despite that, I still had fun because the game felt very different but more focused than Payday 2, needing to really take cover and use your head rather than running around at 45 mph and running up the the nearest bulldozer and killing it in 0.65 seconds. You felt like you had the power of 2 or 3 cops, and not the like 15 to 30 you had in PD2. So I then looked for overhaul mods for Payday 2 and tried out a mod that pretty much got rid of everything before update 26 except for the new heists. And while I didn't have as much fun as I did, mainly because all I had were bots and old PD2's skill tree system uses money, it still had some fun with similar feelings I had when I played PD:TH, just with less jank. I guess what I'm saying is that PD:TH and PD2 Pre-Update 27 felt a lot more tactical, while PD2 now feels very arcadey, which doesn't work the best for a game that started out feeling more tactical. And it's because of that where the people behind and developing PD2 are struggling as it really seems like some still think it plays the same or similar to how it was in 2013 while others are more adjusted to how it is now. It feels like there is a clash and we get something good, but then we also get something that's honestly outdated in terms of how the game is played now. And sometimes they clash so hard that we get something that doesn't support either side of the game in the past or present, or are weird compromise that just makes things messier. TL;DR, Payday: The Heist and Payday 2 Pre-Update 27 feel a lot more focused on what games they want to be, while Modern Payday 2 had changed so much it's honestly confusing what It wants to be and keeps fighting with it's self.
Even then, I feel the more arcadey gameplay can be done well, but just over time a lot of the nuance and value in its gameplay degraded. Update 100 made a bunch of useful skills into core abilities, added a ton of overpowered skills, and then flattened the damage and enemy spawn curves into being flat increases based on playercount and difficulty, and then from there they kept trying to one-up one another, leading to a game that just's ultimately now just a boomer shooter with objectives to complete and timers aplenty, and it's not even a good one at that. It's just really confused as to where it stands in the FPS spotlight, and I'm hoping the third game helps it find its footing.
I love your longer form content (payday, fallout etc) and i know you put a crazy ammount of time into them and theyre what draws me to your channel, i think your writing works especially well with longer stuff since you're incredibly talented at making it about more than "just" the game in so many ways and i think the reason your longform content appeals to me especially as someone with autism is cos seeing someone talk about something they know inside and out and love/loved is so fullfilling. i enjoy your channel for your thoughts and takes not for whatevers on screen ❣️also sorry for the essay comment lol (ps. ur h3vr try out vids are so cozy)
Glad to hear it! Both Fallout: an Analysis and this video took about six months to get all squared away, and I'm glad it's gone over well. I have a few other large-ish video projects on the docket for the coming year (pretty much every Halo retrospective from here on out is gonna be in excess of 20 minutes, if I had to wager), and of course more Tryouts, but unless anything changes in the next month or two, this will probably be my only major essay this year. I've been very pleased with the support they've had, but I know there's gotta be a larger audience out there, especially given Quinton Reviews and HBomberguy have done some gargantuan essays to rave review. If you've liked my videos, sharing them with friends or over social media *really* helps, I cannot stress that enough. Word of mouth has helped the channel grow since like June 2019. Also I don't mind longer comments, I try to take time to read all of 'em!
"Why are there two 1911s?" Yeah you're right, we need more. ...what? I love the 1911. Anyway ironically the video I watched immediately before this was your old final Payday 2 video so it was neat to see this. Personally I play this super casually with friends and occasionally look at builds. I wish you luck in anything you choose to do, RUclips is a cruel mistress for people trying to diversify or change tack.
It's been rough, the past few years, but if you find something on the channel you like, absolutely share it around with friends or on social media, word of mouth helps the channel grow!
1:40:24 All I’ve heard is that most of the jiu feng 4 guns are amazing. The wasp is the best smg in it’s damage tier: easily hits 96/96 accuracy and stability, and best in class fire rate. It also has good concealment. The argos one shots heavy swats on DS with only shotgun impact and overkill if I’m not mistaken, and has good pickup and fast reloads to support it. Also easily concealable. The gecko is an niche gun sure, but in stealth functions like a judge with better accuracy (less likely to collaterally hit glass). Granted, in loud, it’s just a pistol, but in stealth, it’s a fine alternative to the judge or the locomotive.
I had to rely mostly on Steam reviews and Reddit comments as I hadn't bought the DLC myself, but it seems from those comments that the reload on the Argos was a pretty major drawback for a number of players (especially it loading slower with rounds in the chamber versus from empty), and everything the Gecko could do, a Judge loaded with slugs could do just fine, which in total make the purchase a little tough to justify for a number of players. I will say I did see a handful of FMGs during the few public lobbies I did play, though.
Hey, not sure if you're still reading the comments a year after the video's release, but this really resonated with me. Going through burnout and personal loss at the same time is something that I am unfortunately familiar with, and it's great to see that you're actually making the content you enjoy creating. Good luck with the channel, hopefully, I'll watch it grow.
I mean, I didn't see it during my time in public lobbies for this video (even when I'd see folks running secondary pistols), and it wasn't really popular when I was actively playing the game in 2017-2019 due to its sub-standard stats. Whether it's been reworked or outfight buffed in the few years between LTAPD2 and this video, I don't actually know. Regardless, the AP revolver offered in the game is still objectively inferior to the free pistol counterpart.
holy shit, I forgot you existed man, good to see you still make videos tho. I still use some of your payday 2 builds even after they got nerfed or buffed as the playstyle is fun. even tho you don't make payday 2 content anymore I don't care, keep grinding youtube and make that bread man. here's to 20K subs and an awesome year man
It seems a lot of people either forgot to chose to forget, after LTAPD2. I'm still going, doing game reviews and retrospectives plus the kind of signature unscripted nonsense Build Randomizer offered, just in new formats. Honestly, the fact people still run the builds I made when the ones that weren't modest tweaks to Armory Subforum stuff I found or were just me noodling around with the skill system between classes as a commuter student is bewildering; y'all definitely gave it more thought than I ever did. Here's hoping that this video either brings new people into the channel, or returning users back with a healthy backlog of stuff to watch!
Dam this got me tearing up man you keep doing what makes you happy homie no matter what I joined for payday and now I get to watch you as a person enjoy what you like and see that it's nice Dam this got me emotional god just keep being you
The response has been great, but I kinda wish that the previous 90-something minute retrospective on this game had the same response so I wouldn't have had to have made this, but I'll just see where this goes.
As a casual fan thats always been interested in getting into it, i can confirm its almost impenetrably bloated, so i thank you for giving my stubborness some closure with this video.
I'll be honest, I never found your channel because of your Payday 2 build videos. Sure. I might have gotten recommended your original Payday 2 retrospective, mostly because I was watching a ton of other long ass retrospectives (Including a 7 hour "quick" Morrowind analysis). However, I stuck around because I looked into your channel and saw your H3VR "Guns of (Game)" videos. I still watch those videos because my favorite thing to do in H3VR is to recreate guns from other games (Such as using ModulAR to remake the CoD MW2 M4), or recreate my own loadouts in said games and take them for a spin in take and hold. It should be a crime for more people to not have seen your other content, because it's all quality content.
The RUclips algorithm is fickle and rude (as detailed in the Puttin' on the Riffs episodes I filmed with Connor Shaw) so a lot of my stuff just goes entirely unseen. Sharing my videos with folks really does help a ton, so if you've got favorites, definitely post them around. H3VR Tryouts are in a weird place right now because I work evenings but Dan works afternoons, so we haven't had time to film them since like April. I'd like to make time on like Thursday evenings to record them coming up here, but it also depends on errands either of us have to run; it just can't work otherwise. We're both antsy to record more though, and I've got two lists ready to roll whenever!
I straight-up told Dan this was gonna be the first comment while making this video, I just at least thought people would wait until the video came out to post it.
You completely missed the point of a two-hour essay. I literally and specifically call out that I'm not doing any more videos on the game in my closing remarks.
;) (in true Starbreeze fashion, this smiley actually means nothing; see: Bo dropping clues about The Secret in 2014) I haven’t been playing much of PD2 but I might dig around in the coming months and see what I can find, though it’ll likely be a Cohost post at worst and a tweet at best, if I even have opinions.
It's been so weird seeing what this game has evolved into over the years, from the simple heist sim I used to play back in high school with friends to the odd bloated mess it is now. It was kind of hard to put to words exactly what I liked and hated about it, but this video does such a great job of it. Also coming back to the game has introduced me to channels like yours and Connor Shaw so it's not that bad ❤️ Oh and thank god for the DLCUnlocker mod. I don't care who Overkill sends I am NOT playing for weapon DLC. Technically you already have all the files downloaded, you just have to pay for them not to be wasted space on your PC so that's cool I guess :v
I don't have as many hours in Payday 2 as the next guy, but I do have 4.5k hours in TF2, having played it as a kid. So, I decided to take a break from it... And it was only right. Aye, any one-game channel faces this sooner or later when the love for the game slowly dissipates. SoundSmith faced it too, and he's a BIG TF2 channel. RTGame faced it, and he's a BIG variety channel, now. Branching out is ultimately good for content and sanity as it is in real life. Just proves that if it feels right to do, it probably is. Best wishes to you and your family.
I guess one of the big things that bothered me enough to make it an entire chapter of the video is that while I totally get many channels flourished becoming a variety channel, it just didn't happen for me in any real capacity from May 2019 to now. A couple videos wound up being runaway successes, but to some respect it's like out of the 19,000 subscribers the channel has, it may as well only have a thousand or two at most given the viewership. I guess it becomes a cautionary tale; the successes of RTGame and SoundSmith are outliers on this platform. Also kinda ties back to the whole point at the end about treating content creators well. Definitely give a new-found variety channel's work a try! If the fandom that originally supported a channel via one game just trash them for trying something new, at *best* you get a creator who resents an entire fandom and distances themselves from it, and at worst you get a creator who just straight-up leaves RUclips altogether, if not content creation as a whole, and I feel we all agree that every good channel left abandoned is a loss for RUclips as a whole. Presently, while I do have a plan in the event I feel I have to sunset this channel, I don't feel the need to draw upon it just yet. I want to keep making videos and try finding an audience for at least a little while longer, but it's demoralizing that the communities that surrounded other games tended to lift up its creators when they branched out, whereas the community that surrounded PD2 harassed its creators when they understandably put the game down when the game pretty much looked done. That resentment between content creator and audience feels pretty unique to Payday, and I can't off the top of my head think of any other really notable examples. That all said, this is coming from the perspective of a channel that had 6,500 subscribers when its final* video on PD2 came out, so there's definitely some bias present.
@@E3kHatena I definitely agree with all that you've said. The last point however *is* kind of a bias, because games with cult-like following aren't exclusive to Payday 2. For example, TF2 is known as a game that's only alive because of its community. In the TF2 fandom, playing a game religiously and suddenly switching is blasphemy. People are obsessed with that game, but content's been run DRY by RUclipsrs and pretty much everyone else, because the game's *old*. In the Payday 2 sphere, the situation is... Just about the same. b33croft rated from every weapon in the game to every damn contractor in the game. Just like in TF2, informational channels just scrape old moldy paint off the wall behind the closet. And when you feel like you can't do any more content for a game, that showcases loss of interest. Both bring burnout *and* creative block, created merely by inexistence of unexplored things and general roadrolling yourself upon the algorithm against your own will. My advice? Take what you think people like most about your content, and put it together with things you love. Trust me, people watch RUclips stuff not as much for the idea of the video, but for the person behind the screen and their way of talking and presenting the content. In short... Make it more about you. I have RUclipsrs I click to watch no matter what they put out just because of their personality and how fun they make their videos. Find out which *that one thing* you have that'll make you stand out, and your success, I'm pretty sure, is guaranteed. Oh, and if you think you can't, it might just be a matter of time and some self-digging. I used to think I'm extremely boring before, but if people say otherwise, I'm trying to find that niche in me that makes me likeable. Best of luck, Hatena ^^
I understand most of your points and I agree with some, I've personally never seen toxicity in the payday community but I don't really look for that stuff. I found your critiques of the new missions a bit nitpicky in my opinion, especially when you compared them to older missions, but thats just my take on your opinion. But hey, on the bright side, you said you wanted a relaunch and were getting payday 3 soon so I'd say that fulfills your wishes.
Not that it's main or even large part of the video but russianbader as presented in his videos is real him as long time fan he isn't over playing his personality he has always been a sh*tp posting edge lord and I feel all sponsorships are to stave of demonization he still edits his videos himself and can go months without uploading, hell he bought 30k motion capture suit just make videos better
Bit of a longer comment incoming but it's mostly because the topic is real nuanced and I want to approach it as fairly as possible: I get that he owns mocap stuff and also understand why he takes up sponsorships, and commend the one-man band going on of having to render out all of the animation and mocap and then edit that into videos, but to say that he isn't putting on a persona for the camera, even just putting a bit more energy into his delivery is a bit disingenuous. The point I'm making is that most, if not nearly all of the channels actively uploading for a bulk audience, whether that's channels like my own or ones much bigger than mine or what have you, adopt at least a little bit of a persona; it's not unlike how retail employees have a "customer service" voice or people presenting will project a little more to help get the attention of others. Again, I've only seen one of his videos and the bulk of my comments in that segment are rather jabs at the upper class of RUclips as a whole, but in regards to what I saw, comparing it to other similarly large channels versus my own stuff, I definitely don't add much to my normal tone and diction, I'm very much exhausted by the over-the-top exuberant line reads, and many similar videos are just real draining to me. If I have a hard time watching them, then making them would probably kill me. I would no doubt have a greater chance of being more popular by putting more energy into my own delivery and editing, and I could very well sponsor products to try making RUclips checks go farther (I've turned down hundreds of dollars to stream both Raid: Shadow Legends and Fortnite this year alone), but I don't feel comfortable doing any of that, because that's nowhere near the person I am. The point is that I could be more like those wackier personalities on RUclips (especially in variety gaming circles) but to do that would be immensely draining, especially if that's how just watching videos like that feel to me. I'm more understated than I probably ought to be to keep up in this arms race, but it's truer to myself and it keeps my relationship to the videos I make healthier. No doubt Badger and those other channels work hard (and Badger's mocap stuff cost him nearly 5x what my own RUclips channel has made in its lifetime), but it's not to say that I think they're lazy or just jangling keys around in front of their audience's face. If that's how it came across, I do apologize, but rather that the way I've approached RUclips is nothing like how so many of these big channels, especially the ones that have led traffic to my old PD2 garbage, approach video production, and I just think that trying to be more like them would burn me out quicker; I couldn't do it. I'd rather keep working to find an audience that appreciates the videos the way I make 'em.
@@E3kHatena im fine your is fine, i do youtube as hobby and if i felt like people where only coming for the game I was play that would seriously hurt me. In youtube you cant really afford to be a channel that people only come for a game look what happen to pokemon or legend of zelda youtube who at mercy of whenever Nintendo wants to drop a new game or update. I wouldn't want watch a channel if the only reason why they continued to play a game is because it was successful for there channel. Like connor shaw I still pop in there videos every know and then(if youtube bothers to recommend a channel that I'm subcrive to and have motivation turned on to all) If i'm game interest me because I like there stlye and presation. When I started to do youtube videos for fun I made my channel around battlefield but as stand currently series is kinda of dead to be as 2042 is garbage and I hate V and I basically played the other titles to death. Wheneve I try to cover a different game views just don't come so I find very brave of you switch you entire channel off a game you built your audience around. That can be very hard and nigh impossible. You should just to do you,.
All I can think about after watching this is TFTubers who quit the game and move on to other content. You’re not alone, there are other RUclips content creators out there who basically get whipped and hung by their community because they want to move on. I’m not one of those people sadly, because I can firmly say I don’t know what it’s like. But I will reiterate, *please* enjoy Payday 2 when *you* want to play it. I play the game because I find its gameplay so satisfying, on par or even more than Team Fortress 2. Even then, I’ve spent most of my time only ever playing Suit+Anarchist, so there’s so much for me to still explore. The game is addictive, satisfying, and has more than a few times been a blast to play, and hope you still have the same amount of fun I do.
As per the credits, "Define Me" from Red Vox's album Kerosene. Vin and Mike are streamers by trade and have been super supportive of people using their music on streams and in videos and Red Vox is probably my favorite band, so I try to include one of their tracks in each of the major video essays.
With all your discussion about the weird difficulty in the game: They seem way too beholden to the weird balance changes made around 2016. The game used to have much better enemy variety, much fewer enemies at once (it didn't linearly scale with playercount like it does now!) and the short assault breaks were only for the highest difficulty really, which was at the time overkill or death wish. You mentioned in your let's talk video about Jules' weird balance and I certainly agree. While I still play the game regularly it's with several mods (incl two I made myself) with many of them just restoring things that overkill changed for no reason, or fixing things that are broken from bad coding.
I honestly still think the payday 2 VR version was pretty impressive for a port of a desktop game, since there's only so much you can do with a game built with the assumptions of a mouse and keyboard or controller.
I totally get why they won't just gut all these systems and rebuild them, but yeah U100's changes to gameplay and enemy variety have really soured a lot of what nuance the game had, and I assume that's why like three of the public lobbies I *did* have to join to finish the video were modded out the ass; most of it was rebalances and things. Also RE: VR, for the time it was pretty impressive, especially given it ran quite alright and when it came out! I guess it mostly comes down to the VR ports of previously non-VR titles feeling lacking compared to bespoke VR games (which I mean it's obviously gonna be that way) and most of the support for non-Vive locomotion and control coming from the mod scene, not from Overkill. The arm tracking between VR and non-VR, and the fact that it's cross-platform between the VR version and not, are both still quite neat, though. I just wish they'd hire some of those modders to include official control setups for WMR, Oculus, and Index alongside some QoL additions.
@@E3kHatena If you look at the code for the balance changes it genuinely looks like someone with a child's idea of gameplay balance did it. The enemy force multiplier (multiplies max simultaneous enemies based on playercount) was changed from nuanced and reasonable values for each difficulty, to 1, 2, 3, 4 (except for death sentence, which is 1.5, 3, 4.5, 6 because maxing out every value == difficulty apparently). As if each player is just an individual that can handle the exact same amount of enemies, rather than part of a team. And outside of specials all of the spawngroups for each difficulty are just the same with the changes being the amount of heavy vs light units and the unit faction, no change in tactics based on faction or anything. Not to mention, on death wish and death sentence enemies with damage scaling just get a *7.5x* damage multiplier with no distance scaling whatsoever, because again large numbers = difficulty I guess. It just feels like such an afterthought.
@@E3kHatena It is genuinely depressing sometimes looking at the code because there is absolutely a great game with good gameplay underneath it, but at the last minute a huge downgrade was made and since then the game has been stuck for 6 years in a limbo of being too close to or past the end of service to make a brand new overhaul of the mechanics. It's especially notable when you look at the earlier heists where despite the simplicity there's so much effort put into the scripting and presentation and it's clear that they really wanted the game to feel complex and nuanced. Versus now where the limit is that every heist has two police cars enter the map at the start and it's just the shitty 2016-era assault mechanics for the rest of the time, in which so many enemies spawn that without mods the game cannot actually give them enough updates per second so they just sit around doing nothing.
1:27:36 is my only problem with the video. Nobody's using the Five-seveN? That is simply not true and very misleading for someone who is relatively new to the game. One of the best shield removals in the game with no skills invested in it. If you invest in gunslinger subtree it becomes a monster. If you need it in stealth (sometimes to kill an alerted guard through a wall/floor) it works wonders due to its high concealment stats when modded. So I really don't know what the fuck that was about lol
Low pickup rate, less-than-ideal stats, and easier ways to dispatch shields mean that, at least when I was actively playing the game 2017-2019, you’d see it maybe one in ten lobbies or less, it just wasn’t very popular. I don’t think I saw one during my stint playing the few lobbies I needed for this video, and I am unsure if they changed the weapon at all during the intervening three years (there was apparently a rebalance but did not seem aware of any weapons being notably better or worse during my playtime outside of the optimal range stat), but it still seems like the drawbacks are a hinderance, as the other high-damage pistols see plenty of use even without armor piercing rounds. Regardless, I think we can both agree that a 5/7 with just fifteen rounds and an ammo pickup rate like the RUS’ make it less desirable than the free community alternative.
I bought Payday 2 on 3 different platforms and reached max infamy with a few thousand hours on each one. Been around since practically the beginning and witnessed with everyone else everything that has happened behind the scenes, I used to love this game. Now I can't stand them and their stupid lies and stupid monetization and their stupid posts in my Steam activity feed just pisses me off. If this is anything what Payday 3 is going to be like, if they ever stop milking this cow then you can count me out.
those h3vr segments really slaughters the pacing of this video i get that you want people to watch your other videos but this isn't the way to do it. like just get on with the video and stop shoving these segments down are throat.
As much as I loved the rest of the video the parts analyzing the gameplay definitely felt unnecessary to general point of the game and just very out of touch with it's fanbase and generally accepted meta.
"less than 6% completed the game final mission" steam achievements are not a good way to gather statistics. It couts as a player someone who opened the game and then closed it. Look at the amount of people who masked up! If we're still doing that however, assume the "modded a gun" achievement is the basis for the 100% of the activity user base, and calculate an achievement from that.
Even if we use an achievement slightly further down the list like spending a million dollars, that only barely doubles the numbers, that puts us at 12% have beaten WHH on any difficulty. While yes, Steam achievements have their biases, there are not many games where you can see such a sharp drop-off in achievements. Only 42 achievements are at >20% collection, whereas that's usually numbers for completing entire games. Whether that says something about players dropping off or just the throwaway nature of them giving out the game so often though is beyond my judgement to make.
I really just have one major problem with this video, you keep stating they should revamp the game with new assets. Why? They are actively working on Payday 3. It makes it seem like you don't trust Payday 3 is ever going to come out. I get it the company isn't the most trustworthy but it wouldn't make sense for them to not make Payday 3.
I guess my argument held more water in 2019 versus 2022; yeah it is a bit late to do that (and it does get lightly addressed near the end), but I guess a lot of it just comes down to it feeling weird that just beating these new missions on Hard or Very Hard are some of the rarest achievements in the game. It just seems like it’s such a small audience to bank off of for funding on a 9th Gen co-op FPS, even with the help of Koch Media.
@@E3kHatena I do agree that it is kinda weird that they are relying on funding for payday 3 on payday 2 dlc. I also agree a large amount of payday 2's audience has fissled out however if we are looking at steam achievement stats that takes into account everyone who owns the game regardless of whether they opened it or not. Factoring that in when you see 1% of the playerbase has played the newer heists thats actually still a lot. Also Payday 2 still gets about 30k concurrent players so I'm guessing they are actually getting enough funding for payday 3 from these dlcs
It wouldn't be an E3k video without an error: the silence at 1:27:42 and the subsequent fade-in of the next lines totally missed my eyes and ears during editing, I hope it doesn't hurt your opinion of the video too much!
Oh, and you said that the TTI TR-1 was in Fortnite, when Fortnite actually had the TTI MPX, confusingly labelled as an assault rifle but still modelled with and actually using the "light" pistol / SMG ammo.
...Yeah, with my embarrassing Fortnite knowledge out of the way, I started watching you because of Payday but I've absolutely stuck around for your general content style and personality. I watch your new series whenever you launch them to see if I like the content and I'm so sorry that a few idiots harassed you for not playing one specific game, and worse, for merely being yourself.
Ideally they should've just silently moved on with fond memories if they didn't like your current stuff, or stayed for your new content if they like it, but being unerringly rude for the sake of it... yeah.
@@stevenbobbybills - For sure, and that's what this video is actually honestly about; treating the people you watch the way they treated PD2 content creators who left the game in 2018 and 2019 is simply not cool, and it's been boiling up inside of me for a few years. Having it all in one PD2-centric video helped a lot more than just scattered comments here and there in various videos, and I'm glad I made this, ultimately.
the five seven is one of the best secondaries in the game for crit builds
I find it hard to find words for explaining how I feel after watching this.
I believe you never lost your integrity, most of all. In my opinion, you did everything right, and you'll be okay. What I told you in comments years ago on the previous video, still applies today.
Ideally I'd love to just go and have a long 2 hour DM conversation with you about all of this and game design ideas and all that, but it's just time you need for yourself after this.
All I can add is, I really was hyped when you started getting into Fallout territory. It's just there was too much for me to catch up with, despite being genuinely interested, it got overwhelming. I'll be honest, I was never interested in build videos. If anything, "Let's talk about Payday 2" was much better as a study on how this all happened along with your life experience the way it did back then.
Now that all is said and done about PD2, let's hope that things will move on. Again, I'm struggling to find words to an extent.
Keep up the good work. That's the best I can say as a random goober on the interwebs.
Okay, time to ramble now that I've seen the full video.
E3k, I wanna start of with an apology on behalf of the entire payday community, despite the vast majority would never admit this to themselves due to self spite and piss tinted nostalgia glasses. You, or any other creator, never deserved to be dragged back into any type of video you abandoned. That behavior from viewers is truly disgusting. I'm also sorry about the loss of your father and the unfortunate timing and disregard of the community on that front.
As a long, long time veteran of the game, having played since launch as I was 14 years old, logging in 5k hours on console and approaching 1k on PC, this game is truly my baby. It's been the one consistent thing in my life, and I love it. But, I also fully acknowledge the pure awful things about it, and I fully understand your opinions on it. I especially love to agree with you that this fanbase is egregiously toxic and unwelcoming. I myself try to prevent this kind of behavior, but also fall victim to it occasionally out of frustration because I play exclusively Death Sentence loud (if that's not obvious from my channel). A bonnie main at heart, and a lover of many firearms, this game keeps me with it for the sake of a good time. But I don't blame you from wanting to abandon it content wise. It's not worth the headache, if you aren't an established, beloved, long running member of the community.
Furthermore, this video is top notch. I love the H3VR segments, I love the editing and music choice (especially that credits music, its beautiful), and I love your messages. You made me reconsider just why I even still play this. I'm still going to, but possibly for different reasons. I'm still excited for Payday 3 and have high Hopes for it, despite that I really shouldn't.
I look forward to your future content, old friend. Stay Safe, stay classy.
I dont fault you for not knowing this, you dont slave the game like I do, but saying that nobody uses the 5/7 is pain. It's one of the most used secondary weapons from my experience, purely for it's good concealment and anti shield ability. It's in atleast 19 of my 30 builds.
Maybe a lot of it comes down to what's changed in two or three years? I very rarely saw the 5/7 throughout 2018 and the first half of 2019 and at most there was one in all the public lobbies I played for this video; most people took care of shields by using either the melee skills to knock them down, a sniper rifle, or by just circle-strafing around them. Regardless, I still don't think anyone was clamoring for a less-useful version of the thing with the RUS-12. The 5/7's no doubt got a hefty amount of fans, but it was also the only pistol of its kind, whereas there were multiple nearly-identical pistols in a small pool of damage tiers. You might see more 5/7s than Interceptors, but there's also many guns that fill the Interceptor's niche just as well, for instance.
@@E3kHatena Yeah that new addition has basically seen zero use by anyone I've ran with since a few days after its release. Just doesnt fit in a good position in the current meta.
Assuming I'm accurate with my shots I started using the 5/7 more over explosive answers to shields like the judge or launchers.
I found your channel through that "Let's Talk About Payday 2" video despite never having played Payday 2. I just wanted to listen to someone talk about something they're passionate about. That's why I subscribed and it's why I've stuck around.
A really good video, a second retrospective. Personal, informative, and good.
Thank you kindly, Weaver.
Just watched the first video and now saw this. I feel with you, the video made me cry in those emotional moments. Always remember people are there for you 💜
Payday 2
"it's sad to see you go, but you'll find a better place by leaving"
-someone
I mean, I left a few years ago, but I needed to consolidate why I had left. Figured this was the best way to do that.
I saw your last bit Payday 2 and Fallout videos in my retrospective, and then discovered all your other stuff. I might not always agree, but I adore hearing your thoughts. You have a new fan here.
I really appreciate this video, thank you! Our timelines of enjoyment and eventual boredom with Payday are extremely similar, and this video was exactly what I needed. I occasionally feel an itch, like that for revisiting an old friend, when seeing the new content, but I suspected I would have exactly your response. It's hard for me to let go, few games have had my attention like Payday 2 did in it's heyday, but like so many things, you can't go back. While I will always yearn to have back the first time I played Big Bank or Hotline Miami, eventually you must move on. I think you bring a fun and interesting perspective to your videos and I will remain to see what great new places you can go. Best of luck to us all.
Glad the video resonated with you! The past few years, this all's been kinda sitting with me in a way that needed to come out, and bringing all of these personal gripes with the community to light felt vital, a moment of closure I think the channel actually truly needed.
@@E3kHatena It resonated hard. I honestly got emotional at the end of the original “Let’s talk about Payday.” It felt like the end of an era I, personally, cherished greatly. This new video reminded me of the importance of letting go and making room for new growth and adventures, especially when it came to your own reflection. Thanks again, you really put a lot of work and heart into this and it showed.
I recently reset my progress after years of not playing and have been going for achievements and stuff and.. man this game just FEELS good to play. The guns are satisfying and getting better at it at higher difficulty feels really rewarding. I'm well aware of the game's flaws but it isn't bad enough to really spoil it for me.
Video's more so focused on general burnout with the game, but that happens to any game at all. Payday 2 *is* a good game, but nothing you can play forever, as is evident.
I like the honesty of the video, even if I disagreed on several points, pretty rare thing for video retrospectives to get in-depth and even personal.
This video genuinely almost brought me to tears by the end. The game analysis was nice but the most memorable parts are easily your parting message about treating others with kindness online and your story about losing your father, as a trans woman who's experienced no shortage of discrimination and who has lost a father who I loved very very dearly, this video really resonated with me. I'll be sure to watch that fallout video sometime, I'm sure it's really great. I wish you nothing but the best with everything.
The feel of a community going vitriol in terms of spouting transphobia, racism and homophobia really got a flash back in my mind from one game that I refuse to go back to because of it. Payday 2 has had its fair share of this and it makes me thankful that the community is trying to actually welcome and support one another, but the one game that has gotten worse and stayed with its toxic mentality is....Team Fortress 2. It sucks because I have had so many great memories involving TF2 but when I look on it now I'm afraid to even hit the install button to check it out again, it took a turn for the worst when the community practically is lashing out at workshop creators and kicking people just because their trans or anything that the community deems bad in their eyes.
I'm happy though that at least with Payday 2 and many different PvE based co-op shooters are at the very least can be welcoming (some bad eggs may be there but still) and hell even older FPS games like Quake have a community wanting people to learn its mechanics and have new people to play against. I had some bad experiences with the Payday 2 community but it was more or less about what character I played as and not much else. Its always good to look back on something and just see how something is going, every now and again I look back at Payday 2 and when I feel up for it, I reinstall it and do a couple heists and have a blast.
You still enjoy it and want to play it? Fair enough, if not? Also fair enough, no one should control what someone does in any form. I broke that chain and I know many others can too.
What? Never saw anybody being like this in tf2
When I left Payday 2, the community I left behind was one of the most toxic communities I had ever seen.
The game was flawed, very obviously so, but everyone would jump down your throat with "get good" the moment you voice those concerns. I remember having an argument with a friend who tried to convince me that the difficulties and balancing was good. Somehow, a game all about build variety benefits from having most of the sandbox fall out of viability on the highest difficulty, because that contributed to it's hardness, in his mind. This is despite the fact that there is NOTHING DIFFICULT about throwing together a meta build, and then destroying the entire map using it.
The modding community was filled with people just... Sabotaging each other. One mod would be purposefully designed to break another if detected, and there were too many "ban player for this" mods out there. For overhauls it wasn't uncommon for players to spout random bullshit that isn't even true.
I don't regret my time with the game, but I wonder how the fuck the community got this bad.
Connor Shaw (now going by Sheri) wrote a blog post on Cohost about their time with the game and they came to the realization that the people who fell into the game post-Crimefest were the type to strongly lean into the right-wing indivdualist ability to militaristically slaughter a society and system that they felt wronged them, seeing a skewed commentary on deregulation and personal freedoms, which led to a lot of the more hypermodern weaponry and aesthetics we see in the game today, with the likes of the touchscreen-enabled smart guns and FMGs. The game ultimately started catering to the crypto-libertarian crowd as they found the game appealing and had developers willing to accommodate their tastes after the mainstream pushed the game to the side for its (at the time) egregious microtransaction fiasco.
I'll be frank, it's the one thing I'm most worried about with Payday 3, as the game seems to be leaning into the digital age crime a lot more given blurbs from the developers. I don't want to see people asking me for my opinion on the Rugpull Heist or how many ape JPEGs they should steal on Day 2. At the same time, a launch of a new game gives them an opportunity to invite a broader crowd in once more, and given its very outward ACAB leanings, there is some hope that the game's community could be a more welcoming one, at the end of it all. I won't hold my breath on it, but I do want to give them the benefit of the doubt for the time being.
@@E3kHatena What
I dunno what year you left it on, but right now overall the community is insanely chill unless:
1. Stealth only map (everyone gets tense)
2. Someone strokes out (e.g., someone needs to get over for an objective but they're too busy running loops)
@@DogeickBateman - The game's community exists outside of just the game, and when it comes to especially the queer content creators who covered the game 2017-2020, they faced a lot more friction from the people who played the game then they needed to. I can't speak on behalf of Sheri, who was actively transitioning very shortly after they left the game and community and spent their final year of coverage being routinely misgendered, but I can say that I have had Payday fans frustrated with me that I no longer cover the game and have had a small handful of transphobic comments left by people with PD2 profile icons. Sheri, having racked up 100,000 subscribers covering the game and then leaving it post-WHH, has seen the toxic underbelly of the community significantly more than I have and I feel compelled to agree with their description of the more vocal aspects of the playerbase.
@@E3kHatena Dang, that sucks. I am one of the “post-main story” players (started in November 2022) so maybe it had changed since, I dunno
Thank you for your payday videos and such. You've made some great builds and such and your let's talk about payday video was very well written. Best of luck in your future endeavors. I'm grateful for finding your channel through payday stuff.your builds have helped me branch into mayhem and deathwish a bit, I can't thank you enough for that. Best wishes to you and what you do next 🙂
12:19 It's the original 1911, not the 1911A1, which has a couple of minor differences.
Because of the sheer length of this vid, I’m gonna have to come back later. However, I do love that the chapters about Payday use Roman numerals just like the infamy system. Noice touch.
It was actually parallelism with my 2019 video "Let's Talk About Payday 2" but I'll take it.
I will say that adding the H3VR segments into the video was a pretty good way to trigger my brain to wanna see more of it. That, and your admittedly unique way of talking.
Got a whole playlist of 'em, and the PD2 ones will be out in the coming weeks!
@@E3kHatena I'm well aware, being a long time but kinda inactive sub. But, I'm gonna be checking it out. Fo sho.
I feel like the main issue with Payday 2 is that it's one of those games that became a Frankenstein, and not one where it positively changed in terms of gameplay. Even though I had over 1,000 hours in Payday 2, I decided to go back and play Payday The Heist. After 48 hours, I made it to the max level of 193. It was repetitive playing through the same 9 heists, with not much room in terms of changing up builds as "extra start-out ammo" became king. But despite that, I still had fun because the game felt very different but more focused than Payday 2, needing to really take cover and use your head rather than running around at 45 mph and running up the the nearest bulldozer and killing it in 0.65 seconds. You felt like you had the power of 2 or 3 cops, and not the like 15 to 30 you had in PD2.
So I then looked for overhaul mods for Payday 2 and tried out a mod that pretty much got rid of everything before update 26 except for the new heists. And while I didn't have as much fun as I did, mainly because all I had were bots and old PD2's skill tree system uses money, it still had some fun with similar feelings I had when I played PD:TH, just with less jank.
I guess what I'm saying is that PD:TH and PD2 Pre-Update 27 felt a lot more tactical, while PD2 now feels very arcadey, which doesn't work the best for a game that started out feeling more tactical. And it's because of that where the people behind and developing PD2 are struggling as it really seems like some still think it plays the same or similar to how it was in 2013 while others are more adjusted to how it is now. It feels like there is a clash and we get something good, but then we also get something that's honestly outdated in terms of how the game is played now. And sometimes they clash so hard that we get something that doesn't support either side of the game in the past or present, or are weird compromise that just makes things messier.
TL;DR, Payday: The Heist and Payday 2 Pre-Update 27 feel a lot more focused on what games they want to be, while Modern Payday 2 had changed so much it's honestly confusing what It wants to be and keeps fighting with it's self.
Even then, I feel the more arcadey gameplay can be done well, but just over time a lot of the nuance and value in its gameplay degraded. Update 100 made a bunch of useful skills into core abilities, added a ton of overpowered skills, and then flattened the damage and enemy spawn curves into being flat increases based on playercount and difficulty, and then from there they kept trying to one-up one another, leading to a game that just's ultimately now just a boomer shooter with objectives to complete and timers aplenty, and it's not even a good one at that. It's just really confused as to where it stands in the FPS spotlight, and I'm hoping the third game helps it find its footing.
I love your longer form content (payday, fallout etc) and i know you put a crazy ammount of time into them and theyre what draws me to your channel, i think your writing works especially well with longer stuff since you're incredibly talented at making it about more than "just" the game in so many ways and i think the reason your longform content appeals to me especially as someone with autism is cos seeing someone talk about something they know inside and out and love/loved is so fullfilling.
i enjoy your channel for your thoughts and takes not for whatevers on screen ❣️also sorry for the essay comment lol
(ps. ur h3vr try out vids are so cozy)
Glad to hear it! Both Fallout: an Analysis and this video took about six months to get all squared away, and I'm glad it's gone over well. I have a few other large-ish video projects on the docket for the coming year (pretty much every Halo retrospective from here on out is gonna be in excess of 20 minutes, if I had to wager), and of course more Tryouts, but unless anything changes in the next month or two, this will probably be my only major essay this year. I've been very pleased with the support they've had, but I know there's gotta be a larger audience out there, especially given Quinton Reviews and HBomberguy have done some gargantuan essays to rave review. If you've liked my videos, sharing them with friends or over social media *really* helps, I cannot stress that enough. Word of mouth has helped the channel grow since like June 2019.
Also I don't mind longer comments, I try to take time to read all of 'em!
"Why are there two 1911s?"
Yeah you're right, we need more.
...what? I love the 1911. Anyway ironically the video I watched immediately before this was your old final Payday 2 video so it was neat to see this. Personally I play this super casually with friends and occasionally look at builds. I wish you luck in anything you choose to do, RUclips is a cruel mistress for people trying to diversify or change tack.
It's been rough, the past few years, but if you find something on the channel you like, absolutely share it around with friends or on social media, word of mouth helps the channel grow!
1:40:24
All I’ve heard is that most of the jiu feng 4 guns are amazing.
The wasp is the best smg in it’s damage tier: easily hits 96/96 accuracy and stability, and best in class fire rate. It also has good concealment.
The argos one shots heavy swats on DS with only shotgun impact and overkill if I’m not mistaken, and has good pickup and fast reloads to support it. Also easily concealable.
The gecko is an niche gun sure, but in stealth functions like a judge with better accuracy (less likely to collaterally hit glass). Granted, in loud, it’s just a pistol, but in stealth, it’s a fine alternative to the judge or the locomotive.
I had to rely mostly on Steam reviews and Reddit comments as I hadn't bought the DLC myself, but it seems from those comments that the reload on the Argos was a pretty major drawback for a number of players (especially it loading slower with rounds in the chamber versus from empty), and everything the Gecko could do, a Judge loaded with slugs could do just fine, which in total make the purchase a little tough to justify for a number of players. I will say I did see a handful of FMGs during the few public lobbies I did play, though.
Hey, not sure if you're still reading the comments a year after the video's release, but this really resonated with me. Going through burnout and personal loss at the same time is something that I am unfortunately familiar with, and it's great to see that you're actually making the content you enjoy creating. Good luck with the channel, hopefully, I'll watch it grow.
1:27:35 well that’s just not true, the 5/7 is one of the if not the best pistol/secondary there is
I mean, I didn't see it during my time in public lobbies for this video (even when I'd see folks running secondary pistols), and it wasn't really popular when I was actively playing the game in 2017-2019 due to its sub-standard stats. Whether it's been reworked or outfight buffed in the few years between LTAPD2 and this video, I don't actually know. Regardless, the AP revolver offered in the game is still objectively inferior to the free pistol counterpart.
After all this time, Im still thinking about David Kong
holy shit, I forgot you existed man, good to see you still make videos tho. I still use some of your payday 2 builds even after they got nerfed or buffed as the playstyle is fun. even tho you don't make payday 2 content anymore I don't care, keep grinding youtube and make that bread man.
here's to 20K subs and an awesome year man
It seems a lot of people either forgot to chose to forget, after LTAPD2. I'm still going, doing game reviews and retrospectives plus the kind of signature unscripted nonsense Build Randomizer offered, just in new formats. Honestly, the fact people still run the builds I made when the ones that weren't modest tweaks to Armory Subforum stuff I found or were just me noodling around with the skill system between classes as a commuter student is bewildering; y'all definitely gave it more thought than I ever did.
Here's hoping that this video either brings new people into the channel, or returning users back with a healthy backlog of stuff to watch!
Dam this got me tearing up man you keep doing what makes you happy homie no matter what I joined for payday and now I get to watch you as a person enjoy what you like and see that it's nice
Dam this got me emotional god just keep being you
The response has been great, but I kinda wish that the previous 90-something minute retrospective on this game had the same response so I wouldn't have had to have made this, but I'll just see where this goes.
@@E3kHatena hopefully it goes well homie just keep being you always
As a casual fan thats always been interested in getting into it, i can confirm its almost impenetrably bloated, so i thank you for giving my stubborness some closure with this video.
I'll be honest, I never found your channel because of your Payday 2 build videos. Sure. I might have gotten recommended your original Payday 2 retrospective, mostly because I was watching a ton of other long ass retrospectives (Including a 7 hour "quick" Morrowind analysis). However, I stuck around because I looked into your channel and saw your H3VR "Guns of (Game)" videos. I still watch those videos because my favorite thing to do in H3VR is to recreate guns from other games (Such as using ModulAR to remake the CoD MW2 M4), or recreate my own loadouts in said games and take them for a spin in take and hold. It should be a crime for more people to not have seen your other content, because it's all quality content.
The RUclips algorithm is fickle and rude (as detailed in the Puttin' on the Riffs episodes I filmed with Connor Shaw) so a lot of my stuff just goes entirely unseen. Sharing my videos with folks really does help a ton, so if you've got favorites, definitely post them around.
H3VR Tryouts are in a weird place right now because I work evenings but Dan works afternoons, so we haven't had time to film them since like April. I'd like to make time on like Thursday evenings to record them coming up here, but it also depends on errands either of us have to run; it just can't work otherwise. We're both antsy to record more though, and I've got two lists ready to roll whenever!
THE RETURN OF THE KING
I straight-up told Dan this was gonna be the first comment while making this video, I just at least thought people would wait until the video came out to post it.
@@E3kHatena yeah, you certainly called it.
@@E3kHatena i was the chosen one
i feel bad for commenting this, i'll watch the fallout analysis homie.
1:45:34 what the dog doin?
keep up the good work glad that you're back to payday 2 and maybe some payday 2 builds in the future or updated jacket build in 2022😃
You completely missed the point of a two-hour essay. I literally and specifically call out that I'm not doing any more videos on the game in my closing remarks.
The sarcasm in the original post is hilarious 🤣
We need a mini-sequel Part 2 to this now with Starbreeze-Overkill's goofy ah moment with Update 237 and Epic Games
;) (in true Starbreeze fashion, this smiley actually means nothing; see: Bo dropping clues about The Secret in 2014)
I haven’t been playing much of PD2 but I might dig around in the coming months and see what I can find, though it’ll likely be a Cohost post at worst and a tweet at best, if I even have opinions.
I need to go to bed before i watch this behemoth of a video
It's been so weird seeing what this game has evolved into over the years, from the simple heist sim I used to play back in high school with friends to the odd bloated mess it is now. It was kind of hard to put to words exactly what I liked and hated about it, but this video does such a great job of it. Also coming back to the game has introduced me to channels like yours and Connor Shaw so it's not that bad ❤️
Oh and thank god for the DLCUnlocker mod. I don't care who Overkill sends I am NOT playing for weapon DLC. Technically you already have all the files downloaded, you just have to pay for them not to be wasted space on your PC so that's cool I guess :v
I don't have as many hours in Payday 2 as the next guy, but I do have 4.5k hours in TF2, having played it as a kid. So, I decided to take a break from it... And it was only right.
Aye, any one-game channel faces this sooner or later when the love for the game slowly dissipates. SoundSmith faced it too, and he's a BIG TF2 channel. RTGame faced it, and he's a BIG variety channel, now. Branching out is ultimately good for content and sanity as it is in real life. Just proves that if it feels right to do, it probably is. Best wishes to you and your family.
I guess one of the big things that bothered me enough to make it an entire chapter of the video is that while I totally get many channels flourished becoming a variety channel, it just didn't happen for me in any real capacity from May 2019 to now. A couple videos wound up being runaway successes, but to some respect it's like out of the 19,000 subscribers the channel has, it may as well only have a thousand or two at most given the viewership. I guess it becomes a cautionary tale; the successes of RTGame and SoundSmith are outliers on this platform.
Also kinda ties back to the whole point at the end about treating content creators well. Definitely give a new-found variety channel's work a try! If the fandom that originally supported a channel via one game just trash them for trying something new, at *best* you get a creator who resents an entire fandom and distances themselves from it, and at worst you get a creator who just straight-up leaves RUclips altogether, if not content creation as a whole, and I feel we all agree that every good channel left abandoned is a loss for RUclips as a whole.
Presently, while I do have a plan in the event I feel I have to sunset this channel, I don't feel the need to draw upon it just yet. I want to keep making videos and try finding an audience for at least a little while longer, but it's demoralizing that the communities that surrounded other games tended to lift up its creators when they branched out, whereas the community that surrounded PD2 harassed its creators when they understandably put the game down when the game pretty much looked done. That resentment between content creator and audience feels pretty unique to Payday, and I can't off the top of my head think of any other really notable examples.
That all said, this is coming from the perspective of a channel that had 6,500 subscribers when its final* video on PD2 came out, so there's definitely some bias present.
@@E3kHatena I definitely agree with all that you've said. The last point however *is* kind of a bias, because games with cult-like following aren't exclusive to Payday 2. For example, TF2 is known as a game that's only alive because of its community. In the TF2 fandom, playing a game religiously and suddenly switching is blasphemy. People are obsessed with that game, but content's been run DRY by RUclipsrs and pretty much everyone else, because the game's *old*.
In the Payday 2 sphere, the situation is... Just about the same. b33croft rated from every weapon in the game to every damn contractor in the game. Just like in TF2, informational channels just scrape old moldy paint off the wall behind the closet. And when you feel like you can't do any more content for a game, that showcases loss of interest. Both bring burnout *and* creative block, created merely by inexistence of unexplored things and general roadrolling yourself upon the algorithm against your own will.
My advice? Take what you think people like most about your content, and put it together with things you love.
Trust me, people watch RUclips stuff not as much for the idea of the video, but for the person behind the screen and their way of talking and presenting the content.
In short... Make it more about you. I have RUclipsrs I click to watch no matter what they put out just because of their personality and how fun they make their videos. Find out which *that one thing* you have that'll make you stand out, and your success, I'm pretty sure, is guaranteed. Oh, and if you think you can't, it might just be a matter of time and some self-digging. I used to think I'm extremely boring before, but if people say otherwise, I'm trying to find that niche in me that makes me likeable.
Best of luck, Hatena ^^
I understand most of your points and I agree with some, I've personally never seen toxicity in the payday community but I don't really look for that stuff. I found your critiques of the new missions a bit nitpicky in my opinion, especially when you compared them to older missions, but thats just my take on your opinion.
But hey, on the bright side, you said you wanted a relaunch and were getting payday 3 soon so I'd say that fulfills your wishes.
Not that it's main or even large part of the video but russianbader as presented in his videos is real him as long time fan he isn't over playing his personality he has always been a sh*tp posting edge lord and I feel all sponsorships are to stave of demonization he still edits his videos himself and can go months without uploading, hell he bought 30k motion capture suit just make videos better
Bit of a longer comment incoming but it's mostly because the topic is real nuanced and I want to approach it as fairly as possible:
I get that he owns mocap stuff and also understand why he takes up sponsorships, and commend the one-man band going on of having to render out all of the animation and mocap and then edit that into videos, but to say that he isn't putting on a persona for the camera, even just putting a bit more energy into his delivery is a bit disingenuous. The point I'm making is that most, if not nearly all of the channels actively uploading for a bulk audience, whether that's channels like my own or ones much bigger than mine or what have you, adopt at least a little bit of a persona; it's not unlike how retail employees have a "customer service" voice or people presenting will project a little more to help get the attention of others.
Again, I've only seen one of his videos and the bulk of my comments in that segment are rather jabs at the upper class of RUclips as a whole, but in regards to what I saw, comparing it to other similarly large channels versus my own stuff, I definitely don't add much to my normal tone and diction, I'm very much exhausted by the over-the-top exuberant line reads, and many similar videos are just real draining to me. If I have a hard time watching them, then making them would probably kill me.
I would no doubt have a greater chance of being more popular by putting more energy into my own delivery and editing, and I could very well sponsor products to try making RUclips checks go farther (I've turned down hundreds of dollars to stream both Raid: Shadow Legends and Fortnite this year alone), but I don't feel comfortable doing any of that, because that's nowhere near the person I am. The point is that I could be more like those wackier personalities on RUclips (especially in variety gaming circles) but to do that would be immensely draining, especially if that's how just watching videos like that feel to me. I'm more understated than I probably ought to be to keep up in this arms race, but it's truer to myself and it keeps my relationship to the videos I make healthier.
No doubt Badger and those other channels work hard (and Badger's mocap stuff cost him nearly 5x what my own RUclips channel has made in its lifetime), but it's not to say that I think they're lazy or just jangling keys around in front of their audience's face. If that's how it came across, I do apologize, but rather that the way I've approached RUclips is nothing like how so many of these big channels, especially the ones that have led traffic to my old PD2 garbage, approach video production, and I just think that trying to be more like them would burn me out quicker; I couldn't do it. I'd rather keep working to find an audience that appreciates the videos the way I make 'em.
@@E3kHatena im fine your is fine, i do youtube as hobby and if i felt like people where only coming for the game I was play that would seriously hurt me. In youtube you cant really afford to be a channel that people only come for a game look what happen to pokemon or legend of zelda youtube who at mercy of whenever Nintendo wants to drop a new game or update. I wouldn't want watch a channel if the only reason why they continued to play a game is because it was successful for there channel. Like connor shaw I still pop in there videos every know and then(if youtube bothers to recommend a channel that I'm subcrive to and have motivation turned on to all) If i'm game interest me because I like there stlye and presation. When I started to do youtube videos for fun I made my channel around battlefield but as stand currently series is kinda of dead to be as 2042 is garbage and I hate V and I basically played the other titles to death. Wheneve I try to cover a different game views just don't come so I find very brave of you switch you entire channel off a game you built your audience around. That can be very hard and nigh impossible. You should just to do you,.
Shitposting edgelord? What are you some kind of easily deflatable balloon?
All I can think about after watching this is TFTubers who quit the game and move on to other content. You’re not alone, there are other RUclips content creators out there who basically get whipped and hung by their community because they want to move on. I’m not one of those people sadly, because I can firmly say I don’t know what it’s like.
But I will reiterate, *please* enjoy Payday 2 when *you* want to play it. I play the game because I find its gameplay so satisfying, on par or even more than Team Fortress 2. Even then, I’ve spent most of my time only ever playing Suit+Anarchist, so there’s so much for me to still explore. The game is addictive, satisfying, and has more than a few times been a blast to play, and hope you still have the same amount of fun I do.
Beautiful
What's the final song?
As per the credits, "Define Me" from Red Vox's album Kerosene. Vin and Mike are streamers by trade and have been super supportive of people using their music on streams and in videos and Red Vox is probably my favorite band, so I try to include one of their tracks in each of the major video essays.
@@E3kHatena thank you bro ^^
With all your discussion about the weird difficulty in the game: They seem way too beholden to the weird balance changes made around 2016. The game used to have much better enemy variety, much fewer enemies at once (it didn't linearly scale with playercount like it does now!) and the short assault breaks were only for the highest difficulty really, which was at the time overkill or death wish. You mentioned in your let's talk video about Jules' weird balance and I certainly agree. While I still play the game regularly it's with several mods (incl two I made myself) with many of them just restoring things that overkill changed for no reason, or fixing things that are broken from bad coding.
I honestly still think the payday 2 VR version was pretty impressive for a port of a desktop game, since there's only so much you can do with a game built with the assumptions of a mouse and keyboard or controller.
I totally get why they won't just gut all these systems and rebuild them, but yeah U100's changes to gameplay and enemy variety have really soured a lot of what nuance the game had, and I assume that's why like three of the public lobbies I *did* have to join to finish the video were modded out the ass; most of it was rebalances and things.
Also RE: VR, for the time it was pretty impressive, especially given it ran quite alright and when it came out! I guess it mostly comes down to the VR ports of previously non-VR titles feeling lacking compared to bespoke VR games (which I mean it's obviously gonna be that way) and most of the support for non-Vive locomotion and control coming from the mod scene, not from Overkill. The arm tracking between VR and non-VR, and the fact that it's cross-platform between the VR version and not, are both still quite neat, though. I just wish they'd hire some of those modders to include official control setups for WMR, Oculus, and Index alongside some QoL additions.
@@E3kHatena If you look at the code for the balance changes it genuinely looks like someone with a child's idea of gameplay balance did it. The enemy force multiplier (multiplies max simultaneous enemies based on playercount) was changed from nuanced and reasonable values for each difficulty, to 1, 2, 3, 4 (except for death sentence, which is 1.5, 3, 4.5, 6 because maxing out every value == difficulty apparently). As if each player is just an individual that can handle the exact same amount of enemies, rather than part of a team.
And outside of specials all of the spawngroups for each difficulty are just the same with the changes being the amount of heavy vs light units and the unit faction, no change in tactics based on faction or anything. Not to mention, on death wish and death sentence enemies with damage scaling just get a *7.5x* damage multiplier with no distance scaling whatsoever, because again large numbers = difficulty I guess. It just feels like such an afterthought.
I knew it was bad but I had no idea it was *that* bad, jeez.
@@E3kHatena It is genuinely depressing sometimes looking at the code because there is absolutely a great game with good gameplay underneath it, but at the last minute a huge downgrade was made and since then the game has been stuck for 6 years in a limbo of being too close to or past the end of service to make a brand new overhaul of the mechanics.
It's especially notable when you look at the earlier heists where despite the simplicity there's so much effort put into the scripting and presentation and it's clear that they really wanted the game to feel complex and nuanced. Versus now where the limit is that every heist has two police cars enter the map at the start and it's just the shitty 2016-era assault mechanics for the rest of the time, in which so many enemies spawn that without mods the game cannot actually give them enough updates per second so they just sit around doing nothing.
Weapon try out is unlisted go to the playlist
Oof, that wasn't supposed to happen; they're meant to be Ko-fi exclusive for the time being. Enjoy the videos, though.
1:27:36 is my only problem with the video. Nobody's using the Five-seveN? That is simply not true and very misleading for someone who is relatively new to the game. One of the best shield removals in the game with no skills invested in it. If you invest in gunslinger subtree it becomes a monster. If you need it in stealth (sometimes to kill an alerted guard through a wall/floor) it works wonders due to its high concealment stats when modded. So I really don't know what the fuck that was about lol
Low pickup rate, less-than-ideal stats, and easier ways to dispatch shields mean that, at least when I was actively playing the game 2017-2019, you’d see it maybe one in ten lobbies or less, it just wasn’t very popular.
I don’t think I saw one during my stint playing the few lobbies I needed for this video, and I am unsure if they changed the weapon at all during the intervening three years (there was apparently a rebalance but did not seem aware of any weapons being notably better or worse during my playtime outside of the optimal range stat), but it still seems like the drawbacks are a hinderance, as the other high-damage pistols see plenty of use even without armor piercing rounds.
Regardless, I think we can both agree that a 5/7 with just fifteen rounds and an ammo pickup rate like the RUS’ make it less desirable than the free community alternative.
Apparently, Payday really loves your cpu. Cause I can run the game maxed out at 1440p on a r5 5600x and a oc’ed 970.
I wonder what day it is today
Friday.
@@E3kHatena Thank you flip note man
@@EdibleRockingChair - No problem, any time.
You do your own thing, friend. If you enjoy it, I'll enjoy listening to you talking about it.
If I could say one thing: read Lenin :)
1:55:25 It doesn't help that Halo Infinite, Back 4 Blood and RDR2 are all not fun games.
🤞
I bought Payday 2 on 3 different platforms and reached max infamy with a few thousand hours on each one. Been around since practically the beginning and witnessed with everyone else everything that has happened behind the scenes, I used to love this game. Now I can't stand them and their stupid lies and stupid monetization and their stupid posts in my Steam activity feed just pisses me off. If this is anything what Payday 3 is going to be like, if they ever stop milking this cow then you can count me out.
those h3vr segments really slaughters the pacing of this video i get that you want people to watch your other videos but this isn't the way to do it. like just get on with the video and stop shoving these segments down are throat.
As much as I loved the rest of the video the parts analyzing the gameplay definitely felt unnecessary to general point of the game and just very out of touch with it's fanbase and generally accepted meta.
"less than 6% completed the game final mission"
steam achievements are not a good way to gather statistics. It couts as a player someone who opened the game and then closed it. Look at the amount of people who masked up!
If we're still doing that however, assume the "modded a gun" achievement is the basis for the 100% of the activity user base, and calculate an achievement from that.
Even if we use an achievement slightly further down the list like spending a million dollars, that only barely doubles the numbers, that puts us at 12% have beaten WHH on any difficulty. While yes, Steam achievements have their biases, there are not many games where you can see such a sharp drop-off in achievements. Only 42 achievements are at >20% collection, whereas that's usually numbers for completing entire games. Whether that says something about players dropping off or just the throwaway nature of them giving out the game so often though is beyond my judgement to make.
Heisters, this game is dead
They even sell shirts with "Dead game" written in the UI font!
...Neat???
I really just have one major problem with this video, you keep stating they should revamp the game with new assets. Why? They are actively working on Payday 3. It makes it seem like you don't trust Payday 3 is ever going to come out. I get it the company isn't the most trustworthy but it wouldn't make sense for them to not make Payday 3.
I guess my argument held more water in 2019 versus 2022; yeah it is a bit late to do that (and it does get lightly addressed near the end), but I guess a lot of it just comes down to it feeling weird that just beating these new missions on Hard or Very Hard are some of the rarest achievements in the game. It just seems like it’s such a small audience to bank off of for funding on a 9th Gen co-op FPS, even with the help of Koch Media.
@@E3kHatena I do agree that it is kinda weird that they are relying on funding for payday 3 on payday 2 dlc. I also agree a large amount of payday 2's audience has fissled out however if we are looking at steam achievement stats that takes into account everyone who owns the game regardless of whether they opened it or not. Factoring that in when you see 1% of the playerbase has played the newer heists thats actually still a lot. Also Payday 2 still gets about 30k concurrent players so I'm guessing they are actually getting enough funding for payday 3 from these dlcs