Payday went Completely Overkill: Payday 2 Blues pt. 2

A while ago, I talked about how Overkill had somewhat left the community(and myself) in a bit of an uproar, as the newly-installed microtransactions had went against Overkill's previous promises, upset in-game weapon balances, and added a new economy to the game, much like other Valve titles.

However, they've gone and done it again, as they released, with Update 90, the Completely Overkill safe, modeled after the Completely Overkill DLC pack, which with Update 90, adds a safe and drill, plus 7 DLC packs for free. The safe is not tradable or sellable, however the contents are.

The update also adds Team Boost, which boosts reward drops at the end of missions. Team Boost is available from special weapon skins. Each safe has a chance to drop a skin with Team Boost. The reward boost is better if more people in the team have a Team Boost skin.

The Crimefest 2 safe is now gone, however is still tradable and sellable. In it's place are two more safes, the already mentioned COP safe and the Dallas safe, with added chance for Team Boost.

Now that most of the recent changes are out of the way, here's the big problem. They continue to piss people off.

The community still isn't happy because they thought they were going to fix this problem. Overkill has already tried to fix it by adding the drills to the random reward drop at the end of missions, and have delivered on removing a safe. But with two more, and one of which is only for those who bought the COP DLC, and with no word on the game being released as F2P.

Not only that, but the weapon skin fiasco has had more fuel thrown in the fire, as Team Boost will now be the most sought-out item in the community market. It upsets the game balance further, and infuriates people longer.

I get what Overkill is trying to do in the Team Boost aspect. They want to stress the fact that this is actually supposed to make the game more co-operative, where people want other people to have Team Boost so that they get better rewards. But this isn't the way we want it.

We still have to get Team Boost from microtransactions, which siphon away the money that the numerous DLC packs didn't already. We don't want the skins to affect our gameplay other than cosmetic purposes. In fact, we never needed cowboy weapons, flamethrowers, or things like that. It makes the game look too unrealistic, where bank robbery is supposed to be a very serious thing, from both sides of the law.

The uproar among Payday players has grown worse enough that forum moderators are going on strike. Three mods are now unwilling to moderate the Payday 2 forum until a public interview is held.  

I like to believe that i am not unreasonable but unfortunately the situation constantly degraded. We will no longer refuse to work if we are given a public interview with a member of Overkill. We want to be heard and see what Overkill are willing to do to fix the situation.-♥Ashley♥

It's a shame that moderators have to deal with the people who are making threats and making constant distress for other people, but Overkill was definitely to blame for the added hate, and I completely agree with the opinions of these mods. They don't have to deal with this if Overkill isn't going to make it easier for them.

From this point, it doesn't look like it's going to be any better from here on out. Maybe Overkill can dig themselves out of this hole before they go too deep, or maybe the game will die out long before that happens. They already agree that this has been somewhat unorganized and messy, but it doesn't look like they are making it any better for themselves, or anyone else.

--GameKiller

Payday went Overkill - A Note on Payday 2's 'Crimefest' Microtransactions

So Payday has microtransactions now. And people are pissed the f*** off.

I have to be honest here, Payday 2 is an amazing game that was all about breaking the bank. In-game and in real life.

On the PC version of Payday, there were more than just a few DLC to choose from, there were a LOT. And this became a problem for me, as this very easily translated to a few updates per week, which took somewhere around 30 mins to an hour depending on the update. Apparently this is because it downloads the files to a containing folder, then copies the files afterward.

I could very easily stop the downloads to get more FPS in another game, but the process is a very buggy one, especially on my 8-year old laptop, where sometimes the installation of updates fail several times if I don't baby it through.

If that was the only thing I had a problem with, I would have been fine with the game overall. But the constant flow of DLC that Overkill pushes out every one or two weeks just irks me. Not just because they were coming out every week, but because they often had lots of gimmicks that basically had no use, and one item that was often the reason I wanted to spend five bucks. It was not the cool gimmicks, it was the pay-to-win items, that could have been just a few bucks cheaper in my opinion(At the time I'm writing this, during the Crimefest sale, all DLC got slashed down 75%, so I'm a little pissed).

But now, I just feel utterly betrayed. None of the DLC could even amount to how much Overkill has stabbed me in the back with this Blackmarket Update. As I'm told, you can now be dropped safes that contain various weapon skins. Counter-Strike players know what this is about. But this isn't just skins like Counter-Strike, it combines player buffs and status effects like in Team Fortress. AND IT NEEDS TO BE LIKE NONE OF THESE GAMES.

Overkill has said time and time again that these microtransactions would never be a reality, and they have said it over and over again, now they give out one of the most pay-to-win features disregarding any DLC. I would have never thought that weapon skins would be implemented into this game, it would just go against everything I thought about while playing Payday: professional, simple, deadly robbery. Now all the focus is going to the community market, where selling and buying useful and often goofy-looking skins is the real game. Hat Simulator 2.

--GameKiller

A Look Back at Uberstrike

So this post's going to be a bit different, as it's going to be about a game I played a long time ago. That game is called Uberstrike. It was released in Steam sometime in June via Steam Greenlight, and it's now one of the worst games in Steam today.

But I wanted to talk about it, it's condition and what it used to be, since it was a pretty big chunk of my childhood.

To sum it up, Uberstrike is a futuristic PC FPS that was released in November 2008 under a different name, called Paradise Paintball for the Mac app store.

Back when I was around 8-9 years old, when I was gaming with a 2007 Macbook(u wot m8), I had found this game in the widget store, and it quickly became my obsession for the next three years.

The gameplay at that time was pretty simple. You had a machinegun and a rocket launcher, and those were your weapons in an 8-player deathmatch(I think). Eventually it got updated with new maps, weapons, gamemodes, and other goodies. I actually got really good at the game, despite playing with a trackpad for most of my time playing it.(Yeah, I was good at an FPS game using the trackpad on a 2007 Macbook)

Some time later, a few updates changed the Avatar models, weapons, added maps, removed paintballs entirely, changed the name to Uberstrike and added a store to buy better weapons with more damage, range, etc. This however, quickly made the game extremely Pay-to-Win, as you can only rent most weapons for a limited time, mostly only one day, for a hefty price. Buying weapons permanently is extremely expensive, as it probably took around a month's worth of outstanding performance to be able to afford a permanent weapon.

The community didn't seem to be able to notice this absurd amount of P2W in this game as much as I did, when I tried to assess this in a forum post I made a long time ago. Only two or three people who replied seem to be in the same boat as I was, and one not too bright person seemed to try and defend the game by saying I just needed to save up.

I have tried Cmune's form of earning credits(pay-to-win points) to try saving up enough to buy something useful. These were doing tasks like watching ads or playing sponsored games, taking surveys and such. Unfortunately, most of these methods were extremely shady and unreliable, and the only safe ones don't even earn you enough credits to rent a weapon for one day.

Admittedly, I also have resorted to cheating credits, right before I quit entirely. Now that I look back on it, it was a good idea considering the stories in the Steam reviews where their account was worth over $5000. This is also mostly because Cmune also wanted in on the Pay-to-Look-Good bandwagon.

The game slowly diminished from my life, to the point I quit entirely. I've heard that it was going to be on Steam Greenlight, and I checked it out a bit to see that it was in the exact same condition that it was in since I left, just with two new maps. Okay, maybe worse given the amount of hackers that have been in the game since it was released on Steam in June.

The hacker issue has been a big one since the release, and only one "major" update has been released since.

It's current state is terrible, and one that may force Uberstrike out of Steam. Sad to think that one of my favorite games in the past has now become such a travesty of a game. It is insulting, to players and people who actually spent money on this game. Quitting was ultimately the best decision I ever made.

So that's my story on this whole Uberstrike thing. So whoever knows someone who comes across this game, tell them it's not worth it. At all. Crap servers, hackers and such will make this game well worth the uninstall.

--GameKiller