When going into combat, one of the main changes that players will notice in Payday 3 is in the armor system, which affects the total base weight of the character. This will allow you to be faster or slower depending on what you have equipped.
“The biggest changes are to the player’s armor system,” says Martin Waern, Lead Gameplay Programmer. “Armor is made of fragments, so let’s say…you have specific components that can break when you get shot at.” Shards can be regenerated and lost, in which case you’ll have to get another one from an armor bag. It is a mechanic similar to the doctor’s bag or first aid kit in terms of health. When they shoot, the standard enemies will reduce the armor first, but there are special ones that can bypass it, so you have to take care of this aspect as well.
Continuing with the enemies, internally they are classified into three categories: the common ones (SWAT and heavy SWAT), the unusual ones that are the shield and the sniper, and the specials, which like the bulldozer “are there to break the rhythm”. One of the new rivals is the Nader, which is equipped with gas grenades and flashbangs. In order to effectively deal with the different types of enemies, Starbreeze Studios recommends that players work as a team and set up a good group of specialists.
The behavior of the enemies will change depending on the difficulty (Normal, Hard, Very Hard and Overkill). The study adds that Payday 3 will not segregate enemies based on difficulty, but rather will play with quantity, accuracy, and damage. Health values do not change from one difficulty to another.
Regarding the weapons, the modification system of Payday 3 is very similar to that of Payday 2, so you can choose scopes, magazines, stocks and so on. What changes is the way to get them. “Each weapon has its own progression and its own progression path that depends on how you play the game,” says Jimmy Karlstöm, Senior Designer. “As you gain experience with a weapon, and as you use it across multiple jobs, you’ll unlock more options and find new ways to play with it.” In Payday 3 there are preset weapons with which you do not lose progression.
Karlstöm also comments that Payday 3 features a recoil system that is a spread pattern and a recoil-based system “that essentially allows you to control recoil in certain aspects.” “It’s not about finding a breaking point. game, where you want to hit a specific number of stats like you necessarily did in Payday 2,” adds the developer. “Instead, it’s about what you enjoy most in your combat situations and how you want to engage in them.”
