Why Stealth In Payday 2 is Fundamentally Broken
Stealth in Payday 2 comprises exactly 1/2 of the game. In missions, you either do it loud, or you go stealth. So, presumably, stealth should have as much focus as loud. There are some loud-only heists, but there are also stealth-only heists, so it evens out (and I know there are 5 times the loud-only heists, but for the sake of argument, I'll say it balances out). Now, assuming that this is 50% of the game, one would assume that stealth has the same amount of effort and polish as loud, right? Wrong. Loud has several complex levels of play (comparatively). There is room for slight deviation, but the choices are either Body Bags, ECM's, Armor Bag (?) or sensors, with concealed, preferably silenced weapons, as opposed to loud's 4/5 skill trees, 6-7/9 deployables, loads of weapons, and everything else in the game.
The first problem with stealth is the lack of options, like those present in other stealth games, like Hitman or Thief (Thieves steal shit, it shouldn't be hard to make a stealth game based around stealing when Thief exists!). I'm not asking for full disguises and light-based physics problems, but a way to get a guard to walk in a certain direction for a second, like Hitman 47's Coin in Blood Money, would be greatly appreciated. But, alas, it is not so. You have to sit on your ass if you need to wait for a guard to move, which can last between 30 seconds to 4 minutes. This gets worse based on how the guard movement system works. From what I can tell, every guard in every stealth heist has a few predetermined points, which they move around periodically. This leaves much less room for planning, because you can't have an eye on every guard moving God-knows-where at every moment in the mission. And, in some heists (most noticeably on the Shadow Raid Heist), a guard will attempt to path to one of his "guard points," but won't be able to get there for some reason (usually the point is behind a locked door). So, instead of just deciding to go to another point on his roster, the guard completely freezes for the remainder of the mission, incapable of movement until alerted or killed. But, it doesn't really matter, because Papa's got a little trick for you would-be stealther's. Instead of crouching down and slowly slinking away when a guard is approaching, get up, and sprint directly past them! If your detection is low enough, you can consistently get out of binds with this simple trick. Also: your head is what a guard sees. If you just block your head from his sight, even if you stick it behind a lamppost, it'll be like you aren't there. But try to hide behind a wall, and your head is out? "Restart in 5, 4, 3…"
The second main problem with stealth is the lack of reward for accomplishing stealth. Sure, you get the money, big fucking hoopla. For your efforts, you get a ~10% XP bonus for the next mission you do, and you don't have to do an escape day. This is the only difference in rewards between stealth and loud. This would not be so much of a problem, should stealth be as integrated and cared for as Loud. But, it isn't. This leads to the third main problem, in that the skill ceiling and floor for stealth is fucky. Stealth on Normal difficulty is much harder than Loud on Normal. A beginning Stealth player must know that A.) Guards and civilians can see you faster or slower depending on concealment, B.) Guards have pagers that need to be answered on their death or Domination, Ba.) Pagers have to be responded to in order for the alarm to not be raised, Bb.) Only four pagers can be answered before the next one instantly triggers the alarm, Bc.) Aborting the interaction with the pager at any point during the interaction raises the alarm, C.) Civilians and guards, when unprovoked, will eventually raise the alarm, D.) Cameras can spot you and raise the alarm, regardless of if you destroy them afterwards, etc. etc. A beginning loud player must know A.) Cops will shoot you, B.) Shoot cops with your guns, and C.) Cops drop ammo for guns on death. Everything else for loud is dependent on level, which also applies to Stealth. However, with its incredibly high skill floor, it has a incredibly low skill ceiling. Between Overkill and Deathwish, Loud heisters will take more damage, do less damage, and must do more stuff to complete the mission. Between Overkill and Deathwish, a stealth heister will worry about a couple additional guard spawns, a petty mission-specific inconvenience, and Titan Cameras (which don't break, but because broken cameras alert guards, you learn to never break cams, so this is a moot point). Every public game in Deathwish that can be done in stealth, is done in stealth, because if you can stealth Bank Heist on Overkill, you can stealth it on Deathwish, whereas it is by no means a given to say that you can do Bank Heist Loud on Deathwish if you can do it on Overkill.
And that's all I currently have to say about that.
