Payday 3 Infamy Points and Balance Changes in Update 1.0.2

There is a lot to unpack in Update 1.0.2 in terms of content, changes, and updates to Payday 3. We have already discussed all of the bug fixes and quality-of-life changes in this article so go ahead and check it out.

With that being said, in this article, we will be taking a look at all of the changes to Infamy Points (IP) and Balance updates to make the game more rewarding for completing heists and nerf any potentially overpowered builds that are making the game too easy. Let's get started!

Payday 3 Update 1.0.2 IP Changes

The developers finally listened to the community as completing heists without getting any Infamy Points just because no challenges were completed agitated all of the player base, so we will also be receiving IP after successfully finishing a heist.

With this update, we are adding Infamy Points to heist payouts. Points are awarded for three accomplishments:

• Completing the heist successfully
• Completing the heist entirely without raising the alarm (aka “in Stealth”)
• Completing the heist by securing all bags

These payouts are added up together and aren’t mutually exclusive, which means that if you complete a heist without raising the alarm, you’ll get points for completion and for finishing it in stealth.

The dev further explained the reasoning behind these decisions below: 

The amount of Infamy Points you get for each of these three factors depends on which heist you are playing and on which difficulty. Heists that are generally harder to stealth will have the majority of their points in the stealth payout. Heists that have low minimal loot (like Dirty Ice), will have a low completion payout, but a high “all bags” payout.

And so on… To clear up any confusion, the “all bags” payout only cares about you extracting all the baggable loot, it doesn’t care about loose cash or the quality of the loot (for example, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a cleaned jewelry bag or not in Dirty Ice).

It is a good thing that they have added different criteria to the heist you are playing on and the difficulty as well. 

With this change, we’ve introduced an infinite source of Infamy Points to the game, so that required that we make some other changes. Once you reach the level cap (Infamy Level 150), instead of earning additional levels, all your Infamy Points will go towards a new system called “Renown.” Every time you earn 2000 Infamy Points, regardless of whether it’s from challenges or heist payouts, you will get a level of Renown and a random reward. 

The rewards can be a stack of C-Stacks, consumable weapon stickers and consumable mask patterns. We also plan to expand this system with more consumable cosmetics in future updates. Any cosmetics earned through Renown are exclusive to Renown and won’t be earnable through other methods. Please keep in mind that these rewards are consumable, so use them wisely, otherwise you’ll have to wait until they drop again for you to use them.

Also, players will be getting a way to go over the level 150 cap as Renown levels are being added to all of the completionists out there. 

For this update, we have 1188 Renown levels, which will be visible to you in the main menu through a combination of icon and number next to your name. Once you reach the Renown cap, you will still be able to earn Renown rewards, but the number counter will no longer go up until we raise the Renown cap.

How does this affect any future Infamy Level cap increases? While we can’t say when we plan to raise the Infamy Level cap, once we do, all your Infamy Points will go towards your level instead of towards Renown.

Once you reach the new Infamy Level cap, you’ll start earning Renown again instead, back from where you left off. And no need to worry about “wasting” challenges on Renown in the meantime; any Infamy Level cap increase will come with a set of new challenges worth as much as the new infamy levels require.

We plan to monitor this system and we’ll further tune it and update it based on stats and player feedback.

– Mio

Overall, the changes seem promising as the players are yet to find out the exact amount of IP they will be getting for completing heists, but it is encouraging to see that the devs are looking into feedback so hopefully the game will become playable and more enjoyable in the long run.

Payday 3 Update 1.0.2 Balance Changes

The developers have also looked into the power certain skills have in the game, so we will also examine if certain builds will no longer be viable on higher difficulties.

While we are happy with how armor works as a mechanic right now, we wanted to address some armor-related skills that were overperforming. We also understand that players want more ways to restore armor without relying on the Armor Bag deployable.

To help with this, a future update will introduce Armor Repair Kits that players will be able to get from hostage trading to repair damaged armor chunks (but not restore lost ones). We don’t have an estimated time for the Armor Repair Kit, but we’ll try to get it in as soon as we can.

– Mio

Payday 3 Update 1.0.2 Skill Changes

A lot of nerfs to the stronger skills in the game, while other skills have gotten some significant buffs to make them viable in builds.

• Armor Up (Tank): Interacting with any armor bag will also repair your current armor chunk. 

With this change, Armor Up should still be able to get you “two chunks” of armor, but you need to use it at the correct time, before the chunk you want to repair breaks. We’re hoping that this timing requirement makes it less of a mandatory pick for all players and rewards more careful play.

• Last Man Standing (Tank): The base duration has been decreased from 10 to 4 seconds, but the duration increases by 2 seconds for each player who is downed, or in custody when the skill activates. 

This change will make stacking Last Man Standing in the entire crew less powerful, but it will still be as effective in those dire situations when you are, in fact, the last man standing.

• Blade Bouncer (Infiltrator): Increased the damage from the Blade Bouncer skill to 200% (from 100%) per bounce. 

Blade Bouncer was already difficult to use, so we made sure that one bounce was enough to kill a Shield. We recommend going for two bounces if you want to make the Dozer a pin-cushion.

• Cooker (Demolitionist): Lowered the cooking requirement for Cooker from 1.5 to 1.0 seconds.
• Coup De Grace (Tactician): Increased Coup De Grace bonus damage from 5% to 10%. 

The ease of activating Coup De Grace with certain automatic weapons made us more conservative with the initial balance. We are hoping the new 10% damage bonus makes it more appealing.

• Master Trader (Manipulator): Lowered the time reduction from Master Trader from 20 to 10 seconds per hostage. 

We feel that even with this nerf, Master Trader is a very desirable skill to have, and players who specialize in trading will get the most benefit out of it.

• Combat Marking (Strategist): Increased the damage bonus from Combat Marking from 10% to 20%
• Detonation (Engineer): Increased the damage of the Sentry turret with the Detonate skill to 300/200/100 across 2.5/4/8 meters. 

The damage turrets did when detonating didn’t seem worth the skill point investment. This way there’s a much higher chance that the enemies nearest to it will die.

• The skills “Steady Hands” and “Field Surgery” no longer work with first aid kits 

This was an unintended bug with first aid kit interactions.

• Fixed the skill Cover-Up in the CQC Specialist tree preventing the Lead Guard radio’s functioning as intended. They should now repeatedly check in as intended. 

This was an unintended bug. We hope this fix makes the Lead Guard appropriately challenging (and annoying) to play around again.

• Fixed an issue where the skill, Plate Up, wouldn’t trigger reliably
• Fixed an issue where the Cover-Up skill would stop the lead guard's radio from calling more than once.
• Fixed so that the skill ‘Routed Ping’ no longer marks enemies through cameras permanently
• Changed the immunity duration of the skill “Last Man Standing” from the Tank skill line to a base of 4 seconds, adding 2 seconds for each player or AI downed or in custody
• Armor Up no longer restores two plates flat, interacting with an armor bag will now instead also repair your damaged armor chunk and add one full plate

Payday 3 Update 1.0.2 Weapon Changes

• Recoil updated for Mosconi12 FP to prevent clipping with the camera
• Updated hand position when using the Signature 40 pistol (Steam)
• Reduced self-damage from the Mamba OVERKILL weapon by 80%

The self damage of the OVK Mamba was working against the usage of the weapon, this is now greatly reduced to increase the viability of the weapon in tighter spaces.

– Weapons Designer Jimmy

• Increased ammo pickup for all SMGs by roughly 20% 

The SMG weapons were generally underperforming with their ammo usage in the game, therefore we increased the pickup ratio given from ammo resources 

 – Weapons Designer Jimmy

• Fixed an issue causing reload animations to play when leaving ADS if using Ammo Funnel and Replenish skills
• Fixed an issue with Northwest B-9 preventing it from passing level 26

Final Thoughts

Reasonable changes given the game state and the multiple ways of abusing the in-game bugs and glitches so hopefully these updates will result in a more consistent experience for every heister.

Update 1.0.2 offers a lot of content as well, with Payday 3 launching as a somewhat incomplete game, it is encouraging to see more polish being added to the game, as Payday 3 is slowly becoming a successor of Payday 2, and hopefully a good one as well.