YMMV / PAYDAY: The Heist

• Abridged Arena Array: First World Bank is the most common level played online due it being the easiest level and having a secret vault that has so much gold inside that players can easily level up several dozen times in one session. Diamond Heist used to be the only level anyone ever plays just to level grind (due to the valuable red diamond on Overkill difficulty) until the First World Bank had the secret vault. You'd be lucky to find game lobbies in First World Bank that aren't for the cache of gold.
• Awesome Music: The soundtrack definitely makes you feel like you're part of an elaborate heist.
  • The (original) party music in Diamond Heist also counts.
  • Gun Metal Grey, for First World Bank.
  • "Payday For You and Me", the song that plays on the radio in Counterfeit. It's practically the series' theme song.
    Millions of people
    Out of work and on the streets
    Taken by the politicians, banks and corporations
    They're the real thieves, yeah
    While we've been working
    They've been raping and robbing us blind
    But today's the end my friend
    We're taking back what's yours and mine
    It's time for anarchy
    Payday for you and me tonight
    We're gonna take it all (it's payday!)
    We're gonna take it all (it's payday!)
    We're gonna take it all (it's payday!)
    We're gonna take it all tonight
• Broken Base: The secret vault in First World Bank. The requirements needed to get to it when it was released shook up the fan base, but after the developers made the vault open to anyone regardless of their rep level or masks, game lobbies that are set for First World Bank skyrocketed and veteran players are angry that they can't play a round of First World Bank that isn't for the secret vault and are also upset that new players are now Level Grinding with so little effort that they reach high rep levels without the skills to back it up, which can be a disaster in games that are on Overkill 145+.
• Breather Level: Panic Room, at least compared to the previous Heat Street. Careful planning, hunkering down, and Sniper awareness helps make this level somewhat easy. Plus, civilians are few in number, but sufficient, are in safe cover and out of harm's way.
  • Diamond Heist and No Mercy can also become this when the stealth portions go off without a hitch.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Most players will use the Bronco .44 (revolver) as their sidearm since it's extremely powerful and gives the player a lot of firepower to use should they go down. The Rienbeck 880 (shotgun) is usually everyone's main gun since it's absurdly powerful and can hit targets from a fair distance away. Another main gun people use is the Brenner 21 (machine gun) since it has good stopping power and a massive ammo size, allowing for More Dakka before reloading. For secondary weapons, nearly everyone uses the Mac-11, a submachine gun, since it has good stopping power and works at nearly any distance, plus it's silenced, making it good for levels requiring stealth. If you take the Wolf Pack DLC into account, then you will see people use the AK (assault rifle) for range and power and the GL40, which is a Grenade Launcher.
  • Both games have elements of stealth and some heists can be done fully in stealth mode without alerting anyone. Expect people who are trying to stealth to say "suicide" when the stealth fails since there's no other way to restart the level.
• Continuity Snarl: The games's sequel doesn't make it clear as to which heists are canonical to the games' storyline, as all the heists in this game have been refitted in the sequel. Things like Undercover, Counterfeit and Panic Room are very ambiguous in their canonicity (while they could reasonably happen twice, it's unlikely the antagonists were stupid enough to have the same scenario play out), while the Heat street canonically happens twice, as the remake has Bain mention that they're chasing after Matt for the second time. Curiously, the inverse is true of No Mercy, which is non-canon in this game, but Payday 2 retcons the Left for Dead allusions in the heist, and makes it canonical there instead.
• Demonic Spiders: All the special SWAT units:
  • Snipers: Tend to stay far away as usual, but can tear through your armor levels in a single shot. On a rooftop surrounded by them, you won't last long.
  • Cloakers: Blends in with the rest of the SWAT team, save for his glowing green optics at a distance. Average firepower, but can run off the walls to reach you and can also instantly knock you down regardless of how much health and armor you have left. A single Cloaker can wipe out an entire team.
  • Tasers: Bulky armored SWAT units with bright yellow stripes on its shoulder pads. Can paralyze you with its taser which also shakes the screen and forces you to fire your weapon, making you waste ammo. The Taser doesn't stop tasing you until you go down or one of your partners kills him (or you get lucky with your uncontrolled fire).
  • Bulldozers: Heavily armored SWAT unit that has a powerful shotgun which can down you in two hits in close range. Only its face is the weak spot and despite its big size, it can run pretty fast when it needs to. They may also appear in pairs, threes, or even fours on higher difficulty levels.
  • Shields: An upper level SWAT unit with a shield that can withstand everything short of an explosion. What's particularly annoying is that if they are fixated on you, they will always point their shield towards you, necessitating another player to flank it. If you're playing with only AI, you're in for a pretty bad situation. It doesn't help that the police can shoot through it while you can't shoot back.
  • The Murkywater Mercenaries, while not working with the police, are absolute nightmares in the Slaughterhouse level. They have the same armor as a Heavy SWAT (minus the head, which is exposed), but unlike the SWAT, Murkywaters have extremely high accuracy and reaction times. It is not unheard of for teams to have their health reduced to the red by the time they even reach the slaughterhouse because of the mercenaries.
• Difficulty Spike:
  • Going from Hard to Overkill was usually a bit jarring for the first timer. This was made easier in a later patch, but then came Overkill 145+ difficulty... and that's another spike entirely, see Harder Than Hard below.
  • If you're playing each level in order, Heat Street is this trope. Many first time players who play Heat Street after First World Bank get to see just how brutal cops can be as they shoot at you from several yards down the street and cover is very poor.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Old/British Hoxton from the original PAYDAY, who had some popularity in his debut.
• Game-Breaker: First World Bank had a desk in the manager's office that players could duck under and camp there because the AI of the cops broke whenever everyone went under there. A similar case happened in Slaughterhouse where people who camped on top of a vending machine broke the enemy AI. Both exploits were later patched.
  • The secret vault introduced a new game breaker with all the gold inside. Even when playing on Easy, players can easily level up by 5 to 20 levels (depending on their level beforehand) and if someone in the crew is using Noob Lube or Mr. Nice Guy, it makes leveling up even easier. Because of this, everyone now plays First World Bank on Easy to level grind effortlessly.
• Good Bad Bugs: The game is riddled with glitches, mostly in the form of the map spazzing out because you got to some place you weren't supposed to be at. Most of the time, the glitches are harmless, but a few others can get you stuck (such as a Shield magically pushing you through a wall) and make the level Unwinnable. One grand example of this trope is at the Green Bridge heist where after you reach the escape zone, you can jump over the barricaded door at the bottom of the stairs and wind up falling off the bridge, something you can't do normally.
  • Another known glitch are dead bodies that rag doll upon death and then certain parts of the body stretches out to such bizarre lengths.
  • One glitch involving reviving downed players lets you pick up a friend through a wall if they are close enough to you.
  • One of most lesser known glitches which was never patched is the one involving a charging Cloaker getting frozen permanently (Unless if shot again) if the player jumps into a tall area where they can't reach you. For example: In Counterfeit, reaching to the top of a table inside the shed will freeze the Cloaker, completely ignoring you. Which it means it can be very handy specially when playing in the higher difficulties.
• Goddamned Bats: The police are absolutely relentless.
  • The Shield is the worst of the group due to being invincible in the front and makes narrow hallways dangerous because of this. If you have the grenade launcher, then you can easily destroy the Shield no matter where the grenade hits.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The No Mercy heist. When it was reintroduced in the sequel as part of Crimefest 2018, a lot of the elements for the heist stayed the same, albeit with a major story difference: Unlike the other Classic heists, which were present-day revisits with the occasional bit of additional story elements here and there, No Mercy is presented as a flashback to when it happened in this game. Instead of a giant payday, Bain took the "shady" job up for the third-party client because he would receive Cagliostro's manuscript (an item that Bain deems to be important for the future) in exchange for the virus they take from the hospital. It's revealed from information from this heist and the heist on Hell's Island that said client eventually wound up selling the virus to Murkywater. The Murkies would then go on to inject a strain of the same virus into Bain when he gets captured late on in Payday 2's storyline, and he winds up dying because of it after the gang's final heist of the game. While it is presented in Payday: The Heist as a fun little non-canon crossover, in Payday 2, not only is the non-canon nature of the heist retconned, but No Mercy turns out to be the heist that would eventually doom Bain.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: One of the Taxman's passwords is "Starbreezer". Starbreeze Studios would later acquire Overkill to fund Payday 2.
• Magnificent Bastard: Bain is the friendly, enigmatic creator of CRIME.NET and the titular gang's main contractor. Genuinely caring about the gang, Bain does the majority of the planning for their first eight heists, which go off without a problem. Two years later Bain helps Dallas out of retirement by sending him on two training missions and then proceeding to organize Hoxton's escape from prison with help of the Dentist. After befriending a Murkywater operative named Locke, Locke seemingly betrays the crew, however Bain is able to escort them out before finding out that Locke is trustworthy and advising the gang to trust Locke at all costs before being captured. Bain kills several Murkywater guards in his injured state before being escorted off of Hell's Island and finding out he has a deadly virus. Planning one final heist on the White House, Bain successfully gets the gang to steal twenty four presidential pardons before either gracefully succumbing to the virus or being reincarnated as the 46th President of the United States if the Ark of the Watcher is activated. Against killing civilians and capable of kindness, Bain proves to be an effective yet noble mastermind.
• Memetic Mutation: Melee Only Man.
  • It's a motherfucking Bulldozer!
  • "Have you tried answering the phone?" A common response to everyone during the ARG event.
    • Which has now reached Ascended Meme status.
  • STAY THE FUCK DOWN
• Just Here for Godzilla: A lot of players from Payday 2 have bought or returned to Payday The Heist for one specific reason: No Mercy.
• Most Wonderful Sound: A successfully validated blood sample sound in No Mercy. This means you're one step closer to getting the hell out of dodge.
  • "Guys, guys! I got the codes from the CFO!", which translates to "One less step in getting into the vault."
  • The sound when you reach the next reputation level.
  • Hearing the Taxman give up the codes, especially if he cracks quickly, meaning less time being spent in the level and getting the hell out.
• Narm: Wolf. HANZ UP MUH-FUGGAS!
• Scrappy Mechanic: There's always a chance that a special unit will spawn right before the exit just to screw you over if your health is already low, especially on higher difficulty levels. Diamond Heist is a special case since it doesn't have a defined escape route, but should the vault codes work during the stealth portion, you may have SWAT and special units spawn in the balconies above you the moment you start stealing the diamonds. Players who know of this ambush may purposely be spotted by the guards after disabling the security system during stealth so that the cops spawn in elsewhere instead of the diamonds room.
• Spiritual Adaptation: Overkill doesn't try hard to hide that Payday and its sequel are basically Heat: The Video Game, and have given the film many, many references in both games.
• That One Achievement:
  • Noob Herder requires you to have three teammates with Noob Lube active and clear any heist on Overkill. While perks don't change ingame on levelups, you lose Noob Lube at level 5, pretty much requiring you to get it in one shot or else have everyone else drop out, reset their stats, and try again.
  • Don't Lose Face requires you to have beaten every heist on Overkill with no hostage trading. See that block of text immediately below this? That is what has gotten in the way of 99% of the people gunning for this achievement.
  • On a lesser level, I Pushed The Button And Lived can be irritatingly hard to get, due to the amount of sheer luck involved. The mission? Diamond Heist. The requirement? Enter the vault with the Overkill-only secret door still accessible, get the diamond from inside it, and escape with nobody in custody. Some people have gotten the Don't Lose Face challenge for this mission before this achievement.
  • Overdrill (formerly known as Tester) is the most enduring and painful achievement to obtain that requires players to meet several requirements first. The team must play the First World Bank on Overkill 145+ difficulty and each player must stand on specific spots in a room to trigger the secret. Once the secret door is revealed, the team then has to use the drill on the door and wait for 2 hours until the drill finishes. After the door opens, the team then has to enter and press specific tiles on the floors to open the secret vault. Pressing the wrong tiles releases gas that instantly incapacitates everyone. Get the vault open and you will have access to tons and tons of gold bars (if your rep level is maxed out, then the money is worthless).
    • The secret vault was a part of Overkill's Alternate Reality Game that took months to crack. People who gotten inside the vault, recorded it, and sent the video to Overkill Software for verification would get access to the Secret masks. Despite the fact that information on the steps to do the secret are openly available, only 800+ people have actually gotten the secret masks. Previously, players needed to have the gold masks in order to trigger the hidden door and wait 2 hours for the drill to finish. Since the ARG event is over, the drill was changed where it only takes 30 minutes to finish and players can trigger the secret without needing the gold masks or having to play on Overkill 145+.
• That One Level: Several of them:
  • Green Bridge
    • You have to use saws on four prison transports in an open environment with cars as your only source of cover, meaning you can easily get flanked, and you will. Repeatedly.
    • You have to locate and escort ONE specific prisoner to a tower and he will refuse to move if there are cops nearby.
    • You have to release one or two balloons so that a plane can pick up the prisoner. It is here that most people get fucked over on normal, the easiest difficulty allowed for the mission. Since you rarely can prepare for the plane picking up your target on the first attempt, you have little time to react and move as the escape countdown begins. Basically, once the target is picked up, the finale of the mission starts and the assault waves are programmed to be endless. Because of this, it's much easier to prepare when the plane comes by the second time instead of the first.
    • Snipers will spawn in once you reach the tower. Unlike other levels, the snipers are very damn far away from you, making it almost impossible to hit them if you don't have a weapon that has enhanced ADS.
    • You then have to move to the boat on the bridge and then further down to the extraction point, IN THAT ORDER, after the prisoner is picked up, on a timer with an endless assault. If you stop for any considerable amount of time, you will not survive.
  • Heat Street
    • Instead of defending an objective like other levels, much of this heist involves advancing through endless police forces with inadequate cover, wasting most of your health and ammo in the process.
    • The relatively minor problems of Matt (the guy you have to bring to a certain location) not wanting to go in the right direction half the time (though this has become mildly better through updates) and the shootout of endless police at the very end.
    • Trying to get to Matt is extremely difficult compared to other levels even on the same difficulty. Early on there is a street you need to get through which is swarming with police. Being a chokepoint, there is no other way through and must be pushed through while being shot losing valuable health in the process. By the time you get to Matt much of your health and ammo will be gone.
    • Once you get to Matt you have to burn him out of his hiding place, a lengthy process which may take multiple gas canisters depending on how generous the game is. There is little cover to hide behind and enemies come from every direction, making it very hard to survive against. When the fire runs out and someone needs to relight it, if an assault is in process one can very easily be downed in the process. Once Matt gets out the level can continue, but at this point you probably have used up all of your ammo and medical bags, yet you still have 35-40% of the heist to go.
    • The civilians in this level are basically suicidal lemmings who don't care if you shoot them. Because Heat Street is so wide open, civilians will be running all over the place and will gladly get in your line of fire during the shootouts. Naturally, the cops will exploit civilians by shooting through them to hit you. It's possible to lose several hundred thousand dollars in penalties (or even several million dollars if playing on Overkill 145+ difficulty) if you clear the mission because of all the innocents you shot.
  • No Mercy:
    • At the start of the heist, you have to destroy all the cameras and unlike cameras in other levels, the cameras here are randomized so you will never find them in the same spot twice in a row. While this is manageable in Single Player due to the reduced amount of Civilians and only having to deal with 3 Cameras, online play increases the amount of Civilians and the Camera count to 6. Playing with friends? The game will further increase the camera count to 9.
    • After the cameras are destroyed, you have to keep all the hostages down and make sure they don't run off to hit the panic button. Once again, this is mitigated in Single Player with the reduced amount of Civilians (but only on Normal difficulty) as well as the Civilians only being present in the lobby and a few around the elevator, but becomes really unfair in Online play, where the Civilians are everywhere. Not to mention the hassles caused by the phone (which may summon a Guard, or worse, a Repairman who counts as a Civilian), and the correct patient file being spread around the lobby (there's around thirty total files!).
    • If the alarm IS triggered at this point, access to the ICU is closed and you have to waste 3 minutes cutting through with a saw, and then spend even more time using the saw on all 3 shutters (one at a time to boot) trying to find the right patient to draw blood from. This can be negated if the alarm hasn't been triggered, and Dr. Erikson will describe the three ICU patients in advance (keep an ear out for any descriptions among the line of "We're slowly losing him").
    • Once you do get some blood samples, you have to validate them in devices spread out in the area. Because this portion is luck based, you can wind up wasting time because the game decides not to let you have any valid blood samples, forcing you to get more to validate and try again. If you get knocked down while holding a validated blood sample, there's a high chance that your sample will break, forcing you to go get another one!
  • Undercover:
    • The majority of the playing field are in narrow hallways, which makes trying to get around Shield SWAT units a pain in the ass and the cops can easily flank you from both sides.
    • The rooftops are basically hell due to the absurd amount of snipers that are on the opposite buildings across the street and you're forced to run the rooftop when it's time to escape. If the power goes out and the circuit breaker to use is on the roof, you will probably spend more time trying to shoot the distant snipers than getting to the circuit breaker.
    • The payout for finishing the level is very low. It's below $1 million even on Normal. This is due to "something the players are missing" in the level, according to the developers. Since no one knows what the secret is yet, most people avoid playing Undercover since the payout is not worth the frustrations.
  • Panic Room:
    • Panic Room is pretty manageable until Alex has to come in to lower the winch from his helicopter. Alex won't lower the winch until the entire roof area is cleared of cops (not including snipers). What many people don't know is you have to kill a set number of cops that keep spawning on the adjacent roofs as they take their positions, but this goes out the window during assaults since cops can keep spawning on the roof unless you have your team go to the first floor and force the assault wave to follow you down there. If the cops start spawning on the roof during assault waves, then don't expect the roof to get cleared out until the assault is over. Until then, expect to hear "You guys need to clear the roof!" over and over again. For added fun, you have to defend the helicopter again in the same circumstances once the magnet is attached to the panic room.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Certain music tracks were replaced with different tracks and people naturally complained about it. The music composer stated that some of the songs they used they didn't have full rights to and they had to change the music because of it.
  • There were also complaints made when the game had its overall difficulty dropped (including making Diamond Heist and Slaughterhouse playable on Normal as the minimum instead of Hard), which is probably why Overkill 145+ was added shortly after.
• The Scrappy: Matt due to how he screwed the crew over, forcing them to wade through a near endless assault waves of cops and SWAT units in the streets, refusing to leave the wrecked van, and when he finally leaves the van, the crew discovers he handcuffed the suitcase of money to his arm. The crew's first idea is to chop Matt's arm off, but due to the circumstances, they are forced to drag Matt all the way to the overpass and wait for their escape chopper to arrive so everyone and the money can escape. With Heat Street being That One Level, Matt is obviously well hated. No wonder Hoxton beats the everloving crap out of him in prison.
  • The Taxman in Undercover also counts due to how you are forced to yell at him several times before he gives up the passwords to the server and you have to do it 3 times since there are 3 passwords to use. Smacking him around with your gun may speed up the process, but you also run the risk of knocking Taxman out cold for a few minutes, delaying your progress.
  • Ralph and Giant are also heavily disliked due to them refusing to move along if there's cops around and sometimes they will refuse to move at all until the assault wave ends, which can last for several minutes. They'll also stop moving if a cop is approaching from off screen!
  • Alex, the helicopter pilot in Panic Room, Undercover, and Heat Street, due to his stubborn refusal to do anything if police are around, which means progress during an assault wave is nearly impossible, and his tendency to drop mission-critical items in the wrong place. Lampshaded repeatedly by Bain in the sequel.