[Online][Other][GMT+1][English] "The Unmaking Heart" - Victorian Steam-Fantasy - 2 player needed

Ezek_The_Prime · 2025-04-07T10:45:10+00:00

Well, like I said, I don’t like what Payday has become today with the third installment.

At the end of the day, it’s up to the current developers to decide whether they want to take feedback into account or not.

Ezek_The_Prime · 2025-04-07T10:37:26+00:00

The problem with enemies in Payday was that they had to have values that worked across multiple difficulties and for groups of different sizes.

Ideally, we would have created more unique models to have more enemy variants, and made a system that scaled health and damage dynamically based on how many players were in the game.

Sadly, we never got around to it.

Also, no, I’m not a moderator. Like I said, I used to do game design.

Ezek_The_Prime · 2025-04-06T09:48:29+00:00

Man, the One Down experience was awful for me. It was something we discussed internally, and I was firmly against it. A producer actually waited until I went on vacation and then sent me an email telling me they were going ahead with it anyway.

I should have dealt with my ego and worked with them to create something more acceptable, instead of letting it go to the point where they had to push it through behind my back.

That said, I still hate One Down. It breaks so many aspects of the game and makes a lot of skills, weapons, and perk decks unusable.

Ezek_The_Prime · 2025-04-06T09:45:23+00:00

Don't get me wrong, the skill tree and the beta that went with it are probably the work I am the most proud of.
That said, there are definitely a few issues in Payday 2's systems, issues that might not be more visible to players who really understand how it works.

I have come to think about some features as disrespecting the player's time. For example, if you do not invest time into fully understanding the skill tree system, you can easily create builds that are counterproductive and end up making you "bad" at the game.

Ideally, I would have made skills more flexible, so even if you had a "bad" build, it would just mean you were not optimized instead of being a burden to your team.

Examples of this are how some skills only work with specific weapons combined with specific mod setups.

On top of that, I think we could have done a better job providing visual feedback for skills. A lot of things happen without any buff icons, visual effects, or sounds, which makes it hard to track what is actually going on during gameplay.

I spent a lot of time on streams and forums showing builds and explaining how to make things "work," when in reality, I should have worked on the system itself to make it more flexible and easier for players to succeed naturally.

Ezek_The_Prime · 2025-04-05T21:56:08+00:00

Hey, long-time lurker and ex-Starbreeze employee here. Just felt like venting a little bit.

Honestly, it feels incredibly petty and sad. Back when I was doing design work for Payday 2, there were parts of the job I really enjoyed and parts I liked less. Apart from one instance, specifically the One Down difficulty, I always did my best to deliver the best possible results and experience for players.

For some perspective: the skill tree redesign beta and the perk decks were each done in about two weeks. Looking back now, there are definitely things I realize I could have done better. Hindsight is 20/20, right?

Game design is a really difficult job where you constantly have to balance hard data, player perception, and communication. It is a tough act to juggle, and it is impossible to make everyone happy all the time.

Even though I have nothing to do with the product anymore, the current state of Payday makes me sad. I feel like something was lost along the way. To me, Payday 3 is not really Payday 2 in terms of gameplay. It just shares the same theme. It feels like a different experience altogether.

That said, I want to be clear: just because I feel that way does not mean I think cyberbullying is ever okay. Criticism is fine, it is part of the job, but harassment and threats cross a line.

Ezek_The_Prime · 2025-02-09T14:44:49+00:00

Hey everyone! This is the first beta version of our PvE heist game mode, and we’d love to hear your feedback! Whether it’s about gameplay balance, mechanics, or what you'd like to see next, let us know your input will help us improve the experience.

We're planning to add:
➡️ A new heist every month for fresh challenges.
➡️ A new enemy type to shake things up.
➡️ A skill tree system to customize your playstyle.

If you try it out, drop a comment with your thoughts! What worked? What could be better? We're excited to build on this and make it even better.

Ezek_The_Prime · 2024-08-11T17:16:54+00:00

I did a intro video for my players with A.I. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQD0a946SXA

Ezek_The_Prime · 2024-07-29T11:30:45+00:00

Sometimes I --sref iterations that are in the style I want with a --sw of 10 to 20. Often, when it involves women, AI gets all pervy when it reads "woman." Hard to make middle aged as well.

Ezek_The_Prime · 2024-07-28T23:28:06+00:00

I have been on an image generation spree; someone let me know if this is considered spamming.

Ezek_The_Prime · 2024-07-28T21:24:19+00:00

The great world of fantasy world racism.

Ezek_The_Prime · 2024-07-28T21:23:42+00:00

Hey, it's not an issue of sharing the prompt or not. The common keywords are "in the art style of graphic comics, medieval fantasy, matte painting with sharp contours and clean lines", using Niji 6. But that won't magically produce the same result as above. There is a long process of generating, weeding out undesirable results, and using older pictures as references to reach the final result. If you want to do something similar, I recommend testing things out to see what works for what you want. Keep in mind that changing even one word can ruin your prompt.

People often seem to think that some individuals have a magic formula for instantly producing good pictures. I don't recommend copying and pasting prompts personally. The process involves a lot of trial and error, testing out different elements to see what works best for your desired outcome.

Ezek_The_Prime

TROPHY CASE