Note: Some preview images are now outdated due to mod updates.
12 March 2022 Update!
Turns out I must be the only person who misses old Payday's high recoil guns, what a surprise. The most requested change is now here, I've separated weapon and attachment changes and moved them to an optional addons folder inside the VSR mod folder, you can choose which changes you want, if any, on a category basis. Only sights and magazines changes? Only barrels and grips? It is up to you. The addons function as standalone mods, so to activate them, move your chosen addons to your mods folder. As a side-effect, VSR may now be compatible with other mods that rework weapon and attachment stats.
04 March 2022 Update!
Spoiler!
Check the changelog, a lot of changes again.
Requesting feedback for the following skills:
- Explosive Bullets
- Fully Loaded
- Unseen Strike
- Desperado
- Stopping Power
Additionally requesting feedback for dodge perk decks and various builds to go along with them. More specifically, Hacker, Sicario, Rogue and Ex-Presidents. The goal is for every dodge deck to be roughly equal in viability, without there being one obvious best perk deck. Feel free to either comment or contact me directly if you have ideas, suggestions or feedback to share. Please note that balance changes are mostly made with Death Sentence as baseline, I don't care if the mod may or may not trivialize Deathwish or below.
First 2022 update!
Spoiler!
After playing Deep Rock Galactic almost exclusively for two years, I've started playing Payday 2 a little bit again, and it only took me two days to start tinkering with my mod again. I've fixed a few issues, buffed some skills and nerfed some others. There are a lot of changes, but you'll find an overview of them in the changelog.
If you are able to come up with blatantly overpowered combinations that negatively impact the integrity of Death Sentence, contact me immediately. Any such cases are unintended and will be addressed.
Upcoming changes and collaborators.
- Click here or scroll to the bottom of the page to read more.
Why VSR?
Something that always bothered me about Payday 2 is how much of an illusion the Skilltree really is. It makes you believe that you have nearly two hundred skills to choose from and that making builds has endless possibilities. Neither are true, however, because the near-two hundred skill amount quickly gets reduced when you factor in how many basic and aced versions are the same exact thing with different values, how there is both a large amount of skills that never see any use, and a large amount of skills that are taken almost every time, regardless of what the build is trying to achieve.
This mod is an attempt to change this. To keep it short and simple, I have moved around a noticeable amount of skills, some skills have been separated into multiple other skills, some unused or discontinued skills have been reintroduced, and awful skills have either been reimagined or buffed.
Some examples of Vanilla compared to VSR:
Spoiler!
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First aid kits:
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Vanilla: You need maximum FAK quantity for Uppers auto-heal.
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In VSR, auto-heal is in another skill, meaning you can have auto-heal without maximum quantity, or you can have maximum quantity without auto-heal.
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Inspire:
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Vanilla: Tier 1 is never aced, you either choose Quick Fix or Painkillers, then your choice deployable and then ace Inspire, and you have every effect stacked.
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In VSR, Tier 1 is worth acing, and Inspire's manual interaction revive boost has moved to another skill, making Tier 2 a much more important choice.
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Die Hard:
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Vanilla: Completely worthless ace, unless you're using either Crook or Grinder.
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In VSR, ace is useful in a wide variety of builds.
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Bullseye:
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Vanilla: Basic is amazing for armorgating, and aced is worthless because all the effect needs to give you is 1 armor, the extra from ace doesn't make a difference.
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In VSR, the aced version changes the proc condition, so instead of a headshot, even bodyshots will give you that armor, so now there's actually a practical reason for acing the skill - ease of procing the effect.
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Ammo bags:
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Vanilla: It's no secret that ammo bags are underwhelming, most builds are made self-sustainable so meds are preferred. The only unique thing ammo bags have is bulletstorm but it's worthless without acing it, and frankly, isn't worth acing.
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In VSR, bulletstorm basic will give you the full aced effect, giving a much needed buff to all ammo bag users.
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Sentry Guns & Trip Mines, Jack of All Trades:
- Vanilla: All of these required a very high skill investment, which was never worth it.
- In VSR, JoAT gives a buff to some deployables, making it less expensive to use with certain deployables. Sentry guns are significantly cheaper to get, and more effective. Trip mines are still expensive to max out, but they are now significantly more effective.
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Kickstarter:
- Vanilla: A very expensive skill just for a 50% repair chance.
- In VSR, the 50% repair chance is cheaper, and the aced version will guarantee auto-restarting drills. Even still it's hard for me to personally justify drill skills, but this should be a really nice buff for those who love drill skills.
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ECMS:
- Vanilla: Expensive top-tier skills, impossible to justify for loud builds. Pager delay is forced if you want maximum duration.
- In VSR, ECM's are cheaper to get, which makes them more viable for loud/hybrid builds. Additionally, pager delaying is now optional, you can get full ECM duration without having pager delays. This is desired in some situations, such as killing a guard infront of a camera, either intentionally or accidentally.
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Insider Assets:
- Vanilla: Requires Sixth Sense Aced, which is 7 points. Very steep for an effect you seldom get use out of, so naturally nobody ever takes this for loud.
- In VSR, you can gain access to Insider Assets for a single throwaway point, making it a decent leftover choice for loud builds.
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Camera Loop:
- Vanilla: You either get 20 seconds or nothing. Sometimes 20 seconds is useful, but many times it's too much. Because of the simultaneous loop limit, this leads to some issues.
- In VSR, you can choose between a 10 second loop or a 20 second loop, which means you can still have maximum duration when needed, but can also choose a shorter duration when that's preferable.
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Sneaky Bastard & Low Blow:
- Vanilla: The basic and aced versions are identical effects, simply increasing concealment limit from 5 to 25.
- In VSR, the basic versions are replaced by relevant effects that aren't concealment-limited. The aced version functions as you expect, with the 25 concealment limit. Note that this does not increase your maximum totals.
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Second Wind:
- Vanilla: The basic version will give you a speed buff on armor break, and the aced version will give this effect to your entire team. The aced version was basically worthless, and it was also annoying that you couldn't spec into that tree without the armor break buff.
- In VSR, the basic version now buffs your stamina, and the aced version gives you the armor break speed buff for yourself only. Now you can spec into that tree without the speed buff if desired.
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Nine Lives:
- Vanilla: A cheap 4 skillpoint effect that is extremely powerful, even mandatory for DSOD.
- In VSR, the extra down effect is now a more expensive skill, as it should be. It's one of the strongest effects you can get. And if you want to play One Down without One Down you'll have to spend more points.
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Berserker:
- Vanilla: You have to self-harm to get Berserker's full effects, and people healing you will negatively affect your buff.
In VSR, Berserker now locks your health to 10%, starting you off with a 80% damage buff. You can still self harm to push that further, but it's no longer mandatory.
- Vanilla: You have to self-harm to get Berserker's full effects, and people healing you will negatively affect your buff.
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Frenzy:
- Vanilla: Frenzy buffed your survivability but took away all your health, making it a choice pretty much exclusive to Berserker builds.
- In VSR, Frenzy no longer affects your max health, so you can have the survivability without lower max health like the old Techforcer days. The overall damage reduction however is nerfed from 25% to 20%, and the healing nerf is still present without acing.
Here's a bit more details.
Spoiler!
- Over 80 skills have been adjusted!
- Hybrid heisting is back! Regular ECMs (and other stealth skills) are now loud viable, gone are the days of having to invest 24 points into a situational deployable.
- Streamlined perk decks! Shared perks are now built-in.
- Skill descriptions have been simplified. Often times a simple skill has a very complicated description, and I've attempted to make them more understandable.
- Nonsensical skills have been adjusted. (i.e Why did shotgun run and gun require the same amount of points as all-weapons run and gun?)
- This rework presents players with many powerful skills, but due to the skillpoint limitations, you're likely going to have to consider dropping other powerful skills you're used to if you want to try some of the other high-tier skills. When a player suddenly has much more viable skills to choose from, it does not matter if some of the skills are powerful. Inspire has always been powerful, but we all accept it because well.. it's Inspire.
- All spelling mistakes in the skilltree and perk decks have been fixed (hopefully), down to the smallest OCD triggers such as random capitalization (i.e sometimes doctor bags were written as Doctor Bags for no reason) and unmatching skill descriptions (i.e a skill that does the same thing is described differently elsewhere)
With optional addons, you can also include balance changes for various weapon attachments.
Spoiler!
- Magazines no longer give stability bonuses or any kind of penalties. Why would they?
- Most sights no longer give any kind of bonuses. Again, why would they? You're replacing iron sights with a better alternative and this already enhances your gameplay enough. Additionally, concealment penalties have been adjusted to make more sense.
- Lasers and gadgets no longer give any bonuses either. One should not feel forced to equip gadgets if they don't even feel the need to use them, and much like sights, they deserve no additional bonuses as they already provide a practical gameplay benefit.
- Stocks, barrels, grips and foregrips have been rebalanced to provide more variety. You will no longer have one best in slot modification to rely on and will have to decide what bonuses you consider more valuable to your given build.
- Barrel extentions have recieved a similar treatment, you should no longer have one or two options to always rely on, however, these weapon modifications recieved the least harsh treatment; lowering all bonuses across every category would render weapons too unsatisfying to use, and so most barrel extensions didn't recieve major nerfs to their bonuses, instead, they recieved a buff in their damage stat across the board to even out the fact that players will have to limit their rate of fire due to higher recoil and lack of laser-accurate weapons.
- Stat boosts have been buffed across the board to provide players with more options. Weapons now generally have access to a wider variety of stat boosts and neglected boosts such as the ammo bonus have been buffed to grant players a variety of ammunition depending on their total ammunition pool. Weapons with a big total ammunition pool gain 1-2 extra magazines as opposed to a couple bullets, while weapons with a tiny ammunition pool may see it being increased significantly, causing players to really consider it over the other available options.
- Adjusted weapon modifications cost more. Now it'll take you slightly less than an eternity to use up all your spending money!
Installing and uninstalling.
There is a very high chance that this mod will conflict with any mods that adjust vanilla skills, perk decks or weapon modifications in any kind of way.
The only custom perk deck that functions with this mod is Blank Perk Decks, which I highly recommend for a more old-school Payday 2 experience.
Please note that upon launching the game with this mod, your character will still have old skilltree effects applied. To avoid any issues, please reset your skilltree by pressing ''R'' in the skilltree menu before switching your skills or making new builds. The same applies when uninstalling the mod or replacing the mod with an updated version.
Upcoming 2.1 changes and what to expect.
Version 2.1: Now available! Weapon and attachment changes are separated, you can customize your experience with the included Addons folder.
Spoiler!
Due to several requests, I will separate skill and perk changes from weapon changes in the downloads. The main download will only feature the skilltree and perk deck changes, leaving all weapon stats unaffected. There will be a second download as an add-on, which will activate weapon and attachment changes for those that want them. I will also be scaling back on future weapon mod balancing. Changing the stats of every single weapon and weapon mod was a massive undertaking, which I never finished for secondary weapons and all the new DLC weapons. I don't have the new DLC and cannot afford it so I can't justify balancing content which I've never been able to try.
So, Version 2.1 will feature three downloads.
VSR 2.1 Main: changes skills and perks.VSR 2.1 Add-on: activates shared attachment changes.- ~~VSR 2.1 Original: features all of my weapon and attachment changes. ~~
Collaborators
I want to give every weapon attachment a purpose to exist, and every weapon to have an identity, some reason to pick them over alternatives. I think my original balancing of the weapons was a decent experiment, but ultimately a failure - every gun had its accuracy and stability decreased from Vanilla stats, but the best weapons still remained the same. Attachments were fine - every category I visited ended up having zero obsolete choices, so attachments did get an identity, however guns themselves did not.
If there's anyone else who is bothered by laser accurate 100/100 guns and dozens of obsolete weapon attachments in the game, and obsolete weapons that are functionally just model swaps, I invite you to help me finish balancing every weapon and attachment, please contact me either here or on Steam. You'll be added as a collaborator to the mod page and we can discuss balancing weapons and attachments together. You can choose which weapons/attachments you want to balance and how, as long as our goals align; that every weapon and attachment should have its own identity.
Finally, as a closing note I want to bring attention to the fact that this is my first modding project, so don't expect any crazy in-depth coding and brand new unique skills - I simply don't know how to do any of that. But still, any feedback is welcome and appreciated.