PAYDAY 2 was released without any warning, so I’ve been putting some time into it to see how it runs on Linux.
I must say, I am pretty impressed with the port. I did a two hour livestream and it was extremely stable without a single crash. Not many bigger games are this stable right out the door for us, so I’m damn happy with that.
Gameplay video
Here’s a video of a mission I played offline, this is an entire mission played at 2560x1440 on High settings.
Apologies for any noticable screen tearing, Compiz/Ubuntu really isn’t well setup for it. I have a startup script in place now thanks to Xpander that has helped somewhat. I look forward to seeing if Mir/Wayland help with tearing.
Performance
The performance at 1080p on my 980ti has been really good, very smooth without a hint of sutter. That’s impressed me more than anything. I know I have a great GPU, but plenty of other ports don’t come close in terms of performance to Payday 2 for me.
At 2560x1440 resolution the game runs reasonably well; it bounces between 60 and well over 100 FPS depending on what is going on.
Sadly at 4K resolution the game says it has a high FPS, but I can feel the game being really sluggish, It’s just not playable (not many games are at 4K on Linux, so they aren’t alone).
The game doesn’t have a benchmark mode so I cannot capture exact numbers right now without doing some trickery. I might do so in future, but I wanted to get some thoughts out on it before we tried any benchmarking on it.
Gameplay
I’m surprised at just how much I am enjoying the game. I knew I would somewhat enjoy it since it’s an FPS and all, but I didn’t realise it would be as hilarious as it is. It has many features that I wasn’t aware of and a lot of those are sure to excite many linux gamers.
It has full cross-platform multiplayer, so you can play with your Windows friends, or with random Linux/Windows users that join in your sessions. I had a pretty easy time finding people to play with since it’s still a very popular game. I haven’t seen it drop below 10,000 players online for a while, and thanks to the free play time it has been hitting over 20,000.
The main appeal of the game for me is that it allows you to be on the other side of the fence. Instead of some anti-terrorist organisation, or an army, you are the robbers. It just feels more interesting and exciting to play as the bad guy.
If you’re new I highly suggest playing with friends, or trying it solo for a while. The AI is a little dumb and it will end up being a little bit frustrating for you, so online is a must really. That said, people who have played it for a while tend to rage at you if you mess up even a little bit, as I found out.
The basics of the game are really easy to grasp, as there’s no real difficult mechanics. Cracking open doors is a simple press of a button to get your drill out, for example. You still need to keep an eye on your drills as they will get jammed up, prompting the player to interact with them again. Alternatively, you can forget altogether by finding a hidden card key.
There’s a lot of variation in the missions which will keep me entertained for hours. Some of that variation is thanks to the DLC packs, which add in different scenarios. All of which work on Linux as far as I can tell.
I have shot up a mall doing as much damage as I can, which was great as the police eventually stormed the place and we had to get rescued by helicopter.
We rescued someone from a downed helicopter and took their cocaine to make some money, and we had to keep shouting at the pilot every time he fell over or threw up.
At one point Samsai was driving a forklift with bags of nuclear warheads, while I was casually sat on the back unloading clips at police firing at us. Why they thought it was a good idea to fire at us while we were carrying such explosives—I don’t know.
There was also a time we stormed a meth lab, ended up cooking meth and tried to escape with it.
Yes, all of those are actual missions.
Issues
There was one annoying issue with the game only detecting the max resolution from my 1080p monitor, and loading into a tiny box on my 4K monitor. I managed to solve it by disabling my second monitor, loading it up at 4K on my main monitor and then enabling my second monitor again. Since then it has been fine. The developer responded to my report, so hopefully it will get fixed.
Other people's issues
The developers introduced microtransactions, which isn’t always a bad thing, but people didn’t like it. Mainly due to the developers originally saying the game will never have it, so people felt betrayed. Priorities for developers change, especially when you plan to support your game for far longer than originally planned. I don’t personally care as I don’t feel like it’s pay to win.
I’ve seen bad reviews with things like this “if you are new do not buy it unless you are willing to spend more money on DLC's that will come out over time” (actual quote) which I find odd. Why is it such a bad thing? You’re not forced into DLC, and it again keeps games active way longer than they would have been originally. They are constantly on sale too, so it’s not like it’s expensive.
To sum up, I think it’s a really interesting game to have on Linux, and performance is really good. Great for a bash with your friends, and still reasonably fun with random people who join in.
It’s still free to try for a few days, so you have nothing to lose.
You can find PAYDAY 2 on Steam. It’s currently free to try, and it’s on a mega sale.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
I must say, I am pretty impressed with the port. I did a two hour livestream and it was extremely stable without a single crash. Not many bigger games are this stable right out the door for us, so I’m damn happy with that.
Gameplay video
Here’s a video of a mission I played offline, this is an entire mission played at 2560x1440 on High settings.
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Performance
The performance at 1080p on my 980ti has been really good, very smooth without a hint of sutter. That’s impressed me more than anything. I know I have a great GPU, but plenty of other ports don’t come close in terms of performance to Payday 2 for me.
At 2560x1440 resolution the game runs reasonably well; it bounces between 60 and well over 100 FPS depending on what is going on.
Sadly at 4K resolution the game says it has a high FPS, but I can feel the game being really sluggish, It’s just not playable (not many games are at 4K on Linux, so they aren’t alone).
The game doesn’t have a benchmark mode so I cannot capture exact numbers right now without doing some trickery. I might do so in future, but I wanted to get some thoughts out on it before we tried any benchmarking on it.
Gameplay
I’m surprised at just how much I am enjoying the game. I knew I would somewhat enjoy it since it’s an FPS and all, but I didn’t realise it would be as hilarious as it is. It has many features that I wasn’t aware of and a lot of those are sure to excite many linux gamers.
It has full cross-platform multiplayer, so you can play with your Windows friends, or with random Linux/Windows users that join in your sessions. I had a pretty easy time finding people to play with since it’s still a very popular game. I haven’t seen it drop below 10,000 players online for a while, and thanks to the free play time it has been hitting over 20,000.
The main appeal of the game for me is that it allows you to be on the other side of the fence. Instead of some anti-terrorist organisation, or an army, you are the robbers. It just feels more interesting and exciting to play as the bad guy.
If you’re new I highly suggest playing with friends, or trying it solo for a while. The AI is a little dumb and it will end up being a little bit frustrating for you, so online is a must really. That said, people who have played it for a while tend to rage at you if you mess up even a little bit, as I found out.
The basics of the game are really easy to grasp, as there’s no real difficult mechanics. Cracking open doors is a simple press of a button to get your drill out, for example. You still need to keep an eye on your drills as they will get jammed up, prompting the player to interact with them again. Alternatively, you can forget altogether by finding a hidden card key.
There’s a lot of variation in the missions which will keep me entertained for hours. Some of that variation is thanks to the DLC packs, which add in different scenarios. All of which work on Linux as far as I can tell.
I have shot up a mall doing as much damage as I can, which was great as the police eventually stormed the place and we had to get rescued by helicopter.
We rescued someone from a downed helicopter and took their cocaine to make some money, and we had to keep shouting at the pilot every time he fell over or threw up.
At one point Samsai was driving a forklift with bags of nuclear warheads, while I was casually sat on the back unloading clips at police firing at us. Why they thought it was a good idea to fire at us while we were carrying such explosives—I don’t know.
There was also a time we stormed a meth lab, ended up cooking meth and tried to escape with it.
Yes, all of those are actual missions.
Issues
There was one annoying issue with the game only detecting the max resolution from my 1080p monitor, and loading into a tiny box on my 4K monitor. I managed to solve it by disabling my second monitor, loading it up at 4K on my main monitor and then enabling my second monitor again. Since then it has been fine. The developer responded to my report, so hopefully it will get fixed.
Other people's issues
The developers introduced microtransactions, which isn’t always a bad thing, but people didn’t like it. Mainly due to the developers originally saying the game will never have it, so people felt betrayed. Priorities for developers change, especially when you plan to support your game for far longer than originally planned. I don’t personally care as I don’t feel like it’s pay to win.
I’ve seen bad reviews with things like this “if you are new do not buy it unless you are willing to spend more money on DLC's that will come out over time” (actual quote) which I find odd. Why is it such a bad thing? You’re not forced into DLC, and it again keeps games active way longer than they would have been originally. They are constantly on sale too, so it’s not like it’s expensive.
To sum up, I think it’s a really interesting game to have on Linux, and performance is really good. Great for a bash with your friends, and still reasonably fun with random people who join in.
It’s still free to try for a few days, so you have nothing to lose.
You can find PAYDAY 2 on Steam. It’s currently free to try, and it’s on a mega sale.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Quoting: StianTheDark"I know I have a great GPU"
Damn Liam, back at it again with the bragging.
I really appreciated he was mentioning that!
How I hate (*) reading all that "It worked OKish on my double-Titan system - great port!" nonsense...! :D
(*) sitting with my GTX660, a good card - 3 years ago
Last edited by Eike on 24 March 2016 at 1:10 pm UTC
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Works well in FullHD on an AMD 7850 card using the radeonsi open source driver. Mesa version is 11.1.2.
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Quoting: StianTheDark"I know I have a great GPU"
Damn Liam, back at it again with the bragging.
I guess that was a bit of fun and not a dig at me? As it wasn't bragging
Edit: Hilarious typo by me.
Last edited by Liam Dawe on 24 March 2016 at 1:43 pm UTC
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Quoting: GBeeLet me just repeat what Liam said - "The AI is a little dumb and it will end up being a little bit frustrating for you, so online is a must really."
The singleplayer is unplayable and so if you're like me and have no time to dedicate to online play, then don't bother purchasing.
Also worth mentioning that once the police get involved, it becomes a wave shooter worthy of the Left 4 Dead crown. An endless stream of police/fbi etc will throw themselves at you, I was racking up dozens of kills in missions. Each wave is harder than the last as the cops armour up. There's no standoff and I never once saw the police decide to setup a perimeter and send in a negotiator, they always charge in guns blazing, apparently ignoring the civilians caught in the crossfire. This, and more is why I personally was disappointed by the game.
All the things you don't like is exactly what i do like. you always have the option to do most missions silent, if you fuck up and it turns loud... it should be punishing, unless your team is setup for guns blazing ofcourse...then it's another story. learn all the traits and skills first. You might not like it, but it's the way it's meant to be played.
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Quoting: TheBossThat said, people who have played it for a while tend to rage at you if you mess up even a little bit, as I found out.
Being known as a fair, non-raging, even helpful PD2 host has gotten me a lot of friend requests over the years for this very reason.
I've got a lot of hours on PD2, and have sorta accreted an informal list of pointers for new players. I'll offer some here hoping they'll help fellow Penguin Heisters just starting out joining missions online:
* Love it LOUD. Focus on loud-only missions. Stealth missions are easier to screw up for the team than loud missions. Most missions can be played either way, but some are strictly loud.
* Amateurs ain't Pro. In the very beginning, consider avoiding Pro missions. Pro missions are indicated on the map by a red square around the mission symbol. Pro missions cannot be re-played if failed, so screw-ups matter more.
* When in Doubt, Just Help Out. Of course killing cops is always helpful, but if someone's moving bags, then help with the bags. If someone's picking a lock, watch their back. If someone is healing a downed teammate, provide cover fire. Like that.
* Newbie, be Proud. Sometimes it helps to remind people up front that you're new. Typing things like "I'm new, sorry if I screw up." or, "I've never done this mission before. Let me know what you want me to do." before the mission begins can gain you a lot of help and tolerance.
* Stay in Sight. You'll see some players running around way far away from the rest of the group. That's their business. Stay with the group or try to maintain a line-of-site with one or more crew mates. Cloakers and Tazers are gonna take people down, but only those that can be reached by their teammates are gonna get helped back up.
* It's All Good. Laugh. Be upbeat, encouraging, and have fun. Send friend requests to helpful or friendly hosts and players. Leave a game if you're getting unfair abuse, and remember that anybody who kicks you without fair warning did you a favor. That person was an asshole, and you didn't want to play with them anyway. :D
Last edited by Nanobang on 24 March 2016 at 3:07 pm UTC
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Kimyrielle Mar 24, 2016
I can't find a single reference if this game can be played in 3rd person view. Can it?
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Punishing? Yes, but suicidal cops throwing themselves endlessly into carnage completely spoils the immersion for me. I'd be much more impressed by a system where a single gunshot can kill (instead of being a bullet sponge) but where the cops at least seemed to behave realistically. It would be just as punishing, but not completely unrealistic. I feel PayDay is paying homage to that shootout scene in Heat, but even there the cops kept heads down. I mean, in real life they wouldn't keep coming even if 50-60 of their brethren lay dead or dying on the ground.
I get that it's a game and lots of people love the fact that it's so insane, my comments are merely to help people make educated purchasing decisions. If you like the game I've described then go and buy it, if instead you prefer something more thoughtful and authentic, then you'll probably want to skip it.
I get that it's a game and lots of people love the fact that it's so insane, my comments are merely to help people make educated purchasing decisions. If you like the game I've described then go and buy it, if instead you prefer something more thoughtful and authentic, then you'll probably want to skip it.
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Quoting: KimyrielleI can't find a single reference if this game can be played in 3rd person view. Can it?
No, sorry mate. It's strictly first person.
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Quoting: PicoboomBeing known as a fair, non-raging, even helpful PD2 host has gotten me a lot of friend requests over the years for this very reason.
I've got a lot of hours on PD2, and have sorta accreted an informal list of pointers for new players. I'll offer some here hoping they'll help fellow Penguin Heisters joining missions online:
Thanks for your tips!
I'll try to think of them when I'm taking my first try. :)
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Kimyrielle Mar 24, 2016
Quoting: PicoboomQuoting: KimyrielleI can't find a single reference if this game can be played in 3rd person view. Can it?
No, sorry mate. It's strictly first person.
Awww, too bad. Thanks for the reply! :)
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