Payday 3 developers announced in a tweet on Oct. 3 that the price of additional slots for loadout customizations has been reduced by a whopping 90 percent.
Launch week for Payday 3 was rocky, to say the least, as server troubles made the game unplayable for the majority of the first seven days. Many fans, us included, haven’t wanted to give up on Payday 3 entirely, but feel that Starbreeze will need to pull off a hat-trick or two to win back fans’ trust and time. This cost reduction of customization slots is a great first step for Payday‘s return to form.
In the tweet, it was stated that primary weapon slot costs have been reduced from 100 C-Stacks to just 10 and that all other slots have had their costs reduced from 50 C-Stacks to five. The only explanation offered (and the only one needed) in the tweet is, “we’ve seen the feedback.”
Thankfully, C-Stacks are not a micro-transaction currency. In fact, there are not any micro-transactions in Payday 3. C-Stacks are indeed bought but are bought with the in-game money that you earn by completing heists as opposed to real-world money that you earn by doing whatever it is that you do. (Maybe that’s also heists. We’re not here to judge).
To give you an idea of the conversion rate, one C-Stack goes for $10,000 (again, this is in-game money), and 10 C-Stacks go for $90,000. There isn’t a single heist that earns you less than $100,000 upon completion, and most will net you closer to $500,000 on average.
That means that before the cost update, you needed to complete two or three heists before you could unlock a new slot. Now, after the update, a single heist will earn you enough money to unlock about five new weapon slots or 10 secondary weapon slots. Not bad, Starbreeze, not bad.
New weapon slots are not actually purchased with C-Stacks, but rather with in-game money. At first, we were confused why Starbreeze gave the equivalent C-Stack value as opposed to the monetary cost of new slots—and then we realized how writing, “New weapon slots now only cost $100,000” might not look too good to people who aren’t familiar with the game’s currency system. In Payday 3, $100,000 is pocket change. Not so much in our world.
Fans generally seem to be sitting right about where we are—they are happy with this update and consider it a good start, but all is not quite forgiven just yet. As another X (formerly Twitter) user pointed out, we’re still in the market for some more quality-of-life changes before we’ll be ready to forget about the Great Payday Server Crisis of September (we’re still workshopping the name).
