Payday 3 could tweak challenges, but not before making them more organized

You’ve wrapped up a tough heist in Payday 3. Maybe you almost died to a Dozer, or maybe you successfully finished that pesky Rock the Cradle full loot stealth run. But when you get to the results screen, you notice you got zero Infamy Points because you didn’t complete a single challenge in that mission.

This scenario has been somewhat common for Payday 3 players. Challenges are the only way to increase Infamy (the game’s account level), so completing them is essential to leveling up. Starbreeze is working on ways to minimize those zero Infamy cases—though the studio will test out some quality-of-life fixes first.

The first step for challenges is to make them more visible and easier to interpret, senior game designer Miodrag “Mio” Kovačević said in an update stream today (echoing what lead producer Andreas Häll Penninger said on yesterday’s broadcast).

After these likely adjustments to challenges, the dev team will look at its internal data regarding completion, possible hurdles, and more to “evaluate” any possible changes to the feature.

This process of evaluation “can include anything,” Kovačević said. The developer mentioned adding more challenges to make it easier to reach higher Infamy and touched on a popular suggestion: having all heist completions award Infamy.

“It’s not out of the question, but we want to make an informed decision,” he said. “Because if we make a knee-jerk reaction and react too quickly, it could have a negative impact on the game long-term.”

The batch of changes aims to improve the “communication and presentation” of challenges, to use Penninger’s wording on yesterday’s stream. They could include sorting challenges by more distinct categories and adding “recommended challenges” based on playstyles and the next steps needed to advance.

The team didn’t confirm a timeline for the first round of solutions, and the game is still tackling the remnants of the widespread server issues after its full launch. It’s unclear what iteration of those changes will make their way to Payday 3 in the future, but the developers are aware of the challenge system’s need for changes.