The people have spoken: Payday 3 fans vote on least favorite heist

Payday 3 fans banded together in a Reddit poll on Oct. 1 and voted 99 Boxes as the least favorite of eight heists in the game.

The poll was started by u/IfTheresANewWay, who is planning to continue polling and eliminating the weakest link until a lone favorite heist remains. 1,286 people voted in the poll, and 99 Boxes received 518 (just over 40 percent) of those votes, so the decision was fairly unanimous. In fact, the second closest heist, Under the Surphaze, received only 245 votes—less than half of the number for 99 Boxes.

Interestingly, 99 Boxes happens to be the heist in which players are able to earn infinite weapon XP by exploiting a glitch at the end of the heist. While this glitch might have irked some players, it is unlikely that it is ultimately responsible for the negative feelings towards 99 Boxes.

One redditor did a great job of concisely listing the many annoying factors at play in 99 Boxes. This heist has many mechanics in it that feel like they were added simply to make the heist more difficult. Needing to kidnap the store manager in Dirty Ice to bypass a biometric scanner makes perfect sense, and isn’t something that can be dealt with ahead of time. In 99 Boxes, the team knows ahead of time that the loot needs to be kept cold…and yet they didn’t bring a refrigerated truck. Not only is that terrible decision making, it also robs us of the opportunity to pull off a heist using an ice-cream truck.

The refrigerant is just one example of the awkwardness in 99 Boxes. This heist has many similar mechanics to others, but they simply don’t feel like they needed to be there in this case. This heist could very easily just be “show up, pick a lock, and load up the ice-cream truck,” as that is ultimately what happens, just with tons of extra steps.

Judging off of data from the first two days of polling, it seems that Gold & Sharke is very likely to win the spot as fans’ favorite heist in Payday 3. The heist only received three percent of all votes in round one, and that number dropped to one percent in round two despite there being a lower number of heists to choose from.

We can’t say we’re surprised by this either; Gold & Sharke has all the elements that a heist should in our opinion. It is very challenging, all the mechanics and steps are justified by logic, the building itself is beautiful and atmospheric, and there’s freaking lasers outside of the vault. We’re hoping Gold & Sharke takes home first place, too.