december 13 2024 - 3:00 pm

PAYDAY 3: Blog Update #38 – The OVERSKILL System

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Hello heisters,

We hope you have had a great time with the update earlier this week, checking out First World Bank in all its reimagined glory and exploring its secrets (how many beavers did you find? 👀).

While we are incredibly happy with how positive the reception has been, we do also see that some of our players are also sadly facing issues with the newest updates. This is not what we’re here to talk about in this post, but we still want to acknowledge that we do see these reports and the team is hard at work to resolve them.


Now, let’s get to the meat and potatoes of this post, and what you’re all here to learn more about; The upcoming OVERSKILL system coming to PAYDAY 3!

Let’s start with the basics. We have three goals in mind that we want this system to achieve, and they are:

  1. Expand the OVERKILL weapon mechanic
  2. Allow an auxiliary skill system for build customization
  3. Allow alternatives to OVERKILL weapons, similar to “Ultimates”

After you have finished reading this post, we would love to hear your thoughts about whether you think this system will achieve these goals, and if not; how can it be improved?


UI mockup, final version may look different


When the system launches, there will be four OVERSKILL lines available to all PAYDAY 3 players for free. There will be one line tied to each of the OVERKILL weapons, as well as one line dedicated to stealth gameplay.

Each of the weapon’s OVERSKILL lines will unlock at the same time the weapon itself is unlocked, and the stealth ability line will be immediately available to any player. The upgrades within each OVERSKILL line are unlocked like regular skill upgrades, by earning experience while having the OVERSKILL equipped, however in an OVERSKILL line all upgrades will be active at the same time. Kind of like the Perk Decks worked in PAYDAY 2.


You may have noticed by now that OVERSKILLs come in two versions; one version tied to the OVERKILL weapon and one version that replaces the OVERKILL weapon with an activated ability.

To give you a better idea of what exactly this means, here is a practical example of each of them:

  1. Let’s say you currently have an active OVERSKILL line for the Mamba Grenade Launcher, using this weapon will now have all of the skills active for as long as you are wielding the weapon. This is regardless of whether you called the weapon in, or if you’re using a weapon another player summoned.
  2. If you have chosen to go with an active ability OVERSKILL instead, then you will activate this ability in the same way you would otherwise be able to summon an OVERKILL weapon. In the stealth OVERSKILL line for example, this would let you temporarily disable all cameras in the heist.


This also means we have to make some changes to the OVERKILL meter. There are two major things you may notice in this process:

  1. Picking up loose cash granting meter
  2. OVERKILL weapon kills no longer granting meter

The OVERSKILL system is something our developers have been wanting to do since PAYDAY 3 launched, and we are all super happy to finally be getting close to getting this into your hands. It’s important to add that this is a separate thing to the skill rework we are also investigating.


As you can see, Year 2 will have a lot of goodies coming to PAYDAY 3, between OVERSKILLs, a skill rework, Armor 2.0 and so much more.

Stay tuned for more information in future updates on when we can share release times or more details!

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