A comprehensive guide on what you’ve been missing
Alright, this has gone on long enough. Too long for it not to be included my records. People must know what they are missing out on.
So, the game is a robbery simulator, and yet they’ve bafflingly crippled the most important aspect: the cops. Each entry will (hopefully) thoroughly detail what is broken and how its broken.
Hostage Rescue Teams (HRT)
These guys would pop in after the assault waves as part of “recon” groups; their objective was to steal loot bags and free hostages.
How its broken:
After the Hoxton's Housewarming update, HRT units were removed from "recon" groups and replaced with standard SWAT. You can still spot them in the rare instances they are deliberately placed on the map, such as day 3 of Rats.
There's been no official explanation, but arguing for their reimplementation would be like arguing for why a painting should be put on a wall. It might not serve a substantial purpose, but don’t you want the room to look nice and engaging? It'd be a pleasant break from the usual SWAT spam.
Assault Fades
Assaults are broken into four phases: anticipation, build, sustain, and fade.
You’re already familiar with the “sustain” phase: this is the period in which guns are blazing and the music is blasting.
When time runs out, the assault mode eventually switches over to “fade”. At this point, the spawns are turned off and all remaining cops are ordered to retreat.
How its broken:
Simply put: “fade” ends too quickly. On normal occasions, the map is supposed to be empty by the time the assault ends, but that isn't the case anymore – the map is often still flooded with cops.
Assault numbers too high
Assaults have both a time limit and spawn limit. Players are supposed to have the option to either wipe out all the cops or wait it out.
How its broken:
The spawn pool is way too high. The number of potential enemy spawns can go up to 1000+ if four human players are on the team, making it impossible to eliminate all of them. Therefore, assault waves rely solely on the time limit.
In addition to this, the spawn limit for cops in general is outrageous. Nearly a hundred cops are typically spammed onto the map without thought. A good team ought to be rewarded if they can wipe out all the cops, yes?
Both the duration of the assault and the pool can be randomized. It is yet another assault mechanic that isn’t utilized properly. Having possibilities is fun – don’t you think, Overkill?
Missing shotgunners + other spawngroups
There's nine different types of spawngroups in the game:
tac_swat_shotgun_rush
tac_swat_shotgun_flank
tac_swat_rifle
tac_swat_rifle_flank
tac_shield_wall_ranged
tac_shield_wall_charge
tac_shield_wall
tac_tazer_flanking
tac_bull_rushHow its broken:
Due to a coding error, it seems only four out of the nine spawngroups are used.
tac_swat_rifle
tac_shield_wall_ranged
tac_tazer_flanking
tac_bull_rushBecause of this, the only enemies the player typically sees are riflemen and the usual specials.
These particular shotgunners seem to be absent from gameplay entirely (except through deliberately placed spawns, similar to HRT):
Missing tactics
Each unit in a spawngroup is assigned a table of tactics. For example, some tactic tables have a “smoke_grenade” entry. When the squad is in position, and the leader possesses this tactic, a smoke grenade is utilized as they move in to attack. Same goes with flash grenades.
How its broken:
Many tactics are missing or broken, such as flanking.
Flanking behavior is self-explanatory: the squad attacks from an alternate angle rather than the forward-most approach. Flankers are non-existent because the spawngroups that use them are non-existent (detailed before).
That includes the "Tazer flanking" group, because their tactic name is set incorrectly (shown below).
Another broken tactic is “murder”. On normal occasions, cops will stop firing at an incapacitated player, as long as that player doesn't fire their weapon. Units with the "murder" tactic don't stop firing until the player is knocked out. However, this behavior is not programmed into the game.
Four other tactics are also used in these tables, but not programmed. Their functionality is described below, according to older developer comments:
provide_coverfire: If possessed by any member. The member becomes aggressive when teammates are assaulted.
provide_support: If possessed by any member. The member becomes aggressive when teammates become aggressive.
shield: If possessed by any member. The member provides cover to other members who possess the "shield_cover" tactic.
shield_cover: If possessed by any member. The member takes cover behind other members who possess the "shield" tactic.Yes, you read it right, shields aren't even programmed to cover their teammates. Many of these entries have existed since the game's release, despite being unused.
Reenforce
"Reenforce” is a task that was assigned to certain cops to populate unoccupied areas in order to defend them. The current vanilla behavior is that they just charge the player's position mindlessly, and area denial is left up to that godawful SWAT turret.
How its broken:
The function has been purposely disabled. Overkill’s reasoning? Hear it is from the man himself: Jules...
Hey,
Reinforce groups have been removed for two reason.
The first one is that they are bugged. The reinforced group would break the spawn system and disable the spawn limit. Meaning that the levels were populate with way more enemies than intended. The more a level would use the reinforce group fonction the faster the spawn system would break. This created a lot of performance issue due to the massive amount of enemies on the level.
The other reason is that it was a function that did not make sense. The system would send enemies to location were the player is not present and might never go. This just led to a bunch of enemies populating areas of the level the player would never visit. Those enemies just took away performance for no reason.
And yes this is the reason we said there is less enemies on the maps. After removing those groups we tested all the levels in the game and realise that they felt a bit empty so we upped the enemy limit. We did not go into details as most people would not understand what the reinforce groups are; instead we present what should be the perceived difference between live and Beta.
In its defense, I believe this person put it best:
Difficulty system
Not to be confused with difficulties such as "Normal", "Mayhem", "Death Wish", etc. This difficulty system would introduce heavier units as the heist went on. If you've ever heard Bain say "tougher units are coming in", this is what's (supposed to be) happening.
How its broken:
Once again, this is yet another clever system that fell victim to a genius developer's intuition. Bain's warnings about "tougher squads" means nothing anymore. You get the same heavy/special enemy spam the moment things go loud and throughout. Exciting.
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