History YMMV / Payday2

** "Knockout" requires players to kill a Bulldozer by using the Overkill Boxing Gloves. Basically, take the "Are You Kidding Me?" (kill a Bulldozer with knife) achievement, swap out the knife with boxing gloves, and pray that the Bulldozer doesn't down you when you get close to him (requiring the player to weaken them before delivering the final blow). To make matters worse, the achievement was bugged during Update #51 where people connected to the host could not damage the Bulldozer with the gloves.

** The "Overkill Salutes You!" achievement requires you to complete every single heist on the Death Wish difficulty. This is a problem threefolds: First off, you have to complete each heist individually from start to finish; so if you disconnect at any point, you're screwed. This is mitigated by being the host for the lobby, as you can never disconnect from yourself, but it also means you have to at least live through the entire heist from start to finish. The second part is that some of the heists are loud-only, which significantly ramps up the difficulty, especially the "staying alive" part mentioned before. Finally, this achievement changes over time; when a new heist is added, it gets added to this achievement too, meaning it was far easier to complete this achievement in 2014 than it is in 2018, as you will keep the achievement if new heists come out, but new players will have to complete the old ones ''and'' the new ones.

** "City of Sin and Well-Oiled Gears" requires you to complete the Golden Grin Casino in loud while preventing the BFD from breaking even once. Much like Afraid of the Dark, the drilling process takes several minutes, even with if upgrades are purchased. The biggest problem is the number of ways the drill can "break": if cops reach the circuit boxes (two of them by default, though can be reduced to one with an upgrade), if the cops reach the drill's controls, and if the BFD runs out of coolant water, which requires trips to and from the bathrooms carrying a heavy coolant tank and a delay to fill it, requiring either a well co-ordinated team spread out across the hall of the casino or a large number of Sentry Guns. Getting downed once provides enough of a delay that any one of these breaking causes might be triggered, forcing a restart from the very beginning of the level.

* "Walk Faster" requires the player to get to the Commissar's apartment in less than 210 seconds on OVERKILL or above. This sounds quite easy, but like "Gone in 240 Seconds"[[note]]at least prior to Update #157[[/note]] it is subject to a good deal of RNG. First off, doing it co-op is out of the question unless you have a very coordinated team, so most of the time this will be attempted solo (which of course requires the DLC itself). Second, the layout of the various scrap walls and holes changes each time; there are very few actual layouts, but they can catch those who don't know them off-guard until they just know where to go. Third, you of course have to open a gate ''somewhere'' in the chase, so either you waste time with a drill or sacrifice your primary slot for the [=OVE9000=] saw. Fourth, to be able to run fast and long enough you need to forgo armor almost entirely, which is a problem because OVERKILL-level gang enemies ''hit like a truck''; getting downed at ANY point is basically a restart since there is no way the AI will be able to catch up in time. Fourth, this IS OVERKILL so it is very possible to run into Shields, Medics, Tasers, Bulldozers or (if you're very unlucky) Cloakers. Finally, there is the very real chance of a claymore mine being behind the only door out of a particular area, which ''will'' down you if you don't notice it in time - and you won't. Basically, everything needs to align up just right and a single mistake or badly placed obstacle can ruin the entire run.

** "Bushido" requires you to get the samurai armor before you secure any other form of loot on Overkill difficulty. While opening the safe is enough of a challenge, now you have to do it first. Opening the vault is usually saved for last, on account of patrolling guards sounding the alarm if they see the door open. But if you have to do it first, then you have to blitz through the rest of the map and hopefully find five more bags of loot that're light enough for you to quickly move to the escape van.

** Bain has drawn a lot of ire over the game's long life, due to his repetitive lines, chewing out players for killing civilians repeatedly, and apparently having TookALevelInJerkass since the first game (where, for one thing, he'd apologize and [[ItsAllMyFault blame himself]] if the crew wiped and the heist failed). He also [[ScrappyMechanic tends to get the meth ingredients wrong and can lead to certain heists failing]], ''actually'' making it his fault. Some recent patches have toned down his repetitiveness, reduced the frequency with which he'll berate you for killing civilians, and now he's back to taking the blame and apologizing if the heist fails. Some people have seen it as a start to getting the old Bain back.

** Hoxton got some flak on his return due to being far more hostile and foul-mouthed to the rest of the crew. As time has passed, he's gotten more like his old self, with his lines being more relaxed and occasionally snarky, his lines for helping up teammates being more genuine and caring, and much less rage and swearing. [[BerserkButton Except towards civilians, Houston, and broken drills, at least.]]

* Reservoir Dogs Day 1[[note]]technically the second day gameplay-wise, it's complicated[[/note]] is a complete nightmare on higher difficulties, especially if you want to steal all the loot. The mission starts with cops spawning everywhere, and taking all of the loot in the starting section requires you to expose your face to the dozens of cops around you (hope that you don't get tased!) and on those higher difficulties, a SWAT Turret. Once you hack into the vault area, while defending the vault area is easy, upstairs is another thing altogether. The upstairs area will almost always be filled with cops and you have to go up there at least once to get the C4 to open the safe. This doesn't include going up there in order to get all the loot and create a zipline to streamline bag securing, hope you don't get tased! Talking about the bag securing, if you're doing this solo, it's a complete nightmare because you're forced to run across the lobby and main street, both of which are filled with cops and have little to no cover, again, [[RuleofThree hope you don't get tased!]] Thankfully, securing the bags is much easier when you're playing with other players, as you can just have one player stay at the car to secure the bags while others send them down on the zipline.

** Simply put, ''Henry's Rock'' is the epitome of Overkill's general failings in level design for Loud heists: it suffers from little to no cover, enemy spawns everywhere, an overabundance of special spawns, objectives that involve a lot of messing about, heavy loot bags you need to shift through open spaces peppered with guards, and everything in-between. You have to hack your way out of one room (which has no cover), then into the main hall (which also has no cover) before exploring two randomly selected rooms. In terms of the four rooms in question, one is somewhat easy and straightforward[[note]]the computer lab simply has you interact with certain computers, then operate a crane with a crowbar in the main hall[[/note]], two are frustrating[[note]]the weapons testing room has one aim and fire an experimental laser cannon with multiple steps and many places the cops can shut it down, while the archeology room is a mini puzzle in and of itself[[/note]] and one is downright infuriating[[note]]the chemical lab has one play reverse-Rats in order to mix a concoction to burn open a shutter door, while having to defend the chem machine from cops shooting it and you from literally every angle[[/note]]. After that, heave the bags back to the start, hack two turrets on either side of the helipad and then wait for Bile to show up before hoisting the bags into his helicopter, all with - you guessed it - no cover. Naturally, the heist is often derogatorily [[FanNickname referred to as Henry's Cock]], because you are going to get ''fucked'' by it.

ThatOneAchievement: Especially so as several are LuckBasedMission ones, that depend on what the RNG feels like doing.
* Short Fuse: Part of Rats, on Day 3, you need to get out with 7 bags without defusing bombs (two or so suitcases of money won't have a bomb). You may get lucky with an extra money and coke bag that spawn near the escape copter.
* Big Deal: Part of Framing Frame, you need 9 paintings from Day 1 (which randomly gives you 5-9, most of which will probably be in the back and behind lasers just to make stealth almost impossible).
* Afraid of the Dark: Also from Framing Frame, you need to prevent the cops from disabling the power during Day 3 while hacking a computer. Doing Day 3 loud already qualifies as ThatOneLevel, but the fuseboxes have a large number of spawning locations and can spawn very far away from each other, and the cops can kill the power very quickly if given the chance. Made worse by the sheer length of the hacking process and the fact that there is no way to accelerate it.
* Guessing Game: Part of Firestarter, on Day 2, you need to cut two wires without knowing if they'll set off the alarm or not. Deserves special mention as the number and location of the wire boxes changes each time and the whole day must be completed in stealth, already a difficult task.
* Cappuccino To Go: Part of the Cafe Escape, you need to get out with all loot bags within 30 seconds of the van arriving, and there are three spots where it'll arrive that are nowhere near each other. The achievement is much easier if you figure out A) exactly when the 30 second timer starts, B) The escape follows the Ukrainian Job and you only stole the Tiara, hence no loot bags and C) where to stand to be able to see two of the three potential van locations, but considering most people wear heavy armour in all escapes (slowing them down), there's still the matter of reaching the van in time.
* Armored Transport, ''Payday 2'''s first substantial DLC, adds a few more to the list:
** "But Wait - There's More!" is unlocked by being in an Armored Transport heist when someone picks up the address loot that unlocks the bonus Train Heist. This alone has, [[WordOfGod according to Goldfarb]], a 20% chance of occurring per heist (in practice, expect it 1% of the time).
*** It has since been bumped up to a much higher probability of appearing, but as mentioned below, the blueprints can be destroyed if you choose to open the transports with C4.

* "Doctor Miserable" for Big Oil day 2 is an inversion of "Doctor Fantastic" (complete the day 2 of Big Oil with the first engine being correct), which you are tasked with sending every single wrong engine to Bain, leaving the last one as the correct engine. Not only do you crawl at a snail's pace when moving engine parts, but the cops are brutal on the map and it is possible to run out of ammo trying to last through massive amounts of assault waves while waiting several minutes for each engine to be verified. You also have to do it on at least Overkill difficulty.
* "Hot Lava 2.0" is quite difficult for the first day in Election Day. You have to reach and use the computer in stealth without ever touching the ground, which means you will have to use boxes and freight containers as platforms to jump to and it is quite easy to angle your jumps wrong and fall down, or to time your jumps wrong and alert most of the shipping yard as you pass overhead.
** However, many players choose to use the Hot Lava 2.0 route once they learn how to perform it, as it skips directly past common guard and camera locations, and does in fact lead very reliably to two of the computer locations.

* "Sewer Rats" in GO Bank. It takes a very long time to transport all those bags via the sewers (not helped at all by the confusing layout of the tunnels), and the SWAT forces are very capable of swarming the place.
* "Not Today" requires you to kill a Cloaker with the [=GL40=] Grenade Launcher while he is trying to jump kick at you. Doing the achievement is tough due to the fact that Cloakers may decide to just bum rush you instead of doing a jump kick and the fact that Cloakers have enough health to survive one direct grenade blast, requiring you to weaken him first.
* "In Town You're the Law, Out Here It's Me" requires you to do the same as "Not Today", only you have to use a shotgun instead. While this takes projectile travel time and self-damage out of the equation, it also means that the Cloaker will need a lot more weakening, lest they end up grinding your face into the ground. And since one shotgun blast isn't terribly damaging on its own, you will need a shotgun that fires fast and does high damage. And of course, you'll have to try and force a Cloaker to jump kick you rather than simply charge at you, the latter of which Cloakers are much more fond of.
* "We Are All Professionals" requires completing GO Bank with no alarms and zero civilian casualties on the Overkill difficulty and above. This is especially difficult as players will have to control a map up to ~40 civilians with only two dozen cable ties, a feat that is nigh-impossible without the Stockholm Syndrome skill or killing civilians; assuming the crew can tie and move all bank civilians and guard bodies out the back, players will still have to deal with the civilians that constantly spawn into the map, as well as the [=GenSec=] and police that will shoot players on sight and alert everyone.
* "Tabula Rasa" requires players to complete Hoxton Breakout with zero skills and only wearing suits with only the Golden AK and Chicago Typewriter equipped as primary and secondary weapons. Needless to say, your team either needs to very VERY good or very VERY lucky, since Hoxton Breakout can only be done loud, meaning you're constantly being shot at with minimal protection, and both the Golden AK and Chicago Typewriter are not ideal weapons to handle Shields and Bulldozers, and there are no skills either, which means you can't even use basic equipment and lack all of the passive buffs and abilities that would make the heist manageable. It's even worse with the SWAT van turrets active during Day 1, which are conventionally handled by ''[=RPGs=]''. The only saving graces you will have are that you still get access to Perk Decks[[note]]It is recommended that you pick a perk deck that improves your Dodge abilities, like the Rogue deck[[/note]], and your AK and Typewriter can be modified however you wish, unlike the similar "Here Comes the Pain Train" achievement for Firestarter.

* "Knockout" requires players to kill a Bulldozer by using the Overkill Boxing Gloves. Basically, take the "Are You Kidding Me?" (kill a Bulldozer with knife) achievement, swap out the knife with boxing gloves, and pray that the Bulldozer doesn't down you when you get close to him (requiring the player to weaken them before delivering the final blow). To make matters worse, the achievement was bugged during Update #51 where people connected to the host could not damage the Bulldozer with the gloves.
* "Breaking Dead" requires the player to find the hidden meth lab on the Moretta in the Bomb: Dockyard heist. The problem is that the lab ''might'' be hidden in one of the many containers on the ship, and more likely than not the lab doesn't spawn at all.
** A patch made the meth lab now guaranteed to spawn, mercifully making this one a non-issue.
* "Overdose" is not only an achievement that relies on RNG, but also a case of GuideDangIt. The achievement requires the player to cook and secure 6 bags of meth on day 1 of the Hotline Miami job. Only the game will decide whether or not the map will have enough chemicals for 6 bags worth of meth - three or four are guaranteed in various boxes in the basement, requiring the player to open the boxes in very specific order, and the lab itself might only have a single set.
* "King of the Hill" from the Park Escape is brutal. Not only does it take place in the Park Escape getaway (which only has a chance of spawning after specific days of specific missions that go loud), which makes even planning for an achievement run annoying, but the actual unlock requirements for the achievement are that [[HoldTheLine no law enforcer can enter the titular park in the center of the map until the secondary escape van arrives (which can take anywhere from 2-4 minutes)]]. The park in question is the size of a city block, cops can enter the park simply by climbing over the walls while players are restricted to 3 gates on random sides of the park, and the cops are plentiful. Even Sentry Gun spam isn't a viable option, as they'll run out of ammo very quickly and most "special" cops have enough health to scale the walls before the sentries can kill them. Ironically enough one of the best tactics is to hope to spawn in the parking lot across the street and camp out there hoping that the police won't try to cut through the park as a shortcut or during a tactical retreat, cementing this technique as a LuckBasedMission.
* "Reputation Beyond Reproach" requires you to complete Election Day's Plan C on Death Wish with a full four-man crew ''without any crew member being downed once''. Considering Plan C '''must''' be done loud, there is no way to avoid fighting, and on Death Wish, getting downed at least once is almost practically guaranteed.
* "120 Proof". This requires a four-man crew to kill at least 120 enemies with an overall crew accuracy of at least 120%. This means the entire crew must spam high-explosive weapons like the GL40, RPG, or shotguns with HE shells in order to complete.
* "Gone in 240 Seconds" requires Car Shop to be completed [[ShapedLikeItself in four minutes]]. While simply going loud and using the Normal difficulty's timer as a guideline may be simple, the RNG elements and the [[TheAllegedCar cars' heavy understeering]] mean it gets difficult fast. Not only can the Teuer Autos manager be in a spot that is just too far away from his office, but the IT employee's desk is completely randomized; one would have to check every office to find it, and it had better be in that cubicle area on the second floor or the office on the first floor! Even then, the computer will always take 100 seconds, or 1:40 minutes, giving you just over 2 minutes to complete ''every single objective in the map''[[note]]Update #157 reduced the time required to 60 seconds, making this achievement somewhat easier, but is balanced by making ECM jammers disrupt the hack[[/note]]. Bumping into things during the escape is a sure-fire way of losing this achievement.
* The "Overkill Salutes You!" achievement requires you to complete every single heist on the Death Wish difficulty. This is a problem threefolds: First off, you have to complete each heist individually from start to finish; so if you disconnect at any point, you're screwed. This is mitigated by being the host for the lobby, as you can never disconnect from yourself, but it also means you have to at least live through the entire heist from start to finish. The second part is that some of the heists are loud-only, which significantly ramps up the difficulty, especially the "staying alive" part mentioned before. Finally, this achievement changes over time; when a new heist is added, it gets added to this achievement too, meaning it was far easier to complete this achievement in 2014 than it is in 2018, as you will keep the achievement if new heists come out, but new players will have to complete the old ones ''and'' the new ones.
* Many of the Gage Sniper Pack achievements can be hairpullingly hard to accomplish. Some of the notable ones:

* The Gage Historical Pack adds "Death From Below" for snipers. You have to use the Nagant sniper rifle to kill 25 rappelling cops. The problem is that there aren't that many heists where it is easy to shoot rappelling cops. Either they don't rappel in the heist, or it's so short a distance that you would barely have time to shoot. Complicating matters, the Nagant is a bolt-action rifle with very slow reload and a five-round magazine, so you can easily be caught unable to fire on the cops you need to kill because you need a reload. Not to mention as well that the cops get invincibility frames when rappelling in certain instances (such as the initial jump down from a helicopter, before they actually start their full descent), meaning that if you waste your shot on a guy that ''can't'' be killed, he's likely going to be on the ground already by the time you're able to fire again.
* "City of Sin and Well-Oiled Gears" requires you to complete the Golden Grin Casino in loud while preventing the BFD from breaking even once. Much like Afraid of the Dark, the drilling process takes several minutes, even with if upgrades are purchased. The biggest problem is the number of ways the drill can "break": if cops reach the circuit boxes (two of them by default, though can be reduced to one with an upgrade), if the cops reach the drill's controls, and if the BFD runs out of coolant water, which requires trips to and from the bathrooms carrying a heavy coolant tank and a delay to fill it, requiring either a well co-ordinated team spread out across the hall of the casino or a large number of Sentry Guns. Getting downed once provides enough of a delay that any one of these breaking causes might be triggered, forcing a restart from the very beginning of the level.
* "The Turtle Always Wins" is necessary if you want to unlock some of the mods that are part of the The Butcher's AK/CAR Mod Pack DLC. It involves completing the Art Gallery Heist in stealth with four players wearing the Improved Combined Tactical Vest, all within 4 minutes. If you're not a stealth-oriented player, it would be difficult enough just to successfully stealth a mission where you're already going to get screwed over by the locations and numbers of the stealable paintings and whether or not the doorways to the back areas where the most paintings are likely to be will have motion sensors across them that only the guards can pass through without setting off. Now add on that you're on an extremely strict time-limit, you're moving as slow as molasses even when sprinting because you're in the heaviest armor, and the guards will be easily alerted should they see or hear you. The closest to an easy way to do this is simply ECM rushing, and even then you need nearly a full team of players with fully-upgraded ECM jammers just to have enough time on them.
* "Here Comes The Pain Train" is something of an inversion of "Tabula Rasa". You need to complete Firestarter on at least Overkill difficulty with a full 4-person team, using the AK assault rifle and Para submachine gun. There is no restrictions on your armor or skill sets, but you ''do'' need to have completely unmodified guns - even having previously put on and then removed the fire-rate-restricting mods doesn't count for it due to an oversight. And unlike Tabula Rasa, where the only restriction was that everyone ''present'' worked under the restrictions of the achievement (meaning you could easily do it solo, even with bots at least prior to the Henchmen update), here you '''need''' a full four-person team working under the achievement's restrictions. Worse is that unlike Hoxton Breakout, Firestarter is a ''three''-day job; it does make up for this somewhat by Day 3 being rather easy to stealth (in comparison to the massive pain that is stealthing Day 2), but that still gives even more chances for someone to disconnect at an inopportune time and not get the achievement because they didn't technically do the whole thing in one go (anyone who doesn't disconnect gets it so long as there is a full four-person team at the point they complete the heist).

*** This throws a serious monkey wrench in a stealth, as you can only carry one body bag at a time, and getting more in Pre-Planning requires you to have a skill, or to sacrifice your ECM jammer for a bodybag case, the drills are loud, so you NEED to find the keybox, you can't disable cameras with a feedback loop, and you can't sprint as fast.
*** Doing it on loud is even harder, as you'll need powerful firearms, a good amount of armor, and a hell of a lot of luck.

ThatOneLevel: Due to the [[FakeDifficulty unfair]] nature of the game, there are a lot of them. Some heavily favor one approach over another, making them agonizing if you're using the "wrong" build. Others are easy with an experienced crew but a nightmare with a poorly-coordinated, inexperienced group. A few are just sadistic. Here is a run-down:
* Big Oil:
** If you refuse to play on single-player, you ''will'' need either totally cooperative strangers or friends. Playing with neither of these will screw up the entire heist before it's started. Additionally, the heist depends on getting the right intel and identifying which of the several machines is the only correct one.
** Day 1 requires you to steal intel from the Overkill MC. Getting caught before gathering it all means the Overkill MC bikers will try to burn it, and since it tends to be in three/four separate rooms, you need to be stealthy or carefully plan an assault. Failure prevents any sort of bonus in Day 2.
** On Day 2, figuring out the right engine requires remembering intel and checking info on boards around the basement to figure it out. If you're playing with the wrong people, expect someone to assume it is a standard heist ''and begin urgently bagging up all the machines indiscriminately.'' In other words, they begin piling them into unmarked bags (i.e. making the machines impossible to tell apart) and try to charge to the chopper; since it can take around five minutes to summon the chopper and have the machines checked one at a time for authenticity, expect to die or run out of ammo before you find the right one.

** Another thing that discourages most players from playing is that Big Oil was only available as a Pro Job, meaning players don't really get good chances to learn the mechanics of the heist since they can't restart if they screw up. Update #100 for the PC version thankfully removed pro jobs entirely, allowing for trial and error to learn the heist if the need be.
* Framing Frame:
** Day 3 requires stealing gold from a senator[[note]]and if you want [[VideoGame/RAIDWorldWarII Sterling's Beret]] from the Aldstone's Heritage Side Jobs, a case of old wine[[/note]] or (should you fail the stealth) uploading incriminating data from his computer. However, the biggest pain arises from the senator's gold vault; should the team ever be discovered, even if they've already secured one or more bags of gold, the rest must be abandoned and the stealth approach must be dropped. Naturally, these can mean a misstep of one person can leave the team without the achievement/trophy and with only a fraction of what they could have stolen. A recent patch finally addressed this by allowing you to keep zip-lining bags of gold if you make it that far, but then the mission logic glitches...

* Hoxton Breakout, while an otherwise entertaining and fair level, has some unpleasant portions:
** In Day 1, the crew must find the control room to lower bollards that are in the way of the armored truck's escape route. There can be many rooms to open, requiring up to 20 seconds of lockpicking, or C4. The bad news is that there is no indication where the control room is, and the rooms are spread out. Pray the control room is in the first door opened...
** With the introduction of the SWAT Van Turret, Day 1 has become a nightmare during the street portion (especially if attempting Tabula Rasa, which requires using no skills and wearing no armor on Overkill difficulty). A SWAT Van Turret has a chance of spawning at every horizontal turn, especially near the parking lot entrance. You could even get a turret spawn on both sides, essentially sandwiching you between two rapid-fire turrets. While there is enough cover to save yourself from one turret, when they spawn on both sides of the road it becomes near impossible to dodge the damage without running in circles. And that's on top of everyone else after your ass.
** In Day 2, there are some tasks that require far more dedication than others. The worst of the lot by far is searching for Witness Testimonies; always located at the very bottom of the level (where the main fighting arena is closer to the top), has a door that must be lockpicked, AND one that must be drilled (though both can be blown up with C4). ''Then'' the crew must search a large archive for the right file. RNG strikes again; it may take a ''very'' long time to find the file, so don't be surprised if the right one is always whichever one you save for last. The worst part is the hostage rescue teams may free hostages while a player is stuck searching below!
** The second worst is the DNA Scan; again, two doors must be opened (one via lockpicking, the other must use a drill), and files marked "Clown Case" must be put through the DNA scanner. Each scan takes half a minute. The one saving grace of this task is that it is actually close to the operations room, and the two doors can be dealt with simultaneously.
** There are four possible ways into Operations, but anywhere between two and four of them can appear. The mission is much harder if only the two side entrances are available - This means any time you have to leave Ops you have to run past the two snipers that are nearly always set up across from you and any assignment you have is going to take longer simply because of the added time it takes to get there.
** On the flipside, if all four ways are opened, it leaves the crew ''very'' vulnerable to enemy invasions from all flanks. Provided that some doors won't spawn it becomes easier and less costly to shut down the doors and save the keycards for objectives.
** The spawn location of the fuse box can also make this heist frustratingly difficult. If the fusebox spawns under ANY balcony, the cops can actually just jump down and instantly turn it off. Each time it's turned off it adds 60 seconds to the hack. If you get this spawn location and don't watch the balconies very carefully, you'll end up staying in that operations room for a VERY long time.
* The sequel to the above, Hoxton Revenge, also has its fair share of frustrations:
** You have around 8-10 guards patrolling the interior of a fairly tiny house, with very few hiding spaces. This makes traversing the inside a nerve-wrecking job, since a guard could turn the corner at any minute. It also makes accomplishing the objectives difficult, as they require a lot of scavenger hunting through the house.
** The objectives themselves range from annoying to downright horrifying. The biggest one is the Retinal Scanner, which requires you to bundle up the only civilian on the map (the FBI Boss) and lead him to the scanner. Civilians are not fast, and sometimes he can be on a completely different floor than the Vault (although always relatively nearby). Combined with the amount of guards inside, it is frustratingly difficult at times to get him to the vault without a single guard seeing. Another notable one is the Telephone Pole, which has you shimmying up a telephone pole outside of the house to patch Bain in. This means going outside of the fence, which is surrounded by Murkywater guards. Worse still, they could path right to the base of the pole, making it impossible for you to get down without being seen.
* The Car Shop:
** Like Shadow Raid, this is a stealth-only mission that starts a timer when the alarm is triggered. While the heist overall is fairly straightforward, one sequence that can annoy players is the driving sequence at the end where the players must transport the stolen cars to the docks before a timer runs out. The controls for the car are ''extremely'' bad, and it's not uncommon to lose a lot of time just trying to keep the car from repeatedly crashing into walls. [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking Much like the Art Gallery, the exp/cash payout is quite poor]]. It also briefly enters GuideDangIt territory, as it is not explained ''where'' you need to drive the cars to - all you're told is to plant C4 on the road at one point, the game not bothering to explain that it's to blow a hole through (which you can't see from the car over the dashboard until you're driving into it), which opens up into an abandoned tunnel leading to the docks.
** On Mayhem and above, this heist not only gives you ''90'' seconds to get the car from the shop to the crates (meaning you basically have to make a perfect run at it, with minor collisions; getting detected will basically end the run right there because it takes that long just to open the door to the key storage) but it also has a high chance of spawning a guard right in front of the Manager's office, ''that won't move''. You pretty much have to kill him, but he also happens to be in one of the most highly patrolled areas of the map. Additionally, there can be as many as a dozen guards packed inside the relatively tiny dealership, making movement extremely difficult. This isn't even counting all the civilians that spawn inside, too!
** Almost any difficulty but Normal makes the heist a major pain in the ass to even beat it. Because the dealership is tiny, the paths that guards and civilians take can frequently cross each other, making the odds of being spotted or someone seeing a dead body extremely high. Sometimes it's just safer and faster to kill civilians and bag their bodies rather than tying them up and slowly leading them somewhere while running the risk of the hostage or yourself being spotted. Part of the major difficulty the heist presents comes from the amount of guards and civilians alone.
** There is absolutely no substantial reward in completing the mission either. The EXP payout is poor, the monetary payout is poor if only a few cars are secured (there aren't many skilled drivers in the ''Payday 2'' community), and there's no stealth bonus despite the majority of the mission being stealth-based.
*** Much of this was made a little easier in Update #157, in which the computer hacking now only takes 60 seconds regardless of difficulty. In addition, the guard guarding the manager's office is absent and none of them will patrol the offices anymore. [[FakeDifficulty Even then, the driving is still dangerously difficult for the wrong reasons]].

* The Golden Grin Casino, the last of The Dentist's jobs, is no walk in the park. When going loud, the crew must erect the BFD[[note]]Big Fucking Drill[[/note]], a plasma cutter that normally requires two power sockets and enough coolant tanks to keep it running. These three factors plus the console itself must be defended, requiring all four members to address each position lest the drill restart over and over due to interference. The drill itself, even when upgraded to cut through the fastest, takes a ''long time''. After that, it's an endless assault!
** Doing it silent is just as difficult. There are many steps in gassing the security room, involving stolen blueprints, finding three briefcases, scanning the guest rooms, and making a guy throw up. Sounds silly, but it's no joke; the guest in question must be fed a ''specific'' drink, which can be located in some of the worst spots imaginable. The guest himself may be surrounded by peeping toms or guards too.
*** Inside the vault The Dentist's mystery loot can only be accessed by bypassing a door and a laser. The laser has a random, but predictable pattern, but the noisy drill will almost certainly attract the attention of a guard, [[FakeDifficulty bringing him to a now breached security room]], which will make him panic. Even the lasers can be a very real problem on the way out with the Dentist's loot, as the loot is considered to be as heavy as the fusion reactor from Big Oil and the artifacts from Shadow Raid, and will slow you down to a crawl. Your timing with getting past the lasers has to be pretty much spot-on if you don't want to set off the alarm.
* Meltdown is another heist known for its difficulty. The team goes into the same Murkywater compound from Shadow Raid, taking on soldiers that are a little better armed and armored than the average cops. Then they have to look through the whole place for one container. If you're lucky, the container will be in the main building, the only area with good cover on the map. The rest of the Murkywater compound has snipers everywhere. Then you have to look for crowbars, having to find three just to complete the heist. It used to be if you wanted any extra loot, you'd have to use those crowbars to open the crates beforehand, because there wasn't an extra; a later update added a fourth crowbar, but you still have to look around for it. The loot itself leaves you incredibly slow, and the forklifts around can only carry three at most. They don't move particularly fast, either, nor are they armored, which wouldn't be a big deal except that the route to drop off the loot is a massive shooting gallery full of cops in impossible-to-reach, elevated positions. There are armored police vans with turrets guarding the way on higher difficulties, but any van will randomly decide to block off various paths to the dropoff point. The Longfellow car can make it easier, if it's found and if players bother to use it.
* Goat Simulator. As if the crossover itself wasn't contentious enough, the heist itself may well be the hardest in the game.
** Day 1 sees the crew roaming around the city in search of goats, which [[MakesJustAsMuchSenseInContext have had cocaine smuggled inside their rectums]]. Sounds simple? It isn't. The map is massive, requiring the Longfellow in order to get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time, and the goats could ''be'' anywhere - hidden in buildings, trapped on scaffolding, stuck behind gates or on top of lampposts, requiring the use of a drill or saw respectively, and regardless of difficulty, one is guaranteed to appear at the top of a burning building, which is of course going to be swarming with cops. As for the goats themselves, they are a rather unique type of loot in that they can ''damage you''. The Longfellow is also intended to help carry the goats, but it can only carry a set few at the time, so you will have to fill up the trunk, get to the semi, drop off the goats, repeat, until you have all the goats. This is made even more frustrating in that none of the goats' locations, aside from the last one, are marked out for you, only revealing themselves as you get close. The Longfellow itself can break down if it gets too damaged, just to make it worse. And then there is the big problem: a severe lack of cover. There are several buildings that should be used as functional cover, but they all have very large glass windows, rendering them more likely to get you killed. Clearly, this map was designed around Swan Song.
** Day 2 is even worse. The day begins with you having a shootout on the farm with the Honduran cartel who got you into this mess, where the map's problems quickly rear their ugly head - in that this map somehow has even less cover than Day 1. The farmhouse is barren, and has several holes that you can be shot through, and that's as good as the cover is going to get here. And once the cartel dies down and the police arrive, you're forced to take the goats out of the barn, and set up a fulton cage for Vlad's brother Bubba to fly in and extract them. And just like on GO Bank, the cage has no protection from the cops stealing the cargo. And if you forget even one of the goats (or it gets stolen out of the cage by cops), you'll have to do the whole process over again. Once that's done, you need to unload the Longfellow from the truck, and drive to a nearby bridge. Once you arrive, you'll find that the bridge is out, and you are once again surrounded by cops. You have to get into the security room using a drill, or a saw or C4 if you happened to bring them, and just to rub it in, once you get in, you finally get some cover in the form of some shutters! Until you activate the bridge, at which point the shutters raise up. Once the bridge is in place, you can finally get back in the Longfellow and make a run for it. At least you'll get an above average payday for your efforts.
* Brooklyn 10-10 is a rather nasty heist. The main objective is to shoot down cops that chase after Charon, a protectee of yours. Surprisingly, this is not the hard part. The hard part is having to deal with the swathes of cops that rush in while you watch out for Charon. And your movement space in the levels is very, very limited and the cover is woefully inadequate, so finding a safe spot to lick your wounds is often an exercise in futility. A little while later, you have to drill a pair of gates whilst under all the above-mentioned pressure (and the drills jam very frequently, given how short the ETA to completion is). There is also some extra loot that you can get out, but with all the bullets coming at you, you'd be hard-pressed to resist the urge to make a run for it.

* Brooklyn Bank is pretty similar to the Harvest & Trustee bank heists from the game's early days, in that you bust open the vault, get what you need and get out of there. And that's where the similarities end...
** The map is one big killzone, as the interior of the bank is cramped and likely to be flooded with cops, the second floor balcony is open to fire from the streets, and the streets have no cover whatsoever. No matter where you go, you'll be under fire from enemies, and the poor lighting can render faraway enemies, especially the hard-hitting Snipers, nearly invisible.
** The method of reaching and cracking the vault is randomized every time. To get to it, you have to either saw a shutter open, or cut a circle in the floor of the offices above, and blow it open with explosives. Then to open the vault, you have to either use a thermal drill, or weaken the locks on the door with thermal paste, and use a winch to pull the vault door off the hinges. But it gets worse; if you have to use the winch, there's a chance that the bags to assemble it may not be at the drop point, resulting in the bags being dropped to you via overpass. Then you have to watch out for cops attempting to stop your equipment, and we all know how fun that is.
* Both of the Heists included in the Spring Break 2018 event are brutal, for different reasons;
** Stealth-only heists have been a very mixed bag, and ''Breakin' Feds'' is unarguably the worst. A multi-level, corridor-centric maze ''infested'' with guards and cameras, with more guards spawning in if you kill a few. On higher difficulties, it is entirely possible for '''three''' guards to stand in a single corridor, and chances are you'll run from one guard into a room containing two more. The worst part is Commissioner Garrett. If he spots you at any point, you automatically fail the heist and he can't be killed (doing so will fail the heist as well). You need to move him out of his office, a temporary measure, and finding the box in said office is an exercise in frustration. And then, there's a chance that you won't actually ''find'' the box there, meaning you have to trudge across the map again to find it in the Evidence room. And finally, there's a chance that Twitch will blow up one of the walls as your escape, thus triggering a one-minute point of no return. It makes sense that the FBI offices would be this secure after Hoxton Breakout, but for anyone not 100% versed in ''Payday 2'''s wonky stealth mechanics, it's seriously aggravating and bordering on impossible. At least the objectives are simple and the door to the camera-controlling Security Room is a lockpick job rather than a keycard job.

* The White House, fittingly enough for the grand finale in the game, is absolutely brutal whether you choose to go Loud or Stealth it. If you go Loud, you have to locate certain wire boxes for Locke to hack, which aren't easily found despite being in plain sight ([[FakeDifficulty though the fact that they're small, cream-coloured boxes on cream-coloured walls might have something to do with it]]). Depending on the RNG, they'll either be in easily-defended spots, or right out in the open of the lobby being swarmed with massive amounts of cops. After that bit of unpleasantness, you fight your way to the Oval Office, where you have to wait for a drill that the cops can cut off the power to from multiple locations. And by the way, the drill can't be upgraded and cover in the Oval Office is pitifully-inadequate. And that's assuming that the cops don't just flood it with tear gas. And afterwards, you have to run to the PEOC on the other side of the map, while taking a new route leading you out into the open with lots of enemies, no cover and a van turret to go with it. Then, when you're actually in the PEOC, you have to hack a computer three times in one of the worst places in the whole game. Multiple places for cops to spawn, which they do in ''droves'', the cops are willing to flood the room with tear gas, and once more, there's virtually no good cover. And that's ignoring the two turrets on the ceiling raining down lead on your group the whole while. Even after that, you have to run back outside, and complete ''yet another'' hack to get rid of some AA guns so Locke can pick you up! With, [[RuleOfThree again]], no cover. Overkill spared no detail on the endgame, clearly.
** The Secret Ending is the absolute epitome of bullshit defense in this game. [[spoiler:It requires four players who've all completed the prerequisite activation of the artifact, which in itself is a confusing, drawn-out, arduous feat. Once you reach the entrance to the resurrection chamber, you have to defend yourself against an infinite army of Phantom Cloakers while trying to decode the language on the door four times. Screw up, you have to decode all the phrases again from the top. The Cloakers won't stop until you open the door, so if no one knows how to decode the door's writing, you're doomed. But wait! There's more! The Dentist will eventually show up at the chamber door holding Locke and Bain at gunpoint; you need to attack and kill the Dentist as soon as he comes into view, otherwise he'll kill his hostages and instantly fail your run. And then it's STILL not over! Once the Dentist is dead, you need to set several bars of gold into the indents around the chamber within a set amount of time in order to complete the heist, otherwise, you guessed it, instant failure. THEN it's over.]] Those who choose to stop after completing the Heist normally are absolutely blameless in the face of this.

ThatOneBoss: While there aren't many bosses outside the EliteMooks in the game, they still put up a hell of a fight. Any inexperienced group won't have a pleasant time.
* The Commissar on higher difficulties, the FinalBoss in the Hotline Miami heist, packs a [[{{BFG}} light machine gun]], a weapon normally reserved for the Death Wish-exclusive Skulldozers. If he isn't eliminated quickly, he'll more than likely down the crew a few times.

* [[spoiler:Hector]] doesn't pack as much of a punch due only using an IZHMA shotgun like the black Bulldozer, but also has a lot of health on par with a Bulldozer except the massive headshot multiplier.
** That is, of course, if the crew decides to fight [[spoiler:Hector]] in loud. If they deal with him in stealth, he goes down in a single hit from the weakest weapon.
* Captain Winters is a more prevalent example. Upon his arrival, the assault turns endless, enemies become stronger (damage resistance up to 50%), and his team will ''never'' budge from their position. While explosives and sniper rifles make engaging him much easier, anyone who lacks any sort of DLC will find him nigh-unstoppable, and those with DLC can have significant issues even getting near him.

* While not a "boss" in and of itself, there is one enemy that towers amongst all others in terms of sheer annoyance; the Minigun Dozer. These abominations can soak a lot of damage, have as much health as one, are laser accurate out to a surprisingly long range and in certain heists can spawn in places where their sluggish speed is no hinderance to them. Originally resticted to high-level Crime Sprees, Overkill thought it would be just swell to place them into the main difficulty levels, specifically Death Wish (where they spawn rarely) and Death Sentence (where they spawn ''constantly'').

* ScrewedByTheLawyers: On October 1st, 2020, the Scarface Character Pack was removed from sale on Steam and Consoles for licensing reasons. This is a particularly odd example, as the Scarface ''Heists'' Pack is still up for sale, and by extension that allows them to use iconography and the name of the [=IP=] (so losing the Scarface name and trademark is out of the running too), so it seems to pertain to Scarface himself being the issue. Overkill haven't clarified what the issue is, but the theories are three-fold; Either the Voice Actors' contract expired, or Universal wanted to charge more money that Overkill didn't have to continue using the character.

* Meltdown is another heist known for its difficulty. The team goes into the same Murkywater compound from Shadow Raid, taking on soldiers that are a little better armed and armored than the average cops. Then they have to look through the whole place for one container. If you're lucky, the container will be in the main building, the only area with good cover on the map. The rest of the Murkywater compound has snipers everywhere. Then you have to look for crowbars, having to find three just to complete the heist. It used to be if you wanted any extra loot, you'd have to use those crowbars to open the crates beforehand, because there wasn't an extra; a later update added a fourth crowbar, but you still have to look around for it. The loot itself leaves you incredibly slow, and the forklifts around can only carry three at most. They don't move particularly fast, either, nor are they armored, which wouldn't be a big deal except that the route to drop off the loot is a massive shooting gallery full of cops in impossible-to-reach, elevated positions. The Longfellow car can make it easier, if it's found and if players bother to use it.

** Day 2 is even worse. The day begins with you having a shootout on the farm with the Honduran cartel who got you into this mess, where the map's problems quickly rear their ugly head - in that this map somehow has even less cover than Day 1. The farmhouse is barren, and has several holes that you can be shot through, and that's as good as the cover is going to get here. And once the cartel dies down and the police arrive, you're forced to take the goats out of the barn, and set up a fulton cage for Vlad's brother Bubba to fly in and extract them. And just like on GO Bank, the cage has no protection from the cops stealing the cargo. And if you forget even one of the goats, you'll have to do the whole process over again. Once that's done, you need to unload the Longfellow from the truck, and drive to a nearby bridge. Once you arrive, you'll find that the bridge is out, and you are once again surrounded by cops. You have to get into the security room using a drill, or a saw or C4 if you happened to bring them, and just to rub it in, once you get in, you finally get some cover in the form of some shutters! Until you activate the bridge, at which point the shutters raise up. Once the bridge is in place, you can finally get back in the Longfellow and make a run for it. At least you'll get an above average payday for your efforts.

** Stealth-only heists have been a very mixed bag, and ''Breakin' Feds'' is unarguably the worst. A multi-level, corridor-centric maze ''infested'' with guards and cameras, with more guards spawning in if you kill a few. On higher difficulties, it is entirely possible for '''three''' guards to stand in a single corridor, and chances are you'll run from one guard into a room containing two more. The worst part is Commissioner Garrett. If he spots you at any point, you automatically fail the heist and he can't be killed (doing so will fail the heist as well). You need to move him out of his office, a temporary measure, and finding the box in said office is an exercise in frustration. And then, there's a chance that you won't actually ''find'' the box there, meaning you have to trudge across the map again to find it in the Evidence room. And finally, there's a chance that Twitch will blow up one of the walls as your escape, thus triggering a one-minute point of no return. It makes sense that the FBI offices would be this secure after Hoxton Breakout, but for anyone not 100% versed in Payday 2's wonky stealth mehanics, it's seriously aggravating and bordering on impossible. At least the objectives are simple and the door to the camera-controlling Security Room is a lockpick job rather than a keycard job.
** Simply put, ''Henry's Rock'' is the epitome of Overkill's general failings in level design for Loud heists; It suffers from little to no cover, enemy spawns everywhere, an overabundance of special spawns, objectives that involve a lot of messing about, heavy loot bags you need to shift through open spaces peppered with guards, and everything in-between. You have to hack your way out of one room (which has no cover), then into the main hall (which also has no cover) before exploring two randomly selected rooms. In terms of the four rooms in question, one is somewhat easy and straightfoward[[note]]the computer lab simply has you interact with certain computers, then operate a crane with a crowbar in the main hall[[/note]], two are frustrating[[note]]the weapons testing room has one aim and fire an experimental laser cannon with multiple steps and many places the cops can shut it down, while the archeology room is a mini puzzle in and of itself[[/note]] and one is downright infuriating[[note]]the chemical lab has one play reverse-Rats in order to mix a concoction to burn open a shutter door, while having to defend the chem machine from cops shooting it and you from literally every angle[[/note]]. After that, heave the bags back to the start, hack two turrets on either side of the helipad and then wait for Bile to show up before hoisting the bags into his helicoptor, all with - you guessed it - no cover. Naturally, the heist is often derogatorily [[FanNickname referred to as Henry's Cock]], because you are going to get ''fucked'' by it.

* Captain Winters is a more prevalent example. Upon his arrival, the assault turns endless, enemies become stronger, and his team will ''never'' budge from their position. While explosives and sniper rifles make engaging him much easier, anyone who lacks any sort of DLC will find him nigh-unstoppable.

* Meltdown is another heist known for its difficulty. The team goes into the same Murkywater compound from Shadow Raid, taking on soldiers that are a little better armed and armored than the average cops. Then they have to look through the whole place for one container. If you're lucky, the container will be in the main building, the only area with good cover on the map. The rest of the Murkywater compound has snipers everywhere. Then you have to look for crowbars, having to find three just to complete the heist. If you want any extra look, you have to use those crowbars to open the crates beforehand, because there aren't extras. The loot itself leaves you incredibly slow, and the forklifts around can only carry three at most. They don't move particularly fast, either, nor are they armored, which wouldn't be a big deal except that the route to drop off the loot is a massive shooting gallery full of cops in impossible-to-reach, elevated positions. The Longfellow car can make it easier, if it's found and if players bother to use it.

** Day 1 sees the crew roaming around the city in search of goats, which [[MakesJustAsMuchSenseInContext have had cocaine smuggled inside their rectums]]. Sounds simple? It isn't. The map is massive, requiring the Longfellow in order to get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time, and the goats could ''be'' anywhere - hidden in buildings, trapped on scaffolding, stuck behind gates or on top of lampposts, requiring the use of a drill or saw respectively, and regardless of difficulty, one is guaranteed to appear at the top of a burning building, which is of course going to be swarming with cops. As for the goats themselves, they are a rather unique type of loot in that they can ''damage you''. The Longfellow is also intended to help carry the goats, but it can only carry a set few at the time, so you will have to fill up the trunk, get to the semi, drop off the goats, repeat, until you have all the goats, which is made even more frustrating in that none of the goats' locations, aside from the last one, are marked out for you. And then there is the big problem: a severe lack of cover. There are several buildings that should be used as functional cover, but they all have very large glass windows, rendering them more likely to get you killed. Clearly, this map was designed around Swan Song.

** The same applies to the Hitman deck, which has the dubious distinction of being the only deck with a significant ''penalty''. Especially now that dual-wielding pistols no longer requires a specific skill, ''nobody'' ever uses it anymore.
** Hardly anyone invested points in the Technician Tree, since it doesn't contribute to supporting supplies (like the Mastermind's Doctor Bag, Enforcer's Ammo Bag, or Fugitive's First Aid Kit), nor does it have many benefits over what the Fugitive and Ghost tree provide in stealth. It doesn't help that the Sentry Gun is another TierInducedScrappy. That said, it was RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap with the addition of the "Jack of All Trades" skill, which normally lets you place and interact with deployables twice as fast as normal (which especially stacks well with the Mastermind's boosts to deployment speed for first-aid kits and doctor bags), and when aced allows you to carry a ''secondary'' deployable, with half as many instances as you'd get if it were a primary one (e.g. only one body bag case even if you have the skill to carry two).

** And, finally, melee. Out of over a hundred different weapons and counting with ''every'' update, only five are even barely useful without significant skill investment; the four status effect weapons, which either tase or poison on hit, and the ice pick, which has top stats in every respect except charge time. Even with skills, some of which are actively detrimental, there are still a few dozen or so knives, five machetes, three hammers, and a variety of gimmick weapons ranging from a chainsaw to a medieval buckler to an ''improvised american flag spear'' that all have no special functions or even uniqueness to them beyond cosmetic differences, and were all pretty much a waste of time to use until a couple perk decks got an unexpectedly insane multiplier to melee damage.

** The web series teaser trailer for ''Payday 2'' also generated complaints of Houston (formerly named Hoxton) not looking or sounding like he does in the actual game. Similar complaints were made for the rest of the crew.
*** More complaining ensued when it was confirmed that [[https://twitter.com/locust9/status/347669714346057730 most of the characters from the first game will have new voice actors based on the web series]], [[ReplacementScrappy something that the community heavily disliked]]. One of the developers couldn't go into detail on why they had to use a new set of voice actors other than "it's a long story". It was also confirmed that New Hoxton is a new character (Dallas' younger brother) using the old alias, while Old Hoxton was left behind after a job went bad and was arrested. While the fanbase had warmed up to the new Dallas and Chains a little bit, everyone ''hated'' New Hoxton[[note]]Houston[[/note]] having an American accent instead of a British accent.

** Patch 11 made the Bulldozer more durable and spawn more often than he should have, broke all armor's defensive values (the Improved Combined Tactical Vest only provided as much protection as the two-piece suit), ''and'' made gangsters and blue SWAT deal triple damage, causing massive complaints from people saying the game is too hard.

** After stealth bonuses were introduced, Overkill quickly removed the stealth bonus and the body bag asset from day 1 of Firestarter, insisting that the level is not supposed to be stealthed - now alerting the patrolling Mendozas instantly sets everyone else on alert. [[note]]Being able to move several heavy bags of weapons to the van without resistance puts the method into near GameBreaker territory.[[/note]] People who were able to stealth the heist in the past were visibly upset by the changes.

** The Border Crossing heist isn't looked upon favorably in comparison to other heists. While the heist being made was understandable from a financial viewpoint[[note]] VideoGame/RaidWorldWarII being a flop, the aftermath of the investigations on Starbreeze, ''and'' the failure of VideoGame/OverkillsTheWalkingDead, all of which lead Overkill to make more content for Payday to keep the company afloat.[[/note]], Border Crossing was heavily criticized for being mostly a rehash of many previous assets (American side was using assets borrowed from Big Oil and Rats, and the Mexico Side was very obviously using assets from both Firestarter and Optimal-Day 2 of Big Oil in every inch of the map). This didn't stop some from buying the new DLC in hopes of Overkill improving their financial situation, and while the San Martin Bank Heist still has ''some'' reused assets (from Big Bank, the same computers are used, along with the vault, and even the Beast drill being reused), it was significantly less noticeable (Assets were retextured for a start) and was mostly agreed to be a drastic improvement in terms of level originality and fun.

* UncannyValley: Despite the character models being more realistic than in VideoGame/PAYDAYTheHeist, some characters, [[https://i.ytimg.com/vi/vei_btofEqs/maxresdefault.jpg especially the bank tellers, look like reanimated corpses]] [[ThousandYardStare with their blank stares.]]

** There are mods that can [[BodyHorror horribly disfigure]] the PAYDAY Gang including the civilians and the cops themselves (Like the "[[HumanoidAbomination Spaghetti Cloaker]]" mod). One of the most notable mods is [[https://modworkshop.net/mydownloads.php?action=view_down&did=16865#prevsbox the one that replaces EVERY heister's face texture with]] [[VideoGame/HotlineMiami Jacket]]'s face! Even though many said that it is [[MemeticMutation the PAYCHECK Crew]], but also pretty unsettling... [[Funny/PAYDAY2 and funny at the same time.]] Ironically, someone referred the mod as "[[CrossesTheLineTwice Jiro: Completely Potato Pack]]".
** The recently released "[[https://modworkshop.net/mydownloads.php?action=view_down&did=22448 Thicc Garrett]]" mod is like this while falling into NightmareFuel territory. It simply turns Commissioner Garrett into a rather [[FatBastard obese]] {{Gonk}} while bearing a PsychoticSmirk, which is pretty disturbing to watch. There is also the "[[https://modworkshop.net/mydownloads.php?action=view_down&did=22448 Thicc Kento]]" mod, also by the same team, so did the other characters as well.

** Released modding tools allowing players to create custom gun skins and share them online as well as add Steam Workshop for Weapon Skins.

* Brooklyn 10-10 is a rather nasty heist. The main objective is to shoot down cops that chase after Charon, a protectee of yours. Surprisingly, this is not the hard part. The hard part is having to deal with the swathes of cops that rush in while you watch out for Charon. And your movement space in the levels is very very limited and the cover is woefully inadequate, so finding a safe spot to lick your wounds is often an exercise in futility. A little while later, you have to drill a pair of gates whilst under all the above-mentioned pressure (and the drills jam very frequently, given how short the ETA to completion is). There is also some extra loot that you can get out, but with all the bullets coming at you, you'd be hard-pressed to resist the urge to make a run for it.

** Stealth-only heists have been a very mixed bag, and ''Breakin' Feds'' is unarguably the worst. A multi-level, corridor-centric maze ''infested'' with guards and cameras, with more guards spawning in if you kill a few. On higher difficulties, it is entirely possible for '''three''' guards to stand in a single corridor, and chances are you'll run from one guard into a room containing two more. The worst part is Commissioner Garrett. If he spots you at any point, you automatically fail the heist and he can't be killed (doing so will fail the heist as well). You need to move him out of his office, a temporary measure, and finding the box in said office is an exercise in frustration. And then, there's a chance that you won't actually ''find'' the box there, meaning you have to trudge across the map again to find it in the Evidence room. And finally, there's a chance that Twitch will blow up one of the walls as your escape, thus triggering a one-minute point of no return. It makes sense that the FBI offices would be this secure after Hoxton Breakout, but for anyone not 100% versed in Payday 2's wonky stealth mehanics, it's aggravating bordering on impossible. At least the objectives are simple and the door to the camera-controlling Security Room is a lockpick job.

** The Secret Ending is the epitemy of bullshit defense.[[spoiler:It requires four players who've completed the prerequisite activation of the artifact. Once you reach the entrance to the resurrection chamber, you have to defend yourself against an army of phantom cloakers while trying to decode the language on the door four times. If you screw up, you have to do decode all the phrases AGAIN. The cloakers are endless until you open the door, and if no one knows how to decode the door's writing, you're effectively doomed. Thought you were done? NOPE. The Dentist will eventually show up at the chamber door holding Locke and Bain at gunpoint; you need to attack and kill the Dentist as soon as he appears, otherwise he'll kill his hostages and instantly fail your run. STILL NOT DONE. Once the Dentist is dead, you need to set several bars of gold into the indents around the chamber within a set amount of time in order to complete the heist, otherwise, you guessed it, instant failure.]]

* HypocriticalFandom:
** Fans have complained about how ''PAYDAY 2'' feels too much like a grindfest with all the money and EXP they need to get everything, yet they want the same sorts of challenges that the first game had, which were mostly grinding as well since most of the challenges were "Kill X amount of cops with weapon Y".
** And then the Gage Assault Weapon Pack DLC introduced weapons with parts unlocked by completing challenges (achievements), and the fans complained again, even though that was, again, essentially how you unlocked attachments for weapons in the first game. After the Big Bank, however, Overkill has for the most part done away with this, presumably because of how difficult some of the achievements to get attachments for its weapon can be.
** Many fans wanted to be able to play as different characters than the main four, and ideas for such were popular on the forums. So far, though, every character addition except Old Hoxton has led to a new slew of complaints, including a free character (Franchise/JohnWick) and the two most requested ideas, a female heister (Clover, then later Bonnie) and an ex-cop (Dragan). Some fans now complain the crew is getting too big (with 22 heisters in total as of the end of 2018).
** The idea of having in game advertisements (namely John Wick's character and DJ Alesso having a heist based on his concerts) has people decry Overkill as being "greedy" and ruining the game with advertisements, yet no one has a problem with Overkill including a lot of crossover material and references to ''VideoGame/HotlineMiami'' in the form of masks, a heist, and having Jacket as a playable character (though a lot of this reasoning has to do with the Miami heist being labelled as the BestLevelEver).

** The Border Crossing heist isn't looked upon favorably in comparison to other heists. While the heist being made was understandable from a financial viewpoint[[note]] VideoGame/{{RaidWorldWarII}} being a flop, the aftermath of the investigations on Starbreez, ''and'' the failure of VideoGame/OverkillsTheWalkingDead, all of which lead Overkill to make more content for Payday to keep the company afloat.[[/note]], Border Crossing was heavily criticized for being mostly a rehash of many previous assets (American side was using assets borrowed from Big Oil and Rats, and the Mexico Side was very obviously using assets from both Firestarter and Optimal-Day 2 of Big Oil i every inch of the map). This didn't stop some from buying the new DLC in hopes of Overkill improving their financial situation, and while the San Martin Bank Heist still has ''some'' reused assets (from Big Bank, the same computers are used, along with the vault, and even the Beast drill being reused[[/note]], it was significantly less noticeable (Assets were retextured for a start) was mostly agreed to be a drastic improvement in terms of level originality and fun.

** The Border Crossing heist, while understandable from a viewpoint[[note]]Coming right after the White House heist and the aftermath of the investigations on Starbreeze and the failure of VideoGame/OverkillsTheWalkingDead[[/note]], was heavily criticized for being mostly a rehash of many previous assets, even by the game's current standards. This didn't stop some from buying the new DLC in hopes of Overkill improving their financial situation, and while the San Martin Bank Heist was agreed to still have some reused assets from Big Bank[[note]]same computers used, along with vault and even the Beast drill being reused[[/note]], it was mostly agreed to be a drastic improvement in terms of originality and fun.

* PortingDisaster:
** The Xbox 360 and [=PlayStation=] 3 ports. Besides a few major, free updates, the console versions seriously trailed behind in a way that parallels the ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2'' console fiasco.[[note]][=TF2=] on PC is ''still'' being updated more than a decade after it first came out. The most recent [=TF2=] console update was for the Xbox 360 in '''2009''', and that was a full year after its '''three''' updates in 2008.[[/note]] 360 users were told it was an issue of Microsoft's ExecutiveMeddling seen with [=TF2=]'s frequent-yet-sizeable updates; [=PS3=] users were told they would be up to date come early 2014, which turned into [[ShrugOfGod "when it's ready"]].

** The console ports in general have a history of getting shafted. The "Crimewave Edition" on [=PS4=] and Xbox One, at one point, went over '''400 days''' without a patch, and when they finally got updated, it was only for the content released up to 2015... which, at the time of release, still put the console versions more than six months behind the PC version.
** Roughly a week before the Switch port was released in February 2018, [[https://www.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/comments/7yv8gr/please_do_not_buy_payday_2_for_switch_its_a/ it was revealed that the port was wildly out of date]], '''nearly two years behind the PC version at release''' (the Switch port was made around the time of the "Most Wanted" edition, which had content up to the PC's Update #100 in June 2016, and apparently never updated at any point after that). To add insult to injury, this meant that the Switch port was even further behind the most recent [=PS4=] and Xbox One versions at the time of its release (the "Master Plan Edition"), which was itself several months out of date by that point (containing all of the updates up to May 2017). On top of that, the Switch version is missing a fair amount of content that the PC version had even before Update 100. For one, not only were achievements nixed, but side jobs as well, meaning all weapon modifications must now be obtained through card drops (aside from Mod Courier Pack mods). And if that wasn't bad enough...it runs horribly, with the game constantly dipping below 30fps, especially on more intensive heists like Golden Grin or Alesso. But hey, at least you got exclusive access to Joy... well, for about six months.
** In a similar theme to that of the console ports, the Linux port constantly gets ignored by Overkill when PC event updates go live, and when it doesn't, the updates break either the very point and feature of the update, something completely unrelated to the update, or the game itself in ways that the Windows version rarely has to deal with (and who rarely have to wait more than a single day for the devs to fix, unlike on Linux where updates are normally next-day affairs). And while the port itself is generally rather good, supporting all the DLC the Windows version has, a lot of the initial features from the Windows version weren't supported by the Linux version on release. Mod_overrides support wasn't included natively until it was added to [=BLT4Linux=] sometime between June and August of 2017. The reason for this ambiguous date? Overkill updated the Linux port to support Mod_overrides after modders had already added it in unofficially, '''without telling anyone!'''. This isn't even going into Workshop support, which isn't supported on Linux, or the incompatibility of certain mods running [=BeardLib=]. Also the game's TrueEnding can't be unlocked on Linux, raising the question of if the devs really thought that no one plays the Linux port of the game.

** The shit officially hit the fan after Overkill announced that the Gage Weapon packs and Armored Transport would be the end of the DLC for [=PS3=] and 360 players in favor of shifting console focus onto the [=PS4=] and Xbox One's [[UpdatedRereleae "Crime Wave" version]]. While many last-gen gamers began to suspect this due to the constant delays and lack of updates, many who were waiting since the beginning have no end of contempt and rage for Overkill at their respective systems getting the shaft. The fact that the DLC heists are widely considered to be some of the best in the series has only rubbed more salt into an already giant wound.

** The shit officially hit the fan after Overkill announced that the Gage Weapon packs and Armored Transport would be the end of the DLC for [=PS3=] and 360 players in favor of shifting console focus onto the [=PS4=] and Xbox One's [UpdatedRereleae "Crime Wave" version]]. While many last-gen gamers began to suspect this due to the constant delays and lack of updates, many who were waiting since the beginning have no end of contempt and rage for Overkill at their respective systems getting the shaft. The fact that the DLC heists are widely considered to be some of the best in the series has only rubbed more salt into an already giant wound.

** In a similar theme to that of the console ports, the Linux port constantly gets ignored by Overkill when PC event updates go live, and when it doesn't, the updates break either the very point and feature of the update, something completely unrelated to the update, or the game itself in ways that the Windows version rarely has to deal with (and who rarely have to wait more than a single day for the devs to fix, unlike on Linux where updates are normally next-day affairs). And while the port itself is generally rather good, supporting all the DLC the Windows version has, a lot of the initial features from the Windows version weren't supported by the Linux version on release. Mod_overrides support wasn't included natively until it was added to [=BLT4Linux=] sometime between June and August of 2017. The reason for this ambiguous date? Overkill updated the Linux port to support Mod_overrides after modders had already added it in unoffically, '''without telling anyone!'''''. This isn't even going into Workshop support, which isn't supported on Linux, or the incompatibility of certain mods running [=BeardLib=]. Also the games' TrueEnding can't be unlocked on Linux, raising the question of if the devs really thought that no one plays the Linux port of the game.

** Bain was initially far less likeable in this game since he TookALevelInJerkass (until an update, he never apologized to the team if they fail like he did in the first game, for one thing), never shuts up even when he only has a single line for a situation ("Guys, the thermal drill. Go get it."), and his cleaner costs for killing civilians (which, stealth ''or'' loud, will almost certainly be necessary due to either not having enough cable ties to secure every civilian or their insistence on standing directly in your line of fire) are much higher. Some people have made mods dedicated to muting Bain permanently.

** There is only one third-person reload animation (swapping detachable box magazines), but the character doesn't actually swap the magazine. They still do the same motion even if their weapon doesn't use a box mag. There is also only one animation for holding long guns (right hand on the grip, left hand gripping the barrel) no matter what mods (like foregrips) are on the gun. Melee attacks also only use one animation regardless of whether the weapon is a knife, hammer, axe, or spear.

*** Patch 12 fixed what patch 11 broke. The result was people who liked the broken difficulty complaining that the game is now easy again thanks to the "casuals" complaining. This eventually lead to the addition of the rare beat cop with a Bronco .44 revolver, who was as durable as other cops but dealt much more damage, in remembrance of the damage bug.

** The background video accompanying Locke heists features a short looping video close up of the obviously in-game model Locke, which looks clash compared to the live-action clips of the other contractors. December 2018 update changed it to the live-action footage from the bad ending, and Locke's model has been updated to look more realistic.

* DorkAge: 2015 was a very divisive period for the game, to the point that it'd be shorter to list the updates that ''didn't'' result in a BrokenBase. Between a massive number of crossovers (before 2015, the Payday series had only had four, with the first game having one with ''VideoGame/Left4Dead'' and the second getting ones with ''Film/JohnWick'', ''VideoGame/HotlineMiami'', and a melee weapon in reference to a ''ComicBook/TheWalkingDead'' game that Starbreeze had just announced; 2015 had six in that year alone), a pair of highly controversial events with the Hype Train and Crimefest 2015, the addition of microtransactions that [[BribingYourWayToVictory could give players an advantage over others]], and various other updates that resulted in large-scale uproar (including review bombing that knocked well over 15% off the game's Steam User review score), to the point where the Steam Community moderators for the game made headlines when they went on strike in protest of the game's direction, only relenting when they were given a public interview with the game's Community Manager to voice the fanbase's concerns. After a rocky start to 2016 (which saw a largely unpopular crossover with VideoGame/GoatSimulator and a Perk Deck rebalance which was widely considered to make the game's balance problems worse), however, the game managed to WinBackTheCrowd in the Spring, with some well-received updates (including a free crossover with Film/HardcoreHenry that was received nearly as well as the Hotline Miami DLC and a rerelease of the first game's Wolf Pack DLC that was free to players who owned the original), attempts to better listen to community feedback (including lengthy open betas for new balance changes), and, most significantly, "freeing up" the microtransaction system (by removing the drills and letting players just open any safes they get for free) as part of Update #100.

** Many fans wanted to be able to play as different characters than the main four, and ideas for such were popular on the forums. So far, though, every character addition except Old Hoxton has led to a new slew of complaints, including a free character (Film/JohnWick) and the two most requested ideas, a female heister (Clover, then later Bonnie) and an ex-cop (Dragan). Some fans now complain the crew is getting too big (with 22 heisters in total as of the end of 2018).

** The civilians to a certain part of the fanbase, mostly [[TooDumbToLive due to running into the crossfire]] and [[WhatAnIdiot getting themselves killed]], as well as the [[MostAnnoyingSound female civilian's screaming]].

** Hoxton also comments that in prison, he didn't have [[MostAnnoyingSound Bain yapping in his ear like a needy dog]].

* MostAnnoyingSound: Some of Bain's mission control dialogues, as well as the mission complete speeches, are horrendously repetitive. For example, it's ''impossible'' to do the standard Bank Heist stealthily without being told "[[BrokenRecord Guys, the thermal drill! Go get it!]]" [[AnnoyingVideoGameHelper every few minutes]]; since doing it stealthily means leaving the drill until the bank is controlled, expect someone to mask up just to pick up and immediately drop the drill to shut him up. There are even mods and codes specifically designed to mute him.
** Many fans also have a special hate for the [[StockSoundEffects screams of female civilians]], to the point some have claimed they will deliberately shoot them (or mod the game) so they don't have to listen to them.
** Houston and Chains' Inspire lines to revive players only consist of "Get the fuck up!". While Chains' dialogue has been vastly expanded in a patch, Houston's has not. If a player playing as Houston uses Inspire several times before it works, prepared to hear that line ''a lot''. As above under Memetic Mutation, this was eventually lessened as the Aced version of Inspire was changed to have a cooldown after guaranteed successful revives, rather than a chance of revival.
** Vlad's [[HollywoodToneDeaf singing]]. [[SugarWiki/MostWonderfulSound Depending on your prespective.]]
** The Alesso Heist's DJ's JiveTurkey lingo.
** [[SmugSnake The Commissar's]] [[TheComputerShallTauntYou very childish threats]] in the Hotline Miami job.
** [[VideoGame/HotlineMiami Jacket]]'s voice lines. This is the reason why the players are using the [[GameMod "Microsoft Jacket" modification]] to avoid getting annoyed by the tape recorder.
** On a similar note, there exists a voiceover mod called [[GameMod "Rust]] [[https://modworkshop.net/mydownloads.php?action=view_down&did=19231 Nukem"]], which replaces Rust's monotone, dreary and uninspired voice lines with those of VideoGame/DukeNukem, which are the total opposite of Rust's voice lines.
** The Cloaker and Bulldozer's voices are considered [[SensoryAbuse "Ear Rape"]] to a certain part of the playerbase, since they're the most cacophonic enemies in the game.
** As for the modding community, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2whT4sjFdM if a custom music mod for certain heist tracks like "Razormind" or "Utter Chaos" doesn't get updated for a while or if you don't reinstall the updated music mods]], the entire tracks are turned into [[EarRape extremely loud white noise.]] Fortunately, this is no longer a problem for the modders since the "[[GameMod BeardLib Music Module]]" was released for anyone to create standalone custom music mods.
** Several songs in the game's soundtrack are considered this to some, which is the reason why they're using music [[GameMod mods]] to begin with.
** The sound that plays when a sniper hits you with one of his bullets.
** The sound that plays when your armor breaks. Whether it is because too many enemies focused on you or because your dodge build failed you, it means that you've got to hide behind cover yet again.

* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK-neZkunpE various]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0gJgH1HGyY catchy]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWkqvRaR8hk tracks]] played during police assaults slowly turn into an EarWorm in your mind as you spend more time playing. Getting UpToEleven lately: the The Dentist trailer has an (awesome) [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcMDJ1jEou8 original track]] and the Big Bank trailer introduced an ''opera'' [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ul0YbD1AIeE soundtrack]] which plays in the heist itself and with the chorus starting during police assaults' climaxes. With the Big Fat Music Update, one can configure the soundtracks to one's preference, often resulting in ''Ode to Greed'' playing everywhere.

* EarWorm: Donacdum... don don donacdum...

ThatOneLevel: Due to the [[FakeDifficutly unfair]] nature of the game, there are a lot of them. Some heavily favor one approach over another, making them agonizing if you're using the "wrong" build. Others are easy with an experienced crew but a nightmare with a poorly-coordinated, inexperienced group. A few are just sadistic. Here is a run-down:

** Like the first game, ever since the initial release in 2013 to the present day, the game ''lacks facial animations, something that was standard in pretty much any 3D game [[Videogame/HalfLife2 since around 9 years before PAYDAY 2's initial release]]''. The reason for this is likely due to time constraints.

** The Big Bank, Hotline Miami, and Hoxton Breakout heists are widely considered the best heists in the game and all three came out back to back to back. The next heist, White Christmas, was released for free so it dodged most of the heat (on top of having a potentially ''very'' high payout), but when the next paid DLC, The Diamond, came out it was quickly blasted for not living up to the epic scale of the other three, being derided as 'too easy' and 'not worth the price.'
** An inverted case with the Car Shop heist. It was released just before the much-anticipated Hoxton Revenge Heist, which would finish the story arc started by Hoxton Breakout. Car Shop itself was hyped up due to the ability to actually drive and steal cars. When it was released however, it was found that the driving mechanic was difficult at best, there was a time limit on the driving portion, and the overall payout was minuscule for the amount of effort (similar to the Art Gallery). This actually dampened some of the expectations for Hoxton Revenge, which while not having as big of a payout as its predecessor, was still considered a decent heist, especially compared to Car Shop.
** Update #157 tweaked the Car Shop heist to make it somewhat more bearable; the computer hacking only take a minute, a vent was added to the upper office, guards will no longer patrol the offices nor will they move towards the office to investigate a computer in progress of hacking, and the one outside the manager's office on higher difficulties was removed.

** There are mods that can [[BodyHorror horribly disfigure]] the PAYDAY Gang including the civilians and the cops themselves (Like the "[[HumanoidAbomination Spaghetti Cloaker]]" mod). One of the most notable mods is [[https://modworkshop.net/mydownloads.php?action=view_down&did=16865#prevsbox the one that replaces EVERY heister's face texture with]] [[VideoGame/HotlineMiami Jacket]]'s face! Even though many said that it's [[MemeticMutation the PAYCHECK Crew]], but it's pretty unsettling... [[Funny/PAYDAY2 and funny at the same time.]]
*** Ironically, someone referred the mod as "[[CrossesTheLineTwice Jiro: Completely Potato Pack]]".

** The background video accompanying Locke heists features a short looping video close up of the obviously in-game model Locke, which is jarring compared to the live-action clips of the other contractors. December 2018 update changed it to the live-action footage from the bad ending.

ThatOneLevel: Due to the nature of the game, there are a lot of them. Some heavily favor one approach over another, making them agonizing if you're using the "wrong" build. Others are easy with an experienced crew but a nightmare with a poorly-coordinated, inexperienced group. A few are just sadistic. Here's a run-down:

** The "Film/HardcoreHenry" pack is a major one, as it ties into a very fantastical action movie, with the crew as actual good guys for once. And if the FreezeFrameBonus in the film has anything to say, it's completely canon. Also, [[TropesAreTools it's ridiculously funny and rather well-designed]].

*** Regardless of build or preference, nearly every veteran player will have Transporter Aced (Enforcer) and Fast Hands Ace (Ghost) due to the sheer number of missions that involve moving bags.
* PortingDisaster: The Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 ports. Besides a few major, free updates, the console versions are seriously trailing behind in a way that parallels the ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2'' console fiasco.[[note]][=TF2=] on PC is ''still'' being updated more than a decade after it first came out. The most recent [=TF2=] console update was for the Xbox 360 in '''2009''', and that was a full year after its '''three''' updates in 2008.[[/note]] Xbox 360 users were told it was an issue of Microsoft's ExecutiveMeddling seen with [=TF2=]'s frequent-yet-sizeable updates; Playstation 3 users were told they would be up to date come early 2014, which turned into [[ShrugOfGod "when it's ready"]].
** Made worse following development in mid-2014: [=PS3=] users received the "Armored Transport" DLC '''six months''' later than promised, making them up-to-date with the PC port circa November 2013. Of course, the [=PS3=] update comes with the bonuses of absolutely nothing for Xbox 360 users, and the fact that the Xbox One and [=PS4=] [[UpdatedRerelease "Crime Wave" versions]] announced not much earlier are expected to ship with all the DLC included.
** The shit officially hit the fan since Overkill announced that the Gage Weapon packs and Armored Transport will be the end of the DLC for [=PS3=] and Xbox 360 players. While many last gen gamers began to suspect this due to the constant delays and lack of updates, many who were waiting since the beginning have no end of contempt and rage for Overkill at their respective systems getting the shaft. The fact that the DLC heists are widely considered to be some of the best in the series has only rubbed more salt into an already giant wound.
** The console ports in general have a history of getting shafted. The "Crimewave Edition" released on the [=PS4=] and Xbox One, at one point, went over '''400 days''' without a patch, and when they finally got updated, it was only for the content released up to 2015... which, at the time of release, still put the console versions more than six months behind the PC version.
*** Roughly a week before the Switch port was released in February 2018, [[https://www.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/comments/7yv8gr/please_do_not_buy_payday_2_for_switch_its_a/ it was revealed that the port was wildly out of date]], '''nearly two years behind the PC version at release''' (the Switch port was made around the time of the "Most Wanted" edition, which contained the updates up to June 2016, and apparently never updated after that). To add insult to injury, this meant that the Switch port was even further behind than the most recent [=PS4=] and Xbox One versions at the time of its release (the "Master Plan Edition"), which was itself several months out of date by that point (containing all of the updates up to May 2017).
*** On top of that, the Switch version is missing a fair amount of content that the PC version had even before Update 100. For one, not only were achievements nixed, but side jobs as well, meaning all weapon modifications must now be obtained through card drops (aside from Mod Courier Pack mods). And if that wasn't bad enough...it runs horribly, with the game constantly dipping below 30fps, especially on more intensive heists like Golden Grin or Alesso. But hey, at least you get Joy....well..temporarily.
** In a similar theme to that of the console ports, the Linux port constantly gets ignored by Overkill when PC event updates go live, and when the game doesn't work, the updates either A: break the very point and feature of the update, something completely unrelated to the update, or even the game itself in ways that the Windows version rarely has to deal with (and who rarely have to wait more than a day for the devs to fix, unlike on Linux where updates are normally next-day affairs). And while the port itself is generally rather good, supports all the DLC the Windows version has, a lot of the initial features from said version didn't get ported over when the port was released. Mod_overrides support wasn't included natively until it was added to [=BLT4Linux=] sometime between June and August of 2017. The reason for this ambiguous date? Overkill updated the Linux port to support Mod_overrides after modders had already added it in unoffically, '''without telling anyone!'''''. This isn't even going into Workshop support, which isn't supported on Linux, or the incompatibility of certain mods running [=BeardLib=]. Also the games' TrueEnding can't be unlocked on Linux, raising the question that the devs really thought that noone played the Linux port of the game (when that clearly isn't true).

** The [[RabidCop Clo]][[{{Jerkass}} aker]] (both in-universe and meta-wise). While he is undeniably a DemonicSpider and an obvious gameplay mechanic and necessary enemy, his [[SmugSnake quotes]] make him this by far. People have taken note that the Cloaker's responses tend to represent the [[TrollingCreator worst traits of Overkill]]. Not only that, the latter is also loathed by [[EveryoneHasStandards the law enforcement themselves]] for [[AxCrazy being batshit crazy enough to be put in a mental asylum]] and being just sadistic enough to give the PAYDAY Gang themselves a run for their money! [[AdaptationalVillainy They also got demonized]] by the developers themselves in Lab Rats and Prison Nightmare as the "Necro-Cloaker". [[AssholeVictim And good riddance he gets killed, though]].
** While the Cloaker still has his own defenders, some players admitted that the [[PsychoElectro Taser]] [[FromBadToWorse is even more psychotic.]] Not only being slightly more durable than the Cloaker, but the Taser is also hated for [[GameBreakingBug having his stunning attack bugged]], [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard giving him the advantage to stun players behind the doors, walls and etc.]] After Hoxton's Housewarming Party updates, his spawnrate has been [[UpToEleven drastically increased]] in exchange of the Cloaker's spawnrate nerf.
** Rust. Many people expect the badass senior biker portrayed by ''[[Creator/RonPerlman Ron Perlman]]'' would be a natural fit, given he'd already played Clay in ''Series/{{Sons Of Anarchy}}''. Apparently not, as what they got was a grumpy old biker, who drops swears liberally, to the point of it sounding incredibly monotonous. Not helping is that Rust has such a low vocal range, it sounds like as if he's ''bored of heisting'' and wants to do literally anything else. It didn't help matters is that on his [[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/72ucal/sup_muthafuckas_ron_perlman_here_dont_be_shy_ask/dnlha4x/?context=1 Reddit AMA]], Perlman more or less confirmed that he [[MoneyDearBoy only took up the role for a paycheck]].

* SelfFanservice: The game has five total female characters; Clover, Bonnie, Sydney, Hila and Joy. Clover is flirty, Bonnie is a thug, Sydney does drop a fair few sex references, Hila...exists, and Joy is peppy and {{Keet}}. Out of all of them however, Clover has the second-most fanart of her, partially because she was the ''first'' female character, only being beaten out by Sydney. Stranger still, fan artists tend to flip-flop on keeping her [[ButterFace intentionally ugly mug]], or redesigning it with prettier features. Bonnie keeps her ButterFace, with Sydney, Hila and Joy averting this.

** Civilians in a nutshell. If it isn't bad enough that they can get brave and try to call the cops, but bugs can mean they ignore shouts to get down if they've started calling, requiring you to melee or shoot them for a good nagging and a fine. There are even player mods that change the warning text to ''"Walking Cop Alarm Exterminated - Pay $X for Bain's Therapy"''.

** The game normally took 35-50 GB of storage space. However for reason that variously explained as "unpacking archive" or "making backups" almost each time the game update, the game size bloated to 70-73 GB of storage space until the update finished, no matter how small the update is.

** Like the first game, ever since the initial release in 2013 to the present day, the game ''lacks facial animations, something that was standard in pretty much any 3D games [[Videogame/HalfLife2 since around 9 years before PAYDAY 2's initial release]]''. The reason for this is likely due to time constraints.

** Clover's hair goes all over the place when she moves around due to the way NVIDIA PhysX works (the technology used to have its hair effects.), which is especially noticeable when you're sitting behind her in the Longfellow car. The Linux Port also has Clover afflicted with the "Crazy Hair" condition too, as it has the opposite problem (it lacks PhysX support, but because there's no checks in place, the hair goes crazy anyway). It's likely for these reasons that the other female heisters have [[NoFlowInCGI much shorter hair]].

** Due to possibly being rushed for release, the female guard/FBI agents in the ''Hoxton Breakout'' heist have ''male'' voices.

*** Some fans, however [[UglyCute actually LOVED his new face]], since he currently has a [[https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/102851052177025960/0FE390407C7FC027FFFDC23B0C6A6CD4406D3182/ strong resemblance to the late]] Music/DavidBowie. And they claimed that before the update, [[http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/938/305/b5d.jpg Jacket originally looked like]] UsefulNotes/VladimirPutin or the "feels bro" man.

** The video accompanying Locke heists features a short looping video close up of the obviously in-game model Locke, which is jarring compared to the live-action clips of the other contractors. December 2018 update changed it to the live-action footage from the bad ending.

** Jacket's introduction video, the Wild West, and Chivalry DLC have the Cloakers being the subject of TheWorfEffect. Meanwhile, in the Reservoir Dogs heist trailer, Wolf gets to recreate the torture scene from the movie with a Cloaker being the victim.

** Really, the console ports in general have a history of getting shafted. The "Crimewave Edition" released on the [=PS4=] and Xbox One, at one point, went over '''400 days''' without a patch, and when they finally got updated, it was only for the content released up to 2015... which, at the time of release, still put the console versions more than six months behind the PC version.

** The car physics in the Car Shop job are a scrappy mechanic for many. Not only is it an UnexpectedGameplayChange, the steering is stiff and the physics are floaty, which makes it very easy to spin out or even flip over. Combine the wonky physics with the extremely strict escape timers on Overkill and Death Wish and you have a recipe for keyboard smashing. It got better in the Meltdown heist, at the very least because there wasn't any time limit (and also technically optional).

* "Gone in 240 Seconds" requires Car Shop to be completed [[ShapedLikeItself in four minutes]]. While simply going loud and using the Normal difficulty's timer as a guideline may be simple, the RNG elements and the [[TheAllegedCar cars' incredibly poor driving physic]] mean it gets difficult fast. Not only can the Teuer Autos manager be in a spot that is just too far away from his office, but the IT employee's desk is completely randomized; one would have to check every office to find it, and it had better be in that cubicle area on the second floor or the office on the first floor! Even then, the computer will always take 100 seconds, or 1:40 minutes, giving you just over 2 minutes to complete ''every single objective in the map''[[note]]Update #157 reduced the time required to 60 seconds, making this achievement somewhat easier, but is balanced by making ECM jammers disrupt the hack[[/note]]. Bumping into things during the escape is a sure-fire way of losing this achievement.

** Finally, "Dodge This" requires you to kill 10 Cloakers with the Thanatos, the rifle with the lowest total ammo count in the game. To make it even harder, you have to land headshots on them, so simply baiting Cloakers to charge at you won't work. You'll have to do a careful balancing act of moving yourself into position to see their heads, but also not in a way that they decide to just straight up Bruce-Lee you into the ground. Thankfully, there is an easier (but very risky) way of helping with this one; equip the Electrical Brass Knuckles and stun that Cloaker for a free headshot.

** “One More Down, No More To Go” and "Ultimate Heister" requires the player to complete all heists on the Death Sentence difficulty with One Down mode on. Up against the Department of Homeland Surveillance's ZEAL team, who will take you into custody the second time [[note]]third with Nine Lives aced[[/note]] you go down? Well... You really do have a death wish.

* Meltdown is another heist known for its difficulty. The team goes into the Murkywater compound from Shadow Raid, taking on soldiers that are a little better armed and armored than the average cops. Then they have to look through the whole place for one container. If you're lucky, the container will be in the main building, the only area with good cover on the map. The rest of the Murkywater compound has snipers everywhere. Then you have to look for crowbars, having to find three just to complete the heist. If you want any extra look, you have to use those crowbars to open the crates beforehand, because there aren't extras. The loot itself leaves you incredibly slow, and the forklifts around can only carry three at most. They don't move particularly fast, either, nor are they armored, which wouldn't be a big deal except that the route to drop off the loot is a massive shooting gallery full of cops in impossible-to-reach, elevated positions. The Longfellow car can make it easier, if it's found and if players bother to use it.

** Day 1 sees the crew roaming around the city in search of goats, which [[MakesJustAsMuchSenseInContext have had cocaine smuggled inside their rectums]]. Sounds simple? It isn't. The city is massive, requiring the Longfellow in order to get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time, and the goats could ''be'' anywhere - hidden in buildings, trapped on scaffolding, stuck behind gates or on top of lampposts, requiring the use of a drill or saw respectively, and regardless of difficulty, one is guaranteed to appear at the top of a burning building, which is of course going to be swarming with cops. As for the goats themselves, they are a rather unique type of loot in that they can ''damage you''. The Longfellow is also intended to help carry the goats, but it can only carry a set few at the time, so you will have to fill up the trunk, get to the semi, drop off the goats, repeat, until you have all the goats, which is made even more frustrating in that none of the goats' locations, aside from the last one, are marked out for you. And then there is the big problem: a severe lack of cover. There are several buildings that should be used as functional cover, but they all have very large glass windows, rendering them more likely to get you killed. Clearly, this map was designed around Swan Song.

* The White House, fittingly enough for the last heist in the game, is absolutely brutal whether you choose to go Loud or Stealth it. If you go Loud, you have to locate certain wire boxes for Locke to hack, which aren't easily found despite being in plain sight ([[FakeDifficulty though the fact that they're small, cream-coloured boxes on cream-coloured walls might have something to do with it]]). Depending on the RNG, they'll either be in easily-defended spots, or right out in the open of the lobby being swarmed with massive amounts of cops. After that bit of unpleasantness, you fight your way to the Oval Office, where you have to wait for a drill that the cops can cut off the power to from multiple locations. And by the way, the drill can't be upgraded and cover in the Oval Office is pitifully-inadequate. And that's assuming that the cops don't just flood it with tear gas. And afterwards, you have to run to the PEOC on the other side of the map, while taking a new route leading you out into the open with lots of enemies, no cover and a van turret to go with it. Then, when you're actually in the PEOC, you have to hack a computer three times in one of the worst places in the whole game. Multiple places for cops to spawn, which they do in ''droves'', the cops are willing to flood the room with tear gas, and once more, there's virtually no good cover. And that's ignoring the two turrets on the ceiling raining down lead on your group the whole while. Even after that, you have to run back outside, and complete ''yet another'' hack to get rid of some AA guns so Locke can pick you up! With, [[RuleOfThree again]], no cover. Overkill spared no detail on the endgame, clearly.