History YMMV / Payday2

** Flashbangs were a long time ScrappyMechanic for many players, which was not helped by Bo Andersson's hostile defense over said mechanic. Initially, flashbangs would spawn at seemingly random times for supposedly no reason, despite Anderson's insistence that it is suppose to be an anti-camp mechanic. After update 100, flashbangs now give the players a warning in the form of a beeping noise and a red aura, granting players a small window to avoid getting blinded.

* 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 dig into 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.

** Taken [[UpToEleven to the next level]] with the ZEAL Team on [[HarderThanHard Death Sentence difficulty]], in which all of the units are {{Lightning Bruiser}}s (with the exception of Snipers) and can [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill instantly mow down]] the entire crew in a few hits if they're not careful enough. Someone admitted that using the ICTV without the Anarchist Perk Deck (and some damage reduction skills such as Underdog aced or Frenzy) will result your entire armor getting depleted in 3 hits.

** [[UpToEleven Death Sentence]]. Enemies have the same health as on Death Wish, but hit thrice as hard. Also, Minigun Dozers, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Bulldozers with miniguns and a '''massive health pool!''']], spawn on Death Wish and above, with Medic Dozers[[note]]A unit with the Bulldozers durability, crossed with the Medics healing powers[[/note]] spawning on Death Sentence. A modifier was also added for all difficulties called "One Down", where players can only be incapacitated and revived a single time before they go into police custody, as the name suggests. One Down was replaced, with Death Sentence taking its place.

** After fixing a jammed drill, Houston may sometimes say "We need a bigger drill!" The Big Bank heist upped the ante of drilling into vaults by introducing an industrial drill (nicknamed The Beast) so large that you have to carry it in three separate bags. The Golden Grin heist cranked it UpToEleven by introducing an even ''larger'' drill that the developers called the "Mother of the Beast" in previews and the "Big Fucking Drill" once it was released... and even they have a chance to break down!

** Taken UpToEleven with Dallas regarding the "I NEED A MEDIC BAAAG!" meme, though.

** Taken UpToEleven with a [[https://modworkshop.net/mydownloads.php?action=view_down&did=12752 modification]] inspired by ''VideoGame/WolfensteinTheNewOrder'', which turns the PAYDAY Gang into the [[LaResistance Resistance]] while [[HeroAntagonist the cops]] [[AdaptationalVillainy got demonized into]] [[UsefulNotes/NaziGermany Nazis]], under the command of [[BigBad Wilhelm Strasse.]] This becomes a bit of HilariousInHindsight regarding the development of VideoGame/RAIDWorldWarII, which is just like PAYDAY 2 but involving stealing gold from the Nazis.

** While the Cloaker still has his defenders, some players admit that the [[PsychoElectro Taser]] is [[FromBadToWorse 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 doors, walls and etc.]] After Hoxton's Housewarming Party updates, his spawnrate has been [[UpToEleven drastically increased]] in exchange for the Cloaker's lowered spawn rate.

** The AI and other characters can smoke a cigarette before the heist starts. Gangsters in day 2 of "Rats" can be seen smoking cigarettes ''through their face rags'', which is mostly due to all characters sharing the same smoking animation.
** Like the first game, ever since the initial release in 2013 to the present day, the game ''lacks facial animations, something that was standard even in ''Videogame/HalfLife2''; 9 years before PAYDAY 2's initial release. The reason for this is likely due to time constraints. However, characters can be seen blinking and moving their mouth in the Big Bank trailer, something which was never implemented into the game.

* 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]] with their [[ThousandYardStare blank stares.]]
** [[http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/531768892755760962/2498E493A1CCF626BCEF83E33AC9572AC5567503/ Also, the Cloaker's "helmet" shape is slightly exaggerated]] which looks like he has a [[CranialEruption massive, egg-like lump]], even worse if his nightvision goggles are 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 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 "[[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.
** The background video accompanying Locke heists features a short looping video close up of the obviously in-game model Locke, which clashes with 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.

** The game normally takes 35-50 gigabytes of storage space. However for reasons that have been variously explained as "unpacking archive" or "making backups", almost each time the game updates, the game size bloats to 70-73 GB until the update finished, no matter how small the update is.
* SpecialEffectsFailure: The AI and other characters can smoke a cigarette before the heist starts. Gangsters in day 2 of "Rats" can be seen smoking cigarettes ''through their face rags'', which is mostly due to all characters sharing the same smoking animation.
** 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. However, characters can be seen blinking and moving their mouth in the Big Bank trailer, something which was never implemented into the game.

** 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]].

Please note that, due to the NintendoHard nature of the game, [[LastLousyPoint sadistic completion requirements]], and plethora of [[FakeDifficulty player-perceived bullshit]], there is an overflow of ThatOneAchievement and ThatOneLevel instances; they can be found in their own folder at the bottom.

[[folder:''"That One X"'' Examples]]
* 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.
** "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.
** "We're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat" requires you to secure 40 bags of shells (which explode if thrown too far or if it gets damaged) in Train Heist. Yes, the same Train Heist that is unlocked by doing the entirely luck-based achievement "But Wait - There's More!", so you can't even go for it without hitting every transport that comes your way hoping for the address to drop. It also doesn't help that sometimes, the physics glitch out and send one bag in a vertical trajectory upwards, only to land back on the pile of 39 other bags you have. The Spring Break update has made this a lot easier, as the requirement has been lowered to 20 bags and on higher difficulties you need to grab 12 bags, while each train car holds 10. Since you've already blown open the door, might as well bag the remaining 8. The map is also now selectable without going through Armored Transport, so you can actually plan ahead.
** "If you Liked it you Should Have Put a Ring on It" is obtained by completing any Armored Transport heist with 9 bags of gold secured. Each convoy can have up to 4 trucks, and each convoy also carries only one type of bag loot (jewelry, cash, or gold), meaning it is impossible to tell whether you'll even get the right kind of loot you need for it. Additionally, each heist only carries a ''minimum'' amount of bags that will spawn; it is perfectly possible to get a gold convoy that only has 6 bags. Compounding this is that if you use shaped charges, you remove two safety boxes on each truck you use them on, reducing your chances further. Can be mitigated by running on higher difficulties, which increases the minimum number of trucks, and thus bags, that appear.
** "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.
** The "Murphy's Law" achievement in the same heist is just as bad due to it being purely RNG-based. First, you have to tag the wrong truck (easy enough) to get the Breaking Ballot distraction heist for day 2. You then have to break into the vault and hope there is no money inside to steal, which is how the achievement is done.
** "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.
** As of Update #100, you can now use ''any'' deployable thanks to changes to how the Skill Trees work, but this is at best a marginal boost in survivability as you still have to worry about everything else that can go wrong, including Captain Winters' platoon on Day 2.
** "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. This is mitigated slightly with the Sociopath perk deck (after Update #164, which significantly buffed Sociopath and its melee skills), but the player needs to own the ''VideoGame/HotlineMiami2WrongNumber'' Digital Special Edition on Steam.
** "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 onward, 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.
** "Didn’t See That Coming Did You?" requires you to kill 10 enemies with a sniper rifle while ziplining. If you were to use rapid fire or scatter-shot weapons to do this, it would be tolerable. Doing it with a bolt-action rifle that requires precision aiming ''when precision aiming isn't possible'' is ballbustingly annoying. "Last Action Villain" takes this up a notch, requiring you to get ''a headshot'' while performing those shenanigans with the R93 rifle. That part about not being able to aim? Ho boy you will be feeling that one without a laser module attached.
** The "Triple Kill" achievement requires you to kill three enemies with one shot. Sounds simple until you realize that cops will actively try to dodge your shots. Double Kill ramps this up: while the players are only required to kill 2 enemies in one shot now, you have to do it with the Rattlesnake, the weakest of the DLC's rifles (that might not have enough power to kill both enemies) and you have to do it ''25 times''. The best way to do this is to simply go loud on a mission that spawns a lot of cops, and blindly fire through an alleyway hoping you get them or camp at a wall that cops climb over to enter the level.
** 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 matter difficult, 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.
** 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 more than 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 on opposite sides of the second floor, 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 coordinated 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).
* "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 secondary slot for the [=OVE9000=] Saw (it was once a primary weapon, adding onto the difficulty of this before it was changed). 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, since you're in a hurry. Basically, everything needs to align up just right and a single mistake or badly placed obstacle can ruin the entire run.
** Thankfully, the achievement counts when you reach the door to the apartment, before you put the C4 on, so you don't have to fight the Commissar with a saw and trip mines; just restart as soon as the achievement pops up and gear up for the real battle.
* Basically ANY achievement which boils down to "Play Heist X with all four players using masks from Set Y", especially if the masks are DLC. You basically need to orchestrate that mask setup yourself - or be VERY lucky.
* Similar to the above, while not actually very difficult to complete, several older achievements involving "Complete objective X using weapons from set Y" are now all a case of GuideDangIt, as the achievements refer to these weapons by the DLC packs they originally came in while ingame these are now all referred to as "Ultimate Edition" weapons, making it impossible to tell which ones you're supposed to use without looking it up online.
* While not strictly achievements, per se, some Safe House trophies are quite maddeningly difficult to get.
** “Big Daddy” basically requires the player to perform the "Knockout" (kill a Bulldozer with the Overkill Boxing Gloves) achievement fives times. The main issue is that the Boxing Gloves are more designed for knockdown rather than damage, and Bulldozers are ''immune'' to stun or knockdown.
** "Bushido" requires you to get the samurai armor on Shadow Raid 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.
** “Clueless” requires the player to complete the Big Bank heist on Overkill using no skills.
*** 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.
** “Failed Assassination”. Basically, you're stuck with completing the Undercover heist on Overkill, with no skills, no armor, and a sniper rifle. Most of the map is cramped with little cover, poorly suited for a sniper rifle, and a single bullet will drop your defense to zero. Add in the fact that most enemies will dodge a high threat weapon, and it's an exercise in insanity.
** “Long Fellow”. Complete the Meltdown heist on Overkill or above in 7 minutes or less. You pretty much need a full lobby and a perfect run to be able to do this, as in solo, it's just impossible. Find the vault in the first container you open, open the vault with three crowbars in the fans pretty much as soon as you find it, stash 4 of the extremely heavy bags in the trunk of the Longfellow, with the other four on forklifts, and make a mad dash to the drop-off point, praying that the ones driving the forklift can dodge enough of the gunfire to make it.
** “Robbedacop” is in essence, a grinding achievement, with the goal being to kill cops. Not hard on its own, but how many cops does it require? '''''658893.''''' This is not an exaggeration, either. You have to literally kill the entire population of Washington.
** “Snipe It" requires completing the Watchdogs with sniper rifles, and an accuracy of 100% or higher. You cannot miss a single shot, or at least get enough [[OneHitPolykill One-Hit Polykills]] to rebalance the stat. You will also have to do this for both days. Watch that trigger finger!
** “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 modifier 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.

* 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.
*** There is one more hiccup you may encounter when getting the info for the right machine. The pressure information is found on various computers on Day 2. If the texture quality is set too low, ''the monitors are unreadable''. They can also accidentally be broken if someone gets too trigger-happy or a gunfight breaks out in the lab somehow.
** Another thing that discouraged 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...
** Even worse, it is entirely possible for the heist to suddenly go loud with no apparent reason other than the reported "Someone saw suspicious activity". What ends up happening is a guard ends up pathing to the secret vault in the apartment... and immediately starts phoning in as if there was coke stashed there, even if you're still working on locating the 5 devices (and thus don't even have the coke bags to put there). And the worst part about it is there is no indication that the guard is doing so unless you are close enough to hear him.[[note]]This is easily handled by closing the ''secret'' vault when you're not using it.[[/note]]
** Going loud on Day 3 not only prevents you from getting the gold, but it is also notoriously hard to complete. Plan B requires you to break open a computer room, which can be behind one of many identical looking security doors. Then you have to hack the computer and wait for the absurdly long timer to count down. However, you can't just camp the computer room, as there are 2 fuseboxes on the level that must be protected, since if the cops reach them and cut the power, the hacking process is interrupted. Not to mention, most players will be geared to do the mission in stealth, so they'll get ripped apart by the relentless waves of cops. Even if your team is geared to go loud, waiting for the hack to finish and dashing back and forth between fuseboxes is just tedious.
** Due to the way the vault and cameras spawn on the map, it is perfectly possible to have a camera spawn ''looking straight at the vault''. And yes, it will instantly aggro the moment you open it. This means you either have to destroy the camera, hope someone has camera loop, or use an ECM every time you want to get inside. Due to the impracticality of all of this[[note]]If you destroy a camera, a guard can later happen upon it and sound the alarm, and you can't kill all the guards on this map. And [=ECMs=] will eventually run out, with the team only having a max of 8[[/note]] most people would just rather swallow the asset costs if they see this combo and restart the map.
* Rats is probably the biggest pain of them all:
** Firstly, the mission comes with escape sub-missions. If you fail to cook three bags of meth on the first day, you ''will'' have to go through an escape mission. If the trade on Day 2 goes loud, and it will if you failed on Day 1, [[MarathonLevel there's a chance of a ''second'' escape mission]].
** Day 1 is easily the hardest day of the three as, upon finding the client's crystal meth cooks are dead, the group has to make meth whilst fighting off cops. Did someone use the wrong ingredient or do anything in the wrong order? ''The meth lab explodes, setting the entire second floor aflame and incapping anyone caught by surprise.'' It doesn't help that Bain can either be confusing with what to put in by fumbling between ingredients or combining names, or he'll say "Fuck me", which is a telltale sign that he's uncertain. Originally, the best way around this was either to wait for Bain to say the ingredient again (which 9 times out of 10 he would be very specific) or comparing what you heard to what other players heard, as Bains' lines were not uniform amongst all the players. Thankfully this has been fixed for a good while, as Bain now uses his dialogue from the Lab Rats event heist, which is much more certain and uses a more consistent pattern[[note]]Simply wait for Bain to speak again after he requests an ingredient. He will correct himself almost instantly if he's wrong, otherwise he'll say something along the lines of "I'm x% sure" or "Add it"[[/note]].
** Day 2 is not much better. If you have little to no meth, then the gangsters will open fire and try to burn their intel before you can reach it. Even if you do have ''enough'' meth, [[LuckBasedMission if the gangsters just decide to screw you over, or if the cops get wind of the deal,]] you'll have to fight your way to the intel anyway.
** Day 3 requires killing the remaining Mendozas and stealing their loot. However, should you fail to defuse the bombs hidden in the bus or lack the intel to do so, then any bags you failed to save will be destroyed, significantly reducing your PAYDAY prize.
* Firestarter Day 2 is a pain in the ass to stealth, mainly because the alarm boxes you must disable are almost always located in well patrolled hallways, making them difficult to approach. Not only that, but just the act of opening the alarm box can alert nearby guards since their programming results in them always seeing the open box before they see the player and call it in.
* Armored Transport. All of the variations of the heist has cops swarming in from every which way and they all spawn close to you, meaning you will be under fire a ''lot''. Downtown, Crossroads, and Harbor are notoriously infested with snipers, Underpass has fog that may hide the likes of Cloakers, and Park hardly has any cover. All the maps for Armored Transport require you to move bags of jewelry, money or gold (jewelry is the lightest while gold is the heaviest) across a good distance, so have fun being shot at while trying to move bags. And because the heist is always loud, the game may trigger an Escape level when you try to leave.
** Some players would deliberately avoid picking up the secret blueprints that unlock the Train heist, since that essentially adds an extra day to the heist and players won't get their payout and XP until they finish the second day.
* Train Heist. There is a reason why many players avoid looting the secret blueprints in Armored Transport. This heist requires players to break through two layers of security to reach the loot. First, you have to drill or hack the train car doors, and assuming you opened a car with a vault in it, you need to open it with a thermal drill which Bain will "helpfully" drop somewhere in the canyon below, requiring a player to retrieve it with cops constantly shooting at them from the high ground. Then, once you set up the thermal drill, there's a 1/3 chance the vault will either contain the mission required turret pieces, or optional ammo. The ammo itself, unlike regular loot, will explode if shot at or if dropped too far, which means if you want to get the maximum payday, you must ferry ''all 40'' ammo bags on foot to the drop-off point, all while being shot at by cops and snipers, of course.
** Following the Spring Break event, the Train Heist has been made into its own heist, and made significantly easier in both loud and stealth runs via adding in new asset options.
* Election Day is a massive pain in the ass if the job goes loud.
** On day 1, if you didn't tag a truck before being spotted, you're forced to hack a computer containing the shipping info and you have to do it ''twice'' at four and a half minutes both times if you want to have a greater chance of doing day 2 at the warehouse where the ballot machines are stored. The entire map has very little cover and the warehouses themselves are filled with a lot open skylights for the SWAT units to rappel down from. During the hacking process, if the cops shut the power off, you're forced to go outside to restore it via circuit breaker, forcing yourself to be exposed to snipers.
** Day 2, should you be successful in tagging the right truck from day 1 (or fully hacked the computer), is even worse with cover when the heist goes loud. The entire warehouse is full of windows, skylights, and balconies for cops to hit you from every possible angle and a large number of snipers always spawn near the escape van on the adjacent rooftops, which is several yards away from the main warehouse; good luck hitting the snipers from an extreme distance while the snipers themselves have pinpoint accuracy against you. The final step of the mission also has you hacking a computer to delete the surveillance footage, which can take upwards of five minutes of babysitting while cops are swarming you and snipers punish you the second you crawl out of cover. Stealthing it isn't much better, due to the high number of guards and tight corners, luck-based crates that have the ballot machines you're after, the occasionally horrific locations of said crates (some spawn on a shelf two stories high with minimal cover, meaning that if you miss a jump, you'll likely take heavy damage or be downed instantly, and if you DO make it, you need to protect a machine that might as well be a neon sign), and perhaps worst of all, some of the ballot machines can spawn behind gates that either need a randomly placed keycard or being drilled for upwards of a full minute in plain sight of the guards' patrol route). Regardless of whether you're stealthing or not, if you play the level on Mayhem and above, you're also forced to find a crowbar to pop open the shipping crates and said crowbar is in a random location.
** And should you fail to tag the right truck in Day 1, Day 2 is a straight shootout through a strip mall. The bank vault you need to drill is in a long, straight hallway that will be camped by snipers on a neighboring balcony and cops have no less than four different routes into the bank, which manages to be both cramped and short on good cover at the same time.
* Shadow Raid is notoriously hard since stealth is pretty much required and there is ''zero'' margin for error. If at any point one of the numerous cameras or guards sees you, the alarm will go off and start a one-minute timer that will automatically end the mission once it finishes. If you haven't collected the minimum required loot by that point, which can be up to '''12''' bags of loot, the level essentially becomes unwinnable; even if everyone is at the vehicle with time to spare, it won't leave unless you've loaded enough loot.
** Perhaps the worst part is that you ''cannot'' kill, contain, or otherwise neutralize all of the many, many guards and civilians. You still only have four pagers available, and there are easily at least a dozen guards on the map. They also like to patrol a ''lot'', and while they won't notice things like opened crates or cargo containers, they ''will'' notice if the secured vault is opened. The loot in the vault is four pieces of the samurai armor, with the same weight as gold (no sprinting, no jumping, slow movement), and if you get spotted or a guard notices the vault is opening (and no, you can't close it), you're boned and have to drop everything and run...assuming you even have enough loot to DO that!
** It can become frustrating for players for an entirely different reason. Players who really know the level and are strong with stealth abilities find the level very easy and ''incredibly'' profitable in cash and XP, second only to Hoxton Breakout. If you get in a group with one of these people expect to run Shadow Raid early and often, with the stealther instructing everyone else to just sit back and do nothing for 15 minutes while they effectively solo the heist.
** With enough time and practice, the guard paths are stable enough that a skilled player can avoid almost all of them, with options on just killing the ones that will stay stationary in an inconvenient place. With a little luck and caution, a decent player can basically make the warehouse their playroom. ''Unless'' the helicopter that arrives around the five-minute mark is carrying ''more guards'' instead of an artifact, which means if one of ''them'' turns out to be a camper and picks the right spot, you're not getting any loot in his line of sight without blowing the alarm.
** It ''is'' possible to "force" the chopper to bring a container instead of additional guards by standing near the helipad, 5 minutes after Bain says you should check the Murkywater warehouse for better loot.
* GO Bank is probably the most infamous. For starters, stealthing this mission isn't as simple as "stop all the guards, cameras, and civilians in the map". Also, the cameras' operator is offsite (meaning they need to be directly destroyed), and all the people in the building need to be dealt with. Then when the time comes to open the vault, it requires two keycards (located from a large list of potential spots), and takes many minutes for its lock to disengage. During this time the phone constantly rings, using the RNG to determine whether or not the mission will get even harder, and civilians constantly spawn on the street. And that's just scratching the surface.
** Practicing the map helps, but even if you know it inside out there are several hazards players need to account for. Assuming the team has no qualms about killing civilians and/or have a very large amount of cable ties, and can co-operate well enough to answer the phone whilst managing [=GenSec=], police, and civilian spawns, there is still the matter of passing the vault lasers (which are almost always on) and then reaching the escape before things get out of your control.
** The civilians are the worst problem; unlike other maps they will constantly spawn and, if you were sloppy, spot corpses or hostages in the streets before they enter the playing area. This means you have to kill them or use Stockholm Syndrome's effects, but at times you can't do the former because they're still hidden behind a wall, frantically dialing away at a cellphone. If you DID manage to be clean about everything, there's also a random chance that the civilians will enter the now-deserted bank and ''will not leave''. Considering you have to go through the front of it to get to the vault, this effectively means you must subdue the new civilians, even if you're out of cable ties and bodybags.
** Should Plan A fail, you have to face large amounts of cops with poor cover for yourselves, while assembling a cage and skyhook to collect your loot - which has nothing to stop the police from taking the bags back out of it, should they get to it. When the pilot ''finally'' catches the cage (the Ace Pilot is better, but still not guaranteed), the crew must escape to the van at the parking garage through the sewer maze in a limited time with the cops on their tail.
* The Big Bank. There is a very good reason this place has never been robbed. Both approaches have their own unique challenges, with Loud being a monumental gunfight, but stealth deserves special mention. The Big Bank has generally taken over from GO Bank as being the hardest stealthable mission in ''Payday 2''; it's flooded with civilians, more of which constantly spawn in the street and walk in. Want to use Stockholm Syndrome to get them all down? ''You can't'' - The guards inside the vault room will hear you too and call the police from complete safety. The cameras in the lobby are connected to a control room behind the timelock so you can't disable them when you really want to. When you trigger the timelock, you get a call from our good friend Jen at [=GenSec=], who may send over more guards, and another guard may come in from the elevator. Shoot him inside the elevator, though, and you can't answer his pager, so hope he doesn't see something right away. Once you get the timelock open you have to contend with the lasers on the vault room entrance, then perform a stealth section right out of one of the better ''VideoGame/{{Thief}}'' games just to open it (which may sometimes alert a guard or two). Once you get inside you better have a silent drill or have found the keybox so you can open the 5-6 doors quietly. Then you need to move the loot out past the guards and lasers all over again, though one of the Escape Plans you can elect to utilise is specifically tailored for stealth runs, and involves moving the loot a shorter distance from the vault to secure it. If you can find, or pre-place, extra keycards, you can also get rid of some or all of the lasers. However, if you're going for the "Entrapment" achievement, all that's out the window - you ''have'' to get 12 bags to the default escape out front, and you ''have'' to leave those lasers up.
* The Dentist's [[PunctuatedForEmphasis THE]] Diamond job has one particular section that makes it challenging. Once you get past the regular security features, your final obstacle to the titular loot is a puzzle involving a series of pressure plates. Players need to hack a security terminal to reveal the safe path. Should the player step on an incorrect plate, the alarm immediately sounds, gas is vented into the room, and the Diamond drops into a safe that must be drilled open. The thing that makes this puzzle frustrating, especially on harder difficulties, is that the puzzle resets after a set period of time, and the terminal must be hacked again to generate a new path. This means that if someone takes too long retrieving the Diamond, there is the risk that the timer resets while they're still negotiating the pressure plates and the alarm goes off. Another frustration with the puzzle is that it still must be done even if the heist goes loud, with some groups preferring to deliberately trigger the plates and just drill the safe.
* The Bomb: Dockyard, for sneaks. You thought Shadow Raid was bad? Try stealthing this one! You need two keycards to open the docking gate, but on this huge map there will only ever be exactly two keycards which have a large number of potential spawns; these keycards must then be moved to the front of the map. Then you need to find a computer with the Moretta's comm frequencies; these eight computers, in two groups of four, are always in rooms with cameras and the potential for a guard or civilian to spot you while you work. Then you need to make a phone call to the captain from a specific phone, then give him GPS data from a computer, which may be on opposite sides of the map. Wait for the ship to move, which takes a few minutes, and only then can you board and begin looking for the bomb. Making it harder, the map is large and relatively open, with guards on multiple elevations who aren't always easy to spot and can see you from some very unusual angles. Civilians are numerous and strategically placed to ensure there's no easy way to navigate around without killing a few. Also, a surprise to many people, there are two security rooms - This means to take the cameras offline two guards may need to be killed[[note]]It is possible for one of the two rooms to be unoccupied[[/note]], and one of them is in a room with a large glass window in a fairly well-patrolled area.
** Brutal as stealth on Dockyard can be, it is still a stiff breeze compared to the nightmare that is doing it loud. Most of the above tasks are present, though some are modified (you need to wait for C4 to be airdropped in instead of keycards, there's one computer to hack, but the building has a power box on every outer wall that the police will doggedly pursue and force you to repair them and restart the computer). The biggest issue is that the police will send in massive amounts of Snipers who will set up on the buildings on the edges of the massive map, [[TheAIisACheatingBastard who will effortlessly plug you full of holes from distances that you can't even see them, even through the most powerful scopes available to the player]], made worse by the lack of tall enough cover in many places. The helicopter drop and hacking portions takes a very long time, especially if you aren't willing to throw substantial money and favours towards assets that can speed them up slightly. Worst of all, however, is actually moving the bomb parts-- not only are they heavy, and not only are you being shot at from almost every angle, but the path to the escape van is LUDICROUSLY long if you don't have enough favours left over for the pricey alternative escape routes. It's well over 100 meters away as the crow flies, but the actual path itself is full of long, exposed corridors that wind and in some cases require a bit of backtracking. Without a full party of four players, you either have to walk this path several times or keep throwing the bags ahead, making progress agonizingly slow, all the while the police simply do not relent, especially at the end where the assault literally ''never ends''.
* 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 Alesso Heist, bar the whole deliberate ProductPlacement theme, is still divisive for its confusing layout and overly long process. For one, an unexperienced players can easily get lost in the corridors or behind the shops, and have a lot of trouble reaching the basement. Stealthing this heist in particular can be a challenge as the layout is still windy, the pathfinding of the guards may change, and the mission requires going from the lowest floor to the highest, then back again, and then [[OverlyLongGag again]]. All the while remaining under the radar! At least the various chutes make bag-moving a lot easier.
* 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.
* 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. If you're playing on Mayhem or higher, there are ''multiple'' Skulldozers in the first waves of the police assault, making it quite likely that the heist will end right there if players don't focus on them immediately. 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.
* 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.
** 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.
* 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.
** Somewhat mitigated in that if you don't aggro him after the vault opens and simply hang back, the police will kill him for you.
** [[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.
** His shields always rotate against the attacker, making outflanking them difficult.
** Each one of his Phalanx units boasts 3000 health, comparable to a ''Bulldozer''.
** Some of the locations his team gets stationed are easily some of the worst imaginable; in Hoxton Breakout Day 2 and Big Bank, he stays at the front entrance, which tends to be choked tightly (making it much harder to outflank him), or out in a lot of sniper fire.
*** Not so much in Hoxton Breakout Day 2, as although outflanking him horizontally is more difficult, outflanking him ''[[DeathFromAbove vertically]]'' is much easier, due to the way the room is designed.
** 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'').
[[/folder]]

** 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.

** For stealth in general: If that portion is botched, players simply restart rather than deal with the mission loud likely because they aren't equipped for it, as stealth-focused weapons more often than not sacrifice power and accuracy for silence and concealability. Overkill has attempted to avert this somewhat with the addition of the Armor Case drop, which allows a single player to go from two-piece suit to any armor they decide to pack along... but it means that the heister won't have any other, much more valuable drops, like a doctor bag or ammo bag, which means it doesn't see much use.
** In the 3rd day of Framing Frame, nearly everyone insists on stealthing the level so they can grab the gold and escape with little resistance, as getting spotted and having to go to Plan B is long, loud, dangerous, and doesn't pay out nearly as much.
** Election Day during the warehouse computer hacking job also has a similar problem where people will demand a restart if stealth fails due to hacking taking longer in a loud heist and an extra security hacking job you're forced to do before you can escape, as well as the loss of bonus gold loot if the alarm is raised.
** In general, expect every stealthable heist on Death Wish to be a stealth run (there are exceptions though). Part of this can be explained in that Death Wish stealth missions are rarely different from their Overkill counterparts, with the exception of cameras and safes being Titans (and thus indestructible and only drillable, respectively), whereas Death Wish loud missions are accompanied by swarms of bullet-sponge [=GenSec=] SWAT units, swarms of DemonicSpider level enemies, and require intimate knowledge of the map as well as very specific setups and preparation. There are some stealth missions, such as the Big Bank, that are even [[HarderThanHard worse than that]], however.

* FanNickname: To avoid confusion between both Hoxtons, a number of players had taken to calling Payday 2's Hoxton "Houston", as not only does it suggest a link between him and his brother Dallas, but it also sounds fairly similar. This was then made into New Hoxton's actual codename, since Bain thought the same thing, while letting Old Hoxton keep his codename.
-->'''Old Hoxton:''' You call yourself Hoxton, right? More like Houston... because you've got a fucking problem!

* EnsembleDarkhorse: Old/British Hoxton from the original ''PAYDAY'', who had some popularity in his debut. Once ''PAYDAY 2'' was made and revealed that the new Hoxton character (now Houston) was now a new American character, fans cried foul and immediately created a petition to reinstate the old Hoxton character. Overkill eventually responded by releasing a Christmas soundtrack that had British Hoxton singing the lyrics (while also noting about the petition made for him) and also hinted that he may return if he [[spoiler:can break out of prison]]. The soundtrack won British Hoxton fans over quickly.

* CreatorsPet: Bain. Pretty much everyone hates him in this game to the point where they install mods and codes for muting him so that he can't repeat his lines over and over again, yet Overkill always has him on standby for voice acting (most likely due to Bain's voice actor being the lead composer for the game and can be on standby to record new lines at any time) and pretty much has PlotArmor... [[spoiler:until the ''Film/ReservoirDogs'' Heist]].

* 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 ''Franchise/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.

* NightmareFuel: [[NightmareFuel/PAYDAY2 Has its own page.]]

** Election Day, where you rig an election on behalf of a Republican politician, may just be a bit uncomfortable after the allegations of eletoral fraud by Donald Trump and [[Sandbox/StormingOfTheUnitedStatesCapitol the Capitol Riots.]]

** For Loud heists: Big Bank, First World Bank, Hotline Miami, Reservoir Dogs, Scarface Mansion and Hoxton Breakout are widely considered to be the best heists in the game, since they're large scale, offer intense and fast paced action, have a respectable cash and exp yield, and are still simple enough that relatively inexperienced players can complete them.

** “Staying Alive” requires the player to complete the Nightclub job using only trip mines to kill enemies. Only trip mines, no weapons/melee kills or other deployables. Even having the Jack of All Trades skill will disqualify the challenge.

* AlasPoorScrappy: While Bain may be constantly annoying due to his nagging, [[spoiler: after the events of the ''Reservoir Dogs'' heist, along with his current condition and subsequent death as a result, one can't help but feel sympathetic towards him. His FamousLastWords really hammers the point home. Good thing that wasn't the true ending]].

** 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.

** 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.
** 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. If you're playing on Mayhem or higher, there are ''multiple'' Skulldozers in the first waves of the police assault, making it quite likely that the heist will end right there if players don't focus on them immediately. 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.
** 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.
*** 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.
** 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.

* MagnificentBastard: [[VillainWithGoodPublicity John Henry Simmons]], known on CRIME.NET as "[[CorruptPolitician The Elephant]]", is an ambitious politician aiming to become Senate and willing to pull plenty of strings to do so. Hiring the titular gang, he has them do a number of heists to increase his good publicity, with objectives ranging from rigging ballots to framing rivals, himself aiding by warning the gang of police assets ahead of time. Consistently giving them hefty rewards for their heists, he uses his power to assist the gang if needed, being responsible for Hoxton being transported to a less secure prison so that the gang can bust him out. Being exposed by the same AncientConspiracy he was involved with, he uses his various connections to bail himself out, promptly using his knowledge of the conspiracy to have the gang steal an ancient artifact and rescue Bain from them. Using the publicity from the failed exposure, he becomes a figurehead for anti corruption, [[KarmaHoudini thus gaining more power than he had before and ending the game on his own terms]].

** 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 not having enough cable ties to secure every civilian, or accidental from either their insistence on standing directly in your line of fire or the cops' insistence on helping them up then sitting right there, effectively using them as shields) are much higher. Some people have made mods dedicated to muting Bain permanently.

** 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 when he gets killed]].

** On a more meta-level, people sometimes forgive Goldfarb or Almir for their shortcomings. [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Bo Andersson]], the top man, has almost no defenders, being absolutely [[ItsAllAboutMe snide and condescending to legitimate player complaints]].
** In-universe, Bain and the crew ''still'' hate Alex the pilot from the first game. [[IdiotBall But they still keep hiring him.]]
** Also in-universe, Hoxton ''loathes'' Houston.